August 24, 2024 • 46 mins
The interaction between oil and water has fascinated us since ancient times, and it has factored into practices as diverse as divination rituals and attempts to calm turbulent waters at sea with storm oil. In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the effect of oil on troubled waters. (Originally published 08/03/2023, Part 2 of 2)
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and it is Saturday. We are
back with another Vault episode. This is going to be
part two of our two parter Oil and Troubled Water.
This one originally published eight three, twenty twenty three. Let's
dive right in.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And after a little bit
of an interval, we are back with part two in
our series on pouring Oil over Troubled Waters.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
That's right to refresh. In the last episode, which I
guess was over a week ago. At this point, we
discussed several interesting mentions from ancient and medieval writings, in
particular about the interaction between oil and water. We went
over some of the basics about this of you know,
the all idea that oil and water don't mix, and
that oil in water or oil mixed around with water
(01:10):
can create kind of this novel appearance that captivates our imagination,
and we also discussed how it may have been added
to stormy seas to calm them down, and it may
have been used in some capacity by free divers to
somehow smooth or clear or illuminate the waters they're diving
in so as to better see what they're looking for.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Now, that was an issue last time that I was
really confused by, because it wasn't even clear to me
exactly what these ancient authors were claiming. They were saying
that in some sense a diver might like swim underneath
the water with some oil in their mouth, and then
when they needed to see better, they would like spit
the oil out into the water, or I think you
(01:51):
said in some other sources people just talked about like
putting oil over their eyes before they went diving, and
I couldn't understand from the original verus. We looked at,
like what even the alleged method of action was there.
You finally have some answers on this, right.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know that I'll be able
to bring one hundred percent clarity to the issue. I
think there's still gonna I think there may still be
a certain amount of like historical telephone game going on
with some of these. But I did find a great
deal of clarity on this in a twenty twenty one
book that I picked up titled Neither Letters nor Swimming
The Rebirth of Swimming and Free Diving by John m McManamon.
(02:31):
So this is an interesting book which it's a little
harder to get your hands on this one, but it's
worth picking up if you're interested in the history of
diving and swimming in general. Oil comes up multiple times
in the book, sometimes just in general observances of waters
that were known to contain oil naturally in the ancient world.
Ancient writers mentioned a spring at Carthage. There's the Laparous
(02:55):
River in southern Turkey or what is now southern Turkey,
and there's also a lake an the Opia that were
singled out, all noted for oil that could either be
extracted for use. In the case of Carthage, I think
they used it with livestock or just waters that had
a quote unquote naturally lubricating effect on the swimmer. Hmmm,
sounds great now, This idea of lubricating yourself for a swim.
(03:22):
This was This was pretty interesting to me because I
swim several days a week, but I never oil myself
up beforehand, and I don't see anybody else doing it either.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I mean wait, I was gonna ask, is that even
a thing anybody does? I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I mean, you see cases, certainly, there are cases of
people lubricating their body with lotions and oils afterwards, or
you know, something to that effect. But I mean, it
may be I don't know if it's anything that has
ever explored and say, competitive swimming. If it is, I'm
not aware of it off the top of my head.
But there are various mentions of oil lubricated swimmers in
(04:02):
ancient texts. The idea that before you entered the water
to swim, you'd want to rub your naked body down
with oil, okay, And the reasons for this is, you know,
seems to vary. So one account, during the Corinthian War
in the three eighty nine BC, the Athenian forces used
swimming infantry against Spartan forces near this place in Egypt, Habitus.
(04:29):
Apparently the waters there were quite cold, so they rubbed
themselves down with olive oil beforehand, and they drank a
lot of alcohol before they got into the water. Now
McManamon points out that, okay, the oil might have provided
some insulation that actually helped protect them against the cold,
but the drinking would have been counterproductive.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Drinking doesn't actually make you warmer. It might make you
feel warmer temporarily, but right, yeah, it doesn't help.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
The General Hannibal is also said to have ordered his
soldiers to oil themselves down against the cold at the
Battle of Trevia River, the first major battle of the
Second Punic War in two eighteen BCE. So, in general,
there seems to be this idea that like, okay, you
can protect yourself against the cold by covering yourself with oil,
and then perhaps that would work in the water as well.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Now, on the subject of ancient free diving pearl divers,
in particular in the Persian Gulf and in the waters
between India and Sri Lanka, mcmaamon writes that there's a
lot we don't know about their practices in the ancient world,
and then they were often working with kind of sketchy
ideas concerning the nature of oysters. So he mentioned this
(05:39):
idea that you see written in some of these old
texts about how oysters have leaders, and you have to
take out the first oyster first. You have to find
the leader, take it out first, and then the rest
will follow.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Okay, it's a decapitation strike against the oyster brigade.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, there's also talk about you need to watch your
fingers because the oysters may sever the fingers, and mcmammon
casts a lot of doubt on this. I mean, I
know that there are concerns with certain types of free
diving and foraging for various shells and creatures. There are
particular creatures where you do have to potentially worry about
(06:14):
a you know, finger getting caught or snagged or whatever.
But in this case McManamon seems to write that it
was not really a concern. But basically it all drives
home just how alien the environment was into which these
people were venturing. Just think about just how limited you
were as you gazed down into the water, as you
(06:35):
dived into the water and tried to find whatever you
were looking for. So in this particular case, they would
have likely used grafts, which makes sense. And in the
case of India and Sri Lanka in particular, there's apparently
evidence that they made condemned criminals do the work, and
I think in general it was considered dangerous work and
there's some writings reflect this. Whatever the case, the clear
(06:59):
the diving conditions, the better to see what you're doing
as you go down there too and try and venture
into the oyster kingdom. So mcmatamon writes, quote, if the
sea was choppy, the crew would spread oil on its
surface to settle it down. Modern fishermen use a similar
method to improve surface visibility, pouring shark oil at times
(07:20):
mixed with sand to settle the waters. So this is
the idea that we've discussed already, or were going to
continue to discuss. The idea here, I believe is that
friction of the oil on the water surface keeps the
surface from ruffling or breaking, at least for a short
period of time.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
The question of the mechanism of how oil culmbs the water,
if it does, is something I'm going to get into
in a paper that I'll discuss in a minute here.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah, but in general, it sounds like the idea that
is being expressed here is like, if you can make
the more you can make the surface of the water
like glass, supposedly through the application of some oil, the
better you can see down into where you're about to
send your divers, who again are free diving without masks, etc.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Okay, So in this case it would be a question
of being able to look down into the water from
the surface and see through it better.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
That's my understanding.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yes, okay.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Now The author also discusses a legendary free diver from
Italian traditions by the name of Cola pache Cola, the
fish in Italian, a Mediterranean hero whose exploits holding his
breath were apparently comparable to Coculon, to BeO Wolf, to
King Olaff and others. I often don't think about this,
(08:37):
but yeah, you have a lot of heroes who can
really hold their breath for a long time, and you
can take that into the modern area. I mean, look
at Indiana Jones right then he holds his breath on
that submarine or does he get in the submarine?
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Oh? Wait, I know what you're talking about now. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Anyway, in this particular case, this is an oral tradition
that was written down by medieval chroniclers during the twelve century.
He said to have had various adventures and was said
to spend so much time in the water that he
would die if he stayed on land for too long.
So more fish than man in some ways. It's certainly
a tall tale, to be sure, but ridings about him
(09:14):
do contain some insight into the use of oil in
free diving. Quote, while diving, Cola followed the ancients and
releasing oil into the water column in order to see better.
Sicilian fishermen still use that technique, especially when they are
hunting octopi. In the profound abyss of the Straits of Messina,
(09:35):
Cola reported to the sovereign that he had seen mountains
and valleys, woods and fields and trees with edible fruits.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Like another kingdom, just like we have on land, but
under the waves.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Exactly, which is something we've discussed before in terms of
how previous generations thought about the world underwater. And I
like that there's also kind of a I mean, there's
a hint of truth to this as well, Like he's
reporting that, hey, underneath the water, there's actually a robust ecosystem. Now,
(10:08):
whether it's actually woods and fields and trees with edible freed, well,
obviously not, but there is in a sense this rich
other world down there that you can imagine a free
diver being able to attest to.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So this passage is not just talking about putting oil
on the surface, but actually releasing oil down underneath the
water when you are down there and again that helping
to see, but this passage doesn't say why that would
work if it did.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Right, And I wish again, I wish I could have
one hundred percent clarity on this particular angle. I haven't
found anything. It's worth noting that there are multiple factors
that contribute to decreased visibility underwater. And you have particles
in the water, you have salinity gradients, temperature gradients, organic particles.
Just you know, issues of light and you know where
(10:55):
the sun is positioned in the sky and how much
light you're getting in a particular volume of water. Interestingly,
I was reading that you know sometimes there's a visible
layer between thermoclines that look like the smoothness of an oilchine.
So I couldn't help, but wonder if that might factor
into some of this, like things that may be encountered
(11:15):
underwater that have the feel or look of oil separation.
