Listener Mail: Mothers of Invention

Finally, it's listener mail time on Invention! You've wrote 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. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey
you welcome to Invention. My name is Robert lamp and
I'm Joe McCormick, and it is our inaugural listener Maile
episode of Invention. That's right. We put out I don't
know how many episodes of Invention, like multiple six, Well

(00:23):
maybe not that baby, but we we've put out a few.
We've been getting some great email. I think some of
the initial Invention emails were received. We read on Stuff
to Blow your Mind listener mail episodes. But then we
started saying, no, we're getting some great stuff. Let's save
them up. Let's do an Invention listener mail episode. And
that's that's easy to do. But then we had another conundrum.
All right, obviously it's going to be the two of

(00:44):
us reading them, but we can't use Carne our mail bot,
our sci fi mail bot from Stuff to Blow your Mind. No,
this is Invention. We need to turn to another mechanical
mail delivery entity. Now. Fortunately, the immortal craftsman Dadalus was
on hand to build out a new mail bot for us,
and apparently this bot was modeled on an earlier design

(01:07):
by the forge god hefest Us which was, of course,
the bronze automaton called Talos, known for wandering the shores
of crete throwing giant rocks at ships. This is the
prototype mail delivery variant of Talos. This is Melos. Yes, hello, Melos,
can you say hi to our listeners? Now? Fair? In
all fairness, Melos also throws rocks at ships every opportunity

(01:31):
that he gets. But he also brings us mail. Yes,
he brings us mail, and he filters out scam emails
from the witch Princess Medea. Oh yeah, yeah, that kind
of that kind of junk Maile really gets his I
Corps boiling. So Melos, you you've got something for us today?
Looks like this first email comes to us from our
listener Rob, where it looks like I think we're gonna

(01:52):
start off with a few about the episode we did
way back on toothpaste. So Rob says, in your recent
episode on toothpaste, you just dicussed how people throughout history
approached dental hygiene before modern toothpaste became ubiquitous. One solution,
of course, was to just do away with teeth altogether.
For example, both my maternal grandparents, along with several others

(02:13):
of that generation, in my family had all their teeth
removed relatively young and more dentures the rest of their lives.
Apparently this was considered the modern hygienic thing to do
at the time, and this would have been the nineteen thirties.
They lived in the East End of London. So I
worry that I'm reinforcing American stereotypes about British dental hygiene
and telling you this, but nevertheless, I thought you might

(02:35):
find it interesting. Keep up the great work. I've been
a regular listener to Stuff to Buill your Mind for
a couple of years now, and it's one of the
only podcasts I never missed an episode of. I'm enjoying
Invention very much so far as well. Regards Rob Well,
thank you Rob. That that is an interesting question. I
don't know whether this is the case, but I do
have to wonder if you couple a diet high and
sugar with a lack of proper dental care. I wonder

(02:59):
if it actually is healthier and more hygienic to just
pull them out and do your chewing with washable prosthetics. Uhh,
I mean, I'm not recommending it, but I mean I wonder.
I mean if so, you know, dental health. I think
it is becoming more more clear that, like oral health
is not just about you know, what your mouth feels like,

(03:20):
it's connected to other parts of the body, you know,
like like what kind of microbiota is living in your
mouth has an effect on the rest of you. Yeah,
and there there have been some studies in recent years,
and I haven't I haven't read them in detail, in
part because I I had a couple of wisdom teeth
taken out, and all these articles are about like, to
what extent does wisdom teeth removal have some sort of

(03:42):
influence on brain power and nerves and and so I'm like, uh,
you know, I'm just I'm not ready for that yet.
This is why I'm dumb. I had them taken out
to Oh no, you know, I would I would be
an interesting topic to discuss, probably on Tough to Blow
your mind. Uh, speaking of uh, back when Christian was

(04:04):
on the show, I did an episode with him about
ritual tooth removal um, which I don't remember getting into
anything in nineteen thirties London. So this exact particular example,
I think it's new to me, but we discussed some
various older practices, and we also discussed some like kind
of uh, you know, crackpot theories about you know, about

(04:25):
the the benefits of tooth removal um. And in this
I have to bring up the the excellent Cinemax television
series from Soderberg, The Nick, which went two seasons and
it was phenomenal. I watched it. I don't know if
anybody else did, but but it's tremendous. Had Clive Owen
just a wonderful cast. And uh. In one of the

(04:46):
characters that shows up played by John Hodgman in his
in his best cinematic role with Like Hands Down, he
plays a slightly fictionalized version of this character who did
advocate teeth removal, not for oral health, but for mental health.
He saw it as a means to treat mental ailments.

(05:06):
And uh, and I believe had his his children's teeth
removed as well. Okay, So in addition to us and
not actually recommending you removing all your teeth and replacing
them with prosthetics, there there have actually been some some
maybe KuPS in history who did recommend this. Yes, there
have been and confirmed yeah, I mean I think largely confirmed. Yes,
But yeah, I would recommend going back and listening to

(05:28):
that episode, it's of stuff to blow your mind for
more grizzly tooth removal practices. All right, here's another one
from Melos. This one comes to us from Kate. Hi. Guys,
my name is Kate. I am from the Ukraine and
I currently live in Sri Lanka. I enjoy your podcast
a lot, listen to each episode and it's exciting to
learn something fascinating about regular routine objects every day. I

(05:50):
just recently listened to your episode about toothpaste and you
mentioned there that toothpaste is perhaps only a one of
a few hygiene products which is not gender marketed. Sadly,
that's not entirely true. Is Colgate had a controversial campaign
back in two thousand and sixteen, as it can be
traced advertising toothpaste just for men, and even though it

(06:13):
was met with highly negative reaction, product of the product
is still continue to be advertised on the website. And
did a link? Did look this up? This is so hilarious.
I wonder what the flavor was, because it seems like
the anytime you see something marketed just two men, it's
it's like it really gets into this. I mean it,
I tend to find it gets into this like really

(06:34):
kind of like hyper masculine nothing pretty is good kind
of sensibility where it's like, yes, it smells like, uh,
you know, everything has to smell like like some sort
of industrial cleaner or something. Is you know, Ron Swanson
bacon teeth, bacon and leather teeth. We've actually got an
example of this coming up right after this email. Yeah,

(06:54):
but I'm just starting to imagine what's going through their minds, Like,
if you want rock har masculine teeth, just like Burt Reynolds,
try what you know, mascudent. Well, I'm in I'm of
two minds on it. I think I went into a
similar argument in our actual episode. On one hand, this
I think this is silly, uh, And I also don't
like the way it you know, ties into, you know,

