Listener Mail: Machine

It's listener mail time again on Invention! You've written in with your thoughts on past episodes and now Robert and Joe are going to read some of them -- with the help of a brand new mailbot.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick, and we're bringing you some listener mail today.
We've got our bronze automaton here with us. Our mail
bought Melo say hello Melos Now. Melos has a new function.

(00:25):
In addition to delivering our listener mail, Melos now also
eats and poops. That's right, you know. Inspired by recent
episode we did about the idea of creating machines that
can consume and then defecate, it made sense to update
Melos so that he can do this as well. And

(00:50):
now he does. It's not perfect, if you you know,
if you analyze the various bits of robots scat that
he's leaving around the studio here, you know, you'll you'll
notice it looks rather different from what you might find
in the wild. It's a little um uh, you know,
the formation is a little suspect, a little more radioactive

(01:10):
than normal. Yeah, a little a little too cubicle in nature.
Not to say that cubicle poop is not found in nature,
because it is. But but still we're working on it.
We feel like we're still working out some of the
kinks in his mechanical intestines. Yes, mailists, do not take
this critique harshly. You you have noble ichor and we

(01:33):
believe in you, alright. So I think we should start
off by reading some mail we got in response to
our episode on the ancient weapon technology the oddle Addell.
Now you remember this was the episode we did. I
think it was right after our last listener mail episode
about the the ancient hunting and weapons technology of this

(01:54):
lever that would be used to accelerate dart throws and
has been found all over world. We actually heard from
one very experienced and knowledgeable listener and that this was
some exciting feedback. So let's jump right into it. Uh,
this is from our listener, Angelo, Angelo says, Dear Robert
and Joe, my name is Angelo Robledo. I hope I'm

(02:17):
pronouncing that right. And I am on the board of
directors of the World Auto Lattle Association. I run their
social media accounts and host autolatal tournaments in Southern Nevada.
I'm an experimental archaeology researcher at the University of Nevada,
Las Vegas and have been making and throwing auto ladles
for ten years. First off, thank you for taking the

(02:38):
time to do such a thorough podcast episode on the
auto ladle. It's rare that this artifact gets any attention
at all, let alone to the level of a popular podcast.
Your research incitations were great. It's impossible to go wrong
by researching. Dr John Whittaker and autolatdal research legend and
fellow board member at the w a A. I was
hoping to clarify a few things regarding banner stones. Remember

(03:00):
those were some artifacts that are these sort of weights
or stones that are associated with autolattal findings in archaeology.
Uh and he continues, also flexible auto attles and flexible darts.
Based on what you did and didn't discuss in your episode.
Banner stones have been a point of contention in the
auto lettle community for decades, but some important distinctions need

(03:21):
to be made. There are some rocks slash weights attached
to auto addles that are not banner stones and are
not contested. These stones are generally flat on one side
and no wider than the width of the autolattle itself,
unlike banner stones, which are definitionally wider than an auto
lattle protruding from the sides. These regular weights, or boat

(03:42):
stones as I call them based on their canoe like appearance,
have a well understood and largely uncontested purpose. They're very
prevalent in the American Southwest and used prominently on basket
maker style addleaddles, though they can be found elsewhere. These
stones serve as a counterweight offsetting the length and weight
of the dart. With an average six foot dart and

(04:02):
two foot auto ladle, there's quite a bit of darts
sticking out in front of the hand, causing strain on
the wrist and causing the tip to dip when aiming
for long periods of time. The stone balances this weight
by adding mass to the rear of the auto laddle,
nullifying wrist strain. This stone also helps smooth out the
throw by adding more mass near the spur, in the

(04:24):
same way that swinging a wooden baseball bat can feel
smoother than a foam one. Okay, that makes sense to me.
I can picture this, and also it totally makes sense
about balancing it on the wrist. When we heard we're
going to read messages or summarize messages from several other
listeners who talked about their experience with auto laddles, and
one thing several of them said was that that actually

(04:44):
maybe the hardest part of it when they were learning
to use an auto laddle was just like holding the
dart in place while they were trying to aim their throw. Yeah,
you know, it reminds them. On one hand, it reminds
me of things I've read about the the use of
the longbow um in medieval times and how just the
sheer physical demands of that, and that's something that can
is easy to overlook and discussing ancient and inventions that

(05:06):
are more that require more physicality on the part of
the user. Is that is that that they are, you know,
highly physical devices in many cases. And I can't remember
if I mentioned this in in the Lattle episode that
we recorded, but uh, just my own experience of using
sort of at Lattle esque ball throwing devices like just
like the throw tennis ball dog, yeah, or in this

(05:27):
case like throws some sort of a nerf you know,
whizzing football type, uh projectile. Just playing around with that
with with my son, I was I was noticing, like, wow,
I'm straining new things in my arm that I was
not aware of you know. Uh so, yeah, I think
the physical demands of the invention are definitely worth worth mentioning.

(05:49):
But so this comes back to the idea of the
banner stones, which we mentioned. There was some archaeological controversy
about because it's not entirely known what these stones were for.
Were they decorative or did they actually serve a purpose?
And Angelo here gets into that. He says the contention
is in banner stones, which are often too large and
awkward to serve the same purpose as boat stones. Some

(06:12):
say they still function as regular weights, Others say they're
simply status symbols hence the banner and we're not functional.
Still other state other uses for such stones, such as
arrows straighteners. Archaeologists themselves cause more troubled and intended by
improperly labeling banner stones from regular addolddle weights or failing

(06:32):
to differentiate what they're talking about. This brings us to
flexible addoladdles. While some studies have shown there to be
a benefit to flexible auto addles, this often requires the
aid of high speed footage to properly calibrate, and the
results are often negligible. Other studies show no benefit to
having a flexible audol addle. The biggest argument against flexible

(06:52):
addoltdeles being an intentional innovation is the fact that an
overwhelming majority of autoladdles found or documented are not flexible.
In fact, in my ten years of auto lattel ng
and attendance of dozens of events, I have yet to
see a flexible auto lattle in use or make one myself.
I also cannot recall a flexible autolattle in the dozens

(07:14):
of autolattle artifacts I've seen or studied. Finally, onto flexible darts,
the fact that the dart flexes is arguably the single
most important part of the entire auto lettle system. I
was disappointed to not hear you discuss how vital this is.
The flexibility of darts is what differentiates them from hand
thrown spears. Autolttle darts are propelled from the rear behind

