Bugs, Twinkies and Ancient Foods

goat cheese pizza. You known, just on the fly rosemary pizza is always so good, like goat cheese pizza with like grapes and rosemary. I love that grapes. Sorry, I know what I'm going to add now. So these these are very you know, these are modern foods. These are you know, we we pretty much have everything in the

world at our disposal. Yeah, I was about to say, I I should um, I should point out that the balslama onions I use are from a grocery store chain that are frozen, which makes me being a foodie super easy to your point. Well, but but even you know, there even someone, even if you're not gonna even if even if you can use raw materials, you know, there's just so many at our disposal, so so modern cuisine just encompasses everything. But have you ever attempted to cook

with ancient methods or to to prepare ancient recipes? Have I churned my own butter? Have I created a little hole in the ground in my backyard and and just filled it full of hot coals and grow up some stuff to pick in there? No? I haven't. Okay, well

I I don't think I think I have either. But it's a It is a fascinating prospect, the idea of inviting people over or just you know, just just preparing this nice meal, setting the table, and then it's uh, you know like nuts and bugs, nuts and bugs and nuts and bugs, which could be very very I mean, I'm not setting this up like, oh this is gross and the goat cheese pizza is great. The oat cheese pizza is great, but but bugs and nuts are good too. I mean, are you saying this is the plus to

see an era dinner party? Yeah, it's like the Pleistocene dinner party. We're kind of trying to imagine here. It would would be a very different affair than than what we're used to. But but but is we try and understand what people ate in the past. It is kind of challenging because that we don't always have the best kept records of what people ate, especially when you get back, you know, obviously into prehistoric times. It's called prehistoric because

there's not really in a recorded history. You have to depend on fossil records. Uh, you know, looking at the actual teeth of our our ancestors and seeing what they were capable of eating. Yeah, and when we looked at neander faults, we actually are need it or tall as they are called. We actually found that meat really wasn't

as present in their diet as people thought. In fact, there's a lot more vegetable matter and so on and so forth, And that meat as a main source of proteins sort of a myth because it's very obvious that bones would subsist better than vegetable matter, right, Yeah, I mean you have to keep in mind catching something to

eat is kind of a challenging affair. Like if you had to go catch an animal and eat it right now, Um, I mean not counting pets, not counting squirrels that are so used to the presence of humans that you could go and grab one with your hand. Um, you know, in an in an actual prehistoric environment where everything is fearful of everything else. It's it's a lot harder to actually go out and catch that much meat, right, I

would be toast. I think most of us would be toast if we had to go out and actually get except for for Mark Zuckerberg of course. Yeah. But then also speaking of toasting, I mean that's another thing too, since since cooking, which we'll get to in a lot in in in a few minutes, uh, is it can be used as a means of preserving meat. That's the

thing too. It's like, say you're a prehistoric tribesman, you bring down some sort of large animal, Well get eating because you only have so much time before that that meat is spoiled in a warm environment, right, and hopefully you've got a salt flat nearby, right, so you can at least preserve some of it if you know the methods and the methods have been taught to you. If if there's enough language at this point to communicate this, Yeah, there is the what was the movie about the kid

who who goes up into the wilderness to survive. Oh uh, this is John cracow Um book, right, if you based off of that, I cannot remember. Into the woods or sometimes yeah, into the wild wild, Like there's a scene in that where he kills a large animal and he's looking to try and you know, preserve the meat as fast as possible, and it just ends up failing because it's it's a huge undertaking, especially if you as a

people have not developed the technology to do it yet. Yeah, well, and let's just try to let's do a quick timeline if if, if, if people will allow us such an indulgence of what we're looking at when we talk about these kinds of foods um, before we became an agrarian culture. Um, we're talking actually a much longer, like twenty plus years ago.

