There's a documented statistical correlation between margarine consumption in America and divorce rates in Maine, which proves either that butter saves marriages or statistics can be completely meaningless. Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments are getting fresh validation, confirming that humans will electrocute strangers just because someone in a lab coat tells them to, while NASA's Mars rover might have discovered ancient microbial life as humans plan red planet vacation resorts. This year's Ig Nobel prizes celebrated researchers studying cow zebra costumes and 35 years of fingernail growth, and scientists observed mice performing what looks suspiciously like CPR on unconscious buddies.
Today we're exploring a world where food choices predict relationship outcomes, authority figures can make ordinary people do terrible things, space robots are better at finding life than we are, and rodents might understand emergency medicine better than most humans. These stories prove that whether we're talking about statistical correlations, psychological experiments, or animal behaviour, science keeps finding new ways to make reality stranger than any fiction we could imagine.
Spurious Correlations: When Statistics Get Ridiculous
Ever heard of spurious correlations? They're those hilarious statistical relationships that make your eyebrows shoot up and your skepticism kick in. Take the wild link between divorce rates in Maine and per capita margarine consumption. Then there's UFO sightings in Utah correlating with the number of patents granted in the US and Will Smith's movie output allegedly matching electricity generation in Kosovo.
These quirky connections are comedic gold, but they serve a deeper purpose: reminding us to dig beneath the surface of numbers and not take statistics at face value. Just because two things appear linked doesn't mean one causes the other, or that life works that way at all. It's a cheeky nudge to approach sensational headlines with a bucketful of skepticism and keep us from getting duped by slapdash data. Whether it's margarine causing marital strife or aliens boosting creativity, this kind of critical thinking helps us see the world through the eyes of true scientific curiosity.
Milgram's Obedience Experiments: Still Terrifyingly Relevant
Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiments, where ordinary people administered electric shocks to strangers because an authority figure told them to, are being validated by new research. Turns out Milgram was right about humans' disturbing willingness to follow orders, even when those orders involve hurting other people.
Recent studies confirm that most people will abandon their moral compass when someone in a position of authority tells them to do something harmful. It's a stark reminder that the "just following orders" defense isn't just a historical footnote - it's a psychological reality that explains how ordinary people become complicit in extraordinary cruelty.
Mars Rover Finds Possible Ancient Life
NASA's Perseverance rover is busy doing actual science on Mars, potentially discovering evidence of ancient microbial life while humans back on Earth fantasise about Martian vacation resorts. The rover has been collecting rock samples that might contain traces of prehistoric organisms, which would fundamentally change our understanding of life in the universe.
If Mars had life billions of years ago, it means we're probably not as special as we thought. While billionaires plan space tourism and Mars colonisation, our robot explorers are quietly revolutionising astrobiology and making the red planet feel less like a distant frontier and more like a cosmic neighbor with a fascinating past.
Ig Nobel Prizes: Celebrating Science's Weirdest Research
This year's satirical Ig Nobel prizes celebrated the kind of research that makes you laugh and then think. Winners included studies on fingernail and toenail growth rates over 35 years, whether painting cows as zebras protects them from flies and the effects of alcohol on foreign language pronunciation skills.
These seemingly ridiculous studies often reveal genuinely useful insights. The cow-zebra research actually helps protect livestock from insect-borne diseases, and the alcohol-language study has implications for understanding how inhibition affects learning. Sometimes the silliest questions lead to the most surprising answers.
Mice Performing CPR: Rodent Emergency Medicine
Scientists observed what they suspect is mice trying to revive unconscious companions using behaviours that look remarkably similar to CPR - licking faces, nibbling snouts and manipulating airways. Whether this represents genuine medical intervention or just curious poking is still being debated, but it suggests that emergency response behaviours might be more widespread in the animal kingdom than we realised.
These tiny paramedics are either following sophisticated medical instincts or just really concerned about their unconscious friends. Either way, it's both adorable and scientifically fascinating, proving that even the smallest creatures might understand life-saving techniques that took humans millennia to figure out.
From butter-saving marriages to electric shock compliance and rodent paramedics, these stories prove that the universe has a twisted sense of humor. Science keeps serving up combinations of absurd, terrifying and adorable that no fiction writer would dare attempt. At least when the robot uprising comes, we'll have trained mice to perform CPR on the survivors.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
01:47 Autism and Paracetamol Controversy
08:26 Spurious Correlations
13:33 Milgram's Obedience to Authority
23:50 Fascism and Authority
27:11 Mars Rover Perseverance
28:55 Exploring Martian Rocks for Signs of Life
29:22 Perseverance's Advanced Chemical Analysis Tools
29:41 Potential Evidence of Microbial Life on Mars
30:28 Challenges in Proving Biological Origins
31:10 NASA's Perseverance Project and Its Implications
33:38 Mars Sample Return Mission
36:20 The IG Nobel Prizes: Celebrating Unusual Science
37:03 Notable IG Nobel Prize Winners
44:23 Mice Performing CPR: A Surprising Discovery
48:41 Conclusion
SOURCES:
Jesus on toast and baby-poop sausages: 2014 Ig Nobel Prizes
Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate pizza-eating lizards, drunk bats and garlic-flavoured breast milk
Teflon diet, garlic milk and zebra cows triumph at 2025 Ig Nobel prizes
Mouse-to-Mouse Resuscitation: Rodents Try to Revive Unconscious Buddies
True believers: The incredulity hypothesis and the enduring legacy of the obedience experiments
Milgram’s Infamous Shock Studies Still Hold Lessons for Confronting Authoritarianism
The U.S. government has jumped the public health shark
NASA Says Mars Rover Discovered Potential Biosignature Last Year
Redox-driven mineral and organic associations in Jezero Crater, Mars
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[00:00:00]
[00:00:02] WILL: So I wanna start with some wise words from Arthur Kaplan, head of Medical Ethics at the New York School of Medicine earlier this week. It's from a beautiful opinion piece that, um, Arthur Kaplan wrote. This announcement was the saddest display of a lack of evidence, rumors, recycled old myths, lousy advice, outright lies and dangerous recommendations by anyone in authority in the world, claiming to know anything about science that I have ever witnessed, and that's saying something since I'm 76 years old.
Among other things, I watched Trump gurgle on about taking bleach during COVID. It is time. For a little bit of science, I'm will grant an associate Professor of Science communication at the Australian National University.
[00:00:57] ROD: I'm humbled. I'm Rod Lambert. I am a 30 year [00:01:00] science communication veteran with the, my, uh, teenage boy.
[00:01:03] WILL: and this week as well as some wise words from Arthur Kaplan and some not wise words from some others.
We have.
[00:01:10] ROD: We're gonna cover a little bit of just following orders.
[00:01:13] WILL: I've got some yay space.
[00:01:15] ROD: I'm gonna, we have to acknowledge the ign Nobles because we are contractually obliged to acknowledge that there are people other than us out in the world who make science idiotic, but also good.
[00:01:23] WILL: Nice.
[00:01:24] ROD: and I'm gonna, uh, close us out with fun with animals.
AKA mouse on mouse.
[00:01:30] WILL: Mouse on mouse. Look, uh, it's good to be with you. I dunno how closely you are following the news.
[00:01:41] ROD: you are reading that opener and I'm like, okay, I can think of 20 things, but I'm gonna guess can I guess.
Yeah, you can guess.
I'm gonna guess it's the autism Pregnant Ladies paracetamol.
[00:01:52] WILL: Yes. Yes.
[00:01:53] ROD: Boom. 'cause it's the most recent idiocy, uh, sorry. Opinion.
[00:01:56] WILL: Yeah. And, and, and look, I just wanted to go into this [00:02:00] because, you know, uh, we have talked about Donald Trump and his administration in the past. We don't, we're not the closest cover of Donald Trump, but, uh, when, when that man veers into the land of science, occasionally this little bit of science show has to step up and,
[00:02:15] ROD: uh,
get off our patch
[00:02:16] WILL: mate.
Punch back, get off our patch somewhat.
[00:02:19] ROD: you two Kennedy.
[00:02:20] WILL: And
[00:02:21] ROD: off. Get off our patch. Get off our patch.
[00:02:23] WILL: And you too Kennedy. so yeah. I just wanna start by just going through what happened on Monday. Uh, this is Monday before we were recording. President Trump and his health secretary, uh, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wearing, as he's been described, a jacket that is too small, a too small jacket for him, which I dunno if it shows off your muscles or not,
[00:02:41] ROD: It does. It shows off
[00:02:43] WILL: your rights. oh, and also meme oz, uh, three of the people who often claim to know science, but uh, don't have the science chops that, uh,
[00:02:55] ROD: meme has done your medical degrees, it has your degrees [00:03:00] medical and look then, then ignored them or not totally ignores bits of them, I think as, as suits the, uh, the broadcast.