(07:37):
the dart center of gravity, meaning the force is transferred
to one percent of the dart. A spear, however, is
thrown from the midpoint, a much more inefficient force transfer.
There is a trade off, however, the weight of the
dart tip wishes to stay in place according to Newton's
laws and the throwing motion generates a great deal of
force in the split second before the dart disin gages

(08:00):
from the autolatzle that force and needs to go somewhere.
If the dart is stiff, then that force immediately causes
the tip to raise as the audi latti flicks the
rear end of the dart underneath it. The stiffer the dart,
the greater the effect. The effect would be so great
on a perfectly stiff dart that the dart would fish
tail in the air and fail to be accurate or
even reach the target. A flexible dart, however, allows the

(08:24):
excess force to be stored in the dart as it flexes.
The tip remains frozen in space as the dart flexes,
and at the last moment, the stored energy releases, allowing
the dart to disengage from the odd laddle. The dart
flexes in a specific way during flight, however, the front
third of the dart is stiffer than the rear two thirds,
meaning the rear of the dart continues to flex around

(08:46):
the tip, which remains on target during the entire flight.
In essence, a flexible dart is one percent necessary for
an accurate throw. The engineering of the dart is much
more important than the add lattle. At two by four
with an ale in it confunction as a a a laddle,
but without a perfectly formed flexible dart, the entire system
won't work. Arrows shot from a bow are flexible in

(09:09):
the same way for the exact same reason. It just
happens on a smaller and faster scale. Arrows are also
propelled from the rear, just like a ladle darts. In fact,
many modern projectile weapons used the same principles found in
a ladles. The final thing I wanted to mention was
a clarification on the range and accuracy of auto ladles
when compared to bows or spears. You alluded to but

(09:32):
did not explicitly mentioned the short effective range of a
hand thrown spear. Most credible studies of prehistoric, historic, and
modern hand thrown spears put their maximum effective range, or
the range where thrower could reliably meaning seventy five greater
chance hit a target with a flat trajectory and enough
force for a fatal injury to be five to seven meters.

(09:54):
That's fifteen to twenty two ft, so that's obviously not
very far. The minimum distance that standard at Lattle tournaments
is fifteen meters or about forty eight feet, with a
maximum effective range of twenty five meters or about eighty
feet from the top throwers in the world, around thirty
meters or a hundred feet hit percentage starts dropping drastically.

(10:15):
More often than not, spears were for thrusting, and auto
ladles were used for throwing, despite what Hollywood would lead
you to believe. As I previously mentioned, overall, YouTube provided
more in depth analysis on the auto ladle than any
other non autolodolists I've ever seen, and Angelo wraps up here.
Thanks us again for the episode. Uh says uh. I
just wanted to clarify a few things. Mentions that their

(10:38):
Instagram pages at World Auto Lottal Association if you want
to check that out and see some high speed footage
and uh and dart flex Uh So, Yeah, that was
really informative. Thank you very much, Angelo for getting in
touch and for sharing your expertise with us. As soon
as I was reading this, yeah, I was picturing the
importance of the flexing of the dart the way like
when you release it, sort of the tape ill. Especially

(11:00):
when you see this high speed footage. The Tale of
the Dark kind of wobbles around while the front of
the Dark just stays dead on target. Yeah, it's definitely
noticeable in the in the a lot of the footage
that you see online. All right, here's another one. This
one comes to us from David. David says, I love
your show and and I can't say enough good things

(11:21):
about it. Keep doing more shows. I'm catching up on
stuff to blow your mind and listen to End of
the World and Two Shifts at work. But I really
love it when it's time for a new episode of Invention.
I work at a mindless warehouse facility, and listening to
your podcast keeps my brain from atrophy. Although I think
my wife is tired of me knowing everything, as I
have been catching myself interrupting a lot with actually, did

(11:43):
you know? Oh no, it's a nasty habit I picked
up from fact Overlord. Overload from fact Overlord. Yeah, now
he's fact Overlord, David, fact Overlord. Don't get that Overlord David. Anyway.
At Alttle, I worked as a wilderness guy for two
years and became very interested in primitive tools and weapons.
I never used any to actually hunt, but mostly target practice.

(12:06):
I just wanted to elaborate on a point you briefly
made comparing the outlawdle to the two of the bow.
I've used bows all made from high tech material and
a factory quite easily and without much practice, and pretty good.
I've also made attempts to design and make my own
bow from collected wood, not professionally commercial grade. That would
be cheating. The result is always very poor. Again coming

(12:28):
back to our our our commentary on Arnold Schwarzenegger in
Predator or or what was what was the MST three
K movie that uh we referenced where the individual makes
a bow and that the riff is yeah, it barely works.
I don't remember, but at anyway, you see that a

(12:49):
lot or a fair amount in in in films where
someone makes their own bow and suddenly it's deadly efficient.
Predator being the key um suspect here. Anyway, David continues,
even after reading some instructions and using modern tools, the
bows don't come out much better. Uh, they're even harder
to use. In my experience, the quality of shot is

(13:11):
only as good as the bow, which is very difficult
to make without a lot of practice. But I made
three or four bad models and one hell of an
aladdle in one afternoon, and I feel confident I could
make a great a autoladdle and under an hour with
only a knife. With only a few hours of practice,
I could hit a one ft diameter tree from thirty
ft away with tremendous force, many times getting really poorly

(13:33):
made spears to stick in a tree. Without a lot
of time and a large learning curve, I don't think
I could make a quality enough bow from scratch to
do that. Further, I believe at distances under fifty feet
the aladdle gives you much more force but equal accuracy
of a bow. If I wanted to bring an animal
down in one shot quickly, I truly feel the aladdle

(13:54):
is going to cause much more damage than the bow.
This also depends on the size of your spear. Any times,
while living in the wilderness, I would come across animals
less than fifty feet away, and at least twice a
week I would find myself accidentally less than twenty ft away.
It was very common for me to open my eyes
from a morning meditation and be in the presence of
potential food and don't forget at Alato can be used

(14:18):
for fish too in a hurry, if you have a
clear stream. In conclusion, if someone made an excellent bow,
I'd prefer the bow. If I had to figure out
my own weapon, I choose the addoladdle. All the love,
David from Greenville. All right, well, this sort of ends
up with what we were saying, right, Uh, the idea
that one of the great advantages of the auto ladle
is its simplicity and the fact that, uh, you know,

