Radiolab is supported by progressive insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call the shots on your auto insurance too, with the name your price tool from progressive. It works just the way it sounds. You tell progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you cover options that fit your budget. Get your quote today at progressive.com
to join the over 28 million drivers who trust progressive. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, pricing coverage match limited by state law. Radiolab is supported by Mint Mobile. We all love saving a few bucks, but it has to be easy. No hoops, no BS. Mint Mobile makes it easy to get affordable plans with unlimited talk text and data when you purchase that three month plan. To get this new customer offer, go to mintmobile.com
slash radio lab. That's mintmobile.com slash radio lab. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month for a first three month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan, additional taxes fees and restrictions apply, see mintmobile for details. That is a registered trademark of the Chlorox pet products company. For breeses used under license from the Proctor and Gamble company or its affiliates. Clash.
The glad girl group coming at you with a throwback jam. That was glad for a split drawstring trash bag featuring pine salt original scent. That's better than all good. It's all glad. So I'm going to give you a few more tips. Why are we really here? I wanted to bring you here today because you are one of the few people at this show who has been around for longer than I have. You started as an intern in what year, Saren? 2007. 2007. Do you know how many episodes of radio lab you have worked on?
It's got to be north of 400. Not that I totally made or but you know that I had something to do with. How many shows have we even made? Oh, it's probably like how many episodes? I think probably around 500 or something. Wow. I mean there's sometimes it was like a rerun with an update or we can't do it. Right. Right. Little things or. And of those you've worked on the preponderance. This is some preamble to you suggesting that it's time for me to leave. Yeah, it's time for you to move on.
This is a coup. You've all gotten together and decided that you know. No, but like it's a my question for you. Put simply is why do you stick around? What after so long do you still get joy from doing this and what where does that joy come from? Where does the joy? I mean I guess it does feel like we kind of get to do anything. Like so many shows are you know kind of have to be
in a box like crime or sports or this or that. But you know for us it could be we get to do like I don't know hockey and then some weird thorny legal issue and then black holes and then like academic
publishing. But the actually the thing that keeps you going the real joy like week to week is that for each and every one of those things there's always something you didn't know or didn't understand like or you thought you knew and then you realized you didn't or you'd never even thought you wanted to know something and then also you do like sometimes thinking back over the last 17 years it just feels like a fever dream of questions. Like she swam up right next to me and then came up and
looked directly at me. Like Kenna Whale say thank you right right or how can your mom also be your aunt or enjoy your bowel movements. No have you ever thought about killing yourself. No do we lie to ourselves. Why were you left? I don't know. Can animals laugh? Where's morality come from? Why is there this group of butterflies are thriving in an artillery range? What makes someone successful? Why can't you sell your blood? Could we ever cheat death? Why do vegetables spark in a microwave?
Can you think without words? Why do we sleep? How can you be a scientist and not know the answer to that? So it's time to slow down with your fall. Can we make a living thing? Can babies do math? We're going wrong. Eels how does Chris Ode to make how I can't help out in the end? How fast do you play Beethoven's Phil Symphony? Wow those are a lot of questions that are why was Ted doesn't see so
angry? Oh you're still going. You could you could keep going. You could. And that does feel really good to think about all the different things that there's already a radio lab for. Also to me it's like it's actually a fun challenge to find like little nicks and crannies where it's like oh we've never even gone we've never even gone close to this before. Yeah and sometimes you know the answer comes you just keep wondering things the answer comes from somebody on staff
or you get a pitch that has a new question that you've never thought of before. Although you know there was I have to say like one of my favorite things was there was a moment where we were all sitting around and realized you know we're asking all these questions. We're always looking for questions but like people are always actually asking us questions too. And so we're just like looked in the email inbox and we're kind of like oh my god there's a treasure treasure.
There are some weird ones. Yeah. Yeah and so like I think it was like 10 years ago we did a thing where we're like let's just take those questions and make a show and just take all these listener questions and just hit go. And we've actually done a several of these now we call them like our stupid question shows but I think that first one was like 10 years ago or something like that. And it's just there's something about those shows it's really fun. I mean they're listener questions
which is cool. Right. But it's also just like it just hits the spirit of what we do in some kind of other way and I don't know those are those are some of my favorite shows. Yeah I agree. Okay so right after having that conversation with Soran it was like okay we need to play our original stupid questions episode we call them internally stupid questions but it's like a tongue-in-cheek thing we don't actually call it that the episode was called big little questions.
Before we get to that I just wanted to say something that maybe you're tired of hearing but it's it's true is the reason we keep saying it. We are an independent non-profit show for us to keep doing what we do to keep asking these questions that seem small but are actually big we need help we need your help we need your support and the best way to do that is to become a member of the lab.
