Are We Really Breathing Julius Caesar's Last Breath?

on eBay. It took two months to sell, and it sold for a whopping, which sounds like a great business. But he was bored with his day job, so he decided to try it again. And guess how much? The next bag sold for a hundred and sixty eight dollars. So he started packaging it better and for thirty two dollars a can, and they've been selling like hot And he isn't the only one. I decided to do a little research on this, and there's a whole industry around this. There.

Eucalyptus lay six packs from Australia, Rocky Mountain air straight from the Colorado, even air from the Swiss Alps, and people in Beijing are going crazy for it. Does anyone in China do the reverse, like, do they like package their smog for people living abroad? Well, I know you're joking, but actually this does happen when I was doing the looking into this. So novelty cans of Beijing air are huge sellers, and the ingredients listed on them are pretty great.

It says nitrogen, oxygen and other stuff. But reading about packaged there made me wonder what's actually in the stuff around us and what crazy stories are hiding in every breath we take. And that's what this episode is all about. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend man guest how Ticketer, And in today's episode, we're talking

about the stories literally hanging in the air. But before we get to that, we've got some housekeeping to take care of. You're talking about Pan Piguan. Yes, you may remember from a few episodes ago it was called what's the most American Place. We challenged our listeners to come up with this mnemonic device to help us remember the five territories that are part of the United States but

actually not one of the United States. Puerto Rico, Guam, the US, Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Northern Mariana Islands. And I think mine was pancakes grow under a nice tree to help remember those? What was yours again? Uh? What was it? It It was like pickles. Pickles get ugly after negotiations. Yeah, that's what it was. So we asked listeners to send in their own, and they came flooding in. It was pretty awesome to see. So I wanted to recognize some of those, and we've got some prizes to

give away. One that I thought was pretty terrific was and very simple, but I thought easy to remember. From Fred Kruk. We have pine nuts are unusually good, unusually good, all right? The best trio of responses. Kelly Lawson in Um Georgia sent this one, as she actually sent three, and we've got pirates go ashore under nightfall, people get uneasy around Ninja's and politics get ugly around November like also are so good? All right? You got a T shirt coming to you, Kelly. And let's see what other

we've got two more. We tried to come up with the top three, but it was just too hard to do this. I have to admit this might actually be my favorite from Brett Wilkes in Massachusetts. Paul Giamat's undershirts are nuanced, just so nuanced, all right. And then one that was um actually used more letters to use both letters and some of these pose Raven gave us vodka and said never more, and I just thought that was awesome,

all right, So you guys are winners. And then one that was just crazy complicated, and I thought, because it was even more difficult to remember than just remembering the names, I think deserves a prize. Rob Brown, Um, you're gonna be getting a prize as well. So his explanation, Since Demonic begins with a silent M, I suggest the following Northern Mariana's American Samoa guam Us, Virgin Island, Puerto Rico

becomes Mascus viper. The end, of course, is silent pronounced the Mascus with a silent like with us, which sounds a little like Damascus, and then the rest sounds like viper. It's so complicated, but but I love that, So Rob, you're going to be getting a prize too, So thank you all for participating in this contest. That is pretty awesome. But let's dig into today's episode topic, you know, one of the things that really inspired this episode was Sam

Kaine's new book called Caesar's Last Breath. Yeah, that's right, we'll have Samon in just a bit. And you know what his book kind of reminded me of. So here's a book that came out a few years ago called Twinkie Deconstructed, where the author looked at the back of a Twinkie package and realized there were like thirty nine ingredients that go into Twinkies. Then many he didn't recognize. A whole bunch of them were unpronounceable. So we decided to chase down the story for each one, and each

chapter is about a different ingredient. So he goes down to mind Shaft and Idaho, He's chasing across this field in China, and it's crazy, but that's kind of what Sam does. Like he looks at a single breath of air and goes down a rabbit hole on the elements

and compounds in air and it is fascinating. Yeah. But the funny thing is, as soon as I started researching air and this is so me, but I immediately wanted to go to Tangent Town, like I know where someone to be talking oxygen and nitrogen and argon and whatever. But I immediately wanted to talk about like an air hockey game some students invented, and air guitar competitions, and honestly, anything but chemistry spoken like the son of a chemical engineer,

and that would be you. Yeah, well, just to be warned, I've got this pile of non essential facts for the fact off that all have the word air in them, like air fresheners. Can't wait for this. By the way, do you know the inspiration for those little tree air fresheners that hang in taxis? I mean, I've seen those a million times, but now I don't know where those

came from. You probably realize it's a bad smell, but more specifically, they got to start when this chemist overheard a milkman crying over spilled milk, or rather that he hated the smell of the spilled milk in his truck. Anyway, the chemist wasn't immigrant from Europe, and he started thinking that a little like alpine scent from his homeland could help. So he designed the air freshener. But strangely, the first ones weren't tree shaped. They were shaped like pin up girls.