(14:39):
as we were talking about with some of the survivalists,
we were reading that you can pretty easily make one
in the field that works not not bad at all. Yeah,
and again coming back to the fact that Dutch should
have made an Aunt Lattle in Predator instead of that
ridiculous bow. You really hung up on this. I am no,
I just think it would have been a better It
would have made the movie better. It would have made

(14:59):
that Sea Winn's better, and it would be it would
have been cooler and what's what's it would have been
perfect more unfamiliar to modern audiences too. Yeah. Well, we
actually had one listener to get in touch with us. Well,
we don't have time to read the email in full,
but mentioned an episode of Star Trek the original series
where in the in the TV episode that they had
to make primitive weapons on a planet because they were

(15:20):
stranded didn't have their phasers and all that sort made bows.
But but the listener writing and mentioned that in the
novel adaptation of the episode, they make out ladles instead.
I love that. I love it when when someone doing
the novelization decides to fix something. Yeah, who's that movie
novelization writer that you really like? Who did that? Was

(15:42):
the Halloween three adaptation? Oh? I don't. I don't remember
his name off hand, but you know, they're they're There
are various tales of of movie novelization victories. I mean,
I think one of the greatest, of course, is Isaac
Asimov for Fantastic Voyage. I'm not even aware of this. Yeah, yeah,
agreed to uh, you know, to work on the book

(16:02):
version that came out with the film. But part of
the consideration was that he got to fix some of
the science in the book. And it's a fabulous book,
you know. I don't even movie's fun too. But I
finally remember reading Isaac Asimov's fan a Fantastic Voyage. I've
never even heard of that before I got to check
that out now. Well. So we got a lot of

(16:22):
great listener mail about the add a laddle, way too
much to read in full, but since we asked for
people's experiences, I did want to just summarize a few
more of the messages we received, but don't have time
to read. We got a message from an Ethan who
says that when he was in college he got to
try out and ad a ladle in one of his
classes and he found he could aim pretty well after
just a few throws, and this was a commonly reported

(16:43):
thing from listeners. They said that it was surprisingly easy
to get the hang of aiming with it. Another David
wrote in and said a similar thing. I says he
does historical re enactments and has attended an ad a
ladle siminar. In his opinion, it was much easier than
he would have expected to throw, and he became fairly
accurate after just a few practice throws. Um Our listener

(17:04):
Bradley says that when he was a kid, he learned
about the addleladdle in a class at school, and then
he and a friend made an addle laddle in a
dart later that summer, when after a day of practicing
they could sometimes hit a milk jug full of water,
though he doesn't say what distance, and he also says
it was surprisingly easy to make an audle ladle in
a dart just out of branches that they found. You know,

(17:26):
I hope it goes without saying, but I do want
to just advise everyone here that if you are inspired
by this and decided to make your own add a ladle,
that you will exercise common sense. Oh yeah, and and
and follow follow directions and advice from some of these
organizations that we've mentioned, because that's that's one of the
potential pitfalls of being able to make a fairly efficient

(17:49):
deadly weapon from just sticks that you obtain in your
natural habitat right, look up safety precautions. Obviously, don't do
anything with a living thing down range unless you're actually hunting.
And then I guess you got to wait till a
little season. Right, what's the what's the hunting season for
using not not a lottle? Oh? I think we talked
about this, but I've forgotten about. I mean, generally the
trend is the more sort of old fashioned the weapon,

(18:13):
the earlier you get in, right, I think that might
be true. I do remember reading something about in in
some places the regulations are different for the bare handed
deer hunting that like that starts super early. Uh So.
Speaking of hunting, we also heard from our listener Matt

(18:33):
regarding how close you can get to deer without noticing.
Matt says that he's an avid hunter in Ontario and
had a few observations about approaching wildlife, because that was
one of the things we talked about in the episode,
was like the distance that you can get from pray
if you're hunting, Like, how close can you normally get
to a deer? Normally you know they'll bolt before you
get pretty close. But I talked about one experience I

(18:55):
had just this year where I kind of walked up
on one without it apparently noticing me, and I did
notice it, And how did that make you feel like
a regular Jason Vorhees uh So, Matt says outside the
realm of hunting, he says that on the farm, it's
easiest to get close to deer during the harvest. Quote.
They like to eat and take cover within the corn

(19:16):
rows and won't run if they're unsure what direction you're
coming from. With a couple of pieces of machinery running
in different areas. I imagine this can be somewhat disorienting
to them, thus making it possible to get pretty close
if you know where they are once. He's a lot
of wildlife during the harvest season eagles, owls, rabbits, coyotes, etcetera.
And a nice close up of an area's deer is

(19:36):
always a pleasant treat. And then with regards to hunting,
Matt says quote when it comes to hunting, I'm continually
amazed how well deer can blend into their environment, as
well as how patient they are. Many times I have
not literally, but approximately so nearly walked on top of
one or a group of deer. They have an intuition
for knowing they've been spot whether they've been spotted or not,

(19:59):
and whether the same forbet is to run or stay put.
Then they make their escape once the hunter me is
a safe distance past. This is the thing I think,
if we haven't talked about it on our other podcast
to stuff to blow your mind, I would like to
come back and visit sometime. The sense for having been seen,
Like there's debate about to what extent you know animals

(20:20):
and stuff have a kind of sense for that, Like
how do they detect whether or not they are detectable
or have been detected. I think about this with my catalot,
when when she's like stalking me in the house, and
it doesn't seem to make a difference to her if
I've seen her or not, Like she's still going to
continue stalking me and hunting me for prey. That's recreational stalking. Yeah,

(20:41):
that's true, and she I guess she's she's acting in
full predator mode when she's doing that. But of course,
the thing about the common house cat is that it is.
And one of the reasons that they are ultimately so
insane is that besides the fact that we've we've we've
sort of domesticated them and we're keeping them inside of
our how in many cases, uh, they are also in

(21:02):
this area that they're you know, they're clearly both both
mega predator, but also they are prey. H They're small
enough to be a prey animal to a number of
creatures of the wild. It's a strange niche to occupy.
All right, should we take a break before we move
on to our next messages. Let's do it. We'll be
right back, all right, We're back, all right, So we

(21:29):
also heard from someone about our museum's episode. Where does
the invention of the museum come from? What does the
what does it mean? And how are we continuing to
wrestle with the idea in modern times? So Diane writes
in and says, first, Robert and Joe, your podcasts are
the very bust out there. I love listening and learning

