Scientists in the mid-20th century bombarded plants with gamma radiation to create mutations that would yield stronger crops, which sounds like a mad scientist's fever dream but actually happened in atomic gardens around the world. Microwaves have been accused of causing cancer, zapping nutrients and possibly spying on you, though none of these conspiracies hold up under scrutiny and we're all still nuking leftovers anyway. And "phubbing" - snubbing someone by looking at your phone instead of paying attention to them - has become so prevalent that we've created connections across continents yet can't maintain eye contact with the person sitting across from us.
Today we're exploring a world where radiation gardening seemed like a reasonable agricultural strategy, kitchen appliances inspire paranoid conspiracy theories and smartphones have destroyed our ability to be present with actual humans.
Atomic Gardens: Gamma Ray Plant Experiments
Scientists in the mid-20th century created "atomic gardens" where they bombarded plants with gamma radiation to induce mutations, hoping to breed stronger, more resilient crops. Imagine rows of plants basking under the sporadic glow of radioactive isotopes while researchers waited to see what genetic chaos would emerge.
The idea was that radiation would scramble plant DNA enough to occasionally produce beneficial mutations - disease resistance, higher yields, better drought tolerance. It's the agricultural equivalent of throwing darts blindfolded and hoping one hits the bullseye. Some mutations were successful and are still used in crops today, but most were either useless or produced plants that looked like they belonged in a horror film. It's a quirky example of human ingenuity driving us to the brink of science fiction, with lessons learned about both nature's resilience and the unpredictability of science without careful consideration.
Microwave Conspiracies: Fear of What We Don't Understand
Microwaves have been accused of causing cancer, destroying nutrients and possibly functioning as listening devices, though none of these conspiracies hold up under scientific scrutiny. The fear partly comes from not fully understanding how electromagnetic radiation works - people hear "radiation" and immediately think Chernobyl rather than radio waves.
Microwaves heat food by making water molecules vibrate, which is considerably less sinister than the conspiracy theories suggest. They don't make food radioactive, they don't significantly reduce nutrients more than conventional cooking and they're definitely not government surveillance devices. Yet each phase of technology's evolution comes bundled with its own set of skeptical bystanders convinced that convenience must come with hidden dangers. Whether you're a fervent defender or cautious critic, microwaves have revolutionised how we cook and value time, becoming an inextricable part of modern kitchens despite the persistent paranoia.
Phubbing: Digital Distraction Destroying Connections
"Phubbing" - phone snubbing - describes the act of ignoring someone in front of you to look at your phone, and it's become the modern signature of distraction. It's a by-product of our tech-infused lives and a choice we make every time we prioritize the buzzing rectangle over the human in front of us. The accidental side glance at notifications has become so normalised that we barely register the social damage it causes. As William Blake once pondered, "what is now proved was once only imagined" - words that echo eerily in the context of technology's hold over our lives and attention spans.
From gamma-ray gardens to microwave paranoia and phone addiction ruining dinners - this week showed that human curiosity and technological advancement create both excellent outcomes and noteworthy disasters. We've learned to mutate plants with radiation, overcome irrational appliance fears, yet somehow can't put our phones down long enough to have a proper conversation.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
01:32 The Birth of Atomic Gardening
04:09 Muriel Howorth and the Atomic Gardening Society
12:25 The Legacy and Impact of Atomic Gardening
12:59 CJ Spies and the Atomic Golf Balls
13:39 Radiated Golf Balls: The New Sensation
14:04 Introducing the Food Babe
14:48 Microwaves and Nutrient Destruction
17:17 Microwaves and Radiation Exposure
19:57 Microwaved Water and Negative Energy
22:45 Phubbing: The Modern Social Dilemma
26:18 Wrapping Up: Listener Interaction and Feedback
SOURCES:
Atomic Gardening
https://proto.life/2021/05/a-short-history-of-atomic-gardening/
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/03/atomic-gardening-breeding-plants-with.html
http://www.atomicgardening.com/1966/03/01/whatever-happened-to-the-atomic-garden/
https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/peppermintkings/chapter/global-peppermint/
Microwave Conspiracies
https://www.vox.com/2015/4/7/8360935/food-babe
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf970670x
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200714-is-it-safe-to-microwave-food
Phubbing
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563218302978
-
[00:00:00]
[00:00:04] WILL: It is time for a little bit of science. I'm will grant an associate professor in science communication at the Australian National University.
[00:00:13] ROD: and I'm Rod Lambert. I'm a 30 year science communication veteran with a mind of a teenage boy.
[00:00:19] WILL: and today. Well, we've been at the Beach Large Hadron Collider.