The way to do that is go to radio lab.org slash join if you do that as a member you will get a bunch of great stuff you will listen to the show with no ads we actually put up a bunch of bonus content for our members including you know extra little conversations nuggets that sort of fell
out if you sign up before the end of the month we have a very special gift for you everyone on staff is pretty excited about it I'm not going to tell you what it is yet but for now enjoy this romp of listener questions big little questions have fun. Listening to radio lab radio from W and Y. Hey I'm Chad Abumrod I'm Robert Colwood this is radio lab and today we're going to hit the phones. Hello hi can I speak to Mark starting with this guy Mark Morrison. Hey Mark this is
Chad calling from radio lab. Hey Chad good to hear you. Got a hold of him at his home in Olympia Washington. I'm hanging out on the front porch because kids are running around so you might hear some traffic. Okay gotcha. All right maybe we should just jump in and you should just
tell me the story. Okay so I was DJing a wedding out in Lacey which is the next town over it was a hot like late spring kind of feeling like summer kind of day and we were in a little rented facility that had like windows on all sides and all of a sudden the power starts flickering and it starts raining really hard. Okay then trees are falling over the wind is dusting and it's the sky turns tonight. Well and this is like 330 in the afternoon. So Mark takes off goes back home.
My in-laws are visiting in town to hang out with the new baby and we open up the curtains turned off all the lights and we're just kind of marveling at the insane power of this storm that's happening. My wife is sitting on the couch my two-year-old is watching Charlie Brown or something on the iPad and then all of a sudden there's just a loud snap like the sound of a whip cracking or like like a two by four being snapped in half and about a foot in a half to two feet in front
of my face right next to my mother-in-law and the baby there's a little sphere of light white light just a little orb the size of like maybe an orange or a grapefruit kind of blurry edges around it floating in midair as bright as like the sun like the bright it lit up the entire room.
Wow we all screamed everybody in the room in the unit and Mark says this sun orb just sort of hovered in front of his face kind of going wall wall wall wall for maybe a second when all of a sudden poof it was gone yeah that's some x-files s*** right there yeah none of us had any idea what the heck
happened well did you go around the room being like did you guys see that did you see that yeah everybody thought everybody thought my mother-in-law thought that I had like taken some kind of like fireworks and thrown it up in the air what did you do I didn't do anything so what I did was
I started trying to google it and there's you know I mean imagine trying to google that you're not going to find anything what what did you type in the Google a sphere of light floating in doors I didn't get very far yeah but I just I just wanted to get to the bottom of it
and so what Mark did is he sat down on a computer and he typed up this email basically saying like what the hell is this thing and then he sent that email into the void which would be us to our email inbox and you know it sat around for a while because we tend to get
these kinds of questions a lot are there more stars in the universe or grains of sand on earth a lot a lot is it clean underneath the sticker of the apple why do some birds walk in others hot how do fish here why are horses special we get things like what's up with traffic jams random
questions like gillium is a finite resource why are we wasting it on balloons out of poop questions why is different animals poop shaped differently yeah a lot of poop what happens when you flush a toilet on the equator and they just sort of pile up we sort of put them in this bucket and then
feel guilty about not answering them and over the years well they keep coming so the bucket gets fuller and fuller and fuller so finally today we decided okay let's just dump the bucket out and so we're gonna try and answer some of these questions today bunch of us hello
beginning with a question about the orb can I speak to martin please you're talking to him try and answer Mark's question i call up a guy named martin umin professor of electrical and computer engineering university of florida thank you is it still a good time to chat
uh it is about the only time because i'm gonna go to dinner at about 10 minutes all right excellent uh so we'll just jump right in all right how long we gonna talk well so i uh told martin the story thunderstorm boom glowing or poof glowing or gone
yeah so maybe i'll just put the most basic question to you like what is that well that observation is not uncommon and it's called generally called ball lightning ball lightning yeah that's what it's called in according to martin ball lightning is timeless
ancient Greeks described exactly the same thing and the 19th century and 18th century they used to commonly come down the chimney come out the fireplace oh wow but now says martin we are living in an electronic world and so these balls of lightning sometimes come out of a wall socket
sometimes out of a telephone huh they happen in airplanes they happen in submarines whoa oh that actually that's been reported yeah lightning strikes outside an airplane and a ball comes through the windshield and floats down the whole plane what if i'm in that plane i'm thinking
you're gonna hope you have your diaper on right where your depends anytime you've got electrical stuff going on you can make a ball of fire like that so do we know anything about what causes what it is exactly is it just another form of lightning that somehow manages to ball itself up
and hang around well probably martin is actually one of the few people who has studied ball lightning in the lab he actually got funded by DARPA to try and figure out how it works wasn't quite able to he says what's likely happening is that when a bolt of lightning strikes it might hit something
oil water tree whatever it is some substance gets lit up and somehow forms itself into a sphere like a balloon or a bubble or something like if you imagine lightning hits some dust shocks the dust changes its chemistry so that it forms some kind of spherical scaffolding and in the lightning
sticks to the scaffolding or something maybe that's what's happening but you can't prove it I mean there's some theory which indicates that that might happen but if you go in the laboratory and try to make it you can't make it so can't prove it and if you get a book on ball lightning
or you get my book and look at the chapter on ball lightning you'll see probably a list of 50 different theories that people have come up with from all the way to black holes and just continuity in time space and things that are just you know completely almost out of this world
so they remain a mystery but a well observed mystery if you know that people don't have any good math for how lightning gets started in a cloud really I didn't know that we don't know what how lightning can get started it shouldn't be able to it shouldn't really you based on what the math
says there's not a whole measurement that have been made of the conditions in clouds huh so you're saying the whole thing that I've understood almost nothing is understood we're floundering around this do you do you find yourself thinking about ball lightning and then suddenly just tiptoeing