But He didn't change the design because it was sexist. It was just that it was easier to pull plastic off a tree pattern, So that's why he changed it from a woman's shop. It's weird to think about the fact that there were just all these things that we noticed, but we don't ever stop to question why they're that way. You know, I've been again and hundreds of calves and you just are like, oh, well, they're just all shaped

like trees. I don't really know why, but they are the other awesome things that like, his family's owned this company for three generations and they claimed that they've sold as many air fresheners as McDonald's has sold Hamburgers over the airs. Oh my god, I would imagine that things are crazy profitable to all. Right, to keep us on track here, So just like sleep flavor, two topics we've covered here on the show, the reason we chose air is that it's something that's easy to overlook, you know,

partially because it's invisible. But the other reason we don't think about it very often is that, honestly, we just don't have to. Yeah, I mean, breathing happens automatically, and I'm consciously under normal circumstances. So unless something is actually wrong, we're not really concentrating on our breath. That just keeps going on in the background. But until we researched it for this episode, like, I had no idea what the

numbers look like. Like you could have told me, like, we take five thousand breaths a day or a million breaths in a day, and I probably would have believed you. Yeah, I probably would too, But what's the real number? Thank you for crying that up. I actually have those numbers right here. So the average adult takes a breath once every four seconds, So most people are taking somewhere in the neighborhood of like twenty thousand breaths to day, and it can be closer to fifty if you're really active.

But you can imagine if every one of those breaths was a conscious action, we'd never get anything done. Yeah, I mean, there's no way for us to be as picky about our breathing as we are out eating or drinking. We'd lose our minds if it was something we actually thought about. Yeah, And I'm so used to thinking of airs like a single thing, but air is actually a

combination of tons and tons of different gas molecules. Like in his book Sam keenes as a normal human breath is about a half liter of air, which breaks down to over twelve sex tillion molecules. That doesn't even sound like a real number. I'm pretty sure you just wanted to say sex. But so, how many zeros are at the end of a sex tillion? I know, I had to actually look this up. There are twenty one. Oh

my god, it's a staggering amount of zero. It's also a crazy number of molecules for a single So that's a single breath. Yeah, and imagine like we're taking twenty thousand breaths a day. I don't even want to think about that. That's crazy. Yeah. So what's even weirder is that a large portion of the gas molecules and every

breath we take are recycled from someone else's. So no matter where you are in the world, no matter how fresh and clean the air scenes, even if you're getting it from like a six pack of your Rocky mountain air that you're talking about, it's a certainty that some of what you're breathing is really second and breath, or third hand or fourth hand or fifth hand, which is a little unsettling, but I don't know, maybe kind of sweet. I mean, breath seems like this intimate thing to share

with someone. So the fact that we're all swapping it around every four seconds, that means we're all tapping into this invisible shared history between us. Yeah, it's like a brotherhood of breath, which is this wonderful, poetic notion. I was kidding, it's actually kind of gross, really, like, think about people breathing on you. But the really crazy thing is how far back that shared history goes. Like the air we breathe is never completely lost or destroyed, is

just redistributed. So the title of Sam's book hints at this by bringing up Caesar. He breathes dying breath like over two thousand years ago. But those sextillion gas molecules they live on and wind spread them all over the world in a matter of weeks, and Da've been breathing and out in different combinations ever since. In fact, it turns out that approximately one particle of Caesar's last breath will be found in the very next one you take.

So multiply that by the number of breaths you take per day, and you're literally inhaling thousands of microsoftic bits of Caesar's secondhand air every single day of your life. Wow, that is pretty nuts, And I'm still sticking with the fact that that's a little bit gross, but especially when you consider that has to be true of every person's breath, not just Caesar's. Yeah, the other thing I didn't realize

was just how fluid there is. Like, in fact, any expulsion of air anywhere in the world will reach you within the span of two weeks, two months, or a year or two depending on where you are in relation to it. You can almost imagine it as the sea of gas is flowing across the whole world. That is really wild. Actually this isn't an air tangent. But what

about fluid dynamics. Do you know that scientists that you see Santa Barbara have studied why we tend to spill coffee from our mugs when we walk, Like apparently because of our gate and the way the coffee moves, we naturally create this oscillation that will spill the drink between our seventh and tenth steps. I love that there's a study around this. Yeah, so if you actually like slow down every fifth or sixth step, you should be golden.

That's pretty awesome. I actually I thought when you said you were going to do a tangent, I thought this was going to be about how mosh pits actually follow fluid dynamic models, and how people in mosh pits act the same way molecules and gas to I mean, they're actually scientific papers on this. You know, it's crazy, Like I was looking that up again and and I realized that the scientists figured out that if you reshape how a mosh pit works, people actually motion straight lines. They phenomenal.