[00:00:23] ROD: Yeah. Drinking in swimming cocktails. In fact, I'm still there. I dunno where you
[00:00:28] WILL: are of, uh, isotopes and science and stuff like that. So rather than giving you our regular pile of science, we've
[00:00:35] ROD: saved you something delicious. We've been scrolling away little snippets throughout the millennium and you're gonna get a bunch of those right now.
[00:00:42] It's gonna be fab.
[00:00:43] WILL: Enjoy.
[00:00:48] ROD: This is both new and also a little, a little callback to our, distant roots when we first started podcasting. Variations of this show, it's kind of about evolution and how evolution, you know, needs to be sped up. It's also kind of about other stuff. So post World War ii, Adams for Peace.
[00:01:04] WILL: Oh, I was reading about Atoms for Peace.
[00:01:06] Were you really? Oh, I told you about it the other week, or a little bit about it,
[00:01:08] ROD: Yeah. And you talk about, you know, peaceful use of nuclear explosions. Many episodes ago in the wholesome show, so there's one angle on this. In 1950s, governments, scientists, they wanted to show that nuclear tech wasn't just about bombing stuff, as we know very well.
[00:01:21] So the idea was to use radiation for peaceful purposes, not bombs, in this case. Just radiation. Yeah. Medicine. Yep. Food preservation. Yep. And farming. Yeah. So this is why. 1950, a new term appeared in the English vocabulary Atomic Garden.
[00:01:37] WILL: Mm.
[00:01:39] ROD: So it's around 1920s stuff like this was going Yeah.
[00:01:42] Muriel's gonna come in here. So this is just a snippet of this. 1920s. So the, the word turned up in the 1950s, 1920s. A guy called Lewis Staler was a crop scientist in Missouri, university of Missouri. He started zapping maize and Bali with x-rays to see what would happen.
[00:01:57] And it turned out they grew in weird [00:02:00] new colors and stripes and stuff. Hey,
[00:02:01] WILL: you got colors and stripes.
[00:02:03] ROD: know. I know, like, stop there. You, you've had a win. Didn't turn you into a mutant. It's great. then, then there's heaps of versions since then, but my favorite that kind of linked into atomic gardening was 1949 Brookhaven National Labs, Rhode Island.
[00:02:16] They established a gamma garden. They used Cobalt 60. And Cobalt 60 comes up a lot in this Cobalt 60 is the magic isotope.
[00:02:24] WILL: Should I know something about Cobalt 60? Yeah,
[00:02:25] ROD: Yeah. It's an isotope of a radioactive material So in the middle of the field of a, a field of a concentric circles of plants, so spaced out further and further from a core of Cobalt 60.
[00:02:36] Nice.
[00:02:36] And in some of these guns,
[00:02:37] what
[00:02:37] WILL: your ground zero in the middle. Exactly. And then your ground plus
[00:02:40] one,
[00:02:40] ROD: Yeah. Yeah. And you slowly move them out to see, you know, how strong and how weird the effects are. And they put 'em in a, like a cylinder or a tube. So when people had to come in and tender the gardens, you'd drop it underground.
[00:02:49] Oh yeah.
[00:02:49] So, so perfectly safe. A thousand percent safe, give or take a thousand percent. and what they basically were saying, look, we had all kinds of plants, strawberries, sugar, maples X, Y, Z, tobacco, tomatoes, you name it. And they basically, as they claimed it, had their genomes rebuilt.
[00:03:04] WILL: Right.
[00:03:05] Okay.
[00:03:05] ROD: is not untrue. So that was a nice version that started to lead to this notion of atomic gardening. So basically the goal of atomic gardening induced random mutations in crops looking for super plants.
[00:03:17] but you know, to be resistant to pest diseases, drought,
[00:03:20] WILL: So it's a little bit random, just a ta like, like it's a little bit, I mean, shoot 'em with some mutant and stuff.
[00:03:25] Yeah. Let's see what we get. And, and of all the possible effects, let's hope it's resistant to pests.
[00:03:30] ROD: hope any one of a billion options is vaguely positive. It's basically take anything to do a genetic manipulation, put it in a shotgun and go,
[00:03:39] WILL: I feel like, I feel like it's waiting around for your X-Men character.
[00:03:42] Yeah. Like, like that has the exact power that you need to, I, I, I don't know.
[00:03:46] ROD: Not even exact. Any power that's positive. Yeah. No. A any power. Yeah. As opposed to being turned into slush and dying or getting, becoming a tumor
[00:03:53] WILL: or, or a mutation that makes it worse. Or, or
[00:03:56] ROD: or at least stripe positive. Yeah. Like stripe corn or something.