(21:50):
while I work. Especially timely was the museum podcast. I'm
a fiber artist, and just last week learned that a
Peace of Mind is going to be in an exhibit
at the Ladelphia Museum of Art Off the Wall American
Art to Wear, which opens November nine, and that the
piece has been presented to them for their permanent collection.
The Philadelphia area is my home base. I went to

(22:13):
more College in Philadelphia. I am so excited, to say
the least, congratulations. Yeah, you're becoming a part of history. Yeah.
Your podcast made me think about what it means to
actually have my work in a museum, which I never
thought would happen, and how future generations would view it
and the time, materials, et cetera involved in making it
it was. It will be surreal to stand there and

(22:35):
say to someone, hey, I made that anyway, thanks again
for the hours of interesting and thoughtful podcasts Diane. Well,
thanks so much for getting in touch, Diane, and congratulations
on having your piece included. So hey, if you are
out there in the Philadelphia area and you're around uh
after November nine, you should go check out this exhibit. Yeah,
see Diane's work. All right, here we've got a short one,

(23:00):
but but one with a very good reference. So this
is in regards to our gastro Automaton episode about the
like the Canard de Gira Tour, the duck that the
mechanical duck that eats and poops. This is from Dan,
Dan rights, Hi, Robert, and Joe. I was listening to
your dreams of a gastro Automaton episode when you mentioned
machines playing musical instruments. Now, this is a thing that

(23:23):
the same guy who created the pooping duck, you know,
the Canard Deira Tour, also made these automata that we're
human like figures that would actually play musical instruments like
a flute by blowing into them and doing the fingerings right.
Was the key one, uh and so uh here Dan
picks up and says, I immediately thought of compressor head

(23:46):
who compressor Head. Compressor Head are an all robot heavy
metal band. No pun intended that looked like something out
of the out of the nineteen nineties sci fi horror
film Hardware. At first, I've never seen it. I don't think. Yeah,
if I'm remembering the correct film um Hardware, Yeah, I
remember them pretty good. They could also be a cross

(24:06):
between like Short Circuit and Chopping Mall, I think, but
Dan goes on. I first discovered them late last year
after falling through a YouTube rabbit hole, and it is
one of the most amazing things I've ever seen on
the web. I've provided a link down below to a
live video of them playing the Eternal Motorhead classic Ace
of Spades. They're far more entertaining and better than most
flesh based cover bands I've seen. I have seen the

(24:28):
future of rock and roll and its robots. Love everything
you do. Keep up the good work, Dan. I went
and watched this. It's great. It's fantastic, like it is
if rocks. Well, it's interesting that you mentioned motor Had
because Limmy is actually in uh the film Hardware these
referencing no way, Yeah, Yeah, Lemmy is in it. Iggy

(24:49):
Pop is in it. Uh, it was a Richard Stanley film. Uh.
And yeah, it's quite interesting, worth worth picking out if
you want out, like a nice slice of like of
year nineteen nineties horror, sci fi, rampaging robot, that sort
of thing. What does let me do in it? I
think he's a taxi driver, if I remember correctly. Um, yeah,

(25:11):
that's that's what I remember. Yeah. I think he's driving
like a weird like semi post apocalyptic taxi, which which
was appropriate. I think. Oh man, if you like motor
Head or you like metal, yeah, look up compressor Head
asub Spades. It is brutal. It is so good. All right,
here's another one. This one comes to us from James.

(25:32):
James says, hello, Robert and Joe, longtime listeners since the
stuff from the Science Lab days. Okay that that was
the original title of our other show, Stuff to Blow
your Mind, back when I hosted it with Alison louder Milk. Anyway,
it continues, and this is my first time writing in
We took you long enough. It's been almost ten years. Uh.
In the Motion Picture Part three episode, you guys mentioned

(25:53):
how you wanted to hear more musicians synchronized music to
a trip to the Moon. Well, my there. Trevor plays
guitar in a contemporary chamber group for which the composer
writes modern pieces to a company Silent Films. They have
performed a number of shows in and around the Detroit area,
chief among them being at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. They're

(26:15):
called the Andrew Alden Ensemble and by the way, you
want to look that up, andrew Alden Ensemble dot band
camp dot com is the place to find them. Uh.
And they've not only done a modern take on a
Trip to the Moon, but also Nonsferatu, which they've performed
on Halloween for the last few years, as well as
a few other movies. I'll include a link to their

(26:36):
band camp page which I just shared, so you can
check out the music if you find yourself in the
Detroit area or her happened to catch them on tour.
They're a great treat anyway. Sorry for rambling, but I
love both of your shows. Keep doing what you're doing well, Thanks, James.
I feel like everybody's getting in touch with great art now. Yeah,
this is really art heavy episode. Museum worthy fiber arts

(26:59):
come presser head. Uh. Because soundtracks to Silent films. This
is this is my jam. All right. Well, let's go
to the next bit of listener mail, because this is
going to bring us back more into the science realm
of things. All right, This one comes to us from Morrigan.
Morgan says, Hi, guys love the podcast. I'm an avid
listener of all things Joe and Robert. I'm a research

(27:21):
assistant in the end Tunes Lab at the University of
North Texas bio Discovery Department, and we work within the
realm of synthetic biology concerning plant genes. Our aim is
to create plants with genes that will move us toward
a sustainable future like crop production, oil up regulation for livestock, feed,
cloth fibers, and more. When we create specific genes we

(27:44):
want to insert into plants, we have to first insert
the genes into bacteria, and then the bacteria can in
turn transfect the plants. The DNA transfer that comes from
the bacteria to the plant is what alters the plants geno.
When we insert genes into bacteria and grow them on
an agar plate, we want to select for just those bacteria.