(07:16):
to broad gender stereotypes. But on the other it's like, well,
if it gets people to brush their teeth, I'm in
favor of people brushing their teeth, and if they have
to use like, uh, you know, the ax body spray
of toothpaste to do it, then I don't know. I
agree better to have people brushing their teeth through some
kind of weird masculine fantasy than not brushing them at
all anyway, uh, Kate continues, Thanks again, guys for the

(07:40):
work what you're doing. I think it's incredibly important to
educate people on the origin of things we take for granted.
And while I understand that you focus mainly on American listeners,
I would really enjoy some statistics as for how widely this,
uh these inventions are accepted in the world, Like are
there places where brushing teeth is still not an accepted practice,
or how widely flushing toilets are accepted as norm Now,

(08:03):
we did get into that a little bit, but I
don't mean we didn't bust out any percentages, but we
I think this might have come in before the toilets episode. Ok, yeah, yeah,
because I remember getting in talking about UM, well, maybe
we didn't get into flushing toilets all that much. We
were talking about differences in um wet versus dry uh
as a you know, essentially a wiping technique and so forth.

(08:24):
But yeah, this is a This is something that would
be interesting to think about on future episodes when we're
talking about more or less ubiquitous technology to what extent
is it ubiquitous? Are there places where they're uh, where
are there are there places in the world where you
see holdouts and what are the reasons for those holdouts? Yeah?
And I think when it comes to something like like

(08:45):
oral hygiene and like toilets, in both cases, I think
there are two different ways you could look at it.
One is where there are just sort of like hygiene
necessities that are essentially universal that you know, like somehow
or another people should not be like doing open effication
or should be practicing some kind of oral hygiene, especially
if they're consuming carbohydrates. But you know, once you're you're

(09:06):
past that hurdle, I think there are fine just like
differences to explore and the cultures of hygiene, right, you know,
there are different ways that people have toilet culture or
or oral hygiene culture that as long as they're getting
the job done one way or another, not necessarily better
or worse. Okay, But this next email, it turns out
the gendered toothpaste marketing is not new. This was a

(09:27):
pretty good ad. This is from our listener Dominique. She says, Hi, guys,
I just came across this old ad for Whiskey toothpaste
and had to share it. Touches on so many things
you talked about in your toothpaste episode. You mentioned how
toothpaste is one of the only hygiene products that hasn't
been gendered in advertising, and this ad says, here's the
real he mane toothpaste, best argument yet for brushing three

(09:48):
times a day. Uh, she continues, love everything about this. Unfortunately,
I don't have any info on its origin or where
it came from. Is this a real ad? I found
it on Pinterest while browsing ridiculous ads? In story, she continues,
I'd love to hear an episode about the origins of
a product that started out with narcotics as a major ingredient,
like coca cola. That's a great idea. It fascinates me

(10:10):
that products with cocaine, heroin, morphine, and some straight up
poisons like arsenic were marketed as health products for decades. Uh.
Thank you for the great new podcast, Peace Dominique. I'm
not positive, but I think this ad that you pointed
out is reel. It looks like it was sold by
a novelty mail order retailer based out of Miami in

(10:30):
the nineteen sixties called Greenland Studios. I'm not a hundred percent,
but I think it's real. Uh. There are some other
gems from the copy in this ad WiFi oral hygiene,
enjoy it and quote night before feeling on the morning after,
rents with soda instead of water if you prefer, I
would say, there's plenty to enjoy about oral hygiene in

(10:51):
and of itself. Well, I know you're a strong partisan
of good oral hygiene. And I see you washing your washing.
You see you brushing your teeth here in the office
multiple well not multiple times a day. I will brush
my teeth in the office if I have lunch here. Yes,
I mean, I'm not mocking you. That's admirable. That's a dedication.
I do think it's interesting to consider, Like, I'm sure
people have written critical essays about this and stuff, but

(11:14):
like why create gendered marketing categories for products that don't
have pre existing gendered connotations? You know, some products just
already are like that, you know they they've been culturally
like that for a long time. Obviously, there's no like
biological need for men and women to have different toothpaste.
I'm sure they think it helps them sell more, but

(11:35):
if that actually works, like, why does it work? That's
an interesting question. To me. Yeah, I mean, I guess
in some cases you're trying to make a product that
already has gender stereotypes. You know, you're trying to to
to make an acceptable counterproduct. But but to your point, like,
who was saying that toothpaste was just for for women? Um?

(11:57):
I guess the other way of looking at it is
it's just all about like in entering new product lines.
And it's like, if you're the first person to put
out a men's only toothpaste, uh, and you can convince
the public that that these things should be gender specific,
then you have a leg up on the competition, right.
If this indeed takes off, I guess it's true that
people are always looking for a way to make customers

(12:19):
feel that this product is for them, and gendering the
marketing of it is just like one easy way to say, oh, okay,
here's one way in which this fits a characteristic of
me and it's my gender. Yeah. You also see the
marketing of you know, non gender specific things, um, like
like done a non gender specific, say, clothing for children,

(12:40):
that sort of thing. Yeah, essentially doing the exact opposite route,
taking something that's like classically gendered and culture and and yeah,
this would be an interesting thing to come back and
explore and more depth. I don't know, maybe find somebody
who has expertise in all of this, especially they're just
the historical usage of of these tactics. Yeah, it might
be more more appropriate it for stuff to blow your mind.

(13:01):
I don't know, but yeah, anyway, thank you, Dominique. Just
one last message that we got about toothpaste. This came
from a listener named Tobia from Italy. Uh, and just
Tobia wanted to mention the fact that honey. So some
of the historical recipes for toothpaste that we talked about
involved honey, and we were wondering how that sounds like
a not very good idea, because of course honey has

(13:23):
sugar in it. The more sugar you put in the
in the mouth, the more you invite bacteria they're gonna
cause tooth decay. And Tobya was pointing out that, uh,
that is true, but of course honey also has anti
microbial properties, and that is also true, so you may be,
you know, weighing the balance of two different things. They're
honey both fighting in bacteria by its natural anti microbial

(13:44):
properties and having sugar in it. That would encourage the
growth of bacteria, and so you just have to test
and see, and Tobia suggests there is some indication that
that honey could be useful as an anti microbial in
the mouth. All right, here comes another one. This one
comes to us from Jim Guys. I really enjoy your podcasts.
I've been the senior computer generated tactile graphics artist for

(14:04):
the a t PC in Carmarillo, California since two thousand
and two. Your podcast about Braill was interesting. If when
you decide to do a follow up on the subject,
you might want to delve into tactial graphics. Up until
the turn of the current century, UH, the way brail
transcribers dealt with textbook, especially graphics that could not easily