You're really looking at food sources such as very basic water, ice, salt. Again, if you've got salt, bed, handy fish, mushrooms, eggs, right, so you probably creep up to a little nest and grab some eggs, easy pickings, easy pickings, um, some grains, and of course insects really important. This is called into mafaji. Right. When you eat insects, it's a great source of protein. Yeah, because they're everywhere. They I mean they're they're just everywhere,

and and they're so easy to catch. Generally, you're not gonna have to fight for your life to grab, you know, a nice juicy grub to eat. You just gotta know what to dick and right. And if you were in the West, that probably sounds weird, but obviously in in some Eastern cultures, this is you know, straight food for people. It still exists. Yeah. Yeah, it's still traditional food in many parts of Asia and Africa. And you know, you can go on the streets of Bangkok and get the

fried insects and supposedly it's delicious. Yeah, I didn't get to try it when I was there. There was all sorts of street food, but we didn't actually get to see the the insect because I was reason to go back. Yeah, there's totally recently yea. Um. And then you've got the sort of post agrarian fifteen thousand years ago or so, you've got sheep, we cherries and almonds. Is afterward, domesticating animals. We're grown we actually have early agriculture, so we're growing

up some plants we're gonna use. We've got animals that we are controlling and they're not going anywhere, and we can kill and eat them at our at our whim. Yeah. But still we're talking about sheep here, We're not talking about cows or pigs or anything else. And I mean it's still very limited. And then cheap for the first to get pulled in right there they are, Yeah, you're kind of dumb, sorry guys. But then all seven thousand BC beer and wine, oh yes, yea fermentation of fruit

and hops. And then you start to see cattle domestication um in a in a very real way. And then in six thousand BC you've got maze tortillas, honey chickpeas, five thousand BC milk yogurt, popcorn, which just you know that was the big that was the big invention that year. Yeah, yeah, and they have little carts out there and they had a little red and white striped buckets. Yeah yep. Um. And then and then look at this, because this is interesting.

So you've got popcorn thirty s dred BC, three thousand BC, spices starting to be used, and then five hundred BC skip forward sausage. And then this is interesting. Obviously this is a highly selected list. There's a ton of stuff that we could go on forever and it would be like reading the telephone book and would be highly unpleasant. But um, the reason I wanted to point some of these out is because as you go, uh, as you as you come more towards the present, you see more

and more processing of food. So ninth century coffee and cod because they go so well together, eleventh century corn beef insider, fifteenth century jellies, jams and preserves, and then seventeen sixty nine tofuon in America eighteen twenty four, A one steak, sauce, eighteen seventy nine sacharin, and then we've got Crisco in nineteen eleven, vegam nine ninety seven the healthy element of processed foods uh spam. Yeah, So what

do we see? I mean, what we're seeing here is just our ability to manipulate food more more century to the point where it becomes increasingly more like this sci Fi idea of like enjoy some food cubes, you know, where it just comes out and it doesn't even look at anything like uh, like a creature or a plant,

and maybe never was a creature. No, no, But I think it's important to sort of talk about this just in the context of me, how do we get from you know, spearing insects and uh, trying to figure out whether or not a tuber was edible or inedible to to getting to this spam. Yeah, because there's a basic like one like picture yourself in the woods like I

was doing. I've been doing this a little recently as we've been looking to these food topics, and I guess maybe I've been outside a little more in the last year. Um uh and uh. And you know, like looking around in a wilderness situation, especially here in Georgia, you look around and you're like, wow, what if I just suddenly had to survive right now? Just I you know, I

just had a forage to see what I could. You know, I would I would be dead, you know before the end of the day probably well, but you know, as a as a wanderer. And and that's the thing too. As humans spread throughout um, through throughout the world and and and found new homes, they had to be able to find these things, and some some areas were more

conducive to it than others. But basically early humans, you know, you're looking around, You're looking for berries, you're looking for nuts, you're looking for fungus, you're looking for water sources, and the thing is that all of these can be poisoned if you don't know what you're looking for. Some berries, they maybe ones really red and it's really good to eat. The other's red and will kill you, know, heartbeat, Uh.

Fungus is obviously, some are gonna be delicious, some are gonna make you see the devil, and some are going to kill you. Dead water sources, some are gonna be clean and wonderful, some are going to clean you out. Well, this is what when it becomes really important, this whole trial and error process and really communicating, you know, among your tribe or or whatever. The situation is, like, hey, do not pick this type of mushroom. Bad things happen.

