Let's Learn Everything!

It’s not MaxFunDrive without a wild kickoff spectacular! Former real-life VJ and host of MTV's Spring Break 1999, Dave Holmes, takes your favorite MaxFun hosts through some wacky ‘90s- and Spring Break-themed mini games!!

Featuring: Dave Holmes, Jeremy Bent, Oscar Montoya, Dimitry Pompée, Tom Lum, Ellen Weatherford, Alex Schmidt, Brenda Snell, Drea Clark, Alonso Duralde, Dan McCoy, Jordan Morris, Manolo Moreno, Ella Hubber, Caroline Roper, Ella McLeod, John-Luke Roberts, Justin McElroy, Clint McElroy, Mike Cabellon, Sierra Katow, Hal Lublin, Danielle Radford, John Moe, Christian Dueñas, Christian Duguay.

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:22) Tom, Ellen, Alex, and Brenda Trivia
(00:32:47) Tom, Ellen, Manolo, and Jeremy on Party Animals
(00:46:34) Caroline, Ella, Ella, and John-Luke on British Spring Break

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Host of Um Actually and nerd of many domains Ify Nwadiwe joins us as Tom helps him deconstruct the infamous Peasant Railgun from D&D. Could it actually work? And can we come up with something even more powerful using real science? We also dig into nerdery old and new, and see if Ify can convince Ella and Caroline to embrace their home country's greatest export: Warhammer.

Images we Talk About:
A Real Railgun Firing

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:05) The Peasant Railgun
(00:43:07) Q&A/Nerding Out
(01:12:19) Outro

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We also learn about: After this black hole research I do appreciate my family more! we’re here to game, what is a peasant? stealing science experiments for DnD campaigns, Caroline and Ella are delighted to learn the Peasant Railgun for the first time, convincing peasants to hands across america, pandering to the audience telling them their smart, My Monster Manual is On the Origin of Species, a peasant message system/computer, let people accelerate things to the speed of light! I shouldn’t let my players do WHAT, and remember kids DONT use a bong because it gets you SO HIGH, I’m reading between the lines Gary would want us to do this, the real rail gun, UM ACTUALLY ITS A PEASANT COIL GUN, rail guns are more common in fiction, the strength of a rail gun tears itself apart and creates a fireball, Ify would make each peasant in the line roll, if your players try to make the railgun say yes then show them the picture, the peasants have the means of production and destruction - they should unionize, the fastest manmade object, the manhole cover isnt the fastest object recorded, mission to touch the sun, gravity slingshot, it’s not the mass of the planet its the orbit, its not a magnet - its a magnet on a bullettrain, DMs watch out for artificer space programs, the duke of musk keeps stealing our government funding, Morgan you’re welcome to play beyblades with Ify any time, marrying bratz and digimon, England’s main export is Warhammer, can Ify convince Ella to play Warhammer, should we do a separate zoom just talking about nerd stuff? online writing forums, audio books are real books, be mean in magic, playing DnD on stage vs at home, playing true to your character.

Sources:
First Edition D&D Player's Handbook
Knight's Digest on Peasant Railgun Origins
Earliest Peasant Railgun Mention
PCGamer on D&D 2024 Dungeon Master Guide Update
IEEE Early Railgun Research
Vice "This Is Why the Navy Can’t Have Nice Railguns"
USC on Railgun Feasability
Popular Science Interview on Railgun Test
JPL Chart of Fastest Objects
CNET on Parker Solar Probe
NASA Gravity Assist Primer

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Why is math both so easy and so hard for our brains, and how can the psychology of horses, babies, and mathematicians help answer that? And what wild journey did Sudoku take to become the popular puzzle that Ella adores?

Things we Talk About:
The Video of a Child Learning to Count
The Melencolia Painting

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:59) The Psychology of Math
(01:00:35) Sudoku
(01:44:59) Outro

