Written By Will Grant
 

AI chatbots are now giving people bromine poisoning by recommending Victorian-era quack cures, British engineers once accidentally drained an entire canal by pulling a forgotten plug, Japanese scientists have discovered that some mammals can literally breathe through their butts during emergencies, and researchers just found tarantula species with penises so ridiculously long they had to create a new genus to classify them. Also, Danish zoos are asking the public to donate unwanted pets as lion food, which is either progressive recycling or deeply disturbing depending on your perspective.

Bromism: When AI Prescribes Victorian Snake Oil

Meet bromism - a condition caused by consuming too much bromine, which was all the rage in the 1800s for treating everything from "impure thoughts" to stomach aches. Back then, people genuinely believed bromine salts could cure moral failings and physical imperfections, until science figured out that excessive consumption leads to psychiatric symptoms, hallucinations and comas.

This delightful condition mostly disappeared thanks to modern regulations, but guess what's bringing it back? AI chatbots recommending bromine treatments to unsuspecting users. Nothing says "technological progress" quite like artificial intelligence reviving dangerous medical practices from two centuries ago. At least when Victorian doctors poisoned people, they did it with confidence and a fancy mustache.

The Great Canal Plug Disaster of the 1970s

British engineers in the 1970s accidentally drained the entire Chesterfield Canal by pulling what they thought was just a random chain. Turns out it was connected to a wooden plug that had been keeping the canal full since the late 1700s - a crucial detail that somehow got lost in the paperwork over the centuries.

One moment they're doing routine dredging work, the next they're watching an entire historic waterway swirl away like someone pulled the plug on a giant bathtub. The canal had been designed with clever drainage systems that everyone simply forgot about. It's the engineering equivalent of losing your house keys, except the keys control a major waterway and you've just accidentally turned it into a muddy ditch.

Turning the Rivers Around

The Soviets once planned to reverse their rivers using 250 nuclear explosions in order to negate water wastage, because apparently regular engineering wasn't dramatic enough. Their grand scheme involved detonating atomic bombs to reshape the landscape for agricultural benefits, which sounds exactly as insane as it was.

Fortunately, they never managed to actually reroute a river with nuclear blasts, though not for lack of trying. Meanwhile, Chicago engineers successfully reversed the Chicago River using conventional methods to flush out their sewage problems. Sometimes the most absurd plans work, and sometimes they don't - but at least Chicago didn't irradiate half the continent in the process.

Tarantulas With Self-Defense Penises

Scientists have discovered tarantula species in the Arabian Peninsula and Horn of Africa with male reproductive appendages so absurdly long they've had to create an entirely new genus just to classify them. These spider penises measure up to four times the length of the male's head and thorax combined, making them practically as long as the spider's longest legs.

The evolutionary logic here is both brilliant and terrifying: these "long-distance" appendages might allow males to mate while maintaining a safe distance from their potentially cannibalistic partners. Nothing says "romantic evening" quite like needing extra-long equipment to avoid being eaten by your date. It's another reminder that when it comes to survival strategies, nature has zero shame and infinite creativity.

Emergency Butt Breathing: Nature's Backup Plan

Japanese scientists have discovered that some sea creatures can breathe through their rectums during oxygen emergencies. Yes, you read that correctly - when normal breathing fails, certain animals can absorb oxygen through their posterior regions to stay alive.

Researchers tested this by inserting high-oxygen solutions into animals' rectal cavities under controlled conditions, achieving survival rates that shouldn't be possible with compromised lung function. It's simultaneously the most ridiculous and most ingenious evolutionary backup system ever discovered. Nature really thought of everything, including the breathing method nobody wants to think about.

Danish Zoo Recycling: Your Pet Could Be Lion Food

A Danish zoo has embraced the ultimate recycling program by asking the public to donate unwanted animals as food for their predators. Instead of traditional feed sources, they're turning pets destined for euthanasia into meals for lions and tigers, which is either brilliantly sustainable or deeply unsettling.

Before you panic, these are animals that wouldn't survive in the wild or have outlived their homes anyway. It's nature's brutal food chain with a Scandinavian efficiency twist. The zoo argues it's more honest than pretending meat comes from happy farms, but it definitely makes you think twice about what happens to surrendered pets.

Whether it's chatbots dispensing dangerous medical advice, engineers accidentally draining waterways, or discovering that nature's backup plans involve breathing through uncomfortable places - science keeps reminding us that reality is absolutely mental. 

Stay skeptical of your AI's suggestions, avoid pulling random chains near historic canals, and maybe appreciate that your reproductive equipment isn't four times the size of your torso.

 

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Introduction

00:30 The Science Behind Bromine Consumption

02:49 Historical Uses and Effects of Bromine

06:02 Modern Cases and AI Involvement

09:22 The Chesterfield Canal Incident

15:25 Rivers Changing Course

19:50 Soviet Ambitions to Reverse Rivers

26:59 Reversing the Chicago River

27:41 Chicago's Pollution Problem

29:14 Engineering Marvel: The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal

30:59 Tarantulas and Self-Defense Penises

36:53 Breathing Through the Butt

42:02 Recycling Pets: The Controversial Practice of Danish Zoos

51:32 Conclusion

 

  • [00:00:00] 

    [00:00:01] WILL: Brom

    [00:00:02] ROD: Brom This is for the people at home. Will is gonna wanna dive in, but he won't be allowed. Is Brom a program run by muscular evangelical Christians who specialize in gay conversion therapy? Is brom a condition brought on by intense or long-term consumption of bromine? Or is it a recently acknowledged psychiatric syndrome that's particularly associated with Silicon Valley hyper-masculine tech?

    Bros. I won't keep you waiting. I know you probably guessed will, but I'm, I'm not gonna listen to you. It's b it's a condition brought about by intense or long-term consumption of bromine. Um, most likely from consuming bromine salts, sodium bromine. But to be fair, the story does also have a strong link with the text bros right now.

    So it's got a lot to do also in this case with a, but not very, 

    I. [00:01:00] it is time 

    [00:01:01] WILL: for a little bit of science

    [00:01:02] ROD: much.

    [00:01:03] WILL: I'm will grant an associate professor in science communication from the Australian National University.

    [00:01:09] ROD: I'm Rod Lambert, a 30 year sitcom veteran, or close enough with the mind of a teenage boy.

    [00:01:15] WILL: And today, ah, what have we got for you? I've got a giant oopsie.

    [00:01:19] ROD: I've got a, uh, self-defense penis.

    [00:01:21] WILL: Oh,

    [00:01:21] ROD: Aw.

    [00:01:23] WILL: I've got some super engineering.

    [00:01:25] ROD: and I've got a little story from our pragmatic Scandinavian, uh, siblings

    [00:01:29] WILL: What do you So, 

    [00:01:29] ROD: so bro, 

    [00:01:30] WILL: bro,

    [00:01:30] ROD: yes. It is not about evangelical muscular Christians specializing in gay conversion or Silicon Valley Hyper Bros. Mm-hmm. So it's a condition brought about by intense or long-term consumption of bromine.

    [00:01:42] WILL: Um,

    [00:01:43] ROD: don't,

    [00:01:44] WILL: I, I, I don't often go to the supermarket and, uh, pick up a bucket of bromine,

    [00:01:49] ROD: bucket of

    [00:01:50] WILL: bromine

    [00:01:50] ROD: brome.

    Print your own bucket.

    [00:01:51] WILL: do you, do you put it on your cornflakes or is this a

    [00:01:54] ROD: you could put it wherever you want. I mean, it, you know, it can, yeah. Put it with 

    [00:01:57] WILL: You were saying you can't.

    [00:01:59] ROD: No, you can. You just probably [00:02:00] shouldn't. I mean, it, it's consumable. Okay. I'll give you a little background just before we get 

    [00:02:04] WILL: just because something is consumable. Well, sure does not

    [00:02:07] ROD: Yeah. Like glass knives, nuclear energy. Airplanes. Airplanes are consumable. Didn't the dude do that?

    [00:02:12] WILL: Yes he did. Of course he did. You know he did.

    [00:02:15] ROD: Was it a whole plane? He was

    [00:02:16] WILL: French man. Ah, he

    he Was He 

    [00:02:18] ROD: being the operative.

    [00:02:19] WILL: was being the operator. He was big on bicycles, but plane.

    [00:02:20] ROD: I remember and a small car.

    I remember him eating a small car. He'd grind stuff. The, the stuff that was too big. De two, he'd grind into filings and 

    [00:02:27] WILL: is cheating. Which is cheating.

    [00:02:28] ROD: also terrible.

    [00:02:30] WILL: It's a weird thing to cheat at. I'm really like cheating on your homework. One thing, cheating at eating an airplane by who

    [00:02:39] ROD: who calls it cheating. Like that's not how you eat an airplane.

    You son of a bitch.

    [00:02:46] WILL: I eat it a proper way.

    [00:02:48] ROD: Exactly. Fucking was. Anyway, Brom though, that particular one, bromine was discovered by a French guy, Antoine Ard. Do I know what year guess? Go on. [00:03:00] You're good at numbers.

    [00:03:00] WILL: Uh,

    [00:03:00] ROD: Uh,

    [00:03:01] WILL: 1915.

    [00:03:03] ROD: You're terrible at numbers. 1826. Close. Close

    [00:03:06] WILL: I had a good 

    [00:03:07] ROD: run.

    Margin of error.

    And

    of course the moment he discovered that in bromine salts, there was of course an entire craze about it from the 18 hundreds through the

    19 hundreds.

    Like consume them for everything. They're good for warts. Oh, okay. Impure thoughts. Shortness, you name it. Yeah, yeah. You know, disproportionately different ear holes, everything. Take it for that. So they use it. Treatments for things like headaches, stomach aches, general malaise.

    [00:03:31] WILL: Well I take that for

    [00:03:32] ROD: you like Yeah, I'm feeling a little malaise ish.

    Can I have some bromine salts? Um, but it actually did have some effects, like medicinal, at least therapeutic. It's apparently a powerful anti-convulsant.

    [00:03:43] WILL: Mm.

    [00:03:45] ROD: So if you find yourself convulsing, get your bromide salts.

    [00:03:49] WILL: I might.

    [00:03:51] ROD: good sedative properties. It has sedative properties. Good. So that's probably related.

    Really Stop your

    [00:03:57] WILL: Is it better than some of the other

    [00:03:58] ROD: No, no, God no. [00:04:00] Everything else is better. It is now anyway. Um, and veterinarians still apparently prescribe it for epileptic dogs, so it is of some use today. Okay.

    Yeah. Problem was when people would. Eat 

    [00:04:12] WILL: it.

    What, what are you saying when you eat it?

    Like, are we just sprinkling it on food

    [00:04:15] ROD: or are like, this is my ab obsession? 

    [00:04:17] WILL: is this like a soap cake sized block of salt that we're 

    [00:04:20] ROD: just

    they've got a swallow hole, otherwise, where's the fun?

    [00:04:24] WILL: Like what are they doing?

    [00:04:25] ROD: Uh, wasn't clear. Like it, it sounds like one of those classic things where it, if it's like other salts, it can, you know, form into small Yeah.

    Sprinkle bits and then put it in things. And if it's anything, you know, I know a lot about the 18 and 19 hundreds and when in doubt put it in an elixir of something and obviously add morphine.

    I think 

    [00:04:42] WILL: El Alexias are from fantasy novels, not the 18 and 19 hundreds.

    [00:04:46] ROD: It can be both 

    [00:04:47] WILL: No, no.

    [00:04:48] ROD: a lot of fantasies are set in that period.

    So yeah, if you consume it, it builds up. You get toxic levels of bromine leading to brom. Which is,

    [00:04:58] WILL: What happens with bromm?[00:05:00] 

    [00:05:00] ROD: Oh, I'm not gonna tell you. That's the end of my story. Oh,

    [00:05:01] WILL: come on. Come on.

    [00:05:02] ROD: It's a neuropsychiatric disorder. Symptoms of confusion. Slurred speech hallucination. Psychosis.

    Sometimes you can drop into a coma.

    [00:05:11] WILL: Oh, okay. Well some of those sound all right.

    [00:05:13] ROD: A coma. Nice quiet.

    [00:05:15] WILL: Not the coma. Not the coma.

    [00:05:16] ROD: slurred speech.

    [00:05:17] WILL: Ah, I don't mind that.

    [00:05:18] ROD: Yeah, I know it's, I dunno how you get that. Otherwise, it's only bromine salts. But yeah, very much related to psychiatric disorder. So around the turn of the 20th century, they reckon something like 8% of psychiatric admissions were due to brom.

    Are you serious?

    [00:05:30] WILL: Are you serious? Yeah.

    [00:05:31] ROD: It was that fricking popular. So I've eaten too much bromine. I'm hallucinating, I'm comatose. I'm confused. I'm slurring my 

    [00:05:38] WILL: speech. 

    [00:05:39] ROD: Have you had any salts? So eventually, at least in the US, the EPA started to regulate around the seventies. So it's still, I think, or at least at that point, used in pesticides and pool and hot

    [00:05:50] WILL: I love, I love my both pesticide and medicine category. Exactly.

    [00:05:53] ROD: Um, so once they regulated it, brom cases from the seventies started to plummet.

    [00:06:00] Which is good.

    [00:06:00] WILL: Great. Thanks. Regulation.

    Mm-hmm. 

    [00:06:02] ROD: So then a month ago,

    [00:06:04] WILL: a month ago, like a month ago.

    [00:06:06] ROD: A month ago.

    Mm-hmm.

    In fact, well, it was reported earlier this month, August, 2025 for those of you listening in Yeah. The future, uh, new paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Mm-hmm.

    [00:06:18] WILL: mm-hmm.

    [00:06:18] ROD: Described a 60-year-old man who ended up coming down with an all but defunct condition known as Brom.

    [00:06:24] WILL: How?

    [00:06:25] ROD: I see you ask.

    [00:06:26] WILL: Well, uh, he ate some bromine, obviously.

    [00:06:29] ROD: Yeah. But why?

    [00:06:30] WILL: Uh, well, no, you said how

    Yeah, I

    [00:06:32] ROD: That's true. How he ate some bromine. Thanks, William. This is where AI comes in.

    [00:06:38] WILL: What?

    [00:06:39] ROD: This is where I, AI comes in. I told you it did link to Silicon Valley. So apparently after his psych, his bromine induced psychosis backed off.

    Mm-hmm. He said, look, he was worried about his, uh, salt intake. He needed health advice. He went to chat GPT and said, what's a good alternative for, uh. Sodium chloride. So it said, what about [00:07:00] sodium bromide?

    [00:07:01] WILL: What about

    [00:07:02] ROD: a salt? He says, sure. And starts eating it. Well, it's true. It is assault. And so in the article, I was mainly reading about this, obviously, see our show notes for sources. Apparently they report on 4 0 4 media. They tried to basically replicate the conversations with chat GPT to ask various questions about sodium chloride, sodium bromide, et cetera, when it was asked for instance, what can chloride be replaced with?

    Chat, GPT said you can often substitute it with other halide ions such as sodium bromide replacing chloride with bromide. The chat bot did not ask for further context. No.

    [00:07:41] WILL: Why would you ask for further 

    [00:07:42] ROD: context?

    No, No.

    [00:07:44] WILL: No, it is technically possible to replace.

    [00:07:46] ROD: Which is true,

    [00:07:47] WILL: it is technically possible to

    [00:07:48] ROD: this is assault.

    Well

    [00:07:49] WILL: you know, depending on your definition and your context, you can replace one thing with anything. Yes. With, with anything. Like, like if

    [00:07:56] ROD: you were just an elephant or a packet of, I don't know, gravel, like it doesn't [00:08:00] matter.

    [00:08:00] WILL: Yeah. If you are a random like, uh, word association machine and you are just

    [00:08:04] ROD: I have known to 

    [00:08:05] WILL: for, the next clearest, you can replace whatever you want. If you don't 

    [00:08:08] ROD: care.

    At least it went with salt. Like I wanna replace it. What if it had focused in on the texture instead for example.

    [00:08:14] WILL: exactly.

    [00:08:14] ROD: Alright, so small bits of dirt

    [00:08:16] WILL: or on the keeping people aliveness.

    [00:08:18] ROD: Yeah. Didn't focus on that.

    [00:08:20] WILL: Didn't

    focus on that. 

    [00:08:21] ROD: No. And also didn't, you know, ask any follow up questions off, think about context or offer any warnings about sodium bromide.

    It also apparently didn't seem to know the main reason people use sodium chloride is to eat.

    [00:08:35] WILL: Yes, of course,

    [00:08:36] ROD: context,

    [00:08:37] WILL: but also

    [00:08:38] ROD: not good at,

    [00:08:39] WILL: that would actually be out there on the internet.

    [00:08:41] ROD: You would think in one or two places, one or two low salt diet, for example. Doesn't mean replace it with bats or eat gravel or just look for a similarly chemical compound.

    [00:08:51] WILL: any other chemical

    salt 

    [00:08:52] ROD: Yeah, any salt? Just any salt. I

    [00:08:54] WILL: think there are, there're uranium salts

    [00:08:56] ROD: I was gonna say plutonium or something.

    [00:08:58] WILL: They're definitely, definitely plutonium and [00:09:00] uranium 

    salts. They 

    [00:09:00] ROD: probably didn't go with those 'cause it'd be more expensive.

    [00:09:02] WILL: Well I, what's it taking money into account? No way. No way. AI takes money into account.

    It's the most expensive, stupid thing there ever is.

    [00:09:09] ROD: It might be, but you don't have to worry. 'cause as we probably, you probably read this yourself recently, chat, GPT five, San Altman tells us this is gonna be really good with medical stuff, so obviously they'll fix that. The

    [00:09:22] WILL: The Chesterfield canal runs for about 73 kilometers between Chesterfield and West Stock width in Northern England.

    [00:09:29] ROD: So why is it not called the stock with Canal or the Chesterfield stock

    [00:09:31] WILL: they, they had a fight and Chesterfield won.

    [00:09:34] ROD: They 

    [00:09:34] WILL: did.

    Or maybe they were gonna Chesterfield or they were from Chesterfield.

    I don't know. I don't know. It is one of the earliest, uh, canals, uh, in the country. Okay. Uh, it opened on the 4th of June, 1777. And it had, well, it still has, but at the time it was one of the longest canal tunnels in the country. Tunnel.

    [00:09:52] ROD: Yeah. A tunnel, like an underground canal. 

    [00:09:54] WILL: Well, no, you're gone through a hill or something like that.

    You take your river through a hill,

    [00:09:57] ROD: but you take the top of the hill out as well, right?

    No, 

    [00:10:00] you

    split the hill in 

    [00:10:00] WILL: half.

    You make a tunnel. A tunnel as a whole, not a splitting in 

    [00:10:04] ROD: half.