[00:03:59] [00:04:00] So yeah, engineering, genetic engineering with a shotgun, I think is the best way to put it. That's fine for scientists, but this is where we bring in. What about the regular folks? What about people who'd like to do it themselves? And you brought this name up, Muriel. Hoi.
[00:04:12] WILL: Yes.
[00:04:13] ROD: So Mira was born 1892 in England.
[00:04:15] She wasn't a scientist. She had no formal training, but
[00:04:17] WILL: Hey, hey. She had no formal training. No, fine. Doesn't make her not a scientist, man. Yeah.
[00:04:22] ROD: So she was like a writer, atomic evangelist.
[00:04:24] She loved the atomic era and she thought it's gonna, basically the nuclear age would bring humanity up to the level of the gods. Fantastic. And so she got to visit one of these gamma gardens.
[00:04:34] Yep.
[00:04:35] And she thought, Hmm, this is gonna be good. So 1959, she started the Atomic Gardening Society. The idea was growing movement to bring atomic energy and experimentation into the lives of ordinary people. And she says, this is Muriel. I now felt that by some stroke of luck, which is difficult to ascribe to chance.
[00:04:53] So nuclear is also about, I don't know, luck of the gods. I've been given the opportunity so much long form to bring science right into the homes of the people. I organized a society to coordinate and safeguard the interests of in capitals atomic mutation experimenters, who would work as one body to help science produce more food more quickly for more people and progress horticultural mutation,
[00:05:15] WILL: that sounds lovely.
[00:05:15] It's lovely. I mean, apart from all the risks, but, but fine.
[00:05:18] ROD: So she self published a book called Atomic Gardening. So they needed seeds. Where'd they get the seeds? Do you know where they got the
[00:05:24] WILL: seeds?
[00:05:24] Seeds are easy to get. I think the nuclear bit's, the hard
[00:05:27] ROD: bit irradiated seeds.
[00:05:28] WILL: okay. All right.
[00:05:29] ROD: She didn't have the irradiation
[00:05:30] WILL: stuff.
[00:05:30] No, see, see, I think that would be the tough bit. Seeds you can get from
[00:05:34] ROD: Bunning seeds. well, not then, and not in the uk.
[00:05:36] WILL: so where do you get the irradiated
[00:05:37] ROD: Well, there was an American, American guy called, CJ spies. PS with an S at the beginning. Spies, maybe it's spies. So he was in Tennessee. He was a dentist. He had a license from the Atomic Energy Commission to have Cobalt 60. '
[00:05:52] probably something he used for some versions of radiotherapy, but for some reason he had it.
[00:05:56] So he put it in a cinder block, like a big old brick and he put trays of seeds into [00:06:00] it and let them Okay. copulate.
[00:06:03] and Muriel started to get seeds from him and she became the guy in England for CJ Spears atom blasted seeds.
[00:06:11] WILL: Did he sell them as CJ Spears?
[00:06:13] ROD: Adam blasted seeds?
[00:06:15] WILL: I would, I would wear that as a hat.
[00:06:17] Like
[00:06:17] that sounds awesome.
[00:06:18] ROD: I want merch from this guy, like I big time
[00:06:20] WILL: that's way cooler than, than I don't care about your, your weird stripe crops.
[00:06:25] ROD: No, I want atom blasted seeds. So apparently by 1960, they reckon his firm had basically via Muriel shipped over three and a half million seeds,
[00:06:34] WILL: three and a half
[00:06:35] ROD: to the UK via her Atomic Gardening society.
[00:06:38] look at the packet, I mean, the packet's spectacular. It's got all kinds of good stuff on
[00:06:42] WILL: it.
[00:06:42] Atomic
[00:06:43] ROD: Yeah, atomic energized. I won't read it all, but there are bits that I love, like one of the headings.
[00:06:47] What does radiation do? Gamma rays tend to quote, shake up the normal balance system of embryos inside the plant. The changes may take more than one year to manifest themselves. Therefore, caps do not destroy stunted plants.
[00:07:01] WILL: Ah,
[00:07:02] ROD: The stunted plants may contain desirable changes when they, again, regain the hereditary balance in subsequent generations.
[00:07:08] Another heading, will everyone find changes? We do not know. We have radiated these seeds in and a capital's attempt to produce changes. And only by growing these seeds can you determine if you have a change. This is the challenge we offer you. What can you discover? No one knows, and it goes on from there.
[00:07:26] It could be good. Maybe something good, maybe something bad no one knows, and it goes on and on. Including how to conduct your experiment, plant them, see what happens. Would you mind letting us know? It goes on and on and on. So anyone who joins the society, the Atomic Gardening Society is given six free irradiated peanuts. And that means they're eligible to try for the Muriel Howorth Peanut Prize
[00:07:46] WILL: Uhhuh
[00:07:47] ROD: First prize is an engraved Silver Bowl. who determines the winner. There is an advisory board. They were charged with assessing meritorious work, comparing useful results with those in America. So the palms versus the Americans determining the value of [00:08:00] various growth developments in order to award certificates, prize of merit to be awarded at the annual Atomic Plant mutation symposium.
