A Little Bit Of Science

It’s simple. We work too much. There’s evidence that shows we work too much and it’s not a fun time for anyone. So what would a world with shortened work hours and no loss in pay look like? Pretty damn good. You’d be a fool to disagree. The weekend is a sacred thing. We live for it, we get our rest from it, but the two-day weekend as we know it has only been around for about a hundred years. The history of the work cycle across the globe is actually quite varied and at times, it gets pretty wacky. Pretend for a moment you’re back in Ancient Roman times and the days of the ‘nundinae’. You get one day off school a week and it’s market day. You’re only allowed to set up shop or for a real treat, you could go to the market and spend your coin. There’s also church, if you’re lucky. Not much of a day of rest, but it could be worse. Then there’s England in the 17th century, where we see a glimmer of the beginnings of the two-day weekend. Along with Sunday, workers sneaked Monday off (they called it ‘Saint Monday’), to go to church and worship. And by ‘go to church’ and ‘worship’ we mean, ‘go to the pub and get pissed’. Unsurprisingly, workers liked this. Bosses, not so much. Goodbye, Saint Monday. You’ve been fun. None of this really sounds ideal but don’t worry - it gets worse. Fast forward to 1929 and the Soviet Union, where Yuri Larin, economist and politician with a little too much imagination (to put it politely) decided it would be great to abolish weekends altogether. This aimed to both solve the current post-revolution economic problem and help to crush the power of religion. Fun! Thankfully, this only lasted a couple of years and workers returned to having their one day of rest per week. While work cycles still vary across different cultures, the two-day weekend idea that was first instituted by an American cotton mill in 1908 has stuck. But can working conditions become even better for us as time goes on? We know that 2023 is not where history ends, and there might be hope for us yet. Over the last five years, a not-for-profit community called 4 Day Week Global have organised a series of pilot studies around the world to trial a four-day workweek. We swoon at the thought. There are varied ways that companies are rolling out the shortened work hours strategy, but the good news is that they’ve seen increased productivity and a huge boost in general well-being amongst workers across the board. Is it realistic to run the workforce this way? Can we still generate profit within a shortened week? Could this really be the way of the future?! We’ll let the stats speak for themselves. PRIOR EPISODES MENTIONED: The Soviet Space Tractor! Karoshi Means Worked To Death (no exclamation mark) Dozenalism! How To Sabotage Your Workplace with OG Spy William Joseph Donovan SOURCES: A Failed Soviet Experiment Offers A Warning To Today’s Burnout Generation, in AOGA Eye on Design Four-Day Work Weeks: Current Research and Practice, by Rex L Facer II and Lori L Wadsworth, in Connecticut Law Review Soviet Experience with Shortening the Workweek, by David W Bronson in the ILR Review Who invented the weekend? BBC Bitesize Working Hours, by Charlie Giattino, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser, on Our World in Data See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Let’s go back to the 1960s. A time of Richard Nixon, moon obsession, hippies, the Vietnam war and… no ethics committees. Born in Oklahoma in 1930, Robert Allan Humphreys was a man of many disguises. Ordained an Episcopalian priest in 1955, Humphreys changed his name to Laud after William Laud, a seventeenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury (he was very holy). Humphreys followed the traditional 1960s path…got married, got kicked out of the church and started a PhD in sociology focussing on male-to-male sex in the St Louis area public restrooms. Then he destroyed a picture of Nixon and got sent to jail for 3 months where he was offered an academic position (naturally!). This just got a little more interesting. In the days of keeping up appearances and things being illegal which definitely should NOT be illegal, there was more homosexual activity happening in public restrooms (otherwise known as “tearooms”) than anyone cared to hear about. But Humphreys was determined to understand exactly what was going on, who was doing what, and why. He wanted up close and personal details. Now, being a professional and someone sincerely dedicated to the betterment of humanity, Humphreys began conducting some serious research. This included going undercover as a “watch queen”, gathering data on the who, what and when and eventually gaining the confidence of some of the men he observed. 12 months later, Humphreys pops on a disguise and rocks up to the private homes of a bunch of his original “subjects” claiming to be a health service interviewer, interviewing them about their marital status, race, job and so on. Oh, did we mention he found them by sneaking a peek at their licence plates outside the tearooms and asked his police buddy to run the addresses? Minor detail. Could Humphreys have gone about his research in a more honest and less invasive manner? Yes. Did Humphrey’s findings have the potential to threaten the social standings of the men whose extremely personal information he collected without consent? Absolutely. But, although Humphreys may not have had the most above-board ethical approach, he has since proven to help move humanity in the right direction. Following his investigation into the tearooms, Humphrey’s publications helped legitimise American gay and lesbian studies within sociology and challenged the notion of homosexuality as deviance. It also led to fewer men being arrested for having consensual sex. Pretty good, no? But the question on everyone’s lips is, does the end justify the means? PRIOR EPISODES MENTIONED: Why Are the Proud Boys So Obsessed With (Not) Wanking? Isaac Newton Coin Detective SOURCES: Sociology Professor accused of beating student NY Times June 10, 1968 https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/06/10/77178200.html?pageNumber=25 OBITUARY Robert Allan Humphreys; Priest, Author L.A. TIMES ARCHIVES AUG. 26, 1988 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-08-26-mn-797-story.html Humphreys, Laud (1930-1988) by Stephen O. Murray http://www.glbtqarchive.com/ssh/humphreys_l_S.pdf Biography - Source: Stephen O. Murray, "Humphreys, Laud (1930-1988)," An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, & Queer Culture, http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/humphreys_l.html, last accessed June 20, 2007. https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt187025pr/entire_text/ Laud Humphreys and the Tearoom Sex Study https://drjkoch.org/Intro/Readings/Humphreys.htm Laud Humphreys and the Tearoom Sex Study - Dr. Joan Sieber, Visiting Research Scholar, The Kennedy Institute, 1977-78, and Professor of Psychology, California State University, Hayward https://drjkoch.org/Intro/Readings/Humphreys.htm Ethics I metal health research case study: The Tearoom Trade Study James M. DuBois https://sites.google.com/a/narrativebioethics.com/emhr/contact/the-tearoom-trade-study-1 Laud Humphreys and Research Ethics Babbie, Earl. The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy; Bingley Vol. 24, Iss. 3-5, (2004): 12-19. DOI:10.1108/01443330410790849 Editorial Introduction: Moving Beyond the Controversy: Remembering the Many Contributions of Laud Humphreys to Sociology and the Study of Sexuality Schacht, Steven P. The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy; Bingley Vol. 24, Iss. 3-5, (2004): 3. America’s Toe-Tapping Menace - By Laura M. Mac Donald Sept. 2, 2007 https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/opinion/02macdonald.html Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places RA ‘Laud’ Humphreys (1970)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alfred Ely Beach was a good and decent man. Born in 1826 in Springfield Massachusetts, Alfred loved his family, he loved the opera and he loved inventing. In fact, he invented the world’s first practical typewriter. He was legit. Hailing from a rich family in the newspaper business, Alfred made his way to New York where he learned the family trade. Heading up Scientific American Magazine, turning it into one of the most successful, powerful, and influential weeklies of its kind, Beach rubbed shoulders with the greats. Samuel F. B. Morse (inventor of Morse code), R. J. Gatling (inventor of the machine gun) and Thomas Edison himself called Beach friend. New York inventor life in the mechanical age was riveting! But there was one problem. The traffic… was horrendous. The hustle and bustle of Manhattan had become unbearable. So Beach was determined to find a solution. Eureka... A New York Pneumatic Subway! Beach had the brains, the money and the drive to make his idea work. Soon, all New Yorkers would travel via an underground tube in lavish style, sucked or blown to their destination of choice. No more arduous commutes. No more collisions with horse poo, rickety carts and polluted air. But there was just one person standing in Beach’s way: Boss Tweed, Mr Corruption himself. William Magar Tweed was the worst of the worst. Controlling the Democratic political machines of both city and state, Tweed had a monopoly on everything. He held everyone in the palm of his hand and nothing went under his nose without him getting a pretty penny from it. Everyone was afraid to do business with Boss Tweed. And no one ever stood up to him, except our good and decent inventor, Alfred Beach. Knowing Tweed would never grant permission for him to build his magnificent pneumatic subway, Beach decided to play Tweed at his own game. Applying for a building permit for an underground postal tube, Beach and his team dug in secret for 58 nights. But this was no postal tube. After 2 years, spending the equivalent of $7m of his own money, Beach had built a full-blown, high-class New York Pneumatic Subway. So where is it today? What happened to this magnificent invention? Was there a subway brawl between Alfred Beach and Boss Tweed? SOURCES: American Heritage - Alfred Ely Beach And His Wonderful Pneumatic Underground Railway New York Times - The Broadway Tunnel Damn Interesting - The Remarkable Pneumatic People-Mover Scientific American - Scientific American’s owner built the first New York Subway IMAGE CREDITS New York Times images from The New York Times, 27 Feb 1870 Other images from the Illustrated Description of the Broadway Pneumatic Underground Railway PRIOR EPISODES MENTIONED: Thou Art The Man! (Or, The Great Moon Hoax) YouTube: https://youtu.be/yyEbU7y7vA8 OmnyFM: https://omny.fm/shows/the-wholesome-show/thou-art-the-man-or-the-great-moon-hoax See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How far would you go to get to the truth, or perhaps more pertinently, to the bottom of things? William Beaumont was one dedicated scientist. Some might say ethically… ambiguous, but hey, he was born in 1785, so, old school. Later becoming known as the Father of Gastric Physiology, Beaumont did whatever he had to do in order to understand the juicy details of the digestive system. But did he go too far? Although not medically trained in the traditional sense, Beaumont began his career as an apprentice with a doctor. Recognised as a judicious and safe practitioner in the different applications of the medical profession, his dedication to understanding the anatomy of the human body prompted Beaumont to keep a journal describing daily events and the symptoms and treatments of patients. He also kept a very detailed journal of the 10 years of experiments he did on a poor old soul named Alexis Bidagan, otherwise known as St. Martin. St. Martin was a young Canadian man, horrifically shot in the stomach at close range, leaving him half-dead with a gaping hole in his stomach. Luckily for St. Martin (or perhaps unluckily?) Beaumont was the man at the scene. No one thought he’d live more than 36 hours, but St Martin carried on an entire year thanks to a few handy poultices and the attentive care of Beaumont. And then he got better. Kinda… St Martin didn’t really get back to normal. In fact, the hole in his stomach never quite closed up, leaving him with what can only be described as another digestive hole. Or if you’re Beaumont, an incredible opportunity to understand the digestive system. So the terribly “kind” Beaumont took St Martin on as his very own chore boy and thus began the experiments. 