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We also learn about: the Wonderful student, it’s not you - it’s math, “I did biology for a reason”, children can want a lot of complex things, it’s harder in the UK cause its Maths plural, Caroline & Ella’s math journeys, charlie solves the Riemann hypothesis, the horse the myth the legend - clever hans, clever hans was drafted into the military AS A MATHEMATICIAN, real horse math! so many animals seem to have Number Sense, counting is hard for kids, multiplication isn’t counting - it’s memorization and other strategies, Caroline doesn’t have a great Mental Blackboard, kick flipping a chair in our minds to brag to Caroline, overlapping waves, hot or not for equations, hahaha a taylor expansion?? in Lp?? ridiculous! there is no one math organ in the brain, don’t give up on math, “I don’t treat math as a monolith (I think statistics is the worst math)”, that surprises me because sudoko’s amazing and you’re wrong, the ancient mystical turtle’s magic square, a mathematical warding spell, “once something is proved true, it is eternally true”, HOW DID ELLA NOT REALIZE THIS WAS A MATH TOPIC, magic squares are unsolved, math divination, wow this is a math’s topic huh, maths in art, Melancholia, the magic square on La Sagrada Familia, wait Magic Squares AREN’T the precursor to sudoku?? I don’t know this child, if not sudoku why sudoku shaped? the Latin square originated in Korea before Euler, my parents are older than sudoku, it was originally called Number Place, even though we call it Sudoku - in Japan it’s often called Number Place for trademark reasons, the 2004 sudoku boom, sudoku is an infectious meme, this topic took so long (because Ella took sudoku breaks), figuring out the question of unique puzzles, so many ways to think about a square, advanced sudoku techniques, x-wing and swordfish, sudoku championships, of course Ella found speed running in this topic, Sudoku doesn’t seem to cure cognitive decline - but it’s also just fun to do! a beautiful sudoku poem, it’s how we learn and it’s calming - a little win, “I feel like I need to lie down”, let us know if you know the difference between 3 apples and 4 apples.

Sources:
Perfect Pitch Study
Feigenson et al. Core System of Number
The Clever Hans Phenomenon Revisited
NYTimes Berlin's Wonderful Horse
Actual Horse Number Sense Study
Number Sense in Animals
Rat Brain Number Sense Study
NPR Why Big Numbers Break our Brains
Erikson Institute Video of Child Counting
The Development of Mathematical Cognition
Math Expert Brain Activity Study
The Beauty of Math Study
University of MAryland on Math Brain Activity
Keith Devlin Stanford Talk
Katie Steckles: What Do Mathematicians Do All Day?
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Wikipedia: Magic Square
Royal Institution: Magic Square
University of Cambridge: Magic Square
Magic Squares in Islamic Mathematics
Wiki: Sudoku
The Guardian: History of Sudoku
The Science of Sudoku by BY JEAN-PAUL DELAHAYE
Paper: There Is No 16-Clue Sudoku
Advanced Sudoku Techniques:
Wiki: World Sudoku Championships
Sudoku.com: The Fastest Sudoku Player
Sudoku.com: 4 Reasons that Sudoku is the Perfect Puzzle Game
Working Memory
BBC: Puzzle Slolving and Cognitive Decline
Sudoku 15 year study
Global Council on Brain Health Report
Sudoku Mental Fortitude

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Why is the common fruit fly the perfect model organism, and the reason for 6 Nobel Prizes?? And what is the british fascination around the meal deal, lunchtime, and the sandwich?

Images we Talk About:

Map of the Fruit Fly Brain
Rat My Meal Deal
The Sandwich Factory

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:57) Drosophila Melanogaster
(00:49:46) The British Meal Deal
(01:37:48) Outro

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We also learn about: Ella’s former favorite fun fact, are 6 nobel prizes more impressive than long sperm? we need to pause, bolas, Ella’s Virgins, Dew Loving Black Belly, Dros Mel are human commensals - they migrated with us, “they’re undemanding guests”, first life intentionally put into space, maybe Jeff Goldblum became a fly so seamlessly because they share 60% of their DNA, Tom’s great Jeff Goldblum impression, they share a lot of disease related genes, Thomas Morgan - The Lord of the Flies, Morgan knew about genetics but not DNA yet, genetic redundancy, a fly geneticist’s swiss army knife, the varied list of nobel wins, are they cancelled? wait actually? guess that fly gene, “the inside jokes are becoming outside jokes”, the golden wild west era of the fruit fly may be over - but not all science, the beautiful fruit fly brain, we COULD end by talking about how this little organism has been so belovedly studied and helpful, Dros Mel has a mini bachelorette organ, the great british everything, is this a sincere answer? rating meal deals, fluctuations of lunch elitism, a beaver and a noonshine, capitalism made workers hours longer - workers rights made lunch, lunch was given by and for women, the earl of sandwich was too much of a gamer, we can’t re-litigate the cube rule, the “daring” true story of the sandwich, the sandwich storry isn’t about invention it’s about class, food elitism fads, ella invents soup in a tube, 1980s the first pre-packaged sandwich, units of sandwich (UOS), it’s almost like getting separated from the means of production…, the british sandwich association, take your lunch break! you won’t remember doing an extra bit of work - you’ll remember spending time with folks and making a bomb ass sandwich, short lunch breaks make meal deals make sense, drosophola and meal deals cancelled on this episode,