[00:08:07] WILL: Really?
[00:08:07] Yeah.
[00:08:07] ROD: Yeah. At the Royal Horticultural Society Hall,
[00:08:10] WILL: bring your peanuts, bring
[00:08:11] ROD: your peanuts, and whatever else you want. So the, highly credible judges. This is written about one of them, one of the more famous, although Britain's Atomic Garden Club had enthusiastically irradiated seeds for years, nothing compared to the resilient new strains of vegetables and wild flowers emerging from a Saint Hill X-ray laboratory. This is in England. Indeed, visitors would liken it to an alchemical process where a hundred years of horticultural breeding was affected in a matter of hours. the secret lay with that gentle bombardment of soft radiation to rearrange the genetic blueprint of the seeds, gentle bombardment, soft radiation.
[00:08:44] It's like a hug or you know, warm breeze on a, on a cool day. The result was a veritable explosion of tomatoes on the truss and all as dutifully reported in the First Garden News feature on Dr. Hubbard's Horticultural Miracles. Dr. Hubbard was one of the men on the panel of Esteem Judges. He was a pioneer in radiation.
[00:09:03] His full name is El Ron Hubbard.
[00:09:05] WILL: Oh, really? Yep. Huh.
[00:09:07] ROD: So El Ron Hubbard is of course a self-proclaimed nuclear scientist, author of the book All About Radiation and the founder of the Church of Scientology.
[00:09:13] WILL: That's interesting.
[00:09:14] ROD: interesting. Yeah, so Saint Hill was his property in the uk
[00:09:18] WILL: So he was a, he was uh, mutating plants before he
[00:09:21] ROD: was, well
[00:09:22] before or as well. As well,
[00:09:24] And he, um, this, this side is too good to pass up. So the, the Scientologists, or as we call them, the sci-fi, when I worked for a company owned by Scientologists years ago, they have an E-meter, the Electrometer, which helps you understand your emotions and the effects they have.
[00:09:37] And so basically hook it up to people. You put them in pain, I like that quote. Put them in pain. And then you get particular readings related to the pain. So then he hooks it up to his tomatoes.
[00:09:47] WILL: Well, who wouldn't
[00:09:48] obviously
[00:09:49] And what did he discover?
[00:09:50] ROD: Jams and nail into the tomato. Okay. Same readings as humans when they're in pain, really. Therefore, obviously the plants showed indications of extreme anxiety and fear of
[00:09:59] WILL: So [00:10:00] well look, science has moved on and we know that plants do have some
[00:10:04] ROD: fear of death.
[00:10:05] WILL: I don't know if it's fear of death. I think
[00:10:07] ROD: uh, Extreme anxiety,
[00:10:08] WILL: screaming pain, maybe just a little bit. And maybe, maybe they have pain.
[00:10:12] I just put it on a rock and, and then hit a nail into it and
[00:10:15] ROD: Oh, good idea.
[00:10:15] WILL: that just gimme a real neutral
[00:10:17] ROD: source. That'll be the
[00:10:17] WILL: problem. is his meter accurately measuring pain or is it
[00:10:20] ROD: something I've seen an e-meter.
[00:10:22] It's fricking garbage. You can do it like the, the kids science shows do it with a bunch of potatoes and people holding hands and you get a battery out of it. It's garbage. So anyway, that's the part of the credibility of the judging panel. So. Mural claimed in the life of what she'd done. Thousand mutation experimenters, including retired non-government, employed geneticists, science masters, plant breeders, and pure amateurs who at their meetings would wear blue badges because the masters and the judges would wear gold badges.
[00:10:50] She also claimed she got these progress data cards from Greece, Australia, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Holland. of these uh, records have been found, but apparently they exist somehow.
[00:10:59] WILL: So we don't know. Are there, are there plants out there
[00:11:02] ROD: from them particularly? It's hard to say.
[00:11:04] 'cause So she basically, she was 74 when she started this society at 59, and she was getting slower and blinder and stuff. So in 1962, she handed over to a new president. He was a retired geneticist, t gray doctor who specialized in tomatoes. Mm-hmm.
[00:11:18] WILL: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:18] She
[00:11:19] ROD: gave him all the records, but they still can't find them.
[00:11:21] So they probably exist, but maybe they don't. 1962 gardeners were still reporting weird suburban garden things like giant distortions, strange smelling das and sweet peas that flowered in mid-November. Mm-hmm.