I like the I like the phrase motion straight list. Yeah, we'll have to do a totally different episode on like fluid dynamics and the studies of like swimming in molasses and whatever. All right, but now that we have an idea on how air flows, why don't we talk about its power and specifically how it's aided human flight. So I'm guessing you want to talk about the right Brothers, No,

not the rights. I'm thinking we should go back to the late seventeen hundreds, even before the rights, when another Frenchman named Joseph Michelle Montgolfier was daydreaming about his wife's lingerie. I love how much like laundren pin ups. So then you mentioned the sextillion. It's just getting area to dirty fast. But all right, so there's a great story here. Montgolfier was watching his wife's laundry dry over a fire when he noticed her underwear billowing and rising whenever the heat

from the flames increased. So he gets curious about what's causing this lift, and he starts thinking about it, and he decides that he could build this you know, sack of air as he decides to lift himself in the same way to possibly fly. So he tries a few experiments and after some help from his younger brother, Montgolfier succeeded in creating the world's first hot air balloon, which he described as a cloud and a paper bag. That's pretty amazing. So he figured that all out by watching

some laundry air. Well, that's the thing. So josephont Gulfier was an amateur scientist at best. I mean, he was a fan of chemistry rock stars like Priestley and Labassier, but he could hardly claim to be an expert himself. He actually thought it was the smoke from the fire that would make the balloon rise, not the air itself. So when the Montgolfier's held the first public demonstration of an unman balloon flight, they got it airborne by building

the biggest smokiest bonfire they could. They burned wool, rabbit, skins, straw, even old shoes. Can you imagine how bad the smelled? Terrible? But the Montgolfier brothers had perfected their shoe burning technique by the time they held their second flight. This time they sent a sheep, a rooster, and I think a duck airborne. And they were all in this little cage that hung beneath the balloon, and the demonstration drew this huge crowd. I think even King Louis the sixteenth was

there to watch this thing. As the balloon animals traveled two miles before they touched down unharmed. Well, I'm glad they arrived on harm But this is supposed to be mankind's dream. Did the Montolfier has ever managed to get

a human airborne? They sure did, and King Louis had suggested that their brothers send up two criminals first, just in case something went wrong, But the Montgolfier's didn't think the convicts worthy of the honor, so Instead, they decided to enlist a physicist and a local marquis for the task. It was on November three, and these men became the first human beings in history to actually fly, which is a huge honor. Yeah, though unfortunately the same physicist holds

a less prestigious title. Two years later, he became the first flight fatality when his balloon caught fire. He was trying to cross the English Channel at the time, which is horrible. But before we move on, mind if I cleared the air with one of my favorite hot air balloon stories. All So, Tristan, can you cue the storytelling music? So this is a story from East Germany in the

late nineteen seventies. He's two friends, Hans Strelzik and Gunther Wetzel, both happened to watch a late night documentary on the history of hot air balloons and it gave them this idea, what if they used a balloon to flee communism and hoped the Berlin Wall like It sounds obvious in theory but pretty difficult in practice. And it helped that one was a bricklayer and the other was this mechanic and of course they had to work on the project in

total secrecy. They built an engine out of propane gas cylinders that they somehow squirreled away, and they stitched a balloon out of tafada. They had to buy the material from different shops and space out their purchases so it didn't look suspicious, and their wives got involved, like stitching this giant balloon together. It had to be big enough to hold both their families. But here's the crazy part.

Right on the night they decided to leave, Mrs Wetzel gets nervous and backs out, says the strel They go it alone. I mean it's rainy and the conditions aren't great, and the engine on the balloon gives out after a few minutes. But suddenly they get spotted by the border police. Somehow they managed to escape to their car without getting caught. But now the Stazzi, you know, those terrifying East German secret police, they have this evidence of the balloon and

they're on the trail. So now they're working against the clock and there's really no option but to flee. The families start over. This time they use canvas and bed sheets to make a stronger balloon. They somehow source all this material again, I mean sixty pieces of canvas go into this thing in addition to all these bed sheets, and they're working overtime, as it's told, and I don't think this is false. Stazi is basically closing in on the operation. So the two families take off and the

dead of night again. This time the conditions are better, but there's no basket, just a platform and some metal bits for these two wives and two husbands and four kids to hold onto. And they're up in the air at a height of eight thousand feet if I for what feels like thirty minutes, just clinging on for their lives. And finally they land and they have no idea where they are, but when a cop spots them in the field and approaches them, they quickly realized they made it

to West Germany. I mean, isn't that a great story? They became heroes in the West overnight, and the hot air balloon became for wild at least, the symbol of freedom. That is crazy. Yeah, that's a that's that's a good story. I think maybe LaVar Burton needs to be worried about story time with Mango. That is really good and I can't imagine trying to build a Hot Air Balloon on my own. I mean now that we have the benefit of YouTube, but back then based on what they learned

from a documentary, that seems insane. But before we return to the topic of air, what do you say we take a break for a quiz? Sounds great, Samango, Who do we have on the line today? We've got Stan Hesse and Kyle Laxton from the U S Hot Air Balloon Team out of Lancaster, p A wonderful Welcome to part time genius guys, So stay and I see you founded the company. Can you tell us how it all started.