(28:05):
We eliminate the possibility of growing other bacteria by also
adding antibiotic resistance to the bacterial genome in addition to
our genes of interest or g o I. We can
then grow up bacteria carrying our g o I on
an agar plate that contains antibiotics in it, and the
bacteria will grow due to the resistance gene we've placed
in it, while all other bacterial strains will die. Therefore,

(28:28):
we only grow the exact bacterial strain we want. I've
personally inserted genes into a grow bacterium that have as
many as four different antibiotic resistances, and I know scientists
who have gotten up to five. I thought this might
be an interesting addition to the podcast. As I said,
love your podcast, so keep them coming, best regards, Morgan.
Oh that's interesting, Morgan. So this sort of seems in

(28:51):
line with when you go way back to Alexander Fleming,
who first discovered these effects of penicillin. Fleming did say
originally the penicillin might be useful in uh for medical purposes,
but remember they had trouble initially producing enough penicillin to
be medically useful. Um, so some of the original uses
he was talking about for it, we're not in medicine,

(29:13):
but we're just in research, right and I imagine he
probably would have had some kind of obviously not genetic
engineering because they didn't know about genetic engineering at that point,
but would have had some kinds of research of this
type in mind, right, that you could separate out penicillin
vulnerable bacteria from penicillin. Uh, you know, non vulnerable bacteria. Yeah,

(29:34):
this is an interesting bit of insight from someone with
with lab experience and uh. And it's not the only
bit of of of such a research oriented penicillin feedback
that we received. No. Also, in response to our penicillin episode,
we got an epic monster email from our listener Daniel,
which is really good. It's long, so we might split
it up and sort of take turns reading here. So Daniel, right,

(30:00):
it's hi, Robert and Joe. I enjoy both of your
guys podcasts very much. But I'm writing today in reference
to the Invention episode on penicillin. I'm a research associate
in a lab that studies tuberculosis and I've never felt
the need to write to a podcast before, but two
ideas came to mind following this episode, the one about penicillin. First,
when you were talking about what the world might look

(30:21):
like if penicillin, and antibiotics weren't discovered, or at least
not for a few decades. I thought about one ramification
that pretty much no one outside the molecular biology world
would think of, and that's the idea of DNA transformation.
It's sort of the basis for all genetic studies, and
the entire thing revolves around antibiotics, both the fact that

(30:42):
they effectively kill bacteria and that there exists specific proteins
or versions of proteins that confer resistance to the antibiotics.
As an example, imagine you wanted to add a gene
into E. Coli to see what it does. Usually this
is done on a circular piece of DNA called a plasmid.
So you add billions of copies of this DNA plasmid

(31:04):
into a tube containing billions of E. Coli bacteria, and
you force them to uptake the plasmid, either through electricity
or their natural heat stress response. But even this is
rather inefficient. So how do you make sure that the E.
Coal I have taken up the plasmid. You don't want
to study a population of bacteria where only ten percent
got the plasmid you're interested in studying. You need a

(31:27):
pure population, and the way we do this is by
including an antibiotic resistance gene on that plasmid. So after
you induce the E. Coli to take up the plasmid,
you can select for the plasmid positive bacteria by culturing
them in the presence of that antibiotic. All the bugs
that did not get the plasmid will die, while those

(31:48):
that did will express the resistance protein and survive and
eventually divide, and the daughter cells will also have that
plasmid as well. This is the basis for practically all
genetic experiments where you need to select for a population
that received your specific DNA of interest, and it's hard
to imagine what would take the place of an antibiotic
in that selection process. Hopefully I've described this well enough.

(32:11):
I think you did, Robert. Do you want to take
over for a minute here, Yeah, I'll jump in here.
Number two. The other thing I wanted to tell you
about is related to a novel class of antibiotics. Our
lab doesn't really work on antibiotic resistance that much, but
of course TB is an important global pathogen and is
naturally hard to treat. I think Joe mentioned how long
a treatment it is usually six months of a cocktail

(32:34):
of multiple drugs, and it's also rapidly. It's also rapidly
developing resistance. But we did have a side project in
the lab studying a class of antibiotics cultur agenns. One
thing you guys probably didn't have time to get into
is how bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics. I guess there
are three main ways. The two that are very simple

(32:56):
are increasing the amount of a flux pumps and a
limb in the amount of import pumps. If a chemical
is causing damage to the cell, just get it out
or don't bring it in. Bacteria have some promiscuous pump
system and these work pretty well, but these are more
like increasing tolerance and might just mean more drug is
needed to kill them, as opposed to developing real resistance,

(33:19):
which comes from the third way, muta genesis. If you're antibiotic,
chemical works by inhibiting a certain specific protein. The bacteria
can just change the protein in such a way that
it still performs its cellular function, but the antibiotic no
longer recognizes it. It's quite amazing that bacteria are able
to do this at all. As far as we know,

(33:41):
there seems to be no chemical that works against bacteria. Uh,
that that they haven't found a way to develop a
resistance to through mutagenesis. Some types of resistance are so
well characterized that we know the exact base pay change
that needs to occur for that specific drug to no
longer be effective. However, this is an incredibly inefficient process

(34:01):
because mutagenesis happens randomly throughout the genome. But that's where
bacteria is power to replicate comes into play. If a
base paira mutations happens once every thousand generations, and there
are one billion base pairs, it seems like thin odds,
but it's really only a matter of time before the
bacteria get lucky, and just like the transformation of plasmid,

(34:22):
these resistant mutants will be able to survive and replicate, and,
since the resistance is heritable, eventually overtake the population. This
is often mitigated by using multiple drugs with different targets,
because two mutations occurring in different genes at the same
time is even more unlikely. Alright, I'm gonna tag out Joe. Okay, Okay,
So Daniel continues, UH, referring back to this class of

(34:44):
new antibiotics. You mentioned anyway, the new class I mentioned
seragenans are based around being a structural mimic to a
human microbial peptide called L L thirty seven. As you discussed,
most antibiotics like penicillin, tetracycline, et cetera, come from microbes.
But L L thirty seven is a peptide a string

(35:04):
of meaning a string of amino acids that human cells
produce themselves, which has been shown to have broad anti
microbial activity. Hah. So this is a weird into what
would be the god of the humans to compete with
jubiles and zugdimoy. Oh I don't know that the humans
have a lot of gods, induges and dragons. I mean
sometimes they'll upen worship zugdimoy if they had, you know,

(35:26):
if they have good reason to. Oh, okay, I guess
we can come back to this one. But Daniel continues,
as you can imagine, there would be quite a lot
of issues getting pharmacological amounts of substance that is produced
by human cells. Also, interestingly, synthesizing strings of amino acids
is not an easy process. Cells make it look so easy.
So even x vivo production of L thirty seven wouldn't

(35:49):
really be feasible, So people have created these seragenans as
chemical mimics to the L L thirty seven peptide. So
what is their mechanism? The way people think they were
work is by disrupting the plasma membranes of bacterial cells.
All bacteria have plasma membranes, and while most antibiotics work
on a bacterial protein like tetracycline, inhibiting the ribosome and

(36:13):
ampicill and inhibiting proteins that helped synthesize the cell wall,
the seragen ins seem to attack the membrane by disrupting
the lipids themselves and forming holes between them, causing the
cells to LCE and that's L Y S E I mean.
I think that means basically break down or break apart.
This is important because there is no real way to