[00:11:34] Which is apparently weird. Um, records after 1963, they can't find shit. Miel dies in 1971. Was there a legacy you ask Kinder as a whole, it didn't live up to expectations. I love the quote here. Most mutative changes were undesirable and all were unpredictable. Yeah. So you couldn't get clear, perfect data. Of course. 'cause a bunch of amateurs at simpler times, et cetera. The, when they did reach out allegedly to scientific [00:12:00] establishments, they were rejected.
[00:12:02] A lot of the seeds did not germinate at all. And if they did, they didn't grow. Great stuff.
[00:12:06] WILL: mean, it comes back to the point about evolution, that the mutation happens all the time.
[00:12:10] Mm-hmm. But that the number of negative mutations is so much bigger
[00:12:14] ROD: it's non-zero.
[00:12:15] WILL: that will either increase fitness in the environment or give us something that we want, in a plant. Like it's
[00:12:21] ROD: Yeah. And they're not wrong. They're, they're, they're speeding it up.
[00:12:24] WILL: Yeah,
[00:12:24] ROD: that's true. But there are some actual legacies. So apparently mint oil from particular peppermint plant is really common, you know, mint and peppermint. But apparently there's one called the, the Todd's Mitchum Cultivar, which was actually nuked up, or how did they put it?
[00:12:39] Thermal neutron irradiation used to mess with that. And apparently that's still, that's one of the most popular and wilt resistant cult viles of mint in the world. It doesn't wilt under bad circumstances. So that was nuked in, it was 1 71 and the Rio Star grapefruit improved the color. So there were some good
[00:12:56] WILL: results. Thanks Mira.
[00:12:57] ROD: I know, but I'm just gonna give you a post credit scene. What happened to CJ Spies? The, the.
[00:13:01] WILL: the
[00:13:02] ROD: Seed provider 1962. There's an advertisement from him.
[00:13:06] WILL: His
[00:13:06] ROD: atom blasted seeds had disappeared, but in 63 he was using Cobalt 60 again, cased in the same cinder block to radiate golf balls.
[00:13:14] WILL: Are you serious?
[00:13:15] ROD: Are you serious? I'm serious. So New York Times ad 1963, your golf game will be wonderfully improved with this amazing, energized golf
[00:13:21] WILL: ball.
[00:13:22] Oh my God. So cool.
[00:13:24] ROD: you too can golf with pride, you can thrill to the satisfaction and pleasure of stepping up to the tee and getting off long drives with professional consistency.
[00:13:33] WILL: That's amazing. Yes.
[00:13:34] ROD: The oos and ahs of the onlookers when you tee off will increase your golfing pleasure 100 fold.
[00:13:39] WILL: I don't care about the science. I just want
[00:13:41] some, I just want some radiated golf balls.
[00:13:43] ROD: Energized Golf balls are the new long distance sensation of the golfing world.
[00:13:47] so. SPEs went from.
[00:13:49] Fairly good to absolute greatness in the golfing world. That's why you hear
[00:13:53] WILL: about let's, let's assume not many of them sold.
[00:13:55] Are there any out there? God, I wanna
[00:13:57] ROD: love to know, like, do you have a CoBoat 60 infused [00:14:00] golf ball out there? If you do, we will, will personally send you a thousand dollars,
[00:14:03]
[00:14:04] ROD: So, you heard of the Food Babe?
[00:14:07] WILL: No.
[00:14:08] ROD: Vanni Hardy, that's her actual name, but she's known as the Food Babe Online.
[00:14:13] WILL: Okay.
[00:14:14] ROD: She's a management consultant, was turned into a consumer activist, she blogs to wage war on toxins in our foods. Okay. From, you know, hazardous chemicals.
[00:14:25] WILL: like, is that a part of
[00:14:26] ROD: this look from the few shots I looked at,
[00:14:29] WILL: and I'm just saying, I'm just saying let's have truth in, in online, nicknames.
[00:14:33] ROD: there are more hideous people out there than her.
[00:14:35] That's right. So, um, she's really into the whole, you know, all these things out in the world, in the everyday consumer world are terrible for you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad.
[00:14:45] She's a little bit, let's say, passionate. So she took down this article back in 2012, but I read it and I thought, I, I have to talk about this. It's called Why It's Time to Throw out your Microwave. Okay?
[00:14:56] WILL: Okay,
[00:14:57] ROD: Now, I'm not gonna read the whole article, but I'm gonna give you a few snippets. So one of the subheadings,
[00:15:02] WILL: microwaves destroy
[00:15:04] ROD: the nutrient value of your food,
[00:15:07] WILL: Okay?
