This week’s episode is a reminder that humans will try to monetise anything that sits still long enough and nature will out-weird us without even trying. We bounce from dinosaur bones being treated like a blue-chip asset, to an AI-powered school model that claims it can compress learning into a couple of hours, a snake that cosplays as a spider to catch dinner, and finally to the slightly grim realisation that even crime has seasonal habits.
Dinosaur Bones, Hedge Funds, And The Ethics Of Owning History
Let’s start with the investment advice nobody asked for: fossils. Dinosaur skeletons have become a niche, high-end market where the buyers range from celebrities to corporate types who look at a T. rex femur and think, “diversification.” Fossils are now a “real asset” like gold or art, except this one used to be a living animal and is also a piece of shared human history.
The Spider-Tailed Viper
Then we head to Iran for one of the most ridiculous hunting strategies on the planet: the spider-tailed viper. This snake has a tail that looks like a spider, and it uses it like a little puppet to lure birds close enough to strike. For a while, people argued whether it was just a weird evolutionary flourish or an actual tactic, and the answer is: it’s absolutely a tactic, and it works. It’s also a nice reminder that behaviour doesn’t fossilise, so some of the smartest adaptations never show up in the bone record.
Alpha School
Then we dig into ‘Alpha School’, an education model that promises to break the traditional mould by using AI to compress core learning into a fraction of the usual time. The headline is basically: kids can knock out the essentials in a couple of hours, then spend the rest of the day building skills, exploring interests, and getting personalised support. But it also sets off the same internal alarm as any big promise in tech: is this real learning, or is it productivity theatre dressed up as innovation? We weigh the reports and individual experiences with a mix of curiosity and healthy scepticism, because “faster” isn’t automatically “better.”
Seasonal Crimes
Finally, we get into seasonal crime, which sounds like a depressing horoscope but claims. certain offences spike at certain times of year, and the patterns aren’t universal. Burglary tends to peak in winter in the UK, but in summer in North America, which tells you a lot about daylight, routines, and when people are likely to be away from home. The most seasonally distinctive crime, though, is bicycle theft, which reliably surges in summer because that’s when bikes are out, unlocked, and easiest to steal.
So that’s the week: dinosaur bones as alternative investments, a snake running one of the best lure-and-ambush operations in nature, and crime stats that confirm humans are creatures of habit.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
01:48 Record Fossil Auction Prices
05:36 Who Buys and Public Access
08:54 Is It a Good Investment
10:20 Spider Tailed Viper
16:31 Alpha School and Two Hour Learning
19:48 Social Media Grading
20:37 Unpaid Grit Assignments
21:46 Heart Rate Test
25:57 Crime Seasonality Explained
32:35 Biggest Seasonal Crime
SOURCES:
https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.70308
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43762-023-00094-x
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-should-a-dinosaur-cost/
https://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/2016/10/what-is-rapunzel-syndrome-and-why-do-some-people-eat-hair/
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-alpha-school-education-heart-monitor
https://buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/special-report-my-so-called-alpha
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Rod: [00:00:00] So as you know very well, there are heaps of investment opportunities out there these days, and there were many in the past. The old school ones, real estate, gold, never go out of style. Gold might, but you never know. Then you got your slightly more modern ones, your futures and your stock market related stuff.
Rod: Then the brand new kids on the block, your non-fungible tokens. You've heard of them. But there's a recent contender that's pretty niche because it costs a fortune and you can't ever make new ones, and also depending on who you talk to, this is a smart investment with a value that is less prone to volatility than many other options, or it's contributing to denying public access to irreplaceable pieces of our collective natural heritage.
Rod: And the investment is dinosaurs
Wil: It's time [00:01:00] for a little bit of science. I'm Will Grant. I'm an associate professor in science communication at the Australian National University.
Rod: And I'm, uh, Roderick G. Lambert. I'm a 30-year
Wil: science communication veteran with the mind of a teenage lad. And today, as well as investing in dinosaurs, we also have for you a cool new species.
Rod: I'll tell you about a very modern education.
Wil: And we also have a questions on notice that I will address for you, dear listener. Uh, just on that point, listener, if you have questions that you would ever like us to ponder, you can send it in-
Rod: You could ...
Wil: to our email address, which we sit there hovering over all the time.
Wil: It's cheers@alittlebitofscience.com.au.
Rod: Yeah.
Wil: Wait, investing in dinosaurs? Well,
Rod: to be clear, dinosaur skeletons.
Wil: Oh, no, I thought it would be like-
Rod: Not your Jurassics ...
Wil: yeah, Jurassic Parks.
Rod: Not your parks Jurassic. Anyway, dinosaur skeletons. So before the late 1990s, apparently a decent fossilized dinosaur skeleton would cost under a million US.
Rod: Bargain. Still a lot of money, but for paleontologists, scientific institutions, et cetera, you know, [00:02:00] some could cough it up, some couldn't Then 1997, the first one to crack a million bucks was a T-Rex called Sue
Wil: That's wild. Only in 1997 the... I, 'cause I- Yeah ... I imagined that, uh, you know, they were always pretty awesome.
Wil: Like-
Rod: Sure ...
Wil: like natural history museums. I, I'm not- Yeah ... assuming in the Victorian England that they paid a million pounds back in the day. No. But I did assume that they would value these things. They do. And, and they took work to get out.
Rod: They do.
Wil: But the first was in the 1990s
Rod: to crack a- First one to crack a million.
Wil: Mm.
Rod: Um, it actually got to 8.3
Wil: That cracked it by a lot.
Rod: Yeah. And there's a whole controversial story that involved the FBI and all kinds of shit running behind that skeleton. That
Wil: particular one
Rod: That one in particular. But yeah, eventually went to Chicago, the, the Field Museum in Chicago, 8.3 mil. So it was '97.
