Scientists in Love

am now in. For others, it is perhaps a reminder of a past love and uh and brings with a certain negative connotations or love that is not yet fully manifested in one's life, and then it can be equally problematic. Or maybe it's just how in the world am I gonna get reservations at a restaurant tonight to uh, to satisfy the uh, the significant other in my life? That's right? And I think that we've got a podcast that's that's gonna cater to some of this, right, But we're not

talking about it. Well, I don't know. I don't know, because we're not talking like, uh, you know, roses and kitten farts here, are we? No, we're not. We're talking hardcore science and love, right though it is conceivable that a scientists could study either um, kitten farts or certainly they study flowers. But but yeah, we're we're dealing with scientists in love. And it's it's a it's an interesting concept.

I mean, it's not out of everyone knows. Scientists are of course human beings, and they fall in love and no matter how nailed down there, they're one part of their life. Maybe with with the strict you know, realities of science. Uh, they're still subject to this weird human

emotion that entangles all of us. That's right. And we've talked about scientists being that the obsessive kind before, right, so it would make sense that scientists and love would be super obsessed and too scientists and love doubly so, and might even their love might be so crazy and strong that it could eventually lead to maybe like the a bomb. Yeah, it's like, uh, you know, it's like the like love is an alcohol and uh in zeal

for science is a caffeinated beverage. And then when when those two things mix, when they are in the same container, as we'll see in two cases, when when scientists are in love with each other and share that scientific zeal and and a and and this love, it becomes something that can potentially give you a heart attack. It's true. Right in the club were so specifically we are talking about well, first let's talk about the Sagans, that's right.

The second Carl Sagan and Andrewin. Yes, yes, and they had they had a groovy kind of love, Yes, a cosmic kind of love. I guess you could say, um to uh. To set this in time, we are going back to the summer of ninety seven, and that's when Carl and a lot of you probably know Carl Sagan of course, the host of Cosmos, which you can get on you can get it on like Netflix streaming and stuff. It's it's still wonderful today. Most of the science still

holds up. But you know, astronomer, astrophysicist, um, you know, cosmologists generally generally was just on the forefront of popularizing science and just being a a mascot for for scientific inquiry, right, particularly space, particularly space. Yes, and uh. He was involved in a little something called the Voyager project, and the creative director on this was one and Drew In. Now Voyager.

You may remember this mostly from the Star Trek movie in which a a a fictional Voyager craft comes back superintelligent.

But of course Voyager we were sending them out and they're still sailing out to the limits of of of man's discovery and space and uh aboard this particularly two particular crafts, Voyager one and Voyiger two, was a Golden Record, which, interestingly enough, jad Aban Rod and Robert Korich of Radio Lab referred to as quote the ultimate mixtape that's right of their love because they collaborated on this school record.

I mean, it's also like a mix tape, like hey, aliens out there, here you go, and maybe we made a mixtape for you. But it's also it really represent this this bond that was growing between these two and this love that was growing between the two between these two in the summer of Yeah, I mean, it's literally documenting them falling in love and the moment that they fell in love in which they chose a specific piece of music for it, which is amazing, and it's just

out there flinging itself into outer space. Yeah. And currently Voyager one is one hundred and sixteen point five astronomical units from Earth. Just to rewind, an astronomical unit is the distance between the Earth and the Sun. So it's that distance spread out a hundred and sixteen and a half times Voyager two is point two astronomic units from

the Earth, and these distances continue to increase. And we talked about this a little bit in our previous podcast about alien etiquette, and the idea, of course of this Golden Record is that it would be intercepted and it might tell an extraterrestrial life form what life was like. I suppose you used to say it was um during that time period, because it's going to be out there for a while. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I think that was the sort of the joke to us as well.

Maybe they intercept this in fo years and then they'll be like, I don't even know what this chicken scratches. Yeah, and it's kind of a you know, it's it's kind

of a time capsule as well. But but it it contained the just the record contained spoken greetings in fifty nine different languages, ranging from ancient Acadian to Wu, a modern Chinese dialect that's not to be confused with anything Wu Tang clan or but sadly with the record was was pressed and sent out before their genesis, but also Sounds of Earth ninety minutes of of selected music from both both Eastern and Western classics. Again no Wu tang, sadly and uh. Also the sound of a kiss, mother's

first words to a newborn child, Yeah, baby crying right. Yeah. So a vast collection of our human experience, and most impressive of all, for the purposes of discussing the love between these two scientists of the sound of a heartbeat, that's right. What was the idea? Andrew And said, I'd like to have my heartbeat recorded, right, and then sort of data scrambled later to to sort of map this out.