Now another interesting bit here on medieval pearl divers. Mcmanumon
has some interesting information on oil use from the Arabic
world of the time, and I want I'm going to
read a longer quote here and warning that it is
a little bit graphic as it includes mention of alleged
(11:36):
body modification for the purposes of free diving. Quote. Pearl
divers attempted to eliminate the pain in their ears and
block their nostrils. They ruptured their own ear drum and
knew they had succeeded when blood flowed out. They soaked
cotton in oil and inserted it into their ears. The
technique had an added benefit on the bottom, as the
oil leaked out and floated up. It clarified the water
(11:58):
column by allowing greater light to a train. For the nostrils,
pearl divers had various options. They could plug the openings
with small balls carved from a tortoise shell and use
a cloth soaked in oil like the ones used in
the ears. Alternatively, they could wear a clip over the
outside of their nostrils, carved from ivory or horn or
tortoise shell. The stated purpose of blocking the nostrils was
(12:21):
to keep water out, but it may also have aided
in equalizing pressure in the sinuses and ears. Professional free
divers still use a nose clip, and he also mentions
this at a later point in the book, as well,
attributing the oil soaked cotton swabs in one's ears as
being protective but also kind of having this side effect
of like, well, and as the oil leaks out, you're
only going to see better down there.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Hmmm.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
So I think I think all of you, even though
again not one hundred percent clarity on all this, but
I think some of these examples are telling. On one hand,
they provide a little more insight into what some of
these accounts were talking about concerning free divers bringing down
oil in their mouths or even in around their eyes.
We also see plenty of examples where humans would have
had a chance to witness oil interacting with water whilst swimming,
(13:08):
you know, this idea of Okay, if we had some
sort of tradition of oiling your body up before you
go in, then perhaps you're bringing that information with you.
If there is some practice about, you know, calming the
water at the surface of the water so as to
better see down, then that can easily be translated into
this idea of like, well, bring the oil down with
you and make that clear as well. So, yeah, I
(13:30):
think there's still some mysteries remaining here, but I think
I can maybe sort of glimpse the shape of the
thing a little better.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Okay, Well, even if the answer is still a bit elusive.
I think valued effort at digging there.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
We may have to come back to this particular book
in the future. He has a lot of great information
about like early ideas and developments in the creation of
like actual goggles and masks that would enable people to
eventually see under the water with the kind of clarity
were clearly reaching for.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Oh yeah, we could do some invention coverage on on
old school diving helmets, which are beautiful.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Now. I believe in the first episode we warned that
there would be Ben Franklin, that Ben Franklin would pop
up in this topic. So let's let's I see is okay,
he's here? He dies. He frequently pops up on the show,
especially in our invention episodes. Occasionally you didn't know that
you were going to have Ben Franklin content, but then
(14:40):
he appears.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
That's right. So Benjamin Franklin often known as one of
the so called founding fathers of the United States. He
was an early American I don't even know what what
what are? What's the order that you put the things
he did when you say what he was? He was
an early American statesman, author, businessman, scientist, inventor. He kind
(15:05):
of did everything.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah, just kind of a general American polymath and weird guy,
you know, an Enlightenment thinker that had a great deal
of curiosity about the world and entertaining those curiosities.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Now specifically in the domain of science. Benjamin Franklin, I think,
is best known for his experiments with electricity, and this
would include experiments with the storage and discharge of electrical
potential in what we now call a battery after Franklin's terminology,
like the Franklin battery was made by putting together a
(15:40):
series of a pre existing invention called a Leiden jar,
and he could He's like, oh wow, you can really
like stack these things up and really pack a punch
with the energy youer storing. One of these battery experiments
I know we've talked about on the show before because
of its weirdness, was the electrocution of a turkey for
a hull dinner, which he then said was to be
(16:02):
roasted upon an electric jack after it was electrocuted. But
for some reason, Franklin believed this would make the meat
especially tender and succulent. If he used electricity from one
of his batteries to kill the thing, but he ended
up badly shocking himself while attempting this. But on the
broader subject of electricity, Franklin's electrical research also entailed work
(16:27):
in support of the hypothesis that lightning was in fact
a form of electricity, was a type of electrical discharge,
and Franklin was not the first person to make this connection,
but did important work investigating it. The most famous anecdote here,
of course, is the one the kite and key experiment,
(16:47):
which is in a way of disputed historical status. Franklin
apparently never described himself doing this experiment in any of
his letters, though I think he described the experiment in
some writing as a kind of hypothetical, like this is
an experiment one could do, though after his death people
did say that he himself had carried it out. If
(17:09):
he did do it, it would have been probably in
June of seventeen fifty two. However, Franklin was correct about
lightning being a form of electrical discharge, and this led
to his advocacy of the use of sharpened iron lightning
rods to protect buildings during storms. And this is kind
of a tangent, but one I got interested in while
reading about Franklin's lightning rod research for this episode, I
(17:33):
wanted to share a paragraph I came across from an
article from the Franklin Institute, which is a museum of
Benjamin Franklin's life and work in Philadelphia, where they write,
quote Franklin began to advocate lightning rods that had sharp points.
His English colleagues favored blunt tipped lightning rods, reasoning that
(17:54):
sharp ones attracted lightning and increased the risk of strikes.
They thought blunt rods were less likely to be struck.
King George the Third had his palace equipped with a
blunt lightning rod. When it came time to equip the
colony's buildings with lightning rods, the decision became a political statement.
The favored pointed lightning rod expressed support for Franklin's theories
(18:16):
of protecting public buildings and the rejection of theories supported
by the king. The English thought this was just another
way for the flourishing colonies to be disobedient to them,
And I thought this was funny because it's an eighteenth
century example of a pure scientific question, just like what's
the ideal shape of a lightning rod? Where really all
we should care about is what is the correct answer
(18:38):
of this question being politicized? Now, which answer you favor
has political connotations, and there is political pressure to think
a certain way about it.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Well, who is right? Is it the American way or
the British way?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
It seems in a way they were both wrong. But
it seems like the English had the better. The blunt
lightning rods were better overall, according to modern research. I
looked up there has been modern research on this, so
I found a paper by more Awlick and Risin in
the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology in the year
two thousand and three, where they say, quote, an examination
(19:15):
of the relevant physics shows that very strong electric fields
are required above the tips of rods in order that
they function as strike receptors, but that the gradients of
the field strength over sharp tipped rods are so great
that at distances of a few millimeters, the local fields
are often too weak for the development of upward going streamers.
(19:35):
In field tests, rods with rounded tips have been found
to be better strike receptors than were nearby sharp tipped rods.
Though it gets kind of complicated, so they say, overall,
if you're trying to attract your lightning strikes to these rods.
The blunt ones are better. But as they explained in
the paper, Franklin's idea was that the purpose of a
(19:57):
sharp tipped lightning rod was not to attract lightning, but
to prevent lightning by allowing thunderclouds to sort of silently
and gently discharge electricity down to the rod, without actually
allowing a violent lightning strike to occur at all. Of course,
it was later recognized that a lightning rod could be
(20:19):
useful by providing just a conductive pathway to the ground,
rather than simply letting the lightning find its own way
to the ground through the structure of the building, which
would be a lot more destructive. So the authors of
this paper say that lightning rods don't actually discharge thunderclouds gently.
Franklin was wrong in thinking that would happen, they say,
quote it is now recognized that the sole function of
(20:41):
a lightning rod is to be the receptor or interceptor
of strikes for a lightning protection system that conducts lightning
discharges to the earth without damage to the structure on
which the system is mounted. So I would say Franklin
was correct about the nature of lightning being electrical. He
was correct that lightning rods were a good idea. He
(21:02):
was incorrect in part about how they worked. They don't
actually gently discharge lightning without a strike occurring. And he
was probably incorrect about the ideal design parameters because the
blunt rods, it seems, are better. But also, if you'll remember,
it seems like the English were also wrong because it
said that they thought the blunt rods were less likely
(21:24):
to be struck, and they're actually better because they're more
likely to be struck. So I thought that was interesting.