I went for a balloon ride one day back in the early nineteen eighties, and UH decided I just had to have one, got my first balloon, decided to um, bigger was better, and the United States had her balloon team. Just seemed like a natural extension, and we went to work, and probably fifty balloons later, here we are. That's incredible. So I heard you guys are on the NTV show Promposals, and I was curious, what's the most romantic thing you've

seen in the air. You've got anything from you know, proposals to people just coming out to hang out all the way to drop on a couple of skydivers out of the balloon. You know what I mean, it's just you name it. If you could do it in the balloon, you know, we're down to have some fun. Typically we probably have an engagement or two every week in one of our balloons. What about any surprising or memorable landings.

I mean, you gotta think, you gotta remember, you know how your ballooning were always landed somewhere different every time, So I would say every flight is unusual and exciting in its own way, you know, whether it be a field in the middle of a farm or culd de sac during Fourth of July, you know, when you've got barbecues left and right. You know, it's it's just really neat everybody coming out, either helping out put the balloon away,

or just come out and take pictures. You know. It's just definitely makes for a good story at the end of the day. And if I can offer, if I can offer mine, I think that I probably would tell you that the most memorable place that I've ever landed a balloon a nudist colony, and it would have been better that they had their clothes on. That's pretty great, Now, was that an intentional landing? Did you mean to land

in a nudist colony? Actually, it was part of a part of a contest where we're as part of the event, all the participants were given we're given coordinates to where they were supposed to land their balloon. We didn't know it was the newest colony up front, but we tried to fly to the coordinates and we and we come into the coordinates and my goodness heard these people are without clothing and we had no idea it was a new dest colony. Do we land? Yeah? So you did?

You didn't offer any rides once you got there? I'm guessing no, No, But it was it was it was, It was different, It was different. Well, let's put these guys to the test, Mango, What what quiz are we playing with them today? We've got a really dumb quiz called the air up there, or rather things that rhyme with the air of their Okay, right, So, because we like to make people say things that sound like phrases, every answer in this quiz will be the blank up there. Um,

So here we go. Let's get started with question number one. You guys ready, all right, let's do it you can work together. Question Number one. If lazy Way put too many balloons on their furniture, it would be got that one to chair up there? You got it, all right, one for one. Number two, if Paddington or Winnie the Pooh went to space, they'd be the bear up there. Got it. If Joe Biden went airborne, he'd be representing this state, Delaware. Yeah, the Delaware up there right here

we go, all right. Number four, if your family's nice forks, knives, and spoons were since skyward, they would be you got it. Here's a tough one. Number five, This is for all the prize. Here we go. Number five, if the dromedary colored overcoat were shot into the atmosphere, it would be the hare up there. You got it. Congratulations, guys, tell

them how they did mango. They went a't astounding five for five, And in addition to a note to their mom or boss and their praises, are contestants of each earned macaroni and cheese air Freshener's the strangest smelling air freshener we could find the market. Congratulations, all right, congratulations guys, and thanks so much for being on part time genius. Unbelievable. Thank you so much. It's all good. Welcome back to

part time genius. So Mango, we should probably talk a little bit about the composition of air and some of those stories, but honestly, I want to keep talking about hot air balloons after your story, So Sam Keene writes, Besides the daredevils and picnickers, balloon flights also stimulated interest in the properties of gases. Indeed, it's no coincidence that some of the first balloonists were also some of the first people to explore the behavior of gases in a

systematic way. These men had the most to lose, including their lives, if their theories failed, which is a great point. Like atmosphere chemists and other brainy aeronauts made full use of the practical applications of hot air balloons. They used balloons in all kinds of experiments that grastually expanded our understanding of the miles and miles of air above us. And while Sam makes a distinction between daredevils and scientists, the French chemist and physicist Joseph Louis gay Lusak he

was definitely both. How's that well, even before he was pushing the limits of the skies. Gay Lusac was testing the limits of his lab. He almost blinded himself during multiple experiments, and he even shocked himself with a homemade battery to the point that he couldn't move his arm for a day. It just sounds a little more reckless than well. I think we should just call him determined, which is the best way to explain the fact that he took a hot air balloon solo to over twenty

three thousand feet, which is totally insane. I mean, we do need to put this in perspective for our listeners. So most recreational balloon is stick between about twelve hundred and three thousand feet tops, and that's in balloons with modern day safety features. Yeah, his altitude stood as a world record for more than a century, so at least the ordeal netted him some fame afterwards because it had

to be rough going in the moment. That air up there is really thin, and he would have only had a short period to collect samples of verified like high altitude air before high tailing it back down After all that effort, where the samples even useful totally I mean, they showed us that the composition of the atmosphere is the same at sea level as it is miles up in the air, and while there's less air in general at higher altitudes, as gay Lusac learned, the proportions of nitrogen, oxygen,