into an existential crisis how how little we know of the world so I'll make my living is trying to uncover little little more bits by little more bits but yeah there's lots of it isn't about everything next up producer Tracy Hunt goes on a field trip
to some very hallowed ground right I think I finally reached the library the New York public library the New York public library within its white marble walls is stored the sum of man's wisdom which in its glory days okay so I'm right here in the Grand Hall
there's like beautiful chandeliers all over the place these gorgeous columns filled with seven floors of stacks millions of books and every field of human endeavor row upon row upon row of shelves of shelves close to 50 centuries of human thinking and experience and every year
millions of visitors like Tracy would walk through these hallowed halls each has a question with questions fueled by curiosity the desire for truth for knowledge for wisdom people trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe I came here to ask him a question about catnip catnip yes catnip why why why cat oh I'd like to back up so we actually got like 500 questions from our listeners so I thought it might be a good idea to take some of them to the library hi Rosa so I met up with this woman
nice to meet you I'm Tracy nice to meet you Rosa and she walked me into this office there's about like I don't know 12 people sitting at their desk why don't you introduce yourself okay sure so my name is Rosalie
I manage ask and ypl and I've been in this department for about five years ask and ypl it's 917 ask and ypl I'm putting the phone number out there and if you call them and you ask them a question it's their job to answer it yes so we are like a call center so our typical day um starts with
questions and like it's a typical day how many phone calls do you get um people day about 150 to 200 and Rosa was telling me that most of the questions they get are all the weather be like this weekend um very boring hey my library card expired or I want to renew this book but you know
also they they get some weird ones we take them all yeah um so I got a list right here and in the past they've gotten things like what kind of apple did Eve eat is it proper to go alone to Reno to get a divorce any statistics on the lifespan of the abandoned woman do candles have to be licensed in India what is the natural enemy of the duck can I get a book telling me how to be a
mr. system on his at a musical orgy what does it mean when you dream you're being chased by an elephant and and the answer all those they'll try to so you know I was maybe a little dismissive for a few of them I mean all the questions of course are very important we welcome all questions please
this by the way is Bernard Bernard van Marcivene he has been working for ask and ypl since about 2001 and so the question he did answer my catnip question which is do large feline species like tigers and lions have the same reaction to catnip as domestic cats yes all cats like catnip
apparently tigers at least but um you know I had all these questions so I actually had then pick one that they thought was super interesting yeah which one did you pick to answer let me get the exact wording out so yeah so here we go uh could you play a meaningful game
of frisbee on the surface of Mars yeah and yeah I really like that yeah that was a good one and I think the word that makes it like just really shine is meaningful so um the first thing he does if you want to get me kind of doing some some searching you know again back of the envelope kind
of stuff here in he I guess i was a little disappointed that we didn't invest that in any like books i'm just looking up frisbee aerodynamics he literally just turned his computer inside it googling how does a frisbee behave here on earth the spin of the frisbee of course lift drag
so he looks all that stuff up let's see then he looks at like aerodynamics on Mars on Mars it's very thin the air there so because it airs something on Mars you wouldn't get that spinning lifting thing that you always get frisbee it might not have the same sort of hovering effect
that frisbee does here on earth it probably would be more like just throwing a ball it would just go 10 feet away 15 feet away I don't think that that's that counts as a meaningful game of frisbee but you know you could just throw it back in for it but meaningful to me the question is like
you're playing frisbee on Mars I mean that's just that's just inherently meaningful I mean you know growing up I remember seeing you know re-broadcasts of you know like the astronauts on the moon playing golf and I'm sure that they were not playing like you know PGA golf they were just you know amateur duffers but there we go they were golfing on the moon I mean to me that's pretty great that's pretty impressive so the venue kind of makes the whole endeavor meaningful I think in it in its way
thanks to producer trust wait I actually do ask them my dragons question oh well then next up Tracy Hunt and dragons radio lab is supported by better help I've got a question for you when's the last time you did something for the first time as we get older and our school years
get further and further away it can be harder and harder to find time and energy to dedicate to learning something new so what's something you've been wanting to learn go ahead come up with something maybe it's sewing or growing tomatoes or ice skating therapy can help you reconnect with yourself
and tap back into that back to school mentality and sense of wonder it can also help you develop healthy coping skills and equip you with the tools you need to be the best version of yourself so if you're thinking of starting therapy or picking it back up give better help a try it's
all online and designed to be convenient and flexible to fit your schedule just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge rediscover your curiosity with better help visit betterhelp.com slash radio
lab today to get 10% off your first month that's better help help.com slash radio lab radio lab is supported by betterment do you wish your money could be motivated that it could get up to rise and grind and work hard for you don't worry betterment is here to help betterment is
the automated investing and savings app that makes your money hustle their automated technology is built to help maximize returns meaning when you invest with betterment your money can auto adjust as you get closer to your goal rebalance if your portfolio gets too far out of line and your
dividends are automatically reinvested that can increase the potential for compound returns in other words your money is working like a dog while you can be sleeping like one you'll never picture your money the same way again betterment the automated investing and savings app that makes
your money hustle visit betterment.com to get started investing involves risk performance is not guaranteed fresh stuff knows you do anything for your cat from getting them food that's nicer than yours to letting them take a midday nap on your keyboard so my settle for basic litter
switch to fresh step fresh step cat litter locks in liquid and odor on contact giving you up to 15 days of odor control learn more at fresh step.com step it up to fresh step with superior odor control versus leading value clumping litter fresh step is a registered trademark of the Chlorox pet
products company for brees is used under license from the proctor and gamble company or its affiliates fresh grandma's place always feels like fine she's they get out the chat room and clean my friend the glad girl group coming at you with a throwback jam that was glad for a splex drawstring trash back featuring pine salt original scent and that's better than all good it's all glad.