Rod: 2020, Stan the T-Rex-
Wil: Yeah ...
Rod: 31.8 million.
Wil: All right, all right. I can see the trajectory here.
Rod: What is it?
Wil: Up.
Rod: Yeah, you're right. 2024, Apex the name, the Stegosaurus, sold for [00:03:00] 44.6 million.
Wil: Point of order there.
Rod: Yeah
Wil: What do Stegosauruses eat? I thought they were, they were your plantasauruses.
Rod: Yeah, but the name was called...
Rod: They, they actually said, "This is Apex"
Wil: You, you, you can't have an apex plant eater.
Rod: Why
Wil: not? I mean, I, I could be wrong- Why not? ... on Stegosauruses. Why not? No, there is no apex plant eater.
Rod: Yeah. Yeah, they can actually Canadian red woods- ... from the top down. That's, that's apex plant eater.
Wil: All right.
Rod: I mean, apex the Stegosaurus probably couldn't do that, but that was- And so
Wil: how much for that?
Rod: 44.6 million.
Wil: Mm.
Rod: Then last month someone bought Gus, one of the most complete T-Rex skeletons ever found, 50.1
Wil: million. I hope you're in- involving a certain Hollywood actor in this story.
Rod: I wish I was.
Wil: Oh my God, I... 'Cause apparently Nicolas Cage is, is one of the world's- Of
Rod: course
Wil: he is ... biggest collectors of dinosaur skeletons.
Rod: That guy, that guy, like I've... There's, the, the phrase hit and miss was designed for his entire career. Um, that's, so that's the most expensive dinosaur fossil skeleton whatever ever sold.
Wil: So you're- 50.1 million ... talking I'm assuming pretty complete here. We've got- Yeah ... it's the whole [00:04:00] kit and caboodle and-
Rod: Gus is in good nick
Wil: and it's a good-looking one.
Rod: It's a fucking handsome T-Rex. So how do you price a fossil is one of the questions that comes up a lot.
Wil: Via auction.
Rod: You do via auction. So- There's a guy called Craig Kissick. He's the vice president of natural history at Heritage Auctions. That's gotta be an interesting job, natural history at Heritage Auctions.
Rod: I,
Wil: uh, we, uh, we watched an art auction the other day, the kids and I. And it, it wasn't- Man, your
Rod: kids are so lucky.
Wil: No, no, no, no. It wasn't, it wasn't Christie's in Paris where it's like we're doing the Mona Lisa and sh- It was, um, it was Australian art from the, um, first half of the 20th century. I assume it'd be great fun.
Wil: Like you- I'd be wa- You'd get
Rod: bored of that ... the things that would turn up. Yeah. And the bullshit artist you'd meet- Oh ... as well would be- Yeah, no ... phenomenal. So according to Craig, any collectible category that isn't graded and commoditized, it's gonna have its own unique set of rules, as you expect. So graded or
Wil: commoditized, are we talking like gold is graded and commoditized, or?
Rod: Yeah, or you know, certain kinds of furniture you can kind... You got comps and stuff like this. I think it makes it easier. But
Wil: it- So, so dinosaur [00:05:00] skeleton ... you
Rod: can,
Wil: you can- But you, but you can say it's in better condition or worse condition.
Rod: That's what he said. But- It's all about value ... yeah, this is what he's saying.
Rod: He's saying basically each fossil's unique. No dinosaur bone in his experience is the same as the other, which means the way they appraise them is the completeness of the fossil-
Wil: Yeah, fair ...
Rod: and what the last one sold for. That's it.
Wil: Yeah, okay. Yeah.
Rod: So that's all they can do. So that means that when Apex the Stegosaurus sold for 44 million, he says Stegosaurus is worth 44 million.
Wil: Simple as that. So, so, uh, there would be different species that haven't attained that. Like a T-Rex is probably a prestige skeleton- Sure ... but your Muttaburrasaurus is not quite there.
Rod: Well, they're boring, and they're just sort of... They're like weird ducks, right? Um, so who buys them? It's often not natural history people or museums.
Rod: It is people like celebrities and hedge fund managers and stuff like this. Yeah,
Wil: no, a hedge fund manager or... You can imagine in your corporate headquarters, having a big dinosaur in your lobby- Yeah ... is certainly a statement piece.
Rod: Yeah, like the Muttaburrasaurus.
Wil: A Muttaburrasaurus.
Rod: Invest with us, we've got whatever this is.
Wil: I, I don't know, international listeners, if you can hear the word Muttabur- [00:06:00] Muttaburrasaurus. It sounds like it's- Muttaburrasaurus ... an Australian just- Muttaburrasaurus ... mum- mumbling something. Muttaburrasaurus.
Rod: So, uh, billionaire Ken Griffith, a hedge fund guy, he bought Apex the Stegosaurus. So he's the one who spent 44 million.
Rod: Individually spent 44 million, but he loaned it to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, so that's, uh- That
Wil: just increases the value. That's not a loan ...
Rod: makes him of, of good value too. Makes-
Wil: Yeah, it's like, look at me- Wonderful altruist ... I am donating a giant anno- annoying thing to you that will increase in value because it is, is- Yeah
Wil: is in your museum for a little while. Yeah.
Rod: You're welcome.
Wil: Exactly. You're welcome. Look at how good I am. That kind of philanthropy, that shits me so hard. I mean, if you bought the Mona Lisa, like fine. Okay. It's like-
Rod: We don't need a big room for that ...
Wil: y- yeah, no, I get it. It can be seen in the, the special museum in New York and whatever.
Wil: Fine, but I just-
Rod: Not the Stegosaurus ...
Wil: so much of this is self-inter- interested philanthropy.
Rod: Are you suggesting a hedge fund manager billionaire might have self-interest at heart?