But anyway, we should come back to a different scientific question,
the one of today's episode. This was a different question
that captured Franklin's attention, and so I want to cite
a twenty thirteen historical science paper by Wang Stieglitz, Mardin,
(21:45):
and Tam in the Biophysical Journal published in the year
twenty thirteen called Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia's favorite son was a
membrane biophysicist. So here's the biographical context. In the year
seventeen fifty seven, the American House of Assembly in Philadelphia
(22:06):
sent Benjamin Franklin as an envoy to King George the
second of Great Britain, and Franklin was traveling on one
of a fleet of ninety six ships that set out
to cross the Atlantic, departing from New York Harbor. Early
in their journey, the fleet hit some bad weather. There
were high winds and heavy waves, and the paper doesn't
(22:26):
mention this, but I will say I've read in other
sources that Franklin was very interested in storms and would
sometimes chase storms on horseback. So I kind of wonder
if he was out on deck observing the bad weather
with joyful curiosity while everybody else is vomiting. I don't know,
but whatever he was doing, he at some point made
an observation. He looked out at the rest of the fleet,
(22:48):
and he observed that a couple of the ships in
the fleet appeared to be sailing much more smoothly than
the rest. Everybody else is pitching back and forth violently
in the waves, and a couple looked like for some
rea and they weren't. They were just kind of cruising
along smoothly. And Franklin mentioned this to the captain of
his ship, and the captain said to him, apparently thinking
(23:09):
that he was stupid for even asking this question, the
captain said, the cooks have, I suppose, been just emptying
their greasy water through the scuppers which has greased the
sides of those ships a little, as if this was obvious,
and explained it totally, because, as we talked about in
the last episode, it had long been common knowledge among
sailors that oil or grease would calm the waves.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
All right, Well, now Ben Franklin has been tipped off
and is on the case right.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Right, He's like, oh, I need to get me some
of that rancid cooking grease. Figure out what's so special
about it. So the authors of the paper here they
go over some of the things we talked about in
the previous episode that since ancient times, authors have mentioned
this here and there, this practice of pouring oil, sometimes
olive oil, on top of the sea to calm the
waters during storms. Remember that, though we don't have Aristotle's
(24:02):
original writing on this subject, the Roman historian Plutarch attributed
a view to Aristotle that quote, the oil produces calm
by smoothing the water's surface so that wind can slip
over it without making an impression. So when the captain
told Franklin this He's like, oh, yeah, they emptied their
nasty grease into the water after they're done cooking, and
(24:25):
it's greasing the side of the ship and the water
around it, so that's making the waves calm. Franklin suspected
that this explanation was wrong. He doubted that greasing the
outside of the ship would actually calm the water around it,
but the observation captured his curiosity, especially since it reminded
him of experiences playing with wax in his father's soap
(24:45):
factory when he was ten years old, and he observed
the same phenomenon several more times during voyages across the ocean,
so he decided at some point that he should make
experiments to better understand this. He finally got around to
it twelve years later in seventeen sixty nine during another
visit to Great Britain. So Franklin was staying in an
(25:06):
area called Clapham Common in South London, and together with
a friend of his name, Christopher Baldwin, Franklin made his
way to a local pond and started just dumping oil
in it. To quote from Franklin's own description of his
experiments at the length being at Clapham where there is
on the common a large pond which I observed to
(25:27):
be one day, very rough with the wind. I fetched
out a cruet of oil. And just to note, a
cruet is like a small flask or carafe with a
stopper on top, which you might use to store olive
oil or vinegar or lemon juice at a dining table.
Sort of. You can think of it as like, you know,
you taco bell sauce packet, but a rigid caraf.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Okay, that's good that we know how much oil, because
I think, as we discussed in the first episode, like
there's there's this one tale where it sounds like it's
a magic potion's worth of oil. Other cases it sounds
like you're talking about like a dumping out all the
kitchens excess oil. So there's always this question of, like,
how much oil are we talking about here?
Speaker 3 (26:06):
This is going to be a fairly small amount of oil.
I think I've seen it described in the tablespoon range. Okay,
but so Franklin says, I fetched out a cruet of
oil and dropped a little of it on the water.
I saw it spread itself with surprising swiftness upon the surface,
and there the oil though not more than a teaspoonful.
Oh okay, so he says, a teaspoonful here produced an
(26:29):
instant calm over a space several yards square, which spread
amazingly and extended itself gradually till it reached the lee side,
making all that quarter of the pond, perhaps half an acre,
as smooth as a looking glass. The oil layer was
so thin as to produce the prismatic colors for a
(26:49):
considerable space, and beyond them so much thinner as to
be invisible except in its effect of smoothing the waves
at a much greater distance. So this is a very
simple experiment, simply pouring oil out over the surface of
a pond in windy weather. But out of this very
simple experiment Franklin got several interesting observations. So one is
(27:12):
that a tiny container of oil spreads out over a
shockingly vast area on the surface of the water. And
the second thing was it seemed true in the parts
where the oil spread, the water no longer rippled in
the wind, but became, in his words, as smooth as
a looking glass, smooth as a mirror. But what if
the effect was just something about this pond in particular
(27:36):
Franklin knew that you should repeat an experiment under different
circumstances to see if you get the same result or
a different one, So he wrote quote after this, I
contrived to take with me whenever I went into the
country a little oil in the upper hollow of my
bamboo cane, with which I might repeat the experiment as
opportunities should offer. And I found it constantly to succeed.
(27:59):
So I'm thinking of him a little bit like Gendalf
sort of wandering through the shires, stupefying the Hobbits by
pouring oil on the water out of his staff.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
I guess so. But this makes me I ask all
sorts of questions about his cane. Did he always have
a secret compartment in his cane for some sort of
a flask or vial of some substance? And if so,
what usually goes in there? Is this like you have
a little bit of alcohol? Or is there is this?
I do you put some poison in there? I mean,
(28:29):
there's so many questions about this bamboo cane.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, what did he have in there when he was
not wandering the shire? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Or maybe he had it specially. I mean, it's like
all these options around the table with Benjamin Franklin. I
can also easily imagine from what we've read of the
man him going into the cane shop and say, look,
I need to oil down some ponds in the as
I travel around, and I don't want to just carry
it on my person. I want to have it secreted
away within my bamboo cane. I would like to commission
such a bamboo cane. And they're like, all right, yeah,
(28:58):
we can do that for you.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Right, So then he crosses commissioned secret grease cane off
of his daily to do list. Well, anyway, so after
a while he'd observed this effect a lot of times,
and in trying to interpret the results, Franklin observed a
distinction between how oil behaves when you drop it onto
a solid surface versus onto the surface of water. He says,
(29:21):
if you put a drop of oil on a table
made of marble, or a table made of wood, or
on a mirror glass that's lying horizontal, the drop just
remains in place as a drop. It pretty much keeps
the same shape. It doesn't spread out. But on the
surface of water it spreads. There is a dramatically different behavior.
It's not just a little different like a single drop
(29:42):
of oil will spread over a vast area. I remember
he said, the pond in England. It was about a
tea spoonful, and that went to like a half acre. Wow.
So Franklin wrote, quote, if there be a mutual repulsion
between the particles of oil and no attraction between oil
and water, oil dropped on water will not be held
(30:03):
together by adhesion to the spot whereon it falls. It
will be at liberty to expand itself, and it will
spread on a surface that, besides being smooth to the
most perfect degree of polish, prevents, perhaps by repelling the
oil all immediate contact, keeping it at a minute distance
from itself, and the expansion will continue till the mutual
(30:24):
repulsion between the particles of the oil is weakened and
reduced to nothing by their distance. And while of course
Franklin believed there to be a natural repulsion between oil
and water, he thought that there was no natural repulsion
between water and air, so the water and air could
freely contact one another, and that was why he thought
(30:45):
it may be stilled the waves. So we'll come back
to a slightly different explanation of how it stills the
waves in a minute. But First, there's another interesting consequence
of this experiment. The concept of a molecule had not
yet taken root during Franklin's life. Franklin wouldn't have known
what a molecule was. But the author's right that what
(31:07):
Franklin had actually created here on the surface of the
water was a monomolecular layer of oil quote, which eventually
expanded into a two dimensional gas of oil molecules at
the air water interface. But what he had done is
create a layer of oil one molecule thick. That's what
(31:27):
happens when you allow oil to spread out without boundary
on the surface of water. And so Franklin never made
this next step, but later scientists observed that you could
use exactly this experiment to calculate the height of a
single molecule of oil, because you already know two things.
You know the starting volume of oil, and then when
(31:50):
you drop it on water, you can wait for it
to spread out completely into a monolayer and then measure
the area of the oil. So if you know this
starting volume and then the area that it spreads out to,
you can calculate the thickness of the single molecule layer.