this question is from Christina Hartquist I'm a native of navado out in northern california and i was born and raised here so yeah love this place and you and what was your question too is if you remember what it was roughly yeah so i came across this article about these creatures
called ohms that i guess we're being you know washed out of these caves in eastern europe what did they call ohms the ohlm these sort of like blind cave dwelling amphibians they're totally white their skin is translucent very like otherworldly and the article touched on the idea that you know
folklore thought that these little creatures were actually like dragon babies being pushed out of of these caves where where these huge dragons live so i started digging into it a little bit and of course you can only find so much on the internet but there was this idea of dragons being a sort
of like a universal myth across you know different disparate cultures and Christina started to wonder why it seemed that so many cultures all over the world all have myths about dragons what is it about like humans that cause them to believe in these like huge scary fire breathing animals is that true the culture all over the world have dragons well sorted out you have the northern european dragon that we're all familiar with then there's the uh chinese dragon which is a little different
it doesn't have wings doesn't breathe fire then there's uh other dragon looking sort of things the nana bolelay among the basotto people in southern africa there's the amaru associated with the incan empire yeah i think there's no doubt that we have fabulous awesome creatures like dragons
in almost every culture in the world uh so this is adrian mayor i'm a research scholar in the classics department at stanford and i'm most interested in is what sorts of things found in nature might have led pre-scientific people to believe that dragons or monsters or other fantastic creatures
really existed at least in the past or even maybe in the present adrian actually got a book called the first fossil hunters that lays out this theory that a lot of these stories were actually based on uh people finding old you know fossils and bones fossil bones or or teeth or claws or footprints
embedded in stone so they'd see uh set old bones that they couldn't explain with any modern creatures so the creature they go to is this dragon shaped thing yes but i do want to point out though that we can never know for certain which comes first the observations of mysterious traces of
unknown animals or the stories of dragons we don't know which comes first she says it could be that the story about the dragon was already there and then when they found some bones they just sort of applied those bones to the dragon myth but if if the dragon came before the bones where did
it come from well there's another theory some scholars have said they're like monsters of the id they arise from ancient memories of very real predators that were faced by our ancestors basically dragons are composers of these creatures that you see eat us in hanses and kill us like crocodiles
sabre two tigers and lion cave bears gigantic serpent snakes python conduit raptors so you can take like this scaly skin of the crocodile the claws of the sabre two tiger and its sabre teeth the wings of these raptors put them all together so says all the old terrors rolled into one like
boom together yeah they tap into all those fears that are ready or in ready inside of us in theory i'm gonna go for that one yeah i like that that works that that feels like an answer well you know like like they're very powerful i mean it could be very scary they could be very destructive
but what's kind of magical in in game of thrones is that the intimate scenes also melt their heart and bring you closer to these creatures that should be you know burning your face off okay so i i i i should admit that i actually just used this whole dragon thing to talk to this lady at game from game of thrones you know the whole thing was this my name is polypher field and she makes all the dragon noises for game of thrones oh she makes the dragons right so what did you ask her i
guesses with the liquid what did you want to know well i wanted to know i wanted to know like how does she make these sounds and it was really interesting because you know we're talking a little bit about uh come you know how dragons are composite creatures and she basically uses composites to make
these noises oh yeah yeah yeah i absolutely she takes some noises from birds reaching shrieky bird sounds insects different kinds of reptilian recordings and stuff and is it always scary animals well depends on on what dragon that she you know which of the dragons that she's trying to actually
um create a performance for i have sounds i might choose simply by certain personality traits that i might want to push forward um so in the case of drogon so um on the show there's Daenerys who's this dragon queen and she has three dragons and one of them is named drogon
and she named that dragon after caldrogor her hot late husband um so drogon is like her lover we have to go higher he kind of has like a very affectionate um sensual relationship with her he's whistling at her all the time he's looking at her butt and going oh baby and so in order to kind of push forward this sort of like dragon sexual tension i guess she uses the sounds of two giant tortoises you know mating giant tortoises what does that sound like well um you know i'll just play it
whoa the the groan of the male actually became with some work and and you know adjustments and stuff became um the source the basis for drogons per with her with Daenerys how far did you carry me drogon we need to return my people leave me the funny thing about the per with drogon was
watching people watch it and giggling when they heard it but not really knowing why and to me it's because it had that essence that that kind of sensual sexual essence that person yeah now i used for all kinds of things and you know i also used for dragonfly wings to make that kind of funny