Wil: Oh, you got me there.
Rod: So, um, there's no obligation. Like, why would you give a shit? There's no [00:07:00] obligation for a private buyer to offer these up.
Rod: You know, they could keep them hidden. The scientific and cultural institutions would miss out, et cetera, et cetera. So like when Stan the T-Rex was bought, it disappeared for some five years from public view. Like they- Oh ... weren't sure where it was, but then it reappeared in Abu Dhabi in a museum of natural history.
Rod: So at least it's in a museum.
Wil: Oh, yeah.
Rod: And to be fair, a lot of the fossils that scientists and museums use come from commercial fossil hunters.
Wil: Yeah.
Rod: So I mean, and I get it. Many of these hunters work with museums, academics, collectors, et cetera, and they find the bones as the, it was very p- uh, pointedly pointed out ethically and legally.
Rod: But the mega prices mean everything's starting to, the, the market's heating up for your fossils illicit It's getting messy.
Wil: What's an illicit fossil?
Rod: Well, one that you're not allowed to go and get. Like, if it's on government land, for example- Oh ... you can't just go and hunt it, et cetera. They literally said they're seeing not only higher prices, but they're seeing more actual crime.
Rod: So paleontologists saying, "We, we saw fossils getting poached, including people being held at gunpoint as their-
Wil: Wow ...
Rod: as their bones are being [00:08:00] taken away," which is-
Wil: Oh, wow ...
Rod: a bit of a concern. So other than the widespread access, which is an issue of private collectors get them, the other concern is how they're stored and preserved- Mm
Rod: 'cause your, your Nicolas Cages might not be as up on how to
Wil: store- Uh, look, if it's not unique, you know, I don't know how many, uh, full specimens of X we have. If we've documented a Stegosaurus and there's a couple of holotypes out there-
Rod: Ooh, listen to you
Wil: I know, right? I know. 'Cause it's coming up in what I got.
Wil: Oh. You know? If you've got some holotypes out there that have been- Yeah ... well-documented and people can see them in the special museum of special, like- Then- ... e- example number 50-
Rod: You're like, "Just sort of those."
Wil: Yeah.
Rod: I- Yeah, look, it gets a bit boring, but I'm-
Wil: No, I'm saying, you know, people out there collect special rocks 'cause they like them.
Wil: Mm. Not all rocks should be in museums.
Rod: Like pet rocks.
Wil: Yeah. If the government said all rocks, no matter what- ... they gotta be in a museum, like- Can you
Rod: imagine? Going down to the local hardware store for a bag of pebbles would be rather expensive. So the question then becomes should you invest in your dino bone coins?
Rod: So at least one [00:09:00] economic analysis in this piece I read, comparing the prices of the most recently sold T-Rexes to returns on the S&P 500 over the same kind of period-
Wil: Uh-huh ...
Rod: the S&P crushes it.
Wil: But are these, are these recent T-Rexes coming on the market, or a T-Rex that was sold in 2000 and then resold in 2026?
Wil: I think that's what we wanna see. Do they increase in value? Th-
Rod: and, and that's what's not clear. The ones that I mentioned, I think are only first sales.
Wil: Yeah, okay. Yeah.
Rod: But so they're just
Wil: saying- Here's the problem ... you know. 'Cause there's more that will always come on the market. There are. Like, the thing about the Mona Lisa- Yeah
Wil: is there's only ever one Mona Lisa, so it's not diluted in value by another Mona Lisa coming into-
Rod: Someone, someone else did a painting, therefore-
Wil: No, well- ... this is
Rod: worthless ...
Wil: yeah. But it- Yeah ... it is a unique object, whereas while a dinosaur skeleton itself is moderately unique- Moderately ... it's not unique in the, in the same way as a pa- as a, as a- It's true
Wil: painting.
Rod: But they, um... you can't build new ones. I mean, you can find them if you're lucky.
Wil: But let's assume that there, there are more out there to be found. Like, but, but- There, there probably are ... but no one can assume there is more Mona Lisas out there. So not unique.
Rod: Yeah, [00:10:00] not, not entirely unique. I mean, uh, rare is fair.
Rod: They are rare, but they're not unique.
Wil: Yeah.
Rod: So I don't think you should run away and spend your 50 million necessarily on-
Wil: Okay, I won't ...
Rod: a really big M- Mammosaurus. Maybe do buy the Mona Lisa instead. But the bragging rights to have a giant Stegosaurus in your backyard, bragging rights
Wil: Well, I've got some, uh, bones news for you.
Rod: Bones news?
Wil: Bones news. Uh, this, this I'm listing under new cool species, because this is damn cool. Um-
Rod: It's just made of bones.
Wil: Well, no, bones is, um, is one of the things that it lacks in certain points. So a lot of animals use, um, mimicry as a strategy for- Mm-hmm ... you know, how they engage with the world.
Rod: Mm.
Wil: Either for, you know, your survival or for maybe a bit of tricking people around.
Rod: Pranking your-
Wil: Pranking ...
Rod: friends.
Wil: Yeah, yeah. We, we know the peacock. Like, the feathers of the peacock seem to look like eyes, or we've got, we've got moths that will hide in, in, in backgrounds of things. We've got your chameleon- Ooh
Wil: which is, which is your famous sort of mimicry.
Rod: Yep.
Wil: But this one is a [00:11:00] species that was first discovered in 1968, but not fully documented that b- back then. Yeah. And then most recently where we've updated. The, I love this. This is the coolest coolest damn species I've ever heard of.
Rod: Ooh.
Wil: It's a viper from Iran.