Take me down that road, Robert, Yeah, and it's it's it's fascinating because because the Sagan and and basically went down and had this recording done, like just just shortly after they had actually come because they've been professionally aligned for a while and they knew each other, they were working each other, but this was after they actually reached the point where they realized they were in love with each other, and and and and and just shortly after

they had actually spoken about it with each other, and then they went and recorded her heartbeat. And now it's out there on the plate, and it's it's it's it's beautiful. It's the love and the science um intermingling with each other. And uh, and you know, maybe it's a little sappy if you're if you're not in the mood for it this week. But yeah, but there, I mean, there you go.

You've got this, this incredible collaboration between two people. And we should also note to that Carl Sagon was married at the time that um he met Andrew and and as far as I know, nothing nuts or scandalous went on, so to speak. I think he actually declared his love for her over the phone after she had talked to him about a particular piece of music that they had been obsessing over. So it was sort of one of those things that I think that he was like, oh

my god, I'm in love with this person. And then of course he dissolved his marriage, his first marriage, So I just want to point that out. I think that Carl Singgon was a perfect gentleman. I'd like to think that, but but I don't know that for sure. And of

course Sagan died uh sadly in ninety six. But Anne continues on continued writing, and she believe currently resides in New York, YEP and she actually made a comment to for that radio piece saying something about how sometimes when she gets a little depressed or you know, nostalgic, thinks about the Golden Record and this, this document of their love just flung out into outer space can still traveling. Yeah,

it's kind of a beautiful thought. I think so as well. Yeah, so, and and it's one of those like grand I mean, he didn't do it for Valentine's Day, but you know it's it pretty much trumps anything that any of us might have us might be scheming for that week. Yeah, all right, helicopter ride. Sorry, Carl's got you beat. Yeah. Yeah. But there's another pair, pretty famous pair that has come to white recently because of a book that's been written

about them. Right though they've of course they've been you know, people have been studying the for want that this latest book has been really really fascinating, sort of re examining their relationship and their contribution to science. Yeah. The book is called Radioactive Marie and Pierre Curie by Lauren Redness. Uh. And then this just came out I think in December two ten. Yeah, followers, and we picked up our copies in the last week or two. Yeah, and uh, I

was I this is a book. I was really not sure exactly what to expect um. And we're going to come back to the curies, but just to briefe, we're gonna talk about this book because I basically heard from my wife had heard something about it on the radio and she's like, hey, this sounds like there's a really cool book about the curious coming out. And the cover glows in the dark. There was you. Yeah, I'm like, all right, I'm there, you know, I mean I left

things ago. I'm wearing glow in the dark shirt right now. Yeah. Uh, and we always record the podcast in complete darkness. Yeah, well, which sometimes the candle well yeah, we have to see the notes and we only use extremely flammable paper, right, yeah,

it makes sense. But but but anyway, this book, so I get it in right and it's you know, it's a large, hard bound book, and sure enough, the cover glows in the dark, but it is it's it's kind of hard to describe because it's not really one might be tempted to talk about it as a graphic novel, but it was that was my initial impression. But generally speaking, graphic graphic novels are more a case of sequential art, where you're having a little little boxes or large boxes

of of images that tell a story. Um, and this is more I guess I would tend to think of this as an like an illuminated manuscript or a or just an illustrated biography. But it's not even even calling it a biography. It's not really accurate. No. In fact, I heard an interview on MPR with the author of Laura read Nous, and uh, the the interviewer has had actually made this um observation that he thought that it was more like sort of eliminated manuscript or journal like this,

this imagined journal. Yeah, there of what might be Marie and pre curious experiences. It's kind of scrap bookie. And I say that in like the absolute best connotation, Like we're not talking Etsy here, We're talking science scrap bookie, if it makes any sense. But the reason that we're getting so excited about this is because Laura Redness really

put a tremendous amount of research into this book. So she's looking at the trajectory of Marie and Pierre curious relationship, which is really the heart of this book and is interesting in and of itself, but she's also looking at UM what their discoveries UH bore out for us as humanity and UM. And she's also looking at the future generations of the curious and what they contribute or what their contributions were as well. So I mean she she went to great lengths really to mind a lot of