Oh wow, if Franklin had thought to do this, and
they say that he would have been able to mathematically,
(32:11):
he apparently just didn't. It didn't occur to him to
do this. He could have come up with the first
roughly accurate estimate of the size of a molecule in history,
and he would have been one hundred years ahead of
the actual first people to do this. So one of
the later scientists who did make this kind of calculation
was the British mathematician and physicist Lord Rayleigh, who lived
(32:32):
eighteen forty two to nineteen nineteen, and he realized that
the spreading of the molecules of oil across the surface
of water would illuminate the question of what he called
molecular magnitudes the size of an oil molecule. So he
did experiments of putting olive oil in a sponge bath
to calculate the size of a molecule of triolene, which
(32:54):
is a main component of olive oil, and he put
it after his measurements at sixteen point three angstroms and
Angstrom is one ten billionth of a meter, and this
calculation was close but was still a little bit off,
and it was improved by the contributions of a German
self taught chemist named Agnes Pockels who lived eighteen sixty
(33:15):
two to nineteen thirty five. She had performed similar experiments
on her own before Lord Rayleigh, and she had done
them in her own kitchen at the counter. She was
not formally trained in science. She was an autodidact, and
when she saw his paper in eighteen ninety she contacted
him with her own results, which had been hers. Had
(33:35):
been accomplished with the help of an instrument that she
had invented for measuring surface tension, which helped get a
better calculation of the thickness of the oil, and with
her method she measured the thickness of a single oil
molecule or the sorry not just the oil, the trilene molecule,
the main component of the olive oil. She measured that
(33:55):
to thirteen angstroms, and this in turn led Raley to
improve his own measurements, and then later the American physicist
Irving Langmuir came along to do definitive work on oil
film chemistry, and when he did that, he did so
with the help of a surface tension measuring device which
was similar to the instrument that Agnes Pockles had already
(34:16):
invented in the nineteenth century. But anyway, why did the
oil actually calm the waves? What is going on when
the waves stop rippling in water where there's an oil
(34:37):
mono layer on top. The authors of this paper suggest
that the best explanation is the one offered by Lord Rayleigh,
So I'm going to read from Lord Rayleigh. Here. He wrote,
let us consider small waves as propagated over the surface
of clean water. As the waves advanced, the surface of
the water has to submit to periodic extensions and contractions.
(35:00):
At the crest of the wave, the surface is compressed,
while the trough it is extended. As long as the
water is pure, there is no force to oppose that,
and the wave can be propagated without difficulty. But if
the surface be contaminated, the contamination strongly resists the alternating
stretching and contraction. It tends always on the contrary to
(35:23):
spread itself uniformly, and the result is that the water
refuses to lend itself to the motion which is required
of it. The film of oil may be compared to
an inextensible membrane, membrane that can't stretch floating on the
surface of the water and hampering its motion. And under
these conditions it is not possible for the waves to
(35:46):
be generated unless the forces are very much greater than usual.
So if I'm understanding this correctly, it seems to me
what he's saying is that the oil, because of its
hydrophobic chemical reaction with the water and with its and
with itself, it strongly prefers to stretch out into this
single molecule thick layer. And if this oil really wants
(36:07):
to become and then stay a layer that's a single
molecule thick, that means it can't really stretch any thinner
unless the force of the waves is so strong that
the oil slick is actually ripped apart, and it repels
being contracted to become any thicker. Since it resists becoming
more than a molecule thick, so it resists any wave
(36:29):
motion at the surface. Though of course, at some point
waves could become so powerful that they would override the
hydrophobic chemical forces that caused this phenomenon, So it only
works up to a certain point.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
And yet you might ask, well, could we stop a
hurricane with it? This actually is something that I found
discussed in a paper from two thousand and five. This
is it's titled A Note concerning the Light Hill Sandwich
Model of Typical Cyclones. The authors here are Baron Blot, Chorin,
(37:05):
and Prost Taukashan. These three individuals would be Alexander Chorin,
a Berkeley computational fluid mechanics expert, Russian mathematician Grigory Baron Blatt,
and VM Takashian. So they seem to be individuals who
are very well established in their field here, and I
(37:28):
looked at this paper and I tried to look at
the paper that it came before it, that they're kind
of This is kind of an addendum too. It's very
technical paper, full of equations and whatnot. But in this
A Note concerning the light Hill Sandwich Model of Tropical Cyclones,
they suggest that that oil spread on the surface of
water could potentially prevent the formation of quote turbulence dampening
(37:53):
ocean spray troplets. The idea here being that while there's
a lot going on in a hurricane, quote, flow acceleration
in an ocean spray that carries large water droplets unquote
is part of the whole scenario, and if one could
theoretically curtail flow acceleration by droplets, it might have an
impact on the storm's overall strength. I'm going to read
(38:17):
what the authors wrote here on the matter.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
In the present work, we demonstrated that the mechanism of
turbulent suppression by water droplets in the ocean spray can
substantially accelerate the flow so that the speeds of wind
characteristic of the strongest hurricanes can be reached. The complete
mathematical model, taking into account both thermal effects and Coriola's force,
can now be constructed in the form that allows effective
(38:44):
numerical calculations. Note that a model of dust storms taking
into account the thermal effects was proposed in reference seven. Furthermore,
the effects of particles on the dynamics of tornadoes can
be studied by similar meats. Anyway, they get to the
conclusion here they say, incan illusion. We want to make
a comment. Since antiquity semen have had barrels of oil
(39:05):
on the decks of their vessels and thrown the oil
on the sea surface in critical moments of stormy weather.
We think that the action of oil was exactly the
prevention of the formation of droplets. The turbulence was restored.
After the oil was dropped, the turbulent drag was increased
and the intensity of the squall was reduced. Possibly hurricanes
(39:27):
can be similarly prevented or dampened by having airplanes deliver fast, decaying,
harmless surfactants to the right places on the sea surface.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Okay, So, a surfactant is a substance that reduces the
surface tension of water when you or of any liquid,
I guess when you add it to the water. So
soap is a surfactant, and it increases the wetting properties
of water. It causes water to less want to cling
to itself and more to spread out over whatever.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Now, I do want to stress that this, this proposal
here is very much based in mathematical modeling, and you
have to sort of you have to take it with
that in consideration. On top of that, we have to
to mention that, Yeah, there have been various methods that
have been brought up over the years as possible means
of dampening hurricanes, or preventing hurricanes, or stopping a hurricane
(40:21):
and its growth. None of these I think has really
proven to be effective. We're not actually doing any of
those things. I mean, there are things we know that
we could do in the world a large scale to
prevent hurricanes from becoming worse in the years ahead, and
we're not necessarily doing all of those either. So but
(40:42):
you know, nobody wants to change their lives. They want
they want the really quick means of stopping the hurricane,
some dynamic idea, something you can drop out of an
airplane or so forth. But still, I don't know. The
modeling here is interesting, and it's it's neat to see
this more modern, like very technical approach to trying to
(41:06):
figure out the same thing that Benjamin Franklin was pondering
over and that the ancients in many cases just took
as fact. You have turbulent seas well, throw a little
oil in there and that's going to calm things down.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
It would be very interesting if this worked, though, though.
I just pulled up a New Scientist article that was
covering this paper that consulted somebody else in the field.
They consulted Julian Hunt at the University College London, who
just said, quote, I am very doubtful about this approach.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah, and again even the authors themselves are are pointing
out that they're taking the various factors involved in the
growth of a hurricane and reducing it to this one area.
So this is not a solution that would seem to
take everything into account, but just concerning like this one
aspect of storm strength building up.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
I guess this does raise different questions because if you
go back to in part one we talked about that
story from the Venerable Bead about I think the deal
was a bishop gave a priest, so like King Oswe
sent out a priest to bring his bride home from Kent.
And then there was a bishop who gave a bottle
(42:19):
of oil, almost as if it was a magical potion,
to the priest and said, hey, you know, when you
get out on the sea, if there's a storm, you
pour this oil on the water and it'll calm the storm.
And so that raises two different interpretations. One could be like, oh,
is he just talking about the thing that is in
(42:39):
a way. I mean, I don't know how well it
would really work on a large scale around a boat,
but there is at least experimental evidence that you pour
oil on waters and somewhat will calm waves. Is that
all that this story is talking about, or should we
take it in the broader sense of it will actually
stop the storm, like it will effect to the weather
(43:01):
coming from above and the winds.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah, I mean, in so many of these accounts, you're
dealing with retellings of the thing. And even though even
though bed was was maybe not too many degrees away
from from from the actual account, Yeah, it's easy to
imagine how the story could could be exaggerated, you know,
the calming of the waters to the overall you know,
(43:25):
calming of the storm in the same way that perhaps
an effect that makes the surface of the water more
like glass so that you can see down into it,
could I'm and I'm guessing here potentially be you know,
further exaggerated into making the entire water column illuminated and
diveable in a way that you can easily find what
(43:47):
you're looking for.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
In the depths.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
But this is all what I think makes the topic
so fascinating because it, you know, it seems to be
this realm where this some it seems on one hand
that this could not be that this seems like, surely
this is just fable. But on the other hand, we
do see you know, some of the science at play here.
We can see, like why it works at least to
(44:10):
some degree, so it's it's kind of has a has
a foot in both worlds.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
Oh yes, I think this has been a delightful ramble
around the countryside with a bit of oil in our
bamboo cane.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Absolutely. All right, Well we're going to go ahead and
close out this episode and this exploration, but we'll be
back with more episodes in the future. Here. Core episodes
of Stuff to Blow Your Mind come out on Tuesdays
and Thursdays. We have our listener mail episodes on Mondays,
short form Monster Factor Artifact episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays,
we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
(44:46):
a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Let's see what
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(45:07):
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(45:32):
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Speaker 1 (46:00):
Production is based with ratatatator
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and it is Saturday. We are
back with another Vault episode. This is going to be
part two of our two parter Oil and Troubled Water.