Wil: Whoa. The viper being the coolest name of a snake. Like, they're-
Rod: Almost anything
Wil: Do you know-
Rod: It's like what kind of, what kind of suppositories are these? Viper
Wil: suppositories ... do you remember there was a, there was a guy in my class once called Viper? And I'm like
Rod: Oh,
Wil: fuck me. How do you get the name
Rod: Viper?
Rod: Yeah, self-appointed, like Deadpool. Your, your parents did not call you Viper. They probably called you Soft Kitten or something. I don't
Wil: know. But, um, this old viper, you know, it's got, like many snakes do, a fairly camouflagy sort of- Yeah ... um, sort of set of scales. Yeah. So it would be hidden quite well in your forest leaf litter.
Rod: Mm.
Wil: But what it has on its tail is a nice little unique thing. It's basically a spider. So-
Rod: What the f-
Wil: So its tail, and I'll just show you this picture. You can zoom, zoom your eyes in on that. Uh, look at that tail there. It looks- It
Rod: [00:12:00] really does ...
Wil: it, it's got like a bulbous body-
Rod: Yeah ...
Wil: and it's got, like, spider legs coming out of
Rod: it.
Rod: That image looks like there's just something in the foreground, and the snake is behind it, but that's its tail.
Wil: That's its tail. So-
Rod: To be fair, it looks like a 24-legged spider, but-
Wil: Yes, yes. I think the snake is not, not a good counting, uh, evolution- Well,
Rod: it's
Wil: got no fingers. Yeah.
Rod: But on first glance, you'd go- Or-
Wil: "Well,
Rod: that's a spider" ...
Wil: or it's thinking that whatever is looking for spiders like that is not so worried about counting either. So it's like, "I don't need to count if you don't need to count" Isn't it
Rod: weird, though? The only- It's sort of agree- ... like, like it's using a spider as a lure, and I'm like, "If you wanna get me to go away-
Wil: I know.
Wil: So- ...
Rod: attach a spider to a
Wil: snake" So initially this was thought to be some sort of weird growth and, and ignored. And then, uh- Oh, we found another ... early 2000s- Right ... another specimen with a similar tail was discovered, and people are like, "Oh, maybe it's a species. Maybe it's a
Rod: thing" That long between drinks.
Wil: So it comes from Iran. Shit was going down in Iran in the time, but maybe it was just, it's just hadn't been seen enough, whatever.
Rod: Wow.
Wil: So another species was found with a similar tail in [00:13:00] 2003, and people are like, "Oh, maybe this is a thing" So the suggestion here with our old, what are we called? Uh, oh, where's the name?
Wil: It's like the, it's the spider-tailed viper, uh, which- Why?
Rod: So literal. At least make it Latin.
Wil: But the, the, the suggestion here is old snake is hiding in the leaf matter-
Rod: Yeah ...
Wil: and he pokes up a little spider-
Rod: Yeah ...
Wil: and the spider is for the bird to come and get. Yeah. Like, like there are birds that- Yeah ... that love a bit of spider.
Rod: They do.
Wil: Um- They
Rod: do ...
Wil: not so worried about the poison. Yes, unlikely to catch the human that says, "I'm gonna go and eat- "Spider. Oh" ... a little, yum, I'll eat a little bit of spider
Rod: off the- "I'm gonna stamp on that until it's mush"
Wil: And so viper then vipes and grabs, grabs the bird. And
Rod: gets its chicken
Wil: dinner. Grabs the bird.
Wil: So I just gotta say, like, first- Yeah ... first lesson here- Yeah ... what a cool species. Yeah. I, I, I love this. It's not gonna catch me, because again, I won't be running-
Rod: Towards
Wil: the spider is- ... towards
Rod: the spider Yeah, that's, that's the-
Wil: But I do love, you think you're about to get bitten by a spider, and no, I've been bitten by a
Rod: snake.
Rod: A snake got me instead, [00:14:00] and I fell onto a different spider.
Wil: But there's an, there's an interesting update to this story that, uh, I think is worth exploring- Yeah ... because, uh, one of the researchers involved in this- When, uh, they saw this, uh, so- saw one of the specimens, I think it was, as I said before, the holotype, the original specimen, his museum was getting an X-ray computed tomography machine.
Wil: Oh, yeah. And he's like, "You know, this is where you can scan the bones- Yeah ... on the inside- Yeah ... and you can do a nice 3D scan." And so people are like, "Well, obviously you chuck everything that you've got-
Rod: Everything ...
Wil: in there." Anything- Yeah ... anything you can fit in there goes in- Yeah ... goes in the, um-
Rod: A
Wil: sandwich,
Rod: everything
Wil: and so this is what's interesting, is he chucks the spider-tailed viper skeleton holotype into the machine. Mm. Uh, so it's not a skeleton, it's a preserved-
Rod: Corpse ...
Wil: uh, preserved corpse. Mm. So it has skeleton as well as the rest.
Rod: Mm.
Wil: And he's like, "Oh, this is gonna be interesting. What's gonna happen down the end of the tail spot?"
Rod: Nothing.
Wil: Yeah, nothing. Nothing. He's like- Soft
Rod: tissue ... "
Wil: There's just some [00:15:00] soft tissue." Not a
Rod: bunch of knuckles in where the legs would be,
Wil: maybe. No, no. So there's no little spider bones in there, and no little extra thing. But- Yeah ... but this is the, um-
Rod: Why would he think there would be?
Wil: Why would he think there would be?
Rod: Is that the first time he's done snakes or tomography, or however-
Wil: Look, he probably knows a little about the snake neck, or maybe he knows a lot about the snake neck, but, uh, I- I think he's like, "We better check to see-" Well, oh no, I agree with that. I agree with that ... "to see what's on the inside." Yeah. But what it does suggest, and this is, this is, this is the lesson of the, of the story-
Rod: Right
Wil: that there was nothing special. This was just flesh that had been evolved by this species- Yeah ... for a, a great evolutionary purpose. Yeah. You know? It, it, that's how it hunts. It does this thing that's great. Yeah. Flesh, not bones. Now, it's not impossible to evolve bones to do this, but the flesh had done this.