10 years of prodding, poking and shoving meats, cabbage and more into a hole that no one should have. There was nothing Beaumont wouldn’t do… or taste for that matter.. to get to the bottom of the digestive system. SOURCES: Science History Institute: Probing the Mysteries of Human Digestion Smithsonian Magazine: This Man’s Gunshot Wound Gave Scientists a Window Into Digestion Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery: A DEBT TO ALEXIS: THE BEAUMONT-ST MARTIN STORY Wikipedia: William Beaumont Encyclopedia of World Biography: William Beaumont Biography My North: The Gruesome Medical Breakthrough of Dr. William Beaumont on Mackinac Island Guinea Pig Zero: Alexis St. Martin (1794-1880): The Intrepid Guinea Pig of the Great Lakes PODCASTS MENTIONED: Radiolab Sawbones The Dollop See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Charles Vance Millar was the greatest troll ever. Born in Aylmer, Ontario in 1854, Charles was a fan of practical jokes. Some might have described him as a cantankerous man, capricious and out to do whatever the hell he wanted to do. Extremely intelligent, and top of his class in law school, Charles built a silly amount of wealth by investing in companies and real estate. Then he bought some racehorses as wealthy men do. But he was also an ass. With no love, no living relatives and a fortune worth 5 million in today’s money, Millar collapsed dead on the evening of Halloween in 1926. So who got all his money? Soon after his death, articles started appearing in newspapers about the curious nature of Millar’s will. Some interesting clauses were found that ended up shaking the entire city and pissing a bunch of people off. Millar’s money was to go to the mother who gave birth to the greatest number of children in the ten years after his death. And so the race began. Women went wild! The government tried to step in, issuing a bill to escheat the estate and nick all the cash but that couldn’t stop the women. They talked emphatically and persistently until the town seethed with indignation, eventually turning over the government’s rule. Tune in to hear about some of the families who were contenders for the Millar’s loot. Perhaps not so coincidentally, contraception was legalised in Canada in 1969. References Bearing the Burden: The Great Toronto Stork Derby 1926 - 1938, Masters Dissertation by Elizabeth Marjorie Wilton at Dalhousie University Comstock Act of 1873, at The First Amendment Encyclopedia Ghost Road: and Other Forgotten Stories of Windsor, by Marty Gervais How A Dead Millionaire Convinced Dozens Of Women To Have As Many Babies As Possible, by David Goldenberg on FiveThirtyEight It’s a long story: The history of birth control in Canada The Toronto 'Stork Derby' Baby Race, by Barbara Mikkelson on Snopes The Will of a Troll, by Five Guys FactsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is your workplace overrun with unqualified managers, red tape and bureaucracy? Are you asked to sit in on arduous meetings with no real consequence when you’ve got deadlines coming out of your ears? Maybe that’s just office politics. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a deliberate ploy against you, decades-long in the making with deep roots in espionage and sabotage. Welcome, friends, to the world of citizen saboteurs. It all dates back to 1883 to the father of American intelligence, William Joseph Donovan. “Wild Bill” they called him and oh was he wild. After studying military strategy and combat tactics, Donovan formed his own troop known as the Silk Stocking Boys (you had to be there). He chased down Mexican bandits and rallied men to commit feats of bravery - sometimes under orders, sometimes off his own bat. With a bullet in his knee, Donovan lead his men through German fire, refusing to turn back when even the American tanks were retreating. A heavily decorated war hero, Wild Bill was a badass. But, not everything he did was obvious to the untrained eye. Working for a private secret organisation, Donovan started gathering intelligence on the developments throughout Europe leading up to World War 2. This attracted the attention of MI6, and that’s when Wild Bill started playing with the elites - Churchill, Roosevelt, movie stars and aristocrats - they all loved him. Heading up the Office of Strategic Services, which was the precursor to the CIA, Donovan was instrumental in a colossal number of acts of sabotage. Eventually, he got his people to build a manual centred around the idea that sabotage is a game that anyone can play. You don’t need guns, bombs and aeroplanes. Sometimes all you need is to be annoying. With instructions for managers and workers alike, Donovan’s book was filled with genius ideas to piss your enemy off - just enough to discombobulate them, but not get yourself caught. I’ll be damned. We’re under attack. SOURCES: Vanity Fair - Spymaster General: The adventures of Wild Bill Donovan and the “Oh So Social” O.S.S. Simple Sabotage - The Simple Sabotage Field Manual - Strategic Services Field Manual No.3 (1944) Central Intelligence Agency - The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency Britannica - William J. Donovan - United States diplomat and general Fandom - William J. Donovan Support sources: The Business Insider - The 16 best ways to sabotage your organization's productivity, from a CIA manual published in 1944 Corporate Rebels - Advice From The CIA: How To Sabotage Your Workplace Wikipedia - William J. Donovan National Park Service - William J. Donovan Irish America Magazine - “Wild Bill” Donovan: Irish-American War Hero and Superspy See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our soft, human brains have been bested by 2022 so we are taking a quick break over the Christmas period and will be back assaulting your senses in Jan 2023. But because we don't want your ears to go unentertained, we're digging back into the archives for eps that have made us squirm, think or vomit (or hopefully, all three!). Today, we're separating the lupine from the canine from the vulpine. Or rather, how did wolves turn into dogs and why don’t foxes fit in? The Soviet Union in the 1930s was not a great place to be. And while we wouldn’t ever say they suffered the most, one group who experienced what might be called ‘interesting’ challenges were geneticists. You see at the time, genetic, biological and agricultural research was dominated by a bloke by the name of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. And he had some… interesting theories. One in particular was that you could educate plants to turn into other plants. Educate the rye into wheat. You know the trick. Agricultural alchemy. Ok, that’s crackpot. But these views (Lysenkoism) ended up the only acceptable theory in the Soviet Union at the time. Genetics was officially declared “a bourgeois pseudoscience”. In fact some geneticists - including rising star of genetics Nikolai Belyaev - went missing in the night, never to be seen again. Just for his science. But Nikolai’s brother Dmitry Belyaev wanted to fight back. So at the age of 20 he launched a secret quest in the middle of the Stalinist Soviet Union to repudiate Lysenko, keep the genetic flame burning for his brother - and for the sake of actual science of genetics and the non-actual science of cuteness, domesticate the fox! Gaining work as a lab technician Dmitry carried out breeding programs to breed the softest fox fur imaginable, and to answer deeper questions of domestication. Why had wolves turned into dogs but foxes remained wild? What brought about cuteness, and strange patches and colourings? And so, framing his experiment as an effort to improve the production of furs he launched a study that still continues today. What happens when you try to domesticate a fox? And, perhaps the most important question science has posed - can you manufacture cuteness? Sources: How to Tame a Fox (And Build a Dog) by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut The Gulag Archipelago Dmitry BelyaevSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We all know that sugar is bad for our teeth. But... how did we come to know that? It’s fairly common to see a healthy set of pearly whites now, but scroll back just a few decades, this wasn’t the case. A study in Sweden in the 1930’s found that even 3 year old children had cavities in 83% of their teeth. That’s bad. That’s real bad. See, the Swedes love their sweets. They even have a special term for Saturday Candy! With the knowledge we have today, the connection between candy consumption and cavities is blatantly obvious. But back then, they were still trying to figure out why people had black teeth… or no teeth at all. In fact during the World Wars, toothlessness was so prevalent in the United States that the military restricted recruits to men who had six teeth intact. As long as you had six teeth, you were good to go. But what was to be done? At that point, dentists were divided on the cause of dental decay. Was it due to an underlying disease? Was it due to overall diet? Or… was it candy? (Thankfully people had figured out by then that tooth worms weren’t to blame). So, The National Board of Sweden decided to undertake a long term nutritional study to determine the root cause of dental cavities once and for all. Aptly named the Vipeholm Hospital sugar experiments! They did in fact determine the cause (yes, it’s sugar), but the way they went about it was, well… not so ethical. Sources The New Yorker - How to eat candy like a Swedish person History of Dentistry - History of Dental Caries and Cariology CNN Health - The Swedish cavity experiments: How dentists rotted the teeth of the mentally handicapped to study candy’s effect Atlas Obscura - An Adorable Swedish Tradition Has Its Roots in Human Experimentation Wikipedia - Vipeholm experiments See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our soft, human brains have been bested by 2022 so we are taking a quick break over the Christmas period and will be back assaulting your senses in Jan 2023. But because we don't want your ears to go unentertained, we're digging back into the archives for eps that have made us squirm, think or vomit (or hopefully, all three!). Today, we're re-living the horrors of Easter Island. Easter Island is about as tiny and remote as you can get on the surface of our planet. It’s just 23 kilometres long (on its longest side), and as close as you can get to the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility. So you’d be forgiven if you’ve never heard of it. But of course, you have. You’ve heard of Easter Island - or Rapa Nui, as it is known to locals and should be known to everyone - because soon after it was settled by intrepid Polynesian explorers around the 12th century, the new inhabitants took up a fascinating cultural practice of carving and erecting thousands of Moai, or giant stone heads, along the circumference of the island. They brought the inhabitants spiritual protection and later, pop culture fame. But you’ve probably also heard of Easter Island because sometime after the locals began erecting these thousands of Moai, the population - and culture - of the island collapsed. From a fertile paradise with perhaps ten thousand happy, farming, statue-building inhabitants, by the 20th century, there were barely a few hundred islanders, and the island itself was an arid relic of what once was. Archaeological expeditions described it as an exhausted terrain. The Moai were abandoned. But what was to blame for such destruction? The leading theory has been that the people of Rapa Nui over-exploited their own resources, leading to civil war, mass stone head tipping and ruin. This makes Easter Island a poster child for human folly and the dangers of climate change. But is this theory right? Or is the actual story perhaps more prosaic than that? What other factors (*ahem* racism) could possibly be (*cough* genocide) at play here (*mumbles* lies about cannibalism to justify Christian-ising the place)? Join Dr’s Will and Rod as they get to the bottom of the destruction of the