Say what you like about Hitler, but he was one driven man. The guy was dead serious about building monster weapons, including a 188 tonne tank to take over the world. Meanwhile, Australian beetles are proving themselves quite driven to get laid, bonking their brains out with empty beer bottles (we love a good alliteration). And teenagers these days? Well they’re creating slang so fast that even AI can’t keep up with them. Sheesh, take it down a notch guys.
The Might Maus: Hitler's Wonder Weapon
Meet Maus - Hitler's 188 tonne monument to the idea that bigger is always better. This absolute unit was the heaviest fully enclosed armored vehicle ever built and it was about as practical as a teapot made of chocolate.
Sure, it could survive direct anti-tank hits, but it also guzzled fuel like a drunk sailor, moved slower than men on foot and was so heavy it couldn't cross a bridge without collapsing it. Once it was stuck, no way in hell that thing was going anywhere. Spoiler alert - Maus was a flop and Hitler didn’t take over the world. Turns out more is not always more.
Gen Alpha Slang: Skibidi or sigma?
Speaking of things that don't work as intended, researchers are discovering that AI can't keep up with how fast Gen Alpha creates new slang. In fact, even parents of teenagers tested better than AI in deciphering what the heck kids are saying these days.
In a quest to prevent online bullying, young researcher Manisha Metta took it upon herself to create a data set of Gen Alpha phrases, hoping to train AI to detect harassment. But turns out AI has less even rizz than the Boomers. The language is moving too fast for it to keep up and it’s not all that surprising really - the younger generation have always been the ones to push linguistic boundaries. Guess it’s all just skibidi.
Monkey Balls - Size Really Does Matter
Now for some cheeky evolutionary biology - it turns out size really does matter but in this case we’re talking about monkey balls. Scientists studied two different monkey species, each about the same size and weight. One had small testicles, the other had a pair that would impress Hitler.
The monkeys with smaller testicles fight ferociously for a harem, but once they win, they only breed with them. The big ball monkeys act like they’re on LSD and get it on with a whole troop. It's nature's version of "go big or go home," except the stakes are literally passing on your genes. The more promiscuous the troop, the bigger the equipment needed to compete.
And it’s not just primates. Fun fact: Dolphins have proportionally the biggest mammalian testicles of all, a whopping 4% their entire body weight. That means if we were dolphins, we'd have three kilogram nuts.
Is That My Girlfriend or a Pile of Trash?
Dolphins aren’t the only ones getting a lot of loving. There’s a beetle out there bonking it’s brains out on something that should be in the recycling bin. Researchers just happened to be there when a group of Australian jewel beetles gave it their best shot with empty beer bottles on the ground. They weren’t interested in full bottles or different coloured bottles. Just the brown empty ones.
Turns out, these little guys mistook the brown glass stubbies for flightless females. That’s right, only the male beetles can fly. How screwed up is that! With the light reflecting on the brown glass, the empty bottles looked like the perfect girlfriends waiting for their arrival and they were willing to die trying to impress them. Talk about dedication to a lost cause.
So there you have it - failed Nazi engineering, teenagers breaking AI with their slang, monkey reproductive strategies that would make your biology teacher blush and beetles with absolutely terrible taste in partners. You’re welcome!
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Hitler's Obsession with Wonder Weapons
00:35 Introducing the Maus: The Heaviest Tank Ever Built
02:01 Off the Charts Specifications of the Maus
07:33 Technical Challenges of the Maus
14:17 AI Can’t Understand Generation Alpha’s Lingo
24:13 Convergent Evolution
25:54 Promiscuity and Testicle Size in Mammals
28:50 Dolphins and Their Massive Testicles
30:29 Where Do Human Chins Come From?
32:05 Beer Bonking Beetles
37:34 Feeding Predators to Save Prey. Is it a Good Thing?
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[00:00:00] ROD: So, you probably haven't heard this before, but Hitler was quite a driven man. Oh.
[00:00:05] WILL: Oh,
[00:00:05] ROD: he was also really into big ideas and he wasn't afraid to run with 'em. I think no one would dispute that either, One of his obsessions with WI was with this, it's called wva or um, wonder Weapons. One of them this week as I was perusing, you know, the inter tubes that caught my attention, they toyed with calling this weapon the OT or the E 100, but they finally settled on mouse,
[00:00:30] WILL: which is
[00:00:30] ROD: exactly as it sounds in English or mouse. So literally mouse. What kind of weapon was it? Obviously it was the, uh, heaviest and most powerful tank ever constructed.
[00:00:54] WILL: It is time for a little bit of science, just
[00:00:57] ROD: little.
[00:00:58] WILL: I'm will Grant, associate Professor of science communication at the Australian National University.
[00:01:03] ROD: Sounds like a big uni. I'm Rod Lamberts. I'm a 30 year sitcom veteran with the mind of a 15-year-old boy.
[00:01:10] WILL: And, uh, today for your little bit of science a little.
[00:01:13] I'm gonna tell you about, uh, the kids that should get off my lawn.
[00:01:17] ROD: I'm gonna talk about how beer makes all men stupid.
[00:01:21] A little bit on um, the weirdnesses of evolution. Believe it or not, evolution isn't perfect and easy to understand all the time.
[00:01:26] WILL: I've also got something where I'm not sure if it's good news or not, but maybe it is. Maybe it is.
[00:01:32] ROD: this is a new second. Welcome to good news.
[00:01:37] WILL: So the mouse, the mouse,
[00:01:39] The mouse.
[00:01:39] or the mum?
[00:01:40] ROD: Or the, the mouse. The mouse. So about 1942. Ferdinand. Porsche.
[00:01:45] WILL: Yeah. Of the, of the automobiles.
[00:01:48] ROD: Yes. The guy who made BMWs.
[00:01:50] WILL: He did, didn't he?
[00:01:51] ROD: I don't know.
[00:01:51] WILL: I thought he made, he made Volkswagens
[00:01:53] ROD: da
[00:01:53] WILL: dins.
[00:01:53] ROD: Daon.
[00:01:54] WILL: He made
[00:01:55] ROD: He made the DATs, but they called it Shun. This [00:02:00] is my shun.
[00:02:01] WILL: with
[00:02:01] ROD: is 1200 se says, so he believed the, the size to, to get, make armor in tanks really decisive. They should be humongous and well armored
[00:02:10] WILL: This Sounds so
[00:02:11] ROD: What a genius.
[00:02:12] WILL: look, look. Sure, sure.
[00:02:14] ROD: sure. Makes sense. He's, he's, I don't think he's wrong so far.
[00:02:17] WILL: Okay.
[00:02:18] ROD: So the mouse, it was the, uh, heaviest, fully enclosed armored vehicle ever constructed, and it maintains that title today,
[00:02:26] WILL: Yeah. That's what won World War
[00:02:27] ii.
[00:02:28] ROD: Yep. By
[00:02:28] WILL: and, and the story
[00:02:29] ROD: is one
[00:02:30] WILL: months. Hitler drove one giant tank by himself. One months he, he drove it himself. He did all the way to Russia over to America, and then. Man in the high castle.
[00:02:38] ROD: That's how all the canyons and the, what do you call 'em, the, uh, canals were made. It's what made the bearing
[00:02:44] WILL: How big, how big is this thing?
[00:02:46] ROD: It weighed 188 tons.
[00:02:48] WILL: mean,
[00:02:48] ROD: that? 700 Sydney Harbors.
[00:02:50] WILL: But, but is it made of lead or I, I, i 180. 180 tons
[00:02:55] ROD: everyday metals, like you would make out a tank, a tank metal to give you at least some idea.
[00:03:00] Probably the second heaviest, which was also an old school tank. There's the T 28 super heavy tank and it weighed 95,
[00:03:07] WILL: So it's double
[00:03:08] ROD: close. Yeah. double. The other heaviest tank that I could find. Today's heaviest tank, the Abrams, I don't know, T
[00:03:15] WILL: 1000, the
[00:03:15] one that was gonna rip up all of Washington in the, in the, the saddest military parade ever.
[00:03:19] Yeah.
[00:03:19] ROD: And instead they all looked happy, which was of course a travesty to the US military. So heaviest one today, about 70 tons. So two and a half times the heaviest tank that exists today.
[00:03:29] WILL: shows, it shows, you know, it's weird. The, the progression of tanks from, you know, world War I, world War II onwards Mm. Hasn't been increasingly bigger.
[00:03:38] Maybe they've thought, okay, there's disappointing, there's a max out point. I,
[00:03:42] ROD: I don't think there should be. Okay. I think the goal should be to beat the mouse,
[00:03:46] not a euphemism.
[00:03:47] WILL: what if, what if you could do war like that? Like no killing. It's just who can make the most ridiculous tech, you know, like a robot war thing.
[00:03:54] And, and we, we, we base all of our, our geopolitical decisions based on, you know, sort of come to a [00:04:00] big arena. Yep. And you line up the sides and it's, it's the robot tech masters
[00:04:03] ROD: and you throw figurative metaphorical for armies. One creature each at each
[00:04:08] WILL: other.