information of this book. I think we should stop for a second, just for anybody listening out there is not really familiar with the curious or refresher UM. Marie Cury was born Marie Scouldwowski sculd Bwoska sounds good in warsaw poland um back in, I believe. And she went on to marry physics professor Purre Cury in uh Pierre Curry, sorry inn and the two dove into research together like this is again it's like the the the deal with

with with Carl and Ann. They were they were both just really under their work, and suddenly they had they had the chance to be together too, and they fell in love and they threw themselves at the same research, right, And actually, let's just go with that, because I think it's interesting to point out that Marie Curie, who was really Maria, she changed her name to Marie Um when

she was in Paris. But she was one of very few obviously women students at Sorbonne, and she was the first to get her PhD in science and I believe the first to become a professor there. Yes, and she was appointed after her husband's death. And she won not one, but two Nobel Prizes. Yeah, so first woman to win a Nobel prize, first person to win two alongside Pierre. So what I'm the reason why I think that's important is because these are incredible circumstances for this woman to

be in. And the fact of the matter is she meant Pierre because she just needed some extra lab space. So someone was like, oh, you should check out the sky. He's got some extra space. You know, you could probably use it. So what happens, obviously, is they come together and they find that they are both the most hardcore science researchers that they know that exists, and that really bonds them. So they have this I don't know that

I would call it a passionate sort of love. I don't know that we know that, but we know that they're passionate about their research and this really bonds them together. Right, Yeah, they become like a just just a team of effort, you know, and and uh and and what did they accomplish? Well, Okay, at the first Nobel prize I had to do with her with their isolation of polonium, which is a radio

active elopment named Bymary for hooland her home contry. And uh and also radium, another radioactive element, and the one that was far more noteworthy, and we discussed a little more and she named that one that has the Latin for light, I believe. And then the second one was for actually her her inquiry into radioactivity and the fact

that she even discovered that their elements could be radioactive. Right, So this book is about these two people coming together about the the thoroughly non scientific things in their lives that led them to each other. Like she fell in love with a with a noble um and son, as I remember, and he was too good for her according

to the family, so it was heartbreak. And then he had another situation with where he was in love with someone and it just was not meant to be, you know, right, So they had both experienced heartache and when they found each other, um, I think that I obviously drawn to each other because of their love of science. But Marie also says, in the as told by Laura Redness in the book, he caught the habit of speaking to me in his dream of an existence consecrated entirely to scientific research,

and asked me to share that life. So that, again, is unusual to have this pair of people, um at that time period saying okay, let's just throw all caution to the wind. We'll get married or research like we've never researched in our life. Maybe we'll have kids. The kids don't matter in the sense that you'll still research, and then they'll research too. That's right, create the little researchers. And so again that's that the was a not something

that was commonly thought. Then it was you get married, you raised the children. Um, you know, I'll come home and you make me some you know, roast beef. Right. And she was still doing that, and she was doing the science. I mean she was she was going to the lab with him and working, but but also raising kids, cooking. Um.

So the great thing about Redness is book. I mean, aside from just being beautiful to look through, I mean, the illustrations are magnificent, is that she weaves this the emerging love of the curious with the emergence of this science, of this fascinating science of radioactivity, right because radium and plonium by themselves is kind of like okay, yeah, all right, so there's the elements, but what what's what does that

mean to our society today? Well, tremendous amount. And at the time that you really had this, especially with radium, there was just radium zeal. They really took off and uh and Redness discusses this at length in the book.

And because it was a time, it's like, I think back to any time where we've developed a new technology, um, like when electricity was first becoming a thing and in the utilization of electricity in our lives, like people were tremendously excited about it, and you know, like you know, Tesla and Edison are doing all this stuff. It's like, let's let's show it off. Let's do it. Let's electrocute

an elephant's electricating himself. Yeah, like electurting himself. And there was there was some fascinating talk in the time where people were discussing using electricity to execute criminals and some people were actually speaking up and saying this is just this is blasphemous because electricity is this holy, blameless creature and and you you you can't use that to kill

a criminal. That's just that's what. That's horrible. How could it light up my life and allow me to to stay up late and kill a criminal or Yeah, that's just completely ridiculous. This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. So you see, and you we end up seeing the same thing with radium today. You continue to to see. Anytime there's like any kind of new science, you can guarantee somebody out there is going to try and market something to make a buck off

of it. And with radium at the time, it was it was really kind of crazy. Um. And we should also point out that the reason that this happened that radium sort of went nuts is that Marie and pre Cure decided not to patent radium because they thought, well, no, I mean, you know, it's only gonna be a handful of scientist that really need to use it. We don't need to patent u. Yeah, and they were like and then they were like, this is a totally beneficial thing.