It's happened to me. I survived it, or someone didn't survive it. So you know, we take only man, it's like you have to give me those measures, right, yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, just save this for me. But so how do you how do you do trial and error when you're dealing with potentially lethal consequences? I mean especially it's like to say, even if it's just a thing where you get dysenterry. Like today, dysenterry is is a lot more treatable, you know,

especially in the more modern Western civilizations. But but back then, it's like dysentery could be uh mean, until very recently, dysentery was a death sentence in many places, and it is in many places. Yeah, well, I mean in terms of whether or not something might be poisonous. I mean,

they're gonna be some clues right off the bat. You know, if you if you bring it up to your lips as it began to sting, if you put in your mouth, does your you know, do you go into antiploxic shock, These sort of things that might be able to sort of head you off from death before you know you actually get there by consuming it. So there are some clues that it would give you. But again the trying

to um orally tell this information is really important. And then later as an agree in society with domestication dogs, it becomes a lot easier. Oh, because dogs of course will eat anything. You will eat anything you throw them that say, hey, check that out. Maybe you have twenty dogs and you have one to spare. Um It's it's an easy way to figure out whether or not something is is edible or inedible? Yeah, or well it's like a dog could eat it and not die, so it

must be good for dinner. That's that's that's setting the bar kind of low, I think, but you know, it's better than nothing. And and of course, uh, people end up developing all these different myths and stories. You end up with this oral history to share with with your people. That lets you just you know, kind of like a memorization sheet of what you can eat and what you can't um. But not unlike the memory palace. That's thinking instead of just trying to remember, right, this red berry

will kill you and this one is pretty delicious. You create a story about it, and then it's it will sink in a lot more. That's right. And I mean, how do we teach our kids right now? You know, to avoid things? We we give them scary like you know Grimm's fairy tales, you know, watch out for the witch. Um. I mean, you know, it's it's all a little bit, you know, in the same manner, I suppose, But there

you go. I mean, you are foraging, You're you're giving your food scraps to the dogs, and then on top of that, you're probably giving them something new that you're interested in finding out whether or not you want to eat. Um. And all of this starts to evolve into, you know, this tide of food that becomes available to us and that we cultivate. But the big big thing here obviously is fire. Yeah, and it's it's really difficult to to

figure out when we first began using fire deliberately. You look at some of these estimates and US and you can some people say like Asia, other estimates are in Africa even even further in the past. Um, And it just kind of depends on which one you go with. And uh, you know, it's it's hard to figure out exactly when then, you know, because obviously you're keeping a fire. Um, you might use the fire too, obviously to keep warm

to scare away animals. Um. Eventually the craft tools. But at what point do you discover, Hey, if I take this piece of meat and uh accidentally drop it in the fire, then when it comes back out, it has a different taste, it has a different consistency, right. Or if I take this potato which was inedible, and I cook it, then all of a sudden, I have something

that's really nutritious. Uh, that I can now eat. So, I mean, because that's the thing about fire, It doesn't just I mean it has several the way it changes the property of food. Uh, it does so in several different ways. I mean obviously, Um, if you cook meat thoroughly, you don't have to worry as much about like parasites, that's just just a small thing. You don't have to worry about getting sick as much from it. Um, then the taste is going to be in many ways better.

And then also you're gonna be able to digest it easier. It's gonna that's a huge part of that. I believe that the digestion part. Because we're talking about this, um a little bit that you know, back in the day, obviously there was no plumbing. So you would not want to put yourself at risk for just fooling around with a certain food to see whether or not you could eat it, because you know, who wants to be doubled over in a cave with diarrhea? Right? Yeah, I mean

you will be shunned. Yeah, and there are not that many caves. Why aren't you doing it in the cave? Yeah? Go outside? I know it's snowing, but um, it's uh, yeah, I mean it's uh, it's it's like if we suddenly had a magic sauce that you could pour over rocks and make them edible. You know. It's kind of like that's the thing. It's like being able to cook things suddenly makes things that you could not eat before edible.