flutter of the thorns it's it's moving like especially on the end of his tail this year as he moved through there was like a chitter and that was like dragonfly wings dragonfly wings yeah really i i was wondering if you ever had a question about dragons that you would like to
have answered you know no it's it's curious because i think the thing that differentiates the dragons from creatures and makes them slightly otherworldly is the fire thing where did the idea for that come along that's a good question yeah where did that come from well there are many
theories about that actually i took that question back to Adrian mayor the one that i like is connected to the devastating weapon called greek fire which was this unquenchable fire it can't be put up by water in fact it burns in water and so it was a naval weapon and i believe that scholars have
found that some of the nozzles for lasting greek fire were shaped like dragons so that the boat looked like it had a dragon on board breathing fire at the enemy ship oh that's so cool just stories of they had dragons that breathe fire would make it back to to northern europe that's
the best theory i've heard oh it's interesting so it's like if the dragon is a compositor of all the things creatures that have scared us now we're part of that composite i technology now it becomes part of the creature that frightens us thanks tracy you're welcome who is what is what is uh
huh who is uh uh uh anything coming to mind what is uh uh uh oh uh say something great it's a fedora should have known that you should have known that all right we're going to take a break hey this is a lot to again um if you're enjoying this radio lab questions hour um i got something
to tell you which is that we have a new t-shirt that it is available to new members of the lab which is our membership program um and it says get ready for a drum roll to go go go go go go go go go go there's a radio lab for that uh the great thing about the t-shirt here bear with me for a second
is that look if you invest in the show you get the t-shirt right but it also helps us make more shows which makes the t-shirt more true huh following me so please invest in the future of the show invest in the future of your own shirt you can check out the t-shirt design pick your favorite color
and become a lab member at radiolab.org slash join that's radiolab.org slash join uh in the meantime we'll be back with the rest of the big little question show right after this short break radiolab is supported by betterment do you wish your money could be motivated that it could get
up to rise and grind and work hard for you don't worry betterment is here to help betterment is the automated investing and savings app that makes your money hustle their automated technology is built to help maximize returns meaning when you invest with betterment your money can auto adjust
as you get closer to your goal rebalance if your portfolio gets too far out of line and your dividends are automatically reinvested that can increase the potential for compound returns in other words your money is working like a dog well you can be sleeping like one you'll never picture your
money the same way again betterment the automated investing and savings app that makes your money hustle visit betterment.com to get started investing involves risk performance is not guaranteed fresh step knows you do anything for your cat from getting them food that's nicer than yours to
letting them take a midday nap on your keyboard so my settle for basic litter switch to fresh step fresh step cat litter locks in liquid and odor on contact giving you up to 15 days of odor control learn more at fresh step.com step it up to fresh step with superior odor control
versus leading value clumping litter fresh step is a registered trademark of the Chlorox pet products company for brews is used under license from the Proctor and Gamble Company or its affiliates glad drink never find so fresh glad stretch drink with sense protect your best
promise plays always feels like time she's they get out the chat room and clean my glad stretch never find so fresh the glad girl grew coming at you with a throwback jam that was glad for a flex drawstring trash bags featuring pine salt original scent and that's better than our good it's all glad
as aids ravaged america in the 1990s an artist sought meaning immortality choreographer built t-jones created a work based on stories of people with terminal illnesses it was as essential as it was controversial women who saw the piece and said i'm a breast cancer survivor how dare
those with their their healthy young breasts how dare they embody my experience i'm chai right on the next notes from america we meet built-tea jones listen wherever you get your podcasts jad robber radio lab and we are back with more questions next one comes from producer Rachel Qsick
so this question comes from Liam humberger from denver chalurato i was browsing memes on my instagram feed and there was a meme where the picture was of a husband and wife trying to go to sleep the wife was looking away and she was like looking
irritated and the husband was looking like this kind of confused on the left side of the bed and a caption was heard he's probably thinking of other girls and then him i wonder if i've heard about milk from the same cow twice what do you say i wonder what yeah so he said i wonder if
i've ever bought milk from the same cow twice so if i go to the store i buy a gallon of milk and then i go back maybe a week later i get another gallon of milk what are the odds that the same cow is in both of those gallons of milk i see
i would say the answer is almost certainly yes a hundred percent that's our Benjamin he's a math professor at harvey mud college in clarumont california and i'm also a math of magician and how is he so sure that it's a hundred percent well according to art Benjamin it all comes down
to uh probability statistics and dare i say how cute yeah so take a farm like the dales here here we go my name is dale matoon pine haladerry dale has about a thousand cows and 20 at a time these cows walk into a milking parlor they line up it looks like a wishbone all day and