and other gases are the same no matter the altitude. To breakthrough led to the discovery of several crucial gas laws that have helped explain the nature of gases and how they behave under different conditions. All Right, I'll admit that does sound worth the risk. I guess as long as it's somebody else doing the flight. And gaylu Sock, he's the guy that figured out that water is made up of two parts hydrogen one part oxygen. Right, Yeah,

that's right. He and his partner in science, Alexander von Humboldt, who is often in that hot air balloon with him. All Right, So here's something I've found fascinating, and it's not something I normally think about, but it's how strong the air pressure is around us. So the planet's normal air pressure is something like fourteen point five pounds per square inch, which is a solid ton of force per square foot. I mean, that's round the clock power pressing

in on you from all directions. It really is kind of a wonder we can even stand it. But I mean, do you know the only thing that keeps us from crumpling from that air pressure are indomitable human spirits, good guesses always, but nope, it's the It's the air that we're carrying around with us, so we don't notice these twenty or so tons of force pressing into us because there's an equal amount of force pushing back from the inside of our bodies. So Sam Kane describes it pretty well.

He says, in theory, a piece of aluminum foil, if perfectly balanced between blasts from two fire hoses, would survive intact. But who would risk it. Our skin and our organs face the same predicament visa the air. Just imagining that's crazy, and I'm so glad it's a tie between the air forces. I would say, though, If the Industrial Revolution taught me anything, it's that gases like steam can be powerful allies. Oh absolutely, And it's best to stay on their good side too,

because some of them fight pretty dirty. So take nitroglycerin for examp apple, which Sam also talks about in his book. There's a huge amount of energy within nitro's chemical bonds. But the real reason for any explosive destructive power, it's the speed and force at which that energy is released, right, Because technically speaking, an ounce of coal or gasoline, or even a stick of butter contains more energy than the

same amount of most explosives. It's just that my pad of butter here doesn't have the means to release its energy outwardly because it doesn't have the same power of a volatile gas cocktail on its side. You have a pad of butter over there all right. By the way, I can't let the topic of nitroglycerin pass without talking about Alfred Nobel. I mean, we all know him from the Nobel Prizes and that he made his fortune by making dynamite. And this is one of those facts that

before anybody starts screaming, I know that fact. I know that fact. It's kind of like that fact about Taft getting stuck in the bathtub, where everybody knows it and everybody likes to point it out. But you know what's funny is that I always thought Nobel came up with dynamite in a vacuum, but he was actually the son of a Swedish weapons manufactured Did you know this. He then witnessed the demonstration of the destructive power of a single drop of nitroglycerin in his youth, and he became

obsessed with explosives. He started funneling his family's fortune into making nitroglycer and more reliable and less likely to explode prematurely. I mean, just to give you a sense of how volatile nitroglycerin is. Gunpowder explodes in a few thousands of a second, but nitroglycern explodes within a millionth of a second. But no. Bill's big breakthrough was to slow down the nitro by adding gunpowder and then packing them both into a hollow piece of wood. And this creates the world's

first blasting cap. So he started selling blasting caps as well as raw nitro, which he dubbed blasting oil, to miners and construction crews all over the world. So I'm guessing he used those profits to fund his prize program. Well maybe partly, but really the blasting caps and oil proved to be disastrous products. There were numerous deaths and injuries from accidental explosions. In fact, this thing got so bad that nobody he would rent labs based the Nobel anymore.

This is Alphred Nobel. So he actually converted a barge into this floating laboratory and he spent years sailing from port to port and people started calling this Nobel's death show. And it was while he was at sea that he hit on the idea of encasing the nitro and gunpowder and a clay like substance, and that made the mixture

less likely to blow up unintentionally. So now we're talking about dynamite, and with a capital D. Actually because Nobel trademarked the name, and that was a move that paid off for him to Dynamite became incredibly popular once mining and construction firms saw what it could do, and suddenly all kinds of knockoff sprang up, something called hercules powder and grin rock, but Nobel was swatting them down with his patents, and in the end the products success actually

cost him his trademark. Dynamite worked its way into the public lexicon and became a generic term, kind of like clean X or zipper. By the way, my uncle, who was an advertising bombay, actually ran into the same problem. He couldn't get people to stop saying they were making a xerox like for some reason, the word coffee wouldn't catch on there, and his client was HP. So the slogan they ended up pushing was make your xerox on

an HP. That's ridiculous. All right. Well, there's actually a little bit more of a Nobel's story that I think we should talk about, and and that's the role that air plays in human psychology. But before we get into that, why don't we break for a quiz. So our guest today is one of our favorite science writers. He was one of the early writers at Mental Flaws actually in our days there. Obviously, he's written such books as the Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, The Disappearing Spoon, and many

of our other favorites. But his latest book is called Caesar's Last Breath, and that's the book that we've been talking about today. Sam Keene, Welcome to Part Time Genius. Hi, thanks for having me. Hey Sam, so uh, you know, the title of your book is so poetic, and I was wondering if you'd explain it to our listeners. Yeah.