It it opens up the the culinary world world a little larger, and in that way ensures your survival a little more. Yeah, and yeah, there is no question that this gave us the upper hand as a species. And that's the important thing to realize to about earlier. I mean, these early societies, even monestor, that food is survival, you know. I mean as much as you know, especially in privileged portions of the world, we get wrapped up in food as enjoying and food as this recreation and this thing

that we love. But it's survival, I mean, obviously. And that's an outrageous overstatement of the obvious. But like most outrageous overstatements of the obvious, we do so because you really have to drive from a point that we often overlook. You know, this, This was the key to so many of the roots of modern cuisine was that we had to figure out ways to survive. We had to figure out ways to eat things that we couldn't eat previously and eat things tomorrow that we would otherwise have to

eat to eat all of it today. Well yeah, even until the Industrial Revolution, it was pretty much uh, touching go when it turned when it came to getting the right amount of food and protein and surviving right little kids. You know, babies often would perish because they didn't have enough food or their parents didn't have enough food, or obviously disease um was pretty rampant as well. So anyway, until we stabilize enough for society, we really didn't take

it um as we do today. Is like, Okay, I'm just gonna sit down and have myself a meal here, whether or not it's in a restaurant, or I just pull something out of my freezer and it happens to be bossonic onions, which are delicious. So you have preservation um of food. This is this is key. Well, we we've alluded to this earlier, like if you if you heat a meat, if you if you cook it right, it can last longer. Right. The classic example of this

is beef jerky. Uh. You know, some people may just you know, just think, oh, beef jerkey is delicious because I can buy it a a truck truck stop and eat it while I'm driving, you know. And and uh, you know, and beef turkey can be really good if if you're into that sort of thing. But it's an example of meat that's preserved. I mean it's like, yeah, it's dried out, it can last longer. It's not gonna rot and make

you sick. Um. And we see uh, several different food preservation techniques that were essential early on, because especially when you're dealing with harsh winters, you've got to I mean it's it's like the weather grasshopper in the ant, right, the the ant stores is food away and is therefore able to survive. The winner the grasshopper doesn't and dies

during the winter. So we had a learned to be ants pretty early on, which is taking something delicious now and save it for the winter, even if it's going to be a little disgusting come winter. Oh yeah, you have a really good example of that bag of disgusting nous. Yes, I mean to me, not to this culture. Yeah, we kind of. Some of these are basically their survival foods.

There are things that and you see a lot of these in UM in more extreme environments such as UM such as Greenland, where we have this thing called Kiddiak, which we're gonna get to right after this quick break. This presentation is brought to you by Intel sponsors of tomorrow. All right, kak laid on me? Yeah, okay, so halves in Greenland. All right, So every year these little birds, baby birds, cute, very cute little guys. Uh. You know, they're they're all out, They're all just swarming all over

the place. This is a great time to eat little birds because they're everywhere, right, and they have this great way of catching them. They developed this it's like this big sort of slingshot net, like like a picture of like a giant butterfly net. And I was thinking, like Dr Susie and net. It's very Sousian and they sling that thing around. And if you've there's a the Discovery BBC co production Human Planet has some excellent footage of

this in their episode about the Arctic. But they sling this this net around and they catch these birds and like in a day, they'll just catch hundreds of these things and they'll they'll catch them and they'll snap their little necks, put them in a bag, and then they'll take them back back home. Now what are they doing when they get home? Do they fry them up? No? Because this is not food for now. This is because now is a great what are you gonna yeah, yeah, yeah,

you can't eat them. You can't eat them all now, it's impossible and you are worrying about surviving later. But you also can't just uh pile them in you know, a corner of your house, so they're gonna rot other things they're getta eat there. They're not gonna be food come winter. So they actually take a page for on the the book of the Arctic Fox, which will we're

up pretty much all foxes will do this. This is why they you know, they talk about like a fox getting into a inhouse, so will just kill all the chickens because the fox's ways to like, well, there's all this food now, I'm gonna kill it all and I'm gonna bury it. I'm gonna hide it and then I'll come back and eat it when it's nice and nasty later on during the winter. So it's the same principle um they but but instead of just bearing it under