[00:04:08] Yeah. Make a giant condom.
[00:04:10] ROD: giant gun dam.
[00:04:12] WILL: Yeah.
[00:04:12] ROD: That was that Korean song, wasn't it? Gunda style? No. Am I wrong? You,
[00:04:17] WILL: You are wrong. Like you're wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong.
[00:04:19] ROD: Tank was more than 10 meters long.
[00:04:22] WILL: than 10 meter.
[00:04:23] ROD: Four meters wide. Nearly four meters high.
[00:04:27] WILL: Four meters high.
[00:04:27] ROD: It's fairly, oh, to be fair, three, 3.68
[00:04:30] WILL: it's kind of pointy
[00:04:31] ROD: no, no. You could sum bake on the top of this. Bugger. The tracks, the tank tracks were more than a meter wide. Each That's a lot of track.
[00:04:39] Yeah. Okay.
[00:04:39] so this is not a small vehicle. This is not your standard. SUV. Even even in Texas, you wouldn't see
[00:04:44] an
[00:04:45] WILL: What's, what's the parking like?
[00:04:46] ROD: It turns on a dime
[00:04:48] WILL: I mean, it's 10 meters long, so it turns on a 10 meter dime.
[00:04:50] ROD: Yeah, well it's, it's, yeah, I wouldn't know it. Spoiler alert, it didn't quite live up to expectations. Armor the front hole. The front armor was, uh, between 20 and 22 centimeters thick.
[00:05:04] Yeah. Okay. Centimeters of armor.
[00:05:06] WILL: Yeah. steel. I
[00:05:08] ROD: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:05:08] Like so centimeters.
[00:05:09] Yeah. Yeah. Bigger than your foot. Well, maybe not.
[00:05:12] The front tart got up to 24 centimeters. Thick side and rear armor. Uh, the sides were 18 centimeters and the rear was 16 centimeters thick. A fuck ton of metal. You, you,
[00:05:26] WILL: this
[00:05:26] ROD: must, God, it's a
[00:05:27] WILL: lot. Like you must have really dry soil to drive on. Like, I, I I get
[00:05:30] ROD: yeah, that does come
[00:05:30] WILL: up.
[00:05:32] I get the, you go into the bogs of Russia and this
[00:05:35] ROD: road surface did
[00:05:36] WILL: come
[00:05:36] up well. Well, no, just, there was, I mean, it was tragedy actually. It was um, just recently. I think some American troops in, in one of your homelands.
[00:05:45] Lithuania. Lavia. One of, one of those. It's one of those, one of those, it's one
[00:05:47] of those. But they, they, they got bogged and I think, I think their vehicle like went down into the swamp.
[00:05:52] so, yeah.
[00:05:53] ROD: They drowned in their
[00:05:55] WILL: truck.
[00:05:55] Something like that. Yeah. but you imagine
[00:05:57] ROD: what are doing
[00:05:58] WILL: max out at the 70 tons [00:06:00] and this thing's a hundred eighty,
[00:06:01] ROD: a
[00:06:01] hundred eighty eight. The armor, they reckon basically made it immune to almost anything you could do.
[00:06:05] Like it could survive direct hits from anti-tank guns and artillery. So that's pretty impressive. You wouldn't wanna be inside it when it got hit. I think you get a
[00:06:13] WILL: headache.
[00:06:13] No, you would. No, no, totally. No. I'm,
[00:06:15] ROD: like my ears are ringing.
[00:06:17] WILL: to say it, but you know, those, those idiots they put a really hard helmet on and then Yeah. And then they're like, all right, shoot me right in the head. Yeah. I, I'm not saying I would do that.
[00:06:25] No, but I'm not saying I wouldn't, wouldn't do that. Like.
[00:06:28] ROD: so I would,
[00:06:29] WILL: No. I, I dunno,
[00:06:30] ROD: would not, would not.
[00:06:32] WILL: two Wooden's doesn't make a, a wood
[00:06:34] ROD: No, it doesn't make brain damage though. Like
[00:06:36] WILL: Like, it's,
[00:06:37] ROD: it's the classic approach to car safety. What do you do is you make it stiffer and harder.
[00:06:42] Yeah,
[00:06:42] exactly. You really, really wanna be safe. Make sure it just resists at all costs.
[00:06:46] WILL: this won the war,
[00:06:47] ROD: Yep.
[00:06:48] WILL: That's
[00:06:48] ROD: why we've been conquered by the Germans. So the boom boom parts, the things that going pew, the main gun, 128 millimeters. So 12, nearly 13 centimeter shells.
[00:06:57] WILL: Yeah, but that's not, is that bigger than a normal tank?
[00:06:59] ROD: Uh, yeah. Okay.
[00:07:00] WILL: Okay.
[00:07:00] ROD: It was originally developed as a tank killing weapon, so, which makes sense. You know, said to kill tanks. Effective firing range, three and a half kilometers.
[00:07:07] WILL: Mm.
[00:07:08] ROD: So, I mean, you just gotta go enemy over there.
[00:07:10] Ha. Just start lobbing. I don't know how many could carry though. I don't know how many of those shells it could put on. 'cause I mean, that doesn't count as its base weight.
[00:07:19] WILL: Does it have a little trailer out the back? It would full of shells and stiff. Yeah. And fuel, because I'm imagining
[00:07:25] ROD: oh, we'll get
[00:07:25] to
[00:07:26] WILL: fuel.
[00:07:26] This is using all of the fuel all of the
[00:07:29] ROD: time. Yeah. All of Germany's fuel for the next four years. Secondary weapon, 75 mil coaxial guns, so like big guns. And of course close range machine guns. The gun turret, the main turret weighed over 50 tons.
[00:07:42] WILL: I've never picked up a toret, so I, I dunno what to compare it with.
[00:07:45] ROD: uh, most of 'em are less than that.
[00:07:47] Okay.
[00:07:47] Well when you consider, like I said, the heaviest tanks today are 70 tons. The main gun tower weighed a fair bit of one of those tanks. So the bru bros. The engines are originally a damela Benzs.
[00:07:56] WILL: Benzs.
[00:07:57] Well, of course, one needs to, one needs to drive [00:08:00] in style. Sophisticated
[00:08:01] ROD: Hitler would not murder people with anything less than a bends.
[00:08:04] Um, There was a 1200 horsepower, which is many
[00:08:08] but that didn't go so well.
[00:08:09] So they replaced it with a slightly less powerful, a 1080 horsepower Porsche diesel engine. Previous one was gasoline, had an electric transmission. The engine drove generator, and the generator powered electric motors on every track. So there were separate
[00:08:23] motors. okay.
[00:08:24] Which sounds great,
[00:08:26] doesn't it? It's an EV basically. Hmm.
[00:08:29] Pretty close There were a couple of issues you picked. One, the weight. The weight, depending on which source you read. The weight of the armor made it close to immobile, the, the real world speed on ideal flat terrain.
[00:08:42] It could max out at probably 13 kilometers an hour. Eight, eight miles an hour-ish off road. It could barely move. As soon as the ground was even slightly icky, bl, just nothing, uh, the engine. The problem was neither of the engines that they tried could handle the weight. So the mouse was slower than infantry.
[00:09:02] So your soldiers are going, yep.
[00:09:04] WILL: So it's, it's, it's a slow mobile artillery platform. Really?
[00:09:07] ROD: Ooh. Like a fort, I would've called it. It's
[00:09:09] like a mini fort. The prototype often sank into the ground. Even on reinforced roads. It would kind of go Yeah. And take them out. Um, Also this engine was, it was innovative, no doubt, but it was also prone to the engine and the systems related to it.
[00:09:23] Severe overheating.
[00:09:24] WILL: Yeah. Okay.
[00:09:25] ROD: Logistically though it was
[00:09:26] great.
[00:09:26] WILL: They need to put a river through there to cool. The, pretty much cool. The tank down much.
[00:09:29] ROD: Well, one of the things it couldn't do was cross bridges.
[00:09:32] WILL: Of course not.
[00:09:33] ROD: Uh, so what they did, apparently they developed a system where there was a snorkel system, so it could drive underwater, but what you'd have to do is have one mouse in the water and another one on the shore linked to it, connected with power cables to help it.
[00:09:46] I don't think that'd ever got tested,
[00:09:47] WILL: And another one to drag it out, the other, other, side, other side, like,
[00:09:50] ROD: oh, that comes up too. I mean, there's so many issues.
[00:09:53] WILL: You, so
[00:09:53] ROD: you couldn't put it on a train like many, any other tank to, to move it. You had to dismantle it.
[00:09:58] WILL: Yeah.
[00:09:58] ROD: There was no existing [00:10:00] recovery vehicle that could do anything with it, so they got stuck. You just had to, oh, well that's done. It lives in Now. Walk
[00:10:05] WILL: away.
