Let's Learn Everything!

108: Quicksand and Other Childhood Worries & The Undying Game of Pinball

We all thought quicksand would be a bigger deal than it is, but what is the science behind them and all the other worries I had as a kid? And how does pinball reflect the changing cultures of our time, and could now be the best era of pinball? ALSO SEE US LIVE IN LONDON!!! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE Things we Talk About:   BagatelleRedgrave's PinballHumpty DumptyBeat TimeLambeth & Sarceni's Amazing Pinball Talk at MagfestDavid Barber's Magfest Pinball PanelTechnology Connection's Great Pinball BreakdownPinballMap.com Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:06:22) Quicksand and Other Childhood Worries (01:05:22) The Undying Game of Pinball (01:55:32) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: Ella’s spoon collection is much more important than our live show, the never ending story, quicksand was in 3% of in the 1960s, the problem with gen z is they’re not afraid of quicksand, quicksand is reverse oobleck (sheer-thinning), the settled sand at the bottom requires the force of lifting a car, quicksand is unfortunate physics circumstances burying you, 11th century quicksand art in the Bayeux Tapestry (also Haley’s comet), we’re less dense than quicksand so you’d float at your waist, you could listen to this podcast twice while hanging out in quicksand, Ella cried so much she couldn’t cross the piranha plank, piranha fear is President Roosevelt’s fault, you know you’re making fun of a ten year old child right now, my main takeaway was what a cogent president he was, piranhas reloading their teeth, piranhas have 10x the relative bite force to size of a crocodile, piranhas aren’t carnivores - they’re opportunistic omnivores and a skittish prey species, the cow just walking out of the piranhas, it’s like two truths and a lie but all three are true, ARE WE DOING SPIDERS GEORG, spiders have acute mechanoceptors, tarantulas aren’t just hairy for fun, debunking the Lisa Birgit Holst debunking, a 50 spiders salute for georg, Beans Britain is a statistical outlier and should not be counted, spiders georg as a stats teaching tool, spiders georg was NOT an outlier, the moment Tom and pinball fell in love, we’ve been throwing balls at pins since ancient Egypt, indoor parlor games were for the aristocracy, fixing the pins to the table with bagatelle, the depression sparked the start of pinball’s craze, evolving their legs back, truly pinball is what caused the depression, pinball was the avocado toast of the time, pinballs were literally turned into billy clubs and bullets, pinball was banned for 34 years in new york city, the historic humpty dumpty machine first gave us flippers in 1947, pinball was cooler than porn, the bootles, it’s games sex and games AGAIN - but this time it’s bad, Suzanne Ciani’s digital design for Xenon, guess the pinball cabinet from the sound, the sopranos’ profanity filter, NBA fastbreak isn’t a basketball themed pinball - you are playing basketball, Dave demonstrating a Tap Pass, pinball is the most open it’s ever been, finding cabinets is a somehow even nerdier version of birdwatching, oh nooo don’t send me pictures of pinball cabinets. Sources:2021 Fibromyalgia Acupuncture ReviewWildland Trekking: Is Quicksand Real?EBSCO: Non Newtonian FluidWiki: Shear ThinningSlate: The Rise and Fall of QuicksandGetty: Bayeux Tapestry Quicksand SceneBBC Future: Can Quicksand Suck You to Your Death?Nature Comms: Liquefaction of Quicksand Under StressEurophysics News: Quicksand!National Geographic: Quicksand Greater Cleveland Aquarium: How a President Propagated a MythZootaxa: Molecular Systematics of SerrasalmidaeNature Scientific Reports: Extreme Jaw Forces of Living and Extinct Piranhas University of Washington News: Piranha Fish Swap Old TeethEvolution and Development: Heterodonty and Dental Replacement in PiranhasBBC: Piranha 'less deadly than feared'Studies on Neotropical Fauna and Environment: Attacks on Humans by the Piranha Serrasalmus rhombeus in SurinameThe Harvard Gazette: Piranha Lab BBC: Do People Really Swallow Spiders in their SleepSnopes: Do People Swallow Eight Spiders Per Year?Scientific American: Fact or Fiction? People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep |Springer Nature: The Vibrational Sense of SpidersWiki: Fried Spiderr/HelloInternet Reddit: Lisa Birgit Holst Doesn't Exist Snopes: Lisa Birgit HolstTumblr: Spiders GeorgWiki: Spiders GeorgJournal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics: View of How Many Spiders Would Spiders Georg Have To Eat? Medium: The Spiders Georg Problem ---Lambeth & Sarceni's Amazing Pinball Talk at MagfestDavid Barber's Magfest Pinball PanelClive Thompson for Smithsonian Mag on PinballNational Museum of American History on Pinball and BagatelleMontague Redgrave's Pinball PatentAnnals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on Pinball and GamblingTechnology Connection's Great Pinball BreakdownSuzanne Ciani's Audio Design for Xenon Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