[00:03:06] WILL: well, I think they all might be, uh, they, they treat science like a, a choose your own adventure.
Mm-hmm. Um, you know, choose the bits that you like in science, not the bits that, uh, you don't, you don't, you know, you know.
[00:03:17] ROD: yeah, yeah.
[00:03:18] WILL: Anyway, a bunch of months ago, Kennedy promised, that this time at this place, September, they would announce a cure for autism. Ah.
[00:03:29] ROD: even, even
[00:03:30] WILL: scientists, scientists everywhere said, maybe you, maybe you won't.
Like, like color me skeptical. Uh,
God
[00:03:37] ROD: damn.
[00:03:38] WILL: So I'm gonna read a bit of Ka lens piece just because his was a fun one. Um,
[00:03:42] ROD: the opening
quote alone, seriously, we can stop
[00:03:44] WILL: Yeah. You, you know, as I watched the top science and health officials of our nation, uh, the
[00:03:49] ROD: nation
[00:03:50] WILL: flank the President, I was worried that given Kennedy's well-documented hatred of vaccines, things might not go well.
I was right to worry.
[00:03:56] ROD: There
you go.
[00:03:57] WILL: Things went as badly as they possibly could have [00:04:00] gone. The big autism reel reveal was a total disaster. So, as I said before, you know, there's that quote about the saddest display of lack of evidence. Basically the argument of Trump and Kennedy is that, um, the causes of the autism epidemic.
Now you can question if there is an autism epidemic
[00:04:19] ROD: that's a good start to place to stop.
[00:04:21] WILL: I, well, well, no, it's, it's worth recognizing that there has been. A large increase in, in documented cases of autism over the last 20 years. Yes. Now, whether that is changes in diagnostic, uh, whether it's recognition that getting diagnosed may actually provide you with, uh, treatment pathways mm-hmm.
Uh,
[00:04:40] ROD: thank you.
Insurance
[00:04:41] WILL: Potentially, potentially there could actually be changes in the environment that are leading
[00:04:45] ROD: It's true. It could be. It could
[00:04:46] WILL: so there could be, but you know, we've gotta, these, these people, Trump tr Trump and Kennedy are also very hostile to people with autism. Like, like a lot of their, a lot of the things they've said, [00:05:00] well, no, there's, there's, there's this, um, Kennedy quote a while ago where is like, these people will never write a poem.
They'll never play baseball. They'll never, they'll never earn money. And it's like, um, I'm not sure. I'm not sure what you are thinking autism is, but,
[00:05:16] ROD: well, it doesn't sound great from what he's describing. You're basically a vegetable, I gather.
[00:05:21] WILL: But their argument is that, uh, taking Tylenol, or acetaminophen
as a baby,
as, as Trump's ace, Acea, acetaminophen, ACE Acetaminophin or as is known in, in many other countries.
So Tylenol is the brand name. Acetaminophen is the, is the, is the chemical, but it's actually got another che. The actual chemical name is sort of a mashup of acetaminophen and paracetamol. It's, it's got all those bits in there. But
[00:05:45] ROD: Patter, acetaminophen, all
[00:05:46] WILL: in, in most of the world, it's known as paracetamol. Yes.
Traded as a brand name in Japan and America as Tylenol. Mm-hmm. Uh, taking that during pregnancy, they argue. It contributes to autism. Yes. So, [00:06:00] so
by
[00:06:00] ROD: they you don't mean Japan and America, you mean JFK
[00:06:04] WILL: J. FK and Trump. Now here's the thing. there is one study where the authors themselves said, yes, we have found a correlation
[00:06:13] ROD: here.
[00:06:14] WILL: Now, I don't know what your thinking about correlations are.
[00:06:17] ROD: Oh, I've never heard of the word. I, I heard it as correlations, which sounds like incest.
So,
[00:06:21] WILL: so basically the study had found women who take, Tylenol or or paracetamol during pregnancy do see an increase in autism, but. It's not necessarily the causation.
There could be a lot of other things. Well, it could be other things that are causing them to take, uh, Tylenol or, or paracetamol during pregnancy
[00:06:40] ROD: for example, they eat ora fruit. Ora fruit, ora fruit. You shouldn't eat
autistic
[00:06:45] WILL: Tylenol. I don't know. But you could be having, you could be having fevers, you could be having some sorts of pains.
You could be having all sorts of, all sorts of things. So the author said, look, calm down. Correlation does not mean causation.
[00:06:56] ROD: Whoa. Let me pause on that.
[00:06:57] WILL: But, I'll come to some nice spurious [00:07:00] correlations. Cool. In a
second. I love
them,
But, but I think it's just worth stressing here.
The first part here is, yet again, this administration is like, you know what? Women just tough it out of, and this is just another attack on,
[00:07:12] ROD: women.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a festival of misogyny, there's no question.
[00:07:15] WILL: Yep. And so Kaplan is like, you know, we've, uh, we've seen in history ideology used to drive science to confirm the prejudices of dictators like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
We now have a regime that sees science as an enemy. Ah, and public health is only fit for personal anecdotes and conspiracy. He, he gets to the point and he's from like, New York University Med School. Yeah. Like, like
[00:07:36] ROD: is that a good one?
[00:07:37] WILL: I, I think it's, I think it's okay.
[00:07:38] ROD: How many graduates? Like 10?
[00:07:40] WILL: I think they've graduated.
10 graduates at least. That's not bad. And, but he's getting to the point where you can't trust federal science in America anymore. Americans must turn to their doctors and hopefully their doctors are giving good advice here. Yeah. but, uh, it's so totally horrific. Totally horrific.
And, and there's gonna be people, there'll [00:08:00] be. Women following this advice, not taking Tylenol. Getting, getting fevers. Getting, getting things during pregnancy. Yeah. That will harm the health of the baby and potentially harm, harm the mother. The, this is, I mean, I don't know how much Tylenol might be lifesaving, but it's worth recognizing here that this is terrible advice that will actually lead to significant harms and has no, will have no dent in, in autism
[00:08:22] ROD: They just want announcements. So they just want announcements.
[00:08:26] WILL: is what I thought I'd do for you, rod, is um, what this is is a spurious correlation. Ah, two things that go up together. Yeah. doesn't mean that one causes the other. They might have a mutual
[00:08:37] ROD: I love it. I love a spurious correlation.
I of
them.
[00:08:40] WILL: So, so I went to a great website by Tyler Vien.
what Tyler Vien has done.
He's got, uh, 25,000 different variables in his database. Uhhuh, all sorts of, you know, um, statistical things, you know, patents granted, UFO, sightings, anything, anything you
[00:08:57] ROD: Shoe size, color preference,
[00:08:59] WILL: yeah, [00:09:00] anything, anything. And when you mash them up, you can find all sorts of lines that lines that just point to and, and what he's also done.
So Cool. He's got, AI. 'cause AI will do anything you want it to, to write
up, a,
[00:09:12] ROD: to be fair and some things you don't.
[00:09:14] WILL: no doubt. But to write up a spurious correlation paper. So he's, he's got these
[00:09:18] ROD: Oh, that's genius. So
[00:09:20] WILL: I'll just, I'll just pull up some, so a couple here, like, there's a, a nice correlation.
What's the number, you know, for the correlation coefficient? Uh, RR equals 0.993.
[00:09:31] ROD: So it's virtually
[00:09:32] WILL: it's virtually perfect. It virtually perfect between per capita consumption of margarine. I, I, I think that would be
America
[00:09:38] ROD: and sexual prowess.
[00:09:40] WILL: Well close the divorce rate in Maine. So Maine. In Maine. So, so in, in 2000 it was quite high.
Mm-hmm. And it has dropped steadily with a little jump in 2005 down to 2009.
[00:09:50] ROD: if you eat margarine in Maine, you're getting
[00:09:52] WILL: divorced.
No, I think eat margarine in America.
[00:09:54] ROD: Then every, everyone in Maine gets divorced
[00:09:57] WILL: or, yeah. So something,
[00:09:59] ROD: [00:10:00] that's even worse than a bad correlation.
[00:10:01] WILL: So we've got another one here.
Uh, UFO sightings in Utah. Yeah. Uh, correlates quite nicely.
[00:10:07] ROD: with the instances of acne and Zambia,
[00:10:09] WILL: uh, patent's granted in the us so,
Oh, that's
as, as the, as the UFO sightings go up. So to go the, the patents
[00:10:17] ROD: and, and what's our r there?
[00:10:19] WILL: uh, that was 0.927. So
[00:10:21] ROD: humongous again, you find that in a psych experiment you are wedding yourself
[00:10:25] WILL: elect number of movies Will Smith appeared in, which I mean, I've
[00:10:29] ROD: it's quite a few.
[00:10:29] WILL: I've just gotta say
he's been in a few
dude makes some movies, like in some years he's up to seven movies
[00:10:35] ROD: in one year of releases.
[00:10:37] WILL: Uh, yeah,
[00:10:39] ROD: assume
[00:10:40] WILL: movie appearances. Yeah.
[00:10:41] ROD: So yeah, it'd be based on the release that year. He's in it
[00:10:45] WILL: like, it's wild. Like he's, he's in a lot. This, this correlates quite nicely, uh, 0.849.
So not as strong as the others with electricity generation in Kosovo.
[00:10:55] ROD: I knew it. I knew
[00:10:56] WILL: So, which one's causing, which is the question?
[00:10:58] ROD: Yes, it's [00:11:00] definitely, or as Bill Clinton would say,
[00:11:02] WILL: vailable. So shall i, I click the random button on Tyler Gins button and see what else we get. Um,
[00:11:07] ROD: click it, click it hard.
[00:11:09] WILL: what I'll go through is an AI explanation here. Okay. So this one is highway diesel consumption in America,
[00:11:15] ROD: only highways.
[00:11:16] WILL: uh, yes, only highway.
I dunno, popularity of the Willy Wonka meme,
[00:11:21] ROD: which means, which I don't
[00:11:22] WILL: I don't even know.
[00:11:23] ROD: Does it show you the meme?
[00:11:24] WILL: Uh, well I can Google that up. Uh,
[00:11:26] ROD: go on, use your Google Glaze meme. I'm sure there's more than one.
[00:11:32] WILL: Yeah, it's the one, um, where, where Old Willy Wonka, not, uh, gene Wilder Will Gene Wilder,
[00:11:37] ROD: Shalamar.
[00:11:37] WILL: Anyway. Jim Wilder. Jim Wilder with is, uh, seriously popularity of a meme like highway diesel.
[00:11:43] ROD: and Highway. But I love it's highway diesel too. It's not like diesel consumption or anything. It's on the highway.
[00:11:50] WILL: No, but it also comes up with a nice AI explanation. Oh
[00:11:53] ROD: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
[00:11:53] WILL: Tyler vegan's
[00:11:54] ROD: me why this is true. Yeah.
[00:11:56] WILL: Uh, tell me why this is true. Basically, fewer diesel fumes meant less air [00:12:00] pollution leading to clearer thinking.
With clearer thinking. People realized that Willy, the Willy Wonker meme was overused and not as funny as they once thought.
[00:12:09] ROD: So as you, as you lowered the fumes, you lowered the Willy
Wonka meme
[00:12:12] WILL: I like this one.
Okay. Popularity of the first name, Alana. Yeah. Uh, correlates. Uh, 0.96. Oh. The distance between Uranus and Venus.
[00:12:22] ROD: So, but that's fine. That's just astrology. That makes sense. It's like as, as Uranus moves further from your Venus
[00:12:30] WILL: and here's the AI explanation. Yeah. As more and more babies were named Alana, the collective sound frequency of their parents proudly calling out to them, created small but measurable sonic waves.
Over time, these waves interfered with the gravitational pull between Uranus and Venus. I'm sorry, I'm, I know, I'm deliberately saying Uranus inadvertently nudging them slightly further apart. So. The
[00:12:49] ROD: the sound waves changed gravity and moved them slightly further apart.
[00:12:52] WILL: The Alana effect, as it was dubbed by baffled astronomers led to revals of celestial mechanics and left everyone marveling at the cosmic [00:13:00] consequences of baby name trends.
[00:13:01] ROD: I love that. If you, if you want it to lie,
if you want it lie, great lies.
[00:13:04] WILL: It's great lies.
[00:13:05] ROD: great. That's really well constructed. But,
[00:13:07] WILL: the fact, you know, he's put it in as, as papers as well.
So
[00:13:09] ROD: Of course.
[00:13:10] WILL: just, just to go back to the idiots in chief, yeah. Correlations actually are useful in science, so let's not dismiss them
[00:13:17] ROD: No. They point to something they, they at least make you go, okay, let's look further or have a think about it.
[00:13:21] WILL: But, uh, what they're doing here is utterly dangerous and, uh, you know,
[00:13:26] ROD: wrong as fuck.
[00:13:27] WILL: as fuck.
So, well, it's getting worse. There you go.
[00:13:31] ROD: Yeah. Thanks.
So 50 years ago, Stanley
Milgram. Oh,
good Old Stanley.
Published obedience to Authority. Now, anyone who listens to
[00:13:41] WILL: this,
is this like an anniversary? Like
[00:13:43] ROD: well, sort of, kind of. No. Yeah, it, it's. Ish. So this, this is from a piece that was written September last year. But, um, so he published the book. And for those of you, I don't know, for the two people among our listeners who's never heard of this, it's a classic psych study about [00:14:00] deference to authority.
And I know you know this, and, and it's also used as, and I used a lot myself in lectures in days gone by about how ethics, let's say change over time within experiments, et cetera. So the bottom line was after Nuremberg when a bunch of German people, prison guards and stuff said, the only reason I did all these at trustees was I was just following
[00:14:18] WILL: orders.
I was
just following
[00:14:20] ROD: just following
orders. Just following orders.
So experiments were done in the US by Stanley Milgrim, and, and it's argued by some, at least the reason for doing these was to prove how Americans would never
[00:14:28] WILL: do that.
Yes.
[00:14:29] ROD: So you set up the experiment. I should explain it right? Just
[00:14:32] WILL: briefly. You should
[00:14:33] ROD: Yeah, you should explain it. So just briefly. What he had is a situation where there'd be, uh, the participant in the experiment or what they used to call the subject in the olden days, was told that they were participating in a, the effect of negative reinforcement on learning.
So they sat in front of a, a, a large bank of switches and dials. There was a speaker in the room, uh, attached to the wall. They couldn't see another, there's another person who is the student, and there was a, a person with a clipboard, a white lab coat looking very officious. And they were like the [00:15:00] experimenter.
And they said to them, okay, you've gotta ask the person in the other room questions. Whenever they get it wrong, you deliver an electric shock. Yeah. And the shocks each time went up a little bit. They got stronger and stronger for each time. The person got it
[00:15:10] WILL: Or, or, or they were told. They did.
[00:15:12] ROD: They were told.
They did? Yeah. They were told each time. So the person would answer the question wrong. You'd flick a switch and they'd just hear through the speaker. Ow.
[00:15:18] WILL: Oh, yeah.
[00:15:19] ROD: Then as it got stronger, they'd hear through the speaker,
[00:15:21] WILL: ah.
[00:15:22] ROD: ow, and it got worse and worse and worse. So as they started to get concerned, as the shocks got stronger, the experimenter or the person in the lab coat and the clipboard said, no, you agreed to do this.
You must do the next shock. And after a while, the person in the other room who was actually in on the experiment was sh shrinking into a microphone. Oh my God, stop. You're burning me. I have a heart condition. Terrible things like this. Then the person with a clipboard would say, no, no, no, you agreed. They know what they're in for.
Push the next switch, put the next switch. And it got to a point where many people, a surprising number of people clicked the next switch to a point where on the actual, uh, readout it said, you know, this is dangerous [00:16:00] and or lethal. And the person was screaming, my heart, my heart, my heart. And occasionally would go silent.
So I dunno, passed out or
died.
[00:16:07] WILL: yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:16:09] ROD: So
this experiment was a little bit surprising. So suddenly, of course, these people said,
uh,
no.
Oh, turns out we do it
too.
[00:16:16] WILL: Yeah. Well,
[00:16:17] ROD: then of course, questions came up and this, this thing has reappeared and reappeared and reappeared over the years
[00:16:22] WILL: since Can, can I just, can I just say though that that, uh, I, I look obviously a very interesting experiment,
foundational in a lot of this kind of
stuff. Uh, there's other things going on in a, in a wider prison environment that there might be some people that, that like doing some of
[00:16:37] ROD: this
Well, who
[00:16:38] WILL: who doesn't?
But there's also a lot of other pressures.
You're in the middle of a war, a lot of people have guns that if you don't follow
[00:16:43] ROD: orders,
you get a bit
[00:16:44] WILL: shot. y You do. And I'm not, I'm not forgiving, uh, those concentration camp guards. I just think that, uh, it's a complicated
[00:16:54] ROD: place. It absolutely is. But then when you put people into this experimental situation and they, for all they know are actually [00:17:00] murdering or at least participating to in someone else's extreme pain, it becomes a little bit like, Ooh.
Yeah.
So anyway, it comes up and up and again and again and again when, um, bad things are happening around the world. And what I remember was, uh, Abu Gray back in the, was that a bar?
[00:17:13] WILL: No, 2004 GW Bush.
it was, it was the first, one of the first big scandals of, of Iraq war.
[00:17:20] ROD: Yeah. And so, you know, it was a, uh, prison facility in Cuba.
Cuba. Cuba, yeah,
[00:17:25] WILL: Cuba, Iraq.
that's, I meant Iraq Harbor grave. I mean, you just go from the language, man,
[00:17:30] ROD: Anyway, it was a bad American prison and, and people got really brutal. Like the guards got really brutal. They did terrible things. They, they, you know, dehumanized people, et cetera. So of course when this happens, whenever these stories start up, news stories, uh, documentaries and stuff, bring up
[00:17:44] WILL: up Stanley
and says, Hey, what do you reckon, Stanley?
[00:17:47] ROD: Oh, you're dead. Sorry mate. Anyway, any opinions for us anyway, and of course, Philip Zimbardo's, Stanford prison experiments, these
[00:17:53] WILL: all
come up.
yeah.
[00:17:54] ROD: These all come up and, was listening to a documentary, if you're listening in Australia, triple J's hack, and they're [00:18:00] interviewing someone who's really into these experiments who'd done and repeated grams experiments and other people because it was timely.
And they said, um, look, I did a replication of one of these and with a bunch of different kinds of people. And the one that stuck in my head was the most egregious people by employment category, let's
[00:18:15] WILL: call
it.
Oh,
[00:18:17] ROD: guess, guess who are the most egregious. Yes. Keep clicking up until a person is screaming, I'm dying.
I'm dying, et
[00:18:22] WILL: Oh, Jesus. No, no, no. Well, it's obviously academics.
[00:18:24] ROD: Yeah. Close nuns, nuns, nuns, horrifyingly
willing
[00:18:32] WILL: Oh wow.
[00:18:33] ROD: To torture the shit outta people.
As far as
[00:18:35] WILL: Well, I, I did not have a Catholic school education, but, uh, yeah, but I, I, I have friends that did, That I think that lands very much in the stereotype, shall we
[00:18:45] ROD: say.
Would you think so? I, I mean, I nearly crashed the car.
I was listening to this and I was just like, oh, thank you for making me justifying everything I ever believed. And of course, the original
Blues Brothers.
[00:18:53] WILL: Yeah, no, that's, that's where I get my
[00:18:55] ROD: education. Yeah. Oh, fuck. Shit. Fuck. No. Fuck. Slap Slap. Ruler. Ruler. Um, but anyway, so [00:19:00] for a long time the Milgram experiments people and also scientists have felt a little bit awkward about it.
Is it a good experiment? Is it true? we of course know that everyone who hears this, and I know I did when I first heard about it, I thought, yeah, well, other people might submit to that, but there's no way
[00:19:14] WILL: yeah, no, I'd be black. Gandhi, Jesus. Yeah, I, I go on hunger strike
[00:19:18] ROD: instantly,
And of course scientists at the time were particularly shocked at how many people just followed orders.
[00:19:24] WILL: So
[00:19:25] ROD: Milgram studies have been beaten and bashed, and they've had the shit kicked outta 'em for years.
Ethics is part of it because you bring someone into a room, you get them to do this as a participant in the experiment, then they either feel freaking stressed out in the experience or then they get told afterwards what was really going on, and they discover about themselves that they're prepared to do this.
Yes. So that freaked people out. Yeah. You've also got,
[00:19:48] WILL: um,
[00:19:49] ROD: uh, situations where psychology reformers, as they're called, people who try to replicate studies, have tried to replicate or look at other ones. And there's a mob
who
[00:20:00] said, well, it maybe the people who were doing the learning, the people who were flicking the switches didn't really believe it was true.
They were just, you know,
playing along
[00:20:07] WILL: I, I, I, that's my suspicion all the way along. Like, I, I, I guess I've got a trust in institutions that like, I'd be like, nah, you're playing along this, this, this ain't real.
[00:20:17] ROD: Just do. Yeah. I, I, I want my five
bucks or my
[00:20:19] WILL: gonna, I'm gonna shock you to see how much the actor can
[00:20:21] ROD: do
this.
Yeah, exactly. How good
[00:20:22] WILL: are
you?
let's, let's, I, I, I can see acting and, and I
[00:20:26] ROD: know,
come on, Lawrence Olivier,
[00:20:27] WILL: let's, let's get him
[00:20:28] ROD: there. Convince me,
you're having a heart
[00:20:29] WILL: attack,
[00:20:30] ROD: but only with my
[00:20:31] WILL: ears.
Yeah, exactly. So you know, that, that, that frees me from any ethical
[00:20:34] ROD: responsibility. Absolutely. I look, and I would too.
I'd mess with it if I was in a psych experiment now that they should, psychologists out there, if I ever volunteer, if one of your experiments refuse me because I will do everything I can to fuck with it, which might be what you want
[00:20:46] WILL: Whoa.
[00:20:48] ROD: anyway. So, um, there's a journal called Philosophical. And just recently, three authors reexamined the data from Milgram's
[00:20:55] WILL: experiments.
Hey,
[00:20:56] ROD: they had a re-look at the data itself, but they also looked at outcomes of what they called [00:21:00] conceptual replications. Similar kinds of studies. Sure. Similar kinds of studies and they reckon that Milgram's work and his conclusions probably still stand pretty strong.
Very good. So they said, for example, I mean I love the start off as, as it was put in one article. Milgram's experimental paradigm is robustly replicable.
And it is exactly. You really can replicate this. Yeah. There's no fucking nuance. The
setup is
[00:21:22] WILL: hasn't it been done a bunch of time by TV shows and stuff like that?
[00:21:24] ROD: Like
[00:21:24] WILL: it's the, yeah.
[00:21:25] ROD: they found 20 replications or close variations on it from around the globe. Okay. That reinforced
it.
And so there's a couple, like one participants were ordered to torment job applicants by making negative comments and on and so forth until the applicants failed their qualification exams and lost their chances to be employed.
[00:21:43] WILL: Oh geez. Come
[00:21:43] ROD: on. I
know. but
[00:21:45] WILL: what does that tell us? Tormenting people works
like, like, wow.
[00:21:50] ROD: but, but the study is on the people who prepared to do the tormenting.
[00:21:53] WILL: Yeah. Okay. Sure.
[00:21:54] ROD: Yeah. Not, not the Tor mentee, but the like, oh, you're prepared to keep tormenting these people. 'cause we told you to [00:22:00] another one, a game show scenario, participants with questions and then they asked questions and they shocked fellow contestants in front of audiences.
[00:22:08] WILL: is like a Japanese game show
[00:22:09] ROD: scenario. Sadly,
probably not.
[00:22:11] WILL: not.
[00:22:11] ROD: they found that people would follow all kinds of instructions and authority figures to the point of causing other people extreme distress.
Basically they're saying there's a lot of, a lot of track record in different ways in different countries under different scenarios that show that if you feel like you're being ordered by an authority figure to cause other people distress, many people do. Yeah. And so one of the questions, the big question was that, and we flagged it a moment ago, do participants think the setups are real?
And apparently there's strong evidence that that is the case though. So there are videos of milgram's experiments.
[00:22:42] WILL: and other
[00:22:42] ROD: people running them. The participants were clearly extremely upset. Under heaps of stress. Yeah. They're
freaking
[00:22:48] WILL: This is horrible. But I must do it because the authority
[00:22:50] ROD: Yeah. Yeah. I signed up for it also after the trial. So Mil would tell 'em, the learner was not really being shocked and asked 'em if they thought it was real. And overwhelmingly they said they were [00:23:00] absolutely convinced it was true. And that was even the people who bailed early and didn't obey. So whether you obeyed or didn't, they
all
[00:23:06] WILL: I mean, surely the people that bailed early were the ones that thought it was it was
[00:23:10] ROD: true.
they they all, but they all
[00:23:11] WILL: you're not bailing if it, if you think it's not.
[00:23:13] ROD: Well, that's why I think it's shitty. But they believed it was really happening, so,
[00:23:17] WILL: so what's your take home on
[00:23:18] ROD: This This is what I was wondering, like what is the take home on this? Because part of me goes, yay for it. Like it's a cunning experiment.
Like all these things, it's very
[00:23:26] WILL: it is very clever. Uh, look, any experiment that 50 years later, look, I, I, I think in one sense it resonates so much with the
time. Mm-hmm. Um, but 50 years later that we are still thinking, oh, that tells us something about ourselves. Yeah. That, that is a, that is a powerful
[00:23:40] ROD: And, and look, we, we don't want it to be true.
I, I, I get that. We don't want it to be true, but,
so
I think there's been high motivation to pull it apart and say, not really.
[00:23:49] WILL: Look, I Okay. Okay. Look, so, uh, we know the world is on the slide. Let's
[00:23:55] ROD: say
we've heard rumors. Well,
[00:23:57] WILL: heard rumors. We've heard rumors. I mean, I just covered a story and that I've got something [00:24:00] more for you in a second. towards fascism, pretty clear in
the us Uh, and there was an article, you know, that came out just the other day where some fascism expert goes, oh, Australia, you guys are next.
And, and the bit of me that's like, oh,
[00:24:11] ROD: oh, but I don't
[00:24:11] WILL: what? But, but I don't want, can we
[00:24:14] ROD: not? Yeah. What
[00:24:14] WILL: Why don't we
go,
[00:24:15] ROD: can we have a referendum on it?
[00:24:16] WILL: and you know, there was one bit of me that's like, surely Australians are a bit skeptical. Like, like we, we are not a dress up in, in Hugo Boss kind of thing.
[00:24:25] ROD: Actually my only, my only real suit is Hugo
Boss.
But for different, No,
it's not quite as Nazi
[00:24:29] WILL: it, yeah, not quite as n But we are not quite a like, let's all dress up in the
[00:24:33] ROD: March under the
[00:24:34] WILL: flag
Like, and we also think people that, uh. You know, that take that kind of stuff seriously are a bit
[00:24:40] ROD: weird.
You're a wanker. If you're too proud of your country, you're a bit of
[00:24:42] WILL: a
dick. Yeah.
Calm the fuck down. But, but I, I, I don't doubt that. Well, Australia has committed lots of crimes and, and, and in, in recent and longer past, so, so I'm not claiming any perfection there. I just, I just hope that we might not be, but, but I did, you know, it's that moment where you start going, so if, [00:25:00] if we land in fascist, you know, it's like, you know that, that question, what would I do in the Nazi Nazi world?
You don't ever want to,
[00:25:08] ROD: actually, no, I don't wanna answer it.
[00:25:09] WILL: don't wanna answer it. You don't wanna be, you don't wanna be tested. You wanna be able to answer it hypothetically when you're sitting
[00:25:13] ROD: around it's a pub
[00:25:14] WILL: question.
having some, having, having some beers or, or
[00:25:16] ROD: Yeah. Paul and bongs going, would you be fasc? Like
[00:25:19] WILL: No man
[00:25:21] ROD: that'd be uncool.
Yeah. Just,
[00:25:23] WILL: what Milgram shows is that we may have deference to authority, perhaps ingrained in us as, as a species, you know, that's something there. But I think it's actually the other things that are scary is where people go, you know, I hate this and this is horrible, but I have duties to insert smaller family,
[00:25:44] ROD: you
know, or things
[00:25:45] WILL: other, other things.
[00:25:46] ROD: and, and, and at least it's not
[00:25:48] WILL: me.
Well, no doubt
and horrifying. And, and this is the thing that the fascists do, is they split us from the wider community and go, you know, you care about your own and then you'll be safe if you, if you keep your [00:26:00] head down. And no doubt there were, there were millions of Germans in, in the Nazi regime that were like, I hate this.
I sure there were people that loved it, don't doubt, of course. But there were people that were hating
it. Yep.
And they were just terrified the whole
[00:26:11] ROD: time.
Yep. I mind my own patch
[00:26:13] WILL: I
survive my,
my, i, I want, I want my kids to
survive. And it's just, whoa.
[00:26:18] ROD: Yep. Absolutely. So I, I think, okay, one of my takeaways is let's not, so b delightfully dismiss
[00:26:23] WILL: What do you know what shits me so much about the fascists?
[00:26:26] ROD: Like,
[00:26:27] WILL: they are terrified. They are literally
[00:26:29] ROD: terrified. Just you,
[00:26:30] WILL: I would assume right towards the
[00:26:31] ROD: peak.
[00:26:31] WILL: I imagine Hitler all the way through that was like, one day a bullet is gonna get me in
[00:26:36] ROD: the
neck.
Yep. That's why he was so pale and white. 'cause he never had any shit in him. He was always shitting himself. Always shitting himself. Skinny little pale, man.
[00:26:43] WILL: what if, what if you set up a regime where no one was terrified and they're like, oh, but that,
[00:26:49] ROD: but
how would we control Sam?
[00:26:50] WILL: And, and it's like, could you just not
[00:26:53] ROD: don't be a
[00:26:53] WILL: up
[00:26:54] ROD: terror
Don't be a dick. There you go. Don't be a dick.
[00:26:58] WILL: Do you have some good
[00:26:58] ROD: news?
[00:26:59] WILL: Yes. [00:27:00] Okay. Okay.
[00:27:00] ROD: So,
so
don't make it too good though, 'cause I won't
[00:27:02] WILL: believe it.
I love this story and it, it's, it was kind of buried in the last couple of weeks. because, well, other stuff was going on So
up
there on our, uh, sister planet, our friend planet, our God of war, planet Mars.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, we've got a rover. We, I mean the human species,
NASA in particular, Rover
is a dog.
Uh, no, it's a little robot.
It is a little
robot. Perseverance. Perseverance.
[00:27:26] ROD: hmm.
[00:27:26] WILL: it's out there driving around, uh, collecting samples. Yeah. and looking at things and it
[00:27:32] ROD: I I do love that. Oh fuck. I love, they're out there. I love, they're just travelling
[00:27:34] WILL: No, this is, I still as I'll come to in a bit, I, I really hope that we can maintain a presence looking out there into the rest of the world, universe, trying to understand more about ourselves. Like, you know, uh, the first question that perseverance is answering is, is life possible on other planets?
Has life happened?
[00:27:58] ROD: Yes and
[00:27:58] WILL: yes.
So he, [00:28:00] yes,
maybe yes and yes.
Maybe So, 2024, perseverance, found a rock. And on the rock were little spots. Mm-hmm. Little spots. They were calling them like, like leopard, leopard prints, spots, little tiny
things there's a great photo of perseverance, like the rover.
It takes a selfie all the
[00:28:18] ROD: time.
[00:28:18] WILL: it's, it's like taking a selfie of it, standing over the, not standing,
[00:28:22] ROD: over
there's no one immune to the social
[00:28:24] WILL: effect. No one is immune. No one is immune. And it's like, it's like, looks at the
[00:28:27] ROD: camera,
But you can imagine the thing, the stream. Check me out, mom, dad. I'm still on
[00:28:31] WILL: mask. Yeah. No, but
literally it's, it's red.
Uh, yeah. So perseverance are found, a small rock and the, and the rock is named Ava Falls. I'm not quite, not quite sure.
[00:28:43] ROD: The rock is named
[00:28:44] WILL: Chava Falls.
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:28:45] ROD: After its Spanish
[00:28:47] WILL: but it's in a, in a, ancient riverbed, a dry riverbed on Mars in Jro Crater.
So a river used to flow through there ages ago. Yeah. And the rovers go, all right, like there's some spots, or at least the human drivers of the [00:29:00] rover are like, let's
[00:29:00] ROD: have
a
look
at
this
spot.
[00:29:02] WILL: the rock itself, um, it's composed of clay and silt. Mm-hmm. Uh, which on earth are excellent preservers of past microbial life.
Yes. So, you know, we've got, we've got lots of slates and things like that that will show microbes doing what microbes do, you know, letting off little bits of gas and
[00:29:18] ROD: doing
stuff like that. Yeah. Fighting and breeding or splitting
now.
Yeah.
[00:29:21] WILL: Yeah.
Uh, perseverance has a couple of different, chemical analysis instruments.
They've got a x-ray litho chemistry, joby obviously, and a ramen and luminescence for organics and chemicals. Joby ramen. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:35] ROD: So soup curry
[00:29:37] WILL: and,
I think
so.
[00:29:38] ROD: Yeah. Well, you know, a roper's
[00:29:40] WILL: gotta eat.
I, I
[00:29:40] ROD: think
so. Yeah.
[00:29:41] WILL: Fair And, and so it's, it's had a look at the spots and so these spots on the rocks. It could have been left behind by microbial life if it had used like roaring ingredients, the organic carbon, sulfur and phosphorus in the rock as an energy source.
So these are, these are not the, like the microbes themselves, but [00:30:00] they're evidence potentially of microbes living there, bubbling
[00:30:03] ROD: away, microbe
[00:30:04] WILL: microbe mining, doing, doing the things that microbes do. And the key thing here is, you know, what perseverance has to do is determine could these have been from, a non-biological
[00:30:15] ROD: process?