forgotten people of Rapa Nui. Sources Benny Peiser’s ‘From Genocide to Ecocide: The Rape of Rapa Nui’. DiNapoli, Crema, Lipo, Rieth and Hunt’s ‘Approximate Bayesian Computation of radiocarbon and paleoenvironmental record shows population resilience on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)’ in Nature Communications BingUNews: ‘Resilience, not collapse: What the Easter Island myth gets wrong’ Princeton: ‘Jacob Roggeveen, 1659–1729’ Easter Island Travel: ‘Ship logs of 1722 voyage of Jacob Roggeveen’ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our soft, human brains have been bested by 2022 so we are taking a quick break over the Christmas period and will be back assaulting your senses in Jan 2023. But because we don't want your ears to go unentertained, we're digging back into the archives for eps that have made us squirm, think or vomit (or hopefully, all three!). Today, we try and understand why oh why people drink their own urine. Ok... to people who don't do it, it's weird and gross and wrong. But to people who do do it, it's basically the golden fountain of youth. We have been fascinated with our own urine for a while now (humans that is, not the two of us). Back in medieval times, urine was considered to be a crucial diagnostic tool. Using a urine wheel, these medieval folks would diagnose disease based on the colour, smell, and taste (yes, taste) of a person's wee. Presumably by the time the colour got to ‘black as very dark horn’ the prognosis was not excellent. This practice morphed into more urine-related fun times, specifically uromancy - a form of divination by studying urine. AKA Piss Prophets. And then we come to urophagia. The weird gross quack medicine that is drinking your own urine! Urine was used in several ancient cultures for various health, healing and cosmetic purposes…and still is today. Coen van der Kroon is a present-day advocate and has written an entire book researching both the history and present-day uses of urine. The book is very aptly called The Golden Fountain. You’ll be relieved to know that van der Kroon tackles his subject with sensitivity and conviction. The book is not only a comprehensive history of urine use but a user-friendly guide to urine’s practical application. The health benefits and life-enhancing properties he (and his devotees) claim are numerous. Revitalised energy, a cure for depression, immune system boosting… Why on earth have we not caught onto this earlier? You may not have ever wanted to know about this practice, but your intrepid explorers at The Wholesome Show have done the hard yards for you today - so sit back, pour yourself a glass of something delicious, and enjoy! Sources Consciousness and Cognition: The inhibitory spillover effect: Controlling the bladder makes better liars health: Why You're a Better Liar When You Have to Pee Science Alert: These Urine-Fuelled Socks Generate Enough Power to Transmit Wireless Signals American Journal of Nephrology: The medicinal use of urine 22 words: 20 things to do with Urine besides flushing it Buzzfeed: 31 Things You Should Definitely Know About Pee Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris: Piss Prophets and the Wheel of Urine The Yoga Institute: Coen van der Kroon The Golden Fountain - Coen can der Kroon BBC: Please can everyone stop drinking their own urine?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Talking with animals and aliens is the stuff of children’s stories and conspiracy theorists. But for John Cunningham Lilly, it was his life's work. So, who on earth is John Cunningham Lilly? At the age of 16, most of us can barely organise our way out of a paper bag, hold more than a grunting conversation with our friends, or ask anything intelligent of anyone. But Lilly wasn't just anyone. See, at 16 he had a pretty profound question: whether the mind could render itself sufficiently objective to study itself. Woah. It became his life's work trying to answer that question. Where it took him may surprise you. Early in Lilly’s career, it led him to become the first scientist to locate the pain and pleasure centres in the brain. And the first to... artificially stimulate them. But, you don’t study techniques for stimulating pain and pleasure in the brain without the FBI, the CIA, Air Force Intelligence, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the National Security Agency, Army Intelligence, and the State Department all becoming interested. So when Lilly realised that furthering this research meant the weaponisation of it, he abandoned the research and found another way to answer his question. Flipping the script, Lilly decided that sensory deprivation might be a pathway to understanding the mind. His quest to be cut off from sight, sound, temperature and gravity led him to invent the first-ever isolation tank. Not only was it the most relaxing thing he had ever been in, his time in the quiet, wet darkness led him to find “other things”. He experienced presences, both known and unknown. He eventually began to see through to another reality. At this point in his career, after guidance from some alien beings and a chance encounter with the gargantuan brain of a pilot whale, Lilly’s secret mission to study the human mind turned to the study of bottlenose dolphins. Lilly was determined to bring humans and dolphins into close proximity, so they could learn from each other and humans could teach the dolphins English. This work led him to believe that dolphins deserved a seat at the United Nations, and the creation of the little-known Order of the Dolphin. But did Lilly actually manage to talk to animals? And did he ever actually answer that driving question - can we understand our own mind? Sources Bruce Clarke’s John Lilly, The Mind of the Dolphin, and Communication Out of Bounds Gerard A Houghton: John Lilly Obituary Alex Leyman’s John C. Lilly: The Mad Scientist Who Gave LSD to Dolphins John C Lilly’s Dolphins' Complex Communication John C Lilly’s Autobiography The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography [described by the New Age Journal as “at times naive and frustrating”] John C Lilly / Ecco - Dolphin Voice, uploaded to Youtube by musick2138 Christopher Riley’s The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa funded project that went wrong. Maria Temming and Anthony Crider’s The Order of the Dolphin: Origins of SETI See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Humans really love a hobby and it seems the more obscure the hobby, the more obsessed we become. But if you’re looking for the gold medal in obscure and obsessive, you need look no further than Victorian salmon fly-tying. Back in the Victorian era ‘recipes’ for the perfect fly-tying involved the most exotic of materials - fancy threads, unusual bits of fur and, most importantly, exotic and rare feathers. Of course, you’d imagine the point of creating these elaborate flys is to sucker in the biggest possible fish. But salmon don’t give a shit about the colour or the beauty of flies. They eat anything that looks and behaves insectish. But people that got into this hobby, didn’t use them to fish. Don’t be ridiculous. The idea of dropping one of their creations into the water - better yet having it scarfed down by a gross fish - was horrifying. The same goes for today. The overwhelming majority of the 21st-century fly-tyers have no idea how to fish. It’s all about bragging rights and respect or something… And one of the most infamous-and-modern fly-tying obsessed humans goes by the name of Edwin Rist. Rist came across fly-tying when he was 10 years old and became infatuated with tying the old Victorian recipes that called for the most exotic feathers you can imagine. Hanging out on the internet forums, Edwin quickly realized such fancy ingredients don’t come cheap. Luckily young Edwin had another obsession to distract him from elaborate fly-tying pursuits: he was also a prodigy flautist. But to be a truly competitive flute-guy, he needed a bloody excellent flute. And they too are not cheap. So, after getting into the Royal Academy of music he started to think…how could he make some serious cash? It’s here we meet the collections of Alfred Russel Wallace, a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist, illustrator and Charles Darwin competitor. In the mid-1800s Wallace had murdered (sorry) collected a huge variety of critters, including many thousands of birds. Most of his collection went to The Natural History Museum at Tring. This collection is of immense historical significance and contains specimens that are exceedingly rare and irreplaceable. But when Rist found out about this collection he thought, damn that’s a lot of delicious, and lucrative, fly-tying feathers. So to further his flute career, he did the obvious thing: he hatched a plan to rob the museum and sell the feathers on the infamous dark-feather fly-tying under-web. But how did it all play out? Did Edwin do the deed? Did he flog enough feathers to buy his dream flute? And …did he get away with it? Previous episodes mentioned: How To Hide A Battleship Non Fungible Tulips Sources: The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century (2019) Kirk Wallace Johnson One Obsessed Musician, 299 Birds, and a Very Weird Crime (National Geographic) The Great Feather Heist: The curious case of a young American’s brazen raid on a British museum’s priceless collection (Smithsonian) Why The Feather Heist is the Most Bizarre Heist Story You'll Ever Read (Literature Lust) Bird skins stolen in museum raid (BBC August 2009) On the Hunt for Hundreds of Rare Birds Stolen From a Museum (Audubon) Musician sentenced for rare bird skins theft (BBC April 8, 2011) Natural History Museum thief ordered to pay thousands (BBC July 30, 2011) Alfred Russel Wallace (Wikipedia)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Battleships are very large, belch smoke and move pretty slowly. If you were tasked with hiding one out on the open water, how would you go about doing it? This has been a long-standing challenge and the military’s best attempts were all pretty average. Low visibility grey was their answer. Not a great answer, but an answer. In April 1917, German U-boats were sinking 8 battleships a day! Grey battleships were not cutting it. The person who came forward with a solution was no less than an artist from the British Army, Norman Wilkinson. His brilliant idea? It’s impossible to camouflage ships, so let’s do the total opposite. Wilkinson’s aim was not to conceal the battleships but to confuse the enemy. He developed a radical camouflage scheme that used bold shapes and violent contrasts of colour and coined it dazzle camouflage. These ships look like floating cubist paintings. They are entirely ridiculous. You can probably guess the army’s reaction. For an institution that prided itself on being sneaky and subtle, this was far too radical and bright. During a demonstration of dazzle, it’s said that a confused U.S. admiral went off, yelling, “How the hell do you expect me to estimate the course of a God-damn thing all painted up like that?”