(36:33):
mutate the plasma membrane to develop resistance since lipids are
not encoded genetically. They're metabolized by genetically encoded enzymes, but
the species of lipid themselves are not. Possibly there could
be a way for them to alter the composition which
flavor of lipid makes meaning which flavor of lipid makes
up the majority of the membrane, but as much less

(36:56):
likely as it would probably require large changes to the
genome as opposed to single based mutations. One question you
may ask is why don't these compounds attack the mammalian
membranes we have plasma membranes, And the answer, unfortunately, is
that they probably do. He continues. What makes antibiotics special
is not just that they kill microbes, but that they

(37:18):
don't kill us. Right. Most of the classic compounds act
on cellular machinery that humans don't have, like cell walls
and bacterial ribosomes. Sulfuric acid is a great antibiotic. Unfortunately,
it's also a great anti human. Right. The same would
be true of heat. So when you put these sagenans,
as well as l L thirty seven on mammalion cells

(37:39):
at high concentrations, they kill the cells. What might be
happening to make l L thirty seven not kill the
mammalian cells is in our bodies that produce it. Is
that they are packaged in a careful way and local
concentration is controlled such that the bacteria encounter a high
enough molarity to kill them, but not the mammalian cells.

(38:02):
Maybe even so highly specialized as to take advantage of
different surface area of volume ratios. So maybe synthesizing a
mimic of l L thirty seven that is much more
potent might not even be what is desired if it
will kill too many mammalian cells. Adding to this complication
is that it seems l L thirty seven has some
immuno modulating effects on mammalion cells, being implicated in inflammation signaling,

(38:26):
which may play a big role in how it's used
in the body to fight infection. So long story short,
too late. The new class of seranogens might not be
as groundbreaking as the initial wave of antibiotics, but perhaps
if we get a better understanding of l L thirty
seven's exact mechanism, we can try to improve on it
in the lab. But it is hard to imagine scientists

(38:48):
beating natural selection if l L thirty seven is in
some sort of Goldilocks region of cell ldic activity. Although
the suragenans are currently used as topical antibiotics because it
does it matter so much if you kill skin cells,
and they appear to work really well against biofilms, which
are notoriously hard to treat. Apologies for the long emails

(39:08):
you your guys, podcasts are always so well researched and
broken down perfectly. It's really difficult to describe things in
a simple enough way that it is understandable for those
who know nothing about the subject, while also detailed enough
that people who are familiar don't consider it incorrect. Keep
up the good work, best, Daniel. Well, thank you so much, Daniel,
and thank you for illuminating with your expertise on this subject.

(39:31):
I didn't know anything about this, uh the suragyan in class.
Yeah yeah, and which I have to say every time
we we we said it. I was imagining like a
Monty Python esque night Surender Sagnans writing into battle. That's
the pathogens the knights who license Yeah there you uh no,
but that is really interesting thinking about the methods that

(39:54):
these different uh antibiotics work, Like the anti microbials have
some kind of mechanism that they work by, and generally
the mechanism is something that the bacterial cells can overcome
if it's some kind of chemical poison or whatever. So
the trick is finding something that hurts their cells in
a way that they can't just get a mutation to overcome,

(40:16):
but that doesn't hurt our selves also, uh, and this
and this apparently does hurt ourselves also, but you know
it's got these modulating effects. All right, on that note,
we're gonna take a quick break, but don't worry. When
we come back, we will we will listen to some
listener males concerning needles. All right, we're back. So it

(40:41):
looks like we've got a couple of listeners writing in
about hypodermic needles. We just recently had an episode on
the hypodermic syringe. So we do this one from Nicola first. Okay.
Nicola writes in says, hey, guys, I love your show.
Just wanted to throw in my two cents about needles.
I'm a twenty two year old university student studying mechanical engineering.

(41:04):
Ever since I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease about seven
years ago, I've had many more encounters with needles. Over
the years, I became used to injections and blood draws
to the point where now is actually comforting and pleasant. Oh, Robert,
you were asking about this in the episode. I was
interesting to know like regular needle users, Uh you know what,
how how you how that changes your relationship with the technology. Right,

(41:26):
So Nicholas says, I know that sounds awfully strange and foreign,
but I enjoy the feeling of cold liquid entering my
veins and warm blood rushing out. Now you might be
thinking that sounds reasonable, but there's no way you like
the actual injection itself. But you would be wrong. It
brings me to a state of relaxation. Forces me to relax.
The sharp pension the needle has actually become a feeling

(41:48):
that brings fondness to my life. Knowing that I'm going
to get the medication I need to be healthy allows
me to look past the pain and discomfort to see
the big picture. My appreciation for modern medicine and medical
uh and engineering accomplishments allows me to appreciate the process
and take it as it is a modern miracle. I'd
like to thank you guys for the amazing content you provide.

(42:08):
I love how you're able to integrate many fields of
study and history into a comprehensive piece of culture and science.
There's so much I've learned from your show, and I
wait patiently each week for the next episode. Oh And
Nicola also suggests in the future that we cover some
technology behind behind factories and mass produced items. Oh, yes,
I very much want to. Yeah, I've been doing a

(42:30):
little reading on this, just looking at you the way
factories have evolved over the decades, and like where we
are now with with the manual with manufacturing and also
just beyond just simply manufacturing things within a within a factory,
but also moving those products around, like dealing with the
the overall supply chain and logistics. It's it's it's it's

(42:51):
far more fascinating than I expected. I mean, it causes
you to rethink what your idea of technology is. Is
the technology just one p physical infrastructure that's all touching
itself or I mean, can you think about supply chains
and stuff being technologies on their own, even if consists
of like multiple different uh things at all different points

(43:14):
that are not necessarily touching or even interactive. Well, it
brings me back to our discussions of the toilet. You know,
it's one thing to invent the toilet, but if you
do not have and they certainly did not have this
when upon its initial invention of the flush toilet in
in in England, if you do not have a sewer
system that can facilitate that toilet, then you really don't

(43:34):
have a modern toilet, you have you have an incomplete
link in an overall chain. Uh. And and that can
be said for a lot of things concerning the supply
chain and manufacturing is that, you know, it's great, you
have this one robot that's fabulous, but it's it's not
going to do everything itself. It needs it needs that,
it needs to have a place in this overall system.