It's sort of a classic problem in chemistry and physics classes where they ask students what are the odds that the next breath you are taking will include a molecule that Caesar breathe his last breath um when he was

assassinated back into b c in robe. And it's the question kind of investigates a couple of different ideas about, you know, how many molecules are in every breath that you inhale, how long those molecules last in the atmosphere, how uh you know a breath or any gas really spreads around the atmosphere, how quickly it is, how large the atmosphere is, And to answer the question you kind of have to take all of those factors into account.

So it's a poetic and interesting question, but there's a lot of good science behind it as well, and kind of surprisingly, the odds of you breathing in a molecule that's Caesar breathe during his last breath are quite high. Each time you take a breath, on an average, you're probably breathing in depending on the assumptions you make, one molecule or so, and over the course of a day, it's almost a statistical certainty that you're going to breathe

in several thousands of those molecules. So it is really cool connection between the past and the present day that you wouldn't really think about that's something that happens every single time you take a breath. Wow, that's it's still so strange, no matter how much we thought about it in in reading this book, it's such a such a bizarre fact. I felt like after I read the chapter on these German scientists racing to extract ammonia from the air, I came away with this, I don't a new appreciation

for the compound. And I think you wrote that ammonia fertilizers actually grow what half of the world's food did. Now did you come away from the book with a new respect for any element or other compounds. Yeah, the ammonia thing, getting the nitrogen out of the air and making something useful from it, it does really give you a perspective on how important the air is and what I mean, just just the hidden way that really influences

our lives that we don't think about. Uh, you know, half the people on the planet wouldn't be here today if not for that process of being able to get the nitrogen out of the air and make it into fertilizers. So it does, I mean, we all know on some level obviously that you need to you know, have access to air to live. But the fact the importance of the air really goes even beyond just sort of day to day breathing. All of these guests is you know,

they helped drive the industrial revolution. They really drive the weather. Things like that, Um, you can you know, and you're inhaling anesthesia and refrigerants, all these different things, uh that make up our modern life. They really are derived. They come from things that are going on in the air all the time, even if you don't really think about them in your day to day life. Now of the things I really loved about the book is that these

little offbeat meanderings that you had. And I was curious why you included the tangent on the Peto Maine because it's really funny, but I just want to hear your

thoughts on it. Yeah, the Peto main was sort of this uh they called him as Partis, who was basically uh an artist who used a flagelence to do impressions in uh Lulin rouge in Paris at the end of the And I included that one because I think it's just such a delightful story, um, something you would never ever expect to be going on in sort of high society Paris, but he was the most popular artist there for a very long time. And the other reason I chose to include it is, you know, I think you know,

you can sort of giggle over it. It's uh, you know, kind of low brown humor, but it's something, uh, you know, the the gas inside of us that we produced, that people think about. You know, it's something kind of on their mind, even if it's you know, we don't always

talk about it in polite society. But there again, there's a lot of good science in there about what those gases are, where they come from, how they affect us um and you can even get into other things, like there was sort of a digression in there about uh, you know, communication and other things. Why do we communicate from one side of our digestive tract and not the other side of it. There's really no reason things couldn't

have evolved differently. So again, you can get into a lot of really interesting, cool science based on this story that on the surface of it might seem you know, just amusing, but there's a lot of good stuff behind it. Do we know of any animals that communicate through the

other end? I don't think we do. Do we There are some species of cod that they think, uh that you know, they're obviously not the articulate speaking like human beings, but they seem to respond in some ways the bubbles that they release, so it's some sort of rudimentary communication going on there. So yeah, there, there, there are tints. There are some animals. I do that with various dialects. I'm sure that's right. Were there any other facts in

your research that you found equally just mind blowing? I mean, there's so many interesting things in this book, but any facts where you you you walked away thinking that can't possibly be true. One fact that I really still kind of blows my mind is the idea of what's called the oxygen catastrophe. So nowadays we think about oxygen obviously as vitals or life. It's very important for life. We would all die if there was an oxygen in the air.

But for most preachers who have ever lived on planet Earth, especially microbes, oxygen is a deadly poison, and oxygen actually caused probably the greatest mass extinction in the history of Earth because it was a pollutant. It was a very reactive molecule. Most microbes back a few billion years ago, didn't want it around, so they would expel it. Eventually it built up in the air to such a degree

that it started killing them off. So again, one of the greatest mass extinctions in history was driven by something that we considers absolutely vital to life nowadays. So it really gives changes your perspective on what this gas is, what the air has been over time, and how it really has evolved been changed. Yeah, yeah, wow, that is fascinating. So we've got a terrible quiz to play with Sam today. What's the quiz called. We've got a pop quiz called