. Wilkinson was subsequently asked to help set up an American dazzle department under the Navy’s Bureau of Construction and Repair. But it turns out that the history of dazzle camouflage is not such a simple story. Wilkinson claimed the idea. But, aside from nature having perfected dazzle camouflage over millennia (hello zebras on the savanna), quite a few other chaps came up with pretty much the exact same strategy. While it’s entertaining to try and untangle who deserves the ultimate dazzle crown, there’s another question that really needs answering: did dazzle camouflage actually work? Sources: Norman Wilkinson (artist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Wilkinson_(artist) Norman Wilkinson https://artuk.org/discover/artists/wilkinson-norman-18781971 Norman Wilkinson CBE RI https://darnleyfineart.com/artist/norman-wilkinson/ WW1: How did an artist help Britain fight the war at sea? https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/how-did-an-artist-help-britain-fight-the-war-at-sea/zmkx8xs Toy Boat Camouflage http://camoupedia.blogspot.com/2012/07/toy-boat-camouflage.html Camoufleuse: The Dazzling of Women at War https://modernismmodernity.org/articles/camoufleuse Dazzle camouflage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage Women Camouflage Artists http://camoupedia.blogspot.com/2010/03/women-camouflage-artists.html How the Absurd "Dazzle" Camouflage Strategy Ended WWI Carnage https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/how-the-absurd-dazzle-camouflage-strategy-ended-wwi-carnage When the British Wanted to Camouflage Their Warships, They Made Them Dazzle https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-british-wanted-camouflage-their-warships-they-made-them-dazzle-180958657/ http://camoupedia.blogspot.com/2010/10/william-andrew-mackay-and-optical.html See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have you ever had a curiosity so strong that you’ve considered staying awake for 180 hours, tapping your spinal column with cocaine, consuming deadly parasites or pumping 6L of hydrogen up your bum? Probably not. And that is most likely because you are not an idiot. But - there’s a fine line between idiocy and genius, particularly in medical science. And so today we explore some of the most extreme stories of heroes and scientists who have experimented on themselves in the name of science (though some of these experiments will make you wonder - name of…science?). These experiments are daring, shocking, hideously painful and, at times, absolutely the last thing you would want to do to yourself as a human. (And it will come as perhaps deeply unshocking that just 12 of 465 cases of self-experimentation over the last 200 years were women). These experiments weren’t all pain without glory, however. Seven documented self-experimenters went on to win Nobel Prizes for their self-experimentation work. And incredibly, in 89% of instances, the self-experimenters obtained positive results in support of a hypothesis or produced valuable data. But not all of them. Some saw catastrophic levels of failure. Some died. And some held science back by decades by their work. Is this kind of self-as-guinea-pig testing ethical? And how far is too far? The heroes, the idiots and the sad stories are all here. Previously mentioned episodes: The Schmidt Pain Index! Barry Marshall Drinks Something Weird! Why We Forgot The Cure For Scurvy Sources Jason Bittel’s This Guy Got Himself Stung 1,000 Times For Science—Here’s What He Learned Dominic Bliss’s National Geographic article: This man gets bitten by deadly snakes in the name of science Alex Boese’s Electrified Sheep Jennifer Levine’s Notable examples of self-experimentation in science Stubbins Ffirth: An Inaugural Dissertation on Malignant Fever; with an attempt to prove its non-contagious nature from reason, observation, and experiment Laura Turner Garrison’s Mental Floss article 10 Scientists Who Experimented on Themselves Brian P Hanley, William Bains and George Church’s Review of Scientific Self-Experimentation: Ethics History, Regulation, Scenarios, and Views Among Ethics Committees and Prominent Scientists in Rejuvenation Research Healthline: From Metabolism to LSD: 7 Researchers Who Experimented on Themselves New Scientist’s The high life of the self-experimenters Wikipedia: Self-experimentation in medicine Wikipedia: The 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic Window Through Time: The vomit-drinking doctor, Stubbins Ffirth (1784 – 1820) Allen B Weisse’s Self-Experimentation and Its Role in Medical Research in Tex Heart Inst J See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sexual performance, in particular impotence, is something that’s plagued chaps since they first crawled out of the swamp, rose up onto our hind legs, looked down, and bellowed WHY WON’T YOU WORK YOU BASTARD! If there’s one thing you can rely on history to provide, it’s infinite examples of how men across the ages have laboured to enhance, increase, or at the very least enable performance… Erectile dysfunction shows up in Egyptian tombs, Greek cup paintings, and even the Old Testament, with no limit to the wacky treatments they dreamed up to treat it. Not least, drinking the semen of hawks and eagles (how the hell do you get that stuff?). On this very show, we’ve talked about some of these sophisticated, not-exactly-scientifically sound performance enhancers over the years from special elixirs to penile prostheses to testicle grafts. And of course, more mechanical means have also been tried for centuries. But today’s fix is all in the realm of chemical intervention and actual science! There’s a first time for everything, huh? 1983 was the year that real science came to the fore, but not quite in the way we’ve come to expect. Renowned physiologist Sir Giles Skey Brindley made an impractical yet convincing discovery involving phentolamine injections and lacking animal models, he used himself as a guinea pig. Dressed in a loose tracksuit and with some prior preparatory injections, Brindley presented his findings in what has now come to be known as the infamous Brindley lecture, aka how NOT to communicate science. Luckily, just 6 years after this exceptional performance the main scientific surprise discovery of today’s tale arises… British Pfizer scientists Peter Dunn and Albert Wood had been researching a drug that they hoped would be good for treating high blood pressure, imaginatively calling it UK-92480. Early trials indicated little hope for its use as a heart disease treatment, nevertheless, a British patent was filed for sildenafil citrate, AKA Viagra, as a heart medication. Of course, we all know what viagra became famous for. But Viagra’s erective effects were most emphatically a happy accident, and if it hadn’t been for an especially observant nurse, it may never have thrust its way into the spotlight. Previous episodes mentioned: Dr Serge Voronoff's Monkey Balls! Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard and The Origin of Performance Enhancing Drugs! A Brief History of Penis Transplants A Brief History of Aphrodisiacs! Sources The Little Blue Pill: An Oral History of Viagra The story of the drug that changed sex and made billions. By John Tozzi and Jared S Hopkins https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-11/the-little-blue-pill-an-oral-history-of-viagra?leadSource=uverify%20wall The Viagra Craze - A pill to cure impotence? Afflicted men are saying Yesss! But is this the end of sex as we know it? By Bruce Handy https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,988274-3,00.html How to give an unforgettable talk. By Chris Nickson https://litfl.com/how-to-give-an-unforgettable-talk/ Klotz, L, How (not) to communicate new scientific information: A memoir of the famous Brindley lecture - December 2005BJU International 96(7):956-7 DOI:10.1111/j.1464-410X.2005.05797.x Revatio vs. Viagra: What's the Difference? https://www.forhims.com/blog/revatio-vs-viagra-whats-difference From Viagra to Valium, the drugs that were discovered by accident. By James Rudd Tue https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/11/from-viagra-to-valium-the-drugs-that-were-discovered-by-accident 30 Life-Changing Inventions That Were Totally Accidental https://bestlifeonline.com/accidental-inventions/ Laurence Klotz, MD, FRCSC - Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Toronto, Ontario, Canada https://grandroundsinurology.com/author/lklotz/ Before Viagra, There Were Penis Injections https://science.howstuffworks.com/viagra3.htm Viagra’s famously surprising origin story is actually a pretty common way to find new drugs Katherine Ellen Foley https://qz.com/1070732/viagras-famously-surprising-origin-story-is-actually-a-pretty-common-way-to-find-new-drugs Kristen Gurtner, Amanda Saltzman, Kristi Hebert, and Eric Laborde, Erectile Dysfunction: A Review of Historical Treatments With a Focus on the Development of the Inflatable Penile Prosthesis. Am J Mens Health. 2017 May; 11(3): 479–486. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5675239/ Viagra: The little blue pill that could - Jacque Wilson, CNN https://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/27/health/viagra-anniversary-timeline/index.html Brindley, G ”Cavernosal alpha-blockade: a new technique for investigating and treating erectile impotence" — Br J Psychiatry 1983 Oct;143:332-7. doi: 10.1192/bjp.143.4.332. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6626852/ https://royalsociety.org/people/giles-brindley-11138/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giles_BrindleySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A little bonus episode for you today, and we hope you enjoy the shorter format. Let us know in the comments on YouTube or by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts if you would like more episodes in this bite-sized form. If you have listened to the previous episode “What The Hell Happened To The Left-Handers?”, you’ll know that National Geographic sent out a survey using scratch and sniff cards back in 1986. The scents they included were: banana, musk, cloves, rose, androstenone (a chemical found in sweat) and… mercaptans. Today we expand on the tragedy that made mercaptans famous, and why we tend to enjoy this very unique smell more as we age. LINKS: The Wholesome Show on YouTube SOURCES: https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/new-london-texas-school-explosion/ https://www.gasodorizer.com/gas-odorization-history/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you’re left-handed you're part of a group that makes up about 10% of the population. And this rate of left-handedness has been consistent. Historical and archaeological records, reaching as far back as the Neanderthals, tell us that we’ve had this background rate of left-handedness for quite literally all of human history. All of human history, that is, except for a small blip between the 19th and 20th centuries. But before we explore that weird anomaly, one of the most interesting things about this story is how we have come to work out how many left-handers there have been across history. From studying silhouetted hand prints to analysing paintings, drawings and sculptures, scientists have been able to chart left-handedness back to the Palaeolithic era. Amazingly, tooth striations from Neanderthals help us understand that there have always been lefties. In more recent history, researchers have turned to photos, hospital records and documentaries. Thank goodness for all those old docos that contain endless footage of people waving at the camera. We wave with our dominant hand, so these film reels are an accidental census of left-handedness. But do you know what's weird about those images of waving crowds from the beginning of the 20th Century? The number of left-handers seems to drop off as they get younger. Which is where the anomalous data enters. Pulling all the data on left-handers together from cavemen to now, we see there is a pronounced dip in left-handers in the 19th century. So here's the question - where the hell did all the left-handers go during the 19th century?! There are three main theories, but these still remain theories: death, fewer babies, or long-standing prejudice whipped up by seriously villainous people. Previous episode mentioned: The Best Years Of Your Life! Sources Accident proneness and handedness by WF Daniel and RA Yeo Biased semantics for right and left in 50 Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages, by Wulf Schiefenhovel Handedness and longevity: archival study of cricketers by Aggleton, Bland, Kentridge and Neave Left-handedness and accident-related injury risk by S Coren Left Handed: Bad science and bad attitudes are the problem, not the left hand by Free Thought Blogs National Geographic Smell Survey, by Charles Wysocki and Avery Gilbert New London School Explosion, by Petroleum History Almanac Old books on left-handedness, by Keith Milsom Problems Related to Left-Handedness by KC Garrison #PyrfumeCodefest Twitter Thread by Joel Mainland Retraining left-handers and the aetiology of stuttering: The rise and fall of an intriguing theory, by Howard I Kushner The history and geography of human handedness by IC McManus The surprising geography of American left-handedness by Christopher Ingraham The Sniff Survey, by Boyce Rensberger See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There is no better way to conquer things than with great big explosions. The thing to be conquered in this episode? Rain (humans just love punching on with nature). This story begins with a strange observation. After the Civil War in America, soldiers of all ranks, abilities and backgrounds often spoke of drenching drain after battles. This apparent connection rose to the level of received wisdom. In essence — many believed the powerful explosions of battle brought rain. This idea really took off in the US in 1871 with the publication of Edward Powers’ book ‘War and Weather’, a chronicle of battles that were followed by precipitation. This deep wisdom did not consider the fact that battles fought in temperate locales like Virginia, averaged rain every four days. And the battles seldom started in drenching rain…Whatever. Powers had an idea. And the idea had promise. Lots of consistent big booms bring rain. Welcome to the wild world of concussionism. But so far it was just a theory, so Powers thought, “time to prove it”. He harangued politicians to pony up some cash to fund some field tests. Luckily for Powers, it was the late 1880s and people were settling the Great Plains in vast numbers, and they were struggling with severe, ongoing droughts. Perfect opportunity! Powers was granted $9000 to test concussionism. But who would run this scheme? Enter our hero: General Robert. G. Dyrenforth. Broad-shouldered, capable and extravagantly optimistic, Dyrenthforth was a relentlessly self-promoting chap. He saw vast possibilities where others didn't. He asserted that man's dominion over the continent could be extended to the heavens and to the four winds. Most importantly, he subscribed to the theory that there is no problem a little gunpowder can’t fix. Basically, Dyrenforth was concussionism’s poster boy. Over the next five months, Dyrenforth assembled a team, collected gear, and found a test site. To be really precise, his first experiments mimicked a battlefield. In detail. A lot. He set up 3 lines of boom stuff that looked like an artillery battery. There were jury-rigged mortars to lob dynamite and rackarock charges into the air, balloons to float skyward and denote with furious force: the whole nine yards! Over several weeks they blew up multiple oxyhydrogen balloons and detonated thousands of pounds of explosives. Dyrenforth’s reports quickly claimed success - torrential rain. It was all going swimmingly. He even came up with an elaborate theory as to why the booms led to rain. Of course, as we all know, no experiment is perfect, and Dyrenforth was not without his detractors. But he was a man on a mission, driven to prove to all and sundry that concussionism was the cure to America’s frontier farmland water woes. So, was it…? Previous episodes mentioned: Weather War Operation Popeye Sources: https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/rain-of-error/ MAKING WAR ON JUPITER PLUVIUS - THE CULTURE AND SCIENCE OF RAINMAKING IN THE SOUTHERN GREAT PLAINS, 1870-1913 MICHAEL R. WHITAKER http://househistoryman.blogspot.com/2012/02/bizaare-last-will-of-rainmaker-george.html http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.wat.023 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/23/us-stated-cloud-seeding-weather-modification https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eight-states-are-seeding-clouds-to-overcome-megadrought/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The way the story goes, the Summer of 69 was when all hell broke loose in Cleveland. It was the summer the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. Choked with industrial effluent and chemicals it burst into flames. It is said that this is the event that birthed the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Authority. America was galvanised by this shocking event. Things started to change. But the thing is, this was not the first time the Cuyahoga River had burst into flames. We feel like the most obvious question is, how does a river which is by definition “a large natural stream of water” burst into flames?! Shouldn’t the water act as some sort of fire deterrent? But water was no match for the horrors contained in the Cuyahoga River. When surveyors first came across this river in 1796 they knew they’d hit gold. It was connected to one of America’s largest lakes and was an excellent shipping route. Cleveland was born and industry boomed. And back then, as well as being shipping routes, rivers were the industry's drain. Flush it all down the river and it’s someone else’s problem. And so, the Cuyahoga River quickly became the dump for all manner of lovely things. Waste from oil refineries, paint factories, steel mills, coking plants and slaughterhouses. Raw sewerage. Trash. If you had something you didn’t want, into the river it went. It got pretty bad, bubbling away like a deadly stew. So bad that it was commonly accepted that if you fell into the river, you should get yourself to hospital, fast. With reports like this, it’s not a stretch to believe that it liked to spontaneously burst into flames. Well, maybe not spontaneously, but it didn’t take much to ignite that bad boy. The thing is, that fire in 1969 was not the first time the river had caught alight. The river had been prone to catching alight at least nine times before 1969. And that fire in 1969, well, almost no one noticed. So how does a run-of-the-mill river fire in a badly polluted river that almost no one noticed transform into such an environmentally revolutionary moment? The events that transpired say something deeper about how we look at the world, and what it takes to get us to change. Sources: Smithsonian Magazine: The Cuyahoga River Caught Fire at Least a Dozen Times, but No One Cared Until 1969 David and Richard Stradling’s Perceptions of the Burning River: Deindustrialization and Cleveland's Cuyahoga River in Environmental History Not Enough to Drink - Google Books Cleveland's Cuyahoga River caught fire 50 years ago. It inspired a movement. 51 Years Later, the Cuyahoga River Burns Again - Outside Online America's Sewage System and the Price of Optimism - TIME Oral Histories of the 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire - Belt Magazine See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The car has been around for over a century, which makes it easy to forget that there were real-life humans behind its invention, not to mention a messy, complex journey of invention. There are of course some well-meaning gentlemen that were involved in the invention of the automobile. But, possibly one of the most important figures was a woman by the name of Bertha Benz. Bertha Benz’s husband was a locomotive engineer, Karl Benz. After getting into a good deal of debt in an iron manufacturing business, he was bailed out by his then fiance Bertha and, with her financial support, set about on his lifelong dream of creating the first true automobile. There were many failed attempts by Karl before he had any success with a saleable automobile. These contraptions started out as three-wheeled vehicles that could reach 25kph (wild speeds in the day of the horse-drawn carriage). By the time they reached “Model III”, these machines were saleable and one could opt for some sick mods like a folding roof and additional vis-à-vis bench seats, the height of comfort. However, back then, automobiles were not an easy sell. They were loud, shuddering, unreliable and, well, they didn’t involve horses. How dumb! As we know all too well, humans are, in general, terrible at embracing change. The general view back in the 1800s was that these “horseless carriages” were absolutely impractical. However, this public had yet to encounter Bertha’s genius. It’s helpful to point out here that Karl was no Elon Musk. By all accounts, he was meticulous, patient and conservative and prone to bouts of self-doubt and depression. Karl had some serious doubts about the practicality of his inventions and wondered if they’d ever be useful for anything more than quick jaunts around town. But Bertha was made of different stuff and could see a little further than her husband’s limited view. Not only did she have impressive intelligence, but she also disagreed with her husband and spoke out resolutely against dissenters of the automobile. So in 1888, following the release of Model III and tired of her husband’s general attitude, Bertha took matters into her own hands. Bertha roped her two teenage sons into her plans and took a trip. This trip included the first roadside repairs, the first automatic marketing stunt, the first case of a wife borrowing her husband’s car without asking and the first violation of intercity highway laws in a motor vehicle. And it set the scene for the automotive revolution. Sources: https://americanhistory.si.edu/america-on-the-move/fill-up https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/short-picture-history-gas-stations-180967337/ https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM01356b.htm https://www.hotcars.com/the-story-of-bertha-benz-and-the-first-long-distance-road-trip/ https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/tradition/founders-pioneers/carl-benz.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Benz https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/tradition/founders-pioneers/carl-benz.html https://group-media.mercedes-benz.com/marsMediaSite/en/instance/ko/The-Benz-Patent-Motor-Car-from-1888--The-worlds-oldest-original-car.xhtml?oid=9361444 https://web.archive.org/web/20150924041731/http://www.history.com/news/bertha-benz-hits-the-road-125-years-ago https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/tradition/founders-pioneers/bertha-benz.html?r=dai https://jalopnik.com/meet-bertha-benz-the-woman-who-took-the-first-real-dri-451617383 https://www.wired.com/2010/08/0812berta-benz-first-road-trip/ https://www.denso-am.eu/news/deneur19_12_female-pioneers-bertha-benz https://www.prohori.com/english/worlds-first-driver-bertha-benz-and-her-great-story/ https://group-media.mercedes-benz.com/marsMediaSite/en/instance/ko/Bertha-Benz--The-Woman-behind-the-Automotive-Revolution.xhtml?oid=9361402 https://www.dpma.de/english/our_office/publications/ingeniouswomen/berthabenz/index.html See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Scurvy is zero fun. We’re not sure how much you know about this disease but it’s not a walk in the park. Okay, it’s fair to say that not many diseases are a gentle stroll through a pretty field of flower-filled gardens, but scurvy really is an incredible bastard. The only thing going for it is that you’re generally dead pretty quick. You start off feeling a little tired, sore and short of breath. Your gums start to hurt and your legs swell. Then, your darkening, swelling legs develop purple, black, red or blue spots, your muscles start wasting away and you start hallucinating. Then your teeth fall out, your gums rot, old wounds open up and you become so weak and sick that you die. Put simply, it is horrible and gross. And scurvy is not a recent phenomenon. It has plagued humans since ancient times. It hammered early agricultural societies, and we can even see evidence of it in ancient writings. But while it has always been around, it really took off in the age of the explorers. Take, for example, Vasco de Gama’s 1497 journey around the Cape of Good Hope. One hundred of his one hundred and sixty men died. In fact, all shipowners and governments in the 15th-18th centuries assumed that 50% of the crew on a long voyage would die of scurvy. Imagine starting your voyage knowing that you had a 50/50 shot at actually living to see the end of it. It doesn’t sound like a great time. We’re surprised anyone wanted to voyage anywhere with odds like that. But scurvy’s scourge continued right through to modern times with cases occurring still today in the malnourished. As a deficiency disease, and possibly one of the easiest things to treat and cure, we humans have done a truly remarkable job of continuing to get scurvy. We’ve overlooked the cause of scurvy and have been bizarrely forgetful when the cure was stumbled across. Of course, it was never a matter of just forgetting. Colonial trades and fear of poisoning played a role, as did a range of whacky treatments that confused everyone. And as always, a healthy dose of terrible science communication was thrown in there too. Join us while we poke fun at the ridiculous amount