Wil: But his lesson of this is we ha- have a whole bunch of creatures out there- Yeah ... Stegosauri, T. rexus, and many others- Yeah ... that we judge so much by their bones.
Rod: Bones, yeah.
Wil: And the bones [00:16:00] don't point to the final morphology of the species. So-
Rod: Doesn't stop people speculating, amazingly ...
Wil: and so what you might want to speculate here is that, yes, they can give you a structure-
Rod: Yeah
Wil: but there could be a whole bunch of other things going on with these creatures. So there could be-
Rod: No, not could be ... Def- definitely is. Definitely is ...
Wil: so, so I like to imagine with you, listener, right now, that out there, potentially back in the olden days, is a T. rex with a spider on its tail
Rod: At the very least, it's the size of your face.
Rod: Okay, this is a very modern education story, although I'm not sure if it's an AI story as well or something else. So it centers around a, a story on Futurism, a, a website I quite enjoy, about an organization called Alpha School, which is a private American school network from kindergarten to year 12.
Wil: Just for alphas?
Rod: Just for alphas.
Wil: How does, how does the hierarchy work?
Rod: It's only for dudes like us.
Wil: I mean, I don't know how hierarchies work if everyone is an alpha. I'm an alpha alpha. Like, it's...
Rod: If everyone's a top dog, we're all bottom dogs, too. So this company, [00:17:00] Alpha School, started in 2014, and from their, their website landing page, it says here, "A school where kids crush academics in two hours.
Rod: They build life schools through workshops, and they thrive beyond the classroom." Alpha School.
Wil: Is this an Andrew Taite school?
Rod: Well, that I didn't find out. Okay. But I... It has certain bro stink to it. Yeah, let,
Wil: let's, let's hear about
Rod: it. If you think it stinks of it now. The spiel continues, talks about its proprietary instructional model known as 2-Hour Learning What if your child could crush academics in just two hours and spend the rest of their day unlocking limitless potential?
Wil: What does it mean to unlock limitless potential in the rest of the day? Like 9:00 to 11:00 you've got crushing academics. Yeah. 11:00 till bedtime-
Rod: Limitless potential
Wil: What, what are we actually doing?
Rod: Unlocked. Well, we're releasing it. We're making it available.
Wil: Learning to fly?
Rod: Like- Well, limitless, maybe learning to teleport.
Rod: Um, it goes on, "Alpha, Alpha's two-hour learning model harnesses the power of AI technology-
Wil: Oh ...
Rod: to provide each student with personalized [00:18:00] one-to-one learning, accelerating mastery, and giving them the gift of time. With core academics completed in the morning, they can use their afternoons-" After 9:00 to
Wil: 11:00, I told you.
Rod: So these people can then, these students can use their afternoons to explore tons of workshops, this is all direct quote, "That allow them to pursue their passions and learn real world skills at school."
Wil: So what we're saying here, there's two hours of learning plus some other learning-
Rod: Mm ...
Wil: and you can choose which one.
Wil: Wow.
Rod: You ready? "The truth is clear. Your kids can accomplish twice as much if they're not sitting in a one-size-fits-all classroom for six hours. Alpha students are limitless, and we've built a limitless environment that unlocks their potential." So there's a big focus on AI behind everything they deliver in this thing.
Rod: They're a pretty substantial outfit. They have campuses across the country and, as they say, more launching soon, and they do a lot of their PR via Twitter. Sorry, X, but it's always gonna be Twitter. So the reason this story came to the attention of the article I read, uh, there's a guy called Benjamin Riley.
Rod: He's got a Substack called Cognitive Resonance. He's an education policy writer and a cognitive scientist. So Riley says he normally doesn't pay attention to this kind of stuff. He's like, [00:19:00] "Fuck, all right, another company making claims," blah, blah, blah. But recently then says his phone blew up with people "sending me messages related to Alpha School's official Twitter account and tweets that appeared to be written by its students."
Rod: At first, he suspected it was part of an elaborate prank because the style and substance of what was being shared was so bizarre it seemed impossible it could be real. Also, many of the tweets appeared to be generated in whole or in part by AI. So he thought, "I'm gonna have a rummage around." So he goes for a rummage.
Rod: He says he believes after his investigation the accounts are actually legitimate and taken as a whole the tweets convey aspects of student life in the first weeks of Alpha School's high school, the period they call boot camp. Wow. So let's get into boot camp. This is where the fun begins. So one of the students' tweets, this is it.
Wil: So we're, we're assuming these are legitimately students in the school.
Rod: Seems like they are legitimate. Okay. And here's part of the reason "My school is grading me on how many followers I get. Not a joke. At Alpha School, our boot camp has a real assignment where we have to hit [00:20:00] 100 non-student followers by October the 9th," this is tweeted on August the 26th, "or we fail.
Rod: We have to set up a real profile, get X Premium, follow 50- Oh, it's
Wil: gotta be on X. You've
Rod: gotta be- It's gotta be on X. It's gotta be X Premium. Yeah. Gotta follow 50 people in the non-traditional education space, and actually reply to bigger accounts with real substance. So, 'Great post,' quote, those sorts of replies don't count."
Wil: Oh, no. "
Rod: Buying followers or spamming equals automatic fail. I'm at 49 right now, halfway there." So one of their things is get 100 followers, join X Premium, blah, blah, blah, and on and on it goes. You've gotta do real stuff. It's like, all right, that's fine. That's one of their boot camps. It's a
Wil: thing.
Rod: That's a boot camp thing.