(14:25):
be described by the written word, was to glue down
bits of string, fabric, cardboard, and the like to the page.
As technology advanced, they would use a uh thermoform or
vacuum machine to form a tactile page. It is a
procedure still in use. But then came the ability to
use a computer to create the graphic with software and

(14:47):
then print onto a sheet of encapsulated treated paper, thereby
making edits much easier and ability to reproduce the graphic indefinitely.
I still find the procedure fascinating and quite often challenging,
especially when having to translate graphics of anatomy, biology, astronomy, etcetera.
Into two dimensional black and white illustrations that are quote

(15:07):
unquote readable with fingerprints. College textbooks, can you use some
very beautiful and colorful graphics that are pleasing to the
eyes but not at all kind of fingertips, Sorry to
be verbose, I didn't want this part of a brailed
textbook to be left out. That's a great point, Jim. Yeah,
it makes sense to think about things that cannot be
easily represented with text, because if it's just like I mean,

(15:28):
that's one thing that like the alt text on you know,
images on on websites is for if you can describe
the image and words, well then that's one thing. But
there are some images like like a map. You know what,
what what does it help to describe a map, like
the borders of a country in words? You need to
be able to like spatially represent that somehow. Yeah. I

(15:48):
can't remember if we talked about this on the episode,
but I know I had some stuff in my original
notes about it, and that being some NASA texts that
NASA had put out trying, you know, the educational text
about space that use tactile graphics, namely, uh, the Solar System,
Like how do you how do you talk about the
Solar System? And really, uh, you know properly you know,

(16:10):
relay everything without some sort of graphic. I mean it's
hard for me to imagine, because for me, those graphics
were always there. I always had access to the visual data.
But if you didn't have the visual data to rely on,
how do you how do you do it? Yeah? Exactly, Yeah,
And space is one of those things that I don't know.
It seems so much like my appreciation of it is

(16:31):
based in increasingly high resolution images that are like produced
by telescopes and stuff. I just get a visual feel
for the thing that's being talked about, whether that's you know,
a nebula or the surface of a planet. Uh, And like,
how how do you represent that to somebody who is
vision impaired or can't see all? Right? Um? Melos is

(16:53):
waving another one around. This one is from Luke, and
I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but Luca was
responding to the Brail episode as well, in which we
were we were kind of, you know, contemplating the idea
of non visual species creating written language, and and to
what extent they might create something like Brail. Uh, you know,
they use similar you know, dots and so forth, raised

(17:14):
dots to to convey meaning and um, and we're like, well,
there's gotta be some sort of treatment in science fiction
on this. And Luke reminds us that in Dungeons and
Dragons you have the elithids the mind flares, which, incidentally,
Christian and I did an entire episode about the science
of elithids years back, and it just completely slipped my mind.

(17:35):
So I'm glad to be reminded of this. Specifically, the
he says, quote the elethids developed a written language qual
called quality, consisting of four broken lines, and they read
it using their face tentacles. Because the elithids are you know,
they're kind of like squid faced, purple under dark psychic beings,
their little cathulus. Yeah, they're definitely h cathululoid in appearance. Yeah,

(17:59):
and they are if I remember the law correctly. They
do have origins outside of uh, you know, at least
the off world origins, you know, essentially alien beings that
have come to the world of dungeons, dragons, Zulu tots. Yeah,
so anyway, thanks for reminding us about that, Luca. Indeed, yeah,
let's not forget the olipids. Okay, we need to take

(18:19):
a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Okay,
we're back now. It seems that may Loss is offering
to let me look through a box that has a
tiny aperture in the wall to read this next message.
And this message comes from our listener, Tay Tay says, hi,

(18:39):
I love the pod and your recent Camera Obscura episode
was really interesting. I especially enjoyed hearing the two of
you non artists discuss your thoughts on the role of
technology and art. I studied craft in school and I'm
a jeweler by trade, and this is a huge and
ongoing discussion for the industry. Basically, jewelry is at this
weird point now where things like three D printing and

(19:01):
computer modeling are beginning to replace hand carving wax in
lost wax casting. It's exciting because it makes more intricate
and precise designs more accessible to less experienced jewelers, but
it also takes out the real handmade element of a
piece and blurs the line between those who are more
skilled or less skilled jewelers. Consumers mostly don't know the difference,

(19:24):
but there is something heartbreaking about watching a craft that
I adore and think is so important to keep alive
slowly wilt. Personally, I don't think people modeling designs on
computers should call themselves jewelers their designers. It's different when
you get your hand sturdy and spend twenty hours carving
a block of wax with teeny tiny tools and the
wax could fall in shatter at any moment. I don't know,

(19:47):
it's complicated anyway, just wanted to add some perspective from
my specific field. I'd love to hear more from you
all in this area. Thanks Tay. Interesting. Yeah, that's a
that's a great example to contemplate. Springing off of that episode. Yeah,
I think this came from the fact that we were
talking about the idea of um the camera obscura as
like an art assistants tool like it that you instead

(20:08):
of just like eyeballing something and then trying to sketch
it or paint it, that you could start with with
with a essentially a tracing, a tracing of its reflection
through a camera obscura, and this would give you somewhere
to start from. And the question was does that reduce
the value of the art? I kind of don't really
think so. It doesn't seem to bother me, but I

(20:30):
can see how it would bother some people. And when like,
I don't know, maybe that translation directly through the eye
and the brain without any kinds of perspective, replicating tools
and all that is somehow an important part of the
craft itself and the value of it. It's interesting, I've
I've I've seen some like some talks and read some
material about you know, the idea of of especially the

(20:52):
use of robotics and AI being something that should evolve
alongside the artist, so that ideally it as in is
the case. And you know, in many instances when we're
considering robotics in AI that the machine should not replace
the human, the machine should augment the human. The machine
should be able to in this case, I would imagine
make the jeweler better. Um, I'm not, I'm not. I

(21:15):
don't know enough about the craft to really know exactly
where the areas for that would be. But um. For instance,
that you think of the manufacturing use of robots, and
you of course see where robotics are best used to
take over um you know, tasks of intense repetition and
tasks that are inherently dangerous. So for instance, so you

(21:37):
know welding, various welding jobs are ideal for for robots.
And then even in the manufacturing world, you see the
use of what are referred to as cobots uh, machines
that work alongside the human. And then I believe there's
a certain amount of machine learning ideally involved here as well.
But but then it it gets to this this idea
that again you're not replacing the human, you're creating a

(21:59):
machine they can aid the human in their in their job.
And and if we take that out of the factory scenario,
we're looking into the artistic world. That's what you would
want as well, like what is the thing that makes
you better at that craft? In the same way that say,
a word processor does not write the story for you,
but a really good word processor is perhaps making up