Sources:
Paper: Drosophila - Model Organism of Choice
Paper: Innate Immune Responses of Drosophila melanogaster Are Altered by Spaceflight
NASA: Fruit Flies in Space
Paper: Drosophila – A Versatile Model in Biology & Medicine
Paper: The Secret Lives of Drosophila Flies
Guardian Article on Drosophila
Paper: Where are Drosphila From
Paper: Gal4 Swiss Army Knife
Nobel Prize: Drosophila
NPR: Fruit Fly Names
Nature News: Troublesome Names Get the Boot
Paper: Fly Brain Map
Fly Brain Image
UKRI: Fruit Fly Neuron Map
Paper Drosophila Sperm Storage
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Tribune: How Capitalism Stole Your Lunch
Rate My Meal Deal Instagram
BBC: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner: Have We Always Eaten Them?
BBC: Sandwich Celebrates 250th Anniversary of the Sandwich
The Guardian: How The Sandwich Consumed Britain
Greencore: ConvenienceFood
Report: The Sandwich Factory
University of Manchester: What is the Environmental Impact of Your Lunch-Time Sandwich?
Scottish Government: Shopping Behaviours and Meal Deals - Consumer Behaviours: Evidence Brief
The Guardian: Yoghurts in the Meal Deal
Financial Times: The Freddo
BBC: Freddo
Hubbub: Reuse Systems Unpacked
Tesco: The Nations Favourite Meal Deal
The Independant: The Nations Favourite Meal Deal

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What can we learn from the most modern - but overlooked form of pollution? And can mistakes in art be something actually... good?

Images we Talk About:
Navajo Rug Ch'ihónít’i
Ramses II Statue
Ecce Homo
The Original Ecce Homo
3 Versions of Ecce Homo
Lincoln Memorial Mistake

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:25) Light Pollution
(00:48:06) Mistaeks
(01:37:02) Outro

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We also learn about: Auctioning topics, the origins of pollution, pollution is old but light pollution is from the 1960s, the great stink, the biggest light polluter is the sun, old gas street lights used to be more like beacons than lights, the world’s getting 10% brighter each year, 80% of North American can’t see the milky way, Light Trespass, Sky Glow, light pollution makes telescopes worse, Tom’s parents hearing him scream WHY IS THERE BREAST MILK, the strange lights after the 1994 LA earthquake, amateur astronomers are vital to astronomy, light trapped moths, a 1917 study on lighthouses and bird migration, birds waking up 5 hours earlier, turtles also use moonlight navigation, just move your telescope and evolve your species it’s not our fault, “he glistens you philistine”, the big beautiful glow worm woman in the sky, street lights are like sugar light to plants, light pollution isn’t the biggest issue - but that can make it easy to ignore - and it has some easy wins! it’s solvable at the community level, Tom’s buoyancy broken hand mistake, oops I mixed up my therapy and podcast topic list, the beatles anomalies list, Michelangelo’s beautiful complaint letter poem, we are our own worst critic, the ASMR mistake was just an anomaly, Kintsugi, “it treats breakage as a part of the object’s history rather than an error or a failure to be covered up”, what’s the japanese word for mud covered boots, only god can make perfect fun facts, Ch'ihónít’i, releasing the thoughts from an object - a way out, the journey of Caroline’s darned jumper, how can you tell an old mistake was a mistake? hieroglyphic typos, oh shit control ankh control ankh, revealing an ancient mistake by mistake, Philadelphia isn’t real it can’t hurt you, the Jesus that was… made an anomaly by Gloria Gimenez, the misremembered story of Ecce Homo, art is this emotional roller coaster, wow don’t take Tom’s summary Caroline, Lincoln memorial myths, 1000 years from now a museum in Neo Egypt will carve out the lincoln memorial fix, I know a great art restoration person in spain if you need one, most mistakes are just forgotten, you need mistakes to learn, the mistake of starting this podcast, verbal kintsugi, anomalous jesus, we didn’t learn today that Ella was a contrarian.