(43:54):
And then other aspects of the system need to be
brought online, uh, you know, to where it can keep
up with it. Uh. You know, the same can be
said of other things like additive technology, additive manufacturing, and
so forth. So yeah, I think that would be a
wonderful thing to discuss. We could probably be a multi
uh episode series, you know, because essentially you're dealing with

(44:14):
some of the major movements in the industrial revolution. Totally.
All right, here comes another one. This one is from Carissa. Hey, guys,
I really like the podcast. As someone who works in
a clinic that has a whole room dedicated to shots.
Hooray for allergies allergy shots, it was quite interesting. I

(44:36):
think the secret to not being afraid of needles is
just exposure therapy. Most people don't get many needles in
their lives, and the ones they do get are far
and few between. But in the clinic I work in,
we see adults and pediatric patients for allergy shots. In
the room where those are administered is probably the quietest
room in the whole clinic. You don't even hear children
crying in that room when they get their shots, probably

(44:57):
because they start out coming in multiple times week and
then gradually get fewer as time goes on, until there
at once a month maintenance dose. I used to be
freaked out by needles, but now they fascinate me. I
had a couple of days in the hospital a few
years ago for some gallbladder related issues. Had to have
a couple of surgeries while I was there. Plus they
had to stick me at least twenty times, not even

(45:19):
exaggerating there to get an i V in me because
I was so dehydrated because I literally couldn't eat for
a week. After that, I was no longer phased by needles.
It's a good thing too, because now I'm on an
injectable medication and give myself a shot once every other week.
When I tell people this, they get squeamish and ask
how I can make myself give myself a shot, but

(45:40):
it really doesn't even bother me. So long story short,
if you want to get over your fear and discomfort
around needles without a major health crisis, just donate blood
as often as you can. Thanks for an interesting listen, Carissa,
And uh, yeah, she's definitely right on that, because one
of the things about giving blood, of course, is that
it's not just a quick jab. It's you know, the
insertain needle, and then the needle stays in there, so

(46:02):
you have you have a little time to think about it,
and in front not to think about it, you know, like,
if you're like me, you're not really wanting to look
at it. Generally, they you know, they do cover it
up a little piece of gauze, so you're not actually
looking at the injection. But but yeah, every time I go,
I do feel a certain amount of like that exposure
therapy taking place where at first I'm like, yeah, I
don't really want to look at this needle and then

(46:24):
this growing bag of blood this underneath my chair. But
after you've been there a little bit and you've had
time to sort of get bored with the whole thing,
you're you know, you're kind of over the fear when
do I get my twinkie. Yeah, it's kind of a
similar experience I've had on really like irritating plane flights
in the past, where if I'm initially dealing with some
level of flying anxiety, if the people around me are

(46:46):
annoying enough, then I can I can push through that
fear of death and um, you know, and almost crave
it because I'm so tired of other humans. Well, I'd
say actually, the same thing that has being described here
with needles has happened to me with flying. I used
to be much more afraid of flying until I just
had to do it more for work and just having

(47:07):
to get on a plane several times a year without
it really being up to me or not. You know,
I just got to go there, you know. Uh that
that just basically I'm over it now. It's kind of
like the more like the more primitive layers of your
your brain architecture begin to get the message that Okay, yeah,
I think this is gonna be okay. Granted that's not

(47:27):
every brain, but but still, I think there's an interesting
insight on just regular exposure to needles versus the reality
that yeah, most of us when we're getting a shot,
it's what one shot a year, maybe two shots a year,
that sort of thing, as opposed to regular, like weekly shots.
But I would say in both of these cases, these
messages from Nicola and Carissa both sound like a sort

(47:48):
of cognitive victories over the instinct. Right, we've got this
weird instinctual fears of needles. But it seems like in
both cases they were able to think their way through it.
All Right, here's one about vending machines. Yeah, this one
comes from Stefan hi 'all. I was driving to a
coffee shop to do some late night at coding when

(48:10):
I accidentally ran across two people talking about vending machines
on AM nine ten in the San Francisco Bay area
this evening. Were are we on San Francisco radio? I
didn't know that. Yeah you knew this, Joe, Yeah, We're
the podcast is showing up in all sorts of places. Well,
I didn't know that we were specific radio stations. Hopefully

(48:30):
guess pumps soon. I'm hoping for that. Oh, we're going
to be the thing that yells at you while you're
bumping your gas. Wouldn't wouldn't it be great? Though? If, if,
if we were playing an episode of Invention about about
gas pump history, I would actually love to do a
gas pump episode because you look at some of the
older models of gas pumps and they, you know, they

(48:50):
look like they're from a science fiction movie. It's it's
it's pretty fascinating. Oh, we've actually got on the upcoming Ledger.
We're definitely going to do one on leaded Gassle for
for an exploration of inventions gone wrong. Excellent. All right, Well, anyway,
Stefan continues, I ended up trapped in my car because
I found the conversation really interesting and intelligent. I also

(49:11):
did not want to get out of my car because
I wanted to know what program this was, so I
needed to wait and I did. This is one of
the issues I guess of doing a podcast versus that
has been transformed into an AM radio podcast, is that,
of course it's standard in radio to continually remind the
listener what you're listening to, station identification and stuff. Speaking

(49:31):
of if you're just joining us on AM radio, you're
listening to the podcast Invention with Robert and Joe. Anyway,
Stefan continues, So I needed to wait, and I did.
Eventually it ended and I it was announced that it
was related to invention pod dot com. All I can
say is this was a great program and I look
forward to hearing the first half hour when the episode

(49:53):
is put on the website. It's already on there. Yeah,
you just sometimes you have to, I think, dig for
some of the older episodes, but yeah, they all should
be available at invention pot dot com. All I can
say is that it was a great material, thought provoking
and discussed in a really intelligent way. A really nice
change from the a M band that tends to shout
about polarized issues these days. This was a really nice

(50:14):
change from that. By the way, automats automats, of course,
are the establishment you would go into that we discussed.
We have all the little glass windows, little dowars that
you open up, put money in, and you open it
up and you remove a plate of food. As we mentioned,
these are prominently featured in various bits of media and fiction,
including the film Dark City. Um but Stefan says automatsa

(50:38):
we're automats were still very much in evidence in Amsterdam
in the nineties seventies, and I recall enjoying quite a
few meals from the automat there. Quite possibly this automat
has gone today, but it was very much in use
then and quite popular in Holland back then. Regards Stefan, Well,
I'm pretty sure this is our very first uh listener

(51:00):
from radio that we've heard from though it Yeah, it
is happening if you're not aware out there. So the
company that now owns our podcast network is I Heart Radio,
and they've got radio stations. So somewhere out there are
podcasts are playing on the radio. Maybe you're listening on
the radio right now. Yeah, I have to say so.
I sometimes do this too if I'm if I'm out driving.
I used to do it more when I was having

(51:20):
to drive at night more. But listening to like various
AM radio stations, just seeing like what is out there
and encountering like weird parts of conversations, sometimes sometimes very
extreme conversations, but sometimes you know, refreshingly mundane and then
but then not necessarily knowing who's talking or uh, it's
it's it's fun, it's it's it's an it's an exploration.