It's elemental. Okay, that's right, And so when Mango says pop quiz, he means pop culture quiz and it should be fun. So every question we've included the chemical symbol for an element. So we'll get started if you're ready, Sam, Okay, all right. Question number one, This lead singer for the band Queen could have been known as Freddie h G. Who is this must be Freddie Mercury? It is question

number two. This magician who made the Statue of Liberty disappear could be known as David see you Field, all right, he's a genius. Number three, that's talking about Sami genius, not David Copperfield. I don't know if he's pretty smart. Yeah. Number three, when he was hankering for a late night sandwich, Elvis used to fly his jet out to Colorado to get a peanut butter and jelly with bacon sandwich, also known as fools a you fools gold you must have

called it. I love that story, but I didn't know he called it, had a special name for it. Right. I'm glad we're teaching you a couple of things too, equally important alright. Number four, This Belgian comic book journalist and his dogs Snowy, raced around the world solving mysteries elementally. You'd known him, you'd know him better as s N s N. Alright, Another very important one here, Number five. Calling this Canadian rock band in I back wouldn't have

made their music sound any better Nickel. Okay, all right, let's do one more. Winston Churchill's speech about this cold word boundary could have been called the fe Curtain speech. What are we talking about? You must be the Iron curtain. Dazed. I was kind of dreading anything related to pop culture, but well, you nailed it. How did you do? Sam? When astounding six or six which earns them are hard earned admiration. Alright, congratulations, Sam, did you did great? See

there was nothing to be stressed about there. So I hope everyone will check out Sam's latest book, Caesar's Last Breath. I know you will enjoy it just as much as we did. Sam. Thanks so much for writing a terrific book and for being a guest on Part Time Genius. All right, well, thanks for having me. It was fun. So we were talking about the incredible gas power we see expressed an explosive compounds like dynamite. But will you

were telling us when ended up happening with Nobel. Well, as you know, Nobel made a fortune off of dynamite and it was the equivalent of a quarter billion dollars today. And that was all from tunneling projects and subway construction. I mean, that was part of it. But his manufacturers started to see the potential of nitro for new deadlier weapons like bombs and land mines. Nobel became famous all

over again as a merchant of death. He was rich and successful, but ultimately miserable because of how hated he was seeing in the public eye. Right, so I'm guessing the prizes were this form of penance exactly. I mean he took his dynamite money and set up a prize fund for chemistry, physics, medicine, literature, and lastly, of course, for peace. I mean it was his way of making amends for all the suffering he caused while salvaging his

reputation at the same time. Well, it might just be like the best long tail pr move in history, because most people remember him for the prizes, and if you were, people remember him for that floating death bar. That's true, you know, for all his success is poor. Alfred Nobel certainly experienced plenty of anguish from the damage gases can cause. But there are also some parts of human psychology that

are directly affected by our need for air. And that's actually one of the things I found most interesting in Sam's book. He talks about the reason why gas attacks are so frightening and appalling to us, and he ends up concluding that it's because gases have the power to attack our basic biology on a level that things like blades and bullets just can't match. When our air supply

has threatened, humans tend to freak out. I mean, we seem to have a fear of poisonous air that's hardwired into our brains, and when it's triggered, you know, all rational behavior goes right out the window, and our instincts tend to take over. Yes, some researchers now think humans have a second, independent fear system that deals exclusively with monitoring our air supply. So even though we don't consciously focus on our breathing, deep down we're always anxious about it.

We know how much we need air to survive, and we also know how quickly too much or too little of its properties can wipe us out. But you know, if we're going to talk about dangerous air, we should probably talk a little bit about nuclear blasts, do we have to? I mean just a little so unlike regular explosives, that gas molecules released into the atmosphere continue to do

harm long after the initial blast. And that's actually where we get this term fallout from the radioactive leftovers that gets shot up into the upper atmosphere before they fall out of the sky and rain down on unsuspecting victims, which is actually fascinating, but I find the topic so depressing, Like the fallowout creates some of the most toxic air imaginable, the kind that can ruin food and water supplies and causes widespread cases of fast acting cancers and other maladies.

Part of the reason fallout is so dangerous is that there aren't a whole lot of ways to protect against something as pervasive as the air itself, And like we were saying in the beginning, it's all fluid, as sam Keen rights. By the early nineteen sixties, radioactive atoms from both Soviet and American tests had seated every last square inch on Earth. Even penguins and Antarctica had been exposed. Well, just like with everything else, radioactivity is safest and moderation followed.

Is most dangerous in regions that are fairly close to nuclear strike zones. But for the average person, the amount of radioactive gases we breathe in from atomic weapons testing each year is pretty negligible. It's actually less than the radiation we receive from a single X ray, which makes me feel a little better, especially because it gives me the perfect opening to talk about the surprising truth of banana radiation. You guys have no idea how much Mango

likes to talk about banana facts. But but what's this one? Banana facts are the best facts. But I promised this one's good. So you probably already know that. Plenty of things we interact with on a daily basis, even many of the ones we ingest are chalk full of radioactive molecules. Sure, so I know brazil nuts, coffee, red meat, even things like cat litter and granite countertops have trace amounts. But bananas, Yeah, So here's what's weird. Like bananas are actually the gold standard.