all night long and they get hooked up with these black rubber hoses air you're here and everyone's wow is the guy putting the machine on a cow when he hits the button it turns on the vacuum and it pumps the milk out of their udders into this big hose along the bottom of the floor
and it's meeting up with all the milk from all the other cows and then it goes from that room into another room where it gets cooled down this is the milk out put your hand on this plate oh my gosh it's cold there's condensation on it
very cool once it's cooled down it goes into this rocket ship looking thing outside called a milk silo where all the milk from dales farm is just hanging out together silo gets filled up and up and up and up until it's full we're sending out over eight thousand gallons of milk the day on a tractor trailer this truck comes along picks up that milk and it stops at another farm and another farm and another farm until that truck is full right full goes to the processing plant and once you're
at the processing plant all that milk is just mixed around even more with milk from all the cows in the region and I still have my back of the envelope that had the calculation here here is where the math comes in there are about 90,000 drops of milk in a gallon and oh I don't know a hundred
thousand cows who were contributing to a particular processing plant when you run the odds of a drop of milk from any one cow getting into any particular gallon that's probably the case every gallon of milk contains most of those cows contributing and here's the thing in one drop of milk you could
probably have a bunch of different milk molecules from a bunch of different cows and so one glass of milk might have you know thousands maybe hundreds of thousands of different cow molecules in my glass of milk wow it's crazy oh my god so going back to Liam's original question uh arts argument is that when you're drinking a glass of milk there's like so many different bits of milk from so many different cows then it's probably the case that after just two glasses of milk you're almost certain
to have a cow that was represented in both of them so you're bound to run into at least a little bit of one of those hundred thousand cows again the point being that every glass of milk has you know has thousands and thousands of different cows contributing to it a little bit of 10,000 cows in
every glass in every glass of milk I love that I don't know that I do no it's great it's like you're enjoying the collective efforts of this entire species no no I think it should be the product of one or two cows and you can picture in your head and maybe pat on the nose thank you you
could say yeah I don't know on with both of you I feel like it weirds me out but I also think it's kind of cool at the same time well you know it's uh but become a think of it what happens if you drink a glass of milk in New York get on a plane fly to Atlanta then have another glass of milk are you
getting the same 10,000 in each glass or are they different 10,000 yeah so I tried calling around a little bit to answer that question and it seems like no one really wants to pay to ship milk that far and so basically a different processing plant might mean a whole different group of cows yeah
if you really want to figure out exactly which plant your milk is coming from you can go to where is my milk from.com really yeah uh and you input the little code on the top of your carton and see how often that number comes up again each processing plant has its own code. Thank you Rachel thank you uh and just a big thanks to dairy farmer Dale Matune over at Pine Hollow
Dairy are you a big milk drinker oh yeah how often do you drink milk. Oh well I have my cereal in the morning I have a glass or two for lunch and a glass or two for dinner probably two glasses each each meal if I don't drink milk I don't feel good like if I go away on vacation and a lot of times oh ah Now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now now, now, now, now, now now. I had this next one came from a couple. Hello?
A Merry Couple. Hello? Is this Marie? Yep. This is Matt. Uh, Kilti, ikon from ReddyLab. How are you? I'm victim. I have you on the microphone and Zach is right here. Oh, hey, Zach. I'm от. How's it going? Good. Zach Marie, it was years ago actually they sent us an email about what I think is like one of the most confounding, perplexing, mysterious devices that you can find inside anybody's home. Okay, so the microwave. I guess what I'm wondering is how, one, why were you microwaving peppers?
And two, do you remember the moment this happened? I know what it is. I know exactly what happened. Okay, so quick scene set, Portland, Maine, a kitchen around dinner time. I think we were like cooking a tomato sauce. Zach was on Belle Pepper duty. I was trying to take a shortcut, pick them in the microwave to make them a little warm or soft or something. And I said, oh Zach, don't put those in the microwave. They'll spark. And Zach was just like, hmm, you're crazy. I watch it.
I don't believe you at all. And uh, he's like, no, no, no. I remember seeing it as a kid. He said there was a couple times her mom put some peppers in a microwave and they sparked. Yes. And my first thought was that when I memory it was wrong, that's what I thought. I thought it was that your memory was wrong. Like there must have been a piece of metal in the microwave and you just don't remember that. And then you start sparking out because it's special. I wouldn't do that.
And this is going back and forth. And yes, and no, and sparks and nothing until I think it was like we have the, we have the ability to find this out and prove this wrong. So that was like five years ago in the past. So we decided that we would actually do our own experiment in the present to get to the bottom of this. Do green peppers spark in the microwave? Almost already. First things first. I actually went and bought a microwave. Yeah, how's it going? Off the guy on Craigslist?