(22:21):
from some of your uh, your your shortcomings, and in
the future, you know, making up for even more of
your shortcomings, you know, and allowing you to focus on
the things that you're particularly skilled at. Yeah, and I
wonder about this even in the realm of I don't know,
crafts or skills we think of as more creative and

(22:41):
less just like industrial stuff like obviously word processors are
are a good example there. But even when the computer
or machine takes a more active role, I can see
an interesting kind of symbiosis emerging. Where one example is
this sort of this version of chess. I don't know
if you've heard about this. I think I read somewhere
where the chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov talked about this, the

(23:04):
idea that you could have essentially chess players that are
a master chess player that is also working with a
powerful AI chess player, so like they are competing just
like the the you know, the AI recommends a series
of moves as you could do this, or you could
do this, and then the human player sort of picks

(23:26):
from among the AIS generated recommendations. And that's sort of
a new emergent type of chess strategy, you know, android
hybrid chess player. You know. I of course this leads
me to Mortal Kombat. Okay, uh, this is not quite
the same thing. But um, I'm really intrigued by the

(23:48):
I picked up this latest Mortal Kombat game that came
out now, and perhaps if something has been big in
fighting games and video games for a while and I
just didn't notice it. But there's a huge um emphasis
placed on tweaking your own AI player and then throwing
the AI player at a whole bunch of fights, you know,
like a fight tower, and then reaping rewards like in

(24:09):
game currencies and whatnot based on its performance. So there
are plenty of people that are still playing this game
the way you know, people have always played a fighting game,
which is control the character and habit fight other habit
fight AI characters or human characters. But then there's this
whole idea of like tweaking the I AI character and
having it fight other AI and perhaps like sitting back

(24:31):
and watching it or then coming back and checking on
it to see how it's performed. That's interesting. So it's
like taking a game that would normally be an action
game where you're in the moment and turning it into
a strategy game where what you're trying to do is
optimize the design of your competitor. Yeah, so you know,
perhaps we have many of our listeners out there who
play games, of play lots of games. Maybe you can

(24:52):
speak to this. Uh is this part of an ongoing
trend in other games? And then what if anything, might we,
you know, learn from this about our future engagement with AI. Yeah,
that's a really interesting question. Uh So anyway or are
we ready for this next message from Melo's here? Yes?
This this one seems to be coming with some danger. Yes,

(25:14):
this one comes to us from Evan and uh. Evan says,
quote loving the new podcast so far, I stumbled onto
Stuff to Blow your mind nearly a year ago and
was pleasantly surprised at how I found myself enjoying episodes
on subjects that I never would have been normally interested in.
You truly opened my eyes to all sorts of weirdness
and wonder in places I would never have looked anyway.

(25:34):
During the opening of Death Ray Part two, you mentioned
that death ray technology is something which, during the twenties
and thirties was portrayed in the media as being just
on the cusp of becoming a reality, and I immediately
thought of the flying car. The running joke on today's
car blogs is that the flying car is always about
two years away from becoming a thing. I can recall
watching the Discovery Channel specials as a kid, which showed

(25:56):
then amazing prototypes of futuristic looking flying cars and things.
King at the time that my first car might take
to the skies just like Doc and Marty and back
to the future too. I know that numerous technically successful
attempts have been executed, at least as far back as
the fifties and sixties, and even today Boeing and Uber
or testing prototypes. It seems like these contraptions have long

(26:18):
been reality, but for numerous reasons, both financial and practical,
they just can't seem to make it to prime time.
It seems like a perfect topic for an episode of Invention.
Thanks for all the fantastic factoids. Keep up the great
work and I'll keep listening. Well, thanks so much, Evan.
I think you're exactly right about flying cars. I think
in both cases actually death rays or directed energy weapons

(26:41):
in flying cars. It's not that we don't have the
technology to create these things, it's just that they're not
practical for the use cases that they're enthusiasts have imagined.
I mean, we can create compact flying vehicles that would
be like a flying car. It's more question of these
practical problems that would make impossible for people to you know,

(27:02):
use these to get to work in the morning, Like
how does it take off? How much room does it
need to take off? How do you guarantee safety and
pilot expertise? Right? I mean, do you really want the
drivers that you drive next to in traffic operating flying vehicles? Um?
And and how much energy? How much you know, how
loud is it? How much energy does it take to fly?
Or does it take to use this directed energy weapon?

(27:24):
I would say given all these practical problems, you begin
to question, like why you would actually want a flying
car other than the fact that it's conceptually cool. Yeah,
and and so much about the flying car would be
an interesting topic to discussed because a lot of it
is just the idea that the experience of the car
takes place in the sky. And one thing that I

(27:44):
come back to time and time again on this is
if people say, where are the flying cars, I would say, well,
we have the helicopter. Now the thought exercise he would be,
think of what the helicopter does that a flying car
is supposed to do? And think about the reasons that
that that helicopter does not satisfy your thirst for a

(28:05):
flying car. And I think those answers will will mostly
explain why we don't have flying cars and why we
have helicopters instead. I think a lot of this would
have to do with cost and energy efficiencies. Yeah, I
think I think that's where you find your main answers,
because yeah, essentially a flying car is available to those

(28:25):
with the money to spend on it, and it is
a helicopter. That's a really excellent point. And I think
there's a similar thing going on with death rays. I mean,
you've got these problems with portability, energy use, range. It's
not that you can't create a directed energy weapon. It's
more like you could accomplish a lot of the same
goals that are imagined for a directed energy weapon with

(28:48):
cheaper existing conventional ballistic weapons. Though that's not to say
there might not be some special cases where a directed
energy weapon is is desirable for some reason, you know,
strategic or otherwise. Uh, And obviously you know military research
is ongoing. I was reading when we we talked about
a little bit in the death ray episodes, just some

(29:08):
of the more recent projects working on stuff like this.
It is ongoing, but I think for most of the
reasons people imagined a death ray might be useful, you know,
other things get the job done cheaper and and much
more simply. Okay, we got one more death ray email here.
This comes to us from Walter. Walter says, Hi, guys,
loved your discussion on death rays. I listened during my

(29:30):
morning walks, and I might have been temporarily distracted and
missed it, But I don't recall a discussion of what
might be the closest we have to a death ray,
the neutron bomb, if I remember correctly, this is a
device that utilized a small nuclear explosion that had enhanced
output of neutrons that could penetrate tanks and other armor,
including buildings and bunkers. The unfortunate people affected would perish

(29:51):
horrible deaths brought on by intense radiation, sickness, and inspire
and expire within an hour of exposure. The affected area
would have no physical damage, but all living beings would
be eradicated. Nasty business, but about as close to a
proper death ray as we've come so far, thoughts Walter. Yeah,
I think in a way this is right. I don't
think a neutron bomb would be without causing physical damage.