A lot of great stuff is going to come out of this, and it just wouldn't be in the spirit of what we're doing. So along come the all these radioactive quack cures. Um. Just to just to run through. I feel like there were a lot of radium water jars where you just filled up with water and then you could have radium in your drinking water. Radioactive drinking water. It seems like a good idea at the time, right, Um, And it would there were there were rather far more

questionable items such as suppositories. Again we're talking about real radium in this pository. Yeah, actual radioactive elements, uh, in a person's rectum for medicinal purposes. You can get radioactive toothpaste. Um. Again, it's just you could get these these radioactive plates to

put in your cigarette package cigarette. At the at the time, it's like if you thought, oh, the cigarettes aren't good enough for me, now that let me add some radioactivity to that, just to just to boost the health actor or a little. Um. There were a refrigerator, freezer deodorizers. Uh. There you could get a flask you could radiate all your food in the freezer. Is that when I'm here? Right? Yeah?

And and I mean it just went on and on and and and then on top of that, at the time, again everybody's willing to rate radium was a expensive and and and all this hope was wrapped up in it. The stuff is going to change the world, um. And and so for a brief time before the dark attributes of radium became fully known, it uh, it became like like like if you had had a if you had like a credit card back in the early nineteen hundreds, platinum or a gold, neither of those would have been

your higher in card. No, you would want a radium card because you had it. Yeah, you had a number of these different radium branded products that were not in them in and of themselves radioactive. But you had like radium beer, you had radium nut x condoms, um, you had radium playing cards, radium cigarettes. Uh, you know, the list just goes on. So this is like when I see products in the store and that says all natural organic and they actually that's sort of like the greenwashing,

they may not be radium washing. Yeah. Wow. So that's that was a crazy um amount of fervor around something like that. Yeah, And of course it was not meant

to last. And that's one of against something that's beautifully woven into this text because it kind of I mean, it does parallel so often our stories of love where where love blooms and is awesome, but then they're either love faulters or it is complicated by other things, and it maybe it's maybe it doesn't fail, but it is forced to become a more realistic beast, you know, the

half life it is stabilizes exactly nice. So what I think is interesting about this too is that you know, obviously Pierre and Marie didn't really understand how um dangerous it was to be handling this in the first place anyway. And the boy were they handling it? Yeah, I mean they were. They were tossing it around at dinner parties, right. Uh. Marie had a little bar in a jar next to her bed that would you know, illuminate blue at night,

which I'm sure was quite pretty. And and then there's also this uh, this case to where um it was, And Pierre goes into the United Kingdom's Royal Institution and there are all these guys, they're scientists from all over and he rolls up his sleeve to show a burn on his arm, or what looks like a burn off to everybody. And this is a wound that had been caused by radium salts which he had taped to the skin um for just ten hours fifty days earlier. The

wound was still there. And while he's doing this, he ends up spilling some of the salts that he's showing off the table and the the the resulting contamination of the table was still detectable and in need of cleaning up like fifty years later. So and and you know, when we're saying it the way we're presenting it, it it probably it comes off a little weird and a little

bizarre and maybe a little funny. But the way Redness presents it, I mean you really, she presents these two human beings and that are engaged in this thing they really care about in er enter, engaged in this relationship, and they keep they keep dealing with this dangerous stuff and they're getting they're getting more and more sick. It's having an effect on their bodies and their their well being, and they realize it on some level, but they she's

still sleeping. They can't stop themselves. Like I was telling you earlier, it reminds me of of stories you hear about people that are in an abusive relationship and they can't They know that it's it's a bad relationship, but that they can't break themselves away from it because they're

they're tied to it, they're obsessed with it. And that's that's the the way redness really presents it here, that that they they're they're so obsessed with the scientific discovery that they're working with it, they can't they can't separate themselves enough from it too to save themselves. Well, and