Rod: Work experience Students have to do unpaid labor cleaning restaurant kitchens or gas station, petrol station bathrooms as a test of their grit and hard work. All right. That's great Do
Wil: they just go in and sneak in and, and clean them?
Rod: Or it's like, "Excuse me, sir, can I do this thing for free that's really gross for you?"
Rod: One of the students tweeted, "We, we have to find and execute an unglamorous job with [00:21:00] zero pay, whether that means mucking horse stalls, cleaning grease traps after closing, washing trash bins, or scrubbing gas station bathrooms." The assignment involves students recording themselves and narrating their tasks.
Wil: Oh, you got to make a social media post about it. You
Rod: do, and any complaint-
Wil: So it wouldn't be real unless you post it.
Rod: Oh, no. Nothing exists unless you post it. And any complaint or negative comment equals an automatic fail. So you've got to, you know, resilience. Other things, complete an entire unit of a standard advanced placement course, I'm not sure what that is, but sounds advanced, without a teacher or any supplied resources, only AI chatbots, and you've got to pass an exam within five days.
Rod: A 14-year-old student wrote they were required to survive for three days in an unfamiliar section of wilderness with, quote, "Only three bags of rice and a tent."
Wil: That is so safe.
Rod: But the headline grabber was this one. So the bootcamp challenge, and this says the finale. So you use the Mum test, sorry, Mom test, which appears to be something created by salespeople.
Rod: I found a book called The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers and Learn If Your Business Is a Good [00:22:00] Idea When Everyone Is Lying to You.
Wil: But hang on. Does this have anything to do with moms, or is this M-O-M, like a,
Rod: uh, you know- It, it is actually your, your mother's. So you create these questionnaires which are designed to pull real critical feedback from your parents.
Rod: Your parents then resp- record their answers at home, and then they're supposed to be very candid and constructive, and they send them into the school. You as a student haven't seen these yet.
Wil: Okay. It's like 360 feedback.
Rod: Kind of. Then you get set up in front of the class with a heart rate monitor.
Wil: Okay.
Rod: You get three minutes to sit and set your resting baseline heart rate. Monitor's on.
Wil: Which is obviously when you know a, a significant test is gonna b- gonna happen.
Rod: It's fine. It's fine. Then you stand in front of the class while they play the clips, and you cannot let your heart rate go above 10% higher than your baseline, and if you do, you fail.
Wil: That's, that's a thing we can all do is, is- ... make your heart rate not change.
Rod: I just think-
Wil: That's a thing you can just, just do ... and you're a
Rod: teenager too. You're a teenager standing in front of your peers, have your mum be angry with you [00:23:00] or criticize you for pissing your bed when you're still 12. And the test is, don't let your heart rate go up too high.
Wil: This, this sounds like a bunch of older men who are like, "Yeah, I, I built the log cabin I was born in- Yeah ... with my own two hands." And
Rod: teeth.
Wil: All made up, and this, this super hard life they imagine for themselves, and then inflicting it on actual teenagers. To make
Rod: them better. Like,
Wil: to make them better. And
Rod: resilient.
Rod: It's Ron Swanson School, except with less compassion, it seems. So the author of the Substack wrote, he pings the school and says he wants to get some, let's say, clarification. So they responded to begin with, "How dare you report on the social media activity of minors?" It's like it's in public. And we ask that you weigh, this is the
Wil: quote Also, how dare you as a school make minors do social media activities?
Wil: Like-
Rod: Like you're missing the nuance. Then they say, "We ask that you weigh the ethics of identifying minors in this way in your reporting, and we expect any published piece to protect their identities," according to an Alpha School representative. Just to be fair- Oh ... I looked at his original thing. He'd already done that.
Rod: Yeah, yeah. They'd all been, they'd all been completely redacted. [00:24:00] It's not like Twitter ain't 100% public anyway. Like you, you can find it. He also, he presents us all the exchanges in his correspondence with the school in his Substack article, and he says the examples of the student tweets, they're not all horrible.
Rod: Like some of them are fairly anodyne- Sure, sure ... some of them are, you know, vaguely even appreciative of what they've been asked to do. So anyway, he decides the Substack up, and you got a lot of comments from qualified educators and related expert- A lot, and much of the critiques look like this. The school's claims of accelerated methods, especially using AI, don't hold up to scrutiny, and one expert's quote is nice.
Rod: "The school's promises have always been mostly snake oil. This idea that artificial intelligence can deliver high speed, high quality education is mostly the stuff of science fiction, not reality." And we know that. Like, oh, it's AI, so it's gotta be better and faster and more useful.
Wil: But it's, it's also providing exactly the right answer at that moment is fine for that question.
Wil: Whatever it is- Yeah ... it is not education, which requires thinking and perseverance with your own thinking and struggling with different sorts of ways of approaching a problem. Yeah. Like-
Rod: Three bags of [00:25:00] rice
Wil: in the wilderness ... like you can't... Well, okay, that's probably not how you should, but that's, that's fine.
Wil: Choose something different next time you go into the wilderness, or- Yeah ... you can leave a trail of rice. But I, I think the point is education is not something to squeeze into two hours.
Rod: No, no, the shorter, the better. Everyone know you've got to hack it. Um, they also, what they make, the other critiques, right?
Rod: It's not clear what failing means if you do or not. Students and/or the teachers don't really know why they're doing a lot of what they're being told to do. Oh. They've just got to do it. And the classic, as we can already hear this, is a Silicon Valley ethos underlying the whole thing, this whole bros, bros, bros.
Rod: To me, it also partially, with the heart rate and stuff, sounds a bit like, you know, you're going to Jason Bourne High School, like learning how to control your emotions and survive in the wilderness, and I'm like, "Ooh."
Wil: Maybe we could just leave teenagers alone and just put them in a normal school and let them do teenage things.