    I never 

    thought of canals like,

    [00:10:06] WILL: hang on, I'll finish 

    [00:10:07] ROD: this. Going in tunnels.

    [00:10:08] WILL: Yeah, exactly. Well, it's, it was one and three quarter miles.

    And the

    [00:10:10] ROD: Doesn't that make it a drain?

    [00:10:12] WILL: uh, well, you wait,

    you wait, you wait

    [00:10:16] ROD: and 

    [00:10:16] WILL: three quarter miles going through the tunnel. Yeah. And, and course, you know, canal speed is not super speed is like leisurely speed anyway. 

    [00:10:23] ROD: They had it's like 0.001%, the speed of light.

    [00:10:27] WILL: A lot more 0.0 zeros than that. You know, you're, your horse and Dre or whatever.

    A team of, team of school schoolchildren can pull a boat out. The

    [00:10:35] ROD: the British school children have renowned for their weakness though.

    [00:10:37] WILL: anyway, they had a, they had a brass band on the opening. Of course, you know, you know,

    [00:10:41] ROD: Yeah.

    [00:10:42] WILL: this is 1777. That's what they love doing. So they got a canal boat with a brass band, and apparently 

    it 

    [00:10:47] ROD: I would've thought it would've been loots 

    [00:10:49] WILL: an hour to go through the tunnel 

    [00:10:50] ROD: This how one point something,

    [00:10:53] WILL: uh, well, one and three quarter miles.

    So an hour of

    [00:10:56] ROD: of playing your brass

    [00:10:57] WILL: through tunnels [00:11:00] with no audience, but just keep going. Anyway, I don't know if that's true. I know they had the brass band. They might've stopped, but

    [00:11:05] ROD: did you ever play a trumpet for a solid hour?

    [00:11:08] WILL: solid hour, 

    [00:11:09] ROD: solid

    hour on water 

    [00:11:10] WILL: no. Under the ground? No, I didn't. I didn't.

    [00:11:13] ROD: 300 years 

    [00:11:14] WILL: ago.

    Anyway, the, the tail was Canal was built to export coal and limestone and lead from Durish, uh, and iron from Chesterfield. Um, it's famous because the, the stone that made the Palace of Westminster, you know, the, the Houses of Parliament mm-hmm. Was quarried there and, and carried down the canal.

    But those are the boring facts because the canal is actually way more famous because of the most awesome 1970s photo in, in existence. In 

    [00:11:41] ROD: existence.

    Is that the one with ferret, forset,

    [00:11:42] WILL: Uh, well majors. Okay. There may be some other awesome 1970s. Good. 

    [00:11:47] ROD: So 

    [00:11:47] WILL: the photos of, of a guy named Bill Thorpe, and. 

    [00:11:50] ROD: Billy 

    [00:11:50] WILL: Thorpe. Bill Thorpe.

    Bill Thorpe, okay, he's got a beautiful blonde seventies mullet with a great 

    [00:11:55] ROD: fringe

    He 

    [00:11:55] WILL: straight across the side. He's got a deep V-neck T-shirt. He has got these [00:12:00] Wellington gum boots that are sort of flat out in, 

    [00:12:03] ROD: in, yeah, they come out at the 

    [00:12:04] WILL: top. If

    if you would've said, what do gumbo look like in the seventies? You'd go, well, obviously they're wilder 

    [00:12:11] ROD: at the top, to be able to gather all the flared pants into,

    [00:12:14] WILL: but what he's got in his hand is a giant chain with a giant lump of wood on it. So a Dreger gang was trying to stabilize a section of concrete wall, uh, in the 1970s in the Chesterfield Canal. 

    [00:12:29] ROD: Yeah. 

    [00:12:29] WILL: Yeah. Okay. And, um, you know, it's a 200 year old canal. There's work that needs to happen on it. And so what they need to do is put in some shutter boards, which go down there, and then they 

    put to block the water.

    To block the water. Okay. And then you put some concrete in, but there was a whole bunch of junk in the canal. You know, they, they're pulling out bicycles, they're pulling out fridges, prams, all sorts of things. And then they ran across this giant length of chain. And they're like, what's that about? All right.

    So they hand, they pulled, tried to pull it out, and it 

    [00:12:57] ROD: was yanked the chain. 

    [00:12:58] WILL: Well, it was kind of stuck [00:13:00] and uh, so they were like, I'll hook it up to a car 'cause it's the seventies 

    [00:13:03] ROD: and yeah, don't

    investigate further. Just pull it harder.

    [00:13:07] WILL: The car, the car couldn't pull it out, so, so they

    [00:13:10] ROD: that, just pull harder. Don't find out why. Just fucking pull 

    [00:13:15] WILL: harder,

    No, no, no, no. Add

    [00:13:17] ROD: horsepower in whatever form you can find.

    [00:13:19] WILL: Car couldn't pull it out. So they got the dredge up, which is, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, an excavator basically on a boat. So they, they hooked it on that and yanked it and up comes the chain. Hoo. Yeah, we got it out.

    There was a, there was a weird block of wood on the end of the chain that, uh, that old bill is holding here. impressed with their work as they would be. They knocked off for tea,

    [00:13:41] ROD: I've gotta calm the nerves here.

    [00:13:42] WILL: but while they were on break, a passing police officer noticed. An extraordinary whirlpool in the normally placid canal.

    [00:13:51] ROD: Did, did he crouch up and down three times and say, what's all this then?

    [00:13:54] WILL: What's all Hello? Hello. What's, hello? Hello. What's this then?

    [00:13:58] ROD: this seems highly [00:14:00] irregular. I'm a little worried,

    [00:14:02] WILL: and I don't dunno if you've seen English canal. They're not, the water is not like a river. It's, it's like,

    no, it sits there.

    It sits 

    [00:14:08] ROD: there.

    It lurks.

    [00:14:10] WILL: Yeah. And suddenly there's an unusual whirlpool. He rushed off to find the dredging gang, but by the time they had all returned, the canal had disappeared.

    [00:14:21] ROD: Cool. Sinkhole

    [00:14:22] WILL: sucked. No, sucked down the plug hole.

    [00:14:26] ROD: It was a plug,

    [00:14:27] WILL: It was a plug. It was a plug in the, in the canal. They had the smart engineers from 200 years ago had made a whole series of plugs in the canal. So if you needed to drain it, you could pull 'em out. But no one knew this anymore. So had

    [00:14:42] ROD: So had they dug like basins or cisterns underneath the canal or they were natural

    [00:14:46] WILL: drained down to the river.

    So there's a river nearby, and they, they'd made some channels that you could just unplug the canal and no one knew that 

    [00:14:53] ROD: this

    but they didn't write that in the doomsday book or, or something.

    [00:14:57] WILL: So they lost all of the water. Took some great photos of [00:15:00] Bill Thorpe holding the, holding the plug for the canal. The canal is drained completely 

    [00:15:04] ROD: down literal plug, the 

    [00:15:06] WILL: Plug a literal plug in the 

    [00:15:07] ROD: canal.

    That's superb. 

    [00:15:08] WILL: superb.

    Um, 10 years later, there was a British waterways put on a festival to celebrate the, the event of, of the accidental unplugging

    of the, Chesterfield 

    [00:15:16] ROD: the grand polluting.

    But 

    [00:15:19] WILL: in seeing this photo, I was just so happy and I thought, you know what? For my stories this 

    week,

    Mm.

    I just wanted to tell you some weird river stories, some weird things that have happened over the time with water. there's a line, in the Killers song. Spaceman. It's a great song. It's a 

    [00:15:37] ROD: great 

    song. It's a great song.

    The Killers.

    [00:15:38] WILL: The Killers. Yeah, the Killers.

    They're a great band. They play great thing called music

    [00:15:42] ROD: It's a very aggressive name for 

    [00:15:43] WILL: Mormons.

    Yeah, it is. It is very aggressive. Um, but it's a line that says, they say The Nile used to run from east to west. And I 

    was 

    like, 

    yeah,

    [00:15:53] ROD: Like most rivers, it changes its mind.

    [00:15:55] WILL: it changes its mind.

    Well, well let's just wait a second because you will, you'll [00:16:00] see some things. Okay. Um. 

    There 

    is a 

    [00:16:03] ROD: theory, Mm-hmm. 

    [00:16:04] WILL: uh, the ancient Greeks, you know, they, they had a theory that once upon a time, and there are maps that indicate this. Mm-hmm. Um, but the Nile started over in the Sahara over, over in like Morocco. Yeah. Um, and sort of traveled across the Sahara and then curved into Egypt.

    And now we know it's much more of a North

    [00:16:22] ROD: Thank, thank you for giving me that. 'cause I, 

    I

    didn't know. I didn't know, I didn't know I did 

    [00:16:26] WILL: you are like East, west, and

    like Nile. Which 

    [00:16:28] ROD: is 

    the Niles? Near 

    [00:16:29] WILL: Nile. Near Africa?

    It's 

    not true. It's not true. Like the, the 

    [00:16:33] ROD: Nile, 

    it, it isn't near Africa. Uh,

    [00:16:35] WILL: The Nile is definitely in Africa, has always been in Africa.

    That is, that is a guaranteed fact about the Nile.

    [00:16:42] ROD: not near. Okay. Not in South 

    [00:16:43] WILL: America.

    It never did run from east to west. It may have had a slightly different course. 

    [00:16:49] ROD: Oh, sure. Rivers diverge. Yeah. The landscape 

    [00:16:52] WILL: changes.

    Yeah. You know, it once might've popped out of, not Egypt pop popped out at Libya when, when the Mediterranean was basically [00:17:00] not there.

    Um, it was, it was a lot lower, popped 

    [00:17:02] ROD: A lot different. Yeah. Okay. Um, 

    [00:17:04] WILL: but, you know, I thought that was, that was a place where it's like, oh, I, I, I, I wanted to know did it run east to west? Sadly, no. Might've been a bit different, but, you know, 

    [00:17:12] ROD: know, 

    [00:17:13] WILL: But yeah, 

    there are other rivers that have completely flipped

    around 

    change course

    Change. 

    [00:17:19] ROD: Flipped, Literally 

    [00:17:20] WILL: flipped, flipped, aliens. 

    So the Colorado River, right now, uh, runs from north 

    [00:17:26] ROD: to 

    south. 

    Yeah. 

    [00:17:27] WILL: Goes through that fantastic canyon thing. They've got, I can't remember the name 

    [00:17:31] ROD: of it.

    The, oh, it's the, what is it? The, the, the Minuscule 

    [00:17:35] WILL: Canyon.

    I think that's what they call 

    [00:17:37] ROD: it.

    The Almost 

    [00:17:38] WILL: canyon. The, the, the Unnoticeable Canyon. The, the, the detectable 

    [00:17:41] ROD: Canyon.

    Yeah, that's it. The,

    [00:17:44] WILL: small, but, uh, but it runs, it runs, uh, north to south. Goes through. Mm-hmm. All of them, uh, deserty states in, in that bit of America and pops out in the Gulf of Mexico.

    [00:17:53] ROD: but 

    [00:17:54] WILL: a few million years ago, it used to go the other way.

    Uh, it used to go, it used to 

    [00:17:59] ROD: go.

    [00:18:00] but,

    but how doesn't 

    that 

    [00:18:01] WILL: mean But how you say, 

    [00:18:03] ROD: from the ocean inland?

    [00:18:04] WILL: in land? Well, not necessarily from the ocean, but definitely there was a river in the same spot. It's called the California River, they call it, rather than the Colorado River. Okay. I don't know why. I don't know why. but this is, this is talking a long time ago.

    This is like 55 million years ago. Sure. When the Rockies didn't exist. So basically what happened is the Rockies weren't there and so the river was heading in, in the northern direction. Mountains pop up and then the whole thing tilts and the river goes back the other way.

    [00:18:31] ROD: I'm. But two. Two or from the ocean, two or 

    [00:18:38] WILL: two was wrong. But look, look, oh, I, I think this is just a nice thing to recognize that bits of the earth Yeah. Have, have sculpted water. Yeah. And sometimes you tilt them with plate tectonics and your mountains

    and your Things 

    like that. And they can change your directions. You can go up, you can go down.

    [00:18:57] ROD: Usually not while you're on them, thank God.

    [00:18:58] WILL: but you know, you [00:19:00] know, if nature does it, it's, it's boring and normal. I, uh, 

    [00:19:03] ROD: you. Please bring in nuclear 

    [00:19:04] WILL: bombs.

    Oh, yeah. Uh, come on. Like boring and normal, because that's what happens. Like plates shift, rivers 

    [00:19:13] ROD: move, nature 

    [00:19:14] WILL: erosion 

    [00:19:14] ROD: happens. 

    [00:19:16] WILL: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    No, I got two stories of, of river reversal. One, one sadly is ambitious. Bold,

    furious. 

    What's sad about 

    that? 

    Well.

    it's too ambitious, but maybe, maybe, maybe it will still come.

    Yeah, yeah. 

    [00:19:32] ROD: Yeah. Yeah. Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos need to get onto it on is, is what I'm hearing.

    [00:19:36] WILL: Ah, no, there's another guy that would be more 

    likely Peter, 

    too.

    Uh, no, you, you in the, in the, in the world of global Bad guys. Yeah. Sorry to all of you listeners, but you know, it's similar but different. Mm-hmm.

    [00:19:48] ROD: Mm-hmm. 

    [00:19:49] WILL: The Soviets

    and their Russian predecessors have long had a plan. 

    Um, 

    [00:19:55] ROD: this is starting 

    [00:19:56] WILL: well

    to fix those useless rivers, [00:20:00] useless rivers that drain into the Arctic Ocean.

    [00:20:04] ROD: You pissle shit. Garbage, bullshit. Water carriers. You do nothing for me.

    [00:20:08] WILL: be Nothing.

    So there's a bunch of rivers that flown north, some through Siberia from some through the Euro sort of area in Russia, but they go north and they pop up into the Arctic 

    [00:20:20] ROD: Ocean

    [00:20:20] WILL: and. Using who can use that water

    up 

    [00:20:23] ROD: No. 

    [00:20:23] WILL: So since as far back as the 1830s, the, the, the sars have been interested in, in, in thinking about this. But you know, you know, they, what, what did they have? They had peasant labor. 

    [00:20:35] ROD: Um, let's,

    let's not poo poo that. That's quite a few 

    people.

    No, indeed. That's,

    a 

    [00:20:39] WILL: no, No,

    indeed. But, uh, peasant labor ain't enough to solve some of these problems.

    Um, okay. But it's the Soviets who really said, you know, you know what we've got here is rivers that are wasting all their water going into the Arctic when we could pump them back down to Central Asia. And it could, it could grow food for [00:21:00] 200 million 

    [00:21:00] ROD: people

    at 

    [00:21:01] WILL: least.

    Uh, 

    [00:21:02] ROD: yeah. 

    Hmm.

    [00:21:04] WILL: They started really thinking and, and, well actually the other thing they said is it can also replenish the shrinking RLC and the Caspian seat, which I've always, it always blown my mind that of the giant lakes in the world, the RLC was, was, was huge back in the thirties and forties.

    Like, like, uh, I don't know what the comparison size, it's probably an American 

    [00:21:23] ROD: state

    How many Sydney harbors.

    [00:21:24] WILL: Oh, it's many 

    [00:21:25] ROD: Sydney 

    Harbors,

    Olympic 

    [00:21:26] WILL: swimming

    pools. Many, many, many Olympic swimming pools. But, but it shrank, it disappeared. Like this giant inland lake just 

    [00:21:32] ROD: disappeared.

    Did someone pull 

    [00:21:33] WILL: the 

    plug?

    Well, someone did pull the, yeah, I think it was, I think it was Soviet agriculture pulled the 

    [00:21:37] ROD: plug. 

    Oh, imagine 

    [00:21:38] WILL: that.

    Um, but they said, you know, if we turn the rivers back, we can fix that environmental 

    [00:21:42] ROD: problem.

    So what we gotta do right, is just turn the rivers around. I've 

    got 

    [00:21:46] WILL: it.

    [00:21:48] ROD: 1933. 

    [00:21:49] WILL: first really started, uh, thinking about it.

    Mm-hmm. The, the Soviet Academy of Sciences approved a plan for the reconstruction of the vulgar and its basin. We just, we just reconstruct the, the river and its 

    [00:21:59] ROD: basin.[00:22:00] 

    This is me as a child solving world hunger and everything else. What we need to do is fix it. So,

    [00:22:07] WILL: So, so we just turn the rivers around, fix it.

    Like, it's just like you get the indicator on 

    [00:22:12] ROD: in 

    your 

    car. Yeah, 

    [00:22:12] WILL: yeah,

    [00:22:13] ROD: And

    [00:22:14] WILL: yeah. And in the, instead of going that 

    [00:22:15] ROD: way,

    so is this happening too slowly?

    I've got no idea. Make it faster.

    [00:22:20] WILL: So they're gonna divert the Vulgar River and some of the waters of the Pura and the nor Northern Dina. Um, they flow into the Arctic, but they wanted to 

    [00:22:29] ROD: him around.

    Sure. 

    [00:22:30] WILL: Stalin wasn't super keen. He was like, we've got other shit to 

    [00:22:32] ROD: do. 

    [00:22:34] WILL: We got other shit to do. We got, we got, 

    [00:22:35] ROD: got, 

    [00:22:35] WILL: got, uh, gulags, uh, killing the, killing the, the Kool Acts, and we've got World War ii. 

    [00:22:42] ROD: So

    he was a busy 

    [00:22:43] WILL: things didn't really go until the sixties when the Soviets under Khrushchev said, you know, we can actually probably do this.

    And so in the sixties, the Soviets really, really got into this plan. Mm-hmm. They had a whole bunch of, uh, impact studies, um, which is interesting. Like [00:23:00] I don't, I don't, I don't associate impact studies with the 

    [00:23:03] ROD: Soviet

    you go to impact 

    [00:23:04] WILL: study. 

    [00:23:05] ROD: By that, I mean hit people till they agree with me.

    [00:23:08] WILL: Like I, I feel like, I feel like the number of environmental impact assessments done in the Soviet 

    Union was low.

    Was

    [00:23:14] ROD: there environmental impact? Duh. Okay. Moving 

    on. 

    Divert River. 

    Make river backwards.

    [00:23:26] WILL: so they started, um, they started work to devote the, uh, divert the Pura River into the Kama River. You don't need to know that, but the um, uh, and head towards the Caspian Sea instead of up, up to 

    [00:23:36] ROD: the

    Arctic Prince 

    [00:23:37] WILL: Caspian. Um,

    so they got a bunch of, uh, nuclear weapons. Uh, and I'm

    [00:23:43] ROD: so happy right 

    now.

    [00:23:44] WILL: So, you know, 

    [00:23:45] ROD: they 

    started,

    so we new 

    [00:23:46] WILL: Kim,

    This gets better. 