I think it's because it's that quest for knowledge. They know there's there's more potential than they realize, and in fact they yeah, I mean they start to say, okay, well, if if this is killing healthy cells, maybe it can

kill diseased cells, and therefore it could be used in radiations. Right, And after they had worked with they figured out ways that what would become X rays where it can be used to figure out what You don't have to cut into a limb to see what's going on with the bones, you can you can we kind of it's easy to

overlook that today just how helpful uh an X ray is? Right, So, yeah, you've got you've got these two people completely obsessed with us, completely obsessed with the process, and you know, Rediness does do a great job of weaving what becomes that story of radiation, right. So what happens is that you know, they're playing around with it. They they have um a couple of daughters, Irene and Eve. And I'm jumping ahead a little bit because there's a lot of stuff that

happens in marine Pierre Pierre Curie's life. But what happens is that Irene begins to study radium as well, and Mary's a scientist Frederick and they actually create artificial radioactivity, which is to say that they can take an element and make it radioactive. And then you begin to see that this is this is information that's being um relayed

from one generation to another. And it makes me think about our past podcast about tool users and even about computer viruses, where we talk about how the human is just essentially a host for information, host for for technology, and that we're just they're just replicating it based on us.

And that really is evident, I think, in this connection between the generations here, right, and and also like we're talking about that the optimism for for radium and all things radioactive, that optimism beginning to to to fall for a little and maybe become well, definitely become a lot more realistic. And part of that was realizing, whoa, that

the Curries are getting really ill. But also when people were suddenly realizing, hey, we can we can make weapons out of this um not not only does there's certain negative health things going on here, but but we could make a bomb. Yeah, that's right. Is Einstein actually who who's looking at the situation and looking at the discoveries of the two generations and sends out a missive to FDR saying, hey, we we probably need to get behind us.

The Germans are working on it. Yeah. So again it's like this very interesting in traductory between like the relationships and how the relationships are bearing out science, which you know implicates all of us really when you look at it. Yeah. Yeah.

The book also goes it goes a lot into like it'll it'll deal with the curies and the nodile flash forward to Robert Oppenheimer, um, you know, contemplating uh, nuclear weapons, or it will it will skip to Hiroshima or m or three mile three mile island and in the noddle it back to the curies. So it it jumps around in time, A little man gives you this complete picture of of of what they're working on and what it's

ultimately going to become. Uh, the the atomic tests in Nevada and the and just like I was not aware before reading this that anyone ever had a mushroom clop party where you would go out and have like a barbecue and I mean not close up but like the distant smoke. Right yeahar in Las Vegas this was a big deal, right whatever the years between nineteen and nineteen sixty three that you would have a mushroom club party,

I guess until they went underground and started detonating there. Um, but yeah, you see that picture, you see the you see Radium sort of being born and being teased into this other, this other thing that becomes this other thing that becomes the a bomb, just as you see Iren being born and having this relationship in furthering that technology and then having she and her husband having another child, which is the great grandchild or excuse me, the a

child of Murray who becomes a nuclear physicist. Of course. Um, you know, the book does, as you say, jump around, but you keep going back to that story of Marie specifically sort of suffering for her knowledge in a sense. Um. And you look at how she and Pierre detailed the accounts of their own decline. Marie more so because Pierre was killed. Um, he had untimely death. He was killed

in nineteen o six, I believe. Yeah, he was run over by a carriage carrying thirteen thousand tons of military gear. Was bal part. Yeah. Um. But Marie at the end of her life, when she was very, very sick, and she died from a classic anemia, which is of course caused by that radiation, she ch unicled her deterioration and data columns with entries on her body temperature, her color, her urine discharged and pus and she tracked her level

of pain. I mean, it's just so interesting that even at the very end of her life that she's sort of handling it the only way that she knows, County, which is to make it into data that she can try to understand. Um. But you know, that's that's the interesting thing about this is it's the slow death of herself, and even Irene and Frederick, her daughter and son in law, are exposed to radiation and also getting ill as well. Yeah.

It's uh again, it's it's a really powerful book. I I fin it, actually read the second half of it last night before going to sleep, and so I just I had all these dreams where where somebody was testing, like testing nuclear weapons on a college campus, and I'm when I was getting like really because they were doing some sort in the dream, they were doing some sort of like war game, and I just was so angry.