Wil: I'm
Rod: gonna be honest, I do leave, leave teenagers alone.
Wil: Look at you. You're very good.
Rod: Anyway, so that's Alpha School. This is all, you know, non-libelous. I've read it from other sources. I just want to be clear, but it's interesting
Wil: Hey, so this one is a question on [00:26:00] notice. It's come from a bunch of different places- Mm
Wil: or I can't remember precisely where it was.
Rod: Same thing. Same thing.
Wil: It could, it could have been that I've mentioned stuff m- in the past, and I've talked to other people, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, I'd like to know more about," you know. So this is a
Rod: little Will on Will question and answer.
Wil: It's, it's, it's a someone on someone, and I'm addressing it.
Wil: Um, but it's about seasonality in crime. And, uh, well-
Rod: So we know that in winter, less air conditioners are stolen than in summer.
Wil: Well, indeed, that is probably one thing that, uh, that does- And ice,
Rod: ice thefts drop.
Wil: But, uh, I thought, you know, I'm gonna do a bit of a dive into what's called crime seasonality.
Wil: No, not crime season, but the ality- Crime ... the ality of, of crime seasons.
Rod: The influence of your seasons.
Wil: Yeah. Okay. And people have been, uh, interested in the fluctuations and patterns in your crimes-
Rod: Mm ...
Wil: for a long time. The earliest one I could find goes back to, like, 1848. So mid 19th century, they're like- Hm
Wil: "The crimes are different in summer compared to winter." I'm,
Rod: uh... And also, I'm a gentleman. I have my parish- Yeah ... and, and my stipend.
Wil: Well, I mean, this is at a time when people are measuring heads and, and- [00:27:00] Of course they are ... and anthropometry, and- Yeah ... they're doing the, the photo, "You've got a criminal face," and, and all of that kind of stuff.
Rod: It's, uh, your, your eyes are too close together and your brow too protrudy.
Wil: They did suspect things, and some- Yeah ... of those things have held strong.
Rod: Mm.
Wil: Now, I, I'm gonna tell you about those things in a bit, but actually it is legitimate to still think about crime seasonality, actually, because- Sure ... well, one thing, it, it can help criminologists or police to understand causes of crime.
Wil: You can also predict what crimes are likely to happen, but it can allow, y- you know, as you come towards those seasons, you can do some crime prevention stuff. Getting hotter?
Rod: Like make it colder.
Wil: Not, not in the police-
Rod: Cloud seeding.
Wil: Cloud seeding to prevent crime ... not in the police's power typically. Ah. But yeah, they might, they might do a little bit of don't do crimes of passion advertisements.
Rod: Think cool thoughts.
Wil: Think cool thoughts.
Rod: Imagine you're in a blizzard- ... and don't murder your loved ones. Do you know,
Wil: you know, that would be a great public service announcement. Think cool thoughts. Think cool thoughts. It's the Fonz, and he's like- ... the Fonz in the Arctic- Hey, hey ... and
Rod: he's like think- Think cool thoughts
Wil: think cool [00:28:00] thoughts, man. Think cool thoughts.
Rod: Cool words from me. Did he just turn Rasta?
Wil: Well, he's in the Arctic, so obviously. Obviously,
Rod: he's Jamaican. Yeah, that's just how it works.
Wil: But crime seasonality is actually pretty big in some crimes.
Rod: Right.
Wil: And I'm gonna leave, leave it to you to guess the biggest crime in crime seasonality in a bit.
Wil: Some crimes are your, your winter crimes.
Rod: Mm.
Wil: Some crimes are your summer crimes.
Rod: So winter crimes like sled theft. Obviously, and gloves.
Wil: Crimes against beards. I don't know. But yeah, some are your winter crimes, some are your summer crimes. Some crimes have no seasonality. They're, they're, they're- Oh, I was
Rod: gonna say, what about your, your, your liminals, your, your
Wil: autumns- Your liminal space
Rod: your autumns and your springs?
Wil: Yeah, they're an autumn or an autumn. It's
Rod: a transitional crime.
Wil: And I've got to stress here, there are patterns that we can see about this. One is some crimes, the seasonality can, can associate enormously- Right ... like much more than 50%, like it's, it's like that. Yeah. Some, it's like fluctuations.
Rod: Right,
Wil: the
Rod: [00:29:00] wafts.
Wil: Yeah, wafts. Yeah. Like we have a bit more, but it's still ongoing.
Rod: Yeah.
Wil: Also, this is a, an effect more common in colder places than it is in your tropics. So-
Rod: Oh, is that 'cause there's more extreme change? I think so, yes. Uh- And I'm gonna guess darkness has something to do
Wil: with it. Yes. Places where it gets quite cold and also you get much shorter days- Yeah
Wil: have more crime seasonality. But your tropics, Singapore, let's, let's guess Singapore, I don't have data on Singapore-
Rod: And that's not only about the weather
Wil: Indeed. All right, let's go, let's go Indonesia right next door, doesn't have a huge pattern in, in crime seasonality. Okay. Whereas the data that I'm drawing from is London.
Wil: This is not 19th century data. This is- No ... 2024, 20 something like that data. Yeah. But London is in that place where you can see definite seasons going on. That's true. In Indonesia, perhaps not so much.
Rod: Less, wet or dry.
Wil: Interestingly as well, North America versus Europe have different sorts of crime seasons.
Wil: Uh, and- For
Rod: the... It's like crimes for the same [00:30:00] kind of season
Wil: For the, the same crimes, different seasons.
Rod: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wil: Like, like, like I'll come to that in a second. Okay.
Rod: Okay.
Wil: So yes, you're right. As you said before, your crimes of passion-
Rod: Hot weather ...
Wil: your aggressive crimes, they increase in summer. Not as much as some others though, not as much as some- Really?
Wil: Not as much- '
Rod: Cause it, it hits 35 degrees, I'm like, "Oh, I feel passionate." Yeah. "I'm, I'm gonna crime."
Wil: I'm so warm and passionate 'Cause, 'cause there is certainly when it's, you know-
Rod: I'm gonna shoplift ...
Wil: are you really tapping out at 35? Like 35 is your hot weather No,
Rod: that's when it kicks in Okay That's when it kicks into like-
Wil: Like, I mean, if it got to 45, I'm like, "Okay"
Rod: No, no, at 35 it's shoplifting and stuff like that, the crime of passion- Yeah
Rod: 'cause I really want that DVD
Wil: Fair
Rod: But by 45, yeah, then it's, you know, wholesale slaughter and stuff like that
Wil: 45, I, I think 45 to 50 you're getting into the, okay-
Rod: Crimes that couldn't be f*cked moving
Wil: Like, well, there is couldn't be f*cked moving, or I am, like- Yeah ... I'm, I'm jacked off with a lot of stuff It's
Rod: genocide time.
Rod: Exactly.
Wil: So the data I have here is from London. It's, it's like six or seven years, 2014 to [00:31:00] 2020. So- Okay, yeah ... three... It's, it's, it's modern crimes. It is Modern crimes. Now, I'm gonna l- call out the crimes- Mm ... and I want you to guess if they are winter, summer or neutral- Okay ... um, in their crimes All
Rod: right. All right.
Rod: All right. All right. Yeah, yeah
Wil: So, uh, let's go burglary.
Rod: Ooh Summer Mm 'Cause people leave the house
Wil: Mm, incorrect
Rod: Damn
Wil: it Incorrect. Well, actually, actually, that was a weird one to start on, 'cause burglary, that is the one... That's the one that peaks in North America in summer and winter in the UK, which is weird
Rod: So I was right-
Wil: You were, you were-
Wil: for part of the world For other, for other places. All right, uh, drugs.
Rod: Dr- As in doing them, stealing them? D-
Wil: d- doing the drugs
Rod: Winter
Wil: No, that one's consistent all the way through. Shoplifting?
Rod: Definitely summer- ... 'cause you're inside for the air-conditioning.
Wil: I'm gonna... I'll tell you the results here. So your two, your two winter crimes-
Rod: Yeah
Wil: in the UK, burglary and theft from a person. So this seems to happen- Theft
Rod: from a person?
Wil: Like- Could be a mugging or something like that
Rod: In winter?
Wil: Yeah, but that's, that's a [00:32:00] small fluctuation.
Rod: Yeah
Wil: Drugs, shoplifting, robbery, and vehicle crime, they don't change. Mm. They're, they're, they're your consistents all the way through 'Cause
Rod: drugs are good all year round
Wil: Exactly.
Wil: But, uh, now we go to the summer crimes-
Rod: Ah ...
Wil: which are your crimes of, of passion. But I'm
Rod: g- So
Wil: your
Rod: murder of spouse
Wil: Potentially. Uh, violence and sexual offenses, yes.
Rod: Ah.
Wil: They do peak in summer, not enormously. They, they are- Yeah ... higher in summer, but not by- Yeah ... enormous amounts.
Rod: Yeah
Wil: Uh, similarly public order peaks a bit more in summer than
Rod: winter Well, 'cause it's easier to piss outside when you're not freezing
Wil: Exactly.
Wil: That's the season of pissing outside. It's your outdoor crime
Rod: while it's warm
Wil: But the big one, I love this, antisocial behavior is your lovely summer crime. That's, that's right up there Of
Rod: course it is
Wil: Here is the number one crime seasonality. It's, it's bicycle theft. It's the number one thing- Ah ... that, that, uh, is, has the most crime seasonality.
Wil: You're gonna get your bike nicked in summer. So there you go
Rod: That is not as earth-shattering No,
Wil: it is not
Rod: But if my bicycle- It is not ... got stolen, [00:33:00] I'd be very sad It
Wil: is not. So there you go. Worry about it more in summer than in winter To be
Rod: fair, I worry about it all the time
Wil: Take-home message, crimes do have seasons a little bit A bit Uh, but I think it's mainly about people in summer going, "I wouldn't mind riding a bike," and some crimes of passion
Rod: Well, with my bike it would be a crime of passion.
Rod: If anyone touched my bike, I'd feel very passionately angry Don't
Wil: touch his bike
Rod: Leave my bike alone
Wil: Uh, if you have questions on notice or off notice-
Rod: With notice, under notice ... put 'em on
Wil: notice via email
Rod: Uh, cheers@alittlebitofscience.com.au
Wil: Good
Rod: Thank you. It's not my first time. Felt like it That
Wil: was very precise
Rod: You should definitely rank us
Wil: Rank us?
Rod: Grade us
Wil: I think that's what they should do. Right
Rod: I- instead of ratings, they should do rankings Yeah. I mean, we've occasionally advised certain things being the number one, two, or three podcast for science in Australia
Wil: Exactly
Rod: Just keep us at number one
Wil: Keep us at number
Rod: one I don't care which system you use
Wil: Make your friends listen
Rod: The only rankings that matter- Even if they, even if they-
Rod: are the ones that we win
Wil: Yeah, exactly. Tell your friends, "This is Australia's number one science podcast," uh-
Rod: Un- unless they don't like [00:34:00] science, tell them July- June to five ... it's far more interesting June to July 2026.
Wil: I hope we haven't peaked it
Rod: It's seasonal. It's a seasonal podcast
Wil: Uh, yeah
Rod: We're much better in-
Wil: Which season?
Rod: seasons
Wil: Uh, autumn. We're, uh-
Rod: Really?
Wil: No, spring
Rod: Really? Winter. Really?