[00:10:07] ROD: Our fuel consumption, you asked about this, uh, hundreds of liters per hour, hundreds per hour. Hundreds. Now, of course, the World War II famously had an abundance of fuel and, and it had nothing to do with, you know, whole armies getting completely routed. 'cause they couldn't have supply chains of available fuel. So that wasn't a problem.
[00:10:26] WILL: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:26] ROD: So I need the sarcasm emoji for those of you who are, you know, younger than, I don't know, 90 and
[00:10:31] WILL: you could drive it next to like an oil tanker. You could, or something like
[00:10:35] ROD: And the oil tanker would float over the surface while this
[00:10:37] WILL: No, well you just keep it on the coast. You drive along the beach.
[00:10:40] ROD: Oh yeah. With a long umbilical
[00:10:41] WILL: beach with an umbilical cord going out to the oil tanker.
[00:10:44] ROD: makes sense. See, now I'm seeing it 'cause it was so powerful. Did anything
[00:10:47] work?
[00:10:48] Yeah, the gun.
[00:10:49] WILL: Okay. Well that's cool.
[00:10:50] ROD: The gun could destroy an allied tank in a single shot foop boom tank gone. But of course, uh, only one mouse ever fired its main testing
[00:11:00] WILL: gun in anger or in testing.
[00:11:02] Testing. Okay. None
[00:11:03] ROD: ever saw combat good.
[00:11:05] They never got to combat. Only two prototypes were ever completed.
[00:11:08] WILL: Uh,
[00:11:08] ROD: The V one and the imaginatively named V
[00:11:11] WILL: two.
[00:11:11] Oh, I was gonna guess that, yeah. You didn't give me a
[00:11:14] ROD: That wasn't fair of
[00:11:15] WILL: me.
[00:11:15] ROD: I've taken the fun away. So the V one, they the functional chassis with a test tart, but it wasn't armed, and the V two got the full tart in arm.
[00:11:23] So that was one that went
[00:11:24] WILL: three
[00:11:25] ROD: and a half kilometers away. Something blew
[00:11:26] WILL: up,
[00:11:27] ROD: but it blew up emphatically. So production was delayed all the time. 'cause of lack of resources, uh, bombings and disruptions to German industry. Imagine that. So it didn't go well. So finally, Albert Speer, late 1943 went, look, stop.
[00:11:40] Just
[00:11:41] WILL: stop Albert Spear did it.
[00:11:42] ROD: Albert Spearer. Yeah, Speer went, no, apparently Hitler was still nudging
[00:11:44] WILL: for
[00:11:44] five. Albert spear liked grandiose vision.
[00:11:46] ROD: Yeah. But he wasn't completely fucking stupid. I think that was the thing. Whereas Hitler was just like, I want more. So in 1945 he's like, get me my moss. But they didn't.
[00:11:55] WILL: I do like that. He, he was fascinated.
[00:11:56] He was like, this would be the thing if, if only
[00:11:59] ROD: apparently there's a whole[00:12:00]
[00:12:00] WILL: weapons screw the nuclear weapons.
[00:12:02] ROD: He loved it. And I mean, I, I'll give him, you know, small points. April 45, the all aides were closing in, so the German engineers went, we have to destroy the prototypes and the plans.
[00:12:09] We don't want this falling into enemy hands.
[00:12:11] WILL: Yeah, of course, of course. Why not? Why not do the opposite and leave that and say you should build hundreds
[00:12:16] ROD: oh, This is woo. If you'd been here two months later, there would've been a whole wall of these things pointing right at you. Yeah. Then the Soviet forces overran the test site.
[00:12:25] The Master V one was damaged. The master V two was found by Soviet tanks, uh, troops rather. And they basically bastardized the two of them to made one functional one. And they've got in a tank museum near Moscow. That's the only one. Yeah, they've got one. Apparently a bastard of the two.
[00:12:41] WILL: That's so
[00:12:41] ROD: giant mouth.
[00:12:42] I know. It'd be great. And I gotta say this is, this is, this is where I say at the end um, say what you will about Hitler,
[00:12:46] WILL: Ah,
[00:12:47] ROD: but he was prone to testing new ideas.
[00:12:50] WILL: you know, this, this reminds me and, and, uh, grandiose visions aside and stupid ideas of war aside, but there was, there was this piece of research, and I'm not gonna get the full details here. No, but it was a few years ago. And it, it was one of those bits where you go, ah, oh, why'd you have to do that science?
[00:13:05] Why, why'd you have to do that? And, and so,
[00:13:07] ROD: so that we could get wifi.
[00:13:09] WILL: No, but it was, it was a piece of research that looked at body size Yeah. and bone strength and, and how, you know, what bone strength you can achieve and what bone strength is needed for certain body size. And, and of course, you know, we've got the animals that we've got, you know, at the moment up to elephants in the past.
[00:13:26] You know, you got your bronto sauces and
[00:13:28] Yourdo. Yeah, yeah. The,
[00:13:29] ROD: De de high.
[00:13:30] WILL: But basically it was saying, look. They, they point in a trajectory that goes apart. Like you can't have Godzilla
[00:13:37] ROD: a
[00:13:37] WILL: our gravity. You, you can't, you, you can't have, a monster that big. In, in, in our world, maybe, maybe on a different world.
[00:13:44] And, and I'm like, ah, it's kind of sad. It's that the, the bones can only hold us up to a certain, but I think, I think it applies, it still applies as well in other ways to things like tanks as well. So
[00:13:55] ROD: yeah, it appears like 188. Tons is,
[00:13:58] WILL: Well, I mean, what, what was the [00:14:00] movie? The um,
[00:14:01] uh.
[00:14:02] ROD: No,
[00:14:02] mo one?
[00:14:03] know the one you mean? The, his Mortal
[00:14:05] WILL: Engines.
[00:14:05] His mortal engines. And it's like, it'd be cool. It'd be cool.
[00:14:08] ROD: love the
[00:14:09] WILL: love the idea It's not
[00:14:09] ROD: but that wouldn't work. No, not on this
[00:14:11] WILL: plane. Ah.
[00:14:11] ROD: Ah.
[00:14:14] WILL: Well, I told you before that um, you kids should get off my lawn.
[00:14:17] Get off the lawn,
[00:14:18] but it's, it's, it's not quite my lawn and I'm not saying the kids should get off it at all, but, uh, I'm amused because in this story. AI can't read kids lawn. what,
[00:14:31] ROD: as in the words, kids' lawn or it can't read
[00:14:34] WILL: lawns. Well, the words, the words kids lawn, not those particular words, but, uh, yeah, AI
[00:14:39] can't, sounds
[00:14:39] exciting.
[00:14:40] AI can't handle the kids. So ai
[00:14:42] No, it shouldn't
[00:14:42] either.
[00:14:42] ROD: either.
[00:14:44] WILL: This is, this is a great study. First, first thing, I just want to do the shout out because, the research paper is led by but has collaborators, but led by Manisha Metta who is about to be in the ninth grade. And I'm like, go, you. This is, this is awesome.
[00:14:58] This is
[00:14:58] ROD: awesome. this is
[00:14:59] the
[00:14:59] kids fighting back. You, you get off my
[00:15:01] WILL: lawn. This
[00:15:01] is the kids fighting back. Okay. So, Manisha noticed she'd seen a bunch of her friends experiencing online harassment and she was like, well. I'm not sure if our parents can understand the lingo these days.
[00:15:15] Oh. So you know, her friends are
[00:15:16] ROD: getting,
[00:15:17] so they don't even know if
[00:15:18] WILL: it's
[00:15:18] harassing sc harassed or flop.
[00:15:20] ROD: You're a flop. And like, is that good or
[00:15:22] WILL: yeah. Yeah. They're passing or not passing the vibe check. I dunno if they're cooking or not. I've
[00:15:27] ROD: I've heard about
[00:15:28] WILL: but anyway, Manisha said, let's do something about this. Ah, let's see if AI can understand kids' lingo and then could theoretically get in there to, to assist with
[00:15:39] ROD: online
[00:15:40] ation. Spoiler alert. Yes. Instantly. The moment they push the go button,
[00:15:45] it's
[00:15:45] WILL: solved Well be before I tell you the results, I mean, I've just got a few a few things and I, I want you to, I mean, obviously you're gonna say it depends on the context I
[00:15:55] would
[00:15:55] never do
[00:15:55] but do, you know, do well, I mean, uh, let him cook is, is a [00:16:00] phrase.
[00:16:00] Sounds bad. Sounds bad.
[00:16:02] ROD: Sounds, leave him to suffer or stew in his
[00:16:04] WILL: own.
[00:16:04] Yeah,
[00:16:05] Yeah.
[00:16:05] ROD: Yeah. Yeah. Beeswax,
[00:16:06] WILL: yeah. Okay. what if someone ate that up?
[00:16:08] ROD: Sounds good. They
[00:16:09] WILL: loved
[00:16:09] it.
[00:16:11] ROD: And then ate the vegetables and their dessert
[00:16:13] WILL: too.
[00:16:13] What if someone got ratioed?