a rock. They take the birds and they stuff them again by the hundreds into a big seal skin and then they they and then they seal it no pun intended, and then they jump on it get all the air out of it. They literally are jumping on this right after and they've sown the top right yeah, and uh, and they put I think it's like like seal fat on it to help keep the seal, keep it sealed

and to keep flies away from it. Then they put some big rocks over it to keep anything from digging it up and and to get the rest of the air out of it. And then they leave it for months. And then when they come back to it once food is a little more scarce and they need to start getting into the survival food. Uh. All these little birds a fermented all right. Yeah, so it's they say that the aromas like uh, like a really pungent cheese. Yeah, And it was it Richard Attinborough who like, huh okay,

totally different voices. Um, but I think I remember saying that it's ready when when it stings the nostrils, which I thought, well, wow, that that is something I want to eat right there. Yeah, when when I was watching this episode with my wife for the first time. We were like, oh my goodness, there, you know, watching them get these happen, We're like, please cook those birds, Please cook those birds. And they don't. They eat it. They just tear into them. And it's and it's a delicacy.

And I don't want to I don't really want to focus too much. I'm like, oh, this is gross food, because this this is what's gross to someone else's is great to someone Yeah, and it's a delicacy to these two, to these guys and uh, and it could easily be a delicacy to us if we had developed a taste for it. Um. So that being said, I do I find it really interesting because I love a survival food aspect of it, but I'm also really intrigued by its kind of grossness and uh and what it really tells

us about food preservation, about how important it is. There are a few other really cool examples of survival food from U believe, Iceland and uh. Uh. Guy I know by the name of Andy works for a gaming company that's headquartered in Iceland, and he had had a chance to try several the so I asked him, I shot him and he almost like, hey, what was the what

was some of the more interesting survival foods? Uh, that you've got to try because in Iceland now you don't need to eat these things, but they're part of the culture and they're they're they're they're something you kind of celebrate. He said that there is a there is a shark called the it's a p shark and it's uh, it's fer minute. It's called a hack ral, So it's kind

of like the same, you know, the same principle. Uh, but it's uh, it's he said, it's not that bad if you you take it with a with a shot of of of liquor. See, that's the whole point right there, I think. Yeah, And then he said that he said that the worst though, was a cold sour ram testical loaf called the Springer and uh, he says it's worse than it sounds, and it sounds terrible. Ram Testical looks.

He said the fish jerky was very good, and uh he said that the pickled whale blubber was actually fairly good too. So so some of these things sound kind of kind of kind of gross, but apparently they're not that bad. Some of them are sound kind of gross in our kind of gross, at least in the Western Palette. But but again these are harsh, harsh environments, harsh winters. So you gotta take what you have, you got stored away and uh and then be able to get it

out and eat it when times get rough. Well, And I thought this was interesting. This is from Cooking and Ancient Civilations by Civilizations by Kathy Kaufman, and she says, quote, for thousands of years, the survival and power of a tribe or country dependent on its stock and grain harvesting, processing and storing greenstocks was of huge importance, and war was declared only after harvest um. And one of the earliest records of large scale food preserving was in ancient Egypt.

As we know, what was really important to have an adiquette adequate stock of dried grain um. And as you know that the Nile would flood seasonally, so they have these big silos where they would store it. And records from show that the annual flooding of the Nile produced surplaces of grain that were stored and kept to feed. Builders of irrigation schemes and pyramid tombs, the Great Pyramid of Cheops that Giza was built around twenty BC by

slaves fed with stores of grain and chickpeas, onions and garlic. Yeah, it's I mean, it's the it's the ultimate in a way, it's the ultimate survival food because it's it's grain. It can it can be kept and then it can be turned into bread or porridge or what have you later on. Um, and it becomes in early society, but really modern societies too, like grain is power, grain is is survival and and and and bread is essential, especially in an urban environment.