(30:13):
But I think it's that the idea that was that
there would be reduced damaged physical infrastructure, uh, and that
it would be able to better penetrate armor shielding like
you did mention this armor shielding like an armored vehicles
and stuff. But would a neutron bomb be able to
bring about lasting peace? Uh? No, I don't think so,

(30:35):
unless you're making the same argument people make about nukes
in general. I think, you know that the whole mutually
assured destruction thing, which we talked about the logic of
that in the episode, and we discussed some criticisms of
the idea of mutually assured destruction as as a bringer
of world peace. But uh, yeah, yeah, I do think
that that's that's possibly a good comparison. Uh, certainly in

(30:55):
the same way that all nuclear weapons are. But one
of the ways it might be similar is that I
don't know if one of the things about the death
ray was that people imagined it was kind of like
somehow clean, you know, that it was a way of
defending yourself from enemies in in some way that didn't
involve like blood and guts and all that, like you know,
shrapnel hitting bodies and people exploding into pieces. It would

(31:19):
just sort of like make people disappear without a trace,
and the enemy planes would would stop flying and they
wouldn't be able to attack your city and bomb you.
I'm not sure if the neutron bomb works like that.
I mean, the neutron bomb, I think would tend to
be an offensive weapon, not a defensive weapon, right Yeah,
And it would also not be clean. It would give

(31:40):
people horrible radiation burns all over their body and cause
them an agonizing death. Well, pl you know, with the
death ray, since it never can't really can't really came
to fruition, uh you know, you know, it will remain
largely clean, right, Like, there are no stories of loss
and tragedy and death due to the death gray um,

(32:01):
because I imagine, you know, if you're talking about war like,
the results of of deploying this weapon with even the
you know, the best of intentions would still have horrifying results. Yeah,
I mean, I think one of the lessons from our
death ray discussion is that there is no such thing
as a clean weapon. It's a fantasy. You know, weapons
are always going to harm and kill people. And to

(32:23):
the extent that that they are invented and funded and used,
people have to keep that in mind. I mean, these
things are are real killer technologies that have real consequences.
All Right, we have another one, and this one comes
to us from Rob. Rob says, your chopsticks episode was great,
and throughout the episode, I kept wondering if you talk
about using them for non Asian foods. When I was
growing up, my babysitter was a next door neighbor teenager

(32:46):
whose mom was Japanese and dad was intuit They use
chopsticks for virtually every meal. When my babysitter taught babysitter
taught me how to use them, she made me practice
using them while eating popcorn. It was a horrible experience
at the time. In the forty or so years since,
I've been very thankful I used the same tactic when
I taught my kids to eat with chopsticks. My youngest

(33:08):
daughter even uses her old set to sort lego into
colored piles. Oh, I've I have more to I can
add some stuff on this in a second. Rob continues quote,
it has been at least thirty five years since a
cheese puff has left processed cheese residue on my fingers
thanks to chopsticks. If I want to pickle from a jar,
no fork for me, chopsticks time again, time and time again. Um,

(33:31):
and I have to back him up on that. I've
been really pressing my family to start using chopsticks to
get the pickles out of the jars. So just reaching
the whole well, that or just forking because sometimes problematic.
And don't even get me started on the spoon. I
haven't won him over yet, but I'm glad that Rob
is able to back me up. Um. He continues. Same
with pickled beets and onions. Jelly beans are my chopstick nemesis,

(33:54):
though I'm only about one success for every twenty five
or so attempts. But can I ever make short work
of a pile of cooked peas or corn kernels? Fun
side note In French, chopsticks are called baguettes. Much wordplay
fun followed from this in my English French home when
my kids were younger. Thanks for the skilled and passion
you both put into your work, and I hope you

(34:15):
get as much reward making the shows as your fans
get from consuming them. All the best in twenty nineteen. Rob.
Thanks Rob, So what's your lego story? Rob? Okay, I've
not tried picking them up with legos, but up with chopsticks.
I've tried neither. But I will say this. My son

(34:35):
had a birthday in the last month and he was
given this cool little game as like wooden blocks. And
it's the thing is, it's like it looks like sushi,
all right. Uh, it's like a puzzle of sushi and
it comes with real chopsticks and you're supposed to time
each other and compete against people, uh drawing a card
and you see the way the wood pieces are assembled
to form sushi, and then you use the chopsticks to

(34:58):
move the pieces of wood around. And it's a beautiful
looking game. I was really excited to play it, but
I've I've personally found it very frustrating to try and
pick up like painted wood objects with chopsticks. I mean,
I guess been a large part because I'm not used
of trying to pick up anything other than food, and

(35:19):
then again only certain foods. Whereas something that is slick,
like a piece of painted wood or like a lego,
I would think that would I would think the legos
would prove challenging, but it sounds like Rob's got it
figured out. Well, yeah, I think hard things like that.
Usually you're not putting things in your mouth that are
as rigid as legos or as pieces of wood, and

(35:40):
so they're gonna have less resistance and grip on the
on the chopsticks than food would. So um. Anyway, I
still delighted to to hear uh inside from a listener
on the chop Sticks episode. All right, time to take
a quick break, but we'll be right back with more.
M all right, we're back. It's time to talk about toilets. Robert. Oh, yes,

(36:05):
the toilet episodes. Those were a lot of fun. We
got a lot of toilet emails. Uh, there's no way
we're gonna get through them all, but I figured we'll
do a few of them. Let's let's dive in, dive
into the toilet world. All right, what does uh, what
does the nailis have for us? Here? And Melos hands
us this message from Logan says, Hello, Robert and Joe.
I want to start off by saying I'm a huge
fan of both stuff to blow your mind and invention.