Second London Live Show! 1pm Sunday Oct 18th!

We've added a SECOND live show in London, and it's a Sunday matinee! See all the details at LetsLearnEverything.com/live Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

107: The Sci Guys, Acupuncture, and THAT Dolphin Story

Corry and Luke from the Sci Guys podcast join us, at last completing elaborate 4 year scheme to have them on! We learn about whether acupuncture is bullshit, and learn a bit more about That famous dolphin story. We also talk shop about mistakes, debunking, and curiosity! Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:10:51) Acupuncture (00:32:27) THAT Dolphin Story (00:54:20) Mistakes & Debunking (01:21:10) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about:  I’m biggly judging, the only thing I love more than science is a weird bit, Caroline’s 4 year plan to get in a zoom call with these bozos, kind of feels like you came to the top of the mountain and came down to meet us, Brian Cox does Not follow Tom, I know something that will fix Ella’s connection, the corry-luke scale, the peripheral nervous system, free opiod receptors, endogynous, different kind of needles for that opiod, fake accupuncture, treating sever hiccups, min-maxing heroin, it’s tricky to study pain, maybe therapy works more than accupuncture, by the way I don’t need you to share everything, dolphins weren’t so great at finding land mines, I’ll just leave some dead air, an open bar for editting, the sensory deprivation tank, you’re paying for this open bar Tom, I won’t tell you the name of the paper but I will tell you about lisa simpson, was really hoping the apartment would have a dolphinarium, now do your duolingo, this was all to communicate with aliens, Tom tries to have a teachable moment, well someone was certainly “arriving”, raising a chimp as a human, Bunny’s backlash, weird studies, language is complicated and we don’t even think about it so we underestimate it, did we not all read coco transcripts in college - oh i guess not, Corry’s corona mistake, double checking even when we know someone’s wrong, can you believe there are podcasts where people try to learn everything? a meta message not about being right but about science, QI’s mistake rate, the science debunking complex can get toxic, when we debunk it’s not with antagonism but curiosity, the mould effect saga, I think what you were trying to say correy is that it’s important to foster curiosity. Sources:Harvard Medical School, Science of AcupunctureReview: Is Acupuncture Placebo?Review: Acupuncture for Fibromyalgia TreatmentGuardian: NASA's Dolphin ProjectAtlantic: Margaret Lovatt's Dolphin Experiment Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

The Best of Everything 2026

It's the Best of Everything! The episode where we look at the topics that YOU thought were our best from the past year, and chat some behind the scenes about them! It's a great place to start and a great time to brush up on things you may have forgotten. Images we Talk About:  Etching from the Great Moon HoaxBumble Bee Ocelli Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:03:51) The Vitamin Saga (00:20:55) Why is the Sky Blue? (00:33:19) Speech Disfluency (00:53:11) The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 (01:09:07) Superheavy Elements II (01:27:33) Eyevolution II (01:45:17) Outro   Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about:  You wouldn’t marry a husband, oh here comes the vitamin guy, you think we’ll still have history, you missed a spot, literally having to ask for extra time, we don’t learn like computers - relearning is normal, the I’ve just turned 30 pilgramage to Japan, I’ve ruined the algorithm, oh YAY, excited for marriages and reality fracture, 30 seconds of laughter. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