All right, yeah. So 50 bucks? 50 bucks. All right. Our baby. And carried it like eight blocks back to work. Oh, shit. Also, bought a bunch of groceries because we're going to do more than just the peppers test. And for reasons I'd rather not get into, decided not to start with the peppers. Baby carrots. Baby carrots is a little carrots. Yeah. Producer, Anna McEwan. So we're going to catch up. Couldn't tell. Carrots?
Okay. And as the great ronco says of influential fame, I don't know who the great ronco is. Great ronco. Set it. And forget it. All right, two minutes. Let's see what happens. Okay. I know. I'll set it. Oh, God. This little yellow spark just shot out from one of our slices of carrots. That was crazy. It was a little spark. Oh, yeah, there. You see another one? Yeah, it just got a little flash. Wow. A little tiny spark. Ready? Mmm, carrots. Mmm, carrots. Okay. Next. Kale. Set it. And forget it.
This is where it gets a little crazy because the kale. Oh, there. Same thing. Boom, boom, boom. Sparks. Smoke. It's a smoke. Let's have a smoke. Let's have a smoke. Jesus. Delishioso. That is smoke. We're going to try blue bass. Ready? Set it. Whoa. We started to draw a bit of a crowd in the studio. Why was electricity coming out of the blueberry? Up next. Crepes. Crepitos. Crepititos. Crepititos. Crepeninis. Crepe. Time cook. Yes, chef. Ready. Time cook. Yes, chef. Whoa. We're going.
We're going. All right. What's up next? Okay. You done both, Franks? Shhh. Got a turkey, Franks. They're a set it. Spread it. Oh, what's that one? Oh, my God. Okay. Pepper. Yes, chef. Oh. What? Oh. Okay. Both red and green bell peppers. Green was crazy. Hey, pepper. We also threw in diced up tomatoes, pears, decked up gourd. I'm going to get the fire for things. And also. Oh, a flaming lip city. There we go. Who needs fireworks? Who knew you've got a city in the middle of it? This is crazy.
Stop, stop. All right, we're stopped. Yeah, because I don't want it. Yeah, is it going to... It looks like it was on fire. Is it smoking here? Yeah, it's not really smoking. Oh, that's much really bad. Let's take a break. All right. Oh, God. Yeah, we want to keep the zero pins. What did you say to Marie after the peppers sparked in the microwave? I think I was... I don't know. I was probably speechless. I said, I was... I can't believe that you're right about this.
Marie, did you say anything in return? Probably something to be effective. I told you so. So, pepper sparked in the microwave. That was settled. But then there was the debate about... It doesn't believe my understanding of how microwaves work. Why? Maybe it's just that pepper has a lot of moisture in it. Exactly. Maybe it's you put the pepper in the microwave. All that water gets really hot. The skin acts as like tinder and that lights on fire quickly. But Marie.
We always have peppers in our house. And I think that the green one tastes a little bit metallic. Do you hear it? Maybe these peppers just have like some little bit of metal in there that's sparking. Yeah. That's to find the appropriate science. Oh yeah, yeah. I'm definitely going to try and put this case to bed. Yeah, just give us one moment. So, ended up tracking down this woman. Is a Carolina, Carolyn? Is it... It's Caroline. Caroline. Okay. Her name is Caroline Ross.
I'm a professor in the Department of Material Science and Engineering in MIT. An experienced microwaber? I've done it with roast potatoes. Oh, you've seen spars. Yeah, I've seen sparks from roast potatoes. Huh. Alright, so yeah. Maybe we should just like... So I asked her in the case of the peppers or, you know, the roast potatoes or the grapes, like all the different food that we tried. Like, what happens in a microwave that makes the food just go like...
Right. So let's say I got some pieces of the pepper, put them in the microwave. I press start. Like, what? What happens next? Okay. So there is a gadget in the microwave oven that produces the microwaves. It's called a magnetron. And it's an interesting thing in itself. Okay, quicksunder, it's basically like this hunger metal that makes the microwaves. But Caroline told me this really cool thing, which is... They actually used to be used in World War II for radar. That was in the 40s.
And in 1945, there was an engineer Ray Theon who was working on these devices. And he found that some candy bar he had in his pocket got hot. He was like, oh, this cooks food. And so eventually a magnetron got thrown inside of a metal box. And thus was born the microwave. So it's an interesting thing in itself. But it produces the beam of microwaves. And they bounce around inside the microwave oven, moving at the speed of light. And what about the pounding into the pepper?
Or maybe not pounding, like shooting into the pepper? They're being absorbed. Yeah, they're being absorbed. And these microwaves, they are the right kind of frequency to cause the molecules in food to oscillate back and forth. Oh. You've put a pepper in there. So the peppers got a lot of water in it. It's got other things as well. And those molecules start absorbing the microwaves and dancing back and forth and hitting each other and heating up.