of times this simple yet horrific disease kept resurfacing, and why lemons (not limes) reign supreme. Previous episodes mentioned: Ep 276 - Philip Nitschke's Quest to Allow Us To Die Ep 111 - Drinking your own urine? Sources Jeremy Hugh Baron’s article in Nutrition Reviews: Sailors' scurvy before and after James Lind – a reassessment Idle Words: Scott And Scurvy Anu Lall: SCURVY, When Medical Arrogance killed 2,000,000 men Curious Historian: The Scourge Of Scurvy The Guardian: The secret of how Amundsen beat Scott in race to south pole? A diet of raw penguin Journal of the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh: The role of scurvy in Scott’s return from the South Pole The Journal of Nutrition: Scurvy and Cloudberries: A Chapter in the History of Nutritional Sciences Leviathan: Ishmael's Recovery: Injury, Illness, and Convalescence in Moby-Dick National Geographic: A Nightmare Disease Haunted Ships During Age of Discovery Science History Institute: The Age of Scurvy Special Care in Dentistry: The risk for scurvy in children with neurodevelopment disorders See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you were knocking on death’s door and the door wasn’t opening quickly enough, would you want to be able to give it a shove yourself? To have agency over your death is a tricky subject, but that hasn’t stopped Philip Nitschke from diving into it head first. To understand why Nitschke felt compelled to go down such an onerous path, let’s first give you a sense of his personality as a young chap. When he was 18, someone stole Nitschke's car radio. The police weren’t too concerned about it so Nitschke waited in the boot of his car with a 0.22 calibre rifle for the thief to come back for the car speakers. That may seem slightly insane to a regular human being, but Nitschke needed to serve some justice. He figured that he could solve his own problems. As a young med school graduate, feeling compelled to help people solve their own problems too, Nitschke was intrigued by the idea of euthanasia for those that wanted to end their lives peacefully and on their own terms. And in 1996, in the Northern Territory, Nitschke became the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, lethal, voluntary injection. As a result, Nitschke became an outspoken advocate and crusader for euthanasia. As you can imagine, it hasn’t been an easy road, but it certainly hasn’t been boring. Nitschke invented death machines, originated a euthanasia flash mob and created a Comedy Festival show entitled ‘Dicing with Dr Death’. The reviews were actually pretty good! And yes, you did read that right. Death machines are a real thing. Dying in a peaceful, reliable and dignified manner is surprisingly difficult. Nitschke’s newest death machine iteration (which currently only exists in VR form) is called Sarco (named after sarcophagus) and looks like it belongs in a Tesla display centre. Why has Nitschke fought so hard for our right to die? And what is the state of voluntary assisted dying (and his medical licence) now? Also - what happened to that car radio thief? Jump on into this episode and find out. Previous episodes mentioned: Ep 275 - Chinese Restaurant Syndrome or Why We Panicked About MSG Ep 270 - Non Fungible Tulips! Ep 267 - What Do We Do With The Immortal Quadrillionaires? Ep 153 - Safety Issues at the Los Alamos Lab! Sources: https://www.economist.com/1843/2019/12/12/a-design-for-death-meeting-the-bad-boy-of-the-euthanasia-movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_device https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-05/ama-speaks-out-over-nitschke-claims/4670282 https://www.exitinternational.net/about-exit/history/ https://www.exitinternational.net/sarco/ Australian Man First in World To Die With Legal Euthanasia 1996https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/26/world/australian-man-first-in-world-to-die-with-legal-euthanasia.html https://maxdogbrewing.com https://www.9news.com.au/national/dr-death-to-fight-nitrogen-complaint/6765eccc-5b3f-45b5-9fda-15cd70940740 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/15/nitschke-suicide-machine-amsterdam-euthanasia-funeral-fair https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sarco-death-philip-nitschke_n_5abbb574e4b03e2a5c7853ca https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-assisted-suicide-machine-727874 https://www.smh.com.au/national/healthy-woman-thanks-dr-nitschke-then-kills-herself-20021126-gdfvde.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/euthanasia-campaigner-philip-nitschke-sets-medical-licence-alight-20151127-gl9wpr.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Nitschke See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In August 1968, a rather innocuous letter to the editor was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr Ho Man Kwok had written in speculating on the reason he felt so ghastly after eating at a Chinese restaurant. Was it the soy sauce or the cooking wine? Or perhaps, he offered up, it was the monosodium glutamate seasoning - MSG. The prominent symptoms, as he described them, were numbness at the back of his neck, general weakness and heart palpitations. Surely Dr Kwok hadn’t just overeaten or sampled a few too many beverages during the evening. There must be another explanation and something else to blame. The New England Journal, which clearly did a lot of background checking, thorough research and fact-finding *ahem* decided to run with this madness and the term “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” was coined. And so, the flurry of MSG bad-mouthing and hysteria took off. Now, more than five decades later surveys suggest that a whopping 43% of Americans believe that MSG is bad for you. And we wouldn’t be surprised if Australia fell in line with this statistic. The “syndrome” has exploded to encompass symptoms far beyond Dr Kwok’s initial complaint. People report muscle tightening, burning sensations, and almost fainting. And, most notably, an irresistible urge to take off all your clothes. We can certainly blame MSG for that... But is this all bollocks? Are there any real studies from the whole of science that prove or disprove these theories? After a few sprinkles of MSG in their beer, Will takes Rod on a journey through racism, hysteria and deliciousness all in the name of acquitting MSG in the court of public opinion. Previous Episodes Mentioned: Musical Maladies - And Fakes! Sources Jennifer LeMesurier’s Poroi (An Interdisciplinary Journal of Rhetorical Analysis and Invention) article: Uptaking Race: Genre, MSG, and Chinese Dinner Ian Mosby’s: ‘That Won-Ton Soup Headache’: The Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, MSG and the Making of American Food, 1968–1980 Michael Blanding’s article in Colgate Magazine: The Strange Case of Dr Ho Man Kwok Richard D Lyons article in the New York Times: ‘Chinese Restaurant Syndrome’ Puzzles Doctors. May 19 1968 Herbert Schaumburg and Robert Byck’s article in Science: Monosodium L-Glutamate: Its Pharmacology and Role in the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome This American Life’s The Long Fuse The Washington Post’s: Beware of musher's knee and hooker's elbow Umami Information Center: Kikunae Ikeda See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our episode today begins in the 1960s with Laszlo Polgar and his hot and saucy epistolary courtship with a foreign language teacher named Klara. Correction here. Laszlo's letters were less hot and saucy and more….precise and instrumental. There was no time for detailing THE karma sutra. László was on a mission. He wanted to raise child geniuses. So, in his letters to Klara, he outlines the pedagogical experiment he intends to carry out with his future progeny. Laszlo clearly knows how to woo a lady. The guiding theory behind this experiment was that Laszlo believed that any healthy child had the innate capacity to become a genius if their education starts by the time they are three, and specialises by the time they are six. All he needed was a wife to jump onboard, so to speak. Klara was clearly intellectually aroused by his letters and, in rough translation from Hungarian she said to László “Mate, I am bloody in”. And so the great experiment began. After what was probably some very methodical, precise and well-thought-out intercourse, they had three children. Susan (1970), Sophia (1974) and Judit (1976). Now that they had their subjects, it was time to start phase two - education. László believed public education only produced mediocre minds - but homeschooling was illegal in Hungary at the time. After a battle with an armed policeman, he won on the homeschooling front. Now that they could successfully and legally educate their children at home, the next hurdle was to find the specialisation that would allow the genius to blossom. Their eldest daughter Susan sorted that quandary when, aged four, she found a chess board in a closet. Was she obsessed from that very first sighting? Probably not. To be fair, she was just trying to find something that resembled a toy to play with. The household wasn’t big on barbies or monster trucks. Now that Susan had inadvertently picked a speciality, it was decided - all three girls would become chess masters (it’s not an experiment without replication). The next hurdle to overcome was infiltrating the boys club that was chess at the time. Back in the 1970s, less than 1% of top chess players were female. So, Laszlo's mission turned him into a women’s rights activist as a nice little side effect. Did Laszlo and Klara succeed in their genius-raising experiment? How do they feel about the outcome? And where are Susan, Sophia and Judit now? Tune in to find out. Previous episodes mentioned: The Actual Genius of Paul Erdős Dozenalism! References: herway - Epistolary Relationship: 6 Reasons To Bring Back Old-School Romance Wikipedia - László Polgár Psychology Today - The Grandmaster Experiment The Conversation - What’s behind the gender imbalance in top-level chess? Independent - A man with a talent for creating genius: William Hartston meets Laszlo Polgar, the father of three world-class chess players The Guardian - Judit Polgar: 'Everything was about chess' Chicago Tribune - Trained to be a genius, girl, 16, wallops chess champ spassky for $110,000 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our goal here at The Wholesome Show is to make you feel happy, amused and entertained. But a fair warning that we must sometimes journey through a rather astonishing volume of grotesque and sad death to get you there. We won’t apologise for it. It is our duty. In this episode, we travel back to the 18th and 19th centuries - a generally dire time to be alive. Infanticide - the killing of unwanted children - was a horrifyingly common reality. Luckily at the time, there was a relatively liberal emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Joseph II, that decided to try and do something about this epidemic of child killing. First of all, he established foundling homes, where unwanted infants could be dropped off. There was even a convenient after-hours “chute” for those times you couldn’t possibly get there during business hours to give away your children. Convenience was key, even in those days. Then Joseph II set up maternity hospitals, for mothers to give birth in. Was this a brilliant success? Let’s say a little bit of yes and … quite a lot of no. You see, there was a rumour going around that while these hospitals were free, they were in fact … houses of death. How did all this death occur? Well within 24 - 48 hours after exhausted women in need of a solid nap gave birth, they became incredibly unwell. Relentless fevers, excruciating abdominal pain, headaches…These women would go downhill very quickly. Now, because it was the 18th century they had some wacky ancient treatments. The ever trusty leeches, a bit of bloodletting, lots of mercury, opium (that part sounds pretty good), and of course enemas. Because everyone feels like an enema when they’re knocking on death’s door. Did these treatments work at least? No. No they didn’t. These hospitals don’t get to be known as “Houses of Death” without quite a lot of death. This is where we come to the hero of our story - Dr Ignaz Semmelweis. Upon starting work as an obstetrician