(36:26):
I don't know if you guys meant to leave it
out or if you if it didn't come up during
your research. But here's a fun fact kit. Harrington, who
plays John Snow on Game of Thrones is related to
John Harrington, the inventor of the flush toilet, and then
Dr John Snow showed up in the episode as well,
of course, an epidemiologist of Victorian England. I hope you
both found this bit of trivia enjoyable. Uh so this

(36:50):
was from Logan. I I did come across this when
we were researching the episode, but I couldn't figure out
if it was true. I saw it alleged in some
suesstionable looking sources and couldn't find anything that looked good
for it. So I don't know if this is true,
But I don't know. I kind of just want to
take Logan's word for it. Well, I mean hopefully, I mean,

(37:11):
kid Harrington's not going away anytime soon, so surely somebody
will ask him about this in an interview and he'll
he'll provide a real answer. All I know is that
in the show Game of Thrones, John Snow does not
create a toilet. I may imagine one of the masters
would create toilets that probably where it would come from
toilets do figure into the into the books and the

(37:31):
show a little bit. Several characters die on toilets. I think, yeah,
that's right. Well, there's a question, what's the most technologically
advanced toilet in a in a fantasy novel? That would
be an interesting question to have answered. I believe the
Red Keep in Game of Thrones has guarter robes. Yeah, yeah, anyway,
maybe maybe I'll do another quick one here from Ivana

(37:53):
about toilets before we move on. Uh, you mind if
I do this swing around before? Okay, so Vanna says, hey, guys,
big fan. Well, theoretically that's a lie. I'm a fan
of Stuff to Blow your Mind. Uh so maybe this
was her first episode of Invention. Well, you recently featured
the toilet episode on Stuff to Blow your Mind. I've
been listening for a few years now, but never thought
to write in until today when at the end of

(38:14):
part one of the toilet episode you mentioned Slovenia. I
have no idea why, but I always get excited when
somebody mentions my home country, most likely based in the
fact that we're small and most people don't know we exist.
I don't know a lot of people know about Slovenia
these days. Uh, she writes, I also thought it might
be interesting for you to know, if you didn't already,
that the cast in the castle you mentioned called pre

(38:35):
Jomska Castle literally means under the cave. This was the
castle that was in the in the mouth of the
cave where the scoundrel who ran the castle got blasted
by a cannon while he was sitting on the guard row.
Somebody betrayed him and he had the worst bathroom break
of his life. Ivana says, hope you're having a great day.
I'll try to listen to you again soon, maybe even

(38:55):
an invention. I mean, what's another stuff media podcast on
the top on top of the five if I'm already
listening to keep up the great work of Anna, thank
you Ivanna. Yeah, I do want to say we realize,
we were try and realize all the time that there's
so many podcasts out there to listen to these days,
and there's some many great podcasts. So we feel extremely
privileged anytime something we've made makes it into your regular rotation. Absolutely,

(39:19):
we were were humbled by you taking us into your ears.
All right. Here is another bit of listener mail. This
one comes to us from Matthew. Matthew says, Hi, Robert
and Joe, I just finished part two of your episodes
on the Humble Toilet. I've had the privilege of seeing
how the job has done in a few different parts
of the world, and since you asked for it, I
thought you'd appreciate a few stories. In descending order of

(39:39):
technological bells and whistles. Number one, at age nine, in
a Japanese airport, I just finished my business and was
trying to find the flush function among the myriad options
on the control panel. I pressed a likely looking about
and illustrated with a few droplets of water, but the
toilet didn't flush. Instead, a fate were emanated from the machine,
and a small silver cylinder protruded for in the bottom

(40:00):
of the bowl. That day I learned about the bidet. Fortunately,
my reflexes were quick enough to dodge the water jet,
but I still had to scramble to find the off
button while the cubicle door got sprayed. Was it that fortunate?
Would it have been horrible to get sprayed? Well, I
mean it depends where it sprays you like, I guess
the thing about a biddat is you you wanted to

(40:21):
spray you, but you wanted to spray you in one
very specific spot. Anywhere else is kind of a failure
of not necessarily a technological failure, but at least a
user error. Right. Yeah, maybe if you were small, like
when you were a child, you might not have been
aligned properly for number two. On a recent visit to Japan,
four were warned and four armed, I was able to

(40:43):
better appreciate some of the extra functions. In particular, one
model had a small sink built into the top of
the cistern. Flushing caused water to flow in the sink first,
so that the water one used to wash their hands
was then used to fill the cistern for the next flush.
Not a full gray water system, but a great water
saving trick. Nonetheless, Yes, um, you know as years and

(41:06):
years ago, I guess goodness, probably like a decade ago now,
I wrote, Yeah, it was at least that because it
was my first article for how stuff works, like a
test article. I had wrote how right, how gray water
reclamation works? And in that article I did mention one
of these in passing it. You see you see some
of these models where essentially it gives you the option
of washing your hands with the fresh water and then

(41:28):
that that water can then be used to flush the toilet,
which which I think is a sensible way to go.
It's it's it's um you know, odd that we haven't
seen more of that design implemented double dipping on your
water when you can yeah, exactly number three. A few
years ago I took a trip to Nepal to hike
the Himalayan uh Ana Purna Circuit. The highest point on

(41:48):
the trail, uh Thorong Law Pass is five thousand, four
hundred sixteen meters or seventeen thousand, seven hundred sixty nine
feet above sea level, higher than Everest Base Camp. If
you climb the aarrogance thinner, the accommodation becomes progressively more
spartan and the toilet facilities become less familiar to the
Western perspective. The lower altitude tea houses had a number

(42:10):
of Western options, and getting assigned one of those rooms
was a small luxury, but higher up one quickly had
to master the squad. It was that or nothing. Lastly,
on this same Nepalese trip, my stomach was taking a
while to get used to the local fair. Inevitably, nature
called when I was out on the trail without a
restroom in sight. I'd had the foresight to keep a

(42:31):
roll of toilet paper in my pocket, but sometimes one
must make do. On that day, my lieu of the
view was a hastily dug a hole in the snow
off the trail, behind a convenient boulder, looking over the
valley and at one with nature. I attached a photograph
of a typical vista from the trip, though not necessarily
the view in question. Keep up the great work, warm regards, Matthew.

(42:53):
Thanks Matthew. Well that's great. I mean, I appreciate hearing
about the various toilets that Matthew encountered, But this also
gets down to the heart of like just the joy
of traveling is checking out not only like the big
sweeping differences and big cultural differences, but like the toilets.
I'm there's a part of me that I think is
always going to be excited to see what the specific

(43:13):
toilet technology looks like. Um, how you turn on the
hot and cold water in the shower, Uh, that sort
of thing, you know, the little details of travel. Well, yeah,
even with toilet culture, it's a great way of travel.
Is a great way of seeing that the way you
do things is not necessarily the normal way of doing things.
It's just one way to do things. Okay, So we

(43:36):
got a short message from Chris about now, remember in
the toilet episode, I was horrified by all these early toilets,
like these Elizabethan toilets, and you know the later ones
that have all these like cushions around the bowl. Just
seemed gross to me. That there's there's cloth on all
the toilets seemed unsanitary. Um. But Chris writes subject toilet

(43:58):
Part one, the reason for cloth seat covers, and then
continues is that it keeps your bottom safe from the
icy shock of a cold seat in countries that can
get cold in winter, but where central heating is uncommon.
I always made use of one in Hong Kong, and
my unshocked bottom thanked me for it. Oh well, you
know that that is a great point. I don't remember
that point of our conversation, um or I guess I

(44:19):
vaguely do, But I wasn't thinking about like modern designs.
So I remember one of one of my grandparents I think,
had not a cloth cover, but kind of like this
soft cover Like this was kind of like a softer
plastic kind of cover, and it indeed was less cold
to sit on. I remember that, so yeah, in a
cold climate it would I can see what would make sense.