    [00:23:50] ROD: Um, 

    [00:23:51] WILL: so the earthworks were started using three 15 kiloton nuclear 

    [00:23:56] ROD: explosions.

    Ah, so they started light, 

    [00:23:57] WILL: yeah.

    Okay. 

    Explosions for the national economy. Yeah. [00:24:00] Um, they were, they were only faced 165 meters apart. 

    [00:24:04] ROD: isn't that the same as being on top of each other in terms of 15 kiloton 

    [00:24:08] WILL: explosion?

    I think roughly. I think roughly 

    [00:24:11] ROD: like 

    it's,

    it was a separation 

    [00:24:12] WILL: there's a separation from, I mean, 15 kilotons is not as big as Hiroshima. It's three quarters of a Hiroshima bomb. 

    [00:24:16] ROD: So it's,

    no, this is 

    [00:24:18] WILL: it's, it's unambitious, it's, it's, well, I guess it's your, your earthwork sized nuclear.

    [00:24:22] ROD: it's, it's more your practical, your day-to-day, uh, tradesmen kind of thing, but a few meters apart and. 

    [00:24:29] WILL: and 

    [00:24:30] ROD: Mm. So,

    [00:24:31] WILL: uh, they reckon there wasn't any radioactive fallout. 

    [00:24:34] ROD: um, of course,

    they reckon that

    [00:24:35] WILL: and they were, they were keen to keep going, but I think their calculations said now, I don't know why they stopped at 

    this point. 

    Um, well, there's, there's a couple of things. Let's, let's guess which one it could have been.

    it could 

    be that they, they estimated it would've taken 250 more nuclear detonations, 

    [00:24:52] ROD: Oh. Is that 

    [00:24:52] WILL: that all 

    to complete the leveling of the channel, um, that they needed. the Americans said actually it's pretty safe and economical, um, [00:25:00] at the time, 

    [00:25:00] ROD: well. 

    Mm-hmm. 

    [00:25:01] WILL: Mm-hmm. Uh, it could have been.

    [00:25:03] ROD: And

    [00:25:03] WILL: I dunno about this.

    Yeah, they were worried that there was less, that it might've contributed to a running runaway global warming by having less water in the Arctic. And so the Arctic doesn't,

    [00:25:13] ROD: okay, well we can roll 

    [00:25:14] WILL: that 

    one out,

    but, 

    [00:25:15] ROD: oh, maybe back then, 

    [00:25:16] WILL: sadly

    the, the Soviets didn't get any further with their nuclear engineering to turn the river 

    [00:25:22] ROD: around,

    Uh,

    [00:25:23] WILL: but Central Asian states are still super keen on it.

    They're still super keen to capture that wasted water and I wouldn't be surprised if one day there is a plan to actually pump the 

    water 

    back. 

    Look,

    [00:25:34] ROD: capturing 

    wasted water is one. Arter it. Yep. Nuclear engineering is 

    [00:25:39] WILL: another.

    It's beautiful putting the two 

    together. 

    It's 

    [00:25:42] ROD: two together. beautiful. Gives

    me the questions. Beautiful.

    [00:25:44] WILL: It's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

    [00:25:45] ROD: it's, it's,

    [00:25:46] WILL: why would God have given these things? I'll 

    [00:25:48] ROD: mute. That's a good point. Like Jesus gave us both. Let's bang these buggers together and see what 

    [00:25:54] WILL: happens.

    I told you years ago about the peaceful use of, uh, 

    nuclear weapons. 

    Mm. And uh, and I've just gotta, I, every time [00:26:00] I think about it, it's just like, there was that era in the fifties, sixties, and seventies.

    Like, just solve the problem with a b, just

    [00:26:06] ROD: just fucking 

    [00:26:07] WILL: it 

    up.

    [00:26:08] ROD: It's Donald

    Trump and tornadoes,

    [00:26:10] WILL: But there is one river that has successfully been turned around.

    [00:26:16] ROD: Is it the Murray 

    [00:26:16] WILL: Darling

    No, it isn't. Well, no, we just, we've just drained that. We just stopped 

    [00:26:20] ROD: it. Gura 

    [00:26:20] WILL: Digby,

    We The Gu 

    [00:26:22] ROD: Digby.

    the Gura Digby, it flows through Wee Jasper, which is a small town on the outskirts of Canberra. And it was, when I was a teenager, we went there for a camp and they said, you can drink this water straight from the street.

    And I thought, no. And I 

    [00:26:33] WILL: I remember

    you can drink any water straight from the stream. 

    [00:26:35] ROD: It's,

    no without dying or getting dysentery. And the beauty of this one was, I remember sitting like, like lying in this river on a hot summer's day up to my mouth and just drinking the water and thinking, this is so decadent.

    I didn't know the word decadent then, but now I realize in retrospect it

    [00:26:49] WILL: I'm, I'm I'm drinking my 

    [00:26:50] ROD: bath 

    water,

    I'm drinking my swimming pool and, and it's okay. Anyway, none of 

    those,

    [00:26:57] WILL: no, it was the Americans, 

    uh,

    [00:27:00] of 

    course,

    they're the only ones that we have that have successfully reversed a river. 

    it followed its natural 

    course.

    the Chicago River. We would sort of do this weird conversions thing. Uh, the northern branch would come, come down south and the southern branch would come north and come through where Chicago is and pop out in a little combined 

    [00:27:17] ROD: channel.

    That's what there's a weird little whirlpool or

    [00:27:19] WILL: weird little thing.

    And then it pops out in Lake Michigan. Yeah. You can see what it's doing. It is draining from each side and going out there

    [00:27:24] ROD: And there's a quick aside. My fucking God. The Great Lakes are big. They are. There's a reason they're called Great. They are, they are humongous.

    [00:27:30] WILL: humongous. Love them. Love them.

    They're my favorite of the lakes that 

    [00:27:34] ROD: I 

    haven't

    seen. Of the lakes. 

    [00:27:35] WILL: Great.

    little. Yeah. They're, they're good. They're, they're a good size lake. I feel like that's appropriate. That's appropriate. when Europeans were living, first arrived in, in Chicago. Mm-hmm. 

    [00:27:46] ROD: in invited to 

    [00:27:47] WILL: be there. Well, 

    something like that. They noted that the river, you know, it flowed sluggishly into Lake Mi 

    Michigan. Mm-hmm. 

    and pretty quickly you can guess what they started doing into the river.

    [00:27:59] ROD: Did it [00:28:00] involve everything that comes outta 

    [00:28:01] WILL: people,

    everything that comes outta people and industry and, and anything else that you can imagine as I've, I've told you in the past about how gross 

    [00:28:07] ROD: rivers 

    can get 

    [00:28:08] WILL: Yes. And how gross they did get in the 

    [00:28:11] ROD: early

    twenties. We've got all this stuff. What are we gonna do with it? Was the river 

    [00:28:14] WILL: over there?

    The problem, the problem for Chicago was that, um, all of the shit and cow carcasses and industrial pollution and everything else that was flowing from their city into Lake

    Michigan. but Lake Michigan was their drinking water.

    And

    [00:28:29] ROD: no, but, and 

    [00:28:31] WILL: end. So, so they're like, we are, we are dumping all of our shit into our drinking water. So what we actually need to 

    [00:28:41] ROD: do

    is nuke it.

    [00:28:44] WILL: They were pre nukes. They were pre nukes back in this, this is, this is, uh, 1900 basically. So this is early 20th century. Late 19th century there. Yeah. Uh, they're like, you know what we could do is.

    Rather than

    pumping our shit into the drinking [00:29:00] supply, we could turn our river around and pump it out to the Mississippi, and then it flows down through all of those other people and we don't need to worry

    [00:29:08] ROD: them.

    They're full of people who are slightly differently 

    [00:29:11] WILL: tinted 

    to 

    [00:29:11] ROD: us.

    [00:29:14] WILL: So in what has been described by the American Society of Civil Engineers as a civil engineering monument of the Millennium

    [00:29:23] ROD: Civil is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

    [00:29:25] WILL: They turned around the Chicago 

    River. 

    Wow. So 

    instead of dumping out at Lake Michigan dump, they took water from Lake Michigan, pushed it back through Chicago, pushed it back over, over like some, some little, uh, levies that were created in the ice age a hundred millions of years before, and pushed it into the Mississippi, uh, Mississippi and all of the, all the gross.

    No longer became their problem. It was called the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. You can put ships down it too, but, 

    uh, but I love, I love that you've got this sanitary canal sucks [00:30:00] water from Lake Michigan pushes it into the Mississippi. Mississippi. So they take, uh, they're allowed to remove, um, 33,200 cubic feet per 

    second of 

    water from the great lengths and pump it in that direction.

    [00:30:13] ROD: oh, so it's, it's constantly, it requires 

    [00:30:15] WILL: energy to 

    [00:30:16] ROD: constantly, it requires energy. So it's basically a big pool filter 

    [00:30:19] WILL: pump there.

    There's engineering 

    work 

    that, that has allowed, allowed the water to flow after that. But there, there, there is a, there is a pumping 

    [00:30:25] ROD: system.

    It's basically a little aquarium on a grand 

    [00:30:28] WILL: scope. Yeah, I, I,

    [00:30:30] ROD: I didn't realize. So that's the bit that I wasn't aware of. We still need to, you know, like pump it.

    [00:30:35] WILL: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    [00:30:36] ROD: I feel like that 

    [00:30:37] WILL: matters.

    Look, Chicago itself is still a tiny bit above Lake Michigan. Like that's, that's inherent. So the water would want to go that way. But what they've done is put a little barrage there

    and push water back there. Back, back the other way.

    I don't know.

    It's a miracle.

    It's a miracle. So there you go. Turning the rivers around.

     

    [00:30:56] ROD: self-defense penis. Okay. [00:31:00] Fun with animals. AKA, wow. I'm glad I'm not a spider.

    [00:31:04] WILL: yeah.

    [00:31:05] ROD: So recently four new subspecies of tarantula were discovered in the Arabian Peninsula and round the horn of Africa.

    [00:31:11] WILL: Of what? Tarantula.

    [00:31:13] ROD: Yep. Tarantula.

    [00:31:14] WILL: I'm, I'm guessing, I'm guessing this is more of an identification thing, like it was the slightly reddish tarantula and the slightly greenish tarantula. Not, we've never seen these giant spiders before because 

    [00:31:25] ROD: I, 

    [00:31:26] WILL: I imagine you

    [00:31:27] ROD: it's bigger than my dog.

    [00:31:28] WILL: You, you know, you notice these things.

    [00:31:31] ROD: You know, this is, well, look, there was a thing that made them distinct. So they were so distinct. These four subspecies formed their own genus, So yeah, this Satter ex sub Janes, they're named after Sers obviously, because they 

    [00:31:48] WILL: have. 

    [00:31:49] ROD: Colossal spider dongs, like colossal. Oh, dongs. Sorry. I mean the longest pulps, so the name pulps is the name of the reproductive [00:32:00] appendages

    spider cell that are used for mating.

    [00:32:02] WILL: The, the, the male. The male,

    [00:32:03] ROD: The male. The women don't have as many penises as the,

    [00:32:06] WILL: well, I don't know. I don't know 

    [00:32:08] ROD: they're

    that was very No, no, no. Good for 

    [00:32:10] WILL: you.

    never know what they truck with in the, the other parts of

    [00:32:13] ROD: Was very open-minded of you. 

    [00:32:14] WILL: Very

    yeah. I 

    [00:32:14] ROD: open-minded. I appreciate that.

    [00:32:16] WILL: I know mushrooms are sex organs too, and 

    [00:32:18] ROD: they,

    mushrooms are sex 

    [00:32:19] WILL: organs.

    Yes. 

    [00:32:21] ROD: Ooh. I ate more sex organs than I 

    [00:32:23] WILL: realized. You

    definitely do.

    [00:32:24] ROD: I had a great pie with chock full of sex organs the other night is delicious and, 

    [00:32:29] WILL: meat. It would, it would sell very well.

    Sex, organ pie, like

    [00:32:32] ROD: No, it wouldn't. It depends where you imagine the local markets. You can have cauliflower, you can have beef.

    There's venison, there's something with spinach or sex, organ pie and you're like, I, I don't want 

    that 

    [00:32:42] WILL: one.

    But no, you see, wait, wait and see. Dick the pie. There would be a bunch of people that are like, well, I'll take the sex organ pie.

    You know,

    [00:32:48] ROD: anyway, so they have huge penai. So for example, the Satre, FedEx, one of the four. It's pulps measured up to five centimeters long. Now you and I are going 

    [00:32:59] WILL: whatever [00:33:00] hours 

    [00:33:00] ROD: or at least six, but that is almost four times the length of the head and thorax combined.

    [00:33:05] WILL: Yeah. Okay. We're

    [00:33:06] ROD: talking a little impressive. We're

    [00:33:07] WILL: talking, they've spent a bit of time 

    [00:33:08] ROD: on 

    this. Yeah.

    I'm thinking Virgin on impediment here. Like you imagine having 

    [00:33:12] WILL: So what

    percentage of the body length is this?

    [00:33:15] ROD: We think of the head and the thorax of a spider. Yeah. The thorax is 

    [00:33:18] WILL: basically,

    so we're not getting legs 

    [00:33:19] ROD: here? 

    No. 

    [00:33:20] WILL: How do you measure a spider? Like generally, how do you, what, what is the, what is the unit?

    [00:33:25] ROD: Well, oh, the 

    [00:33:26] WILL: Is

    spider No, but like, like a sinister 

    Are you head to tail or you, you toe to toe or are you toe to toe in a, you spread 'em out on a circle.

    That's 

    [00:33:33] ROD: what

    you, yeah. Squash 'em flat and measure the 

    [00:33:34] WILL: diameter. Yeah. It's

    a diameter based

    [00:33:36] ROD: Yep. Spiders a diameter. So this one, so if you take basically everything it is in its legs up to four times the length 

    [00:33:42] WILL: of 

    that. 

    [00:33:44] ROD: Now, in human terms, at least as far as I'm concerned, that means about 19 

    [00:33:47] WILL: meters. Oh, 

    [00:33:48] ROD: Oh, exactly. Obviously. so basically it's ding-dong is at, at nearly as long as its longest leg.

    It

    [00:33:54] WILL: It seems, 

    [00:33:55] ROD: seems

    and we've all suffered 

    [00:33:56] WILL: that 

    way,

    but it seems unnecessary. Yeah.

    [00:33:58] ROD: Yeah. So, um, [00:34:00] one source quoted from the University of Tical,

    [00:34:03] WILL: she

    [00:34:03] ROD: look, the species is highly defensive. So they're, you know, a little jangly, a little bit edgy at the slightest disturbance.

    They'll raise their front legs in a threat posture and produce a loud hissing sound, which made me go, what the fuck? But they do it by rubbing specialized hairs on parts of their front legs together. So it makes this noise. Also, the, they're extremely aggressive defense behavior is observed particularly in females.

    So the females as happens in a lot of species, large 

    and 

    [00:34:30] WILL: angry.

    Mm-hmm.

    [00:34:32] ROD: So basically they suspect the huge member is facilitates, uh, copulation while minimizing the risk of cannibalism.

    [00:34:40] WILL: So it keeps a 

    [00:34:41] ROD: distance. Yeah.

    Bang 'em from a distance and probably not get eaten after you've 

    [00:34:44] WILL: done So it's like in, um, like those terrible Japanese, uh, manga, you know, you know, or 

    [00:34:49] ROD: crazy or 

    [00:34:50] WILL: something

    like 

    that. 

    [00:34:51] ROD: And I mean, look, I can show 

    [00:34:52] WILL: you 

    terrible Thai thing.

    [00:34:54] ROD: The pictures don't make a lot of sense because they're, they're weird bent sort of arm looking

    [00:34:57] WILL: Yeah, no, I wouldn't necessarily recognize [00:35:00] that as a 

    [00:35:00] ROD: as a, as a pen, 

    [00:35:01] WILL: as, as, as a, as an expert on, on such 

    [00:35:04] ROD: things,

    You're not, you're not a, a big, uh,

    [00:35:06] WILL: but it's nice that he's, that they've got hinges like

    [00:35:09] ROD: they do. I mean, again, I, I couldn't uh, put it actually on the internet, but they 

    have, 

    they have two elbows.

    [00:35:17] WILL: I do like when your, when your diagram is, here's our collection of spider 

    [00:35:21] ROD: penis spider dongs.

    [00:35:22] WILL: Yeah. Like here's our six of them that we got. They, they range from f which is, 

    [00:35:27] ROD: Tiny, tiny, 

    modest. 

    [00:35:28] WILL: fine. Modest. Uh, well, uh, it depends what you do with it.

    [00:35:31] ROD: Small but 

    perfectly 

    [00:35:32] WILL: was definitely depends what you do with it.

    Yeah. Um, up to

    c C, C, which is

    [00:35:37] ROD: see 

    [00:35:38] WILL: this,

    that's, that's for coming from another 

    [00:35:40] ROD: city.

    Did you notice that all of them 

    [00:35:42] WILL: have a You missed it.

    [00:35:43] ROD: A I heard what you 

    [00:35:44] WILL: said.

    Ah, you just,

    [00:35:46] ROD: I'm not gonna grace you with a acknowledgement of my kind of joke. That's just terrible. We have no more demarcation 

    anymore. 

    You could, with that biggest one. You could. And, and each of them has sort of a, kind of like a scorpion's tip on one end, which is

    [00:35:59] WILL: nature is [00:36:00] unkind,

    [00:36:01] ROD: but at least I just love the idea that, you know, you wander up and you go like, is it on sweetheart?

    And she says Yes. And you say, cool. I'm gonna go over behind that 

    tree. 

    [00:36:08] WILL: I'm, I'm behind the 

    [00:36:08] ROD: behind the camera. I'm gonna put a bunch of sandbags 

    [00:36:10] WILL: in 

    front Don't eat me. Don't eat 

    [00:36:12] ROD: me. I'm gonna do you remotely. Well done.

     So I, I have a feeling that Alex maybe have something to tell 

    us.

    What do 

    [00:36:22] WILL: do you 

    reckon? 

    [00:36:22] ROD: Oh my God. What do you reckon? Because we ignored Alex last episode and I feel like a horrible little man and I've been thinking about 

    [00:36:28] WILL: this 

    [00:36:29] ROD: every 

    [00:36:30] ALEX: I am glad. I hope you couldn't sleep this whole

    [00:36:32] ROD: I couldn't, 'cause I watched your little face fall after we stopped recording and he looked at us and you forgot me.

    And I thought, we're fucking monsters. 'cause we 

    [00:36:38] WILL: did. 

    [00:36:39] ROD: And also your stories are good. So, hi Alex. And for people listening at home or watching on too, Alex is our producer and thank 

    [00:36:46] WILL: God

    and if you're on Twitch, he's hidden. He's hidden, he's in another window.

    [00:36:50] ROD: He's the voice from above.

    [00:36:52] ALEX: that's right. Thanks for the introduction. You'll be sad you missed out on this last week 'cause you've gone all week without knowing about mammalian, enteral, [00:37:00] ventilation.

    [00:37:00] ROD: Sounds a little sexy.

    [00:37:03] ALEX: Yeah, it's a little 

    [00:37:04] ROD: ventilation. 

    When I, whenever I enterally ventilate, I feel relieved, at least, if not actually pleasured.

    [00:37:11] WILL: I think you 

    [00:37:11] ROD: might.

    And I'm a 

    [00:37:12] WILL: mammal.

    [00:37:14] ALEX: As you, as you might understand from the, the wording, it's breathing through your butt hole.

    [00:37:21] WILL: Well, who

    [00:37:22] ROD: yeah, we've all been there. Yeah, exactly.

    [00:37:24] ALEX: Yeah. So a, a team of researchers in, um, uh, Japan, university of, uh, Tokyo, they looked at some sea creatures like flukes and some of these other crazy things you've never heard of, and saw that during times of hypoxia they could actually recruit this additional body part for ventilation

    [00:37:43] ROD: So what you mean is extra breathing 

    holes.

    [00:37:46] ALEX: extra breathing 

    [00:37:46] WILL: I like the, 

    [00:37:47] ALEX: So they 

    thought, you know what,

    [00:37:49] ROD: Recruit. I can't breathe well, I'm gonna recruit my other

    [00:37:52] WILL: I, I'll, I'll en enlist the butthole,

    [00:37:56] ROD: holes. I've got all these extra holes and then they're doing nothing for me 

    [00:37:59] WILL: right[00:38:00] 

    Useless holes.

    [00:38:01] ALEX: Well, not so useless. And then they thought, well, why, you know, can mammals do it? You know, crazy sea creatures with highly evolved, you know, breathing apparatus then well, why can mammals do it? So they thought, let's figure it out. So they, they got these, um, poor mice and, and pigs and they, you know, induced.

    Oh,

    [00:38:20] WILL: continue. I have, I have ethical questions instantly.

    [00:38:25] ALEX: because what's the gain from this research that the, and the, the, at the expense of many animal lives. Um, so they, they induced hypoxia. So they, they basically took control of the breathing by putting 'em in a coma and putting a little tiny breathing tube in their trachea and drop the oxygen level right, right down, right 

    [00:38:41] WILL: Yep. 

    [00:38:41] ROD: Yep.

    [00:38:42] ALEX: And then at the bottom end, they put a, uh, tube into the back passage and then started pumping this, uh, solution, this liquid solution of. With a very, very high oxygen content into the rectum

    So what they, what they [00:39:00] found is, is that, um, they were looking at respiratory failure. So at what point do your lungs fail to oxygenate your body enough to keep you alive? And they had the control mice, which all across the board just died because they just cut off the oxygen. So that was a useful control, but, you know, science and then in 

    [00:39:17] ROD: It's not a control group, is it? What if we murder some mice as well as do the experiment?

    [00:39:22] ALEX: And in the, um, experimental group with this liquid infusion of, of oxygen up the back passage, they were able to stave off type one respiratory failure. So lung body failing due to lack of oxygen for a statistically significant amount of time. 

    [00:39:37] ROD: So 

    [00:39:37] ALEX: And they 

    [00:39:38] ROD: versus two minutes.

    [00:39:40] ALEX: statistically significant actual numbers are relevant.

    And um, and they found that the actual transfer of the oxygen was better if they a braided the, uh, butthole with a small skewer type object to disrupt the lining

    [00:39:53] ROD: So by braided you mean offer access to more blood 

    [00:39:56] WILL: supply.

    Oh my

    [00:39:57] ALEX: well they just got this kind of like pipe cleaner [00:40:00] type thing and just went up there and went backwards and forwards to

    [00:40:03] ROD: So does a braid mean cut 

    shit? Mm-hmm. 

    [00:40:07] ALEX: Yeah. Brave. Just, just disrupt the surface.

    [00:40:09] ROD: So cut. Shit,

    [00:40:10] ALEX: Catch it, yeah.

    [00:40:13] ROD: I'm in. I'll give it 

    a crack

    [00:40:15] WILL: on 

    you. 

    Yeah, yeah. Fine. Do it 

    [00:40:17] ROD: yourself.

    I'm not, I'm not at all scared about drowning or being buried alive. It's all fine with me. 

    [00:40:21] WILL: But you'll have your butt hole ab braided for,

    [00:40:23] ROD: for, I've had my butt ed by medical practitioners and you know what, I'm still alive

    [00:40:28] WILL: While that, while they hold, hold your 

    [00:40:29] ROD: nose.

    No. Well, they helped me. I was on 

    [00:40:31] WILL: drugs,

    Hmm.

    [00:40:32] ROD: some of them 

    medically, 

    um, endorsed. 

    [00:40:35] WILL: I, I, am not sure this is a necessary study.

    [00:40:37] ROD: I think 

    it is.

    [00:40:39] WILL: And the 

    [00:40:39] ALEX: I am just trying to, and the, the result, they're able to demonstrate that in a mammal, they could actually prolong the time to death by hypoxia, by pumping 

    [00:40:49] WILL: prolong the time to 

    [00:40:51] ROD: death 

    [00:40:52] WILL: is not quite an endorsement.

    [00:40:54] ROD: No. It is, it is. And you know what it also does to me, what I'm thinking is, you know, I did the St. John's Ambulance course to do [00:41:00] first eight years ago. What they never did, and they should now, is to say, well, if that's not working, flip 'em over and blow up the butt.

    You use, you still use a mouth shield, but you'd like the,

    [00:41:09] WILL: I feel like the, I feel like the, the state of surprise would absolutely wake 

    [00:41:12] ROD: someone up,

    But it's hard to do CPR when they're lying on their stomachs, but you can get oxygen into them by blowing 

    [00:41:17] WILL: the 

    butt.

    Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    [00:41:19] ROD: I, I, I endorse this is, this is a little bit of science 

    [00:41:21] WILL: endorsement

    you know, you know, I feel like that is, that is a nice dystopia in the future where it's like all ambulance, ambulance 

    [00:41:29] ROD: ambulance, people

    have roll 'em 

    over, roll '

    em over.

    [00:41:33] WILL: and it's like, who, uh, obviously ambulance people suffer in this, in this future.

    [00:41:38] ROD: Uh,

    does this mean when they, when the, the, the person under resuscitation when they breathe out?

    It's like,

    [00:41:45] WILL: I think so.

    [00:41:47] ROD: that's pretty much what it looks like from now 

    on.

    [00:41:51] ALEX: Well, at least they'd be administering ene enemies. It is a fluid per fluer

    carbon oxygen solution, 

    so they don't have to breathe, they don't have to breathe into the 

    butts. [00:42:00] Uh, you're welcome.

    [00:42:02] ROD: So pragmatic, Scandinavians, God bless our Scandinavian cousins, reuse, restore, recycle. You're aware of these 

    [00:42:10] WILL: three, 

    uh,

    mm-hmm. 

    [00:42:11] ROD: you know, aspirational situations. Would you 

    [00:42:13] WILL: like 

    that? Hmm?

    [00:42:15] ROD: Would 

    [00:42:15] WILL: you 

    like 

    that? 

    [00:42:16] ROD: Hmm 

    hmm.

    [00:42:17] WILL: hmm.

    [00:42:18] ROD: So the words to live by and we wanna save the world, so it's really good to get into those.

    And we do it with paper, we do it with plastic, we do it with glass, old furniture, electronics. We reduce, re reuse, recycle, 

    et cetera. 

    Mm-hmm. 

    So the old Borg Zoo in Denmark is also on board 

    [00:42:33] WILL: with 

    this. Yes. 

    [00:42:36] ROD: So they're particularly on board with, and I'm not sure we'll talk about this later, reusing or recycling. It depends how we frame this. They put up a Facebook post that said, if you have a healthy animal that needs to be given away for various reasons, feel free to donate it to us. Uh, which I think is 

    great, 

    right?

    Yeah. 

    [00:42:53] WILL: So they 

    [00:42:53] ROD: said, 

    you know, hand them over. And what kind of zoo though is my question? Wants rabbits, chickens, Guinea pigs, [00:43:00] et cetera. No reference to dogs or cats. Oh. 'cause they're not monsters. 'cause who wants a dog or cat museum? I mean, sorry. Uh, zoo horses may be of interest 

    [00:43:09] WILL: too. 

    [00:43:10] ROD: I'm gonna add, if you donate these animals to them, nothing goes to 

    waste,

    [00:43:14] WILL: Mm.

    [00:43:16] ROD: which I think 

    is excellent.

    So what 

    do 

    [00:43:18] WILL: they actually 

    mean?

    [00:43:19] ROD: Yeah.

    I I feel like you have some 

    [00:43:21] WILL: suspicions. Well, 

    [00:43:23] ROD: So the zoo, it seems, wants to mimic the natural food chain of animals housed there. For the sake of both animal welfare and professional integrity

    [00:43:33] WILL: And

    AKA

    and

    and visitor, visitor spectacle?

    [00:43:39] ROD: Vi, no, that that has not 

    [00:43:40] WILL: come 

    up.

    No. Not stated

    [00:43:42] ROD: so 

    far. 

    So they basically wanna feed excess pets to zoos 

    [00:43:46] WILL: Present? Uh, live,

    [00:43:51] ROD: No, they're not 

    [00:43:52] WILL: monsters. 

    Oh no. I thought this was like a hunting scenario. I thought this was what, like watch a tiger take down a horse. Like it's 

    [00:43:59] ROD: [00:44:00] gonna 

    happen 

    rabbit afternoon.

    Watch a tiger devour. A rabbit alive.

    Look.

    Afternoon

    Well, that 

    was quick.

    [00:44:08] WILL: I want to tiger to take down a horse. I'm sorry.

    I'm 

    [00:44:13] ROD: not gonna lie. I, I'd

    [00:44:14] WILL: I would, I would pay an extra $2 on my zoo

    [00:44:17] ROD: Yeah. To go there live and hand me some kind of, I don't know, Danish

    [00:44:21] WILL: I'm like, basically David Attenborough right here.

    [00:44:22] ROD: here, give or take a few years and. Any integrity. So in the post on Facebook, I'm gonna quote a few bits, but here's one.

    If you have, this is next to a picture of a yawning predatorial cat with 

    [00:44:35] WILL: huge 

    fans. That's like a, that's, no, that's like a a one of them. One of them actual 

    [00:44:39] ROD: cats.

    Yeah. But that isn't domestic.

    Yeah.

    If you have a healthy animal that has to leave here for various 

    reasons, feel free to donate it 

    [00:44:47] WILL: to us. 

    [00:44:49] ROD: I think here means this mortal 

    [00:44:50] WILL: quote. I do love the idea that you would, okay, so it's a dead animal and you flop 

    a 

    dead 

    [00:44:55] ROD: pet

    [00:44:55] WILL: on,

    their, no. So live. Live. So, okay. It's a hunting scenario. Yeah. Oh no.

    [00:44:59] ROD: [00:45:00] no. 

    Alright. 

    The animals are gently euthanized by trained staff and afterwards used as fodder. That way, nothing goes to waste. And we ensure natural behavior, nutrition and, and the wellbeing of 

    [00:45:13] WILL: our

    practice. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Screw them. No, 

    [00:45:15] ROD: fuck 

    this.

    You're 

    [00:45:16] WILL: you're screw. No, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, off. Are

    you

    out? I'm, I'm with them on the idea that we should give zoo animals a more natural experience, but, uh, euthanizing the, like on the planes of the Serengeti.

    DDD 

    [00:45:31] ROD: it look another drunk 

    [00:45:32] WILL: Guinea pig?

    does? It does exactly. A floppy Guinea pig present themselves. I'm sorry, 

    [00:45:37] ROD: Danes. 

    I think it's 

    [00:45:38] WILL: breathing. 

    No, you're talking, you, you're just doing this for pr. This is fucked

    [00:45:42] ROD: you monster. So this is a, this is actually quite resonant. You'd be surprised to know that there was a, a few, I don't know, social media concerns 

    [00:45:50] WILL: expressed. 

    [00:45:53] ROD: Couple of quotes. What? A bunch of sociopaths.

    A zoo should care for all 

    [00:45:56] WILL: animals.

    No, I, I was, I wasn't done that. I was, I was 

    [00:45:59] ROD: say [00:46:00] I'm not, I'm not saying you are. I'm just saying this is what happened. Another quote, which I think is really quite articulate, fuck the Berg 

    [00:46:06] WILL: Zoo. 

    [00:46:06] ROD: Oh,

    [00:46:07] WILL: Oh,

    [00:46:07] ROD: but my favorite, this is a public post to say, fuck the Alburg Zoo in Denmark.

    From here to eternity.

    [00:46:14] WILL: To 

    [00:46:14] ROD: eternity.

    Yeah. They're not mucking 

    [00:46:15] WILL: around. 

    [00:46:16] ROD: That's, that's,

    that's, a lot of fuck.

    It's a big, yeah, exactly. That's tiring

    [00:46:21] WILL: to eternity. I mean,

    [00:46:24] ROD: I mean, look, I'm not against the 

    [00:46:25] WILL: intercourse, 

    [00:46:27] ROD: but forever, 

    until the end 

    of time, 

    I wanna read a book occasionally, you know, have a shower, old fashioned.

    Anyway, they've asked the Danish public this. This post goes on to donate unwanted dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens, Guinea pigs, and other, quote, smaller pets to be eaten by the zoo's, predators. They refer to the pets as fodder, 

    [00:46:48] WILL: so that person 

    is 

    angry. 

    [00:46:50] ROD: But then underneath this poster is a clarifier added by, I assume the 

    zoo.

    Oberg Zoo is requesting horses, chickens, rabbits, and Guinea pigs. They reject cats [00:47:00] and dogs. So they're not monsters, obviously, kitty like, like mittens and, and Fido out. 

    These are 

    animals that are going to be euthanized anyway, not quote unwanted pets 

    fodder.

    [00:47:13] WILL: They'll just be euthanized through 

    [00:47:14] ROD: petite. that 

    would be be killed anyway.

    Yeah. Fodder is a mistranslation of the Danish word fo, which means

    [00:47:20] WILL: which means

    [00:47:20] ROD: food for animals. 

    So calm your farm.

    Social media 

    poster. 

    [00:47:25] WILL: I don't see how, I don't see how that's a mistranslation

    [00:47:28] ROD: One is, you know, just like dismissive. And the other is that, that's fine.

    [00:47:33] WILL: It doesn't seem like a misre that, that food for 

    [00:47:36] ROD: animals

    As partial Scandinavian, myself, I think you should accept my word on that.

    It's 

    [00:47:41] WILL: different.

    [00:47:43] ROD: It's 

    [00:47:43] WILL: different.

    [00:47:44] ROD: So co-director of the Clinic for Zoo Animals, exotic Pets and Wildlife at the University of Zurich, a gentleman called Marcus Klaus speaking to the Washington Post. He says, if you agree to the general principle that you have a carnivorous animal in the zoo, You succumb [00:48:00] to the necessity that you have to feed them animal material. That's what 

    he says. Yeah. If you do this in a way that is not primarily directed at economics, but at animal welfare, you'll strive to get animals that had high welfare ideally.

    So what he's saying is, look, they gotta get meat somehow. So what about 

    [00:48:17] WILL: this 

    way? 

    [00:48:19] ROD: A fellow from, uh, Copenhagen Zoo, a guy called Stawa ta. You probably know him. I mean, you know, we all follow him on social medias. Nature can often be pretty 

    [00:48:27] WILL: grizzly.

    [00:48:28] ROD: Yeah.

    And in any case, the zoo insists that animals will be put down, quote, gently, not hunted and thrown to the literal wolves.

    [00:48:36] WILL: Ah.

    [00:48:37] ROD: This 

    practice, apparently is quite normal in Denmark, and the from people who over romanticized nature in the world. He said to the Washington Post, they're basically disnifying 

    [00:48:47] WILL: everything. Mm. 

    [00:48:49] ROD: So an

    example that was thrown out was 2014 Copenhagen 

    Zoo.

    Yep.

    It was celebrated or not for euthanizing, a healthy 

    giraffe, 

    [00:49:00] allegedly 

    to avoid 

    [00:49:00] WILL: inbreeding.

    d.

    There's a strange solution 

    [00:49:03] ROD: to, 

    inbreeding. He cuts dick 

    off.

    [00:49:05] WILL: Well, well, or just 

    move it. Move 

    it. Like, 

    [00:49:08] ROD: like 

    sterilize, 

    [00:49:10] WILL: it doesn't fuck its sister. Like 

    [00:49:12] ROD: yeah. What if you didn't do 

    [00:49:14] WILL: inbreed. I feel like there are, there are few solutions before capital 

    [00:49:18] ROD: punishment.

    See, you're not, you're not a very Danish 

    [00:49:21] WILL: thinker.

    Yeah. 

    [00:49:23] ROD: So apparently it was, uh, euthanized, uh, then, um, dissected in front of Zuko and fed its carcass was fed 

    [00:49:29] WILL: to lines. No, I,

    [00:49:32] ROD: Nothing to do with pr. It's just, 

    [00:49:34] WILL: you

    know, 

    I, no, 

    no reasonable. 

    go the whole 

    [00:49:38] ROD: hog.

    So, 

    a point that was raised, which I kind of understand, I know if it's true 

    though, 

    for many animals who are in pain, et cetera, it's more humane to euthanize.

    And that's what we do with our animals. We know this with pets, et cetera. They're kind of like, well, they're fucked and it's gonna be fucked forever. Let's, let's take 'em out quietly. Now, the problem is, at least according to Washington Post, not everyone can afford to do that. [00:50:00] 

    [00:50:00] WILL: Okay. 

    And it does 

    cost a 

    lot. Oh, okay. 

    [00:50:02] ROD: Okay. So 

    this

    is, it does 

    [00:50:03] WILL: this is

    a solution for pet owners in 

    [00:50:05] ROD: a 

    challenging

    Yeah. They're kind of like, and, and I get it. Like I've, I've had to, and it's horrible and it still haunts 

    me 

    even many years 

    [00:50:12] WILL: And then having a big bill as well, like, 

    [00:50:14] ROD: not it costs a lot of money to kill your loved pet.

    Yeah. Yeah. It's horrible. It's absolutely horrible. So it's not a, I don't disagree with that argument in principle, 

    so 

    it's not great. So, but back to my original point, is this reuse or recycle? I mean, in, in terms of, you know, giving a shit about the 

    world, the thing that really matters here is which kind of, uh, being environmentally conscious.

    Are 

    we, 

    what do you 

    reckon? 

    Is it reusing or 

    is it recycling? It's definitely not 

    [00:50:43] WILL: restoring,

    no, 

    it's both.

    It's 

    we reusing the cells we are using. I don't know. I 

    [00:50:51] ROD: dunno. So you are 

    [00:50:51] WILL: the 

    monster. I

    no, I feel like this is. Like, so the giraffe, like the tiger gets a little taste of giraffe. Like, how is this, I [00:51:00] get the use of the No, I get, I get a giraffe dies on your watch. I dunno about the 

    [00:51:05] ROD: euthanasia 

    point

    Yeah, that's 

    [00:51:06] WILL: that. Yeah.

    Your giraffe dies on your watch. It's dumber to bury it then chop it up and give 

    [00:51:10] ROD: it to the 

    tiger.

    A 

    hundred percent.

    [00:51:11] WILL: Like that's, that's totally fine. Like if you've got giraffes and tigers, that that's what

    you do.

    Yeah.

    it's not really any benefit to the, to the tiger. Like the tiger gets a lump of meat.

    Like the I.

    [00:51:23] ROD: Yeah. If

    you, if you otherwise giving them something to do, what, 

    [00:51:26] WILL: what are they? Pull down the, pull down the walls. 

    Sorry, I got, I got, uh, I got two more 

    [00:51:31] ROD: So 

    [00:51:32] WILL: we

    finished? 

    [00:51:33] ROD: Yeah, 

    we finished,

    which means what we need you to do, people listening at home or wherever you're listening.

    Send us suggestions. Give us an 11 star review on every podcast platform, including ones that haven't been 

    [00:51:43] WILL: invented.

    The one the, the one that your mother reads.

    [00:51:45] ROD: That's,

    exactly your, your great-grandmother. Also, uh, if you want to send us suggestions, corrections, abuse, or love, what's the 

    [00:51:53] WILL: email 

    address?

    Cheers. 

    Cheers. 

    [00:51:55] ROD: At, 

    [00:51:55] WILL: At,

    r little bit of science one [00:52:00] word.com 

    [00:52:00] ROD: au.

    That's one word. Not the.com, not 

    [00:52:02] WILL: the au

    No, they're, they're, they're not words. They're

    [00:52:06] ROD: oh, they're concept

    acronyms.

    And I dunno what to do about Twitch. But if you are one of the minus three people listening on Twitch, tell the other people, 

    [00:52:14] WILL: you know,

    yeah. Go on Twitch. No, it's great fun. But, but, but, but you know, it's live. It's 

    [00:52:18] ROD: live.

    No, you should, you should. Because we dress very 

    well for

    this. Yes. 

    [00:00:00] 

    [00:00:01] WILL: Brom

    [00:00:02] ROD: Brom This is for the people at home. Will is gonna wanna dive in, but he won't be allowed. Is Brom a program run by muscular evangelical Christians who specialize in gay conversion therapy? Is brom a condition brought on by intense or long-term consumption of bromine? Or is it a recently acknowledged psychiatric syndrome that's particularly associated with Silicon Valley hyper-masculine tech?

    Bros. I won't keep you waiting. I know you probably guessed will, but I'm, I'm not gonna listen to you. It's b it's a condition brought about by intense or long-term consumption of bromine. Um, most likely from consuming bromine salts, sodium bromine. But to be fair, the story does also have a strong link with the text bros right now.

    So it's got a lot to do also in this case with a, but not very, 

    I. [00:01:00] it is time 

    [00:01:01] WILL: for a little bit of science

    [00:01:02] ROD: much.

    [00:01:03] WILL: I'm will grant an associate professor in science communication from the Australian National University.

    [00:01:09] ROD: I'm Rod Lambert, a 30 year sitcom veteran, or close enough with the mind of a teenage boy.

    [00:01:15] WILL: And today, ah, what have we got for you? I've got a giant oopsie.

    [00:01:19] ROD: I've got a, uh, self-defense penis.

    [00:01:21] WILL: Oh,

    [00:01:21] ROD: Aw.

    [00:01:23] WILL: I've got some super engineering.

    [00:01:25] ROD: and I've got a little story from our pragmatic Scandinavian, uh, siblings

    [00:01:29] WILL: What do you So, 

    [00:01:29] ROD: so bro, 

    [00:01:30] WILL: bro,

    [00:01:30] ROD: yes. It is not about evangelical muscular Christians specializing in gay conversion or Silicon Valley Hyper Bros. Mm-hmm. So it's a condition brought about by intense or long-term consumption of bromine.

    [00:01:42] WILL: Um,

    [00:01:43] ROD: don't,

    [00:01:44] WILL: I, I, I don't often go to the supermarket and, uh, pick up a bucket of bromine,

    [00:01:49] ROD: bucket of

    [00:01:50] WILL: bromine

    [00:01:50] ROD: brome.

    Print your own bucket.

    [00:01:51] WILL: do you, do you put it on your cornflakes or is this a

    [00:01:54] ROD: you could put it wherever you want. I mean, it, you know, it can, yeah. Put it with 

    [00:01:57] WILL: You were saying you can't.

    [00:01:59] ROD: No, you can. You just probably [00:02:00] shouldn't. I mean, it, it's consumable. Okay. I'll give you a little background just before we get 

    [00:02:04] WILL: just because something is consumable. Well, sure does not

    [00:02:07] ROD: Yeah. Like glass knives, nuclear energy. Airplanes. Airplanes are consumable. Didn't the dude do that?

    [00:02:12] WILL: Yes he did. Of course he did. You know he did.

    [00:02:15] ROD: Was it a whole plane? He was

    [00:02:16] WILL: French man. Ah, he

    he Was He 

    [00:02:18] ROD: being the operative.

    [00:02:19] WILL: was being the operator. He was big on bicycles, but plane.

    [00:02:20] ROD: I remember and a small car.

    I remember him eating a small car. He'd grind stuff. The, the stuff that was too big. De two, he'd grind into filings and 

    [00:02:27] WILL: is cheating. Which is cheating.

    [00:02:28] ROD: also terrible.

    [00:02:30] WILL: It's a weird thing to cheat at. I'm really like cheating on your homework. One thing, cheating at eating an airplane by who

    [00:02:39] ROD: who calls it cheating. Like that's not how you eat an airplane.

    You son of a bitch.

    [00:02:46] WILL: I eat it a proper way.

    [00:02:48] ROD: Exactly. Fucking was. Anyway, Brom though, that particular one, bromine was discovered by a French guy, Antoine Ard. Do I know what year guess? Go on. [00:03:00] You're good at numbers.

    [00:03:00] WILL: Uh,

    [00:03:00] ROD: Uh,

    [00:03:01] WILL: 1915.

    [00:03:03] ROD: You're terrible at numbers. 1826. Close. Close

    [00:03:06] WILL: I had a good 

    [00:03:07] ROD: run.

    Margin of error.

    And

    of course the moment he discovered that in bromine salts, there was of course an entire craze about it from the 18 hundreds through the

    19 hundreds.

    Like consume them for everything. They're good for warts. Oh, okay. Impure thoughts. Shortness, you name it. Yeah, yeah. You know, disproportionately different ear holes, everything. Take it for that. So they use it. Treatments for things like headaches, stomach aches, general malaise.

    [00:03:31] WILL: Well I take that for

    [00:03:32] ROD: you like Yeah, I'm feeling a little malaise ish.

    Can I have some bromine salts? Um, but it actually did have some effects, like medicinal, at least therapeutic. It's apparently a powerful anti-convulsant.

    [00:03:43] WILL: Mm.

    [00:03:45] ROD: So if you find yourself convulsing, get your bromide salts.

    [00:03:49] WILL: I might.

    [00:03:51] ROD: good sedative properties. It has sedative properties. Good. So that's probably related.

    Really Stop your

    [00:03:57] WILL: Is it better than some of the other

    [00:03:58] ROD: No, no, God no. [00:04:00] Everything else is better. It is now anyway. Um, and veterinarians still apparently prescribe it for epileptic dogs, so it is of some use today. Okay.

    Yeah. Problem was when people would. Eat 

    [00:04:12] WILL: it.

    What, what are you saying when you eat it?

    Like, are we just sprinkling it on food

    [00:04:15] ROD: or are like, this is my ab obsession? 

    [00:04:17] WILL: is this like a soap cake sized block of salt that we're 

    [00:04:20] ROD: just

    they've got a swallow hole, otherwise, where's the fun?

    [00:04:24] WILL: Like what are they doing?

    [00:04:25] ROD: Uh, wasn't clear. Like it, it sounds like one of those classic things where it, if it's like other salts, it can, you know, form into small Yeah.

    Sprinkle bits and then put it in things. And if it's anything, you know, I know a lot about the 18 and 19 hundreds and when in doubt put it in an elixir of something and obviously add morphine.

    I think 

    [00:04:42] WILL: El Alexias are from fantasy novels, not the 18 and 19 hundreds.

    [00:04:46] ROD: It can be both 

    [00:04:47] WILL: No, no.

    [00:04:48] ROD: a lot of fantasies are set in that period.

    So yeah, if you consume it, it builds up. You get toxic levels of bromine leading to brom. Which is,

    [00:04:58] WILL: What happens with bromm?[00:05:00] 

    [00:05:00] ROD: Oh, I'm not gonna tell you. That's the end of my story. Oh,

    [00:05:01] WILL: come on. Come on.

    [00:05:02] ROD: It's a neuropsychiatric disorder. Symptoms of confusion. Slurred speech hallucination. Psychosis.

    Sometimes you can drop into a coma.

    [00:05:11] WILL: Oh, okay. Well some of those sound all right.

    [00:05:13] ROD: A coma. Nice quiet.

    [00:05:15] WILL: Not the coma. Not the coma.

    [00:05:16] ROD: slurred speech.

    [00:05:17] WILL: Ah, I don't mind that.

    [00:05:18] ROD: Yeah, I know it's, I dunno how you get that. Otherwise, it's only bromine salts. But yeah, very much related to psychiatric disorder. So around the turn of the 20th century, they reckon something like 8% of psychiatric admissions were due to brom.

    Are you serious?

    [00:05:30] WILL: Are you serious? Yeah.

    [00:05:31] ROD: It was that fricking popular. So I've eaten too much bromine. I'm hallucinating, I'm comatose. I'm confused. I'm slurring my 

    [00:05:38] WILL: speech. 

    [00:05:39] ROD: Have you had any salts? So eventually, at least in the US, the EPA started to regulate around the seventies. So it's still, I think, or at least at that point, used in pesticides and pool and hot

    [00:05:50] WILL: I love, I love my both pesticide and medicine category. Exactly.

    [00:05:53] ROD: Um, so once they regulated it, brom cases from the seventies started to plummet.

    [00:06:00] Which is good.

    [00:06:00] WILL: Great. Thanks. Regulation.

    Mm-hmm. 

    [00:06:02] ROD: So then a month ago,

    [00:06:04] WILL: a month ago, like a month ago.

    [00:06:06] ROD: A month ago.

    Mm-hmm.

    In fact, well, it was reported earlier this month, August, 2025 for those of you listening in Yeah. The future, uh, new paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Mm-hmm.

    [00:06:18] WILL: mm-hmm.

    [00:06:18] ROD: Described a 60-year-old man who ended up coming down with an all but defunct condition known as Brom.

    [00:06:24] WILL: How?

    [00:06:25] ROD: I see you ask.

    [00:06:26] WILL: Well, uh, he ate some bromine, obviously.

    [00:06:29] ROD: Yeah. But why?

    [00:06:30] WILL: Uh, well, no, you said how

    Yeah, I

    [00:06:32] ROD: That's true. How he ate some bromine. Thanks, William. This is where AI comes in.

    [00:06:38] WILL: What?

    [00:06:39] ROD: This is where I, AI comes in. I told you it did link to Silicon Valley. So apparently after his psych, his bromine induced psychosis backed off.

    Mm-hmm. He said, look, he was worried about his, uh, salt intake. He needed health advice. He went to chat GPT and said, what's a good alternative for, uh. Sodium chloride. So it said, what about [00:07:00] sodium bromide?

    [00:07:01] WILL: What about

    [00:07:02] ROD: a salt? He says, sure. And starts eating it. Well, it's true. It is assault. And so in the article, I was mainly reading about this, obviously, see our show notes for sources. Apparently they report on 4 0 4 media. They tried to basically replicate the conversations with chat GPT to ask various questions about sodium chloride, sodium bromide, et cetera, when it was asked for instance, what can chloride be replaced with?

    Chat, GPT said you can often substitute it with other halide ions such as sodium bromide replacing chloride with bromide. The chat bot did not ask for further context. No.

    [00:07:41] WILL: Why would you ask for further 

    [00:07:42] ROD: context?

    No, No.

    [00:07:44] WILL: No, it is technically possible to replace.

    [00:07:46] ROD: Which is true,

    [00:07:47] WILL: it is technically possible to

    [00:07:48] ROD: this is assault.

    Well

    [00:07:49] WILL: you know, depending on your definition and your context, you can replace one thing with anything. Yes. With, with anything. Like, like if

    [00:07:56] ROD: you were just an elephant or a packet of, I don't know, gravel, like it doesn't [00:08:00] matter.

    [00:08:00] WILL: Yeah. If you are a random like, uh, word association machine and you are just

    [00:08:04] ROD: I have known to 

    [00:08:05] WILL: for, the next clearest, you can replace whatever you want. If you don't 

    [00:08:08] ROD: care.

    At least it went with salt. Like I wanna replace it. What if it had focused in on the texture instead for example.

    [00:08:14] WILL: exactly.

    [00:08:14] ROD: Alright, so small bits of dirt

    [00:08:16] WILL: or on the keeping people aliveness.

    [00:08:18] ROD: Yeah. Didn't focus on that.

    [00:08:20] WILL: Didn't

    focus on that. 

    [00:08:21] ROD: No. And also didn't, you know, ask any follow up questions off, think about context or offer any warnings about sodium bromide.

    It also apparently didn't seem to know the main reason people use sodium chloride is to eat.

    [00:08:35] WILL: Yes, of course,

    [00:08:36] ROD: context,

    [00:08:37] WILL: but also

    [00:08:38] ROD: not good at,

    [00:08:39] WILL: that would actually be out there on the internet.

    [00:08:41] ROD: You would think in one or two places, one or two low salt diet, for example. Doesn't mean replace it with bats or eat gravel or just look for a similarly chemical compound.

    [00:08:51] WILL: any other chemical

    salt 

    [00:08:52] ROD: Yeah, any salt? Just any salt. I

    [00:08:54] WILL: think there are, there're uranium salts

    [00:08:56] ROD: I was gonna say plutonium or something.

    [00:08:58] WILL: They're definitely, definitely plutonium and [00:09:00] uranium 

    salts. They 

    [00:09:00] ROD: probably didn't go with those 'cause it'd be more expensive.

    [00:09:02] WILL: Well I, what's it taking money into account? No way. No way. AI takes money into account.

    It's the most expensive, stupid thing there ever is.

    [00:09:09] ROD: It might be, but you don't have to worry. 'cause as we probably, you probably read this yourself recently, chat, GPT five, San Altman tells us this is gonna be really good with medical stuff, so obviously they'll fix that. The

    [00:09:22] WILL: The Chesterfield canal runs for about 73 kilometers between Chesterfield and West Stock width in Northern England.

    [00:09:29] ROD: So why is it not called the stock with Canal or the Chesterfield stock

    [00:09:31] WILL: they, they had a fight and Chesterfield won.

    [00:09:34] ROD: They 

    [00:09:34] WILL: did.

    Or maybe they were gonna Chesterfield or they were from Chesterfield.

    I don't know. I don't know. It is one of the earliest, uh, canals, uh, in the country. Okay. Uh, it opened on the 4th of June, 1777. And it had, well, it still has, but at the time it was one of the longest canal tunnels in the country. Tunnel.

    [00:09:52] ROD: Yeah. A tunnel, like an underground canal. 

    [00:09:54] WILL: Well, no, you're gone through a hill or something like that.

    You take your river through a hill,

    [00:09:57] ROD: but you take the top of the hill out as well, right?

    No, 

    [00:10:00] you

    split the hill in 

    [00:10:00] WILL: half.

    You make a tunnel. A tunnel as a whole, not a splitting in 

    [00:10:04] ROD: half.

    I never 

    thought of canals like,

    [00:10:06] WILL: hang on, I'll finish 

    [00:10:07] ROD: this. Going in tunnels.

    [00:10:08] WILL: Yeah, exactly. Well, it's, it was one and three quarter miles.

    And the

    [00:10:10] ROD: Doesn't that make it a drain?

    [00:10:12] WILL: uh, well, you wait,

    you wait, you wait

    [00:10:16] ROD: and 

    [00:10:16] WILL: three quarter miles going through the tunnel. Yeah. And, and course, you know, canal speed is not super speed is like leisurely speed anyway. 

    [00:10:23] ROD: They had it's like 0.001%, the speed of light.

    [00:10:27] WILL: A lot more 0.0 zeros than that. You know, you're, your horse and Dre or whatever.

    A team of, team of school schoolchildren can pull a boat out. The

    [00:10:35] ROD: the British school children have renowned for their weakness though.

    [00:10:37] WILL: anyway, they had a, they had a brass band on the opening. Of course, you know, you know,

    [00:10:41] ROD: Yeah.

    [00:10:42] WILL: this is 1777. That's what they love doing. So they got a canal boat with a brass band, and apparently 

    it 

    [00:10:47] ROD: I would've thought it would've been loots 

    [00:10:49] WILL: an hour to go through the tunnel 

    [00:10:50] ROD: This how one point something,

    [00:10:53] WILL: uh, well, one and three quarter miles.

    So an hour of

    [00:10:56] ROD: of playing your brass

    [00:10:57] WILL: through tunnels [00:11:00] with no audience, but just keep going. Anyway, I don't know if that's true. I know they had the brass band. They might've stopped, but

    [00:11:05] ROD: did you ever play a trumpet for a solid hour?

    [00:11:08] WILL: solid hour, 

    [00:11:09] ROD: solid

    hour on water 

    [00:11:10] WILL: no. Under the ground? No, I didn't. I didn't.

    [00:11:13] ROD: 300 years 

    [00:11:14] WILL: ago.

    Anyway, the, the tail was Canal was built to export coal and limestone and lead from Durish, uh, and iron from Chesterfield. Um, it's famous because the, the stone that made the Palace of Westminster, you know, the, the Houses of Parliament mm-hmm. Was quarried there and, and carried down the canal.

    But those are the boring facts because the canal is actually way more famous because of the most awesome 1970s photo in, in existence. In 

    [00:11:41] ROD: existence.

    Is that the one with ferret, forset,

    [00:11:42] WILL: Uh, well majors. Okay. There may be some other awesome 1970s. Good. 

    [00:11:47] ROD: So 

    [00:11:47] WILL: the photos of, of a guy named Bill Thorpe, and. 