This one originally published eight three, twenty twenty three. Let's
dive right in.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And after a little bit
of an interval, we are back with part two in
our series on pouring Oil over Troubled Waters.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
That's right to refresh. In the last episode, which I
guess was over a week ago. At this point, we
discussed several interesting mentions from ancient and medieval writings, in
particular about the interaction between oil and water. We went
over some of the basics about this of you know,
the all idea that oil and water don't mix, and
that oil in water or oil mixed around with water
(01:10):
can create kind of this novel appearance that captivates our imagination,
and we also discussed how it may have been added
to stormy seas to calm them down, and it may
have been used in some capacity by free divers to
somehow smooth or clear or illuminate the waters they're diving
in so as to better see what they're looking for.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Now, that was an issue last time that I was
really confused by, because it wasn't even clear to me
exactly what these ancient authors were claiming. They were saying
that in some sense a diver might like swim underneath
the water with some oil in their mouth, and then
when they needed to see better, they would like spit
the oil out into the water, or I think you
(01:51):
said in some other sources people just talked about like
putting oil over their eyes before they went diving, and
I couldn't understand from the original verus. We looked at,
like what even the alleged method of action was there.
You finally have some answers on this, right.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know that I'll be able
to bring one hundred percent clarity to the issue. I
think there's still gonna I think there may still be
a certain amount of like historical telephone game going on
with some of these. But I did find a great
deal of clarity on this in a twenty twenty one
book that I picked up titled Neither Letters nor Swimming
The Rebirth of Swimming and Free Diving by John m McManamon.
(02:31):
So this is an interesting book which it's a little
harder to get your hands on this one, but it's
worth picking up if you're interested in the history of
diving and swimming in general. Oil comes up multiple times
in the book, sometimes just in general observances of waters
that were known to contain oil naturally in the ancient world.
Ancient writers mentioned a spring at Carthage. There's the Laparous
(02:55):
River in southern Turkey or what is now southern Turkey,
and there's also a lake an the Opia that were
singled out, all noted for oil that could either be
extracted for use. In the case of Carthage, I think
they used it with livestock or just waters that had
a quote unquote naturally lubricating effect on the swimmer. Hmmm,
sounds great now, This idea of lubricating yourself for a swim.
(03:22):
This was This was pretty interesting to me because I
swim several days a week, but I never oil myself
up beforehand, and I don't see anybody else doing it either.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I mean wait, I was gonna ask, is that even
a thing anybody does? I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I mean, you see cases, certainly, there are cases of
people lubricating their body with lotions and oils afterwards, or
you know, something to that effect. But I mean, it
may be I don't know if it's anything that has
ever explored and say, competitive swimming. If it is, I'm
not aware of it off the top of my head.
But there are various mentions of oil lubricated swimmers in
(04:02):
ancient texts. The idea that before you entered the water
to swim, you'd want to rub your naked body down
with oil, okay, And the reasons for this is, you know,
seems to vary. So one account, during the Corinthian War
in the three eighty nine BC, the Athenian forces used
swimming infantry against Spartan forces near this place in Egypt, Habitus.
(04:29):
Apparently the waters there were quite cold, so they rubbed
themselves down with olive oil beforehand, and they drank a
lot of alcohol before they got into the water. Now
McManamon points out that, okay, the oil might have provided
some insulation that actually helped protect them against the cold,
but the drinking would have been counterproductive.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Drinking doesn't actually make you warmer. It might make you
feel warmer temporarily, but right, yeah, it doesn't help.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
The General Hannibal is also said to have ordered his
soldiers to oil themselves down against the cold at the
Battle of Trevia River, the first major battle of the
Second Punic War in two eighteen BCE. So, in general,
there seems to be this idea that like, okay, you
can protect yourself against the cold by covering yourself with oil,
and then perhaps that would work in the water as well.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Now, on the subject of ancient free diving pearl divers,
in particular in the Persian Gulf and in the waters
between India and Sri Lanka, mcmaamon writes that there's a
lot we don't know about their practices in the ancient world,
and then they were often working with kind of sketchy
ideas concerning the nature of oysters. So he mentioned this
(05:39):
idea that you see written in some of these old
texts about how oysters have leaders, and you have to
take out the first oyster first. You have to find
the leader, take it out first, and then the rest
will follow.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Okay, it's a decapitation strike against the oyster brigade.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, there's also talk about you need to watch your
fingers because the oysters may sever the fingers, and mcmammon
casts a lot of doubt on this. I mean, I
know that there are concerns with certain types of free
diving and foraging for various shells and creatures. There are
particular creatures where you do have to potentially worry about
(06:14):
a you know, finger getting caught or snagged or whatever.
But in this case McManamon seems to write that it
was not really a concern. But basically it all drives
home just how alien the environment was into which these
people were venturing. Just think about just how limited you
were as you gazed down into the water, as you
(06:35):
dived into the water and tried to find whatever you
were looking for. So in this particular case, they would
have likely used grafts, which makes sense. And in the
case of India and Sri Lanka in particular, there's apparently
evidence that they made condemned criminals do the work, and
I think in general it was considered dangerous work and
there's some writings reflect this. Whatever the case, the clear
(06:59):
the diving conditions, the better to see what you're doing
as you go down there too and try and venture
into the oyster kingdom. So mcmatamon writes, quote, if the
sea was choppy, the crew would spread oil on its
surface to settle it down. Modern fishermen use a similar
method to improve surface visibility, pouring shark oil at times
(07:20):
mixed with sand to settle the waters. So this is
the idea that we've discussed already, or were going to
continue to discuss. The idea here, I believe is that
friction of the oil on the water surface keeps the
surface from ruffling or breaking, at least for a short
period of time.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
The question of the mechanism of how oil culmbs the water,
if it does, is something I'm going to get into
in a paper that I'll discuss in a minute here.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah, but in general, it sounds like the idea that
is being expressed here is like, if you can make
the more you can make the surface of the water
like glass, supposedly through the application of some oil, the
better you can see down into where you're about to
send your divers, who again are free diving without masks, etc.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Okay, So in this case it would be a question
of being able to look down into the water from
the surface and see through it better.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
That's my understanding.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yes, okay.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Now The author also discusses a legendary free diver from
Italian traditions by the name of Cola pache Cola, the
fish in Italian, a Mediterranean hero whose exploits holding his
breath were apparently comparable to Coculon, to BeO Wolf, to
King Olaff and others. I often don't think about this,
(08:37):
but yeah, you have a lot of heroes who can
really hold their breath for a long time, and you
can take that into the modern area. I mean, look
at Indiana Jones right then he holds his breath on
that submarine or does he get in the submarine?
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Oh? Wait, I know what you're talking about now. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Anyway, in this particular case, this is an oral tradition
that was written down by medieval chroniclers during the twelve century.
He said to have had various adventures and was said
to spend so much time in the water that he
would die if he stayed on land for too long.
So more fish than man in some ways. It's certainly
a tall tale, to be sure, but ridings about him
(09:14):
do contain some insight into the use of oil in
free diving. Quote, while diving, Cola followed the ancients and
releasing oil into the water column in order to see better.
Sicilian fishermen still use that technique, especially when they are
hunting octopi. In the profound abyss of the Straits of Messina,
(09:35):
Cola reported to the sovereign that he had seen mountains
and valleys, woods and fields and trees with edible fruits.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Like another kingdom, just like we have on land, but
under the waves.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Exactly, which is something we've discussed before in terms of
how previous generations thought about the world underwater. And I
like that there's also kind of a I mean, there's
a hint of truth to this as well, Like he's
reporting that, hey, underneath the water, there's actually a robust ecosystem. Now,
(10:08):
whether it's actually woods and fields and trees with edible freed, well,
obviously not, but there is in a sense this rich
other world down there that you can imagine a free
diver being able to attest to.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So this passage is not just talking about putting oil
on the surface, but actually releasing oil down underneath the
water when you are down there and again that helping
to see, but this passage doesn't say why that would
work if it did.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Right, And I wish again, I wish I could have
one hundred percent clarity on this particular angle. I haven't
found anything. It's worth noting that there are multiple factors
that contribute to decreased visibility underwater. And you have particles
in the water, you have salinity gradients, temperature gradients, organic particles.
Just you know, issues of light and you know where
(10:55):
the sun is positioned in the sky and how much
light you're getting in a particular volume of water. Interestingly,
I was reading that you know sometimes there's a visible
layer between thermoclines that look like the smoothness of an oilchine.
So I couldn't help, but wonder if that might factor
into some of this, like things that may be encountered
(11:15):
underwater that have the feel or look of oil separation.