(44:41):
All right, here's another one. This one comes to us
from Luke. Hey, guys, big fan here. I have listened
for a few years to stuff to blow your mind
and really enjoy the way you guys present topics. I'm
really enjoying your new podcast that would be invention. You
always say you want folks with experience and what you
were talking about to write in. Sadly, this is my
first time writing in and it's a two and it's

(45:01):
to address the masculine toilet side. I just wanted to
say that you two are right and that there are
definitely they are definitely being silly about building a bigger
batter toilet, or at least branding it the way they have.
I write, and not because I have used one, because
I can vouch that the concern is at least real
if not pressing. Robert is right, that right, and that

(45:23):
just sitting positioning will take care of the issue on
a normal toilet, just like everything else in life. The
real problem is that it gets you when it is
the worst possible time. I am sure you guys have
worked an exhausting day before and then had tasks and
work in your personal lives piled up on on top
on the same day, and when it is finally over,

(45:43):
an exhaustion has permeated your very bones. What is the
last weary thing you do before bad collapse on the
toilet and make sure your rest will be long and
undisturbed one And that's when it gets you. Not no,
So not only do you have the monstrous day on
your line, but now you have gotten one of the
most intimate parts of your body dirty and at least

(46:04):
in your your mind, the grossest place in your home.
So I agree, not a huge problem that requires a
new feed of engineering, but when it does get you,
it really sticks in your mind. L O L I
would I would suggest the masculine toilet is not a
new project product, though just rebranding. The style of toilet
has existed for decades and can be found in special needs,
special access bathrooms all over North America. Toilets designed for

(46:27):
these washrooms are taller than average toilets to make it
easier for someone to lift themselves off. So rebranding the
masculine toilets. Definitely sounds like a business strategy. Luke, that
was an impassioned plea. You have convinced me. Okay, he
continues on a side note, I have to address the
wheel issue and your guys use of the saying there

(46:48):
is no point in reinventing the wheel. I believe you
guys have misinterpreted this thing. As you guys point out
that better and better wheels are being made all the time.
I have always figured what this would mean is that
the person doing the reinventing here is limited from using
any technology already involved with the wheel. They don't mean
reinvent the wheel by putting ball bearings into it. When

(47:09):
they say reinvent, they mean make something that does the
same job as a wheel, but no circular wheel can
be part of it. This would be a significant challenge,
and since the friction of a wheel on a well
maintained road is already very low, than any new invention
you might come up with is probably going to only
match the wheel at best, and most likely will involve
more moving parts and be less efficient overall. Please keep

(47:33):
up the amazing work you guys are doing. I find
the majority of your topics very interesting and it is
hard to find any podcasts that today that don't force
a private agenda along with the story. Thanks very much
regards Luke. What does that private agenda mean? I don't
know what. I feel like I'm certainly pushing a private agenda.
What's that? What's the private it's against cushions on toilet

(47:56):
h Yeah. I feel like we do have our own
little pet peeves here and there, and I guess I will.
Our basic agenda on these shows is too is to explore,
is to come from a place of curiosity. Uh to
learn something about the world, um, about the universe, about
our history, about our cultures, and and present it in
an open minded way to learn from it and help

(48:17):
other people learn from it as well. And uh, as
as Quato would say, to open your mind, to make
the familiar strange. Yeah, yeah, like we said before, and
stuff to blow your mind. And they gave us the
title stuff to blow your mind. But really I like
to think of the show is stuff to open your mind, right,
stuff to expand your mind. That's that sort of thing,
all right, But I know we haven't reached the bottom

(48:39):
of the barrel on toilet related listener mail yet. Okay,
our next message here is coming from our listeners. Sam.
This concerns the episode we did about walls. Uh. Sam says, Hi,
guys love your work and have been a loyal listener
for a while now in London, UK. Really enjoyed your
episode on walls. But you debunked a false factoid that
I believe is actually true. You said that you can't

(49:02):
see the Great Wall of China from space. In fact,
astronauts on the I S s have reported being able
to see it and can see many other human built structures.
This article from The Guardian backs this up. The myth
is in fact that you can see the Great Wall
from the moon, which is untrue, and no human built
structures can be seen from this distance. While the Great

(49:22):
Wall is difficult to see from space due to its
similar color to the ground and poor condition in many places,
the right condition, in the right conditions, it is possible
to see from space. Keep up the good work. If
you're ever in England, let me know and we can
go for a point. All right, Well, yeah, I looked
this up and I you are correct, Sam. I was
getting this backward. I think what I was remembering was

(49:43):
this old statement that you can see it from the moon. Obviously,
you can't see it from the moon. Whether you can
see it from space depends on where you are in
space and what the conditions are, particular atmospheric conditions. Yeah,
so I feel like that's come up on the past episodes.
I should have I should have been able to chime
in on that as well. You should have spanked me
right then and there. Thank you so much, Sam. We
appreciate the correction. All Right, we're beginning to run out

(50:06):
of time here, but we're gonna try, and we have
so many good ones. We're gonna try and just run
through a few more. Cram a couple more in al right.
This one comes to us from Bob entitled Demons. Hey, guys,
love the podcast. Been listening since the first episode and
also a fairly new and big fan of Stuff to
Buy your Mind as well, So that's interesting. Came in
the backwards on those um Anyway, he continues, I'm currently

(50:26):
listening to your most recent episode. Literally it's on pauses.
I typed this about the Wheel and Robert mentioned the
demon Bure appearing on the cover of a Black Sabbath
or AUSSI album. Now I'm a bit of a heavy
metal nut and immediately started trying to figure out what
album this could be. I know the covers of every
Sabbath and AUSSI release and never remembered seeing a lion

(50:46):
head with goat legs around it, and with an image
like that, How could you not want to hear that album?
After a little bit of searching, I found the album
you were speaking of. It's simply titled The Bure Album
and was an unofficial Japanese release of a live show
while Ronnie James Dio was on vocal duty. Physical copies
go for a pretty penny on discogs. I might need
to add it to my want list anyway. I've never

(51:08):
written into a podcast before and thought I would share
thanks for being such a great podcast hosts and making
my work day go by a little faster. Oh, Bob
will break your heart if I say I'm a big
Sabbath fan, but I can't get down with the d
O years. I don't know why. I'm not trying to.
I mean, I'm glad you love them. I'm an Azzie
die Hard so well he was Dio. I'm not familiar