And then that bit gets even hotter and even hotter. And eventually it could burst into flames. But that is not what we're seeing with our pepper or any of the food in the microwave. It's not. No, because as Caroline explained to me, a flame is very different than a spark. So one thing to keep in mind is that the pepper is fairly conductive. It's got all this water in it. We know that water can conduct electricity. And the water isn't pure. It has a lot of salts dissolved in it.
Minuels, things like that. Okay. In that sense, it's a little bit like a piece of metal. Metal, as we know, absorbs microwave energy rather well. As we all know. Yes. So. Okay. So let's say you get these pieces of pepper in a microwave and they're, you know, keeping up. Now the thing is the microwave, like the wave itself. It has an electric field which oscillates back and forth rather a high frequency.
So when these microwaves shoot into these pieces of pepper, what happens is this electricity starts swishing back and forth through the bits of pepper. So there's a current flowing. And as more microwaves are absorbed into these bits of pepper. You can get quite big currents. Current so big that they start to create this electric field around the food. And that electric field builds up and up and up and eventually it's big enough to cause the air to glow around the food.
Because now there's actually electricity coursing through the air. Like a fluorescent light bulb. In care of it, it says at this point you can start to see these glowing balls of gas floating. It's actually the air turning into plasma. Now, back in the center of the microwave are our little bits of pepper where there's still this electrical current. Swishing back and forth through those bits of pepper. And if you have sharp corners.
Like the actual corner of a pepper even on the skin, like these tiny microscopic little points, the electricity in the pepper, the electricity in the air. You can get concentrated at those sharp corners like a lightning rod. And at those corners the electricity will just build and build and build. Until... Wow! You get a mini lightning bolt. I think Caroline said everything in the microwave just sort of calms down. Until the electric field builds up again and it does it all over.
Letting loose these mini lightning bolts. So it's a very dynamic process. You've got things being ionized, you've got things recombining, you've got charge flowing, you've got light being emitted, things get hot. There's a big current flowing all for that tiny fraction of a second. A lot of quantum physics in there. And then we hear a little ting. And then... Yep. We're done. And then we're done. But I just had one last job to do. How are you two doing? Again? Good. Okay, alright, so I think...
Called up Zach and Marie told them everything I learned about their sparking pepper. And then even though both of them didn't have the exact theory, like Zach was right, water is an important part. Marie was kind of on to something with this metal thing. Yeah. It feels like it's almost like a little bit of a marriage of sorts, part of the pun. Between both of your ideas that kind of is what is happening inside this black box. So yeah. So I think we had some of the elements there.
Yeah. Yeah. So that's about it. Okay. Okay. Oh, there was one thing that I actually thought was kind of interesting. And all these questions we were getting in. There was like this tiny little pattern of married couples sending us in arguments that they got. There was one couple that was like... They were arguing about the nutritional value of microwaving a potato. There was another couple that sent in a very long email about how they'd been debating about how we perceive color.
You actually had a similar just you. Yeah. Over color. It was the couch. Oh, yeah. It was the couch. It was some sort of like drab tone that I thought was green and you thought was brown. Great. Great. Yeah. We had that couch for like between different houses and different combinations for probably like five or six years and maybe seven years, ten years. And I was... Yeah, I always thought it was gray. It still do. Apparently you and your sister thought it was green.
You lived together for years and you never realized you're seeing something completely different. Like what do you mean our green couch? I have no idea. You don't have a green couch. Producer Matt Kilti. Why do humans have two feet? And now we're going to be able to fax the pencil. Do you have a little wave go through the little head full string? I don't know. We're doing it all along the bow. What are you doing here? What are you doing here? What is happening after this life?
Where do we go from here? I'm working at old. I'm just a comb. Does that work? I have water. We're working. I have water. I don't know. I'm flying. I want to know what's interesting. I am curious to learn. Hello. Let me know when you get the answer. Bye. Hi, this is Danielle. And I'm in beautiful glubber Vermont. And here are the staff credits. Radio Lab was created by Chad Ebenrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts.
Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fertuna, David Gabel, Maria Paz-Guterres, Sindhu Nyanu Sam-Bum-Dum, Matt Guilty, Annie McEwen, Alex Niesen, Valentina Powers, Sarah Kari, Sarah Sandbach, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio.
Leadership support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simon Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Fundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Fresh step knows you do anything for your cat. From getting them food that's nicer than yours to letting them take a midday nap on your keyboard. So, my settle for basic litter.
Switch to Fresh Step. Fresh Step Cat litter locks in liquid and odor on contact, giving you up to 15 days of odor control. Learn more at FreshStep.com. Step it up to Fresh Step, with superior odor control. Versus leading value clumping litter, Fresh Step is a registered trademark of the Chlorox pet products company, for brews is used under license from the Proctor and Gamble Company or its affiliates.
Walmart has straight talk wireless, so I can keep doing me, like hitting up all my friends for a last-minute city sash. Or curating the best pop playlist you've ever heard in your life. And even editing all my socials to keep it with what's new. Oh yeah, I look good. Post it. Which all-in-all suits my study poppy main character vibes to a tee. Period. Find and shop your fake tech at Walmart.