I mean it becomes almost a currency. Yeah. I think it's very telling that, you know, war would sort of take a break during harvest because you know, why would you why would you, you know, disturb one of the most plentiful, bountious times of food available to you, and

you would be wiping out your civilization. Yeah. And I've also there are there are different arguments of course about like how war really got got started in human civilization, But there's there is the the argument that you really didn't have war per se until we had reached the point, as as an agin in culture where we could have the silos of grain, where we could have where something was worth taking. Yeah, we had a surplus of essential

materials in the form of grain. It's interesting to you, just on a side note, that Costa Rica doesn't have any sort of army. And what I love about that is there their whole thing is, well, if you don't, if we don't have something some sort of central government that has you know, munitions and this power structure here, then nobody really wants to take us over. Yeah. I mean, yeah, if you wanted to take over coast to Rea, I guess the main it's like we really like uh, you

know jungles. Yeah, you want to take over our sloths. They're high maintenance. Yeah but no, Yeah, that's but that's one really cool thing about Costa Rica for sure. Yeah. But yeah, so you have to you know, you have these things, like you said, You've got these stockpiles that all of a sudden become very interesting to to other tribes or cultures to take over. Yeah. It's interesting thinking about like grain is survival food, and grain is the

thing you store away now for for food later. Um. I feel like in the office here and how stuff works, I think everybody kind of has like a survival food stored in their desks. Like today I managed to leave without bringing my lunch with me. So I've got I've got a like noodle bowl in my desk, which is like, you know, a little plastic bowl with stuff that looks like dust in the bottom of it, and then you

add water and water. That's funny. I have that, and I have mac and cheese, and then I have some cocoa from when it was cold, cold for like four days in the winter. Yeah, and I was cool. Yeah. You people pulling out oatmeal packs too, Yes, yeah, that's the that's a big thing throughout the day to not just for breakfast, not enough pickled fish year where is it? Um? But but yeah, back to uh to food preservation for

just a moment. Other techniques include pickling, uh you know, preserving it in a in a vinegar or you know, some sort of a harsh flood. Um. And and then eventually we get to the point where we can bottle things and canned things, but that really comes much later. Um. The technology for that actually during um Napoleonic times really gets uh gets interesting. Right, This was for French troops, right,

in an effort to try to preserve food. Right, there was a man by the name of effort a P P E R T. And uh, I just have to share this bit from James Burke's Connections. James Burke is uh. Uh, He's covered a lot about the history of science, and he's big on like comparing, like you know, sort of like uh these different little paths through technology that leads from something um simple to something highly advanced and earth shattering. Um. But he says here um Appert's idea was to preserve food.

The container for his first attempts was the champagne bottle. He had handled these bottles often during his earlier years, and as he said, the form of the champagne bottle is most convenient. It is the handsomest as well as this strongest, and is of the best shape for packing up. So he placed the food. He placed the food to be preserved in the bottles, and he sealed it with the cork. And uh, as they were in the wine

business by wire cages. So eventually we're, you know, we we learned how to to do this little better with cans. But I've actually seen footage of one of these bottles and it looks kind of gross because it's like ancient soup. Yeah,

why is that so un appetizing. I don't know, but this guy was a big you know, he was like, this is the perfect way he was envisioning the future, where like, anytime you wanted to have dinner and you didn't have anything preparable, you go under the wine cellar, you get yourself a bottle of wine, a bottle of soup, and uh you come up and uh have have something. Well, yeah, okay, that's not bad. Bottle of wine, a bottle of soup.

That was a really bad billy. Sorry. Um. And then you have pasteurization, to which starts in late eighteen hundreds, which again helps us to um, you know, pat rites, milk juices, so on and so forth, makes us a much more portable society as well, and freeze drawing space missions, right exactly. Yeah, even more techniques where we can take the food of today and make it available for consumption later on. Yeah, and then don't forget nitrates and cured meats,

talking hot dogs. Oh yeah, so yeah, this is uh, this kind of a smorgese board, if you will, a buffet table of of some ancient up patter, a poopoo platter of of ancient and not so ancient food techniques about the evolution of few food and some of the science of food, um, which we're going to get into more detail in some upcoming episodes. Um. I mean it's really fascinating, cause, like I said, the story of food