(51:41):
So it is kind of neat to think that we
might be uh the gym that someone ins is they're
driving around in the middle of the night. You find
us when you're tuning between different people screaming from bunkers.
All right, here we got an international one from our listener.
To Mossmas says, hello from Sweden. I have now listened

(52:03):
to you for about a year. I have no idea
how I found you, but enjoy listening to you. Your
mix of science, myths and popular culture is what makes
the shows enjoyable. I guess you can't put every movie
reference in your episodes. We'll we'll give it a shot.
To Moss, we try, but he says, there are two
that I feel you should have picked up on. The
first one is from your series on the motion Picture.

(52:24):
You talked about Edward my Bridge and his multiple image
camera that captured the movement of a horse. I immediately
thought of the groundbreaking visual effects of the matrix that
used a similar set up, taking movie making full circle.
I think he means the multi camera set up, yeah,
that was used. The bullet time effect, as it's called,
allows the audience to view an actor suspended in space

(52:47):
and time while the camera moves around the actor. It's
made possible by synchronizing fifty DSLR cameras around the actor.
It was developed by the film's visual effects supervisor John Gaeta. Yeah,
I kind of you don't one of the sames. I
kind of forget about this despite having seen some behind
the scene. I think everybody saw some behind the scenes
stuff about how they shot that sequence back in the day.

(53:08):
But it's also was just so well done. I almost
don't think about it as a special effect. You know,
but tons. There were tons of copycats, like cheap copycats
in the movies that came afterwards. Well, and also just
obvious parodies is exactly well. The parodies are one thing,
but I love the early two thousands movies. There was
there was an Uva Bowl movie that did the House

(53:30):
of the Dead. I've not seen any of his filmography.
I have to say House of the Dead is extremely bad,
but it's full of like I'd say, half the run
time of the movie is bullet time shots. Hey watch it.
Are you gonna wind up in a boxing match? Uh?
Thomas continues the next references regarding the episode Gastro Automaton.
When talking about making androids human by letting them eat,

(53:53):
you failed to mention one of your favorite movies Robocopsy, Thomaston,
that was us. That's in the movie. They show a
machine that produces something similar to baby food that RoboCop
eats disapplay nutrients to his organic body parts. One of
the technicians finds it really tasty. Looking forward to hearing
more of your interesting podcast kind regards Thomas. You know,

(54:15):
this does drive home that we need to do a
stuff to blow your mind episode that focuses on RoboCop,
because certainly RoboCop comes up a lot. Have we not
already basically done the whole movie. Well, I thought about that,
but then I'm reminded of the baby food, and I'm
reminding of some other scenes too that like, for instance,
there's the toxic waste sequence, which traumatized me at an

(54:37):
early age. But I kind of wanna, like, you know,
face the trauma and take that scene apart and discuss
like what's actually happening in the scene and how that
matches up with reality. And I'm sure there's other I
haven't actually sat down and watched it, uh beginning to
end in quite a long time, so I'm sure there's
other stuff in there that we could, you know, squeeze
out a proper movie episode we try and do one

(54:58):
episode of stuff to blow your mind a month roughly,
in which we we use them. We just focus around
a particular movie. We talk a little bit about the
movies history and you know, some of them curious facts
about it, but mostly we use bits of the film
as a springboard to discuss topics that either wouldn't come
up otherwise on the show, wouldn't you know, necessitate an

(55:20):
entire episode, or you know, something where it puts a
new spin on an old topic. I like how this
one listener can tell that RoboCop is one of our
favorite movies just from listening to the show. And I
don't even know when we ever said that, but it's true.
It's true. It comes up a lot. I think at
one point you also told listeners that have they wanted
their listener mail read that they should put RoboCop in

(55:43):
the in the title, which is which is not required.
We we we did. We pretty much read everything. We
don't have time to share it all. We don't have
time to read it all on on listener mail episodes
of either show, but we will read your listener mail
even if it does not say RoboCop uh in the header?
All right, we're gonna have to call it there because
we're out of time. We had some more little listener

(56:06):
mail bits we wanted to read, but you know, we
had some some wonderful suggestions people asking for say, more
health related topics in the future, that sort of thing. Uh,
and yeah, I think in in the future we do
want to continue to just try and and hit all
the sweet spots, you know, more medical technology, more ancient inventions,
more recent inventions, more RoboCop, more more more RoboCop for

(56:29):
stuff to blow your mind. But for Invention. Uh, you know,
we're gonna you know, we're gonna try and just keep
cast the net wide as we have thus far. Thank
you so much to all these people who got in touch.
And again, if we didn't have a chance to read
your email on the episode today, please don't take that
as an insult. We really really love and appreciate all
the email we get, so thank you so much. In

(56:50):
the meantime, if you want to check out more episodes
of this podcast, Invention, head on over to invention pod
dot com. That's where you'll find all the episodes that
have come out. Uh, there are no secret episodes of Invention,
They're all right there, and if you want to support
our show, one of the best things you can do
is if you're listening to this in podcast form wherever
you got that podcast, make sure you have subscribed to us,

(57:12):
and make sure that you rate and review wherever you
have the power to do so. Oh and also if
you are a reverse order listener. We imagine most of
the people who listen to Invention listen to Stuff to
Blow your Mind, our other podcast first. But if you're
the other way around, if you came to Invention first,
you should go subscribe to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
If you haven't already, Yeah, go check it out. Yeah,
we've been doing it for almost ten years. And uh,

(57:36):
you know, as always, I say start with the more
recent episodes because the science is just going to be
fresher and hopefully you know, our you know, will be
a little better in the more recent episodes. But but
check those out. Yeah, you'll find those at stuff to
Bow your Mind dot com. Huge things to our excellent
audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to

(57:56):
get in touch with us with feedback on this episode,
or to just a topic for the future, or just
to say hello, any of that You can email us
at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

(58:18):
you listen to your favorite shows.