I was like, why are you doing this? This is so destructive to all of us, And don't you know that now I'm going to deal with the zombies after the apocalypse and treat to a mall now I know. Luckily the zombies didn't show up in the dream, but that's good, I think. Though. Again, looking back at their accomplishments, you just have to look at how amazing it is that they took four years of their lives just specifically

for radon excuse me radium. Um, it's grueling work. They are in a shed in Paris, they had forty tons of corrosive materials to go through to extract just one

tenth of a gram of radium. And the reason they had to do this because they had to prove that it physically existed, because just to say you know, Okay, well we've we found this and to try to get this published, the scientific community wasn't necessarily gonna um take that at face value, right, so they think about all that exposure in that time, going through a heat pile of corrosive materials kind of creepy. So anyway, it's, uh, you know, we're we're not being bribed to say this,

but it's a great book. So if you if you're interested in a an atypical science uh book, pick it up if you want to want to read, if you're you want to read a romance that has science in it and and also a store a story of science, tific advancement and all the complications that come with it in human culture. Uh, It's it's a really good read. Also would make for a pretty cool Valentine's Day gift if you that that other person in your life is uh is interested in science at all. And I would say,

even it sort of extends beyond that. I mean, it's it's about humanity, right, Yeah, it's that. It's it's bigger than just mere romance. Yeah. And I don't mean to get all goofy here, but I admit that I had like a tier yeah at my kitchen table. And it wasn't the love story part of it. I was just like, Wow, she did a great job and really capturing, um what science means to us, I think on an individual level. Yeah, yeah it is. Yeah, it's a great book. Right, enough

with my earnest exclamations, Robert, take us on home. Okay, uh, yeah, Well, I believe we have a little listener mail here. Okay, we have have one here from a listener by the name of Peter, and he writes in Julian Robert regarding the future of pain podcast. First of all, what is an Indian burn? I grew up with three boisterous brothers, and I'm sure that we tortured each other in various ways, but I've never heard this particular infliction of paint. Um,

do you want to answer that? When in the doing burnus it's when you take someone's arm, for instance, and you put both of your hands on and then you twist in opposite directions until This is my understanding of that. Other people may have other variations, but you do it. This is my John my brother method. Um, until your skinny hands raw and hurts a lot. Okay, alright, So anyway, Uh, Peter, there you go, and I don't know the atymology, haven't

a matter. Yeah, I don't think it's actually Native American or air vedic in uh in its origins. Anyway, Peter continues, However, my bigger question is whether this is an approbo when he goes on to ask about the racial and ethical references. So there he goes, that's our answer to Probably doesn't. But anyway, his main point is, I want to come back to the new anesthetic technique called continuous peripheral nerve block.

In two thousand nine, I was in a truly horrific head on car crash caused by a drunk driver, resulting in severe trauma and burns. I was hopped to hospitalize for five months, and I am truly grateful for pain management with opiates. These drugs certainly made me somewhat loopy and confused, but I wouldn't call it a high. Even so, these side effects may may have been been side effects,

may have been beneficial. In retrospect, I think that it was helpful to only gradually become conscious and cognitive of my permanent injuries if my physical discomfort had been controlled in such a way that my thoughts were clear and present. I think that I would have been pained and traumatized in other ways. It was difficult enough to accept my missing fingers and toes, large areas of grafted skin, and

generally shattered existence. In addition, I was essentially immobilized on my back for three months in the narcotic effect of oxycotton and other medications certainly made this miserable time more tolerable. Fortunately, as I have continued to recover, I am not in any constant pain or or even in any significant intermitted pain. I have learned to walk again, and I am composing this message with voice recognition software, and I'm working halftime

in my profession. I do have some long term side effects from the extended period on opiates, such as chronic difficulties sleeping sleeping, but no addictions. Opiates were definitely worth it.

I'm a regular listener. Thanks for the great podcast, so h Peter, thanks for writing in that was the The nerve blocking technique is something we've discussed as well as the use of opiates, so it's it's really nice to have some listener feedback on how this actually affects one's live Yeah, and We're glad that you're doing well as well. So yeah, thank you for listening. So, hey, if you have anything that you would like to share with us, one place you can find us is Facebook, the other's Twitter.

On both of those we are Blow the Mind. And hey, I actually have a correction within this podcast right now, right here, and that is that I've been referring to Lauren Redness as Laura. So Lauren, my apologies and if you'd like to email us, please do so at Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of

our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes