Listener Mail: Mothers of Invention

started saying, no, we're getting some great stuff. Let's save them up. Let's do an Invention listener mail episode. And that's that's easy to do. But then we had another conundrum. All right, obviously it's going to be the two of us reading them, but we can't use Carne our mail bot, our sci fi mail bot from Stuff to Blow your Mind. No, this is Invention. We need to turn to another mechanical

mail delivery entity. Now. Fortunately, the immortal craftsman Dadalus was on hand to build out a new mail bot for us, and apparently this bot was modeled on an earlier design by the forge god hefest Us which was, of course, the bronze automaton called Talos, known for wandering the shores of crete throwing giant rocks at ships. This is the prototype mail delivery variant of Talos. This is Melos. Yes, hello, Melos,

can you say hi to our listeners? Now? Fair? In all fairness, Melos also throws rocks at ships every opportunity that he gets. But he also brings us mail. Yes, he brings us mail, and he filters out scam emails from the witch Princess Medea. Oh yeah, yeah, that kind of that kind of junk Maile really gets his I Corps boiling. So Melos, you you've got something for us today?

Looks like this first email comes to us from our listener Rob, where it looks like I think we're gonna start off with a few about the episode we did way back on toothpaste. So Rob says, in your recent episode on toothpaste, you just dicussed how people throughout history approached dental hygiene before modern toothpaste became ubiquitous. One solution, of course, was to just do away with teeth altogether.

For example, both my maternal grandparents, along with several others of that generation, in my family had all their teeth removed relatively young and more dentures the rest of their lives. Apparently this was considered the modern hygienic thing to do at the time, and this would have been the nineteen thirties. They lived in the East End of London. So I worry that I'm reinforcing American stereotypes about British dental hygiene and telling you this, but nevertheless, I thought you might

find it interesting. Keep up the great work. I've been a regular listener to Stuff to Buill your Mind for a couple of years now, and it's one of the only podcasts I never missed an episode of. I'm enjoying Invention very much so far as well. Regards Rob Well, thank you Rob. That that is an interesting question. I don't know whether this is the case, but I do have to wonder if you couple a diet high and

sugar with a lack of proper dental care. I wonder if it actually is healthier and more hygienic to just pull them out and do your chewing with washable prosthetics. Uhh, I mean, I'm not recommending it, but I mean I wonder. I mean if so, you know, dental health. I think it is becoming more more clear that, like oral health is not just about you know, what your mouth feels like, it's connected to other parts of the body, you know, like like what kind of microbiota is living in your

mouth has an effect on the rest of you. Yeah, and there there have been some studies in recent years, and I haven't I haven't read them in detail, in part because I I had a couple of wisdom teeth taken out, and all these articles are about like, to what extent does wisdom teeth removal have some sort of influence on brain power and nerves and and so I'm like, uh, you know, I'm just I'm not ready for that yet.

This is why I'm dumb. I had them taken out to Oh no, you know, I would I would be an interesting topic to discuss, probably on Tough to Blow your mind. Uh, speaking of uh, back when Christian was on the show, I did an episode with him about ritual tooth removal um, which I don't remember getting into

anything in nineteen thirties London. So this exact particular example, I think it's new to me, but we discussed some various older practices, and we also discussed some like kind of uh, you know, crackpot theories about you know, about the the benefits of tooth removal um. And in this I have to bring up the the excellent Cinemax television series from Soderberg, The Nick, which went two seasons and it was phenomenal. I watched it. I don't know if

anybody else did, but but it's tremendous. Had Clive Owen just a wonderful cast. And uh. In one of the characters that shows up played by John Hodgman in his in his best cinematic role with Like Hands Down, he plays a slightly fictionalized version of this character who did advocate teeth removal, not for oral health, but for mental health. He saw it as a means to treat mental ailments. And uh, and I believe had his his children's teeth

removed as well. Okay, So in addition to us and not actually recommending you removing all your teeth and replacing them with prosthetics, there there have actually been some some maybe KuPS in history who did recommend this. Yes, there have been and confirmed yeah, I mean I think largely confirmed. Yes, But yeah, I would recommend going back and listening to that episode, it's of stuff to blow your mind for more grizzly tooth removal practices. All right, here's another one

from Melos. This one comes to us from Kate. Hi. Guys, my name is Kate. I am from the Ukraine and I currently live in Sri Lanka. I enjoy your podcast a lot, listen to each episode and it's exciting to learn something fascinating about regular routine objects every day. I just recently listened to your episode about toothpaste and you mentioned there that toothpaste is perhaps only a one of a few hygiene products which is not gender marketed. Sadly,

that's not entirely true. Is Colgate had a controversial campaign back in two thousand and sixteen, as it can be traced advertising toothpaste just for men, and even though it was met with highly negative reaction, product of the product is still continue to be advertised on the website. And did a link? Did look this up? This is so hilarious. I wonder what the flavor was, because it seems like the anytime you see something marketed just two men, it's

it's like it really gets into this. I mean it, I tend to find it gets into this like really kind of like hyper masculine nothing pretty is good kind of sensibility where it's like, yes, it smells like, uh, you know, everything has to smell like like some sort of industrial cleaner or something. Is you know, Ron Swanson bacon teeth, bacon and leather teeth. We've actually got an

example of this coming up right after this email. Yeah, but I'm just starting to imagine what's going through their minds, Like, if you want rock har masculine teeth, just like Burt Reynolds, try what you know, mascudent. Well, I'm in I'm of two minds on it. I think I went into a similar argument in our actual episode. On one hand, this I think this is silly, uh, And I also don't like the way it you know, ties into, you know,

to broad gender stereotypes. But on the other it's like, well, if it gets people to brush their teeth, I'm in favor of people brushing their teeth, and if they have to use like, uh, you know, the ax body spray of toothpaste to do it, then I don't know. I agree better to have people brushing their teeth through some kind of weird masculine fantasy than not brushing them at all anyway, uh, Kate continues, Thanks again, guys for the

work what you're doing. I think it's incredibly important to educate people on the origin of things we take for granted.

And while I understand that you focus mainly on American listeners, I would really enjoy some statistics as for how widely this, uh these inventions are accepted in the world, Like are there places where brushing teeth is still not an accepted practice, or how widely flushing toilets are accepted as norm Now, we did get into that a little bit, but I don't mean we didn't bust out any percentages, but we

I think this might have come in before the toilets episode. Ok, yeah, yeah, because I remember getting in talking about UM, well, maybe we didn't get into flushing toilets all that much. We were talking about differences in um wet versus dry uh as a you know, essentially a wiping technique and so forth. But yeah, this is a This is something that would be interesting to think about on future episodes when we're talking about more or less ubiquitous technology to what extent

is it ubiquitous? Are there places where they're uh, where are there are there places in the world where you see holdouts and what are the reasons for those holdouts? Yeah? And I think when it comes to something like like oral hygiene and like toilets, in both cases, I think there are two different ways you could look at it.

One is where there are just sort of like hygiene necessities that are essentially universal that you know, like somehow or another people should not be like doing open effication or should be practicing some kind of oral hygiene, especially

if they're consuming carbohydrates. But you know, once you're you're past that hurdle, I think there are fine just like differences to explore and the cultures of hygiene, right, you know, there are different ways that people have toilet culture or or oral hygiene culture that as long as they're getting the job done one way or another, not necessarily better or worse. Okay, But this next email, it turns out the gendered toothpaste marketing is not new. This was a

pretty good ad. This is from our listener Dominique. She says, Hi, guys, I just came across this old ad for Whiskey toothpaste and had to share it. Touches on so many things you talked about in your toothpaste episode. You mentioned how toothpaste is one of the only hygiene products that hasn't been gendered in advertising, and this ad says, here's the real he mane toothpaste, best argument yet for brushing three

times a day. Uh, she continues, love everything about this. Unfortunately, I don't have any info on its origin or where it came from. Is this a real ad? I found it on Pinterest while browsing ridiculous ads? In story, she continues, I'd love to hear an episode about the origins of a product that started out with narcotics as a major ingredient, like coca cola. That's a great idea. It fascinates me that products with cocaine, heroin, morphine, and some straight up

poisons like arsenic were marketed as health products for decades. Uh. Thank you for the great new podcast, Peace Dominique. I'm not positive, but I think this ad that you pointed out is reel. It looks like it was sold by a novelty mail order retailer based out of Miami in the nineteen sixties called Greenland Studios. I'm not a hundred percent,

but I think it's real. Uh. There are some other gems from the copy in this ad WiFi oral hygiene, enjoy it and quote night before feeling on the morning after, rents with soda instead of water if you prefer, I would say, there's plenty to enjoy about oral hygiene in and of itself. Well, I know you're a strong partisan of good oral hygiene. And I see you washing your washing. You see you brushing your teeth here in the office multiple well not multiple times a day. I will brush

my teeth in the office if I have lunch here. Yes, I mean, I'm not mocking you. That's admirable. That's a dedication. I do think it's interesting to consider, Like, I'm sure people have written critical essays about this and stuff, but like why create gendered marketing categories for products that don't have pre existing gendered connotations? You know, some products just already are like that, you know they they've been culturally

like that for a long time. Obviously, there's no like biological need for men and women to have different toothpaste. I'm sure they think it helps them sell more, but if that actually works, like, why does it work? That's an interesting question. To me. Yeah, I mean, I guess in some cases you're trying to make a product that already has gender stereotypes. You know, you're trying to to to make an acceptable counterproduct. But but to your point, like,

who was saying that toothpaste was just for for women? Um? I guess the other way of looking at it is it's just all about like in entering new product lines. And it's like, if you're the first person to put out a men's only toothpaste, uh, and you can convince the public that that these things should be gender specific, then you have a leg up on the competition, right.

If this indeed takes off, I guess it's true that people are always looking for a way to make customers feel that this product is for them, and gendering the marketing of it is just like one easy way to say, oh, okay, here's one way in which this fits a characteristic of me and it's my gender. Yeah. You also see the marketing of you know, non gender specific things, um, like like done a non gender specific, say, clothing for children,

that sort of thing. Yeah, essentially doing the exact opposite route, taking something that's like classically gendered and culture and and yeah, this would be an interesting thing to come back and explore and more depth. I don't know, maybe find somebody who has expertise in all of this, especially they're just the historical usage of of these tactics. Yeah, it might be more more appropriate it for stuff to blow your mind. I don't know, but yeah, anyway, thank you, Dominique. Just

one last message that we got about toothpaste. This came from a listener named Tobia from Italy. Uh, and just Tobia wanted to mention the fact that honey. So some of the historical recipes for toothpaste that we talked about involved honey, and we were wondering how that sounds like a not very good idea, because of course honey has sugar in it. The more sugar you put in the in the mouth, the more you invite bacteria they're gonna

cause tooth decay. And Tobya was pointing out that, uh, that is true, but of course honey also has anti microbial properties, and that is also true, so you may be, you know, weighing the balance of two different things. They're honey both fighting in bacteria by its natural anti microbial

properties and having sugar in it. That would encourage the growth of bacteria, and so you just have to test and see, and Tobia suggests there is some indication that that honey could be useful as an anti microbial in the mouth. All right, here comes another one. This one comes to us from Jim Guys. I really enjoy your podcasts. I've been the senior computer generated tactile graphics artist for the a t PC in Carmarillo, California since two thousand

and two. Your podcast about Braill was interesting. If when you decide to do a follow up on the subject, you might want to delve into tactial graphics. Up until the turn of the current century, UH, the way brail transcribers dealt with textbook, especially graphics that could not easily be described by the written word, was to glue down bits of string, fabric, cardboard, and the like to the page. As technology advanced, they would use a uh thermoform or

vacuum machine to form a tactile page. It is a procedure still in use. But then came the ability to use a computer to create the graphic with software and then print onto a sheet of encapsulated treated paper, thereby making edits much easier and ability to reproduce the graphic indefinitely. I still find the procedure fascinating and quite often challenging, especially when having to translate graphics of anatomy, biology, astronomy, etcetera.

Into two dimensional black and white illustrations that are quote unquote readable with fingerprints. College textbooks, can you use some very beautiful and colorful graphics that are pleasing to the eyes but not at all kind of fingertips, Sorry to be verbose, I didn't want this part of a brailed

textbook to be left out. That's a great point, Jim. Yeah, it makes sense to think about things that cannot be easily represented with text, because if it's just like I mean, that's one thing that like the alt text on you know, images on on websites is for if you can describe the image and words, well then that's one thing. But there are some images like like a map. You know what, what what does it help to describe a map, like the borders of a country in words? You need to

be able to like spatially represent that somehow. Yeah. I can't remember if we talked about this on the episode, but I know I had some stuff in my original notes about it, and that being some NASA texts that NASA had put out trying, you know, the educational text about space that use tactile graphics, namely, uh, the Solar System, Like how do you how do you talk about the Solar System? And really, uh, you know properly you know,

relay everything without some sort of graphic. I mean it's hard for me to imagine, because for me, those graphics were always there. I always had access to the visual data. But if you didn't have the visual data to rely on, how do you how do you do it? Yeah? Exactly, Yeah, And space is one of those things that I don't know. It seems so much like my appreciation of it is based in increasingly high resolution images that are like produced

by telescopes and stuff. I just get a visual feel for the thing that's being talked about, whether that's you know, a nebula or the surface of a planet. Uh, And like, how how do you represent that to somebody who is vision impaired or can't see all? Right? Um? Melos is

waving another one around. This one is from Luke, and I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but Luca was responding to the Brail episode as well, in which we were we were kind of, you know, contemplating the idea of non visual species creating written language, and and to

what extent they might create something like Brail. Uh, you know, they use similar you know, dots and so forth, raised dots to to convey meaning and um, and we're like, well, there's gotta be some sort of treatment in science fiction on this. And Luke reminds us that in Dungeons and Dragons you have the elithids the mind flares, which, incidentally, Christian and I did an entire episode about the science of elithids years back, and it just completely slipped my mind.

So I'm glad to be reminded of this. Specifically, the he says, quote the elethids developed a written language qual called quality, consisting of four broken lines, and they read it using their face tentacles. Because the elithids are you know, they're kind of like squid faced, purple under dark psychic beings, their little cathulus. Yeah, they're definitely h cathululoid in appearance. Yeah,

and they are if I remember the law correctly. They do have origins outside of uh, you know, at least the off world origins, you know, essentially alien beings that have come to the world of dungeons, dragons, Zulu tots. Yeah, so anyway, thanks for reminding us about that, Luca. Indeed, yeah, let's not forget the olipids. Okay, we need to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Okay,

we're back now. It seems that may Loss is offering to let me look through a box that has a tiny aperture in the wall to read this next message. And this message comes from our listener, Tay Tay says, hi, I love the pod and your recent Camera Obscura episode was really interesting. I especially enjoyed hearing the two of you non artists discuss your thoughts on the role of technology and art. I studied craft in school and I'm a jeweler by trade, and this is a huge and

ongoing discussion for the industry. Basically, jewelry is at this weird point now where things like three D printing and computer modeling are beginning to replace hand carving wax in lost wax casting. It's exciting because it makes more intricate and precise designs more accessible to less experienced jewelers, but it also takes out the real handmade element of a piece and blurs the line between those who are more

skilled or less skilled jewelers. Consumers mostly don't know the difference, but there is something heartbreaking about watching a craft that I adore and think is so important to keep alive slowly wilt. Personally, I don't think people modeling designs on computers should call themselves jewelers their designers. It's different when you get your hand sturdy and spend twenty hours carving a block of wax with teeny tiny tools and the

wax could fall in shatter at any moment. I don't know, it's complicated anyway, just wanted to add some perspective from my specific field. I'd love to hear more from you all in this area. Thanks Tay. Interesting. Yeah, that's a

that's a great example to contemplate. Springing off of that episode. Yeah, I think this came from the fact that we were talking about the idea of um the camera obscura as like an art assistants tool like it that you instead of just like eyeballing something and then trying to sketch it or paint it, that you could start with with with a essentially a tracing, a tracing of its reflection through a camera obscura, and this would give you somewhere

to start from. And the question was does that reduce the value of the art? I kind of don't really think so. It doesn't seem to bother me, but I can see how it would bother some people. And when like, I don't know, maybe that translation directly through the eye and the brain without any kinds of perspective, replicating tools and all that is somehow an important part of the

craft itself and the value of it. It's interesting, I've I've I've seen some like some talks and read some material about you know, the idea of of especially the use of robotics and AI being something that should evolve alongside the artist, so that ideally it as in is the case. And you know, in many instances when we're considering robotics in AI that the machine should not replace the human, the machine should augment the human. The machine should be able to in this case, I would imagine

make the jeweler better. Um, I'm not, I'm not. I don't know enough about the craft to really know exactly where the areas for that would be. But um. For instance, that you think of the manufacturing use of robots, and you of course see where robotics are best used to take over um you know, tasks of intense repetition and tasks that are inherently dangerous. So for instance, so you know welding, various welding jobs are ideal for for robots.

And then even in the manufacturing world, you see the use of what are referred to as cobots uh, machines that work alongside the human. And then I believe there's a certain amount of machine learning ideally involved here as well. But but then it it gets to this this idea that again you're not replacing the human, you're creating a machine they can aid the human in their in their job. And and if we take that out of the factory scenario,

we're looking into the artistic world. That's what you would want as well, like what is the thing that makes you better at that craft? In the same way that say, a word processor does not write the story for you, but a really good word processor is perhaps making up from some of your uh, your your shortcomings, and in the future, you know, making up for even more of your shortcomings, you know, and allowing you to focus on

the things that you're particularly skilled at. Yeah, and I wonder about this even in the realm of I don't know, crafts or skills we think of as more creative and less just like industrial stuff like obviously word processors are are a good example there. But even when the computer or machine takes a more active role, I can see an interesting kind of symbiosis emerging. Where one example is this sort of this version of chess. I don't know

if you've heard about this. I think I read somewhere where the chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov talked about this, the idea that you could have essentially chess players that are a master chess player that is also working with a powerful AI chess player, so like they are competing just like the the you know, the AI recommends a series of moves as you could do this, or you could do this, and then the human player sort of picks

from among the AIS generated recommendations. And that's sort of a new emergent type of chess strategy, you know, android hybrid chess player. You know. I of course this leads me to Mortal Kombat. Okay, uh, this is not quite the same thing. But um, I'm really intrigued by the I picked up this latest Mortal Kombat game that came out now, and perhaps if something has been big in fighting games and video games for a while and I

just didn't notice it. But there's a huge um emphasis placed on tweaking your own AI player and then throwing the AI player at a whole bunch of fights, you know, like a fight tower, and then reaping rewards like in game currencies and whatnot based on its performance. So there are plenty of people that are still playing this game the way you know, people have always played a fighting game, which is control the character and habit fight other habit

fight AI characters or human characters. But then there's this whole idea of like tweaking the I AI character and having it fight other AI and perhaps like sitting back and watching it or then coming back and checking on it to see how it's performed. That's interesting. So it's like taking a game that would normally be an action game where you're in the moment and turning it into a strategy game where what you're trying to do is

optimize the design of your competitor. Yeah, so you know, perhaps we have many of our listeners out there who play games, of play lots of games. Maybe you can speak to this. Uh is this part of an ongoing trend in other games? And then what if anything, might we, you know, learn from this about our future engagement with AI. Yeah, that's a really interesting question. Uh So anyway or are we ready for this next message from Melo's here? Yes? This this one seems to be coming with some danger. Yes,

this one comes to us from Evan and uh. Evan says, quote loving the new podcast so far, I stumbled onto Stuff to Blow your mind nearly a year ago and was pleasantly surprised at how I found myself enjoying episodes on subjects that I never would have been normally interested in. You truly opened my eyes to all sorts of weirdness and wonder in places I would never have looked anyway.

During the opening of Death Ray Part two, you mentioned that death ray technology is something which, during the twenties and thirties was portrayed in the media as being just on the cusp of becoming a reality, and I immediately thought of the flying car. The running joke on today's car blogs is that the flying car is always about

two years away from becoming a thing. I can recall watching the Discovery Channel specials as a kid, which showed then amazing prototypes of futuristic looking flying cars and things. King at the time that my first car might take to the skies just like Doc and Marty and back to the future too. I know that numerous technically successful attempts have been executed, at least as far back as the fifties and sixties, and even today Boeing and Uber

or testing prototypes. It seems like these contraptions have long been reality, but for numerous reasons, both financial and practical, they just can't seem to make it to prime time. It seems like a perfect topic for an episode of Invention. Thanks for all the fantastic factoids. Keep up the great work and I'll keep listening. Well, thanks so much, Evan. I think you're exactly right about flying cars. I think in both cases actually death rays or directed energy weapons

in flying cars. It's not that we don't have the technology to create these things, it's just that they're not practical for the use cases that they're enthusiasts have imagined. I mean, we can create compact flying vehicles that would be like a flying car. It's more question of these practical problems that would make impossible for people to you know, use these to get to work in the morning, Like how does it take off? How much room does it need to take off? How do you guarantee safety and

pilot expertise? Right? I mean, do you really want the drivers that you drive next to in traffic operating flying vehicles? Um? And and how much energy? How much you know, how loud is it? How much energy does it take to fly? Or does it take to use this directed energy weapon? I would say given all these practical problems, you begin to question, like why you would actually want a flying

car other than the fact that it's conceptually cool. Yeah, and and so much about the flying car would be an interesting topic to discussed because a lot of it is just the idea that the experience of the car takes place in the sky. And one thing that I come back to time and time again on this is if people say, where are the flying cars, I would say, well, we have the helicopter. Now the thought exercise he would be, think of what the helicopter does that a flying car

is supposed to do? And think about the reasons that that that helicopter does not satisfy your thirst for a flying car. And I think those answers will will mostly explain why we don't have flying cars and why we have helicopters instead. I think a lot of this would have to do with cost and energy efficiencies. Yeah, I think I think that's where you find your main answers, because yeah, essentially a flying car is available to those with the money to spend on it, and it is

a helicopter. That's a really excellent point. And I think there's a similar thing going on with death rays. I mean, you've got these problems with portability, energy use, range. It's not that you can't create a directed energy weapon. It's more like you could accomplish a lot of the same goals that are imagined for a directed energy weapon with

cheaper existing conventional ballistic weapons. Though that's not to say there might not be some special cases where a directed energy weapon is is desirable for some reason, you know, strategic or otherwise. Uh, And obviously you know military research is ongoing. I was reading when we we talked about a little bit in the death ray episodes, just some of the more recent projects working on stuff like this.

It is ongoing, but I think for most of the reasons people imagined a death ray might be useful, you know, other things get the job done cheaper and and much more simply. Okay, we got one more death ray email here. This comes to us from Walter. Walter says, Hi, guys,

loved your discussion on death rays. I listened during my morning walks, and I might have been temporarily distracted and missed it, But I don't recall a discussion of what might be the closest we have to a death ray, the neutron bomb, if I remember correctly, this is a device that utilized a small nuclear explosion that had enhanced output of neutrons that could penetrate tanks and other armor,

including buildings and bunkers. The unfortunate people affected would perish horrible deaths brought on by intense radiation, sickness, and inspire and expire within an hour of exposure. The affected area would have no physical damage, but all living beings would be eradicated. Nasty business, but about as close to a proper death ray as we've come so far, thoughts Walter. Yeah, I think in a way this is right. I don't think a neutron bomb would be without causing physical damage.

But I think it's that the idea that was that there would be reduced damaged physical infrastructure, uh, and that it would be able to better penetrate armor shielding like you did mention this armor shielding like an armored vehicles and stuff. But would a neutron bomb be able to bring about lasting peace? Uh? No, I don't think so, unless you're making the same argument people make about nukes

in general. I think, you know that the whole mutually assured destruction thing, which we talked about the logic of that in the episode, and we discussed some criticisms of the idea of mutually assured destruction as as a bringer of world peace. But uh, yeah, yeah, I do think that that's that's possibly a good comparison. Uh, certainly in

the same way that all nuclear weapons are. But one of the ways it might be similar is that I don't know if one of the things about the death ray was that people imagined it was kind of like somehow clean, you know, that it was a way of defending yourself from enemies in in some way that didn't involve like blood and guts and all that, like you know,

shrapnel hitting bodies and people exploding into pieces. It would just sort of like make people disappear without a trace, and the enemy planes would would stop flying and they wouldn't be able to attack your city and bomb you. I'm not sure if the neutron bomb works like that. I mean, the neutron bomb, I think would tend to be an offensive weapon, not a defensive weapon, right Yeah, And it would also not be clean. It would give people horrible radiation burns all over their body and cause

them an agonizing death. Well, pl you know, with the death ray, since it never can't really can't really came to fruition, uh you know, you know, it will remain largely clean, right, Like, there are no stories of loss and tragedy and death due to the death gray um, because I imagine, you know, if you're talking about war like, the results of of deploying this weapon with even the

you know, the best of intentions would still have horrifying results. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the lessons from our death ray discussion is that there is no such thing as a clean weapon. It's a fantasy. You know, weapons are always going to harm and kill people. And to the extent that that they are invented and funded and used, people have to keep that in mind. I mean, these things are are real killer technologies that have real consequences.

All Right, we have another one, and this one comes to us from Rob. Rob says, your chopsticks episode was great, and throughout the episode, I kept wondering if you talk about using them for non Asian foods. When I was growing up, my babysitter was a next door neighbor teenager whose mom was Japanese and dad was intuit They use chopsticks for virtually every meal. When my babysitter taught babysitter taught me how to use them, she made me practice

using them while eating popcorn. It was a horrible experience at the time. In the forty or so years since, I've been very thankful I used the same tactic when I taught my kids to eat with chopsticks. My youngest daughter even uses her old set to sort lego into colored piles. Oh, I've I have more to I can add some stuff on this in a second. Rob continues quote, it has been at least thirty five years since a cheese puff has left processed cheese residue on my fingers

thanks to chopsticks. If I want to pickle from a jar, no fork for me, chopsticks time again, time and time again. Um, and I have to back him up on that. I've been really pressing my family to start using chopsticks to get the pickles out of the jars. So just reaching the whole well, that or just forking because sometimes problematic. And don't even get me started on the spoon. I haven't won him over yet, but I'm glad that Rob is able to back me up. Um. He continues. Same

with pickled beets and onions. Jelly beans are my chopstick nemesis, though I'm only about one success for every twenty five or so attempts. But can I ever make short work of a pile of cooked peas or corn kernels? Fun side note In French, chopsticks are called baguettes. Much wordplay fun followed from this in my English French home when my kids were younger. Thanks for the skilled and passion you both put into your work, and I hope you get as much reward making the shows as your fans

get from consuming them. All the best in twenty nineteen. Rob. Thanks Rob, So what's your lego story? Rob? Okay, I've not tried picking them up with legos, but up with chopsticks. I've tried neither. But I will say this. My son had a birthday in the last month and he was given this cool little game as like wooden blocks. And it's the thing is, it's like it looks like sushi,

all right. Uh, it's like a puzzle of sushi and it comes with real chopsticks and you're supposed to time each other and compete against people, uh drawing a card and you see the way the wood pieces are assembled to form sushi, and then you use the chopsticks to move the pieces of wood around. And it's a beautiful looking game. I was really excited to play it, but I've I've personally found it very frustrating to try and

pick up like painted wood objects with chopsticks. I mean, I guess been a large part because I'm not used of trying to pick up anything other than food, and then again only certain foods. Whereas something that is slick, like a piece of painted wood or like a lego, I would think that would I would think the legos would prove challenging, but it sounds like Rob's got it figured out. Well, yeah, I think hard things like that.

Usually you're not putting things in your mouth that are as rigid as legos or as pieces of wood, and so they're gonna have less resistance and grip on the on the chopsticks than food would. So um. Anyway, I still delighted to to hear uh inside from a listener on the chop Sticks episode. All right, time to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. M all right, we're back. It's time to talk about toilets. Robert. Oh, yes, the toilet episodes. Those were a lot of fun. We

got a lot of toilet emails. Uh, there's no way we're gonna get through them all, but I figured we'll do a few of them. Let's let's dive in, dive into the toilet world. All right, what does uh, what does the nailis have for us? Here? And Melos hands us this message from Logan says, Hello, Robert and Joe. I want to start off by saying I'm a huge fan of both stuff to blow your mind and invention. I don't know if you guys meant to leave it out or if you if it didn't come up during

your research. But here's a fun fact kit. Harrington, who plays John Snow on Game of Thrones is related to John Harrington, the inventor of the flush toilet, and then Dr John Snow showed up in the episode as well, of course, an epidemiologist of Victorian England. I hope you both found this bit of trivia enjoyable. Uh so this was from Logan. I I did come across this when we were researching the episode, but I couldn't figure out

if it was true. I saw it alleged in some suesstionable looking sources and couldn't find anything that looked good for it. So I don't know if this is true, But I don't know. I kind of just want to take Logan's word for it. Well, I mean hopefully, I mean, kid Harrington's not going away anytime soon, so surely somebody will ask him about this in an interview and he'll he'll provide a real answer. All I know is that in the show Game of Thrones, John Snow does not

create a toilet. I may imagine one of the masters would create toilets that probably where it would come from toilets do figure into the into the books and the show a little bit. Several characters die on toilets. I think, yeah, that's right. Well, there's a question, what's the most technologically advanced toilet in a in a fantasy novel? That would be an interesting question to have answered. I believe the

Red Keep in Game of Thrones has guarter robes. Yeah, yeah, anyway, maybe maybe I'll do another quick one here from Ivana about toilets before we move on. Uh, you mind if I do this swing around before? Okay, so Vanna says, hey, guys, big fan. Well, theoretically that's a lie. I'm a fan of Stuff to Blow your Mind. Uh so maybe this was her first episode of Invention. Well, you recently featured

the toilet episode on Stuff to Blow your Mind. I've been listening for a few years now, but never thought to write in until today when at the end of part one of the toilet episode you mentioned Slovenia. I have no idea why, but I always get excited when somebody mentions my home country, most likely based in the fact that we're small and most people don't know we exist. I don't know a lot of people know about Slovenia

these days. Uh, she writes, I also thought it might be interesting for you to know, if you didn't already, that the cast in the castle you mentioned called pre Jomska Castle literally means under the cave. This was the castle that was in the in the mouth of the cave where the scoundrel who ran the castle got blasted by a cannon while he was sitting on the guard row. Somebody betrayed him and he had the worst bathroom break of his life. Ivana says, hope you're having a great day.

I'll try to listen to you again soon, maybe even an invention. I mean, what's another stuff media podcast on the top on top of the five if I'm already listening to keep up the great work of Anna, thank you Ivanna. Yeah, I do want to say we realize, we were try and realize all the time that there's so many podcasts out there to listen to these days, and there's some many great podcasts. So we feel extremely

privileged anytime something we've made makes it into your regular rotation. Absolutely, we were were humbled by you taking us into your ears. All right. Here is another bit of listener mail. This one comes to us from Matthew. Matthew says, Hi, Robert and Joe, I just finished part two of your episodes on the Humble Toilet. I've had the privilege of seeing how the job has done in a few different parts of the world, and since you asked for it, I

thought you'd appreciate a few stories. In descending order of technological bells and whistles. Number one, at age nine, in a Japanese airport, I just finished my business and was trying to find the flush function among the myriad options on the control panel. I pressed a likely looking about and illustrated with a few droplets of water, but the toilet didn't flush. Instead, a fate were emanated from the machine, and a small silver cylinder protruded for in the bottom

of the bowl. That day I learned about the bidet. Fortunately, my reflexes were quick enough to dodge the water jet, but I still had to scramble to find the off button while the cubicle door got sprayed. Was it that fortunate? Would it have been horrible to get sprayed? Well, I mean it depends where it sprays you like, I guess the thing about a biddat is you you wanted to spray you, but you wanted to spray you in one

very specific spot. Anywhere else is kind of a failure of not necessarily a technological failure, but at least a user error. Right. Yeah, maybe if you were small, like when you were a child, you might not have been aligned properly for number two. On a recent visit to Japan, four were warned and four armed, I was able to better appreciate some of the extra functions. In particular, one model had a small sink built into the top of

the cistern. Flushing caused water to flow in the sink first, so that the water one used to wash their hands was then used to fill the cistern for the next flush. Not a full gray water system, but a great water saving trick. Nonetheless, Yes, um, you know as years and years ago, I guess goodness, probably like a decade ago now, I wrote, Yeah, it was at least that because it was my first article for how stuff works, like a test article. I had wrote how right, how gray water

reclamation works? And in that article I did mention one of these in passing it. You see you see some of these models where essentially it gives you the option of washing your hands with the fresh water and then that that water can then be used to flush the toilet, which which I think is a sensible way to go. It's it's it's um you know, odd that we haven't seen more of that design implemented double dipping on your

water when you can yeah, exactly number three. A few years ago I took a trip to Nepal to hike the Himalayan uh Ana Purna Circuit. The highest point on the trail, uh Thorong Law Pass is five thousand, four hundred sixteen meters or seventeen thousand, seven hundred sixty nine feet above sea level, higher than Everest Base Camp. If you climb the aarrogance thinner, the accommodation becomes progressively more spartan and the toilet facilities become less familiar to the

Western perspective. The lower altitude tea houses had a number of Western options, and getting assigned one of those rooms was a small luxury, but higher up one quickly had to master the squad. It was that or nothing. Lastly, on this same Nepalese trip, my stomach was taking a while to get used to the local fair. Inevitably, nature called when I was out on the trail without a restroom in sight. I'd had the foresight to keep a roll of toilet paper in my pocket, but sometimes one

must make do. On that day, my lieu of the view was a hastily dug a hole in the snow off the trail, behind a convenient boulder, looking over the valley and at one with nature. I attached a photograph of a typical vista from the trip, though not necessarily the view in question. Keep up the great work, warm regards, Matthew.

Thanks Matthew. Well that's great. I mean, I appreciate hearing about the various toilets that Matthew encountered, But this also gets down to the heart of like just the joy of traveling is checking out not only like the big sweeping differences and big cultural differences, but like the toilets. I'm there's a part of me that I think is always going to be excited to see what the specific toilet technology looks like. Um, how you turn on the hot and cold water in the shower, Uh, that sort

of thing, you know, the little details of travel. Well, yeah, even with toilet culture, it's a great way of travel. Is a great way of seeing that the way you do things is not necessarily the normal way of doing things. It's just one way to do things. Okay, So we got a short message from Chris about now, remember in the toilet episode, I was horrified by all these early toilets, like these Elizabethan toilets, and you know the later ones that have all these like cushions around the bowl. Just

seemed gross to me. That there's there's cloth on all the toilets seemed unsanitary. Um. But Chris writes subject toilet Part one, the reason for cloth seat covers, and then continues is that it keeps your bottom safe from the icy shock of a cold seat in countries that can get cold in winter, but where central heating is uncommon. I always made use of one in Hong Kong, and my unshocked bottom thanked me for it. Oh well, you

know that that is a great point. I don't remember that point of our conversation, um or I guess I vaguely do, But I wasn't thinking about like modern designs. So I remember one of one of my grandparents I think, had not a cloth cover, but kind of like this soft cover Like this was kind of like a softer plastic kind of cover, and it indeed was less cold to sit on. I remember that, so yeah, in a cold climate it would I can see what would make sense.

All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Luke. Hey, guys, big fan here. I have listened for a few years to stuff to blow your mind and really enjoy the way you guys present topics. I'm really enjoying your new podcast that would be invention. You always say you want folks with experience and what you were talking about to write in. Sadly, this is my first time writing in and it's a two and it's

to address the masculine toilet side. I just wanted to say that you two are right and that there are definitely they are definitely being silly about building a bigger batter toilet, or at least branding it the way they have. I write, and not because I have used one, because I can vouch that the concern is at least real if not pressing. Robert is right, that right, and that just sitting positioning will take care of the issue on

a normal toilet, just like everything else in life. The real problem is that it gets you when it is the worst possible time. I am sure you guys have worked an exhausting day before and then had tasks and work in your personal lives piled up on on top on the same day, and when it is finally over, an exhaustion has permeated your very bones. What is the last weary thing you do before bad collapse on the toilet and make sure your rest will be long and

undisturbed one And that's when it gets you. Not no, So not only do you have the monstrous day on your line, but now you have gotten one of the most intimate parts of your body dirty and at least in your your mind, the grossest place in your home. So I agree, not a huge problem that requires a new feed of engineering, but when it does get you, it really sticks in your mind. L O L I would I would suggest the masculine toilet is not a

new project product, though just rebranding. The style of toilet has existed for decades and can be found in special needs, special access bathrooms all over North America. Toilets designed for these washrooms are taller than average toilets to make it easier for someone to lift themselves off. So rebranding the masculine toilets. Definitely sounds like a business strategy. Luke, that

was an impassioned plea. You have convinced me. Okay, he continues on a side note, I have to address the wheel issue and your guys use of the saying there is no point in reinventing the wheel. I believe you guys have misinterpreted this thing. As you guys point out that better and better wheels are being made all the time. I have always figured what this would mean is that the person doing the reinventing here is limited from using any technology already involved with the wheel. They don't mean

reinvent the wheel by putting ball bearings into it. When they say reinvent, they mean make something that does the same job as a wheel, but no circular wheel can be part of it. This would be a significant challenge, and since the friction of a wheel on a well maintained road is already very low, than any new invention you might come up with is probably going to only match the wheel at best, and most likely will involve more moving parts and be less efficient overall. Please keep

up the amazing work you guys are doing. I find the majority of your topics very interesting and it is hard to find any podcasts that today that don't force a private agenda along with the story. Thanks very much regards Luke. What does that private agenda mean? I don't know what. I feel like I'm certainly pushing a private agenda. What's that? What's the private it's against cushions on toilet h Yeah. I feel like we do have our own little pet peeves here and there, and I guess I will.

Our basic agenda on these shows is too is to explore, is to come from a place of curiosity. Uh to learn something about the world, um, about the universe, about our history, about our cultures, and and present it in an open minded way to learn from it and help other people learn from it as well. And uh, as as Quato would say, to open your mind, to make the familiar strange. Yeah, yeah, like we said before, and stuff to blow your mind. And they gave us the

title stuff to blow your mind. But really I like to think of the show is stuff to open your mind, right, stuff to expand your mind. That's that sort of thing, all right, But I know we haven't reached the bottom of the barrel on toilet related listener mail yet. Okay, our next message here is coming from our listeners. Sam. This concerns the episode we did about walls. Uh. Sam says, Hi, guys love your work and have been a loyal listener for a while now in London, UK. Really enjoyed your

episode on walls. But you debunked a false factoid that I believe is actually true. You said that you can't see the Great Wall of China from space. In fact, astronauts on the I S s have reported being able to see it and can see many other human built structures. This article from The Guardian backs this up. The myth is in fact that you can see the Great Wall from the moon, which is untrue, and no human built

structures can be seen from this distance. While the Great Wall is difficult to see from space due to its similar color to the ground and poor condition in many places, the right condition, in the right conditions, it is possible to see from space. Keep up the good work. If you're ever in England, let me know and we can go for a point. All right, Well, yeah, I looked this up and I you are correct, Sam. I was getting this backward. I think what I was remembering was

this old statement that you can see it from the moon. Obviously, you can't see it from the moon. Whether you can see it from space depends on where you are in space and what the conditions are, particular atmospheric conditions. Yeah, so I feel like that's come up on the past episodes. I should have I should have been able to chime in on that as well. You should have spanked me right then and there. Thank you so much, Sam. We

appreciate the correction. All Right, we're beginning to run out of time here, but we're gonna try, and we have so many good ones. We're gonna try and just run through a few more. Cram a couple more in al right. This one comes to us from Bob entitled Demons. Hey, guys, love the podcast. Been listening since the first episode and also a fairly new and big fan of Stuff to Buy your Mind as well, So that's interesting. Came in the backwards on those um Anyway, he continues, I'm currently

listening to your most recent episode. Literally it's on pauses. I typed this about the Wheel and Robert mentioned the demon Bure appearing on the cover of a Black Sabbath or AUSSI album. Now I'm a bit of a heavy metal nut and immediately started trying to figure out what album this could be. I know the covers of every Sabbath and AUSSI release and never remembered seeing a lion head with goat legs around it, and with an image like that, How could you not want to hear that album?

After a little bit of searching, I found the album you were speaking of. It's simply titled The Bure Album and was an unofficial Japanese release of a live show while Ronnie James Dio was on vocal duty. Physical copies go for a pretty penny on discogs. I might need to add it to my want list anyway. I've never written into a podcast before and thought I would share thanks for being such a great podcast hosts and making

my work day go by a little faster. Oh, Bob will break your heart if I say I'm a big Sabbath fan, but I can't get down with the d O years. I don't know why. I'm not trying to. I mean, I'm glad you love them. I'm an Azzie die Hard so well he was Dio. I'm not familiar with this. You know, The Black Sabbath had different vocalists over time, very much only familiar with the Azzi era. Yeah, their first like seven albums I think had Ozzy Osbourne

on on vocals. Uh. Their first six albums are just just tip top, you know, and then I think they started being more hit or miss in general opinion. Eventually they ended up with different vocalists on different albums. Several of their albums had Ronnie James Dio as the singer, and I think he's more of the kind of traditional or I don't know if you could say it's more traditional since it's Black Sabbath, but the kind of metal vocalist you think of, and less like the drawling Ozzy

Osbourne style. I know tons of people love love the Deo albums and uh and and more power to you if you do, but I'm a first six kind of guy. Okay, here's one more about wheels real quick. We got tons of emails essentially on the same subject as this one I'm about to read from Jess. Jess says, Hi, I've been loving the Invention podcast after being a fan of stuff to Blow your mind for a couple of years now because of you two and other folks in your

podcast network. I've become that annoying person, adding, well, I learned on a podcast that to any relevant conversation, We're glad we could help you be that annoying um. In the Wheel part two, you mentioned monowheel vehicles in science fiction and had a hard time coming up with an example. First thing that popped into my mind was a scene from Star Wars episode three, Revenge of the Sith, when Obi wan Kenobi, best character in the entire saga, and

General Grievous are engaged in a chase on the planet Utah. Pow. Kenobi's ride as a creature called a aractyl whose name is Boga. General Grievous is writing a mono wheeled vehicle that has legs and some other need attachments. Check it out here. She's got a link. Thanks and keep up with the great podcasts. And she also attached to photo of her dog, Obi wan Kenobi, who would have quote, who would have been probably terrified if a mono wheeled vehicle of any type? This was what I was thinking

of and couldn't remember. When I was trying to conjure up the example, we were both saying, like, I know, there was a big movie that add one. What was it there? You go? Yeah, now I'm I'm picturing it. I can picture like the I think I've seen the lego thing in stores, had this vehicle. Uh yeah, I forgot all about the general grievous. Um. I need to see that. I need to see Revenge of the Sith again, I really do, you know. I remember that was like

a scene that stood out to me as fun. So my brief history with the Star Wars prequels is I didn't see episode one when it came out, despite being a huge Star Wars fan who as a kid just never saw it, never saw episode two. Finally, when episode three came out, I went with the theater. I went to the theater with my friends to watch it and I sat there watching it and I was like, wow, this is bad. And I got out and I was like it was Was that as awful as I thought

it was? And they were like, you know, if you've seen the other two? No? Uh, And that was exactly my experience. I went back and I saw the other two, and suddenly episode three seemed great by comparison. Yeah, yeah, I kind of had. I remember I saw one twice in the theater and and was convinced that I loved it. I just had built up my I wanted to love it so much that I did for a while. And uh, and I don't know, I haven't gone back to it.

Maybe I would love it again if I saw it. Uh. I think one of my big things with per at least the first two, is that the c G I whiked terrific for the time is maybe not as as great now, like I kind of want to see. I want all three of them to be remanded street before I watched again. I guess as opposed as I was to doing that to the original trilogy, I'm all for it with the with the the prequel trilogy. But I do remember the specific scene with the mono wheel and

Obi wan Kenobe. I remember that one being a lot of fun. Yeah, highlight this was pretty cool, as I recall. I mean, there's a lot of cool stuff in that that third one, especially though there well even I would say the second one is the worst one in my opinion by far, just unwatchably bad, except it's got Christopher Lee in it. Every single time Christopher Lee comes on scene, it's just like, you know, it's just like fresh air

being led into a stuffy room. It's like, oh so wonderful, and then he leaves, and then everything like wilts instantly. Well he he leaves, he leaves at the end of a pretty great saber battle like that was one of its redeeming qualities is he had some really cool saber action at the end, and then you had some cool monsters. Again, they might need a little c g I touch up work from my my modern taste, but still they had some cool monsters. But I'm getting kind of far from

the monowheel again. I'll props to General Grievous for busting out of Mono Wheel in that battle. Okay, one more short Wheel one. This is from our listener Adrian. Adrian says, thank you for an awesome podcast. Just finished parts one and two on the Wheel. Wanted to give a shout out to my favorite Wheel spinoff technology, the Pulley and

the Mighty Compound Pulley. You've probably gotten dozens of emails regarding the Pulley already know this was the only one in which case I'd like to add my listener vote to a Pulley episode. Also, you could tie in a couple of outstanding cousins to the pulley, the tooth wheel or gear and the winch. Loved the show and loved binging the End of the World Josh Josh Clark's podcast, which I found to be an effective hangover cure looking forward to future episodes. Adrian, Well, we're always happy to

be a hangover cure. I think the pulley and the block and tackle are absolutely one of the most It's one of the most mystifying and magical seeming of the simple machines because you watch it work and you don't understand why what you're seeing is not magic, Like like when you see a block and tackle that's got a bunch of the least that allows, you know, somebody to lift an extremely heavy weight just by pulling down on a rope away they would never be able to lift

on their own, and and and you're wondering, just like, what's the magic that's going on there? It's all on the tension of the rope folks. Well, hey, you know, I hate to stop it here, but Melos is already gazing longingfully at the sea. I think he wants to throw stones at the ships again. So we're gonna have

to to call it here. We did not get a chance to go through all of the great listener mail that we received for Invention over the past few months, but we got to get through a good chunk of it, so hopefully we'll do some more of these in the future. Um well, we'll catch up on more listener mail related to Invention episodes in the meantime. Check out all those episodes of Invention at invention pod dot com. You can also find the Facebook group which is just Stuff to

Blow your Mind discussion module. That's where folks talk about episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, but they also talk about episodes of Invention. Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio producer TORR. Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of

I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio is the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.