    [00:11:50] ROD: Billy 

    [00:11:50] WILL: Thorpe. Bill Thorpe.

    Bill Thorpe, okay, he's got a beautiful blonde seventies mullet with a great 

    [00:11:55] ROD: fringe

    He 

    [00:11:55] WILL: straight across the side. He's got a deep V-neck T-shirt. He has got these [00:12:00] Wellington gum boots that are sort of flat out in, 

    [00:12:03] ROD: in, yeah, they come out at the 

    [00:12:04] WILL: top. If

    if you would've said, what do gumbo look like in the seventies? You'd go, well, obviously they're wilder 

    [00:12:11] ROD: at the top, to be able to gather all the flared pants into,

    [00:12:14] WILL: but what he's got in his hand is a giant chain with a giant lump of wood on it. So a Dreger gang was trying to stabilize a section of concrete wall, uh, in the 1970s in the Chesterfield Canal. 

    [00:12:29] ROD: Yeah. 

    [00:12:29] WILL: Yeah. Okay. And, um, you know, it's a 200 year old canal. There's work that needs to happen on it. And so what they need to do is put in some shutter boards, which go down there, and then they 

    put to block the water.

    To block the water. Okay. And then you put some concrete in, but there was a whole bunch of junk in the canal. You know, they, they're pulling out bicycles, they're pulling out fridges, prams, all sorts of things. And then they ran across this giant length of chain. And they're like, what's that about? All right.

    So they hand, they pulled, tried to pull it out, and it 

    [00:12:57] ROD: was yanked the chain. 

    [00:12:58] WILL: Well, it was kind of stuck [00:13:00] and uh, so they were like, I'll hook it up to a car 'cause it's the seventies 

    [00:13:03] ROD: and yeah, don't

    investigate further. Just pull it harder.

    [00:13:07] WILL: The car, the car couldn't pull it out, so, so they

    [00:13:10] ROD: that, just pull harder. Don't find out why. Just fucking pull 

    [00:13:15] WILL: harder,

    No, no, no, no. Add

    [00:13:17] ROD: horsepower in whatever form you can find.

    [00:13:19] WILL: Car couldn't pull it out. So they got the dredge up, which is, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, an excavator basically on a boat. So they, they hooked it on that and yanked it and up comes the chain. Hoo. Yeah, we got it out.

    There was a, there was a weird block of wood on the end of the chain that, uh, that old bill is holding here. impressed with their work as they would be. They knocked off for tea,

    [00:13:41] ROD: I've gotta calm the nerves here.

    [00:13:42] WILL: but while they were on break, a passing police officer noticed. An extraordinary whirlpool in the normally placid canal.

    [00:13:51] ROD: Did, did he crouch up and down three times and say, what's all this then?

    [00:13:54] WILL: What's all Hello? Hello. What's, hello? Hello. What's this then?

    [00:13:58] ROD: this seems highly [00:14:00] irregular. I'm a little worried,

    [00:14:02] WILL: and I don't dunno if you've seen English canal. They're not, the water is not like a river. It's, it's like,

    no, it sits there.

    It sits 

    [00:14:08] ROD: there.

    It lurks.

    [00:14:10] WILL: Yeah. And suddenly there's an unusual whirlpool. He rushed off to find the dredging gang, but by the time they had all returned, the canal had disappeared.

    [00:14:21] ROD: Cool. Sinkhole

    [00:14:22] WILL: sucked. No, sucked down the plug hole.

    [00:14:26] ROD: It was a plug,

    [00:14:27] WILL: It was a plug. It was a plug in the, in the canal. They had the smart engineers from 200 years ago had made a whole series of plugs in the canal. So if you needed to drain it, you could pull 'em out. But no one knew this anymore. So had

    [00:14:42] ROD: So had they dug like basins or cisterns underneath the canal or they were natural

    [00:14:46] WILL: drained down to the river.

    So there's a river nearby, and they, they'd made some channels that you could just unplug the canal and no one knew that 

    [00:14:53] ROD: this

    but they didn't write that in the doomsday book or, or something.

    [00:14:57] WILL: So they lost all of the water. Took some great photos of [00:15:00] Bill Thorpe holding the, holding the plug for the canal. The canal is drained completely 

    [00:15:04] ROD: down literal plug, the 

    [00:15:06] WILL: Plug a literal plug in the 

    [00:15:07] ROD: canal.

    That's superb. 

    [00:15:08] WILL: superb.

    Um, 10 years later, there was a British waterways put on a festival to celebrate the, the event of, of the accidental unplugging

    of the, Chesterfield 

    [00:15:16] ROD: the grand polluting.

    But 

    [00:15:19] WILL: in seeing this photo, I was just so happy and I thought, you know what? For my stories this 

    week,

    Mm.

    I just wanted to tell you some weird river stories, some weird things that have happened over the time with water. there's a line, in the Killers song. Spaceman. It's a great song. It's a 

    [00:15:37] ROD: great 

    song. It's a great song.

    The Killers.

    [00:15:38] WILL: The Killers. Yeah, the Killers.

    They're a great band. They play great thing called music

    [00:15:42] ROD: It's a very aggressive name for 

    [00:15:43] WILL: Mormons.

    Yeah, it is. It is very aggressive. Um, but it's a line that says, they say The Nile used to run from east to west. And I 

    was 

    like, 

    yeah,

    [00:15:53] ROD: Like most rivers, it changes its mind.

    [00:15:55] WILL: it changes its mind.

    Well, well let's just wait a second because you will, you'll [00:16:00] see some things. Okay. Um. 

    There 

    is a 

    [00:16:03] ROD: theory, Mm-hmm. 

    [00:16:04] WILL: uh, the ancient Greeks, you know, they, they had a theory that once upon a time, and there are maps that indicate this. Mm-hmm. Um, but the Nile started over in the Sahara over, over in like Morocco. Yeah. Um, and sort of traveled across the Sahara and then curved into Egypt.

    And now we know it's much more of a North

    [00:16:22] ROD: Thank, thank you for giving me that. 'cause I, 

    I

    didn't know. I didn't know, I didn't know I did 

    [00:16:26] WILL: you are like East, west, and

    like Nile. Which 

    [00:16:28] ROD: is 

    the Niles? Near 

    [00:16:29] WILL: Nile. Near Africa?

    It's 

    not true. It's not true. Like the, the 

    [00:16:33] ROD: Nile, 

    it, it isn't near Africa. Uh,

    [00:16:35] WILL: The Nile is definitely in Africa, has always been in Africa.

    That is, that is a guaranteed fact about the Nile.

    [00:16:42] ROD: not near. Okay. Not in South 

    [00:16:43] WILL: America.

    It never did run from east to west. It may have had a slightly different course. 

    [00:16:49] ROD: Oh, sure. Rivers diverge. Yeah. The landscape 

    [00:16:52] WILL: changes.

    Yeah. You know, it once might've popped out of, not Egypt pop popped out at Libya when, when the Mediterranean was basically [00:17:00] not there.

    Um, it was, it was a lot lower, popped 

    [00:17:02] ROD: A lot different. Yeah. Okay. Um, 

    [00:17:04] WILL: but, you know, I thought that was, that was a place where it's like, oh, I, I, I, I wanted to know did it run east to west? Sadly, no. Might've been a bit different, but, you know, 

    [00:17:12] ROD: know, 

    [00:17:13] WILL: But yeah, 

    there are other rivers that have completely flipped

    around 

    change course

    Change. 

    [00:17:19] ROD: Flipped, Literally 

    [00:17:20] WILL: flipped, flipped, aliens. 

    So the Colorado River, right now, uh, runs from north 

    [00:17:26] ROD: to 

    south. 

    Yeah. 

    [00:17:27] WILL: Goes through that fantastic canyon thing. They've got, I can't remember the name 

    [00:17:31] ROD: of it.

    The, oh, it's the, what is it? The, the, the Minuscule 

    [00:17:35] WILL: Canyon.

    I think that's what they call 

    [00:17:37] ROD: it.

    The Almost 

    [00:17:38] WILL: canyon. The, the, the Unnoticeable Canyon. The, the, the detectable 

    [00:17:41] ROD: Canyon.

    Yeah, that's it. The,

    [00:17:44] WILL: small, but, uh, but it runs, it runs, uh, north to south. Goes through. Mm-hmm. All of them, uh, deserty states in, in that bit of America and pops out in the Gulf of Mexico.

    [00:17:53] ROD: but 

    [00:17:54] WILL: a few million years ago, it used to go the other way.

    Uh, it used to go, it used to 

    [00:17:59] ROD: go.

    [00:18:00] but,

    but how doesn't 

    that 

    [00:18:01] WILL: mean But how you say, 

    [00:18:03] ROD: from the ocean inland?

    [00:18:04] WILL: in land? Well, not necessarily from the ocean, but definitely there was a river in the same spot. It's called the California River, they call it, rather than the Colorado River. Okay. I don't know why. I don't know why. but this is, this is talking a long time ago.

    This is like 55 million years ago. Sure. When the Rockies didn't exist. So basically what happened is the Rockies weren't there and so the river was heading in, in the northern direction. Mountains pop up and then the whole thing tilts and the river goes back the other way.

    [00:18:31] ROD: I'm. But two. Two or from the ocean, two or 

    [00:18:38] WILL: two was wrong. But look, look, oh, I, I think this is just a nice thing to recognize that bits of the earth Yeah. Have, have sculpted water. Yeah. And sometimes you tilt them with plate tectonics and your mountains

    and your Things 

    like that. And they can change your directions. You can go up, you can go down.

    [00:18:57] ROD: Usually not while you're on them, thank God.

    [00:18:58] WILL: but you know, you [00:19:00] know, if nature does it, it's, it's boring and normal. I, uh, 

    [00:19:03] ROD: you. Please bring in nuclear 

    [00:19:04] WILL: bombs.

    Oh, yeah. Uh, come on. Like boring and normal, because that's what happens. Like plates shift, rivers 

    [00:19:13] ROD: move, nature 

    [00:19:14] WILL: erosion 

    [00:19:14] ROD: happens. 

    [00:19:16] WILL: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    No, I got two stories of, of river reversal. One, one sadly is ambitious. Bold,

    furious. 

    What's sad about 

    that? 

    Well.

    it's too ambitious, but maybe, maybe, maybe it will still come.

    Yeah, yeah. 

    [00:19:32] ROD: Yeah. Yeah. Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos need to get onto it on is, is what I'm hearing.

    [00:19:36] WILL: Ah, no, there's another guy that would be more 

    likely Peter, 

    too.

    Uh, no, you, you in the, in the, in the world of global Bad guys. Yeah. Sorry to all of you listeners, but you know, it's similar but different. Mm-hmm.

    [00:19:48] ROD: Mm-hmm. 

    [00:19:49] WILL: The Soviets

    and their Russian predecessors have long had a plan. 

    Um, 

    [00:19:55] ROD: this is starting 

    [00:19:56] WILL: well

    to fix those useless rivers, [00:20:00] useless rivers that drain into the Arctic Ocean.

    [00:20:04] ROD: You pissle shit. Garbage, bullshit. Water carriers. You do nothing for me.

    [00:20:08] WILL: be Nothing.

    So there's a bunch of rivers that flown north, some through Siberia from some through the Euro sort of area in Russia, but they go north and they pop up into the Arctic 

    [00:20:20] ROD: Ocean

    [00:20:20] WILL: and. Using who can use that water

    up 

    [00:20:23] ROD: No. 

    [00:20:23] WILL: So since as far back as the 1830s, the, the, the sars have been interested in, in, in thinking about this. But you know, you know, they, what, what did they have? They had peasant labor. 

    [00:20:35] ROD: Um, let's,

    let's not poo poo that. That's quite a few 

    people.

    No, indeed. That's,

    a 

    [00:20:39] WILL: no, No,

    indeed. But, uh, peasant labor ain't enough to solve some of these problems.

    Um, okay. But it's the Soviets who really said, you know, you know what we've got here is rivers that are wasting all their water going into the Arctic when we could pump them back down to Central Asia. And it could, it could grow food for [00:21:00] 200 million 

    [00:21:00] ROD: people

    at 

    [00:21:01] WILL: least.

    Uh, 

    [00:21:02] ROD: yeah. 

    Hmm.

    [00:21:04] WILL: They started really thinking and, and, well actually the other thing they said is it can also replenish the shrinking RLC and the Caspian seat, which I've always, it always blown my mind that of the giant lakes in the world, the RLC was, was, was huge back in the thirties and forties.

    Like, like, uh, I don't know what the comparison size, it's probably an American 

    [00:21:23] ROD: state

    How many Sydney harbors.

    [00:21:24] WILL: Oh, it's many 

    [00:21:25] ROD: Sydney 

    Harbors,

    Olympic 

    [00:21:26] WILL: swimming

    pools. Many, many, many Olympic swimming pools. But, but it shrank, it disappeared. Like this giant inland lake just 

    [00:21:32] ROD: disappeared.

    Did someone pull 

    [00:21:33] WILL: the 

    plug?

    Well, someone did pull the, yeah, I think it was, I think it was Soviet agriculture pulled the 

    [00:21:37] ROD: plug. 

    Oh, imagine 

    [00:21:38] WILL: that.

    Um, but they said, you know, if we turn the rivers back, we can fix that environmental 

    [00:21:42] ROD: problem.

    So what we gotta do right, is just turn the rivers around. I've 

    got 

    [00:21:46] WILL: it.

    [00:21:48] ROD: 1933. 

    [00:21:49] WILL: first really started, uh, thinking about it.

    Mm-hmm. The, the Soviet Academy of Sciences approved a plan for the reconstruction of the vulgar and its basin. We just, we just reconstruct the, the river and its 

    [00:21:59] ROD: basin.[00:22:00] 

    This is me as a child solving world hunger and everything else. What we need to do is fix it. So,

    [00:22:07] WILL: So, so we just turn the rivers around, fix it.

    Like, it's just like you get the indicator on 

    [00:22:12] ROD: in 

    your 

    car. Yeah, 

    [00:22:12] WILL: yeah,

    [00:22:13] ROD: And

    [00:22:14] WILL: yeah. And in the, instead of going that 

    [00:22:15] ROD: way,

    so is this happening too slowly?

    I've got no idea. Make it faster.

    [00:22:20] WILL: So they're gonna divert the Vulgar River and some of the waters of the Pura and the nor Northern Dina. Um, they flow into the Arctic, but they wanted to 

    [00:22:29] ROD: him around.

    Sure. 

    [00:22:30] WILL: Stalin wasn't super keen. He was like, we've got other shit to 

    [00:22:32] ROD: do. 

    [00:22:34] WILL: We got other shit to do. We got, we got, 

    [00:22:35] ROD: got, 

    [00:22:35] WILL: got, uh, gulags, uh, killing the, killing the, the Kool Acts, and we've got World War ii. 

    [00:22:42] ROD: So

    he was a busy 

    [00:22:43] WILL: things didn't really go until the sixties when the Soviets under Khrushchev said, you know, we can actually probably do this.

    And so in the sixties, the Soviets really, really got into this plan. Mm-hmm. They had a whole bunch of, uh, impact studies, um, which is interesting. Like [00:23:00] I don't, I don't, I don't associate impact studies with the 

    [00:23:03] ROD: Soviet

    you go to impact 

    [00:23:04] WILL: study. 

    [00:23:05] ROD: By that, I mean hit people till they agree with me.

    [00:23:08] WILL: Like I, I feel like, I feel like the number of environmental impact assessments done in the Soviet 

    Union was low.

    Was

    [00:23:14] ROD: there environmental impact? Duh. Okay. Moving 

    on. 

    Divert River. 

    Make river backwards.

    [00:23:26] WILL: so they started, um, they started work to devote the, uh, divert the Pura River into the Kama River. You don't need to know that, but the um, uh, and head towards the Caspian Sea instead of up, up to 

    [00:23:36] ROD: the

    Arctic Prince 

    [00:23:37] WILL: Caspian. Um,

    so they got a bunch of, uh, nuclear weapons. Uh, and I'm

    [00:23:43] ROD: so happy right 

    now.

    [00:23:44] WILL: So, you know, 

    [00:23:45] ROD: they 

    started,

    so we new 

    [00:23:46] WILL: Kim,

    This gets better. 

    [00:23:50] ROD: Um, 

    [00:23:51] WILL: so the earthworks were started using three 15 kiloton nuclear 

    [00:23:56] ROD: explosions.

    Ah, so they started light, 

    [00:23:57] WILL: yeah.

    Okay. 

    Explosions for the national economy. Yeah. [00:24:00] Um, they were, they were only faced 165 meters apart. 

    [00:24:04] ROD: isn't that the same as being on top of each other in terms of 15 kiloton 

    [00:24:08] WILL: explosion?

    I think roughly. I think roughly 

    [00:24:11] ROD: like 

    it's,

    it was a separation 

    [00:24:12] WILL: there's a separation from, I mean, 15 kilotons is not as big as Hiroshima. It's three quarters of a Hiroshima bomb. 

    [00:24:16] ROD: So it's,

    no, this is 

    [00:24:18] WILL: it's, it's unambitious, it's, it's, well, I guess it's your, your earthwork sized nuclear.

    [00:24:22] ROD: it's, it's more your practical, your day-to-day, uh, tradesmen kind of thing, but a few meters apart and. 

    [00:24:29] WILL: and 

    [00:24:30] ROD: Mm. So,

    [00:24:31] WILL: uh, they reckon there wasn't any radioactive fallout. 

    [00:24:34] ROD: um, of course,

    they reckon that

    [00:24:35] WILL: and they were, they were keen to keep going, but I think their calculations said now, I don't know why they stopped at 

    this point. 

    Um, well, there's, there's a couple of things. Let's, let's guess which one it could have been.

    it could 

    be that they, they estimated it would've taken 250 more nuclear detonations, 

    [00:24:52] ROD: Oh. Is that 

    [00:24:52] WILL: that all 

    to complete the leveling of the channel, um, that they needed. the Americans said actually it's pretty safe and economical, um, [00:25:00] at the time, 

    [00:25:00] ROD: well. 

    Mm-hmm. 

    [00:25:01] WILL: Mm-hmm. Uh, it could have been.

    [00:25:03] ROD: And

    [00:25:03] WILL: I dunno about this.

    Yeah, they were worried that there was less, that it might've contributed to a running runaway global warming by having less water in the Arctic. And so the Arctic doesn't,

    [00:25:13] ROD: okay, well we can roll 

    [00:25:14] WILL: that 

    one out,

    but, 

    [00:25:15] ROD: oh, maybe back then, 

    [00:25:16] WILL: sadly

    the, the Soviets didn't get any further with their nuclear engineering to turn the river 

    [00:25:22] ROD: around,

    Uh,

    [00:25:23] WILL: but Central Asian states are still super keen on it.

    They're still super keen to capture that wasted water and I wouldn't be surprised if one day there is a plan to actually pump the 

    water 

    back. 

    Look,

    [00:25:34] ROD: capturing 

    wasted water is one. Arter it. Yep. Nuclear engineering is 

    [00:25:39] WILL: another.

    It's beautiful putting the two 

    together. 

    It's 

    [00:25:42] ROD: two together. beautiful. Gives

    me the questions. Beautiful.

    [00:25:44] WILL: It's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

    [00:25:45] ROD: it's, it's,

    [00:25:46] WILL: why would God have given these things? I'll 

    [00:25:48] ROD: mute. That's a good point. Like Jesus gave us both. Let's bang these buggers together and see what 

    [00:25:54] WILL: happens.

    I told you years ago about the peaceful use of, uh, 

    nuclear weapons. 

    Mm. And uh, and I've just gotta, I, every time [00:26:00] I think about it, it's just like, there was that era in the fifties, sixties, and seventies.

    Like, just solve the problem with a b, just

    [00:26:06] ROD: just fucking 

    [00:26:07] WILL: it 

    up.

    [00:26:08] ROD: It's Donald

    Trump and tornadoes,

    [00:26:10] WILL: But there is one river that has successfully been turned around.

    [00:26:16] ROD: Is it the Murray 

    [00:26:16] WILL: Darling

    No, it isn't. Well, no, we just, we've just drained that. We just stopped 

    [00:26:20] ROD: it. Gura 

    [00:26:20] WILL: Digby,

    We The Gu 

    [00:26:22] ROD: Digby.

    the Gura Digby, it flows through Wee Jasper, which is a small town on the outskirts of Canberra. And it was, when I was a teenager, we went there for a camp and they said, you can drink this water straight from the street.

    And I thought, no. And I 

    [00:26:33] WILL: I remember

    you can drink any water straight from the stream. 

    [00:26:35] ROD: It's,

    no without dying or getting dysentery. And the beauty of this one was, I remember sitting like, like lying in this river on a hot summer's day up to my mouth and just drinking the water and thinking, this is so decadent.

    I didn't know the word decadent then, but now I realize in retrospect it

    [00:26:49] WILL: I'm, I'm I'm drinking my 

    [00:26:50] ROD: bath 

    water,

    I'm drinking my swimming pool and, and it's okay. Anyway, none of 

    those,

    [00:26:57] WILL: no, it was the Americans, 

    uh,

    [00:27:00] of 

    course,

    they're the only ones that we have that have successfully reversed a river. 

    it followed its natural 

    course.

    the Chicago River. We would sort of do this weird conversions thing. Uh, the northern branch would come, come down south and the southern branch would come north and come through where Chicago is and pop out in a little combined 

    [00:27:17] ROD: channel.

    That's what there's a weird little whirlpool or

    [00:27:19] WILL: weird little thing.

    And then it pops out in Lake Michigan. Yeah. You can see what it's doing. It is draining from each side and going out there

    [00:27:24] ROD: And there's a quick aside. My fucking God. The Great Lakes are big. They are. There's a reason they're called Great. They are, they are humongous.

    [00:27:30] WILL: humongous. Love them. Love them.

    They're my favorite of the lakes that 

    [00:27:34] ROD: I 

    haven't

    seen. Of the lakes. 

    [00:27:35] WILL: Great.

    little. Yeah. They're, they're good. They're, they're a good size lake. I feel like that's appropriate. That's appropriate. when Europeans were living, first arrived in, in Chicago. Mm-hmm. 

    [00:27:46] ROD: in invited to 

    [00:27:47] WILL: be there. Well, 

    something like that. They noted that the river, you know, it flowed sluggishly into Lake Mi 

    Michigan. Mm-hmm. 

    and pretty quickly you can guess what they started doing into the river.

    [00:27:59] ROD: Did it [00:28:00] involve everything that comes outta 

    [00:28:01] WILL: people,

    everything that comes outta people and industry and, and anything else that you can imagine as I've, I've told you in the past about how gross 

    [00:28:07] ROD: rivers 

    can get 

    [00:28:08] WILL: Yes. And how gross they did get in the 

    [00:28:11] ROD: early

    twenties. We've got all this stuff. What are we gonna do with it? Was the river 

    [00:28:14] WILL: over there?

    The problem, the problem for Chicago was that, um, all of the shit and cow carcasses and industrial pollution and everything else that was flowing from their city into Lake

    Michigan. but Lake Michigan was their drinking water.

    And

    [00:28:29] ROD: no, but, and 

    [00:28:31] WILL: end. So, so they're like, we are, we are dumping all of our shit into our drinking water. So what we actually need to 

    [00:28:41] ROD: do

    is nuke it.

    [00:28:44] WILL: They were pre nukes. They were pre nukes back in this, this is, this is, uh, 1900 basically. So this is early 20th century. Late 19th century there. Yeah. Uh, they're like, you know what we could do is.

    Rather than

    pumping our shit into the drinking [00:29:00] supply, we could turn our river around and pump it out to the Mississippi, and then it flows down through all of those other people and we don't need to worry

    [00:29:08] ROD: them.

    They're full of people who are slightly differently 

    [00:29:11] WILL: tinted 

    to 

    [00:29:11] ROD: us.

    [00:29:14] WILL: So in what has been described by the American Society of Civil Engineers as a civil engineering monument of the Millennium

    [00:29:23] ROD: Civil is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

    [00:29:25] WILL: They turned around the Chicago 

    River. 

    Wow. So 

    instead of dumping out at Lake Michigan dump, they took water from Lake Michigan, pushed it back through Chicago, pushed it back over, over like some, some little, uh, levies that were created in the ice age a hundred millions of years before, and pushed it into the Mississippi, uh, Mississippi and all of the, all the gross.

    No longer became their problem. It was called the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. You can put ships down it too, but, 

    uh, but I love, I love that you've got this sanitary canal sucks [00:30:00] water from Lake Michigan pushes it into the Mississippi. Mississippi. So they take, uh, they're allowed to remove, um, 33,200 cubic feet per 

    second of 

    water from the great lengths and pump it in that direction.

    [00:30:13] ROD: oh, so it's, it's constantly, it requires 

    [00:30:15] WILL: energy to 

    [00:30:16] ROD: constantly, it requires energy. So it's basically a big pool filter 

    [00:30:19] WILL: pump there.

    There's engineering 

    work 

    that, that has allowed, allowed the water to flow after that. But there, there, there is a, there is a pumping 

    [00:30:25] ROD: system.

    It's basically a little aquarium on a grand 

    [00:30:28] WILL: scope. Yeah, I, I,

    [00:30:30] ROD: I didn't realize. So that's the bit that I wasn't aware of. We still need to, you know, like pump it.

    [00:30:35] WILL: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    [00:30:36] ROD: I feel like that 

    [00:30:37] WILL: matters.

    Look, Chicago itself is still a tiny bit above Lake Michigan. Like that's, that's inherent. So the water would want to go that way. But what they've done is put a little barrage there

    and push water back there. Back, back the other way.

    I don't know.

    It's a miracle.

    It's a miracle. So there you go. Turning the rivers around.

     

    [00:30:56] ROD: self-defense penis. Okay. [00:31:00] Fun with animals. AKA, wow. I'm glad I'm not a spider.

    [00:31:04] WILL: yeah.

    [00:31:05] ROD: So recently four new subspecies of tarantula were discovered in the Arabian Peninsula and round the horn of Africa.

    [00:31:11] WILL: Of what? Tarantula.

    [00:31:13] ROD: Yep. Tarantula.

    [00:31:14] WILL: I'm, I'm guessing, I'm guessing this is more of an identification thing, like it was the slightly reddish tarantula and the slightly greenish tarantula. Not, we've never seen these giant spiders before because 

    [00:31:25] ROD: I, 

    [00:31:26] WILL: I imagine you

    [00:31:27] ROD: it's bigger than my dog.

    [00:31:28] WILL: You, you know, you notice these things.

    [00:31:31] ROD: You know, this is, well, look, there was a thing that made them distinct. So they were so distinct. These four subspecies formed their own genus, So yeah, this Satter ex sub Janes, they're named after Sers obviously, because they 

    [00:31:48] WILL: have. 

    [00:31:49] ROD: Colossal spider dongs, like colossal. Oh, dongs. Sorry. I mean the longest pulps, so the name pulps is the name of the reproductive [00:32:00] appendages

    spider cell that are used for mating.

    [00:32:02] WILL: The, the, the male. The male,

    [00:32:03] ROD: The male. The women don't have as many penises as the,

    [00:32:06] WILL: well, I don't know. I don't know 

    [00:32:08] ROD: they're

    that was very No, no, no. Good for 

    [00:32:10] WILL: you.

    never know what they truck with in the, the other parts of

    [00:32:13] ROD: Was very open-minded of you. 

    [00:32:14] WILL: Very

    yeah. I 

    [00:32:14] ROD: open-minded. I appreciate that.

    [00:32:16] WILL: I know mushrooms are sex organs too, and 

    [00:32:18] ROD: they,

    mushrooms are sex 

    [00:32:19] WILL: organs.

    Yes. 

    [00:32:21] ROD: Ooh. I ate more sex organs than I 

    [00:32:23] WILL: realized. You

    definitely do.

    [00:32:24] ROD: I had a great pie with chock full of sex organs the other night is delicious and, 

    [00:32:29] WILL: meat. It would, it would sell very well.

    Sex, organ pie, like

    [00:32:32] ROD: No, it wouldn't. It depends where you imagine the local markets. You can have cauliflower, you can have beef.

    There's venison, there's something with spinach or sex, organ pie and you're like, I, I don't want 

    that 

    [00:32:42] WILL: one.

    But no, you see, wait, wait and see. Dick the pie. There would be a bunch of people that are like, well, I'll take the sex organ pie.

    You know,

    [00:32:48] ROD: anyway, so they have huge penai. So for example, the Satre, FedEx, one of the four. It's pulps measured up to five centimeters long. Now you and I are going 

    [00:32:59] WILL: whatever [00:33:00] hours 

    [00:33:00] ROD: or at least six, but that is almost four times the length of the head and thorax combined.

    [00:33:05] WILL: Yeah. Okay. We're

    [00:33:06] ROD: talking a little impressive. We're

    [00:33:07] WILL: talking, they've spent a bit of time 

    [00:33:08] ROD: on 

    this. Yeah.

    I'm thinking Virgin on impediment here. Like you imagine having 

    [00:33:12] WILL: So what

    percentage of the body length is this?

    [00:33:15] ROD: We think of the head and the thorax of a spider. Yeah. The thorax is 

    [00:33:18] WILL: basically,

    so we're not getting legs 

    [00:33:19] ROD: here? 

    No. 

    [00:33:20] WILL: How do you measure a spider? Like generally, how do you, what, what is the, what is the unit?

    [00:33:25] ROD: Well, oh, the 

    [00:33:26] WILL: Is

    spider No, but like, like a sinister 

    Are you head to tail or you, you toe to toe or are you toe to toe in a, you spread 'em out on a circle.

    That's 

    [00:33:33] ROD: what

    you, yeah. Squash 'em flat and measure the 

    [00:33:34] WILL: diameter. Yeah. It's

    a diameter based

    [00:33:36] ROD: Yep. Spiders a diameter. So this one, so if you take basically everything it is in its legs up to four times the length 

    [00:33:42] WILL: of 

    that. 

    [00:33:44] ROD: Now, in human terms, at least as far as I'm concerned, that means about 19 

    [00:33:47] WILL: meters. Oh, 

    [00:33:48] ROD: Oh, exactly. Obviously. so basically it's ding-dong is at, at nearly as long as its longest leg.

    It

    [00:33:54] WILL: It seems, 

    [00:33:55] ROD: seems

    and we've all suffered 

    [00:33:56] WILL: that 

    way,

    but it seems unnecessary. Yeah.

    [00:33:58] ROD: Yeah. So, um, [00:34:00] one source quoted from the University of Tical,

    [00:34:03] WILL: she

    [00:34:03] ROD: look, the species is highly defensive. So they're, you know, a little jangly, a little bit edgy at the slightest disturbance.

    They'll raise their front legs in a threat posture and produce a loud hissing sound, which made me go, what the fuck? But they do it by rubbing specialized hairs on parts of their front legs together. So it makes this noise. Also, the, they're extremely aggressive defense behavior is observed particularly in females.

    So the females as happens in a lot of species, large 

    and 

    [00:34:30] WILL: angry.

    Mm-hmm.

    [00:34:32] ROD: So basically they suspect the huge member is facilitates, uh, copulation while minimizing the risk of cannibalism.

    [00:34:40] WILL: So it keeps a 

    [00:34:41] ROD: distance. Yeah.

    Bang 'em from a distance and probably not get eaten after you've 

    [00:34:44] WILL: done So it's like in, um, like those terrible Japanese, uh, manga, you know, you know, or 

    [00:34:49] ROD: crazy or 

    [00:34:50] WILL: something

    like 

    that. 

    [00:34:51] ROD: And I mean, look, I can show 

    [00:34:52] WILL: you 

    terrible Thai thing.

    [00:34:54] ROD: The pictures don't make a lot of sense because they're, they're weird bent sort of arm looking

    [00:34:57] WILL: Yeah, no, I wouldn't necessarily recognize [00:35:00] that as a 

    [00:35:00] ROD: as a, as a pen, 

    [00:35:01] WILL: as, as, as a, as an expert on, on such 

    [00:35:04] ROD: things,

    You're not, you're not a, a big, uh,

    [00:35:06] WILL: but it's nice that he's, that they've got hinges like

    [00:35:09] ROD: they do. I mean, again, I, I couldn't uh, put it actually on the internet, but they 

    have, 

    they have two elbows.

    [00:35:17] WILL: I do like when your, when your diagram is, here's our collection of spider 

    [00:35:21] ROD: penis spider dongs.

    [00:35:22] WILL: Yeah. Like here's our six of them that we got. They, they range from f which is, 

    [00:35:27] ROD: Tiny, tiny, 

    modest. 

    [00:35:28] WILL: fine. Modest. Uh, well, uh, it depends what you do with it.

    [00:35:31] ROD: Small but 

    perfectly 

    [00:35:32] WILL: was definitely depends what you do with it.

    Yeah. Um, up to

    c C, C, which is

    [00:35:37] ROD: see 

    [00:35:38] WILL: this,

    that's, that's for coming from another 

    [00:35:40] ROD: city.

    Did you notice that all of them 

    [00:35:42] WILL: have a You missed it.

    [00:35:43] ROD: A I heard what you 

    [00:35:44] WILL: said.

    Ah, you just,

    [00:35:46] ROD: I'm not gonna grace you with a acknowledgement of my kind of joke. That's just terrible. We have no more demarcation 

    anymore. 

    You could, with that biggest one. You could. And, and each of them has sort of a, kind of like a scorpion's tip on one end, which is

    [00:35:59] WILL: nature is [00:36:00] unkind,

    [00:36:01] ROD: but at least I just love the idea that, you know, you wander up and you go like, is it on sweetheart?

    And she says Yes. And you say, cool. I'm gonna go over behind that 

    tree. 

    [00:36:08] WILL: I'm, I'm behind the 

    [00:36:08] ROD: behind the camera. I'm gonna put a bunch of sandbags 

    [00:36:10] WILL: in 

    front Don't eat me. Don't eat 

    [00:36:12] ROD: me. I'm gonna do you remotely. Well done.

     So I, I have a feeling that Alex maybe have something to tell 

    us.

    What do 

    [00:36:22] WILL: do you 

    reckon? 

    [00:36:22] ROD: Oh my God. What do you reckon? Because we ignored Alex last episode and I feel like a horrible little man and I've been thinking about 

    [00:36:28] WILL: this 

    [00:36:29] ROD: every 

    [00:36:30] ALEX: I am glad. I hope you couldn't sleep this whole

    [00:36:32] ROD: I couldn't, 'cause I watched your little face fall after we stopped recording and he looked at us and you forgot me.

    And I thought, we're fucking monsters. 'cause we 

    [00:36:38] WILL: did. 

    [00:36:39] ROD: And also your stories are good. So, hi Alex. And for people listening at home or watching on too, Alex is our producer and thank 

    [00:36:46] WILL: God

    and if you're on Twitch, he's hidden. He's hidden, he's in another window.

    [00:36:50] ROD: He's the voice from above.

    [00:36:52] ALEX: that's right. Thanks for the introduction. You'll be sad you missed out on this last week 'cause you've gone all week without knowing about mammalian, enteral, [00:37:00] ventilation.

    [00:37:00] ROD: Sounds a little sexy.

    [00:37:03] ALEX: Yeah, it's a little 

    [00:37:04] ROD: ventilation. 

    When I, whenever I enterally ventilate, I feel relieved, at least, if not actually pleasured.

    [00:37:11] WILL: I think you 

    [00:37:11] ROD: might.

    And I'm a 

    [00:37:12] WILL: mammal.

    [00:37:14] ALEX: As you, as you might understand from the, the wording, it's breathing through your butt hole.

    [00:37:21] WILL: Well, who

    [00:37:22] ROD: yeah, we've all been there. Yeah, exactly.

    [00:37:24] ALEX: Yeah. So a, a team of researchers in, um, uh, Japan, university of, uh, Tokyo, they looked at some sea creatures like flukes and some of these other crazy things you've never heard of, and saw that during times of hypoxia they could actually recruit this additional body part for ventilation

    [00:37:43] ROD: So what you mean is extra breathing 

    holes.

    [00:37:46] ALEX: extra breathing 

    [00:37:46] WILL: I like the, 

    [00:37:47] ALEX: So they 

    thought, you know what,

    [00:37:49] ROD: Recruit. I can't breathe well, I'm gonna recruit my other

    [00:37:52] WILL: I, I'll, I'll en enlist the butthole,

    [00:37:56] ROD: holes. I've got all these extra holes and then they're doing nothing for me 

    [00:37:59] WILL: right[00:38:00] 

    Useless holes.

    [00:38:01] ALEX: Well, not so useless. And then they thought, well, why, you know, can mammals do it? You know, crazy sea creatures with highly evolved, you know, breathing apparatus then well, why can mammals do it? So they thought, let's figure it out. So they, they got these, um, poor mice and, and pigs and they, you know, induced.

    Oh,

    [00:38:20] WILL: continue. I have, I have ethical questions instantly.

    [00:38:25] ALEX: because what's the gain from this research that the, and the, the, at the expense of many animal lives. Um, so they, they induced hypoxia. So they, they basically took control of the breathing by putting 'em in a coma and putting a little tiny breathing tube in their trachea and drop the oxygen level right, right down, right 

    [00:38:41] WILL: Yep. 

    [00:38:41] ROD: Yep.

    [00:38:42] ALEX: And then at the bottom end, they put a, uh, tube into the back passage and then started pumping this, uh, solution, this liquid solution of. With a very, very high oxygen content into the rectum

    So what they, what they [00:39:00] found is, is that, um, they were looking at respiratory failure. So at what point do your lungs fail to oxygenate your body enough to keep you alive? And they had the control mice, which all across the board just died because they just cut off the oxygen. So that was a useful control, but, you know, science and then in 

    [00:39:17] ROD: It's not a control group, is it? What if we murder some mice as well as do the experiment?

    [00:39:22] ALEX: And in the, um, experimental group with this liquid infusion of, of oxygen up the back passage, they were able to stave off type one respiratory failure. So lung body failing due to lack of oxygen for a statistically significant amount of time. 

    [00:39:37] ROD: So 

    [00:39:37] ALEX: And they 

    [00:39:38] ROD: versus two minutes.

    [00:39:40] ALEX: statistically significant actual numbers are relevant.

    And um, and they found that the actual transfer of the oxygen was better if they a braided the, uh, butthole with a small skewer type object to disrupt the lining

    [00:39:53] ROD: So by braided you mean offer access to more blood 

    [00:39:56] WILL: supply.

    Oh my

    [00:39:57] ALEX: well they just got this kind of like pipe cleaner [00:40:00] type thing and just went up there and went backwards and forwards to

    [00:40:03] ROD: So does a braid mean cut 

    shit? Mm-hmm. 

    [00:40:07] ALEX: Yeah. Brave. Just, just disrupt the surface.

    [00:40:09] ROD: So cut. Shit,

    [00:40:10] ALEX: Catch it, yeah.

    [00:40:13] ROD: I'm in. I'll give it 

    a crack

    [00:40:15] WILL: on 

    you. 

    Yeah, yeah. Fine. Do it 

    [00:40:17] ROD: yourself.

    I'm not, I'm not at all scared about drowning or being buried alive. It's all fine with me. 

    [00:40:21] WILL: But you'll have your butt hole ab braided for,

    [00:40:23] ROD: for, I've had my butt ed by medical practitioners and you know what, I'm still alive

    [00:40:28] WILL: While that, while they hold, hold your 

    [00:40:29] ROD: nose.

    No. Well, they helped me. I was on 

    [00:40:31] WILL: drugs,

    Hmm.

    [00:40:32] ROD: some of them 

    medically, 

    um, endorsed. 

    [00:40:35] WILL: I, I, am not sure this is a necessary study.

    [00:40:37] ROD: I think 

    it is.

    [00:40:39] WILL: And the 

    [00:40:39] ALEX: I am just trying to, and the, the result, they're able to demonstrate that in a mammal, they could actually prolong the time to death by hypoxia, by pumping 

    [00:40:49] WILL: prolong the time to 

    [00:40:51] ROD: death 

    [00:40:52] WILL: is not quite an endorsement.

    [00:40:54] ROD: No. It is, it is. And you know what it also does to me, what I'm thinking is, you know, I did the St. John's Ambulance course to do [00:41:00] first eight years ago. What they never did, and they should now, is to say, well, if that's not working, flip 'em over and blow up the butt.

    You use, you still use a mouth shield, but you'd like the,

    [00:41:09] WILL: I feel like the, I feel like the, the state of surprise would absolutely wake 

    [00:41:12] ROD: someone up,

    But it's hard to do CPR when they're lying on their stomachs, but you can get oxygen into them by blowing 

    [00:41:17] WILL: the 

    butt.

    Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    [00:41:19] ROD: I, I, I endorse this is, this is a little bit of science 

    [00:41:21] WILL: endorsement

    you know, you know, I feel like that is, that is a nice dystopia in the future where it's like all ambulance, ambulance 

    [00:41:29] ROD: ambulance, people

    have roll 'em 

    over, roll '

    em over.

    [00:41:33] WILL: and it's like, who, uh, obviously ambulance people suffer in this, in this future.

    [00:41:38] ROD: Uh,

    does this mean when they, when the, the, the person under resuscitation when they breathe out?

    It's like,

    [00:41:45] WILL: I think so.

    [00:41:47] ROD: that's pretty much what it looks like from now 

    on.

    [00:41:51] ALEX: Well, at least they'd be administering ene enemies. It is a fluid per fluer

    carbon oxygen solution, 

    so they don't have to breathe, they don't have to breathe into the 

    butts. [00:42:00] Uh, you're welcome.

    [00:42:02] ROD: So pragmatic, Scandinavians, God bless our Scandinavian cousins, reuse, restore, recycle. You're aware of these 

    [00:42:10] WILL: three, 

    uh,

    mm-hmm. 

    [00:42:11] ROD: you know, aspirational situations. Would you 

    [00:42:13] WILL: like 

    that? Hmm?

    [00:42:15] ROD: Would 

    [00:42:15] WILL: you 

    like 

    that? 

    [00:42:16] ROD: Hmm 

    hmm.

    [00:42:17] WILL: hmm.

    [00:42:18] ROD: So the words to live by and we wanna save the world, so it's really good to get into those.

    And we do it with paper, we do it with plastic, we do it with glass, old furniture, electronics. We reduce, re reuse, recycle, 

    et cetera. 

    Mm-hmm. 

    So the old Borg Zoo in Denmark is also on board 

    [00:42:33] WILL: with 

    this. Yes. 

    [00:42:36] ROD: So they're particularly on board with, and I'm not sure we'll talk about this later, reusing or recycling. It depends how we frame this. They put up a Facebook post that said, if you have a healthy animal that needs to be given away for various reasons, feel free to donate it to us. Uh, which I think is 

    great, 

    right?

    Yeah. 

    [00:42:53] WILL: So they 

    [00:42:53] ROD: said, 

    you know, hand them over. And what kind of zoo though is my question? Wants rabbits, chickens, Guinea pigs, [00:43:00] et cetera. No reference to dogs or cats. Oh. 'cause they're not monsters. 'cause who wants a dog or cat museum? I mean, sorry. Uh, zoo horses may be of interest 

    [00:43:09] WILL: too. 

    [00:43:10] ROD: I'm gonna add, if you donate these animals to them, nothing goes to 

    waste,

    [00:43:14] WILL: Mm.

    [00:43:16] ROD: which I think 

    is excellent.

    So what 

    do 

    [00:43:18] WILL: they actually 

    mean?

    [00:43:19] ROD: Yeah.

    I I feel like you have some 

    [00:43:21] WILL: suspicions. Well, 

    [00:43:23] ROD: So the zoo, it seems, wants to mimic the natural food chain of animals housed there. For the sake of both animal welfare and professional integrity

    [00:43:33] WILL: And

    AKA

    and

    and visitor, visitor spectacle?

    [00:43:39] ROD: Vi, no, that that has not 

    [00:43:40] WILL: come 

    up.

    No. Not stated

    [00:43:42] ROD: so 

    far. 

    So they basically wanna feed excess pets to zoos 

    [00:43:46] WILL: Present? Uh, live,

    [00:43:51] ROD: No, they're not 

    [00:43:52] WILL: monsters. 

    Oh no. I thought this was like a hunting scenario. I thought this was what, like watch a tiger take down a horse. Like it's 

    [00:43:59] ROD: [00:44:00] gonna 

    happen 

    rabbit afternoon.

    Watch a tiger devour. A rabbit alive.

    Look.

    Afternoon

    Well, that 

    was quick.

    [00:44:08] WILL: I want to tiger to take down a horse. I'm sorry.

    I'm 

    [00:44:13] ROD: not gonna lie. I, I'd

    [00:44:14] WILL: I would, I would pay an extra $2 on my zoo

    [00:44:17] ROD: Yeah. To go there live and hand me some kind of, I don't know, Danish

    [00:44:21] WILL: I'm like, basically David Attenborough right here.

    [00:44:22] ROD: here, give or take a few years and. Any integrity. So in the post on Facebook, I'm gonna quote a few bits, but here's one.

    If you have, this is next to a picture of a yawning predatorial cat with 

    [00:44:35] WILL: huge 

    fans. That's like a, that's, no, that's like a a one of them. One of them actual 

    [00:44:39] ROD: cats.

    Yeah. But that isn't domestic.

    Yeah.

    If you have a healthy animal that has to leave here for various 

    reasons, feel free to donate it 

    [00:44:47] WILL: to us. 

    [00:44:49] ROD: I think here means this mortal 

    [00:44:50] WILL: quote. I do love the idea that you would, okay, so it's a dead animal and you flop 

    a 

    dead 

    [00:44:55] ROD: pet

    [00:44:55] WILL: on,

    their, no. So live. Live. So, okay. It's a hunting scenario. Yeah. Oh no.

    [00:44:59] ROD: [00:45:00] no. 

    Alright. 

    The animals are gently euthanized by trained staff and afterwards used as fodder. That way, nothing goes to waste. And we ensure natural behavior, nutrition and, and the wellbeing of 

    [00:45:13] WILL: our

    practice. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Screw them. No, 

    [00:45:15] ROD: fuck 

    this.

    You're 

    [00:45:16] WILL: you're screw. No, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, off. Are

    you

    out? I'm, I'm with them on the idea that we should give zoo animals a more natural experience, but, uh, euthanizing the, like on the planes of the Serengeti.

    DDD 

    [00:45:31] ROD: it look another drunk 

    [00:45:32] WILL: Guinea pig?

    does? It does exactly. A floppy Guinea pig present themselves. I'm sorry, 

    [00:45:37] ROD: Danes. 

    I think it's 

    [00:45:38] WILL: breathing. 

    No, you're talking, you, you're just doing this for pr. This is fucked

    [00:45:42] ROD: you monster. So this is a, this is actually quite resonant. You'd be surprised to know that there was a, a few, I don't know, social media concerns 

    [00:45:50] WILL: expressed. 

    [00:45:53] ROD: Couple of quotes. What? A bunch of sociopaths.

    A zoo should care for all 

    [00:45:56] WILL: animals.

    No, I, I was, I wasn't done that. I was, I was 

    [00:45:59] ROD: say [00:46:00] I'm not, I'm not saying you are. I'm just saying this is what happened. Another quote, which I think is really quite articulate, fuck the Berg 

    [00:46:06] WILL: Zoo. 

    [00:46:06] ROD: Oh,

    [00:46:07] WILL: Oh,

    [00:46:07] ROD: but my favorite, this is a public post to say, fuck the Alburg Zoo in Denmark.

    From here to eternity.

    [00:46:14] WILL: To 

    [00:46:14] ROD: eternity.

    Yeah. They're not mucking 

    [00:46:15] WILL: around. 

    [00:46:16] ROD: That's, that's,

    that's, a lot of fuck.

    It's a big, yeah, exactly. That's tiring

    [00:46:21] WILL: to eternity. I mean,

    [00:46:24] ROD: I mean, look, I'm not against the 

    [00:46:25] WILL: intercourse, 

    [00:46:27] ROD: but forever, 

    until the end 

    of time, 

    I wanna read a book occasionally, you know, have a shower, old fashioned.

    Anyway, they've asked the Danish public this. This post goes on to donate unwanted dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens, Guinea pigs, and other, quote, smaller pets to be eaten by the zoo's, predators. They refer to the pets as fodder, 

    [00:46:48] WILL: so that person 

    is 

    angry. 

    [00:46:50] ROD: But then underneath this poster is a clarifier added by, I assume the 

    zoo.

    Oberg Zoo is requesting horses, chickens, rabbits, and Guinea pigs. They reject cats [00:47:00] and dogs. So they're not monsters, obviously, kitty like, like mittens and, and Fido out. 

    These are 

    animals that are going to be euthanized anyway, not quote unwanted pets 

    fodder.

    [00:47:13] WILL: They'll just be euthanized through 

    [00:47:14] ROD: petite. that 

    would be be killed anyway.

    Yeah. Fodder is a mistranslation of the Danish word fo, which means

    [00:47:20] WILL: which means

    [00:47:20] ROD: food for animals. 

    So calm your farm.

    Social media 

    poster. 

    [00:47:25] WILL: I don't see how, I don't see how that's a mistranslation

    [00:47:28] ROD: One is, you know, just like dismissive. And the other is that, that's fine.

    [00:47:33] WILL: It doesn't seem like a misre that, that food for 

    [00:47:36] ROD: animals

    As partial Scandinavian, myself, I think you should accept my word on that.

    It's 

    [00:47:41] WILL: different.

    [00:47:43] ROD: It's 

    [00:47:43] WILL: different.

    [00:47:44] ROD: So co-director of the Clinic for Zoo Animals, exotic Pets and Wildlife at the University of Zurich, a gentleman called Marcus Klaus speaking to the Washington Post. He says, if you agree to the general principle that you have a carnivorous animal in the zoo, You succumb [00:48:00] to the necessity that you have to feed them animal material. That's what 

    he says. Yeah. If you do this in a way that is not primarily directed at economics, but at animal welfare, you'll strive to get animals that had high welfare ideally.

    So what he's saying is, look, they gotta get meat somehow. So what about 

    [00:48:17] WILL: this 

    way? 

    [00:48:19] ROD: A fellow from, uh, Copenhagen Zoo, a guy called Stawa ta. You probably know him. I mean, you know, we all follow him on social medias. Nature can often be pretty 

    [00:48:27] WILL: grizzly.

    [00:48:28] ROD: Yeah.

    And in any case, the zoo insists that animals will be put down, quote, gently, not hunted and thrown to the literal wolves.

    [00:48:36] WILL: Ah.

    [00:48:37] ROD: This 

    practice, apparently is quite normal in Denmark, and the from people who over romanticized nature in the world. He said to the Washington Post, they're basically disnifying 

    [00:48:47] WILL: everything. Mm. 

    [00:48:49] ROD: So an

    example that was thrown out was 2014 Copenhagen 

    Zoo.

    Yep.

    It was celebrated or not for euthanizing, a healthy 

    giraffe, 

    [00:49:00] allegedly 

    to avoid 

    [00:49:00] WILL: inbreeding.

    d.

    There's a strange solution 

    [00:49:03] ROD: to, 

    inbreeding. He cuts dick 

    off.

    [00:49:05] WILL: Well, well, or just 

    move it. Move 

    it. Like, 

    [00:49:08] ROD: like 

    sterilize, 

    [00:49:10] WILL: it doesn't fuck its sister. Like 

    [00:49:12] ROD: yeah. What if you didn't do 

    [00:49:14] WILL: inbreed. I feel like there are, there are few solutions before capital 

    [00:49:18] ROD: punishment.

    See, you're not, you're not a very Danish 

    [00:49:21] WILL: thinker.

    Yeah. 

    [00:49:23] ROD: So apparently it was, uh, euthanized, uh, then, um, dissected in front of Zuko and fed its carcass was fed 

    [00:49:29] WILL: to lines. No, I,

    [00:49:32] ROD: Nothing to do with pr. It's just, 

    [00:49:34] WILL: you

    know, 

    I, no, 

    no reasonable. 

    go the whole 

    [00:49:38] ROD: hog.

    So, 

    a point that was raised, which I kind of understand, I know if it's true 

    though, 

    for many animals who are in pain, et cetera, it's more humane to euthanize.

    And that's what we do with our animals. We know this with pets, et cetera. They're kind of like, well, they're fucked and it's gonna be fucked forever. Let's, let's take 'em out quietly. Now, the problem is, at least according to Washington Post, not everyone can afford to do that. [00:50:00] 

    [00:50:00] WILL: Okay. 

    And it does 

    cost a 

    lot. Oh, okay. 

    [00:50:02] ROD: Okay. So 

    this

    is, it does 

    [00:50:03] WILL: this is

    a solution for pet owners in 

    [00:50:05] ROD: a 

    challenging

    Yeah. They're kind of like, and, and I get it. Like I've, I've had to, and it's horrible and it still haunts 

    me 

    even many years 

    [00:50:12] WILL: And then having a big bill as well, like, 

    [00:50:14] ROD: not it costs a lot of money to kill your loved pet.

    Yeah. Yeah. It's horrible. It's absolutely horrible. So it's not a, I don't disagree with that argument in principle, 

    so 

    it's not great. So, but back to my original point, is this reuse or recycle? I mean, in, in terms of, you know, giving a shit about the 

    world, the thing that really matters here is which kind of, uh, being environmentally conscious.

    Are 

    we, 

    what do you 

    reckon? 

    Is it reusing or 

    is it recycling? It's definitely not 

    [00:50:43] WILL: restoring,

    no, 

    it's both.

    It's 

    we reusing the cells we are using. I don't know. I 

    [00:50:51] ROD: dunno. So you are 

    [00:50:51] WILL: the 

    monster. I

    no, I feel like this is. Like, so the giraffe, like the tiger gets a little taste of giraffe. Like, how is this, I [00:51:00] get the use of the No, I get, I get a giraffe dies on your watch. I dunno about the 

    [00:51:05] ROD: euthanasia 

    point

    Yeah, that's 

    [00:51:06] WILL: that. Yeah.

    Your giraffe dies on your watch. It's dumber to bury it then chop it up and give 

    [00:51:10] ROD: it to the 

    tiger.

    A 

    hundred percent.

    [00:51:11] WILL: Like that's, that's totally fine. Like if you've got giraffes and tigers, that that's what

    you do.

    Yeah.

    it's not really any benefit to the, to the tiger. Like the tiger gets a lump of meat.

    Like the I.

    [00:51:23] ROD: Yeah. If

    you, if you otherwise giving them something to do, what, 

    [00:51:26] WILL: what are they? Pull down the, pull down the walls. 

    Sorry, I got, I got, uh, I got two more 

    [00:51:31] ROD: So 

    [00:51:32] WILL: we

    finished? 

    [00:51:33] ROD: Yeah, 

    we finished,

    which means what we need you to do, people listening at home or wherever you're listening.

    Send us suggestions. Give us an 11 star review on every podcast platform, including ones that haven't been 

    [00:51:43] WILL: invented.

    The one the, the one that your mother reads.

    [00:51:45] ROD: That's,

    exactly your, your great-grandmother. Also, uh, if you want to send us suggestions, corrections, abuse, or love, what's the 

    [00:51:53] WILL: email 

    address?

    Cheers. 

    Cheers. 

    [00:51:55] ROD: At, 

    [00:51:55] WILL: At,

    r little bit of science one [00:52:00] word.com 

    [00:52:00] ROD: au.

    That's one word. Not the.com, not 

    [00:52:02] WILL: the au

    No, they're, they're, they're not words. They're

    [00:52:06] ROD: oh, they're concept

    acronyms.

    And I dunno what to do about Twitch. But if you are one of the minus three people listening on Twitch, tell the other people, 

    [00:52:14] WILL: you know,

    yeah. Go on Twitch. No, it's great fun. But, but, but, but you know, it's live. It's 

    [00:52:18] ROD: live.

    No, you should, you should. Because we dress very 

    well for

    this. Yes. 

     

Will Grant
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