[00:15:08] ROD: So it goes on live. Healthy, nutritious food can become dead in a matter of seconds when you use a microwave.
[00:15:14] WILL: This is weirdly late. There wasn't there a fair bit of anti microwave hysteria in the eighties?
[00:15:18] ROD: Oh, fuck it. When my parents first got one, they were like $9 million for a thing.
[00:15:23] WILL: size. Yeah. And you have to put lead, lead in front
[00:15:25] ROD: yeah, yeah. You had to wear like an x-ray technician's apron, and then all the kids had to go into another suburb and then you kind of heat up a, a glass of milk and run away. so yeah, it kills everything immediately within seconds. Uh, we are the only species on the planet that destroys the nutrient content of our food before eating it,
[00:15:42] WILL: We so, well, I just gotta say, we are the only species on the planet to use microwave. Like,
[00:15:49] ROD: look at you in your details. What are you A scientist in the book, she quotes, health begins in the colon.
[00:15:57] WILL: Oh. Ah. well
[00:15:59] ROD: well it [00:16:00] begins in many places. Why not the colon
[00:16:01] WILL: as well? It's one of the places in which,
[00:16:03] ROD: where do you keep your health?
[00:16:04] WILL: I keep it all over me.
[00:16:06] ROD: I just keep mine in the colon. Just in the, well, I've read the book, Dr. Group. Maybe it's grow up. He says that microwave oven decays and changes the molecular structure of food by the process of radiation changes and decays the molecular structure of food. Radiation breaks down any vitamins and minerals in the food and changes its natural structure.
[00:16:25] WILL: Mm.
[00:16:26] ROD: Your body cannot handle these irradiated molecules and they eventually weaken your immune and digestion. And don't provide you with a proper nutrition in case you're wondering. Also, it's widely known that vitamin B12 becomes completely inactive, once heated in a microwave. Actually, best studies I could find appreciable loss, maybe 30 to
[00:16:46] WILL: So, so hang on, you, you're telling me you went and read the studies to, to joust with
[00:16:51] ROD: cut? No, I was just
[00:16:52] WILL: to joust with this 2012
[00:16:54] ROD: This 2012 post, no, because you down, because you pick on me for not having any
[00:16:57] WILL: facts. No, I'm just, I'm just, I'm, it's, it's a good use of your time to, to read a deleted
[00:17:01] ROD: I did it for you.
[00:17:02] WILL: and then correct it.
[00:17:04] ROD: Only 'cause of the way this ends. And remember, this article is called, or this, this sec segment of this show is called, speaking of Hitler. I,
[00:17:11] WILL: I didn't remind
[00:17:11] ROD: me. Yeah. This is called Speaking of Hitler. This comes under the title, speaking of Hitler microwaves. This is the second one.
[00:17:17] Microwaves provide unnecessary daily exposure to radiation. I cannot, she says knowingly use a microwave considering they're slowly destroying my cells. Yeah. She could use 'em by accident.
[00:17:29] WILL: I have accidentally microwaved. Oops. Oops.
[00:17:33] ROD: According to the book, cancer is not a Disease. Okay. It's a survival mechanism, or as she wrote it, a sial mechanism, but she means survival.
[00:17:42] When you stand in front of a radar device, you will start perspiring slash cooking from the inside out, just like food is cooked in the microwave oven. Okay? Sure. If you stand in front of a radar device, the heat is generated by
[00:17:55] WILL: the, but a microwave is basically the same as a a, a full radar [00:18:00] device. A hundred percent the same. Yeah. Okay.
[00:18:01] ROD: I mean, every time you turn on a ra, a microwave planes crash or are diverted towards your house. Yes, and are away from it.
[00:18:08] WILL: The
[00:18:09] ROD: heat is generated by the rapid movement of molecules and the breaking down of molecular bonds. In case you're wondering, each year, millions of birds are killed when they get too close to or sit on cell towers, cell phones.
[00:18:21] This is literally what it says. So this is what I love about this. Woman's still going. She just took this post down and apparently the same can happen to the human body when it is exposed to this type of radiation on a regular basis. So the trick is, don't stand in front of radar towers as far as I can take away.
[00:18:35] After all, human cells are made of molecules. In case you didn't know. And molecular bonds are broken and destroyed when exposed to radiation, so be aware of that.
[00:18:44] WILL: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:45] ROD: Another heading, microbes can create severe health issues. The more dead food people eat, the more calories they consume trying to get the nutrition their body needs.
[00:18:53] So if you keep eating this immediately, instantly dead in food, you'll eat more. A Swiss study by a dude called Hans, he found significant disturbing changes in the blood of individuals consuming microwave milk and vegetables. The blood particularly, it's a good study, eight volunteers,
[00:19:11] WILL: uhhuh
[00:19:12] ROD: Uhhuh all ate.