(51:31):
with this. You know, The Black Sabbath had different vocalists
over time, very much only familiar with the Azzi era. Yeah,
their first like seven albums I think had Ozzy Osbourne
on on vocals. Uh. Their first six albums are just
just tip top, you know, and then I think they
started being more hit or miss in general opinion. Eventually

(51:52):
they ended up with different vocalists on different albums. Several
of their albums had Ronnie James Dio as the singer,
and I think he's more of the kind of traditional
or I don't know if you could say it's more
traditional since it's Black Sabbath, but the kind of metal
vocalist you think of, and less like the drawling Ozzy
Osbourne style. I know tons of people love love the

(52:15):
Deo albums and uh and and more power to you
if you do, but I'm a first six kind of guy. Okay,
here's one more about wheels real quick. We got tons
of emails essentially on the same subject as this one
I'm about to read from Jess. Jess says, Hi, I've
been loving the Invention podcast after being a fan of
stuff to Blow your mind for a couple of years
now because of you two and other folks in your

(52:37):
podcast network. I've become that annoying person, adding, well, I
learned on a podcast that to any relevant conversation, We're
glad we could help you be that annoying um. In
the Wheel part two, you mentioned monowheel vehicles in science
fiction and had a hard time coming up with an example.
First thing that popped into my mind was a scene
from Star Wars episode three, Revenge of the Sith, when

(52:58):
Obi wan Kenobi, best character in the entire saga, and
General Grievous are engaged in a chase on the planet Utah. Pow.
Kenobi's ride as a creature called a aractyl whose name
is Boga. General Grievous is writing a mono wheeled vehicle
that has legs and some other need attachments. Check it
out here. She's got a link. Thanks and keep up

(53:19):
with the great podcasts. And she also attached to photo
of her dog, Obi wan Kenobi, who would have quote,
who would have been probably terrified if a mono wheeled
vehicle of any type? This was what I was thinking
of and couldn't remember. When I was trying to conjure
up the example, we were both saying, like, I know,
there was a big movie that add one. What was
it there? You go? Yeah, now I'm I'm picturing it.

(53:39):
I can picture like the I think I've seen the
lego thing in stores, had this vehicle. Uh yeah, I
forgot all about the general grievous. Um. I need to
see that. I need to see Revenge of the Sith again,
I really do, you know. I remember that was like
a scene that stood out to me as fun. So
my brief history with the Star Wars prequels is I
didn't see episode one when it came out, despite being

(54:00):
a huge Star Wars fan who as a kid just
never saw it, never saw episode two. Finally, when episode
three came out, I went with the theater. I went
to the theater with my friends to watch it and
I sat there watching it and I was like, wow,
this is bad. And I got out and I was
like it was Was that as awful as I thought
it was? And they were like, you know, if you've
seen the other two? No? Uh, And that was exactly

(54:22):
my experience. I went back and I saw the other two,
and suddenly episode three seemed great by comparison. Yeah, yeah,
I kind of had. I remember I saw one twice
in the theater and and was convinced that I loved it.
I just had built up my I wanted to love
it so much that I did for a while. And uh,
and I don't know, I haven't gone back to it.
Maybe I would love it again if I saw it. Uh.

(54:45):
I think one of my big things with per at
least the first two, is that the c G I
whiked terrific for the time is maybe not as as
great now, like I kind of want to see. I
want all three of them to be remanded street before
I watched again. I guess as opposed as I was
to doing that to the original trilogy, I'm all for

(55:06):
it with the with the the prequel trilogy. But I
do remember the specific scene with the mono wheel and
Obi wan Kenobe. I remember that one being a lot
of fun. Yeah, highlight this was pretty cool, as I recall.
I mean, there's a lot of cool stuff in that
that third one, especially though there well even I would
say the second one is the worst one in my
opinion by far, just unwatchably bad, except it's got Christopher

(55:27):
Lee in it. Every single time Christopher Lee comes on scene,
it's just like, you know, it's just like fresh air
being led into a stuffy room. It's like, oh so wonderful,
and then he leaves, and then everything like wilts instantly.
Well he he leaves, he leaves at the end of
a pretty great saber battle like that was one of
its redeeming qualities is he had some really cool saber
action at the end, and then you had some cool monsters. Again,

(55:51):
they might need a little c g I touch up
work from my my modern taste, but still they had
some cool monsters. But I'm getting kind of far from
the monowheel again. I'll props to General Grievous for busting
out of Mono Wheel in that battle. Okay, one more
short Wheel one. This is from our listener Adrian. Adrian says,
thank you for an awesome podcast. Just finished parts one
and two on the Wheel. Wanted to give a shout

(56:12):
out to my favorite Wheel spinoff technology, the Pulley and
the Mighty Compound Pulley. You've probably gotten dozens of emails
regarding the Pulley already know this was the only one
in which case I'd like to add my listener vote
to a Pulley episode. Also, you could tie in a
couple of outstanding cousins to the pulley, the tooth wheel
or gear and the winch. Loved the show and loved
binging the End of the World Josh Josh Clark's podcast,

(56:36):
which I found to be an effective hangover cure looking
forward to future episodes. Adrian, Well, we're always happy to
be a hangover cure. I think the pulley and the
block and tackle are absolutely one of the most It's
one of the most mystifying and magical seeming of the
simple machines because you watch it work and you don't
understand why what you're seeing is not magic, Like like

(56:57):
when you see a block and tackle that's got a
bunch of the least that allows, you know, somebody to
lift an extremely heavy weight just by pulling down on
a rope away they would never be able to lift
on their own, and and and you're wondering, just like,
what's the magic that's going on there? It's all on
the tension of the rope folks. Well, hey, you know,
I hate to stop it here, but Melos is already
gazing longingfully at the sea. I think he wants to

(57:19):
throw stones at the ships again. So we're gonna have
to to call it here. We did not get a
chance to go through all of the great listener mail
that we received for Invention over the past few months,
but we got to get through a good chunk of it,
so hopefully we'll do some more of these in the future.
Um well, we'll catch up on more listener mail related

(57:39):
to Invention episodes in the meantime. Check out all those
episodes of Invention at invention pod dot com. You can
also find the Facebook group which is just Stuff to
Blow your Mind discussion module. That's where folks talk about
episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, but they also
talk about episodes of Invention. Huge thanks as always to
our wonderful audio producer TORR. Harrison. If you would like

(58:02):
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
or just to say hello, 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
is the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

(58:24):
you listen to your favorite shows.