[00:16:15] ROD: That's bad. Is this what I'm trying to do, good or
[00:16:19] WILL: man. Uh, you can, you can give me more if you want, but good or
[00:16:22] ROD: bad?
[00:16:22] Relatively
[00:16:23] bad, depending on the
[00:16:24] WILL: ratio.
[00:16:26] What if something, sigma.
[00:16:27] ROD: S mysterious. You're so
[00:16:32] WILL: like don't
[00:16:32] ROD: sigma.
[00:16:34] WILL: love when old people trying to interpret, uh, the kid's lingo
[00:16:38] ROD: wouldn't know, never
[00:16:38] WILL: hung
[00:16:39] with
[00:16:39] you.
[00:16:42] ROD: I reckon I've, I've nailed it. I'm a hundred
[00:16:44] WILL: There was one, there was one here, and I, oop. And
[00:16:46] ROD: IO
[00:16:47] WILL: and I oop, and I'm like, typo.
[00:16:48] ROD: a typo.
[00:16:49] WILL: It's Ty. That's all I correct.
[00:16:51] ROD: and IO
[00:16:54] WILL: and
[00:16:54] ROD: IOI also, oop,
[00:16:56] WILL: You oop, we oop we o together.
[00:16:58] ROD: He, she, they, it Ed,
[00:17:00] WILL: Oop. I think so. I think
[00:17:02] ROD: so.
[00:17:02] in the past, what is it? The Jaron past? Reciprocal. Reciprocal is the ha have g Ed.
[00:17:07] WILL: Ed I once oed
[00:17:08] ROD: having been once intending
[00:17:10] WILL: have One One shall oop in the future?
[00:17:12]
[00:17:14] ROD: you're
[00:17:14] not gonna tell me what those words mean. You son of a bitch. It's 'cause I
[00:17:17] WILL: got they all mean gibby. Ty's not good.
[00:17:21] No, I, I think ski is, is definitely in the middle. It depends on, it depends on
[00:17:25] ROD: It's in the middle. What was that like? Meh.
[00:17:28] WILL: I think, I think Skiddy is deliberately ambiguous. It's, uh,
[00:17:31] ROD: I want
[00:17:32] to say that I feel deliberately ambiguous about this.
[00:17:34] WILL: I think that wouldn't be cool with the Gen Alpha.
[00:17:37] ROD: Oh, but wait till Jen. Beater.
[00:17:39]
[00:17:39] WILL: Manisha Metta one of the achievements of this paper, aside from everything
[00:17:43] ROD: else
[00:17:43] is it's on this show
[00:17:44] WILL: uh, no, is that um, she went and, and gathered a bunch of her friends. To make a data set of gen alpha phrases.
[00:17:52] Now there's been people obviously documenting a bit before. Yeah. But this is the first data set that's ever been collected of gen alpha lingo. So
[00:17:59] ROD: I was [00:18:00] at linguist in year nine.
[00:18:01] WILL: There you go. Published computational science
[00:18:03] ROD: What do they call it? I wrote a, what do you call it when you write a, a, a A lexicon.
[00:18:07] I wrote a lexicon of Jen Alpha S
[00:18:09] WILL: ling.
[00:18:09] Yeah, it is.
[00:18:10] ROD: Is that ski?
[00:18:11] WILL: It's very ski.
[00:18:12] ROD: Is it sigma?
[00:18:14] WILL: No, it's not Sigma. No, it's, it's
[00:18:16] ROD: not
[00:18:17] Sigma. So Sigma's bad, not mysterious. Yeah.
[00:18:18] WILL: No. We should let her cook, I think.
[00:18:21] ROD: Oh, that's
[00:18:21] WILL: good.
[00:18:22] I think we should let
[00:18:22] ROD: cook.
[00:18:23] So like, it's
[00:18:24] WILL: like keep cooking, keep
[00:18:25] ROD: cooking, keep
[00:18:25] WILL: bubbling.
[00:18:25] Yeah. Keep cooking, keep bubbling on. Yeah. You know, keep bubbling on. That's Gen X slough slang there. You know,
[00:18:32] ROD: We've been bubbling on
[00:18:33] WILL: all
[00:18:33] go.
[00:18:36] ROD: Of course, if you go to the Rugby League of Australia, bubbling means something entirely different.
[00:18:40] WILL: You know what's cool? Parents and all of the different chatbots that, uh, that she looked at.
[00:18:47] Yeah. And she looked at a bunch, you know the regulars, you got the, the chat GPT
[00:18:50] number four.
[00:18:51] ROD: your tropics,
[00:18:52] WILL: Your Geminis. Your llamas. Yep. They're all shit. They're all shit. so
[00:18:57] ROD: does that just mean there's not enough out there for them to find out what it means?
[00:18:59] WILL: means. It could be. Or, or, or they can't work out context.
[00:19:03] No.
[00:19:04] ROD: Or no.
[00:19:04] WILL: and I'll give you my final answer in a second. Yeah, yeah. But look, so she scored the large language models against parents Yep. Against professional modelers, uh, moderators. So people that were asked to go and moderate different sites and against Gen
[00:19:19] Alpha.
[00:19:19] And Gen Alpha basically knew a hundred percent of
[00:19:22] ROD: the,
[00:19:22] slot. Of course, they, it's their
[00:19:23] WILL: language.
[00:19:23] Yeah, exactly. They're like, yeah, I know sc Yeah. I, I, I, I get that. What kind
[00:19:27] ROD: kind of non cooked sigma wanker, wouldn't they?
[00:19:30] WILL: they? Totally keeping it low key,
[00:19:32] so they're getting like 98% to a hundred percent. They, they, they've, they've got it all. The professional moderators were slightly better than the others.
[00:19:39] So they, they're, they're at 72%, but it goes down from there. Parents, actually, parents are sort of ranks number, number three out of this outta the gen alpha and, which is interesting here. So parents are down to 68% understanding, and then you get like 64 down to 58% for the, for the large language
[00:19:56] ROD: models.
[00:19:57] What about the cops,
[00:19:58] WILL: cops are way below. I'm [00:20:00] sorry. Imagine that. I'm sorry.
[00:20:01] ROD: Oh yeah. It was ululating in the vicinity of the virtual direction and I saw a male perpetrator or
[00:20:06] WILL: suspect, but for the parents out there, you may be better at the skiddy language than the, the, than the large language
[00:20:14] ROD: give it two
[00:20:14] WILL: weeks
[00:20:15] though.
[00:20:15] Yeah,
[00:20:15] ROD: maybe
[00:20:16] because, so this means basically the bottom line or problem with this is it's hard to tell if these people are being harassed
[00:20:22] WILL: blind, so yeah. From, from Manisha, Matt's, uh, point of view, she's like, well, we don't actually have a solution for online harassment there,
[00:20:29] ROD: Jen Alpha moderators
[00:20:30] WILL: it Well, it could be.
[00:20:32] Yeah, it could be. So, so she is saying, and I, I wanna, I wanna put the positive on sake, but she's saying you can't use language model to, to moderate this because it's just, we don't have enough understanding in the large language models to be actually, to be able to
[00:20:45] ROD: use
[00:20:45] that.
[00:20:45] So they can't do everything.
[00:20:47] WILL: Yeah.
[00:20:47] But, but I wanna flip around and just go, what, what I love here is Yes, okay. The, the harassment and the bullying is not great. Yeah. But the development of language that, that all young people have always been the font of
[00:21:00] ROD: new
[00:21:00] language. Always. Yeah.
[00:21:01] WILL: But there's a lot of, bunch, a lot of things at the moment saying that they are developing new language, new terms faster than ever.
[00:21:07] And that, that, that new things are popping up
[00:21:09] ROD: I, I'm not
[00:21:10] WILL: the time. And, and there's a part of me that says. Always these terms are developed and they always were. Yeah. To be able to hide from positions of authority. Yeah. Like you, you, you develop new words. Yeah. So people dunno what you're talking
[00:21:22] about. Yeah. It's
[00:21:23] f you know, either parents, teachers, the cops or the large language models.
[00:21:28] So I just, I obviously want Jen Alpha to be safe online. Yeah. But having your own words, you're safe.
[00:21:34] ROD: and you
[00:21:35] totally should. You totally should. If you don't. It's when a new generation stops doing that, that I'd be really concerned. That's 'cause that means they've had their souls beaten outta them.
[00:21:44] WILL: there you go. There you go.
[00:21:45] keep offering, keep
[00:21:46] skitting and, uh,
[00:21:48] ROD: that's ambiguous.
[00:21:49] Yeah.
[00:21:50] So under certain circumstances, keep skidding.
[00:21:53] WILL: I I do wanna ask one final one. Uh, you are such a pick me.
[00:21:57] ROD: Is that,
[00:21:57] that
[00:21:57] sounds
[00:21:58] WILL: desperate.
[00:21:59] ROD: [00:22:00] That sounds like a desperate cry for
[00:22:02] WILL: Pick me, pick me, pick me, pick me.