Now another interesting bit here on medieval pearl divers. Mcmanumon
has some interesting information on oil use from the Arabic
world of the time, and I want I'm going to
read a longer quote here and warning that it is
a little bit graphic as it includes mention of alleged
(11:36):
body modification for the purposes of free diving. Quote. Pearl
divers attempted to eliminate the pain in their ears and
block their nostrils. They ruptured their own ear drum and
knew they had succeeded when blood flowed out. They soaked
cotton in oil and inserted it into their ears. The
technique had an added benefit on the bottom, as the
oil leaked out and floated up. It clarified the water
(11:58):
column by allowing greater light to a train. For the nostrils,
pearl divers had various options. They could plug the openings
with small balls carved from a tortoise shell and use
a cloth soaked in oil like the ones used in
the ears. Alternatively, they could wear a clip over the
outside of their nostrils, carved from ivory or horn or
tortoise shell. The stated purpose of blocking the nostrils was
(12:21):
to keep water out, but it may also have aided
in equalizing pressure in the sinuses and ears. Professional free
divers still use a nose clip, and he also mentions
this at a later point in the book, as well,
attributing the oil soaked cotton swabs in one's ears as
being protective but also kind of having this side effect
of like, well, and as the oil leaks out, you're
only going to see better down there.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Hmmm.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
So I think I think all of you, even though
again not one hundred percent clarity on all this, but
I think some of these examples are telling. On one hand,
they provide a little more insight into what some of
these accounts were talking about concerning free divers bringing down
oil in their mouths or even in around their eyes.
We also see plenty of examples where humans would have
had a chance to witness oil interacting with water whilst swimming,
(13:08):
you know, this idea of Okay, if we had some
sort of tradition of oiling your body up before you
go in, then perhaps you're bringing that information with you.
If there is some practice about, you know, calming the
water at the surface of the water so as to
better see down, then that can easily be translated into
this idea of like, well, bring the oil down with
you and make that clear as well. So, yeah, I
(13:30):
think there's still some mysteries remaining here, but I think
I can maybe sort of glimpse the shape of the
thing a little better.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Okay, Well, even if the answer is still a bit elusive.
I think valued effort at digging there.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
We may have to come back to this particular book
in the future. He has a lot of great information
about like early ideas and developments in the creation of
like actual goggles and masks that would enable people to
eventually see under the water with the kind of clarity
were clearly reaching for.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Oh yeah, we could do some invention coverage on on
old school diving helmets, which are beautiful.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Now. I believe in the first episode we warned that
there would be Ben Franklin, that Ben Franklin would pop
up in this topic. So let's let's I see is okay,
he's here? He dies. He frequently pops up on the show,
especially in our invention episodes. Occasionally you didn't know that
you were going to have Ben Franklin content, but then
(14:40):
he appears.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
That's right. So Benjamin Franklin often known as one of
the so called founding fathers of the United States. He
was an early American I don't even know what what
what are? What's the order that you put the things
he did when you say what he was? He was
an early American statesman, author, businessman, scientist, inventor. He kind
(15:05):
of did everything.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah, just kind of a general American polymath and weird guy,
you know, an Enlightenment thinker that had a great deal
of curiosity about the world and entertaining those curiosities.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Now specifically in the domain of science. Benjamin Franklin, I think,
is best known for his experiments with electricity, and this
would include experiments with the storage and discharge of electrical
potential in what we now call a battery after Franklin's terminology,
like the Franklin battery was made by putting together a
(15:40):
series of a pre existing invention called a Leiden jar,
and he could He's like, oh wow, you can really
like stack these things up and really pack a punch
with the energy youer storing. One of these battery experiments
I know we've talked about on the show before because
of its weirdness, was the electrocution of a turkey for
a hull dinner, which he then said was to be
(16:02):
roasted upon an electric jack after it was electrocuted. But
for some reason, Franklin believed this would make the meat
especially tender and succulent. If he used electricity from one
of his batteries to kill the thing, but he ended
up badly shocking himself while attempting this. But on the
broader subject of electricity, Franklin's electrical research also entailed work
(16:27):
in support of the hypothesis that lightning was in fact
a form of electricity, was a type of electrical discharge,
and Franklin was not the first person to make this connection,
but did important work investigating it. The most famous anecdote here,
of course, is the one the kite and key experiment,
(16:47):
which is in a way of disputed historical status. Franklin
apparently never described himself doing this experiment in any of
his letters, though I think he described the experiment in
some writing as a kind of hypothetical, like this is
an experiment one could do, though after his death people
did say that he himself had carried it out. If
(17:09):
he did do it, it would have been probably in
June of seventeen fifty two. However, Franklin was correct about
lightning being a form of electrical discharge, and this led
to his advocacy of the use of sharpened iron lightning
rods to protect buildings during storms. And this is kind
of a tangent, but one I got interested in while
reading about Franklin's lightning rod research for this episode, I
(17:33):
wanted to share a paragraph I came across from an
article from the Franklin Institute, which is a museum of
Benjamin Franklin's life and work in Philadelphia, where they write,
quote Franklin began to advocate lightning rods that had sharp points.
His English colleagues favored blunt tipped lightning rods, reasoning that
(17:54):
sharp ones attracted lightning and increased the risk of strikes.
They thought blunt rods were less likely to be struck.
King George the Third had his palace equipped with a
blunt lightning rod. When it came time to equip the
colony's buildings with lightning rods, the decision became a political statement.
The favored pointed lightning rod expressed support for Franklin's theories
(18:16):
of protecting public buildings and the rejection of theories supported
by the king. The English thought this was just another
way for the flourishing colonies to be disobedient to them,
And I thought this was funny because it's an eighteenth
century example of a pure scientific question, just like what's
the ideal shape of a lightning rod? Where really all
we should care about is what is the correct answer
(18:38):
of this question being politicized? Now, which answer you favor
has political connotations, and there is political pressure to think
a certain way about it.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Well, who is right? Is it the American way or
the British way?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
It seems in a way they were both wrong. But
it seems like the English had the better. The blunt
lightning rods were better overall, according to modern research. I
looked up there has been modern research on this, so
I found a paper by more Awlick and Risin in
the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology in the year
two thousand and three, where they say, quote, an examination
(19:15):
of the relevant physics shows that very strong electric fields
are required above the tips of rods in order that
they function as strike receptors, but that the gradients of
the field strength over sharp tipped rods are so great
that at distances of a few millimeters, the local fields
are often too weak for the development of upward going streamers.
(19:35):
In field tests, rods with rounded tips have been found
to be better strike receptors than were nearby sharp tipped rods.
Though it gets kind of complicated, so they say, overall,
if you're trying to attract your lightning strikes to these rods.
The blunt ones are better. But as they explained in
the paper, Franklin's idea was that the purpose of a
(19:57):
sharp tipped lightning rod was not to attract lightning, but
to prevent lightning by allowing thunderclouds to sort of silently
and gently discharge electricity down to the rod, without actually
allowing a violent lightning strike to occur at all. Of course,
it was later recognized that a lightning rod could be
(20:19):
useful by providing just a conductive pathway to the ground,
rather than simply letting the lightning find its own way
to the ground through the structure of the building, which
would be a lot more destructive. So the authors of
this paper say that lightning rods don't actually discharge thunderclouds gently.
Franklin was wrong in thinking that would happen, they say,
quote it is now recognized that the sole function of
(20:41):
a lightning rod is to be the receptor or interceptor
of strikes for a lightning protection system that conducts lightning
discharges to the earth without damage to the structure on
which the system is mounted. So I would say Franklin
was correct about the nature of lightning being electrical. He
was correct that lightning rods were a good idea. He
(21:02):
was incorrect in part about how they worked. They don't
actually gently discharge lightning without a strike occurring. And he
was probably incorrect about the ideal design parameters because the
blunt rods, it seems, are better. But also, if you'll remember,
it seems like the English were also wrong because it
said that they thought the blunt rods were less likely
(21:24):
to be struck, and they're actually better because they're more
likely to be struck. So I thought that was interesting.