[00:19:14] WILL: they
[00:19:14] ROD: ate various combinations of the same food, but cooked in different ways.
[00:19:17] Uh, this is science.
[00:19:19] WILL: So we broken down into two groups or more, or uh,
[00:19:22] ROD: uh,
[00:19:22] diff It seems to be two, but it's difficult to tell. Yeah. 'cause it wasn't quite as well referenced as this show. For example, all foods were cooked in the microwave. All foods that were cooked in the microwave caused changes in the blood. The hemoglobin levels were decreased, and overall white cells and cholesterol levels increased. But the doctor found on these eight volunteers of this rigorous study, he was actually able to cure people who were diagnosed with chronic fatigue by having them literally throw out their microwaves.
[00:19:51] WILL: My God.
[00:19:51] ROD: So this is good to know, but here's the best bit.
[00:19:55] Punchline as it were. Dr. Maro Ito, he's famous for taking [00:20:00] pictures of various types of water and the crystals that they formed in his book called Hidden Messages in
[00:20:06] WILL: Water. Mm-hmm.
[00:20:07] ROD: So one of the reviews, or one of the summaries of the book, he uses high speed photography. He discovers that crystals formed in frozen water change when specific concentrated thoughts are directed at them.
[00:20:18] WILL: Right?
[00:20:18] ROD: He found that water from Clear springs and water that has been exposed to loving words shows brilliant, complex, colorful snowflake patterns. Had you, had you heard of this before? I had heard of
[00:20:28] WILL: this. I haven't heard of the Speak to your water.
[00:20:30] ROD: Oh, yeah. It's, it's great. In contrast, polluted water or water exposed to negative thoughts, forms incomplete asymmetric
[00:20:37] WILL: negative thoughts in the vicinity or negative thoughts? At the water? At the water? Like you're, you're,
[00:20:41] ROD: gotta think it out. The
[00:20:42] WILL: You are shitty water.
[00:20:43] ROD: Oh. Not, not being, not, not directed as in your bad water, but. Evil, ugly things. Here's a picture of a poo that's infected. Just think about that at the
[00:20:52] WILL: water. I mean, if you're a publisher, I, I mean, I get you want to get some stuff out there, you do. But when someone comes and tells you that, that directing your thoughts at the water will change it.
[00:21:00] Don't. Do you want to go, maybe I should test this
[00:21:04] ROD: again. Did you not hear Dr. Mato Moto
[00:21:08] WILL: Doctor. Okay.
[00:21:10] ROD: Okay. And we all know that's a difficult thing to get. So the implications of this, uh, research apparently created new awareness of how we can positively impact the earth and our personal health.
[00:21:20] But you know what he found? You'll be excited. Water that was microwaved did not form beautiful crystals. Oh, instead,
[00:21:28] WILL: how, how have you got his method here, just so I know.
[00:21:31] ROD: He microwaved it and then used high speed photography. Okay. So he pushed the finger really fast on his iPhone. Instead, the water formed crystals like those formed when exposed to negative thoughts or beliefs.
[00:21:43] WILL: Jesus Christ.
[00:21:44] ROD: And here's the smoking gun for microwaves. It turns out microwave water produced a sim, a simmer physical structure to when the word Satan and Hitler were repeatedly exposed to the water.
[00:21:55] WILL: Jesus Christ. Why do you tell me these
[00:21:57] ROD: things? But of course, [00:22:00] the food, babe, she's not an idiot. She says, look, this fact might be a bit hokey for some people, but I wanted to include it because sometimes the things we can't see with a naked eye or even fully comprehend, could be the most powerful way to unlock spontaneous healing.
[00:22:17] WILL: Of course they could.
[00:22:18] ROD: Weird. She took that post down, though. I wanna see what she left up because, and I didn't get a chance, because, you know, time was pressing. But anyway, so if you microwave water, it's like saying Hitler to a glass of water and or Satan repeatedly, you are welcome.
[00:22:34] Hey, you asked for a new word. Yes. You wanted, you wanted to learn. Learn a new word. This is not No, no, no. I like it when you learn a new word 'cause it's freaking adorable. Oh, I like, 'cause I know all the words. Okay. Yeah. Fair enough. Well, I did actually learn a new word for this one. phubbing. So phubbing.
[00:22:48] phubbing. P-H-U-B-B-I-N-G. Hooing. Hooing, uh, combination snubbing and phone. The act, the phone snubbing. Yeah. So you're not snubbing the phone, but you're snubbing someone else via the vehicle of the phone. Of the phone. You know, we've all had that experience. Nope. Where we're sitting having a chat and someone just goes, I just gotta look at my text messages.