[00:22:03] Pick me. I didn't like that. Is it? Oh yeah. That is definitely bullying. That one came up with the category overt
[00:22:10] ROD: Simon. I'm,
[00:22:11] at, I'm at, I'm at 99%. That's
[00:22:12] WILL: pretty good.
[00:22:12] You are basically Jen Alpha.
[00:22:16] ROD: So evolution. I like a lot of, a lot of stuff happens with evolution. And you think it's simple. You think it's straightforward, you think it's linear, you think everyone agrees on what it is and there's no complexities. That ain't true.
[00:22:26] And
[00:22:27] sometimes biologists, they have the little scuffles about it.
[00:22:29] So I was, I was reading an article in the conversation 'cause I'm an interesting guy and a dude who's been, he's written a book called The Tree of Life. He's a biology guy he wrote a little sort of summary of his book, and I'm telling you this because you know that's my street cred. The title of the article is what Grabbed Me.
[00:22:44] Dolphins got Giant Testicles, we got a Chin. Only one makes sense. How can you not read that article?
[00:22:52] WILL: Right?
[00:22:53] ROD: I
[00:22:53] WILL: I do feel like, like a human and a dolphin found a magic lamp together and you get one and a half wishes each.
[00:23:01] Exactly.
[00:23:02] ROD: I'm gonna find, okay you guys, ah, get a chin ha.
[00:23:07] WILL: and maybe there was someone somewhere that said, you know what, it's the chin that I want. I've already got the giant balls I want, I want everyone to have giant chins
[00:23:13] or just any
[00:23:15] ROD: So the core mission of the book, or at least the article, is to make sense of. Repeated evolution. AKA convergent
[00:23:21] WILL: Oh yeah. The, the best of evolution. Yeah. Because what it says is it's a good idea. Everyone's pointing towards, you know, making wings, making
[00:23:30] ROD: eyeballs.
[00:23:31] Yeah. That's what it's, it's exactly that. So apparently it's, it's particularly useful to make sense of with biologists. So convergent evolution, you kind of flagged it. It's when organisms that aren't closely related still evolve similar features or behaviors, and so they solve the same
[00:23:45] WILL: problems.
[00:23:45] Just an aside here, are you gonna mention crabs?
[00:23:49] ROD: I've got, I've got crabs. I don't need to
[00:23:51] WILL: I can mention crabs in this article.
[00:23:53] ROD: Crabs. No, not this
[00:23:53] WILL: I'll just, I just, okay. For later. In ification, that's a different one.
[00:23:58] ROD: I did see an article that [00:24:00] said, are we all gonna turn into crabs?
[00:24:01] WILL: Everyone will be one day.
[00:24:03] ROD: I think that's good. We'll, we'll get to that next, next
[00:24:05] episode.
[00:24:06] So the process of this results in matching body shapes, et cetera, color patterns, whatever, but from different. Descent, like you said, wings. So bat wings. Bird wings. Eyes have emerged on their own spontaneously
[00:24:18] WILL: More times than
[00:24:19] ROD: many times. More times than growing grain. It's true deliberately. Conversion evolution. Two organisms look or behave in a very similar way, even though they're only distantly related. This means they've independently evolved those similarities rather than coming from a common ancestor.
[00:24:34] For biologists, this author says, this can be a source of intense frustration. Oh. Because Confusing as to how the
[00:24:39] species
[00:24:40] are related. Ah,
[00:24:41] WILL: Oh, keep your, keep your shit separate.
[00:24:43] ROD: Yeah. Make it easier for us.
[00:24:45] So
[00:24:45] Telford the author, he says, look, there's something really useful about conversion evolution. 'cause if you think of it as a kind of natural experiment. Yeah.
[00:24:52] WILL: Yeah.
[00:24:52] ROD: So heres example. Monkey
[00:24:54] WILL: balls.
[00:24:55] ROD: Not a euphemism. So the abyssinian, black and white COIs monkeys and the bonnet macca,
[00:25:00] WILL: macca, the
[00:25:01] ROD: the males are roughly about the same
[00:25:03] WILL: The bonnet
[00:25:04] ROD: mcca,
[00:25:04] the bonnet mcca.
[00:25:05] WILL: mcca. It feels, it feels like Jane Austen was like, like, like that. Well, that one,
[00:25:09] it's a that
[00:25:10] ROD: A This SA
[00:25:11] WILL: a civil bonis mcca,
[00:25:12] ROD: This ape knows its place in the social hierarchy,
[00:25:15] knows which
[00:25:15] way to pass the port at the
[00:25:16] WILL: end of the meal.
[00:25:17] ROD: So you've got a maca and you've got a a, a colo bu
[00:25:20] WILL: bu
[00:25:21] ROD: monkey. They're about the same size, the adult male's about the same size, but the manifestations, the, in the realization of the, you know, manly junk,
[00:25:31] WILL: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:32] quite
[00:25:32] ROD: different. So your, your calibers balls about three grams
[00:25:35] WILL: Okay.
[00:25:36] per ball.
[00:25:37] Okay. Your
[00:25:37] ROD: Maccas 48
[00:25:39] grams. Wow.
[00:25:40] I know, right?
[00:25:41] Wow. I was a little bit intimidated too. I just stopped reading at that point. Kind of go and then go and weigh my own.
[00:25:47] 49.
[00:25:48] very difficult to weigh an individual testicle unless you take
[00:25:51] WILL: out.
[00:25:51] It's, it's a balancing
[00:25:52] ROD: act
[00:25:53] It really is. so why would this be the case?
[00:25:55] Why would the same size males of basically similar kinds of
[00:25:59] creatures, [00:26:00] why
[00:26:00] have such different nuts?
[00:26:02] WILL: It's, it's baffling to know it's maybe, maybe the ladies in one species want 'em in a certain direction and, uh.
[00:26:08] ROD: uh, oh, he some more, some are more ball interested
[00:26:11] WILL: than
[00:26:11] others. I'm just saying it might be sexual selection.
[00:26:14] ROD: Well, it kind of is according to this piece anyway. Uh, I assume his professor, or at least Dr. Telford, it might be down to the proclivities of mating.
[00:26:23] WILL: right.
[00:26:24] ROD: So the 48 gram beanbag, Maccas, the big boys, apparently they quote, live in peaceful mixed troops of about 30 monkeys in which everyone mates with everyone else.
[00:26:34] So fuck
[00:26:34] WILL: troops
[00:26:35] Yep.
[00:26:36] ROD: The other hand, the, uh, the colobus fellas, the three gram, not boys, they apparently compete ferociously for access to a harem of females who then only mate with them. So all they really need the argument runs is, you know, a droplet of sperm will make the
[00:26:49] WILL: baby,
[00:26:49] but, but it's fighting first that
[00:26:51] ROD: But once it's got them, it doesn't need to work. It doesn't need to produce a
[00:26:54] WILL: of
[00:26:54] juice. But if you're fucking everyone, then you need a lot
[00:26:56] ROD: of
[00:26:56] juice.
[00:26:56] Yeah. You gotta spread it around because, you know, as, as they put it, this is
[00:26:59] WILL: You need juice makers
[00:27:00] ROD: if you are the third person in the queue, you want to sort of flood the zone with you.
[00:27:06] WILL: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:08] ROD: I think is how they put it. Third in the queue, flood it
[00:27:10] WILL: with
[00:27:10] you.
[00:27:12] ROD: Hence they need more juice. Hence they need whoever's grandes, biological
[00:27:17] WILL: term.
[00:27:18] ROD: It's delightful.
[00:27:19] WILL: So. It's
[00:27:20] ROD: a fairly logical explanation. You can see the sense of it, you know, like, but can you test it further? Like how do you kind of go, well, maybe this is just a strange quirk of two kinds of larger and smaller nutted monkeys.
[00:27:32] This is where convergent evolution helps, because if you look across the whole mammal branch of the tree of life, the trees, whatever, right? You see a whole bunch of mammals that have evolved different testicle sizes.
[00:27:43] WILL: And in
[00:27:44] ROD: In almost all these sec uh, these separate cases, big balls equals more promiscuous small ones equals more monogamous.
[00:27:50] So you've spread the juice 'cause you, everyone's banging everyone or a droplet here and there because mine,
[00:27:56] WILL: So it's so, it's like, like, if you partner up or something
[00:27:58] ROD: that, you don't need as much of the, [00:28:00] the, ding dong juice, silverback, male gorillas, they have access to exclusive harems or is it hair plural of Harems hair
[00:28:08] WILL: ha
[00:28:09] ROD: rummy.
[00:28:10] WILL: Where's, where's, where's the root word? You I just left that it wasn't even
[00:28:14] ROD: anything. I appreciate that. Thank you for doing that.
[00:28:17] But they're silverback gorilla, tiny
[00:28:18] WILL: nuts.
[00:28:19] I'm sorry
[00:28:20] ROD: for you.
[00:28:21] They
[00:28:21] WILL: it.
[00:28:21] ROD: need it. Yeah. Look at the
[00:28:22] WILL: testicles.