So like, was it Viking that did the little test where they squirted some stuff on some dirt and gas came out and people went
life
seventies or eighties? There was a
[00:30:25] WILL: Could have been, could have been. But gas coming out, like, I think, I think the compounds there. So, so the key thing is, what we have to do in any of these scenarios is we're looking for evidence of life.
But what you have to find is, is signatures that couldn't be done in a
[00:30:39] ROD: non, non-organic, yeah, yeah,
[00:30:40] WILL: yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:41] ROD: Now,
yeah,
It's, it's always oblique, it's always like the
[00:30:44] WILL: indicator. So there are ways to generate these little spots, um, without the presence
of life.
Right?
So it could have been, uh, sustained high temperatures that might've done things or acidic conditions, or binding by, chemical compounds that might've done these, that these things in spots, right?
But, [00:31:00] but this particular rock doesn't show any of the evidence of the non-biological
[00:31:04] ROD: processes
here. Oh, that's interesting.
[00:31:06] WILL: So, no evidence they showed high temperatures or acidic conditions. Yeah. and so at the moment, I, I love this. Yeah. Um, this is one of the, this is Katie Morgan, uh, who is perseverance project scientist at nasa.
So she's driving, she's one of the people
[00:31:21] ROD: driving You, you, you meet someone at a party, what do you do? I drive a robot on Mar. Well, I'm not gonna tell you what I do because this is no point.
God, I clean dunny and stuff and
[00:31:31] WILL: I've just gotta show you something that, that NASA remains one of the organizations that Yes.
Aspiration wise, but also budget wise, but also bureaucracy, capacity wise. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Yes. Bureaucracy. But they can do. Shit that is just shocking, shocking, shocking to
[00:31:49] ROD: me.
Yeah. Um, alright,
[00:31:50] WILL: so, so Katie Morgan says, so, uh, one of the perseverance approach, while abiotic explanations that's
[00:31:56] ROD: non-biologic, non-bio, yeah.
[00:31:57] WILL: for what we see at this place [00:32:00] are less likely given the papers findings, we cannot rule 'em out.
But what she's saying there, they're less likely that this might be a
[00:32:07] ROD: strong slightly
more lightish than
[00:32:09] WILL: not.
Slightly more lightish than not now.
Key thing there, Demonstrating life on another planet means something pretty important for us.
Yeah. What it, what it means is that, and it's the first other planet we can
[00:32:21] ROD: get
to, Yeah.
[00:32:22] WILL: maybe life is not that hard to evolve. Yeah. You know, intelligent life or whatever out there in the universe. But it does say something, something, it says something really important. Like, like there, there's a couple of different scenarios.
One is. Life itself is totally unique to Earth. And it was just, it's so random, so rare. So,
[00:32:39] ROD: fuck. That would be tragic.
[00:32:40] WILL: It would, it would be, it would be enormously tragic. Maybe Intelligent life is hard to get to now. We don't have evidence there, but, but having the idea that life, life itself could possibly have been a miles, that, that actually changes like the possibilities for the
entire
universe. So, so this is great science and, and Sean Duffy. Who is the NASA administrator appointed by
[00:32:59] ROD: Donald
[00:33:00] Trump. Well, you don't have to
[00:33:00] WILL: tell
me.
um, applauded
[00:33:02] ROD: Did he?
[00:33:02] WILL: did he
[00:33:03] ROD: Well, he, he's fired. No,
[00:33:05] WILL: No. Wait, wait, wait, wait. This finding by perseverance launched under President Trump in his first time is the closest we have ever come to discovering life on
Mars.
The identification
[00:33:15] ROD: create life? Is that what he's
[00:33:16] WILL: saying? I think he's like, he's the, the identification of a potential bio signature on the red planet is a groundbreaking discovery and one that will advance our understanding of Mars. Said, uh, Sean
Duffy, NASAs administrator,
NASA's commitment to conducting gold standard science.
We'll continue as we pursue our goal of putting American boots on Mars's rocky
soil. Uh,
now I'm gonna come back
[00:33:36] ROD: to
that
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:33:38] WILL: the other thing that perseverance is doing is it's leaving a lot of samples on the ground so it digs into the
[00:33:44] ROD: ground. they need to be collected.
[00:33:46] WILL: Yes, I'll come to that in a second.
Like, so it digs into the ground. It's got like, it's got like 43 little tubes. it digs into the ground, gets some samples that, that are
[00:33:54] ROD: in
the right
Looks like a little lightsaber. That's
what
everyone says.
[00:33:56] WILL: They look shockingly like a little. So it's leaving these little lightsabers ar [00:34:00] sweet I think it's left 33 of them so far.
It's got like 10 more
[00:34:02] ROD: to
go. Ooh.
[00:34:03] WILL: and the plan is, and I'm just gonna show you a video here, I'm just gonna take a while to Google it up, but, um, I'll just show you this 'cause it just, it just ah, just made me so happy when I
watched it. This, afternoon. The Mars sample return vision, So this, this is from nasa,
so, okay. Key thing. Yeah. We're blasting some shit towards Mars. Yeah. And they're like, oh, we landed and Oh cool. Here I am. Perseverance, drilling some holes in Mars.
Yep.
there's my buddy. The sample return
[00:34:29] ROD: Mission
wall E actually has a
[00:34:30] WILL: friend.
It's so awesome. Like this is just mind blowing out there. So
[00:34:35] ROD: Yeah. So yeah.
[00:34:35] WILL: picks up the little lightsabers,
[00:34:37] ROD: pops it in its place.
Lock it up.
[00:34:39] WILL: So obviously this is not actual vision, you know,
[00:34:41] ROD: this is,
oh, this isn't actually
[00:34:42] WILL: happened.
No. This is an ad. Little rocket blasts out of there with all of these samples,
[00:34:48] ROD: and then it leaves the two of them to get
[00:34:50] WILL: married.
[00:34:50] ROD: I
[00:34:50] WILL: I think it does. I hope it does. I hope they both got like a chat GPT to talk to each other and fall in love or
[00:34:56] ROD: like
that.
So a tiny micro
[00:34:58] WILL: rocket. So
that goes up to a satellite, [00:35:00] like, like a, you know, it splits into little rockets that, that connects up with a satellite in a second over Mars.
I've just, I've just gotta say like the, like the vision. Of it's
wonderful. You know, not only, not only collecting these samples on earth, having a robot driving around on earth collecting these
[00:35:16] ROD: samples and then send up a buddy to get it
[00:35:18] WILL: and sending a buddy to go and pick 'em all back.
It's wonderful.
[00:35:21] ROD: But, uh,
[00:35:22] WILL: uh, president Trump's fiscal year 2026, proposed budget blueprint, has calls for a 24% reduction in NASA's top line funding, of course. And, uh, and could slash the space agency's budget by 47%. I don't understand how that works. Who knows how numbers work?
[00:35:36] ROD: No. Um, well, they don't
[00:35:37] WILL: add up.
And
the Mars sample return, uh, venture, that's gonna be a casualty of
[00:35:42] ROD: this.
So
[00:35:43] WILL: here's the thing. I just want you to
[00:35:44] ROD: uh,
[00:35:45] WILL: Sean Duffy saying we want boots on the ground. Yeah. In,
[00:35:48] ROD: on
Mars. Mm.
[00:35:50] WILL: That's not science.
No,
that's, uh, that's uh, politics.
Well, that's politics. That's a very different thing. We can learn more about life, [00:36:00] the existence of life on other
[00:36:01] ROD: planets. Yeah.
[00:36:02] WILL: But
getting boots on the ground don't need it.
That's not the thing what we need. So just, just, just put like, I think, yes. Yeah, it'd be cool to go
[00:36:09] ROD: to
Mars,
but put your dick away and let's get on with the stuff we can actually do very quickly and easily and find out.
[00:36:14] WILL: that's the slogan for
science.
Put your dick away.
[00:36:18] ROD: Now it would be remiss of us. We are contractually obliged to acknowledge that we're not the only seriously over qualified idiots who take the piss outta science,
really
on the world stage for the good of humanity. Mm-hmm. And I'm talking about the IG Nobles, which came out that the 35th year of the IG nobles, they, the ceremony dropped 18th of September this year, 2025.
For those of you listening in the
future,
their
goal is to first make people laugh and then make people
think,
cry. That's what I meant. So they have the ceremony.
I think it's in Chicago, but it's the, the awards are handed out by real Nobel laureates because.
[00:36:53] WILL: because
you've
[00:36:54] ROD: it.
I dunno how many of these you, you caught, but, um, couple of the most recent [00:37:00] crop that I thought were fun and a couple of classics from history.
[00:37:03] WILL: Mm-hmm. I love them. I love 'em all. I,
[00:37:05] ROD: I
think they're
great.
It's delightful. It's absolutely delightful. The fact that this happens makes me very, very happy. Um, so one of the ones this year, William B. Bean Nail Growth Records, he's a physician. He spent 35 years meticulously recording the growth of his fingers and
[00:37:21] WILL: toenails.
[00:37:24] ROD: So straightaway you're like, Ugh.
[00:37:26] WILL: Good on you
[00:37:27] ROD: buddy.
There are other
hobbies.
No,
[00:37:29] WILL: there's not. No, this is, no,
[00:37:30] ROD: it. That's it. We're all gonna do this now. It's not, it's not. What's your hobby? It's how long have you meticulously been recording the length of your
finger and toner?
[00:37:38] WILL: I mean, I, I get, once you've started, you're like, well, I'm on a
[00:37:41] ROD: path Can't stop now.
Exactly. Like,
[00:37:43] WILL: I've got a week's worth of data, obviously that's
[00:37:45] ROD: rest
of
my life. Not doing this would
[00:37:47] WILL: be
dumb.
[00:37:48] ROD: So apparently he was just curious about, um, human biology and body changes over time and we all are, you know, changes in
our body.
So he regularly measures now growth rate. He carefully documented scientific style [00:38:00] across Yeah.
35 years. So three and a half decades he noticed consistent, but subtle differences in nail growth between fingers
[00:38:07] WILL: and
toes.
Oh, okay.
[00:38:09] ROD: Uh, it changed by age, hand dominance and circulation. I don't know how
[00:38:13] WILL: he
mentioned his, how did he get a change in
[00:38:15] ROD: hand
dominant? I
think he noticed that it was maybe more in his dominant hand than the other, or less there was a difference between
[00:38:21] WILL: his
Yeah. But it might just be, yeah.
[00:38:23] ROD: Okay.
Fair
enough. What he does with
[00:38:24] WILL: That I, I think that smells like correlation, not causation.
[00:38:27] ROD: How dare you.
[00:38:28] WILL: How dare. Just to, just to
[00:38:29] ROD: put
on
the record,
to be better, like, all correlations are based on observations of one data point
[00:38:35] WILL: him.
[00:38:36] ROD: Yeah. Um, apparently there may be data that help human aging studies, metabolism, regeneration, et cetera.
Anyway, it shows the value of participant observation in science and long-term natural histories
[00:38:46] WILL: the body. It does.
[00:38:47] ROD: What's more interesting is, which, which prize do you think he won? Which version of the IG Nobel.
[00:38:52] WILL: uh, look, they don't have the same categories as,
[00:38:54] ROD: as
the
Nobel,
They have many of the same, but
[00:38:56] WILL: only, I
see. I don't, I,
[00:38:57] ROD: well,
this one is the same as
[00:38:59] WILL: a real
one.
[00:39:00] biology. Literature. Literature, of
[00:39:03] ROD: course.
Do you wanna know
[00:39:04] WILL: why?
Uh, no.
[00:39:05] ROD: Yes,
me
[00:39:06] WILL: too.
[00:39:08] ROD: Why
I don't, I don't know.
[00:39:10] WILL: Literature because he used your fingernails for
[00:39:12] ROD: typing. Probably the, no, probably the way he wrote up it. Like the way he, you know, beautifully documented the fingernail growth and toenail growth and
[00:39:19] WILL: et cetera.
That's one. Okay,
here's another one.
[00:39:24] ROD: Alcohol and foreign language ability. And this one, we already know this. I mean, we know if you've ever left the country or if you've ever been to a country where your native tongue is not spoken. So they wanted to know if alcohol consumption improves foreign language speaking ability.
So they got volunteers who drank moderate amounts of alcohol before speaking their second language or having a crack at it. Yeah, moderate. I assume that means I know 10 to 15 drinks.
[00:39:46] WILL: dunno. Don't
encourage alcoholism.
I'm not,
[00:39:48] ROD: I'm just talking about science
here.
Yeah. So the results participants often sounded more fluent and confident even when their vocabulary and grammar did not improve after a few Bevs.
[00:39:58] WILL: so they sounded more [00:40:00] confident, but they, their actual technical ability
[00:40:02] ROD: doesn't
change, may not have improved, but it's, it kind of gave the impression and language is a lot about
[00:40:06] WILL: impressions. yeah. yeah. Totally. Totally. And there might be total
[00:40:09] ROD: elements
there
There may will
[00:40:11] WILL: you might be
using your
[00:40:11] ROD: may will be. So apparently, you know, it's about, you know, alcohol reducing social anxiety, stuff like this.
guess which prize they
won.
[00:40:19] WILL: Oh, uh, this is definitely
[00:40:20] ROD: physics,
Peace.
Prize peace.
That kind
[00:40:23] WILL: of makes
sense. No. Okay, fair. enough. Fair enough. Get, get a little bit
[00:40:25] ROD: drunker
than you,
Yeah. And then you can
[00:40:26] WILL: make peace together.
[00:40:29] ROD: Physiology prize. I'm telling you that now. Uh, sorry. Psychology being told you're smart tends to lead to you being more narcissistic.
I mean. The, so they're little psychology.
Okay.
You, you're told you've done really well, even though you didn't. And apparently you, you start to, you know, show measurements on narcissism, um, inventories that make you a bit more of
a wanker, a
biology prize. Uh, this, I like this one. Zebra striped cows repel
[00:40:54] WILL: flies.
So
[00:40:57] ROD: some colleagues of, uh, [00:41:00] Toki called Jimma, they tested whether painting zebra, like stripes on cows would reduce fly
[00:41:05] WILL: bites.
[00:41:06] ROD: And
[00:41:06] WILL: they did.
Oh my god.
[00:41:08] ROD: Because apparently it might fuck with insect vision.
[00:41:11] WILL: So that's what I mean. Zebras have strip. I thought those was more camouflage in the grass from lions and
stuff
[00:41:16] ROD: and, and flies and stuff apparently.
Alright. So what that led me to believe is next time, anytime I go to a barbecue for now, and I'm not gonna use fly spray and stuff, I'm gonna paint myself stripy. Yeah. I'm gonna go stripe face
[00:41:27] WILL: Yes.
[00:41:30] ROD: so I don't get
fly
[00:41:31] WILL: blown.
[00:41:32] ROD: Yes.
Okay. And wear pants that will stop you getting fly bone as well.
[00:41:35] WILL: Hmm.
Hmm.
[00:41:37] ROD: So that's a couple of the ones or the most recent round that I quite enjoyed. But I, I, I have to just call on some faves in the past. Just three. Just three from
[00:41:44] WILL: the
top.
[00:41:45] ROD: Alright.
So one was, and if you live in Australia, which we pretty much
do,
you would know wombats first.
You know what a
[00:41:51] WILL: wombat
is? Yep.
[00:41:53] ROD: They shit
[00:41:53] WILL: cubes.
Yeah, of course. But I do
[00:41:55] ROD: too.
Yeah, but you're
[00:41:56] WILL: not
a wombat. Yeah. That's
[00:41:58] ROD: Ha. Have scientists studied
[00:41:59] WILL: cube? [00:42:00] Well, no, they
should. No.
[00:42:01] ROD: Oh, you're not old enough yet. Soon though,
[00:42:03] WILL: you'll Yeah, actually they actually, they
[00:42:04] ROD: It's begun. It's
[00:42:05] WILL: the
[00:42:06] ROD: the
government
study, the government wants to take your poo example.
Um, yeah, but so there was a study, uh, in, they called it Physics 2019. How in the hell wombats? Actually, for those of you who have never seen wombat shit, they literally do shit cubes and sometimes in little piles. Yeah. Little building blocks of
cubes. I
wouldn't expect
[00:42:22] WILL: it like, like it's cube cubes are not your natural biological
[00:42:25] ROD: thing.
It's not on the Bristol stool inventory. Are they? Are they cubes? It's like they're definitely not consistencies,
[00:42:31] WILL: irrelevant
look cubes with rounded edges. Mm.
[00:42:34] ROD: Still pretty much cubes. So that was a great little study. And they, they looked at bowel anatomy, intestinal war compression, moisture of stools, et cetera.
So that was fun. Working it out
happened. There was a nutrition prize in 2014. Scientists made sausages out of baby
[00:42:49] WILL: shit.
Why?
[00:42:51] ROD: It was a, they were trying to develop probiotic sausages.
[00:42:54] WILL: Well,
I I've got other ways.
[00:42:57] ROD: No, you don't. You don't. This is Spanish [00:43:00] researchers and you know the spanishes, they make really good sal
[00:43:02] WILL: massages.
They do.
They do.
[00:43:04] ROD: So they, um, they, they, they got baby feces to get bacteria that might both ferment sausages and also pass through the stomach neatly to colonize the gut. That was
[00:43:14] WILL: is this is the sausage all baby poo or
[00:43:17] ROD: I think it might have only been ingredient, maybe, maybe inspired
[00:43:21] WILL: by,
[00:43:22] ROD: but the best, the best for me, I think unless someone can come up with another.
And please, if you do have a better one, email us at a little bit of science
at
[00:43:29] WILL: Cheers at a little bit of science.com
[00:43:32] ROD: au. That's what I meant. I was just seeing if
[00:43:33] WILL: Will
you? Yeah.
[00:43:34] ROD: Material science. 2020 researchers wanted to reproduce the stories that they'd heard about Inuit
people.
Yes.
In order to survive making knives outta frozen
[00:43:45] WILL: human
shit. They did, didn't they? Because that, that is, that is the classic murder weapon where it
[00:43:50] ROD: disappeared.
rolled? No. That, that might've been an icicle or a leg of lamb, but human shit will do. Yeah. So yeah, they froze poo to minus 50. They shaped blades. They tried slicing through [00:44:00] meat. It generally didn't work, and the edges melted or smeared instead of
[00:44:04] WILL: cutting. Ah,
[00:44:05] ROD: that's my fav. I, I'm pretty sure that's my
[00:44:07] WILL: favorite Oh God. Like just because you
[00:44:10] ROD: can,
doesn't mean you should.
[00:44:14] ROD: So
it
all started from an accidental
[00:44:16] WILL: observation.
[00:44:17] ROD: For those listening or who've just tuned in, this is Mouse on
[00:44:20] WILL: Mouse
action.
[00:44:21] ROD: Fun with animals. So Lee Young, a systems neuroscientist at the Keck School of Medicine, the University of Southern California, they were conducting experiments. The team noticed that when a mouse encountered an unconscious
[00:44:32] WILL: partner,
[00:44:33] ROD: uh, it started to quote, interact intensively with
it.
[00:44:38] WILL: Like, wake up, wake up. My darling, my darling. You stop napping. There, there, there's work to be done. We have, we have mouse
[00:44:45] ROD: business.
The children need cleansing, and the fields
[00:44:49] WILL: lying. We must tend, we must
[00:44:51] ROD: tend,
and this has never been reported before. It looked like the mice that we're interacting vigorously or
[00:44:56] WILL: intensely.
Sorry.
are are you implying something here just to, just for the
[00:44:59] ROD: [00:45:00] record.
what do you
[00:45:01] WILL: I'm
implying? I
know, I'm, I,
[00:45:02] ROD: I,
I,
what do you think
[00:45:03] WILL: I'm
employed? No, that's the point of
[00:45:04] ROD: implying
you, I know what you think. I'm implying it looked like they were doing CPR.
[00:45:14] WILL: I love that.
I
[00:45:15] ROD: know
it. It looked like they were doing CPR or versions of
[00:45:19] WILL: cpr. I, I've got, I've got full ouie
[00:45:22] ROD: OU in
my
mind.
Yeah. Like, yeah,
[00:45:24] WILL: yeah. I just
pull
away.
[00:45:27] ROD: and keep 'em alive. So not all experts were convinced, but there are anecdotes of wild animals like elephants, chimps, dolphins, et cetera, try and help others of their species who may be in need or need rescuing.
But they hadn't seen it in mice, so it was time to
[00:45:41] WILL: do some
science.
but they hadn't seen
it
in
mice.
Like, I don't know how much CPR happens in the animal kingdom. I think you're burying the lead
here. Some,
[00:45:48] ROD: Some,
[00:45:49] WILL: I think Some,
I wanna see some elephant.
[00:45:52] ROD: CPR.
Can you imagine that? I broke him again. Scrunch. I told you sweetheart, a [00:46:00] little more gentle.
Just use one colossal
foot.
So, um, they decided to science the shit out of this. And in fact, it got science at the level that it was published in Science magazine,
[00:46:10] WILL: February 6th. No, that's, that's some
[00:46:11] ROD: That's in good science.
So step one, you knock
[00:46:12] WILL: a mouse out, uhhuh
[00:46:14] ROD: uh, with anesthesia, like
[00:46:15] WILL: you
Yeah, of course.
No, I get it.
[00:46:16] ROD: Then
you have step two, another
mouse.
comes across the knocked out one, so dumb, dumb, dumb. Oh, knocked out mouse
[00:46:22] WILL: and
you
video it.
Are they friend mouse or
[00:46:24] ROD: stranger mouse? Oh,
we'll get to that.
Oh, good.
[00:46:26] WILL: That
matters.
[00:46:27] ROD: Yeah.
So the first mouse that wandered past one of these knocked out mice, performed a set of behaviors towards the unresponsive partner.
First it's sniffed, the unconscious mouse sniffed its body and then started grooming the animal. Like, wake up, I'll take the
[00:46:40] WILL: ticks
off
Yeah,
yeah,
yeah. Yeah.
[00:46:42] ROD: Two, it starts biting the mouth of the unconscious mouth and pulling its tongue out.
So basically it looks like it's clearing the airways.
[00:46:50] WILL: That actually
[00:46:50] ROD: does
sound
like it.
doesn't. It,
[00:46:51] WILL: doesn't it
like, I mean, certainly, you know, tongue going, you know, wrong. Yeah. Can be a way
[00:46:55] ROD: of
blocking
the
airway. It, it doesn't help. and also when they put different objects in the [00:47:00] mouth of the, of the mouth of the unresponsive mouse.
I think I'm lisping when I'm not the mouth
[00:47:04] WILL: of
the
mouse.
No,
[00:47:04] ROD: you've got
it.
Right.
So they put different objects in it. The, the, the observer wandering ByMass would pull
that object out
[00:47:10] WILL: I love this.
[00:47:11] ROD: so they are clear in the airways. So more experiments, they wanted to rule out whether this behavior was motivated by a desire for social interaction, or curiosity or something else.
So like, what's going on? So they did some manipulations details, not here. They found a mouse was more likely to do this rescue behavior to a familiar partner than a stranger. Okay. So a mouse, they
[00:47:31] WILL: you. Yeah. Well that's
[00:47:33] ROD: the thing.
So it suggested their actions weren't motivated by
aggression.
Female rescuers went through more of this routine with strangers than males did.
So maybe there was strong empathy with the ladies. The ladies were a bit more like, it might be a stranger, but hey, it's a mouse
in need.
Yeah. And a mouse in need is a friend.
[00:47:50] WILL: Indeed.
[00:47:51] ROD: As, as all
[00:47:52] WILL: said. Yeah,
[00:47:52] ROD: indeed.
and it turns out mice rescuers, who had no previous experience of interacting with an unconscious peer, would also have a [00:48:00] crack, which means the behavior may be innate.
So male or female, they kind of go, uh, unconscious mouse. That's not
cool.
I'll try
[00:48:07] WILL: and help.
[00:48:08] ROD: it also turns out the recipients of first aid behavior would revive more quickly from their anesthetized state than the ones who didn't get the first aid behaviors or apparent first aid behaviors. But of course, researchers are being careful, like, is this
[00:48:21] WILL: actually
intent? No. Fuck it. Dive in. Just
[00:48:23] ROD: declare it.
Just say, yeah, mice try to
[00:48:25] WILL: resuscitate
each
other. I want to, I wanna thank you deeply for that because that that makes me have so much more
[00:48:31] ROD: faith
in the
world
is
[00:48:32] WILL: worth
it. The world.
The world. is worth it.
I
[00:48:34] ROD: love
it. Yep. Even mice give a shit about each other to the point where they would try and resuscitate
their peers.
That's beautiful. I think it's
[00:48:40] WILL: wonderful. That's
[00:48:41] ROD: beautiful.
[00:48:41] WILL: Look, that's your half a dozen little bits of science. Yeah. put 'em in
the bank.
Yep. Keep 'em there. And, and when you're at a dinner party or a social function, you just
[00:48:51] ROD: bore
you, you were at a football game. Just shrie it
out
to the people
[00:48:54] WILL: next Yeah.
Mice is
[00:48:55] ROD: resuscitate. Did
you know it's not sexual?
[00:48:58] WILL: Yeah. Did you know it's [00:49:00] not sexual? Give
[00:49:00] ROD: us a 14 and a half star rating on any platform you can get your hands on. I don't care what it is. Do it with Quill and Parchment and throw it
[00:49:08] WILL: at
your
neighbors.
Yeah, exactly. Write to Thomas Payne, in the past and send us some sort of email. Cheers. A little bit of science.com au.
And yes, we'll be returning to YouTube music for those who have begged
us and said
we must quit our current platform and go somewhere
[00:49:23] ROD: else.
We
will.
We'll go
everywhere.