But anyway, we should come back to a different scientific question,
the one of today's episode. This was a different question
that captured Franklin's attention, and so I want to cite
a twenty thirteen historical science paper by Wang Stieglitz, Mardin,
(21:45):
and Tam in the Biophysical Journal published in the year
twenty thirteen called Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia's favorite son was a
membrane biophysicist. So here's the biographical context. In the year
seventeen fifty seven, the American House of Assembly in Philadelphia
(22:06):
sent Benjamin Franklin as an envoy to King George the
second of Great Britain, and Franklin was traveling on one
of a fleet of ninety six ships that set out
to cross the Atlantic, departing from New York Harbor. Early
in their journey, the fleet hit some bad weather. There
were high winds and heavy waves, and the paper doesn't
(22:26):
mention this, but I will say I've read in other
sources that Franklin was very interested in storms and would
sometimes chase storms on horseback. So I kind of wonder
if he was out on deck observing the bad weather
with joyful curiosity while everybody else is vomiting. I don't know,
but whatever he was doing, he at some point made
an observation. He looked out at the rest of the fleet,
(22:48):
and he observed that a couple of the ships in
the fleet appeared to be sailing much more smoothly than
the rest. Everybody else is pitching back and forth violently
in the waves, and a couple looked like for some
rea and they weren't. They were just kind of cruising
along smoothly. And Franklin mentioned this to the captain of
his ship, and the captain said to him, apparently thinking
(23:09):
that he was stupid for even asking this question, the
captain said, the cooks have, I suppose, been just emptying
their greasy water through the scuppers which has greased the
sides of those ships a little, as if this was obvious,
and explained it totally, because, as we talked about in
the last episode, it had long been common knowledge among
sailors that oil or grease would calm the waves.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
All right, Well, now Ben Franklin has been tipped off
and is on the case right.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Right, He's like, oh, I need to get me some
of that rancid cooking grease. Figure out what's so special
about it. So the authors of the paper here they
go over some of the things we talked about in
the previous episode that since ancient times, authors have mentioned
this here and there, this practice of pouring oil, sometimes
olive oil, on top of the sea to calm the
waters during storms. Remember that, though we don't have Aristotle's
(24:02):
original writing on this subject, the Roman historian Plutarch attributed
a view to Aristotle that quote, the oil produces calm
by smoothing the water's surface so that wind can slip
over it without making an impression. So when the captain
told Franklin this He's like, oh, yeah, they emptied their
nasty grease into the water after they're done cooking, and
(24:25):
it's greasing the side of the ship and the water
around it, so that's making the waves calm. Franklin suspected
that this explanation was wrong. He doubted that greasing the
outside of the ship would actually calm the water around it,
but the observation captured his curiosity, especially since it reminded
him of experiences playing with wax in his father's soap
(24:45):
factory when he was ten years old, and he observed
the same phenomenon several more times during voyages across the ocean,
so he decided at some point that he should make
experiments to better understand this. He finally got around to
it twelve years later in seventeen sixty nine during another
visit to Great Britain. So Franklin was staying in an
(25:06):
area called Clapham Common in South London, and together with
a friend of his name, Christopher Baldwin, Franklin made his
way to a local pond and started just dumping oil
in it. To quote from Franklin's own description of his
experiments at the length being at Clapham where there is
on the common a large pond which I observed to
(25:27):
be one day, very rough with the wind. I fetched
out a cruet of oil. And just to note, a
cruet is like a small flask or carafe with a
stopper on top, which you might use to store olive
oil or vinegar or lemon juice at a dining table.
Sort of. You can think of it as like, you know,
you taco bell sauce packet, but a rigid caraf.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Okay, that's good that we know how much oil, because
I think, as we discussed in the first episode, like
there's there's this one tale where it sounds like it's
a magic potion's worth of oil. Other cases it sounds
like you're talking about like a dumping out all the
kitchens excess oil. So there's always this question of, like,
how much oil are we talking about here?
Speaker 3 (26:06):
This is going to be a fairly small amount of oil.
I think I've seen it described in the tablespoon range. Okay,
but so Franklin says, I fetched out a cruet of
oil and dropped a little of it on the water.
I saw it spread itself with surprising swiftness upon the surface,
and there the oil though not more than a teaspoonful.
Oh okay, so he says, a teaspoonful here produced an
(26:29):
instant calm over a space several yards square, which spread
amazingly and extended itself gradually till it reached the lee side,
making all that quarter of the pond, perhaps half an acre,
as smooth as a looking glass. The oil layer was
so thin as to produce the prismatic colors for a
(26:49):
considerable space, and beyond them so much thinner as to
be invisible except in its effect of smoothing the waves
at a much greater distance. So this is a very
simple experiment, simply pouring oil out over the surface of
a pond in windy weather. But out of this very
simple experiment Franklin got several interesting observations. So one is
(27:12):
that a tiny container of oil spreads out over a
shockingly vast area on the surface of the water. And
the second thing was it seemed true in the parts
where the oil spread, the water no longer rippled in
the wind, but became, in his words, as smooth as
a looking glass, smooth as a mirror. But what if
the effect was just something about this pond in particular
(27:36):
Franklin knew that you should repeat an experiment under different
circumstances to see if you get the same result or
a different one, So he wrote quote after this, I
contrived to take with me whenever I went into the
country a little oil in the upper hollow of my
bamboo cane, with which I might repeat the experiment as
opportunities should offer. And I found it constantly to succeed.
(27:59):
So I'm thinking of him a little bit like Gendalf
sort of wandering through the shires, stupefying the Hobbits by
pouring oil on the water out of his staff.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
I guess so. But this makes me I ask all
sorts of questions about his cane. Did he always have
a secret compartment in his cane for some sort of
a flask or vial of some substance? And if so,
what usually goes in there? Is this like you have
a little bit of alcohol? Or is there is this?
I do you put some poison in there? I mean,
(28:29):
there's so many questions about this bamboo cane.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, what did he have in there when he was
not wandering the shire? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Or maybe he had it specially. I mean, it's like
all these options around the table with Benjamin Franklin. I
can also easily imagine from what we've read of the
man him going into the cane shop and say, look,
I need to oil down some ponds in the as
I travel around, and I don't want to just carry
it on my person. I want to have it secreted
away within my bamboo cane. I would like to commission
such a bamboo cane. And they're like, all right, yeah,
(28:58):
we can do that for you.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Right, So then he crosses commissioned secret grease cane off
of his daily to do list. Well, anyway, so after
a while he'd observed this effect a lot of times,
and in trying to interpret the results, Franklin observed a
distinction between how oil behaves when you drop it onto
a solid surface versus onto the surface of water. He says,
(29:21):
if you put a drop of oil on a table
made of marble, or a table made of wood, or
on a mirror glass that's lying horizontal, the drop just
remains in place as a drop. It pretty much keeps
the same shape. It doesn't spread out. But on the
surface of water it spreads. There is a dramatically different behavior.
It's not just a little different like a single drop
(29:42):
of oil will spread over a vast area. I remember
he said, the pond in England. It was about a
tea spoonful, and that went to like a half acre. Wow.
So Franklin wrote, quote, if there be a mutual repulsion
between the particles of oil and no attraction between oil
and water, oil dropped on water will not be held
(30:03):
together by adhesion to the spot whereon it falls. It
will be at liberty to expand itself, and it will
spread on a surface that, besides being smooth to the
most perfect degree of polish, prevents, perhaps by repelling the
oil all immediate contact, keeping it at a minute distance
from itself, and the expansion will continue till the mutual
(30:24):
repulsion between the particles of the oil is weakened and
reduced to nothing by their distance. And while of course
Franklin believed there to be a natural repulsion between oil
and water, he thought that there was no natural repulsion
between water and air, so the water and air could
freely contact one another, and that was why he thought
(30:45):
it may be stilled the waves. So we'll come back
to a slightly different explanation of how it stills the
waves in a minute. But First, there's another interesting consequence
of this experiment. The concept of a molecule had not
yet taken root during Franklin's life. Franklin wouldn't have known
what a molecule was. But the author's right that what
(31:07):
Franklin had actually created here on the surface of the
water was a monomolecular layer of oil quote, which eventually
expanded into a two dimensional gas of oil molecules at
the air water interface. But what he had done is
create a layer of oil one molecule thick. That's what
(31:27):
happens when you allow oil to spread out without boundary
on the surface of water. And so Franklin never made
this next step, but later scientists observed that you could
use exactly this experiment to calculate the height of a
single molecule of oil, because you already know two things.
You know the starting volume of oil, and then when
(31:50):
you drop it on water, you can wait for it
to spread out completely into a monolayer and then measure
the area of the oil. So if you know this
starting volume and then the area that it spreads out to,
you can calculate the thickness of the single molecule layer.
Oh wow, if Franklin had thought to do this, and
they say that he would have been able to mathematically,
(32:11):
he apparently just didn't. It didn't occur to him to
do this. He could have come up with the first
roughly accurate estimate of the size of a molecule in history,
and he would have been one hundred years ahead of
the actual first people to do this. So one of
the later scientists who did make this kind of calculation
was the British mathematician and physicist Lord Rayleigh, who lived
(32:32):
eighteen forty two to nineteen nineteen, and he realized that
the spreading of the molecules of oil across the surface
of water would illuminate the question of what he called
molecular magnitudes the size of an oil molecule. So he
did experiments of putting olive oil in a sponge bath
to calculate the size of a molecule of triolene, which
(32:54):
is a main component of olive oil, and he put
it after his measurements at sixteen point three angstroms and
Angstrom is one ten billionth of a meter, and this
calculation was close but was still a little bit off,
and it was improved by the contributions of a German
self taught chemist named Agnes Pockels who lived eighteen sixty
(33:15):
two to nineteen thirty five. She had performed similar experiments
on her own before Lord Rayleigh, and she had done
them in her own kitchen at the counter. She was
not formally trained in science. She was an autodidact, and
when she saw his paper in eighteen ninety she contacted
him with her own results, which had been hers. Had
(33:35):
been accomplished with the help of an instrument that she
had invented for measuring surface tension, which helped get a
better calculation of the thickness of the oil, and with
her method she measured the thickness of a single oil
molecule or the sorry not just the oil, the trilene molecule,
the main component of the olive oil. She measured that
(33:55):
to thirteen angstroms, and this in turn led Raley to
improve his own measurements, and then later the American physicist
Irving Langmuir came along to do definitive work on oil
film chemistry, and when he did that, he did so
with the help of a surface tension measuring device which
was similar to the instrument that Agnes Pockles had already
(34:16):
invented in the nineteenth century. But anyway, why did the
oil actually calm the waves? What is going on when
the waves stop rippling in water where there's an oil
(34:37):
mono layer on top. The authors of this paper suggest
that the best explanation is the one offered by Lord Rayleigh,
So I'm going to read from Lord Rayleigh. Here. He wrote,
let us consider small waves as propagated over the surface
of clean water. As the waves advanced, the surface of
the water has to submit to periodic extensions and contractions.