[00:28:23] I get it. I get it. I get it. They, they, they're, they're displaying elsewhere
[00:28:26] ROD: in virtually every other way.
[00:28:27] It sounds like. Chimps and bonobos, humongous balls and their root
[00:28:31] WILL: rats.
[00:28:32] ROD: So it follows through in these other primates. Same thing. Big balls.
[00:28:38] WILL: This is, this is, I mean, finally, finally, this question has been
[00:28:41] ROD: answered.
[00:28:41] I've been wondering for
[00:28:42] years.
[00:28:43] Why do you have small balls and you have big balls? Ah, you're in a promiscuous society and you are not.
[00:28:48] Yeah,
[00:28:48] okay.
[00:28:49] But it's not just
[00:28:49] WILL: primates.
[00:28:50] ROD: Dolphins.
[00:28:52] WILL: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:53] ROD: Yes. We know natural rapists and all that stuff. We're not gonna talk about that right now. Oops. So it's hard apparently to study their sex life in, in nature, but they've found one mob called spinner dolphins, and
[00:29:03] WILL: they
[00:29:03] ROD: engage in what they call mass mating events, which are, are labeled mass mating events.
[00:29:07] Mass mating events, and they call them WLS les,
[00:29:10] WILL: wl,
[00:29:10] ROD: which is adorable. It sounds like
[00:29:12] WILL: Hug, I don't reckon the dolphins
[00:29:13] ROD: call
[00:29:13] 'em that.
[00:29:14] No, they call it yes.
[00:29:17] But
[00:29:17] Imagine A whole bunch of po pie. Swirling around doing
[00:29:21] WILL: I, I know
[00:29:21] scientists, scientists need to look
[00:29:23] ROD: at
[00:29:23] the
[00:29:23] first. It should be called
[00:29:24] WILL: called colossal,
[00:29:25] but did, did you kinda look away discreetly and just go, okay, let the camera record this.
[00:29:28] I'm
[00:29:28] just, uh.
[00:29:30] ROD: microscopes on big, big googly goggles, staring
[00:29:33] WILL: right
[00:29:33] at it.
[00:29:34] ROD: Never
[00:29:35] break eye
[00:29:35] WILL: contact.
[00:29:36] ROD: So they apparently um, have proportionally the biggest mammalian testicles of all, as much as 4% of their body weight.
[00:29:45] So if a
[00:29:45] WILL: 4%,
[00:29:46] ROD: 4%, if you or I
[00:29:47] WILL: wanna, I don't wanna think anything about, I, I don't, I haven't weighed mine against
[00:29:51] ROD: my, not, not
[00:29:52] WILL: for while. I,
[00:29:52] I, I'm guessing it's not 4%.
[00:29:54] ROD: So yeah, if you or I were dolphins, basically we'd have three kilogram nuts. [00:30:00]
[00:30:03] WILL: I don't want
[00:30:04] that.
[00:30:05] ROD: Imagine finding
[00:30:05] WILL: trousers.
[00:30:06] ah,
[00:30:07] ROD: it'd be terrible. We'd all be wearing
[00:30:08] WILL: kilts
[00:30:08] in total, or, or one each.
[00:30:11] ROD: No, no, no. It's not 8%. No, we're talking total ball is uh, you know, basically 4% of the
[00:30:15] WILL: radio. Oh
[00:30:16] my God. Oh
[00:30:17] ROD: my
[00:30:17] God. So basically ball size seems to relate to patterns of intercourse.
[00:30:22] Humans proportionally is somewhere in the middle. So I suppose we get to have harems and or
[00:30:26] Yeah. Okay.
[00:30:26] WILL: Yeah. Okay.
[00:30:27] It's a
[00:30:27] choice
[00:30:28] ROD: Yeah.
[00:30:28] Fuck things. And why is the chin in the title? 'cause I dunno if you remember the title
[00:30:31] WILL: I do, I do.
[00:30:32] ROD: Just for people listening at home. Dolphin's got giant testicles. We got a chin only one Makes sense.
[00:30:37] So in the
[00:30:38] context makes sense. Yeah.
[00:30:39] In the context of convergent evolution,
[00:30:41] WILL: like, okay, so the balls make
[00:30:43] sense. Yeah.
[00:30:44] You can't, you can't just put a red herring out there and say, it doesn't make sense. Like there's gonna be some reason that chins are
[00:30:49] ROD: important.
[00:30:49] Well, apparently there are many theories of why humans have chins.
[00:30:52] 'cause apparently like no other mammal does there, there's no comparator according to what they call a chin in
[00:30:57] WILL: the human.
[00:30:58] I feel like I'm looking at gorillas in my mind
[00:31:00] ROD: right
[00:31:01] now.
[00:31:01] Yeah. But apparently I assume it's the jutting chin that wasn't specific in
[00:31:04] WILL: Ah, I said I'm, I'm dialing up some
[00:31:05] ROD: Google, dialing up some, some thingo.
[00:31:07] there are arguments like it's because it makes us more masculine. It's a throwback from Neander, Foley times, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Gorilla.
[00:31:15] So apparently that's not a chin on a
[00:31:16] WILL: gorilla.
[00:31:17] No. 'cause it's the bottom of the mouth. Yeah. Oh, and it's a bit sloppy.
[00:31:20] ROD: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:31:21] There's no, they don't have chins,
[00:31:22] but
[00:31:23] they're saying, because no other mammals have them, you can't really do this convergent evolution test. You can't kind of go, well, they have chins and they act like this. We have chins. We act like that. How do we do some comparisons? Apparently it's no good for
[00:31:33] that.
[00:31:34] WILL: there must be other animals with
[00:31:35] ROD: That was what I
[00:31:36] WILL: thought
[00:31:36] I don't wanna be the only animal that has a chin, like I like chins.
[00:31:38] They're
[00:31:39] ROD: fine. Apparently
[00:31:39] WILL: you are.
[00:31:40] But it's a bit
[00:31:41] ROD: weird
[00:31:42] Don't, Don't, shoot the messenger, man. I know. It's terrible. It made me sad too. I, I've read that and went bull shit. But then I'm thinking, well, he probably knows.
[00:31:49] WILL: people said it was tool use or it's like developed culture or, or it's chin, it's chins,
[00:31:56] ROD: chins
[00:31:56] that
[00:31:56] WILL: separate us from the animals
[00:31:58] chin mins or something.
[00:31:59] ROD: We're not by [00:32:00] ftic. Cons. We are chin
[00:32:01] WILL: bearers.
[00:32:01] We could have done by ftic cons. We could have.
[00:32:04] ROD: We could have.
[00:32:05] September, 1981, two entomologists guy, guy called Darryl, a guy called Dave. One from Toronto, one from Australia. I don't
[00:32:13] WILL: know which part.
[00:32:14] ROD: They're hanging out in Donga, Western Australia. You know
[00:32:17] WILL: Donga?
[00:32:17] ROD: Mm-hmm. That's the place with the sand
[00:32:20] and the Oh, I know. I
[00:32:20] love it.
[00:32:21] The cacti pusses, that is the plural,
[00:32:24] They saw a bunch of male Australian jewel beetles flying one to two meters above the ground. Looking at the ground, obviously looking
[00:32:30] WILL: for something.
[00:32:31] ROD: two.
[00:32:31] The Beatles then landed on a discarded stubby. So for foreign listeners, as in non-A Australians, it's a 3 75 mil. I dunno what that is. In the fluid ounces, a hand sized glass bottle in which we insert beer and then drink beer out of it.
[00:32:47] of 'em landed on the discarded stubby. Then they started fucking it.
[00:32:52] WILL: Did they?
[00:32:52] ROD: Okay. Yep. Like going at it like the bottle. So what, what are the size of these, these little
[00:32:58] lot smaller than a stubby. Like they're, they're a few centimeters long. Maybe
[00:33:03] the
[00:33:03] stubby is not okay.
[00:33:05] were going for it.
[00:33:05] Then they looked around, they found two more males like banging hard on other stubbies. This is a discarded stubbies
[00:33:10] WILL: on ground. Mm.
[00:33:11] ROD: And they thought We better science this. And you
[00:33:13] WILL: would.
[00:33:14] Yeah.
[00:33:15] ROD: So they got four more stubbies and they put them strategically around an open area to see if there would be more sweet
[00:33:19] WILL: them.
[00:33:20] ROD: Within half an hour, at least two of the bottles had gentleman callers knocking at
[00:33:24] WILL: the
[00:33:24] door.
[00:33:25] Just to confirm, was there a particular brand of stubby?
[00:33:27] ROD: it wasn't a particular brand. Oh, so
[00:33:28] WILL: did they mix up the band?
[00:33:30] Oh yeah. They got to that.
[00:33:32] ROD: They're scientists. So two bottles, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. A little bit later, four more arrived and
[00:33:37] WILL: started
[00:33:37] ROD: hammering tongs in these bottles.
[00:33:40] Which
[00:33:40] sounds, you know, it's hilarious. Hi jinks. It's what you do in Donga. I dunno if there's much else. Maybe it's a huge city, but I don't think it is. So it's just some hi jinks, right? There's, you know, it's a bit funny, some Beatles bang bottles. Who's not gonna laugh? I mean, I'd, I'd go to that show.
[00:33:53] WILL: Uh, wouldn't hang around.
[00:33:55] ROD: No, you wouldn't pay a lot either, but, you know, so it wasn't just harmless [00:34:00] hijinks.
[00:34:00] 'cause apparently the boy Beatles would basically go at it until they're physically displaced. AKA. Absolutely
[00:34:06] WILL: rooted.
[00:34:07] destroyed, they're done. Yeah,
[00:34:08] they're
[00:34:08] done. They would,
[00:34:09] ROD: would, they would get so tired. They would render themselves incapable of getting food and sometimes even moving. Just like, eh,
[00:34:15] WILL: I think, I think dude should know his limits. stop before you drop.
[00:34:19] ROD: no stop, go until
[00:34:20] WILL: you do.
[00:34:21] ROD: No, You are no Australian male jewel
[00:34:23] WILL: Beatle.
[00:34:24] ROD: they even saw things like males would fall off the bottles with heat exhaustion. In a number of observations, they'd see examples like a male at the side of the bottle being attacked by all these ants, which were basically quote, biting at the soft portions of his averted genitalia. There was another dead male nearby covered with ants about an inch from a bottle. So basically these guys root themselves almost
[00:34:45] WILL: to death.
[00:34:46] And, and just to, from evolution speaking here, not a useful
[00:34:50] ROD: use of
[00:34:51] WILL: of their seed,
[00:34:52] ROD: they're not known to breed with glass objects as a
[00:34:55] rule.
[00:34:56] WILL: is, you're not achieving,
[00:34:58] ROD: No, you're not achi Well, you're not achieving that.
[00:35:01] So now I was thinking maybe these Beatles are just a classic outback piss artists. They just get a bit drunk and they dunno what else to do. So they carry on,
[00:35:08] WILL: but they're not. '
[00:35:09] ROD: cause it turns out when you leave full stubbies around, they're not
[00:35:13] WILL: interested.
[00:35:14] Ah,
[00:35:14] ROD: It's gotta be
[00:35:15] WILL: empty
[00:35:16] ROD: and they don't climb into them.
[00:35:17] So they're not going
[00:35:17] WILL: for the booze.
[00:35:18] ROD: They just start banging the bottle and different colors didn't work either. It was only the brown
[00:35:23] WILL: ones.
[00:35:23] Brown bottles. Yep.
[00:35:24] ROD: Brown bottles? Yep. Brown bottles that had
[00:35:25] WILL: to be empty.
[00:35:26] just to confirm, are they, are they going at the. The mouth
[00:35:30] ROD: hole?
[00:35:30] No. The dimple parts.
[00:35:31] WILL: The
[00:35:32] ROD: parts. The dimple parts of the, the, the photo I saw was like an emu. Is it emu lager or emu? Something other. Anyway, a partic, very localized Australian brand.
[00:35:41] WILL: So
[00:35:41] ROD: The simplest explanation, the best they came up with was the shiny brown color of the glass.
[00:35:46] Looks a lot like the flightless lady beetles that lie around waiting to receive
[00:35:50] WILL: loving.
[00:35:51] Are they flightless?
[00:35:52] The
[00:35:52] ROD: ladies are, and the dimple
[00:35:54] WILL: robbed like
[00:35:55] ROD: I know you can't
[00:35:56] WILL: a fly, as a gender divide. That's that's unfair. It's shit like, imagine [00:36:00] half your species can
[00:36:01] ROD: fly.
[00:36:01] It's like the gillings in the dark
[00:36:03] WILL: Crystal.
[00:36:04] ROD: But only the girls
[00:36:04] WILL: could
[00:36:04] fly exactly
[00:36:05] like that.
[00:36:06] Exactly, exactly like that. you know what I'm talking about?
[00:36:08] I kind of do.
[00:36:10] ROD: There's a great bit in the movie. He goes, he grabs onto her and she jumps off a cliff and she starts flying. He goes, I don't have wings. And she says, of course not.
[00:36:16] WILL: You're a boy,
[00:36:17] I feel like I get, there are, you know, there are sexual differences amongst the boys
[00:36:21] ROD: girls Yeah. But flying or not flying is
[00:36:23] WILL: rude.
[00:36:23] That's
[00:36:24] too big. Yeah, that's
[00:36:24] ROD: it's too big.
[00:36:25] Like different colored heads fine. Bigger hands. No worries. Yeah, you can fly and you can't
[00:36:30] WILL: fuck
[00:36:30] that.
[00:36:30] that's
[00:36:31] ROD: that's weird. Yeah,
[00:36:31] WILL: it's beyond.
[00:36:32] ROD: So the females, they basically lie around waiting for happy love time. So the glass looks like the glass of the base of the bottles and the little bumps on it look a lot like the hardened four wings of the ladies because of the way they reflect light. Ah. So that's why the empty
[00:36:47] WILL: one
[00:36:47] works.
[00:36:47] I'm
[00:36:47] just horny for
[00:36:48] ROD: the reflected
[00:36:48] light. Yeah, the reflected light, the color. It's like that's gotta be a lady just not going anywhere. Must be a lady. People, so to speak, waiting for
[00:36:57] WILL: sweet oven.
[00:36:58] ROD: and the fact that the bottle didn't move is like 90 times bigger than them, blah,
[00:37:02] WILL: blah, blah. No,
[00:37:03] other notice.
[00:37:04] ROD: factor in. it's just didn't smell like there weren't any pheromonal relationships between the glass
[00:37:09] WILL: I feel like you should use a few indicators. to choose your
[00:37:12] ROD: partner.
[00:37:12] Yeah, more like not moving kind of the right color. I'm gonna go until I'm
[00:37:17] WILL: nearly dead.
[00:37:19] I feel like just my advice to the Beatles out
[00:37:21] ROD: there.
[00:37:22] check a couple more facets.
[00:37:23] Just something like go a little bit deeper, but not in that
[00:37:26] WILL: room.
[00:37:28] ROD: I don't know if you call it evolution, you call it something. I'm not quite sure what though.
[00:37:34] WILL: So I love a whole bunch of environmental stories that are not doom and gloom. there are absolutely stories that are happening around the world. Yeah. Uh, every day, every week, every month of people doing good things in the environment to, you know, mitigate this terrible crisis that we're in the middle of.
[00:37:51] Yeah. Or to, to make the world a little bit of a better place. Nice. I
[00:37:55] wondered if this one was, and I want your verdict. I want your verdict. Yes. Um,
[00:37:59] ROD: Um, At
[00:37:59] the
[00:37:59] end. [00:38:00] Oh, at the end.
[00:38:00] WILL: because I read this and I was like, oh, that's, great.
[00:38:04] ROD: oh, the tone suggests
[00:38:05] WILL: Great. No, it might be great. Maybe, maybe I'm being a cynic.
[00:38:09] Maybe I'm being a cynic.
[00:38:10] ROD: you're being very Ty,
[00:38:16] WILL: so, obviously we know that endangered, uh, endangered species around the world face a range of different, threats. there's, from humans, there's habitat loss or there might be chemicals in the environment. But of course they've got their traditional predators as well.
[00:38:31] And
[00:38:32] sometimes
[00:38:32] if all three or more of those threats stack up, that's gonna be pretty tough for the species. But maybe in this case you can remove some of them. So the particular case that I'm looking at is in the Scottish Highlands
[00:38:46] ROD: a beautiful bleak region.
[00:38:48] WILL: Indeed, indeed.
[00:38:49] The Pine Martin, which is basically like a weasel type animal.
[00:38:53] ROD: God, I was gonna
[00:38:53] say a bird,
[00:38:54] I'm wrong.
[00:38:55] WILL: or
[00:38:55] ROD: a,
[00:38:55] a
[00:38:55] stoked. Squirrel, A
[00:38:57] sto
[00:38:57] WILL: type
[00:38:57] thing. Martin or a demon. If you're, if in the right, in the
[00:39:00] ROD: frame
[00:39:01] of
[00:39:01] Martin
[00:39:01] Pine Martin.
[00:39:02] A Pine Martin. Okay.
[00:39:03] WILL: Okay. So. It's not been doing very well for a while, but it's had a comeback.
[00:39:07] It's doing well now.
[00:39:08] ROD: It's It's
[00:39:08] boom reunion tour. The pine Martins are
[00:39:10] WILL: back
[00:39:10] together.
[00:39:11] Yeah,
[00:39:11] exactly. Cool.
[00:39:12] But some of the species that it loves to just have a nibble on, they might be in a bit of danger. So one of the, one of the most famous is the region's Kali.
[00:39:22] ROD: You don't have to tell me
[00:39:23] WILL: Yeah. Famous. Yeah. Well, of course the, the Kali is an impressively large.