SIGNED has actually compared the radio activity of other ordinary objects to bananas, and the amount of radioactive potassium forty found in banana is known among nuclear scientists as the b D or banana equivalent. Does have a hard time believing that, but I'm gonna take your word for it. That's pretty ridiculous. I'm guessing beds of radiation aren't anything to worry about them, Well, not as long as you

monitor your banana intake. There are cases of large banana shipments setting off the radiation detectors at some seaports, but that's just because there's so many beds in one place. For human to contract banana induced radiation poisoning, you'd have to scarf down about twenty million of them. All right, quick, what's your favorite banana related food item? Uh? Banana? Now? And laters? Maybe banana? I was thinking, like a real

thing like peanut butter and banana, think of anything banana? Banana? Runts like, what else is banana? Blanana? Laffy taffy obviously the answer, but so so I'm guess we're safe. Well to clarify, I like bananas, but I don't like banana flavor thing. Okay, good, But let's recap a little. So we've examined the longevity, permeability, and speed of air, it's usefulness in achieving the dream of flight and even helping people escape places like East Berlin, which is less of

a problem today. And we also talked about the force that wheels to keep us humans in line and its propensity for causing damage both physical and mental. But there's one last aspect of air I'd like to demonstrate, all right, what's that? The power of its facts? Remember that air hockey fact I couldn't quite fit into the episode Prepared to be blown away in the part time genius fact off. All right, let's see what you got yah yah. So this is from two six, but I love it so much. Basically,

some students created a virtual air hockey game. You have half an air hockey table and a videos green with

someone on the other side. It could be anywhere, like in Russia or wherever, and when you hit the puck, the table actually calculates how you hit it and at one angle and it spits it out on the other side of the world, which, as someone who grew up with a sister who rarely wanted to play sports with me, to always be able to find a table, tennis partner or whatever across the globe for a game is sort of incredible. That is pretty awesome. So here's one about

black umbrellas and how they became the standard. Did you know that excessive coal burning in the seventeen hundreds caused an inky rain in London? So the black umbrella protected you from pollutants without looking disgusting. Actually, have you heard about that company Air Inc. So an M. I. T. Scientist was in India when you realized the soot and pollution in the air was actually making smudges on his

white shirt. So he came up with a novel idea, why not use it to replace the carbon black and printers. His company actually harvests the straight from the tailpipes of trucks, and it's now helping to clean the air while putting that pollutant into safe markers and paints that actually, apparently artists really dig. That's pretty awesome, all right. Here's one

about whales. Scientists have long wondered why they leap into the air and breach when it exerts so much energy to do this, and it turns out it's a communication trick. Often the behavior happens when whales are traveling in a pod and get separated. While whales have songs and other ways to communicate over very long distances, flopping is an easy way to get another whale's attention in a closer range or in places where there's a lot of competing noise.

As one scientist told Quartz, it's akin to a really keen kid in a classroom jumping up and down and waving his hands. Really keen kids and classrooms, right, which is pretty awesome. Uh Okay, so this one's about the fresh Prince of l Air. Well. First off, did you know that that New Yorker writer Andy Borrowitz actually wrote

the pilot for the show. I didn't, so He told Complex magazine that the Spoiled Hillary character was based on Quincy jones daughters, or, more specifically, the phone messages they used to leave for him while they were at summer camp. And one message that Quincy played for Borrowitz said, Dad, the water here sucks. Please FedEx avien. Al Right, this doesn't actually have anything to do with air, but it's too good not to share. It came up when I

was looking in the ways to clean the environment. Apparently this woman in Cleveland, Susan Warren, came to be known as the Cleaning Fairy because she would randomly break into people's homes, clean them, and then leave. It was apparently her way of drumming up business. But cops, could you know. Of course, they didn't take kindly to this, so she's been arrested twice for it. Oh man, that's so good.

I had one about this, uh the Helsinki University of Technology, which actually created a functional air guitar, like you wear colored gloves and a camera watches your movements and turns into a real live instrument, which is awesome. But I actually really love that cleaning Fairy story. All right, well, I'll take it. Well, thanks to Sam Kane, whose book

we leaned on heavily for this episode. Yeah, the book is jam packed with incredible stories, from the shocking and amazing tale of scientists collecting ammonia from the air to why plants actually respond to anesthesias seriously. Venus flycrafs reflexes get all slow and boozy when they're put under. So please go out and get Caesar's breath. When you get a sec it'll blow your mind. And that's it for today's episode. Thanks again for listening. By the way, have

you heard about the Japanese dio drinkum? Apparently you chew it and it makes your bio smell like flowers, which is crazy. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. CHRISTA McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does the MIXI mixy sound thing. Gary Roland does the exact producer thing.

Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eves. Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave have a good review for us. Do we do we forget Jason? Jason who