106: The Polygraph & Dentistry History

You may know the polygraph is junk science, but what is the real science of lying and what wild turns did the polygraph take to get to today? And how old is dentistry? If ancient cave men didn't brush why do I have to? Well it turns out for good reason, and some fascinating dental science. ALSO SEE US LIVE IN LONDON!!! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE Images we Talk About:  Mackenzie's First PolygraphAncient Teeth ImageDentistry Tool 1Dentistry Tool 2Dentistry Tool 3Dentistry Tool 4 Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:06:38) The Polygraph (01:00:33) Dentistry History (01:49:19) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! Go to https://surfshark.com/learneverything or use code LEARNEVERYTHING at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN! We also learn about: 2 truths and a lie, the jeremy kyle show, the first lie from the devil to eve (or when children first lie), the official stance of the podcast is lying is good and cool, deontic reasoning and theory of mind, flexible and explicit TOM, Ella aces the Sally-Anne test, discovering new advanced levels of lying, lying is normal for kids it’s not evil, lying is complex… but what if it wasn’t and we could just know, James Mackenzie’s original polygraph, the polygraph actually worked (just not for lying but for cardiology), sphygmomanometers, proto-feminist William Marston, back then just thinking women had a theory of mind made you a proto feminist, Tom falls down the rabbit hole of Marston’s feminism, what’s the difference between a lie you believe and the truth, Marston is the first to bring the polygraph to court in Frye vs the United States, the polygraphs turns into a one band band machine, Marston invented wonder woman and the lasso of truth, table the feminism of wonder woman another time, if corporations are people they should all go to therapy, polygraphs are still a 2 billion dollar industry, police firefighters and paramedics still take polygraphs, Caroline pre-empts the but, a polygraph is not a machine you need the interpreter, lying is useful, it’s fun to lie so who’s your favorite co-host, wow we can bond over private healthcare, dentistry asmr, tooth decay is from bacteria acid, stone age morocco acorn sweets, you can blame agriculture for cavities, fossilized plaque can give us an oral history, determining women did a job from paint in teeth, fuck I drank the paint water at least no one will know, did you say we were kissing the rats or was that my inner monologue, would you like to read the tooth worm poem? how could this possibly get to a tooth worm, most of recorded human history we believed in tooth worms, the earliest example of dentistry was a week ago, sorry it changed a week ago, an ancient beeswax filling, a 59,000 year old tooth hole, what’s a worse hyphenate than barber-surgeon, blacksmith barbers, traveling tooth pullers, so many jobs I’m glad don’t exist, a medieval dentist clown is literally someone’s worst nightmare, victorian job questionnaire, What The Eff is That, dental tools that look like weapons made in a dream, I didn’t realize until we got into this how much I hate teeth! the truth of my soul is private in Germany, Sources:The Emergence of Lying in Very Young ChildrenMarjorie Rhodes NPRSocial and Cognitive Correlates of Children's Lying BehaviorReview of Theory of Mind in ChilrenJames Mackenzie's "The Study of the Pulse"Mark Harris' Great Wired Piece on PolygraphsMatthew Brown's Deep Dive into Marston's FeminismJAAPL Frye v. United StatesCornell Law Frye StandardHarvard center for Law Brain and Behavior on the PolygraphScientific American on Lying ---National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial ResearchNational Library of Medicine: Microbiology of Dental Decay and Periodontal Disease2014 Paper: Earliest evidence for caries and exploitation of starchy plant foods in Pleistocene hunter-gatherers from MoroccoSciAm: Oral Mystery: Are Agriculture and Rats Responsible for Tooth Decay?NHGRI: Digging into the past to uncover the cause of our cavitiesWiki: Tooth WormSmithsonian: 6,500-Year Old Beeswax May Be Oldest Known Dental FillingNewScientist: Oldest dental filling is found in a Stone Age toothThe Guardian: Neanderthals Used Stone Drills to Treat Cavities 59,000 Years Ago, Tooth SuggestsWiki: Barber SurgeonBath Medical Museum: Teeth Pullers and Denture Makers2007 Paper: The Tooth Puller2025 Paper: Pierre FauchardScience Museum: Dental Pelican Science Museum: Dental Pelican for Tooth PullingScience Museum: Dental KeyBBC: When Blacksmiths Were DentistsScience Museum: Dental drillScience Museum: SyringeSpear: A Brief History of Dental AnesthesiaBlog: The Gruesome History of Dental ImplantsBBC: The Dentures Made From the Teeth of Dead Soldiers at WaterlooScience Museum: Shade Guide Blog: What Are Dentures Made Of?Dentists Act 1878 Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn