Ever wondered what happens when fish accidentally consume our medications? Or how AI might be bringing the dead back to testify at their own murder trials? Perhaps you've been losing sleep over the universe ending billions of billions of years sooner than expected? (We haven't.)
Today we're diving into a scientific grab bag of the bizarre, the unsettling, and the downright ridiculous. From rivers flowing with pharmaceutical cocktails that are giving fish gender crises and enlarged genitalia, to the cosmic clock potentially ticking faster than we thought, to the historical irony of how the smartest guy in the room became synonymous with the dumbest.
And just when you thought it was safe to prove you're human online, we'll reveal how those annoying CAPTCHAs might actually be training our future robot overlords. Buckle up for a journey through science's strangest corners—no PhD required, just a healthy appreciation for the absurd.
Fishy Business and Hormonal Shenanigans
Let's kick things off with the watery world of drug-infested waterways. Evidently, our rivers are swimming with a thousand different drugs, from caffeine to antidepressants. And while these drug residues are relatively benign for humans (quantities too small), if you're a fish, brace yourself! Take the male minnows, for instance. Apparently, trace amounts of synthetic estrogen can quite literally feminize these poor fish. This transformation can lead to them producing early-stage eggs in their testicles. Now, that’s a fish issue!
And if that wasn't peculiar enough, certain antidepressants are inadvertently enlarging fish genitalia. Prozac, for instance, might be causing fish to feel a little too cheerful in certain aquatic regions. On the flip side, Siamese fighting fish on a diet of diabetes drugs become less aggressive, blurring the lines between 'fighting fish' and 'chill fish.' Quite the aquatic conundrum, isn’t it?
AI: Bringing Back the Dead?
AI is now reviving people—kind of, sort of. We’re talking about the case of Christopher Pelkey, an AI-resurrected persona shown at the trial of his killer. Imagine seeing a digital representation of yourself making heartfelt impact statements. It’s like haunting the courtroom with your avatars. Creepy? Maybe. A warning on where we're headed? Absolutely.
We agreed that it’s fine to bring back the dead in some situations, but to influence a trial seems completely out of line.
The Universe and Its Expiry Date
The universe may not last as long as we thought. Who knew? From 10 to the 1,100 years, scientists propose the universe might poof sooner with a mere 10 to the 68 years on the cosmic clock. If you're sweating cosmic bullets post-reading that, don’t worry. It’s still a billion, billion, billion, billion, billion etc years away. We won’t be losing any sleep over it and we can’t believe this discovery was worthy of the news.
A Historical Tailspin with Dunces
The term 'dunce' actually hails from a 13th-century philosophical whiz, John Duns Scotus, who thought wearing pointy hats helped funnel all the universe's wisdom into your noggin. Flash-forward several centuries, and those same pointy hats morphed into symbols of academic ridicule. Talk about a public relations nightmare for a headgear.
They’re Captcha-ing Data!
Before we wrap this spontaneous whirlpool of eccentric tales, let’s ponder over the humble captcha—those pesky click-to-prove-you’re-human tests online. After spotting a captcha asking which items can be lifted with one hand, we realised that the humble captcha may in fact just be training data for robots.
We’re training the robots to understand what is a bridge, a bike and now how much is plausible to carry. They’re getting smarter off our coattails! Tell us, what quirky captchas have you stumbled across? We want to know what else they’re learning from our clicking.
No matter where the universe takes us or how many fish grow eggs in their gonads, remember: the world is weird, and that's just how we like it. So buckle up, enjoy the ride, and keep questioning everything.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
01:50 Impact of Drugs on Fish
03:53 Antidepressants and Fish Behaviour
07:19 Pharmaceutical Pollution and Its Consequences
12:31 AI and Legal Proceedings
22:59 Cosmology News: The Universe's Lifespan
23:43 The Immense Scale of the Universe
25:00 Theories on the Universe's End
26:02 Fossils from Previous Universes
28:12 The Story of John Duns Scotus
32:39 The Origin of the Dunce Cap
35:13 The Dunce Cap in Modern Times
40:17 The Evolution of CAPTCHAs
SOURCES:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-dunce-cap-wasnt-always-so-stupid
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/407949/anti-anxiety-depression-medication-wildlife-salmon
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1475-7516/2025/05/023?ref=404media.co
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(25)00266-0?ref=404media.co
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Rod: [00:00:00] Humans take all kinds of drugs in vast quantities. I mean, on mass, I don't mean each individual. And some of those drugs that we take in, we also piss out because that's just the nature of how we operate. A lot of that gets captured in the wastewater treatment plants around the least albums sort of version of the world, and a bunch of it doesn't.
So basically around the world, there seems to be more than about a thousand different drugs that end up in the world's waterways. And we're talking birth control, caffeine, metformin, the diabetic drug antidepressants, antibiotics, Panadol, paracetamol, blah blah blah, leak into the waterways, they get through the treatment facilities.
And as a rule, it doesn't really impact humans much 'cause the quantities are tiny. But if you're a fish.[00:01:00]
Will: It is time for a little bit of science, but not too much. I'm will Grant, associate Professor of Science communication at the Australian National University. I'm Rod Lambert, a
Rod: 30 year psych comm veteran with the mind of a teenage boy. And today we've got some fun with animals. Oh yes, we do. We've got a, uh, story from the AI world that will.
Shocking. Amazing. We've got some lessons from cosmology. I'm very excited about that. Um, a little bit of history, a little bit of sort of science esque history because you know, we need some of that.
Will: And, uh, just to round things out, I've got a, a call for research. I want, uh, I want you to tell me some things.
Me, ah, you listener. Everyone, everyone, everyone can tell me things I listen. That's nice. So if
Rod: you're a fish, yeah. So, 2007, there's a study that talked about how small amounts of synthetic estrogen can quote feminize [00:02:00] male minnows.
Will: This, this, this is trigger study for the alt-right. They're like, they're like,
I, I've been worried about the male minnows for a lot of the time. What? The fish are chicks now they're wearing high heels and
Rod: lipstick. I don't want to catch. Chick fish. What if I eat one? What if I eat one? It'll turn my son gay.
Should have had a more southern accent, but So what does it mean? How are they feminized? Okay. I, I can hear you going. Please tell me. It's fine.
Will: Well, are we, are we saying, uh, gender is a social construct or No, it's a fish. It's a fish. It's a fish construct. Biological fish. It's a, it's a fish construct.
Rod: Fish issue, yeah, fish issue.
So basically in this case, for these poor male minnows, they can produce early stage eggs in their testicles. What, what, what? Well, so they kind of intersects, they become a bit of both.
Will: Is this a thing humans have ever done? Could do I have, I have.
Could someone shoot eggs?
Rod: Out of the, [00:03:00] I'll give you a moment. Get yourself ready against the wall.
Will: I'll need a little bit longer. Let's see. Exactly. I'm gonna need a picture book. I, I think I'm gonna need a strong picture book to get eggs out. Like, I, I dunno. I dunno. Do you think that's the trick
Rod: I strong picture book?
I feel like I've just become both.
So apparently if they do this or if this happens to them, they, they can't mate properly because it, well, they're firing eggs and eggs. Like that's not gonna work. Yeah, exactly. And that's just, that's like, there's one thing I know about sex. It's not gonna banging two eggs together.
That doesn't do it. Well, it does do sex, but it doesn't do procreation. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. also, apparently these fish that are exposed to the estrogen, they struggle to build nests and they, they're not good at putting on courtship displays for female, minnows They, they just get worse at being blokey.
Do they
Will: really?
Rod: Yeah. Apparently they're not blokey enough to get the ladies.
Will: Okay.
Rod: Another one, another one. Trace levels of antidepressants like, uh, Prozac, a study found that exposure to this fluoxetine, if you [00:04:00] wanna be official
Will: mm-hmm.
Rod: It led to larger go podium size fish, dick. They call it a go podium, apparently Bigger fish, dick.
Oh. So they, they get an antidepressant and like chin up, look at your bigger fish dick. Okay. Okay. And I'm like, is that terrible? Is that good in fish world? Oh yeah. And then it seems that if, if, the counterpart organs in the other half of the fish population, biologically speaking, don't, are they getting bigger
too?
Rod: Yeah. Well, no. Oh, okay. So I'm wondering,
Will: so there could be a, a limit here, there,
Rod: there may be incompatibility issues. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, yeah, absolutely. I don't know that for sure. I'm no physiologist, but, and the story I read only had small bits also apparently that drug can, this is the quote. You'll enjoy mm-hmm.
Increase male coercive mating behavior. Oh. So the headline is Prozac might make some fish rapey.
Oh, Jesus
Rod: Christ. That's my headline, not theirs. Look, look, that's the [00:05:00] bottom line.
Will: Uh, in fairness, I know that the animal world is, uh, has, has a chunk of that already. Um, it's a
Rod: lot rapier than the human world at least strives to be.
Yes.
Will: Yeah. Yeah. But wow. Prozac, uh, no increased male cove. We, we, we have an amazing ability to fuck up the world. Like I I, oh God. Yeah. You know, you know, we, we, we fuck up the world in, in, you know, the big ways. Yep. But it's nice to have the little discreet bits of world fuckery, isn't it? Like the things we don't even know we're doing.
Exactly. We get to learn every day. You know, you know, that really is the God species, you know, you know, you walk, you walk around, you walk around, fucking up the world. Fuck that up.
Rod: Fuck. In ways that you don't even notice. I did a small fight as I walk on past doing some colossal fuck up, and that had a back stream fuck up that I didn't even realize.
That's how good I am at it. 2018 paper Siamese fighting fish exposed to metformin of the diabetes drug and also universal savior of all humanity's longevity or something. Mm-hmm. Can make a Siamese fighting fish less aggressive.
Will: That's not good. They, they sound like they should be aggressive. It's [00:06:00] what, it's their thing.
It's, it's, it's what they're known for. It's a thing. I mean, also being Siamese, they, they're also known for that. Why aren't they called Thai? Uh, they should be now. Maybe they
Rod: don't identify as type or ese.
Yeah,
Rod: I think Siamese sounds cool. I've always liked the idea of the place Siam sounds like a very cool, yeah, no, you know, well, because it's a cool sounding word.
Will: It was always in the, in the far distance, in the, in the ancient times when you, you'd heard of
Rod: Siam, the far east.
Will: Yeah,
Rod: the far east. But, um, so yes, apparently in, in tests about this, they, the, was it subject's exhibit less aggressive towards a male dummy stimulus. So basically it fucks there.
Will: Makes them better at knowing that that's just a a DA fake fish.
It's a fake fish. Don't fight the fake fish. Why? Chill out man. Bash a sword dummy. That's stupid. I, I'm a fighting fish. Not a fucking idiot fish. Thank you. Thank you scientists for building up a mock, Siamese fighting fish dummy.
Rod: Can you imagine the fighting when someone, like eight people in the lab build one and they all, they all critique each [00:07:00] others are they?
Will: Uh, but are they wiping some hormones or something on it? To, to, I dunno. Because if it's just a block of wood.
Rod: Yeah. I don't think that works. Here. Here's a Polaroid of one of your kind. Yeah. Why, why aren't you mad yet?
And there's, there's a big
Will: How do, how do we make the fish mad? Like, science is wonderful.
It is truly
Rod: wonderful. So the latest study, the one that that drew my attention to this Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences was the lead researchers on this. They're interested in Atlantic salmon, wild Atlantic salmon. They got an article published in science. So, you know, it's legit real, a hundred percent reliable, fucking huge signs.
Talking about the, the lead research is saying pharmaceutical pollution, chemical pollution in general, it's really the invisible agent of global change. Yes.
Yeah.
Rod: It's probably posing a greater risk than at least what the public acknowledges. Yes. It's potentially significant threat to our aquatic wildlife.
Like some wild atlantic salmon populations are actually being moved towards extinction. Yeah. To which I say boo, I like delicious agland salmon. You want to [00:08:00] eat them. So,
Will: but no, I, in fairness, I really, you want them sustainably to exist to serve your needs and their own needs. Exactly.
Rod: I want them to want to be delicious.
It can be a
Will: win-win
Rod: situation if they're, they're on wins, unless you're the particular fish that I'm scoffing.
Will: Yeah, fine,
Rod: fine. But otherwise, yeah. So they wanted to check out what was going on. They, they wanted to test, you know, the implications and influences of particular drugs in the environment. So they got a bunch of young Atlantic salmon and they gave them Clobazam.
K Clobazam and anti-anxiety and sleep medication. Clobazam,
Will: probably a lot of people know how to pronounce that.
Rod: K Clobazam. Do they say get my clo eggs out. Clobazam? Yeah. Gimme a cloer. Clobazam za me. So they, they fed this clo for baba to the fish in doses that mirrors what would they be exposed to out in the real world.
They track them little, you know it stuff to see how the medication affected their 17 mile 30 K Migration from the Dal River in Sweden to the Baltic Sea. Outta Sweden into the Baltic sea.
'cause you know they've gotta get outta the rivers and get the ocean and migrate. And then that's where they do
Will: stuff. No, they [00:09:00] up back
Rod: up the river later. Oh, they're gotta get over it. Yeah. A little ocean. Time out after all. All. Yeah,
Will: they, they have fucked so hard. Yeah, they've
Rod: gotta get out to the ocean to chill again.
Well, went on a lot of eggs. Lying on the ground.
Will: Well that's their version of sex so down. Look, I know they need the drug that makes the fish ding don larger. No, that wouldn't help them. Wouldn't at all. It still wouldn't help them. No. Like I look and in fairness. Other animals. Other animals look at our version of sex and say, that's not how it should be done.
Makes no sense. Why doesn't she leave 'em on the ground? And you do it whenever you want.
Rod: You could just, isn't that performance pressure?
Will: You could just come anytime. Whenever
Rod: she could drop them on it.
Will: Yeah. Yeah.
Rod: Like,
Will: why don't we do it that way, don't we? Why don't we, you know what you say?
There is porn out there on every topic. I bet there is no, leave my eggs on the floor and then you fertilize them. Depends
Rod: what your point is. If you are into this listener, just, uh, just and in my defense, what I actually say is, I don't wanna say hook a brother up, but [00:10:00] if you can imagine it, someone's into it.
That's my line. And I'm pretty convi and so someone's into
Will: that. I don't, I don't, I I don't think it's actually technically possible not to be an animous here. It would take
Rod: interventions of a more medical tool. Variety. Yeah. Yeah. We don't want that. Someone probably does. And if you're listening, talk to someone.
the fish that were given the drug were more likely to reach the sea at all than the untreated fish, the fish without the drug. And they were more likely to get there.
Will: Oh, okay. So,
Rod: so we soup the migration, we souped them up. They also passed more quickly through the two major. They've got these hydropower dams that often slow other fish down going through a hydropower dam.
Yeah, there's, I don't doubt it. So slows people down. I'm in the dynamo run fish mint. But apparently it's because other fish will kind of be more cautious and then weave their way through. But you give them the, um, clobazam and they just go, fuck that, and they go for it, which sounds great.
Yep.
Rod: Um, but it seems to me [00:11:00] it, or at least they're supposing that it could be because it increases their willingness because they've got the anti-anxiety, et cetera.
They're more willing to take risks. They're like, it's chill. Don't worry about it. What's that German turbine? Don't
Will: worry about. But you know, that's interesting though that, uh, that it appears to be giving some sort of anti-anxiety relief and they feel a pretty different species from us. They really are.
Or like, I feel like a fish brain in our brain. Different colors. I, I kind of think that drugs that work on us shouldn't work in the same way on such different
Rod: brains. They shouldn't. I I agree. And look, maybe they would, I, I don't know. They didn't, um, they didn't interview the fish afterwards, so we're not clear on how they were feeling.
But, um, it seems like though the concern with that is they were more risk prone 'cause they, they were also more solitary. So they didn't school, they didn't wait for the other fish. The other fish would hang together and go through together. Which makes sense 'cause it helps 'em when predators attack.
Whereas these guys are like, fuck it guys, let's just get on with it and get out to sea. And by doing that, [00:12:00] they expose themselves to greater risk. So if heaps of fish are doing this, they're spreading out from the herd or whatever you call it. Flock of fish, isn't it? Mm-hmm. A murder. A murder of fish. A murder of fish.
Yeah. It's a tea towel of fish. I think Tea towel. A loin cloth of fish. Yeah. Loincloth. So then likely to become more vulnerable. But it's okay. Don't worry about it because, you know, wastewater treatment options are getting better and we're better at filtering drugs outta the water, so, oh, why bother? So that's, why bother.
We could, that's cool. We could
Will: experiment in different places.
Rod: We do. Just, I wish it were more deliberate. So, in Arizona 2021, Christopher Pelkey was shot in a road rage incident, and he died.
The killer was recently brought to trial. At the end of the trial, a video was played that was newly shot, or at least recently shot just for the purposes of the trial, and it featured Christopher Pelkey, or at least kinder.
Voiceover: Just to be clear for everyone seeing this, I'm a version of Chris Pelkey recreated through AI that uses my picture and my voice profile. I was able to be [00:13:00] digitally regenerated to share with you today. But here is insight into who I actually was in real life.
Take a look.
Voiceover-2: Alright, uh, I'm Chris Pelke. Uh, I served with the United States Army, uh, in the infantry. Um, I'm from upstate New York. And what else? Where'd you deploy? Where'd I deploy? Uh, I went to, uh, Baghdad in, uh, 2006, 2008, and then I went to Afghanistan in, uh,
Voiceover: oh nine to 10. So I would like to make my own impact statement.
Rod: So this was basically Pelky sister and, uh, I think her brother and the friend, they used AI to revive him. They used an aged up photo of him made when he was still alive. they fed a bunch of assets as they put it, and a script into multiple AI tools to help create a digital version of him.
And then they quote, polished it with hours of painstaking editing and manual refinement. And all the people who knew him allegedly agreed. The capture [00:14:00] of him was a true representation of the spirit and soul of how Chris would've thought and presented himself.
Yeah. Okay.
Rod: And we just heard the bits that weren't him talking about deployment were, and you can look this up.
The video of him is the scary thing, is knowing it. It's not really him seeing it well.
Will: Well, you definitely like the, the bits that are ai you clearly know are, are an AI generated, it's, it's stilted. It's, it's, it's jumpy. Uh, the mouth is, it's not dreadful though. It's, it's, no, no, no. But, but you, but I think what they're saying about getting the spirit of him there, like there, there's something definitely coming through that it, that equates to what they would believe.
I mean, obviously I, but what they believe,
Rod: I agree with that. Like, I don't, I don't have a beef with the idea of doing it, like if that's what helps you out. But there was a quote later on in the video, apparently in another life he says, we probably could have been friends. Should we play a bit more?
Voiceover: Have you got that? So, hello everybody. Thank you so much for being here today. It means a lot. I can't tell you how humbled I am for those that [00:15:00] spoke up for me. Everyone who flew in took off work. Those who are watching this remotely. And for everyone who has supported my family and loved ones through three and a half years and two trials, I wish I could be with you all today.
To your honor, judge Lang, thank you for making yourself available to see this case to the end, especially when the rescheduled trial conflicted with your daughter's spring break. Thank you for listening to everyone today. Thank you for reading the Flood of Impact statements that came in before today that so many people wrote on my behalf.
Uh, every single one of them is meaningful and gives a glimpse into my life with each of them to Gabriel Jita, the Man Who Shot Me. It is a shame we encountered each other that day. In those circumstances, in another life, uh, we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness and in God who forgives.
I always have and I still do, to my family and everyone that I've [00:16:00] met along the way. It was a lot of fun. You know, I always had a lot of fun. Love each other because you never know how long you have, but make the most of each day and live your life.
Rod: as emotions. I have emotions. What do you reckon? Well, the, the thing that bothered me about it is not doing it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It sounds to me, from what I read, what I've seen, et cetera, that he seems like he probably was that kind of guy. Like what, what we're seeing presented. I, I get the feeling that he's probably that kind of guy
Will: and, and, and clearly his family would be.
The people who are most, most able to judge if, if it's a fair representation of
him,
Will: like, like the only person that could do better is him himself. He can't do that. No. So friends and family, being able to say, yeah, that's, that's the way that, that presents his arguments. Totally. I'm fine
Rod: with that. The, the bit that bothers me Yep.
Well, not bothers me, makes me consider is apparently the judge sentenced the, what are they called? The plaintiff, the defendant to 10 and a half years uhhuh for [00:17:00] manslaughter. The prosecutors were asking for a year less. I wonder the idea that potentially this video influenced the judge to the point where they went beyond the prosecutor's report.
Well, what did the
Will: judge say? I love that video. I, you know, that
Rod: I, I don't have the, I don't have the
Will: dates. I dunno if you showed those. I, I, I think the judge definitely, definitely talked about the video being impactful that Yeah.
Rod: And, and that to me. That's the bit I kind of have questions about. Like if the prosecutors themselves, the legal precedent, et cetera, they've said, look, this is what we think it's worth.
This is what we think this human ought to get. And I agree. Like, this guy fucking got angry about someone, I don't know, making an illegal U-turn and killed them. Fuck you. That's ridiculous. Yeah, of course. But then to watch a video, a, even if it's a faithful recreation. And so this guy was actually a big sweetheart.
A a lovely bear.
Will: I I I I'm gonna
Rod: increase the sentence. Well, I'm just quite well part, I'm just quite, well,
Will: particularly when the dude has said, I believe in forgiveness. Yeah. I think we could have been. Yeah. Oh, okay. Uh, my [00:18:00] struggle is, there's a difference between saying, you know, you could imagine at a funeral where someone, someone is like, on the record, I'm happy with my family doing some sort of AI version of me at the funeral.
Yeah, this is cool. That's okay. But, you know, this is, this is a legal proceedings and yes, it wasn't used as evidence, but it was used to influence sentencing. And why is that okay? I, I don't believe, I don't believe it is. I, I, I, I, I deep down, you know, things like, things like him saying, I can't tell you. Uh, I can't tell you how much it means for me to be here.
No, you can't because, yeah, actually, it's not you. It's not you. You don't know. You don't don't. Here's the thing. It frustrates me that they chose to use the word I in that, in, in that video, he himself never wrote those words, never said those words. And so it's an unfair use of the word. I agreed.
If it
Rod: have been, if Chris was here and he's not, you know, he might have said,
Will: if, if, if this AI video had been a version, here's my life. I'm gonna tell you about my life. I, I love, uh, whatever it is, dirt bike riding, you know,
Rod: puppies
Will: [00:19:00] beating sand, whatever. It's Yeah. Yeah. Putting, putting puppies on my dirt bike.
I, that is, that is the one I love the most. But if it had been that, I'd be like, okay, that tells me about your life. And it's nice to put it in those terms. Yeah. But the moment you start, even this is a, a light form of argument, but saying I, um, that just, that just throws me just, just as a parallel. Yeah.
There, there was a, there was a study. I, I didn't, this happened a month ago. , But it's worth reflecting on a bunch of, , researchers at u at University of Zurich did some unethical. Illegal, um, hidden, , misinformation operation. , Well, not misinformation. It was, it was persuasion via ai. They went into this Reddit thread called Convi.
Uh, what was it? Convince me or, uh, changed my mind. It was some, something like that and the AI post could go in there and try to convince people of things and to, to test. Its, its ability to, in principle that's fun. To test the ability of narrative, persuasion. Now I'm teaching. Sure, sure. Yeah. I'm teaching my students about narrative persuasion at the moment, and I'm [00:20:00] thinking about this all the time.
But here's the thing. I mean, this, this AI. Who is not a human. Mm. Was going in there and saying, so as a black man, here's this thing. Boom. And, and it's like, that's dishonest. It's dishonest. Like you can win any argument if you make up your identity. Like, like you can, you can say, yeah, well, you know, , I've always been a steadfast opponent of, you
Rod: know, or pick a maligned, pick a maligned identity and say I'm one of those, therefore, and then you are gonna influence people straight away.
Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Have nothing to do with your content.
Will: And it's bullshit. You can't make up a form of identity, and I, I know this isn't quite doing that, but it is doing it to influence here. And I think this is just unfair. Yeah.
Rod: And like, as an expert and or at least a, you know, an extremely, uh, deeply interested scholar of the, uh, juris prudes.
Hmm. That is often how they call it. They do in law school. They say,
Rod: have you, have you studied the jurisprudence? All of them. Not just some ju juris prude pr Denti. Yeah. [00:21:00] I like prude better. It sounds more sophisticated, but, um, the idea that, as I read it, anyway, the articles I read, they played this at the end of the trial.
So there was the trial, there was the evidence. There was the arguments.
Will: So this was about sentencing, not about, uh, conviction. Yeah.
Rod: Yeah. And that to my mind is fucking outrageous, to be honest. It's like outrageous. Why was that given special dispensation maybe in the us That's normal. Or at least in Arizona.
I don't know. But that to me seems outrageous. 'cause that's straight up manipulation. It's straight up manipulation. The arguments have been made. Mm-hmm. The cases have been put forward. People have, you know, crossed, examined, et cetera, et cetera.
Will: And, and really it shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter. Like, it shouldn't matter if the person you killed is an asshole or a, or a no.
Or, or Jesus or a goodie. Yeah, exactly. You know, whatever. Yeah. It's, so that's my beef, I think. I think it's an interesting use of technology, but I just, I, I am deeply troubled by, I don't, I don't want anyone putting arguments in my mouth afterwards. You know, we've seen, you know, there's the whole bunch of the, can we put oth other things in your mouth afterwards?
Flowers. [00:22:00] But, you know, it's like the, , putting actors who have died into Star Wars, stuff like that, you know, which is okay in Rogue One with Peter Cushing. But otherwise I'm against it. Just that, you know, that almost fine. There's, there's a bit
where.
Will: Who gets the money? Who gets the, you know, is it, is it stopping another?
Okay. Okay. Yeah. But, but there's a big jump to making really personal arguments about yourself and what you believe. A hundred percent. And that's, that's, that's bullshit. Yeah. I just, I, I don't want people making arguments outta my mouth. Why don't we like, get an AI of Jesus saying, um, don't do this. You should listen to a little bit of science.
Like, like obviously that's already
Rod: happened.
Will: So Yeah. I think, um, yeah. No listener. Not for legal purposes. Yeah. Not legal. Not for, not for
Rod: sentencing purposes.
Will: Not, not for making arguments, not for political purposes. Yeah.
Rod: Agreed. Just don't,
Will: just, don't,
you like living for a long time, don't you? So far, uh, you, you want to live? I intend to continue or as, as long as you can. Um, well [00:23:00] there's, there's just a little bit of cosmology news out there. Ooh. Um, that's, that's, uh, got a couple of people's bees and a bonnet because, um, a cosmology B bonnet incident.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The ultimate, uh, age of the universe has been revised down, not the age, the age it can get to. Like the, the, the, oh,
Rod: I saw a headline, but I didn't read the details. Yeah. I was like, oh God. So we've only got 10 bajillion news instead of 11.
Will: Well, if you wanna say the bajillion word, like, like previously, the, the, the estimates of the, the longest possible life of the universe were a lot, and, and when I mean, mean, mean a lot.
It's, it's like,
Rod: you'd run out of the world's printer Inc. To, for the number of zeros you'd have to, uh, it's,
Will: it's that, it's that years ago I told you about Graham's number. Mm-hmm. Which is, which is like, if you, every atom of the universe was, was, you know, like, like written a number on it. It couldn't fit.
It's not that big. It's that big. It would take a while. Yeah. Yeah. But it was, you know, this idea of the is of the universe is 10, to the 1,100 years now. [00:24:00] That doesn't mean 1,100. No. That, that, that means 10 with 1,100 zeros after it in years. So if I said the word billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion.
Yeah. I, I gotta say it like, you know, who could possibly tell until the end of the universe basically a hundred times? Like, it's, it's a billion, billion, billion, billion. So, so the power of a billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, here's the theory. It's that, um, the longest possible lived objects in the universe, so planets are going to get eaten by stars.
Stars are going to, uh, go supernova. Everything like that. Black holes are, are, are the longest sort of lived object in the galaxy because stuff just goes into them. And for a long time it was thought stuff goes in and, and, and that's it. But actually black holes have a lifespan. And after, after that there's, there's this idea that the universe just becomes all black holes.
Black holes eat everything, but then the black holes. Eventually do decay. they do irradiate, right? Yeah. They, they
Rod: give away energy
Will: eventually. Little bits of hawking [00:25:00] radiation. Exactly. And so this gives an idea about what's the longest possible lifespan of the universe. And instead of 10 to the 1,100, it's way shorter.
Oh, 10 to the 68. oh, now I'm worried. Get your affairs in order. Should I start, I shouldn't
Rod: buy real estate,
Will: so no point. So where I couldn't say the number of billions before. This is like a billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion years. Which is a lot. And, and it's not known. The universe right now is 13 billion years.
So, okay. So that's a lot more. So, so we've revised this down now. Now I read this story and I thought, oh, what's, what's the point? Who, who fucking cares? Yeah, exactly. Thanks. Who fucking cares? Great. No, but then, then I was like, I was reading the paper. I was reading the paper and, and I love they just the newspaper?
No, no. The, the journal article that this came from. Oh, no, no. Okay. Not over
Rod: your morning coffee. Reading the financial Times.
Will: Yeah. I was like, man, you just put some throwaway lines in these papers these days. Mm-hmm. You know? Uh, so the possible, I'll just put in paper voice so the possible, uh, longest span of the universe could be 10 to the 68, uh, years.
Uh, anyway. [00:26:00]
Rod: Yeah. Good. As a consequence,
Will: fossils, stellar remnants from a previous universe could be present in our current universe. Only if the recurrence time of star forming universe is, is smaller than about 10 to the 68 years. So I'm like, I'm like, what? You can't just, you can't just throw away fossils, stellar remnants from a previous universe can only be in the, in this universe.
It's less than the amount of this universe's life. So, so I consulted with my, uh, my resident astrophysicist and I'm like, what the fuck? Are they talking Chuck? OPT? No, no. Brad Tucker. Brad Tucker. Oh yeah, yeah. Friend of the show, friend of the show. And he's like, yeah, yeah. So, so there are theories there. Of course he did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is like, this is like, the universe is either like the, the big bang, big bounce theory, you know, stuff comes back the w Wild W theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, so it, the, it bangs out and then it collapses back in. And theories that some stuff could survive and, and one ver, you know, stellar remnants. Could it,
Rod: where [00:27:00] that's the bit that always breaks my brain. The universe is everything. Allegedly. Yeah. And then it disappears. But some stuff hangs around. I'm like, where in the shed?
Will: Yeah.
Rod: Like, next to the universe, where the fuck does it hang out? You can't tell me It's everything. And then, so there's bits on the side. This is why I can't do physics, not the maths. The philosophy, it's the concepts man philosophy. I'm like, I don't know where to put that information. I don't know where it fits.
No,
Will: it'll be in. And, and, and I was like, man, could there be some stars here that are older than the universe? Like they do? No, no, of course. It would just be, it would just be particles or like, not even particles. It'd be like gravitational waves. Did you fall asleep? Come through? Yeah. No, I didn't. It was lovely.
It was lovely. Thanks for telling me. It would be, it would not be, it would not be at the level of like a star that survived from previous or a black hole that's just sitting there from previous and like, it, what
Rod: is it? A, a fossil remnant of a star. So it's got teeth and claws and
Will: Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, all it's saying is that our universe is, is, you know, a few billion years old.
There could be older [00:28:00] remnants out there that, that linger on. But, uh, there you go. I, I will, I,
Rod: I will hold my breath.
Little bit of history. We used to do a lot of history. Let's have a little bit now. And this, I have to say thank you to friend of the show and, um, current and former colleague, Dr. Anna, Sophie Gans for pointing this story at us. So the lesson begins, his history lesson begins Scotland, 13th century with a guy named John Duns.
Scott John Dunn. Scottish. Yeah. Three names. His name apparently incorporates his Scottish heritage. Scottish.
Will: Oh, is this the time when people gave themselves a Latin name?
Rod: Not necessarily. But they did tend to incorporate where they were from and where, where they were from. Like at a mega and a less mega scale.
So you could be Rod Lambert's, can Baris. Yeah. Or like Rod Canberra, Latvia, Norway. Sure. Camber Sure. Give us all of it. Yeah, that's what I mean. And so he's kinda doing this, so apparently Scottish, [00:29:00] which is spelt like SCOTUS and Trump Scottish heritage. Yep. And Duns was a village. He was born. Oh. So John Duns, Scottish.
John means he was born in the toilet.
Nice, nice, nice.
Will: So it's all relevant. Finally, it just, all of the information, it's just literally where you were born. Exactly.
Rod: Toilet Village, Scotland, he was a philosopher and a theologian, and he became a Franciscan priest in 1291.
Probably. He was in his twenties. His exact date of birth is a bit nebulous. He went on to become a master philosopher. Linguist. Theologian and metaphysical thinker like us. Nice. Like us. Really. Except for the theologian. We're not great at that. So he came up with a bunch of theories, as you would expect, from a philosopher, linguist, theologian, metaphysical thinker. So, back, back in that time.
Yeah, they could, they could just do a
Will: grab bag of all of them. It's true. Like,
Rod: like I'm, my toe hurts and it rained. Yeah. I think that's a connection.
Will: Well, no, I meant you could be like, pick all of the disciplines of the [00:30:00] university and you're like, yeah, fuck it. I'm a master. I'm, I, I'm a painter, physicist, geologist.
Uh, bathroom renderer. Yeah, exactly.
Rod: Juggler. I can do it all. Odd jobs. And did I mention master, master of all of them? 'cause I am John Scott. So he believed, uh, no, he, sorry, sorry. Theories. One of them a, uh, apparently convoluted philosophical explanation for the existence of a metaphysical God opposed to the idea of the man in the sky thing.
A metaphysical, more nebulous kind of God. More more hidden God. Yeah. More hidden God. Abstract God. Rather, like some dude with a beard and a robe in the sky going, you have made me grumpy.
Will: I think I always assumed that the beard in the sky thing was like, like they couldn't quite work out. Okay, where would God be?
And they're like, well, up, up, up, up. And what does God look like? Okay. Like that. Like old do. Yeah. Like village
Rod: Ude. Yeah. Daddy, he looks like papa. Um, he also apparently come up with a defense of the immaculate conception. Oh, other, other, [00:31:00] other than Mary had sex with someone else and didn't tell. Yeah. That's not immaculate.
Well, it depends how they did it. Maybe it
Will: was wrong. Well, it could have been, I'm arguing that it was not immaculate that I'm saying there might be a fib at the, at the base. Fuck. You're cynical. I
Rod: So he also believed that if you wore a tall conical hat, it would help funnel the knowledge of the universe into your brain, like a medieval wifi booster.
Except you didn't need an intervening device. So you put this tall conical hat on your head and the information deliciousness and knowledge of the universe would hit the point and then get channeled into your brain.
Will: That's how knowledge works.
Rod: It was in the
Will: tall conical device.
Rod: Yeah, it kind of makes sense.
Like an ear trumpet in reverse. So you know it into your head.
Will: Yeah.
Rod: Into your,
Will: into your nodding. But, but, but, but in fairness, there's not a, you know, we get information through our eyes and our ears and you know, the other senses as well. That's boring. Like, why not have a conical thing on your eyes
Rod: or on your ears?
'cause then you bump into things. He's a pragmatic man. He's a Scottish man. You know,
I just don't,
Rod: I [00:32:00] I think what's more impressive is the idea that knowledge stuff resided in the brain.
Will: Oh, okay.
Rod: Fair enough. Fair enough. Rather than the spleen. Yeah, exactly. The liver, the elbow. Yeah. Well, sure. Elbows thinking something, but he, um, so that's, that's what he decided.
If you put this long conical hat on your head, it would filter ideas into your head. How do you,
Will: how do you get to a place? How do you get to a place where you're going? Okay. I, I, I, I like knowledge. Knowledge is good. Let's get some knowledge. Knowledge might come in the brain. Yeah, that's, that's good. Also, we need an antenna thing.
I love it.
Rod: Thing about a condenser. He wanted to really like bring it down to its elements and really sucking whatever he could. Ah,
yeah.
Rod: So, um, yeah, basically the wisdom of the heavens would channel straight in his teachings came to be known as Scottism. Ooh. 'cause his name is Scotus and his most devoted students or followers were known as Dunsman 'cause of his middle name or Dunses.
So some of them would wear these hats, literally wear them as proud examples of their dedication to the [00:33:00] scholarly arts. And him in particular, they'd walk around their long point hats. Wow, and we all know where this is going now, but So by the Renaissance Scottism on the whole was on the wa and the Renaissance, we all know was in the century.
Yeah, it was after the 13th.
Yeah. Later.
Rod: Later. And his followers who were once respected scholars started to be seen as outdated, stubborn, resistant to new ways of thinking. So now the hat became a symbol of something less. Oh my god. Noble people started to go. The guy in the pointy hat. Yeah. Yeah. Fucking dick.
Will: How much are they wearing these pointy hats? It's not clear. I dunno know. They wear them down shop to the party.
Rod: Or is it every day down the shop you wake up, you have a, like, I shit, shower. In a shave, you'll pop your pointy hat on, maybe a pair of pants, go down to the local apothecary for an UNT or a sandwich.
I dunno. You choose. You choose. So apparently the term Dunce, as we know it appeared as early as maybe 16, 24 ish when there was Dunce table in a mentioned in a [00:34:00] play by a dude from the time where children and dumb shits were basically put to seat them apart from others. So in a play that suggests though, at that point,
Will: it like you wouldn't, the notion of dunceness was a thing, was already a thing.
You wouldn't make it up for a play. Like you wouldn't make up something like that for, for a play. What is it? Shakespeare make up words. No, but also what? No, but Shakespeare didn't make up all of those words. Shakespeare? No, some of them already
Rod: existed. It's true. No, but he
Will: was just the first person to write them down like a lot.
Oh. Like he made up, like, there, there were certainly things that he probably made up, but a lot of the stuff is more, it's just the first documentary evidence. And so Good point. What you'd, what you'd suggest here is, yeah, that's a play. So it must have been, it's capturing either doing it or, or people talking about
Rod: it.
So anyway, yeah. John Ford, a play called The Sons Darlings referred to this place, but one of the earliest mentions of the Dunce Cap, not the notion of Dunce, but the Cap. Few hundred years later, Charles Dickens novel, 1840, the Odd Curiosity Shop, ah, just in the background says one of the things you'd find in an elementary school classroom or hanging on the wall, was this conicle called hat probably made outta newspaper.
So they [00:35:00] did do it in the 19th century. Oh.
Will: Oh, they did it. Oh, they did it. I love, I love the 19th century, but they went hard. They went hard for so many things. You're gonna
get
Rod: sadder.
Will: Okay.
Rod: So 18th, 19th Century Britain and American teachers started to put these pointy hats on struggling students and or disruptive students, or just stupid people.
So a big part of it was just to humiliate them.
Yeah, of course. And we
Rod: all know the more you humiliate someone, the more they learn, the better they get at it. Yes. No, of course. It's how I got my PhD.
So the heyday of the cap seems to have been in the Victorian era.
Imagine that. Mm-hmm. Where it was, yeah, it was a disciplinary symbol. It was a marker of shame.
Will: All that good stuff. Well, this is just, just on the desk like, . I think well into the 20th century, they would arrange kids in, in order, like literally who got, who got the, the test scores last week. You sit, uh, highest score sits in the front.
Yeah. Like, and, and just working your way back to the very back of the class. And so it was, it was making a league table in the class, [00:36:00] literally explicit.
Rod: I remember once, you know, I was always a, uh, for all my bluster, a high achieving student in primary school, but I could never get the television. You get expelled from primary school.
That was high school. Oh man. I waited, I waited. I didn't go further get
Will: expelled from primary school. See, that's, that's, I'll go back. That's the tough move
Rod: for selling knives. Selling knives, gunpowder.
Will: Yeah. It's like got barrels of guns. Look for any Gump outta I'm like Guy Forks.
Rod: I was put in the numbers hospital 'cause I couldn't tell the difference between a three and an E and that's the only time I was ever put in a shame coin.
I was just like. What enough They fuck.
Will: Hang on, slow down a second. They call it the numbers
Rod: hospital. The numbers hospital. I still, I was in like, I was six or something and I was like, this doesn't happen to me. One must escape from the numbers hospital. Yeah. So of course I went to Union till I was 70 just to make up for it.
But, um, in theory, predominantly by the mid 20th, Dunce caps had [00:37:00] almost disappeared from classrooms uhhuh, mid, mid 20th century. , And what I found intriguing, if you really want evidence about this, apparently the Dunce's corner continued in some parts of England into the two thousands. Two thousands, and there was a telegraph article 20 10 that reported that putting kids in the Dunce corner had at least been forbidden.
Now finally, in a number of areas, 2010, holy shit. 2010. I mean, it was a Telegraph article, but nonetheless, what the fuck are you talking about?
Will: Seriously humiliating people into learning. Like, wow, what a pedagogy. I, I I, I love, you know, you know, there, there's been those times over the years where we've been asked to write down your philosophy of education.
Just learn shit and shut up. Well, I just love someone writing down, okay, well, I think humiliation plays a really important role here. If they get it wrong
Rod: publicly, shame them and dack them. Dack them. The, the lowest five people in this oral exam in front of the class will get their trousers pulled down, and I mean, undies as well.
I said this at work [00:38:00] recently. I don't think there's enough dacking, and I, I really do. I think our culture is, is. Diminished by the lack of public dacking.
Will: Oh, look, I remember that. Oh, sorry.
Rod: For American listeners, ding means when someone's doing something in public, you sneak up behind them and go and pull their pants down.
Will: Yeah,
Rod: yeah. And then we all laugh and have a jolly good time.
I don't know if we all laugh, always. We all laugh.
Will: But I re I, I went to the, I went to a bachelor's party once you know, its playing golf, like, of course. , And it's like, oh my God, that couldn't be more traditional.
I know. And fucking, oh my god. Heroin hanging out one arm. See, that would be all right. Prostitute on the other arm. That would be all right. Like if we, if we, and you're trying to put, if it's some sort of heavy metal golf, like, like I'm okay with that, but no. And
some, some
Will: fucking guy, he's like, oh, if you don't, if you don't part over, you know, you No, you don't tee off over the lake.
Whatever it is you get, you get dacked and it's like, gone. What are we doing here?
God,
Will: what are,
are you, are you
Rod: 12? Is this a 12 year olds? Like, yes. Except 12 year olds don't play golf. 'cause they haven't. But, but I was, I was very glad that I got over the lake. So, you know, didn't get dacked. No, no, no. [00:39:00] Honestly, I think we should bring it back.
Just Dak dudes. I don't wanna, I don't wanna humiliate women. No, I, I'm happy to humiliate dudes 'cause we deserve it.
Will: Maybe, maybe that's what the prime minister gets. You win an election, you dack the dak the person, whoever wins the election gets d That's the other one. D the, yeah. But
Rod: then for us, Peter Dutton's, dingdong.
Will: No you don't see Dingdong. We just take a
Rod: No. Undies as well. Undies
as well. Calm down. Calm down.
Rod: My wife keeps trying to dack me on the stairs and stuff when I told her about it. And the thing is, 'cause she loves the idea, but she's not fully committed and she feels a bit like she doesn't wanna embarrass me or make it feel bad.
It's only us in the house. So the number of times she and your dogs. Yeah, but they, they, they, they'd love it. But she'll have these little cracks and it's like. She'll grab my shirt by accident and kind of pull my shoulder down or, you know, the, the pants will go down two inches and I look at her and go, you're not even trying.
Not a committed bully. Yeah. You're embarrassing yourself. Yeah. Pull it all away. I'll show you how to d Wait till we get to the shops. I'll fucking d it. Never have. Wow.
Wow. There's, there's some insights just there
Rod: for educational purposes as [00:40:00] we've just been disgusting for science. Look at that now. You've been humiliated.
You will learn.
Will: Oh my god, listener. Look, this has been a whole lot of, a little bit of science for you. Mm-hmm. Um, I just wanted to, I just wanted to close out here because I've got a, a little bit of a, um, a call for research. , Excellent. Well, well, just a, just a thought that, um, I've had recently, , captchas,
Rod: like how many pictures of these don't have a, a weed or a traffic light, and you're like, I don't know, but it's how much of the traffic light
Will: for so long it's been traffic lights and motorbikes and bridges.
Rod: Buses.
Will: Buses too. Buses and, and, and like,
Rod: uh, so does the, the smallest portion of the taillight of the bus count or not.
Will: Exactly. Exactly. And, and I'm like, oh my God. So, so just a step back, captchas are those things that, um, we, we see on, uh, websites all the time, which are, you know, formally called a proof of personhood.
Yes. Like, it's, it's, are you an AI robot? What are, are you not an AI robot? You're, are you, are you a human? And so originally they were often like scrambled up words. Yeah. And you still see those a bit
Rod: or [00:41:00] written in weird kind of handwriting. So a machine allegedly couldn't read that.
Will: Yeah. But the interesting thing about them is that there was, um, at some point someone realized actually you could use them as training data, little bits of training data where you could, you could teach a, a machine, okay, this is a traffic light, this is a bus, this is a bridge, this is a whatever.
So you're giving tiny bits of, of positive human, , identification of objects in the world. And so the interesting thing for a long time you could see, you know, this is a motorbike, this is a, a whatever. It's clearly training data for, driverless cars. it's identification of objects so that machines can see things so Well, it needs to be Is this a, a road or a picture of a road?
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But, but I, I, you know, look, I'm happy with 'em 'cause I, you know, I'm not happy with 'em. No one loves a captchas. It's like a robot asking you if you are the robot, but to when
Rod: you have to go through twice. I do it once, I'm kinda go, fair enough. And then he goes, what about these? I'm like, seriously?
I have to do it twice. Oh, I always worry when I get it wrong. I'm like, oh, is that, is the motorbike really there
Will: or not?
Rod: Is it half a there that I a robot?
Will: [00:42:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but I had one today. It was new and I was like, oh,
Rod: was it, which bit of these shows that's interest shows, shows contentment.
Will: Not quite, not quite that, that would be nice.
Yeah, no, uh, which of these can be picked up comfortably with one hand? And I was like, no way. And I was like, it's conceptual. no. This says to me, this is, this is physical robot. What can you grab with one hand? Like it's, it's an idea of. Objects in the world. And I was like, that's really cool.
So the things on there were, there might have been a building, there was a few treadmills and a few toothbrushes. Cement mixer. Yeah. It was clearly you couldn't, you, you can, you can see a treadmill is an object. Yeah. But you couldn't pick it up comfortably with one hand. Speak for yourself. Buildings. No, you, you, you can't do that.
Whereas a toothbrush, like it had a few pictures of toothbrushes and I was like, okay, that's the one that is, isn't it Toothbrush? Yeah. Nice. Yeah, no, it's actually toothbrushes, teeth brush. It's, it's, yeah. Yeah. Teeth, teeth, brush teeth, brushes. Like they, they should be toothbrush. They [00:43:00] should be toothbrush and toothbrush.
But I was like, hang on. That's, that's a really interesting pivot because, because someone is paying for this data.
Yeah,
yeah, yeah. And what they're asking for is, is machine learning vision to be able to operate objects in the world. Ooh. So listen, what I actually wanted from you is tell us what you see in captchas.
Are there new things that you see? 'cause it says things about what? The robots, okay. They're, they're masters are trying to learn about our world. So look, I thought that was, how do they tell us? , Well, they tell us at cheers at whole. At, no, not even that one anymore. Cheer. Cheers at a little bit of science.com au.
Most, the most professional podcast in the world.
Rod: Maybe in more than one world, depending on the death of the universe. Oh yeah. It could be, it could be there. We could be an ar archeological remnant of a previous one. I've, I've got a remnant of a previous universe in me, so you need to go to the
Will: bathroom.
We are all
Rod: made of remnants of previous universes. Oh my god. It's made of stars. [00:44:00]
Will: Uh,
Rod: a little bit of science is me. Will grant. I. And not him, rod Lamberts. And we want you to give us a nine and a half, bajillion 10 to the 68,000 star review. I
Will: told my students, they said, oh, can we do the seltz now? And I'm like, yeah, gimme a 19 star review.
So yeah, they said, there aren't any stars at all on this. Oh, there aren't any stars. This is a review
Rod: of
his teaching. There are always stars. There's always stars.
Will: Is
Rod: that
Will: us?
Uh, yeah.
Rod: No, you guys listening, you are the stars and we love you. Seems insincere.