at the maternity wing of the Vienna General Hospital, Semmelweis realised pretty quickly that something was wrong. Surely a large part of the puzzle was missing. Ignaz Semmelweis made a discovery that would go on to save hundreds and thousands of lives, but he unfortunately paid the ultimate price. Tune in to the episode to hear why Ignaz Semmelweis is truly a martyr to science. Previous episodes mentioned: A Brief History of Medical Leeches! The History And Future Of The Death Certificate Sources British Medical Journal: Infanticide and Excessive Infant Mortality Caroline M De Costa The Medical Journal of Australia: “The contagiousness of childbed fever”: a short history of puerperal sepsis and its treatment Ignaz Semmelweis: The etiology, concept, and prophylaxis of childbed fever K Codell Carter & Barbara R Carter: Childbed Fever Museum of Contraception and Abortion: The Vienna Foundlings and Orphans Home Paige Mathieson: Midlands Historical Review: Bad or Mad? Infanticide: Insanity and Morality in Nineteenth-Century Britain Sydney Morning Herald: Would baby hatches have saved Lily Grace? The Persecuted: 10 famous martyrs and why they died (Updated 2020) Wikipedia: Baby hatch Wikipedia: Giordano Bruno Wikipedia: Ignaz Semmelweis Wikipedia: Infanticide Wikipedia: Tank Man The World of the Hapsburgs: The Vienna Foundling Home between welfare and population policy See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have you ever had a dream that you just had to do no matter how crazy or how dangerous it might sound to anyone else? A dream so core to your being that nothing was going to stop you realising it no matter the obstacles? Nail Armstrong sure did. As did Marie Curie. Edmond Hillary too. But recently, we found out about a human who eclipsed all those wannabes. That man was Larry Walters. Even as a very young lad, Larry imagined himself flying. His inspiration? Balloons. His idea first took flight when he came across helium balloons on a trip to Disneyland. But it really cemented at the age of 13 when he came across weather balloons at the army disposal store. From then on, he dreamt of nothing else. Well, we can’t 100% confirm that he dreamt of nothing else, but it’s more dramatic if we say that. Larry did attempt to become a pilot to get his fix of zooming through the air. But his bad eyesight stopped him joining the airforce. This dream of his refused to die. He was a man on a mission. Many years after his trip to Disneyland, Larry devised a foolproof (ahem) plan to strap 42 weather balloons filled with helium to a lawn chair and launch into the unknown. The lawnchair was really sturdy apparently. There was surely no cause for concern. Larry’s idea was to float up to about 30 feet, drift lazily for a few hours out over the Mojave Desert and then pop some balloons and drift back down. Sounds like a nice way to spend an afternoon really. Larry prepared. He packed an altimeter (because, height), CB radio, two litres of Coca-Cola, eight plastic bottles of water (for ballast), and a BB gun. There were reports of a stashed six pack as well. The thing he was in very short supply of was maths. Strap in, as we join Larry on his ‘peaceful float across the Mojave desert’. Sources 8 of the Weirdest Items in the Smithsonian's Archives https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/556928/weirdest-items-smithsonian-archives How the Balloon-Borne “Flying Lawn Chair” Got Into the Smithsonian https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/flying-lawn-chair-180972974/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=socialmedia The strange, sad odyssey of ‘Lawn Chair Larry’ https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-strange-sad-odyssey-of-lawn-chair-larry-3b943991179c Before There Was “Up,” There Was “Lawnchair Larry” https://allthatsinteresting.com/lawnchair-larry-walters Larry Walters; Soared to Fame on Lawn Chair https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-11-24-mn-60236-story.html Did Larry Walters Fly in a Lawn Chair Attached to Helium Balloons? https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/up-up-and-away/ Floating on a Lawn chair Over L.A.? He was Living Out His Dream https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidrupert/floating-on-a-lawnchair-over-l-a-thats-no-fool-thats-a-hero/ The Man in the Flying Lawn Chair https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/06/01/the-man-in-the-flying-lawn-chair 50 Epic Adventure Quotes To Kick You Off Your Couch https://expertvagabond.com/adventure-quotes/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Six friends gather around a patch of dirt in the Netherlands. Cornelis, Dirk, Symon, Reynier, Other Cornelis and Andries (clearly this is not 2022). They’re digging up something that is meant to be worth 30 guilders. That is, the price of a pretty modest house back in 1637. A whole house worth of value in a small buried item. Gold? Gemstones? An incredibly well bred and fanciful horse? No dear reader, it was nothing of the sort. It was in fact, a single tulip bulb. You may have heard the story of tulip mania in the Netherlands. How an entire country goes mad over a single flower. And how it all collapses in a matter of days. But almost all of the popular history around this time is erroneous - an oversimplification. A bit like judging the 90s on just Blink 182 albums. There is a much deeper story here. First, the setting. We jump back to 1585, when the Netherlands gained independence from the Spanish empire, kicking off a century of explosive economic growth. While the rest of Europe was slumming it through a period known as the ’General Crisis’, the Dutch became a dominant trade power and got very rich. During this time Jehan Somer, the son of a magistrate, took two years off to go backpacking (ok, luxury touring back then). During his time away he visits Constantinople. Recently taken over by the Ottoman Turkish empire, Constantinople at that time was nice. Impressive gardens with very impressive flowers. Somer returned to the Netherlands with a bug for flowers. He showed his buddies back home all the sweet flowers he’d found. Dogtooth violets, auricles, double narcissi, lilies, crocuses and tulips. But tulips? Well, tulips were special. Join us as we make this journey through the Netherlands in the 17th century and how this story has so many parallels with our modern-day manias. We dive down beyond the simplistic takes and ask what happened, what caused it and what it says about today. Sources Anne Goldgar: Tulip mania: the classic story of a Dutch financial bubble is mostly wrong Charles Mackay: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds Bloomeffects: The history of eating tulips Tulipmania Art Journal: The most expensive tulip bulb in history costed as much as the finest house on the most fashionable Amsterdam canal Wikipedia: Economic history of the Netherlands I don’t care about your crypto, boy See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this daring episode, Rod and Will take us back to 1894 Paris, when a small newspaper had a brilliant idea to boost circulation. A wacky endurance race that would take no prisoners. In this race there were no fewer than 20 different methods of propulsion from steam, petrol, compressed air, clockwork, a system of pendulums through to a mechanical motor. From a four tonne monster tractor right down to a tricycle. With one steering wheel in the whole race (steering wheels were not a thing back then). Basically, it was a Festival of Crazy Mechanical Stuff. But we’re not actually talking about that race today. We’re talking about the more high tech (but bizarrely similar) version of that race, more than 100 years later. In 2003, the US Defence Advanced Research Agency (DARPA’s) announced its first ‘autonomous vehicle grand challenge’. Popular Science Magazine called this ‘DAPRA’s Debacle in the Desert’. Excellent. You might see where this is going. The top secret race track (the location of which was only announced three hours before the race began) ran across the Mojave Desert. The race designer, a man by the name of Sal Fish, designed a course that incorporated everything you can imagine you might find in a desert. Rocks, left turns, right turns, dips, gullies, cacti. Drop offs, barbed wire fences, animals that could come out of nowhere, train tracks. Thankfully, DARPA, being the thoughtful department that they are, had a crew of biologists run a final sweep for the endangered desert tortoise. No animals were harmed. Tony Tether, the Director of DARPA was really not expecting anyone to be interested. Even though there was a $1 million dollar prize (yes, you had to finish the race, not just get the furthest). But on the morning of registration people were lined up around the block - 106 team applications in total. It’s not that hard to make an autonomous vehicle right - basically Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with a laptop? The final, whittled down entrants (15 in total) were the most varied bunch you can think of. From highschool kids, the CEO of a loudspeaker company (excellent marketing strategy) through to a cantankerous ex-Marine who also happened to be a talented roboticist. As for the vehicles, Sal Fish (our course designer) exclaimed “My God, these vehicles were something out of Mad Max.” Join Rod and Will on this wild ride - did anyone win, or did it turn into a robotic graveyard? And learn how that 1894 race turned into the ultimate inspiration for the autonomous vehicles we (almost) have today. REFERENCES: Standage, T. (2021). A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to what Comes Next. Bloomsbury Publishing. The Autonomous-Car Chaos of the 2004 Darpa Grand Challenge https://www.wired.com/story/autonomous-car-chaos-2004-darpa-grand-challenge/ World’s 1st Motor Racing Event Had A 90 Mins Lunch Break (Dec 202, 2020) https://medium.com/formula-one-forever/worlds-1st-motor-racing-event-had-a-90-mins-lunch-break-6b0f203cf016 From Darpa Grand Challenge 2004DARPA’s Debacle in the Desert Behind the scenes at the DARPA Grand Challenge, the 142-mile robot race that died at mile 7 JUN 4, 2004 https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/darpa-grand-challenge-2004darpas-debacle-desert/ An Oral History of the Darpa Grand Challenge, the Grueling Robot Race That Launched the Self-Driving Car https://www.wired.com/story/darpa-grand-challenge-2004-oral-history/ The Grand Challenge https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/-grand-challenge-for-autonomous-vehicles DARPA Urban Challenge https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/darpa-urban-challengeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's a whole bunch of reasons to not be fans of the Proud Boys. In the words of the Southern Poverty Law Centre they're a 'general hate' group, their members played key roles in the January 6 attack on the US capitol, and they're pretty goddamn misogynist. But it's rule number two of their by-laws that's just weird. It states “No heterosexual brother of the Fraternity shall masturbate more than one time in any calendar month". Or maybe it's not weird... So here's the question we're asking this week: why are the Proud Boys so obsessed with (not) wanking?The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the olden times people used to climb mountains wearing all sorts of odd things - wool, leather, or just in the nude! But George Finch was an ideas man...Rod tells Will the story of the invention of the puffer jacket!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Guess what listener - it's possible that people alive today might live a very long life... like 1200 years maybe.That sounds fun, but maybe it might lead to dystopia?Will agonises with Rod about what we should do about longevity treatments!