[00:39:28] ROD: pig
[00:39:29] WILL: Uh, grouse. It's a ground dwelling grouse, which is not a, a, a definition of good. It's like
[00:39:34] ROD: a
[00:39:35] bird. What
[00:39:35] WILL: a
[00:39:35] great
[00:39:35] name.
[00:39:36] ROD: What's what kind of animal? A
[00:39:38] WILL: grouse. I'm
[00:39:38] grouse. I'm a capa and I'm grouse fucking grouse. That's, that's right.
[00:39:42] ROD: Again. For non Australian listeners, grouse means good. In our, one of our
[00:39:45] WILL: vernaculars grouse
[00:39:46] is one of my favorite words for good.
[00:39:47] It's hilarious.
[00:39:47] It's, it's
[00:39:48] ROD: great.
[00:39:48] Fricking
[00:39:49] WILL: grass. Anyway, pine Martins being little Stdy, Joby, they love a bit of eggs. Like, you know, you can, you can imagine you find a nest of eggs. It's like, I'm making some omelets, but I'm not doing any cooking. I'm
[00:39:59] ROD: just
[00:39:59] [00:40:00] no, I'm going. the raw
[00:40:00] WILL: eggs wrong.
[00:40:02] ROD: yummy
[00:40:03] bits of shell, no
[00:40:04] big deal.
[00:40:05] WILL: Yeah. So the pine Martins have boomed back and so now the kka are in a bit of a risk and there's only, there's only like 600 of the kka. So they're, they're pretty, they're they're on the brink as it is. Yeah. Now.
[00:40:18] ROD: Now,
[00:40:18] WILL: As I said before, there are, you know, the variety of threats to the Khali. There are the, uh, habitat loss.
[00:40:25] Yep. Scotland's doing okay on that front. Chemical loss Okay. On that front. but, uh, they've got this predator booming back to life, the pine Martins. And so the researchers said, well, what if we just feed the Pine Martins?
[00:40:40] What
[00:40:40] if we go
[00:40:41] ROD: out
[00:40:41] there,
[00:40:41] we run 'em out with dozens of eggs and throw
[00:40:43] WILL: them
[00:40:43] in? Well, no, not dozens of, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna, okay, so there's too many deer in Scotland, so let's chop up some deer.
[00:40:49] Oh, deer
[00:40:50] eggs
[00:40:50] and, and, give them deer eggs. Or we'll put some deer meat in an egg to look. I dunno if they did that, but they got some deer
[00:40:57] ROD: meat.
[00:40:58] There are too many
[00:40:58] WILL: There are too many deer,
[00:40:59] Too many deer.
[00:41:00] ROD: There are not enough
[00:41:01] WILL: hunters.
[00:41:02] Deer. Deer are, deer are
[00:41:03] ROD: more man with, with, uh, leather patches on their elbows and the shotgun broken until they need
[00:41:07] WILL: to
[00:41:07] use
[00:41:07] it.
[00:41:08] Bambi is, uh, literally a weed like bam, bam. Well, I wasn't gonna go that far, but Bambi is a weed in a lot of places. And in Scotland there, there are a lot
[00:41:16] ROD: of
[00:41:16] deer.
[00:41:17] WILL: Deer too, and they need to get rid of
[00:41:18] them.
[00:41:19] So the
[00:41:19] ROD: they work so well with cars.
[00:41:21] Chew the deer.
[00:41:21] WILL: Yeah. Chop up the deer. Yeah. Feed the pine Martin. Mm. Pine Martin's happy and full. Mm. And then, uh, the capa caley, they can have their babies in. Um Okay. In fine. And
[00:41:33] ROD: so
[00:41:33] I'm waiting for
[00:41:34] WILL: the downside.
[00:41:34] Well, okay.
[00:41:35] So basically they've doubled the number of eggs per capa that, that, uh, the hatch. Okay. So the capa Kali is not as much on the brink as it was
[00:41:44] previously. That's
[00:41:45] gross.
[00:41:45] Now.
[00:41:48] You played this game before,
[00:41:50] so, so by shooting the deer, feeding the deer to the pine
[00:41:54] ROD: marsh, shooting the deer, feed the deer. Yep.
[00:41:55] WILL: And the cap is doing better.
[00:41:57] Now,
[00:41:57] ROD: here's
[00:41:58] the
[00:41:58] thing.
[00:41:58] This is your obvious, obvious connection here. [00:42:00] Why are you murdering the deer? Save
[00:42:01] WILL: those
[00:42:01] birds.
[00:42:02] Save them birds. Course you ask. So here's the question for you. Yeah. Is this good news? The, these ecologist, I, I get that they have to cu the deer like the deer are, the deer are too many, but if the ecologists are going, okay, so we feed the predators.
[00:42:16] So the predators don't eat the other birds.
[00:42:18] ROD: here's
[00:42:18] Why it's not good news, because humans have intervened with a single variable into a deeply complex ecosystem with things we don't even think to measure better yet, have measured and have gone.
[00:42:30] One result seems good,
[00:42:32] WILL: but we could go out there and just feed all of the predators
[00:42:35] we could
[00:42:36] and that would make the
[00:42:36] ROD: world better.
[00:42:37] And then, and then something happens where you go, oh, we couldn't feed them that
[00:42:40] WILL: month.
[00:42:42] ROD: Say, I don't know, tsunami or something, and then you're like, oh, I wonder what happens now.
[00:42:46] Let's take a deeply complex, potentially chaotic system and put something really arbitrary mechanical and routine into it that does not normally
[00:42:53] exist.
[00:42:53] But you know
[00:42:54] what, could
[00:42:54] WILL: go wrong. I mean, they said, they said they're only doing it during the specific breeding season where
[00:42:58] ROD: eggs
[00:42:58] are
[00:42:58] on the
[00:42:58] ground.
[00:42:58] you know, to France.
[00:42:59] We didn't do it all the
[00:43:00] WILL: time.
[00:43:00] Yeah, exactly. But it, but it's just one of these slippery slopes. It's like, we can save them in the zoos or we could make the world a zoo.
[00:43:07] ROD: Yeah. My, I don't know, noisy cynicism
[00:43:09] aside
[00:43:10] in principle, I'm not against it. 'cause why not? 'cause the idea of pristi is
[00:43:14] WILL: gone.
[00:43:15] Totally.
[00:43:16] So, and
[00:43:16] you might as well save. Like these are still wild, wild birds. They're still there and we have a chance to save them. So they, they're in this
[00:43:23] ROD: it's like, and do we like them? Of course we do
[00:43:25] grouse.
[00:43:26] WILL: So
[00:43:27] you didn't even have to
[00:43:28] ROD: do
[00:43:28] that one
[00:43:28] I did. I couldn't help myself.
[00:43:30] WILL: You
[00:43:31] ROD: what I mean?
[00:43:31] I see the line and then I forget
[00:43:33] WILL: where
[00:43:33] it
[00:43:33] was
[00:43:33] There ain't no line
[00:43:34] on,
[00:43:34] ROD: no line. No line. There's no line on. Good.
[00:43:36] But
[00:43:37] the bottom line is always, always, when we do something so deeply and clearly interventionist and we tweak one variable, there're are flow on effects. They're not all bad, but they're, one thing is for sure they're
[00:43:47] gonna
[00:43:47] WILL: be
[00:43:48] ROD: unknown until they've
[00:43:49] happened.
[00:43:50] So you're right though. Do we turn it all into a zoo? Maybe we do because maybe we kind
[00:43:53] WILL: of
[00:43:53] have maybe.
[00:43:54] we are. we're gonna ruin the world,
[00:43:56] ROD: If this is helping ruin the world, at least we're ruining it in a nice way, except for the [00:44:00] deer.
[00:44:00] But, you know, they
[00:44:00] WILL: have,
[00:44:00] ROD: coming.
[00:44:01] WILL: well, uh,
[00:44:02] ROD: uh, this has been
[00:44:05] WILL: a
[00:44:06] ROD: chuy,
[00:44:07] some bits of
[00:44:07] science.
[00:44:08] some bits of science. Optimistically, pessimistically, ambivalently stupid. Yeah. Yeah. But if you need to, uh, if you want to write a review for us um, get AI to write a review Yeah. And,
[00:44:20] put some blank text in there
[00:44:21] WILL: and say what your emotions should be to ai. Tell me what my emotions should be.
[00:44:26] salacious, salacious
[00:44:28] ROD: us some salacious reviews, AI
[00:44:30] WILL: style. Oh, cool. Uh, send us some questions too. Yeah. Um, if you got like. Uh, questions
[00:44:37] ROD: Yeah. Send 'em to our, our PO box, which is cheers at a little bit of science one word com I feel like, I feel like, I feel like they're gonna get that eventually.
[00:44:49] WILL: That's not cool. That's
[00:44:49] cool. get it eventually too. Um, oh, and if you didn't know this, we, we have a, a twitch.
[00:44:54] ROD: Twitch
[00:44:55] stream so that 5,000 people who are on Twitch know that already, but the two of you who aren't get on that too. How do they find out about that? I dunno how
[00:45:03] WILL: to do it.