(35:00):
At the crest of the wave, the surface is compressed,
while the trough it is extended. As long as the
water is pure, there is no force to oppose that,
and the wave can be propagated without difficulty. But if
the surface be contaminated, the contamination strongly resists the alternating
stretching and contraction. It tends always on the contrary to
(35:23):
spread itself uniformly, and the result is that the water
refuses to lend itself to the motion which is required
of it. The film of oil may be compared to
an inextensible membrane, membrane that can't stretch floating on the
surface of the water and hampering its motion. And under
these conditions it is not possible for the waves to
(35:46):
be generated unless the forces are very much greater than usual.
So if I'm understanding this correctly, it seems to me
what he's saying is that the oil, because of its
hydrophobic chemical reaction with the water and with its and
with itself, it strongly prefers to stretch out into this
single molecule thick layer. And if this oil really wants
(36:07):
to become and then stay a layer that's a single
molecule thick, that means it can't really stretch any thinner
unless the force of the waves is so strong that
the oil slick is actually ripped apart, and it repels
being contracted to become any thicker. Since it resists becoming
more than a molecule thick, so it resists any wave
(36:29):
motion at the surface. Though of course, at some point
waves could become so powerful that they would override the
hydrophobic chemical forces that caused this phenomenon, So it only
works up to a certain point.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
And yet you might ask, well, could we stop a
hurricane with it? This actually is something that I found
discussed in a paper from two thousand and five. This
is it's titled A Note concerning the Light Hill Sandwich
Model of Typical Cyclones. The authors here are Baron Blot, Chorin,
(37:05):
and Prost Taukashan. These three individuals would be Alexander Chorin,
a Berkeley computational fluid mechanics expert, Russian mathematician Grigory Baron Blatt,
and VM Takashian. So they seem to be individuals who
are very well established in their field here, and I
(37:28):
looked at this paper and I tried to look at
the paper that it came before it, that they're kind
of This is kind of an addendum too. It's very
technical paper, full of equations and whatnot. But in this
A Note concerning the light Hill Sandwich Model of Tropical Cyclones,
they suggest that that oil spread on the surface of
water could potentially prevent the formation of quote turbulence dampening
(37:53):
ocean spray troplets. The idea here being that while there's
a lot going on in a hurricane, quote, flow acceleration
in an ocean spray that carries large water droplets unquote
is part of the whole scenario, and if one could
theoretically curtail flow acceleration by droplets, it might have an
impact on the storm's overall strength. I'm going to read
(38:17):
what the authors wrote here on the matter.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
In the present work, we demonstrated that the mechanism of
turbulent suppression by water droplets in the ocean spray can
substantially accelerate the flow so that the speeds of wind
characteristic of the strongest hurricanes can be reached. The complete
mathematical model, taking into account both thermal effects and Coriola's force,
can now be constructed in the form that allows effective
(38:44):
numerical calculations. Note that a model of dust storms taking
into account the thermal effects was proposed in reference seven. Furthermore,
the effects of particles on the dynamics of tornadoes can
be studied by similar meats. Anyway, they get to the
conclusion here they say, incan illusion. We want to make
a comment. Since antiquity semen have had barrels of oil
(39:05):
on the decks of their vessels and thrown the oil
on the sea surface in critical moments of stormy weather.
We think that the action of oil was exactly the
prevention of the formation of droplets. The turbulence was restored.
After the oil was dropped, the turbulent drag was increased
and the intensity of the squall was reduced. Possibly hurricanes
(39:27):
can be similarly prevented or dampened by having airplanes deliver fast, decaying,
harmless surfactants to the right places on the sea surface.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Okay, So, a surfactant is a substance that reduces the
surface tension of water when you or of any liquid,
I guess when you add it to the water. So
soap is a surfactant, and it increases the wetting properties
of water. It causes water to less want to cling
to itself and more to spread out over whatever.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Now, I do want to stress that this, this proposal
here is very much based in mathematical modeling, and you
have to sort of you have to take it with
that in consideration. On top of that, we have to
to mention that, Yeah, there have been various methods that
have been brought up over the years as possible means
of dampening hurricanes, or preventing hurricanes, or stopping a hurricane
(40:21):
and its growth. None of these I think has really
proven to be effective. We're not actually doing any of
those things. I mean, there are things we know that
we could do in the world a large scale to
prevent hurricanes from becoming worse in the years ahead, and
we're not necessarily doing all of those either. So but
(40:42):
you know, nobody wants to change their lives. They want
they want the really quick means of stopping the hurricane,
some dynamic idea, something you can drop out of an
airplane or so forth. But still, I don't know. The
modeling here is interesting, and it's it's neat to see
this more modern, like very technical approach to trying to
(41:06):
figure out the same thing that Benjamin Franklin was pondering
over and that the ancients in many cases just took
as fact. You have turbulent seas well, throw a little
oil in there and that's going to calm things down.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
It would be very interesting if this worked, though, though.
I just pulled up a New Scientist article that was
covering this paper that consulted somebody else in the field.
They consulted Julian Hunt at the University College London, who
just said, quote, I am very doubtful about this approach.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah, and again even the authors themselves are are pointing
out that they're taking the various factors involved in the
growth of a hurricane and reducing it to this one area.
So this is not a solution that would seem to
take everything into account, but just concerning like this one
aspect of storm strength building up.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
I guess this does raise different questions because if you
go back to in part one we talked about that
story from the Venerable Bead about I think the deal
was a bishop gave a priest, so like King Oswe
sent out a priest to bring his bride home from Kent.
And then there was a bishop who gave a bottle
(42:19):
of oil, almost as if it was a magical potion,
to the priest and said, hey, you know, when you
get out on the sea, if there's a storm, you
pour this oil on the water and it'll calm the storm.
And so that raises two different interpretations. One could be like, oh,
is he just talking about the thing that is in
(42:39):
a way. I mean, I don't know how well it
would really work on a large scale around a boat,
but there is at least experimental evidence that you pour
oil on waters and somewhat will calm waves. Is that
all that this story is talking about, or should we
take it in the broader sense of it will actually
stop the storm, like it will effect to the weather
(43:01):
coming from above and the winds.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah, I mean, in so many of these accounts, you're
dealing with retellings of the thing. And even though even
though bed was was maybe not too many degrees away
from from from the actual account, Yeah, it's easy to
imagine how the story could could be exaggerated, you know,
the calming of the waters to the overall you know,
(43:25):
calming of the storm in the same way that perhaps
an effect that makes the surface of the water more
like glass so that you can see down into it,
could I'm and I'm guessing here potentially be you know,
further exaggerated into making the entire water column illuminated and
diveable in a way that you can easily find what
(43:47):
you're looking for.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
In the depths.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
But this is all what I think makes the topic
so fascinating because it, you know, it seems to be
this realm where this some it seems on one hand
that this could not be that this seems like, surely
this is just fable. But on the other hand, we
do see you know, some of the science at play here.
We can see, like why it works at least to
(44:10):
some degree, so it's it's kind of has a has
a foot in both worlds.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
Oh yes, I think this has been a delightful ramble
around the countryside with a bit of oil in our
bamboo cane.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Absolutely. All right, Well we're going to go ahead and
close out this episode and this exploration, but we'll be
back with more episodes in the future. Here. Core episodes
of Stuff to Blow Your Mind come out on Tuesdays
and Thursdays. We have our listener mail episodes on Mondays,
short form Monster Factor Artifact episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays,
we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
(44:46):
a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Let's see what
else do we need to mention? If you're if you
are a listener in the UK and you're still getting
these episodes, I don't know how much longer that's gonna
be the case. So as we've been trying to stress,
go out there and find the Stuff to Blow your
Mind UK feed on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify and
(45:07):
subscribe there. That way you can make sure that you're
going to keep getting these episodes.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
It's the same thing you get the same episodes as
published in the other feed. It's just called Stuff to
Blow your Mind UK. That's all you got to do.
Just go sign up for that one. Huge thanks to
our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
or just to say hello, you can email us at
(45:32):
contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Production is based with ratatatator
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
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