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!Sources:Aeon: What are the ethical consequences of immortality technology? https://aeon.co/ideas/what-are-the-ethical-consequences-of-immortality-technologyBBC: A frozen graveyard: The sad tales of Antarctica’s deaths: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180913-a-frozen-graveyard-the-sad-tales-of-antarcticas-deathsEMBO Rep. Jayne Lucke and Wayne Hall: Who wants to live forever: 2005 Feb; 6(2): 98–102. doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400339Bernard Williams: The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality: https://web.archive.org/web/20160528020748/http://stoa.org.uk/topics/death/the-makropulos-case-reflections-on-the-tedium-of-immortality-bernard-williams.pdfForbes: What Kills Billionaires: https://www.forbes.com/2005/04/05/cx_vg_0405feat.htmlJohn Hardwig: Is there a duty to die? The Hastings Center Report , Mar. - Apr., 1997, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1997), pp. 34-42 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3527626JAMA Health Forum. Eric D Finegood et al. 2021;2(7):e211652. doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2021.1652 John Harris: The Harold Hatch International Lecture on Longevity and Population Aging Intimations of Immortality The Ethics and Justice of Life-Extending Therapies: https://www.ilc-alliance.org/wp-content/uploads/publication-pdfs/IntimationsImmortality.pdfJournal of Aging Studies: Public attitudes towards human life extension by intervening in ageing: Brad Partridge Jayne Lucke Helen Bartlett Wayne Hall https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890406510000757?casa_token=ELUiWi4dNksAAAAA:cziJHAtan_8s5o-az6WYOS8Kqwrre9g4YJ3jw1vhoUg7M1eWHHimfqRlbq3sKdzzbschLWviN6vELive Science: The Ethical Dilemmas of Immortality https://www.livescience.com/10465-ethical-dilemmas-immortality.htmlLong Bets: Peter Schwartz and Melody Haller: At least one human alive in the year 2000 will still be alive in 2150.https://longbets.org/11/NBCNews: Mainstream docs join anti-aging bandwagon: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23358964REJUVENATION RESEARCH: Brad Partridge, Jayne Lucke, Helen Bartlett, and Wayne Hall: Ethical, Social, and Personal Implications of Extended Human Lifespan Identified by Members of the Public Volume 12, Number 5, 2009 a Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089=rej.2009.0907 Scientific American: Aging Is Reversible—at Least in Human Cells and Live Mice: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/aging-is-reversible-at-least-in-human-cells-and-live-mice/Wikipedia: Lawrence Oates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_OatesWikipedia: Richard Lamm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_LammSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the end of the 19th century in Paris there were a range of weird and wonderful acts - but one stood out...Rod tells Will the story of Le Pétomane!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!Le Pétomane By The Wholesome Show is licensed under a Creative Commons License.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Old timey people put a lot of stock in maps, but they didn't always get things exactly right. They joined Tasmania to mainland Australia, got Africa in the wrong place, and moved Siberia a long way to the east. But was this by accident? Or design?Will tells Rod the story of lying with maps!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!SourcesBar News: Review of Lying for the Admiralty by Margaret Cameron-Ash, by Caroline DobraszczykThe Globe (84) Captain Cook Invented Point Hicks to Hide Bass Strait by Margaret Cameron-AshThe Globe (87) Cook conspiracy at point hicks? By Trevor LipscombeThe Globe (87) Where’s my embassy comrade? An examination of the 1981 Soviet Military City Plan of Canberra, by Brendan Whyte. Lying for the Admiralty by Margaret Cameron-AshSignals 125: James Cook’s false trail by Nigel Erskine.Gyula Pápay POLITICS AND CARTOGRAPHY in State Security and Mapping in the GDR Map Falsification as a Consequence of Excessive Secrecy?Imago Mundi: Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern Europe by J. B. HarleySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We all go to the movies right, we see the sights, we hear the sounds! But what if we could smell the smells?Rod tells Will the history of Smell-O-Vision!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

People have been cooking food for as long as they've been people - and for almost as long other people have been pushing against it.Will tells Rod the history and science of raw food evangelists!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!SourcesBismark Daily Tribune: Apostle of Raw Food Explains Sect: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042242/1913-10-09/ed-1/seq-3/Carnivor Aurelius on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlpacaAurelius/status/1175851010977337344?lang=enEncyclopedia.com: Szekely, Edmond Bordeaux (?-1980) https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/szekely-edmond-bordeaux-1980 Edmond Bordeaux Szekely: The Essene Gospels of Peace: http://www.thenazareneway.com/index_essene_gospels_of_peace.htmDiscover Magazine: Archaeologists Find Earliest Evidence of Humans Cooking With Fire https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/archaeologists-find-earliest-evidence-of-humans-cooking-with-fireGlikson, A., Fire and human evolution: The deep-time blueprints of the Anthropocene. Anthropocene (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2014.02.002 LA Weekly: L.A. HAS BEEN EATING RAW VEGAN FOOD SINCE 1918, THANKS TO THIS COMMUNIST, FEMINIST ANGELENO https://www.laweekly.com/l-a-has-been-eating-raw-vegan-food-since-1918-thanks-to-this-communist-feminist-angeleno/McGee, H. On Food and Cooking.National Cancer Institute: Chemicals in Meat Cooked at High Temperatures and Cancer Risk https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/cooked-meats-fact-sheetNew York Times: Chimpanzees Would Cook if Given the Chance, Research Says https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/us/chimpanzees-can-cook-a-mean-potato-research-says.htmlOgden, Utah Standard Magazine: Love and Raw Potatoes https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85058396/1915-08-07/ed-1/seq-9/Restaurant-ing through history: Back to nature: The Eutropheon https://restaurant-ingthroughhistory.com/2014/02/02/back-to-nature-the-eutropheon/amp/Terrence Twomey (2013). The Cognitive Implications of Controlled Fire Use by Early Humans. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 23, pp 113-128 doi:10.1017/S0959774313000085 Wikipedia: Bernarr Macfadden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernarr_MacfaddenWikipedia: Herbert M. Shelton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_M._SheltonWikipedia: Maximilian Bircher-Benner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_Bircher-BennerWrangham, R., 2009. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human. Basic Books, New York 320 pp.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ettore Majorana was a physics genius who really could have won the Nobel Prize... but in 1938 he disappeared. The question is, what happened to him? Rod tells Will the story!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ok, the Americans won the race to the moon - but do you know what the Soviets actually did land on the moon? It's something a little bit special.The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You might not know this but ozone has a bizarrely 'clean' smell - so much so, there's a long history of people using it to 'clean' things that they really shouldn't...Rod tells Will the story!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We at The Wholesome Show of course want to live forever. But if you have to go, there are a hell of a lot of worse ways than dying in the saddle.Will tells Rod the science and history of dying on the job!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tycho Brahe is one of the most important astronomers of all time - but he died under super mysterious circumstances. So who killed him?Rod tells Will and special guest Hans the story of the murder of Tycho Brahe!The Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We all have... unique ways of looking at the world. But what if two mutually contradictory views of the world are put in the same room?Rod tells Will the story of the ethically dubious Jesus experiments of Milton Rokeach!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are a few places around the world where a large number of people live to over 100 - do you want to know how? Well, Will tells Rod exactly what the secret is!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What evidence would we need to confirm that Bigfoot exists? Photos? Hair sample? A pool of blood?Rod tells Will the story of Melba Ketchum's quest for the Big Foot! The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the middle of the 20th century it became totally normal - at a 21st, a wedding or a confirmation - to give people the special present of the total removal of their teeth.Was science to blame?Will tells Rod the story!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!Sources:- Brides.com: The 34 Must-Have Items to Add to Your Wedding Registry: https://www.brides.com/gallery/best-wedding-registry-items- Dallas Museum of Art: THE BRIDAL REGISTRY https://collections.dma.org/essay/a8mBA7yW- Dusty Old Thing: From the Fashion to the Gifts- Wedding Trends Over the Past Century Sure Have Changed! https://dustyoldthing.com/wedding-trends-changed/- J Prosthet Dent. 2002 Jan;87(1):5-8. doi: 10.1067/mpr.2002.121203.- Australian Dental Journal 2007;52:(2):154-156- BMC Public Health volume 14, Article number: 65 (2014) - MMWR: Ten Great Public Health Achievements -- United States, 1900-1999: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00056796.htm- British Dental Journal: Total tooth loss in the United Kingdom in 1998 and implications for the future https://www.nature.com/articles/4800840Reddit: How true is this claim about Victorian England? “Having all your teeth removed was considered the perfect gift for a 21st birthday or a newly married bride.”- https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/agyegl/how_true_is_this_claim_about_victorian_england/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf- CDA Journal 28 (3): Focal Infection Theory RevisitedSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The early days of nuclear science were very much a... move fast and break things world. And some people? They ended up in some dangerous spots. Rod tells Will about the risky world of nuclear science at the 1940s Los Alamos National Laboratory!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Do you get sick of waiting for your packages from your online retailers of choice? Have you ever wanted to get your mail just that little bit faster? Yes? Yes! Then might I interest you in... rocket mail?Will tells Rod and special guest CJ Josh the story of rocket mail!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, joined today by @cjjosh and proudly brought to by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is English spelling needlessly complicated? Should we fix it?Som pepl say yes!Will tells Rod the story of the Simplified Spelling Board!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Exercise is great. It helps with just about everything! But here's the thing, does it help you... spread the word of God?Rod tells Will the story - and future - of muscular Christianity!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We love the metric system - you love the metric system! But... what if it wasn't perfect?Will tells Rod the story of dozenalism!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!Sources:Svalbard: French Revolutionary (Decimal) Time; https://svalbard.watch/pages/about_decimal_time.htmlWikipedia: Units of measurement in France; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_measurement_in_FranceToday I found out: A GENIUS AMONG US: THE SAD STORY OF WILLIAM J. SIDIS; www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/12/genius-among-us-sad-story-william-j-sidis/New York Times: Sidis Could Read at Two Years Old: 18 October 1909.The Listener: Twelves and Tens A.C.AITKEN on the case against the system of decimalization; www.dozenalsociety.org.uk/archives/aitken.htmlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Gambian Pouched Rat - or the African Giant Pouched Rat - can hold heaps of stuff in its awesome face pockets... But it's also very useful in helping humans... Rod tells Will the story, a pocket episode for the holidays!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.