[00:23:08] I'm, I'm just gonna scroll on Twitter every time unless we're recording, every time we hang out. Unless we're recording every time. No, man. I give you full eye contact all the time. Like I, I, while somehow still being able to pay attention to your phone. I know how you do it. So phubbing, you know, is that behavior that many of us have seen, uh, where you snub someone by looking at your phone?
[00:23:26] Yeah. Uh, the fbe Oh, the in fbb And, and the in fbb. The N fbb. Yeah. And the Fub, uh, obviously are the two parts of the relationship. Fuck Don don't make it sexist. A f her is not sexist. Bur sounds masculine to me. It does not. I thought you spoke German. You are the one. No, we we're talking English on this podcast.
[00:23:48] This is, this is Bonafide and English language podcast. Mm-hmm. I think nine outta 10 words. A couple more Fs to come. Yep. But anyway, uh, some, uh, psychological researchers said, obviously, uh, we [00:24:00] need a generic scale of phubbing and a generic scale of being phubbed. Of course we do. To measure this behavior.
[00:24:05] Yes. To see, to see how much you do it. Or how much did make a phubbometer. Yeah, phubbometer You know, there needs to be a phubbometer. We finally found our path to riches. It will involve mercury, gentlemen, unleash the forter. So it's a scale that, uh, basically either, either side. Uh, measures. Mm-hmm. How much, uh, how much, uh, you do the, the act of phubbing, uh, in doing the active of phubbing?
[00:24:36] Um, there's a variety of questions that you might, that you might ask of someone. I feel anxious if my phone is not nearby. I can't stand leaving my phone alone, um, leaving my phone alone because it misses me. It misses me. I would rather pay attention to my phone than talk to others. this is like, you're just reading a list from your not me personal motto.
[00:24:56] No, no. You've grown outta that. It's true. No, I, I'm grown up now. Yeah, you are. Uh, yeah. Uh, and then on the other side, others seem to check their phones for messages and social media updates. others seem like they have awareness of their surroundings because of their, uh, lose awareness of their surroundings because of their phone use.
[00:25:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, that kind of thing. Yep. There's a nice, uh, measure in here of, here's two new words for you. Mm. Fubbing, which is, uh, fubbing. Fubbing, uh, is that p apostrophe phubbing? No, it's actually PP, well, P-P-H-U-B-B-I-N-G. So there's two P's at the front of the word. That's where you are. You are phubbing, your spouse, your partner, or a significant other.
[00:25:34] Oh, naughty. Naughty or fubbing. Uh, where your boss is phubbing, you, you, because they're, they're in, in, in meetings and they're just scrolling. So, um, those are very, the, the second one is very specific. Yeah. Interesting thing about this research is, it's not terribly old, but it's been cited hundreds of times.
[00:25:54] Mm-hmm. So people are out there measuring how much people are phubbing each other. Being fobbed and how much [00:26:00] it's ruining society. And I am well down with that research and I'm glad that we're counting it. Well look, um, if you're listening and obviously you are, 'cause you can hear me, um, give us your ideas for a barometer because it's gonna happen.
[00:26:11] We're gonna build one, it will happen. Yeah, it.
[00:26:18] WILL: Well, that was your little bit of science for the week.
[00:26:20] ROD: holiday edition. You're special by the pool wearing a bikini edition.
[00:26:24] WILL: But because you're on holiday, you know that you still have the power to give us the rating that you need to give us. Yeah,
[00:26:31] ROD: seven stars on every app. Even things that don't do podcasts.
[00:26:34] Yeah.
[00:26:34] WILL: Go out there and write it on like a recipe app
[00:26:36] ROD: an Uber and Yelp. Is it Yelp still a thing?
[00:26:39] WILL: I think so. I'm
[00:26:40] ROD: I don't know. I'm at a restaurant where Don't ye
[00:26:41] WILL: listener, if you've got some topics that you want us to explore,
[00:26:45] ROD: tell Will.
[00:26:46] WILL: How would you tell Will his
[00:26:47] ROD: number is? 0 4 0 5 oh. Uh, cheers. At a little bit of science Do com
[00:26:54] WILL: au.
[00:26:55] ROD: au
[00:26:55] WILL: Do that. We want your stories.
[00:26:57] ROD: we wanna hear from you.
[00:26:58] WILL: Lovely listener. Enjoy the pina colada.
[00:27:01] ROD: Oh and the
[00:27:03] WILL: col. Pin colada.
[00:27:04] ROD: Pini Kaia Pina Pia
[00:27:05] WILL: Pina Kaia of
[00:27:06] ROD: of the Clade
[00:27:07] WILL: Penai. Cate.