is the story of humans. It's the story of of of science and technology and uh, and so it's kind of neat to sort of go back and sort of lay the groundwork and and briefly discuss some of the trends in the evolution of food. Yeah, like how we went from eating insects for basic survival to paying five for a hamburger and you know one of the toniest restaurants in New York City. Yeah, like hidding, isn't really like a five hamburger? Yeah yeah, maybe Yeah. It's kind

of a gimmick at some place. Yeah yeah. And when you actually order the hamburger, they have to like send a guy out to get the materials for it. Yeah yeah, I don't know. All right, we've got some listeners, males. Yeah, let's get out of food and let's get into Matt. We uh recently did math music in Mayhem, another one of our math related episodes, and we had a listener by the name of Graham from Scotland, and he wrote in and said is a pH de candidate in physics.

I was delighted to see a recent math related podcast. Whilst these were very interesting, I found your attitudes in the introduction disappointing for some reason, however, and then I'm skipped just a bit for some reason. However, it is acceptable to admit to being bad at maths, and I believe that your comments serve only to reinforce that this

idea is acceptable. I don't expect everyone to have enthusiasm for every topic, but I can't say I've ever heard you confess to disliking a subject in the preface to another podcast. Uh So I was so saddened by this because I thought, oh my gosh, that's definitely not what we're trying to put out there. I think, if anything, we were sort of being apologetic in our our lack of math leatness. Um. Yeah, yeah, so, Graham, I hope that you understand that, um, that we absolutely worship at

the at the math Altar. If anything, we wish we were a lot better. But unfortunately there are a lot of people who, um, you know, with journalism degrees or English degrees like ourselves that are in the same boat. Um, and we certainly have dedicated time to math related subjects because we think it's so interesting. Yeah, yeah, I guess.

I guess we were sort of trying to disarm the non math listeners in a way to say, like, hey, don't run, don't run, We're not going to really get heavy in the math because we're not really heavy math people. But math is still really amazing and let's show you why. Yeah. Yeah, personally, it's a tragedy, the great tragedy of my life that I didn't have more of it, The greatest tragedy of my life. Yeah. But where would you be if you've been warning you'd be ruling this place by now? Oh yeah,

I would just I would eat the other. But but anyway, I think still think Graham makes a valid comment here, and I'm happy that we could. Yeah, and I'm happy that we could. Uh, we could we could mention this um in the podcast, sort of address this just in case anyone else was wondering. It's like, why do they not like math all that much? Now? We we we like math, but we we do realize our our limitations and uh and his dirty Harry Setiman has got to

know his limitation. That's the truth. So thing you Graham from Scotland. And since we just did a food podcast, I would love to recite oh to a Haggis, but I don't know it by heart. Who's that by Robert Burns? To please? Really? Oh? I guess I have heard of dogs? All right? Well, here's another one related to math. This is from listener Paul. Paul writes and it says, greetings, just got done listening to math music and Mayhem. You mentioned Brian May's physics background and it reminded me that

another of my favorite bands is also very mathematical. Tool One great example of this is the song later Alice, which makes a lot of use of Fibonacci, the Fibonacci sequence. Here is a link to the video that explains it needs and this one can actually just put this up on Facebook. Of course it will be buried by the time this comes. Well yeah, well you can look it up. Just look at tool in fibonacci and we have we actually have an article on how stuff works about Fibonacci numbers.

If you're not really sure what they written about you, it's quite low. Yes, I think it was written money but so long ago that I've forgotten every most of the things about it. But yeah, this is the second

listener who's mentioned tool. I used to listen to an awful lot and I never really tied into main connections with most of the the the number stuff, but apparently there's you know, now that I think about it, there are a number of tracks that allude to equations, if you will, so all right, but we've received a lot of good feedback from people based on that podcast with other UM musicians that are also mathematicians or have some sort of math or science background, so it was really interesting.

Uh uh. There were a few that I was not aware to get confirmed our suspicions anecdotally, at least the connection there. So if you have anything you would like to share with us UM, you can check out that Facebook and Twitter page that I alluded to. We're Blow the Mind on both of those, and you can send us an email at Blow the Mind at how Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check out our new

video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The WORL