Sources:

Britannica: Light Pollution
2020 Paper: A Chronology of Global Air Quality
Wikipedia: The Great Stink
NHM London: Increasing Light Pollution is Drowning out the Stars
2023 Paper: Light Pollution is Skyrocketing
Scientific America: Light Pollution is Dimming Our View of the Sky
2009 Paper: Missing the Dark: Health Effects of Light Pollution
National Parks Service: Connect with the Galaxy: A case for turning out the lights
CAPE 2023: What are the Effects of Artifical Light on Human Health? An Evidence Brief 
2019 Paper: Effects of Light at Night on Laboratory Animals and Research Outcomes
1918 Paper: The Destruction of Birds at the Lighthouses on the Coast of California
2021 Paper: Characteristics of Light Pollution – A case study of Warsaw (Poland) and Fukuoka (Japan)
1973 Paper: Light Pollution 
BBC: How light pollution disrupts plants' senses
Dark Sky: Solutions to Light Pollution

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The Beatles Anomalies List
Michelangelo's "Poem"
Kintsugi
Jill Ahlberg Yohe's Incredible Paper on Ch’ihónít’i
Penn Museum's Ramses II
Ancient Egyptian Literacy
NYTimes on Ecce Homo
The Guardian Ecce Homo Critique
The Art History of Ecce Homo
AP on Ecce Homo a Year Later

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As we plan out the new year, please enjoy a recast of one of my (Tom's) favorite guest appearances on Spellbound and Gagged, hosted by the wonderful friend of the show Ellen Weatherford!

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It's the start of the new year which means a bunch of new questions submitted by YOU! What are our favorite words from the podcast? What's it like to scrap a topic? Would we still love each other if we were worms?

Things we Talk About:
Contrapoints' Twilight Video
Jenny Nicholson's Star Wars Hotel Video
Shaun's Channel
China's Artifical Sun
XOXO 2024 Videos

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:07:42) Part 1
(01:13:53) Part 2
(01:54:30) Outro

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We also learn about: west our weawy heads, this year we had long topics and a good spread of topics, Jono’s Q&A themes 2.0, next year I’m doing a topic on Caroline, we can neither confirm nor deny it’s the dex we know, Challengers Zone of Interest is the new Barbenheimer, games that show your personality, ahh eating your own poop has been on my list for forever, the use of pseudoscience, Caroline’s favorite word from the podcast is Quantum thanks to Tom (awww), Tom’s favorite is Kleptoparasitism, just “Light” as a topic, can we sweep Ella off her math’s feet, say hi to us! we clicked with Gretchen TOO well, the format change has been great! someone thought that with the format change one person would just not be there, next year one topic - then zero - then negative topics, Ella’s super secret question section, Head and Shoulders made these lovely locks, being non binary, Ella still collects squashed pennies, learning outside the podcast, you are a clown, actually it turns out we don’t need comedy in this show - huh, tiktok is like matches and podcast are logs, tiktok vs youtube vs podcasts, oh people are listening to this, waiting for the other fun to drop, how we resolved learning everything, 2026 is gonna be a banging year, Ella’s 2 Star review of the year.

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It's the HaLearn Days!! We've gathered a whole bunch of fun facts from each other and from friends of the show to share the gift of laughter and learning!

Images we Talk About:
The Rat Car
Rat Car Video

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:07:57) Part 1
(00:59:11) Part 2
(01:37:06) Outro  

We also learn about: The Christmas Brussel Sprout Tradition, put christ back in halearn days, Where the Dog Ran, eclipses are more of a “huh?” moment, you might hear a frog during an eclipse - or more likely a science communicator, the turkey helicopter truth is stranger than fiction, giraffes can’t walk up anything steeper than 20 degrees, topography is important for giraffe reserves, the emu wars, Anatidaephobia, gotta define intimate, I eat and talk with tongue, our most liked tweet was from a jetlag hat, there’s nothing in the rules that says a wormhole can’t exist and a dog can’t play basketball, we got a rejection on our preprint from St Nicholas, Michel Foucault’s Elf on a Shelf, the scale of believability, when we stopped believing in santa, “Santa knows I can’t speak german”, the child psychology of Santa, William Shatner’s Halloween mask, Sleierton’s Betty Boop ghost mask, Tom finds out he’s driving a rat experiment car, the yuletide tradition of rats, rats would rather drive longer route to get food, alright “Tom Lum”, rice crispies and taco sauce, bingo bingo prison industrial complex! it’s very human to want to have tasty food, the places I would least like to have taste receptors, taste receptors and buds are different, we just discovered them on our tongues first and called them taste receptors, really our tongue has testicle and urethra receptors, screen-based phones, electronic purgatory, we will all get old, and as we say on the podcast: every year another vagina, should all our fun facts be forgot and never brought to mind, we’ll raise a cup of kindness yet, for everything.

Sources:
Minute Physics video on Animals during Eclipses
Frog Song During Eclipse Study
Wikipedia: WKRP in Cincinnati “Turkeys Away”
Why Can’t Domesticated Turkeys Fly?
Eureka Alert: Giraffes Struggle with Slopes
The Emu War
Scientific American: 80 million microbes in a Kiss
Microbiome Journal: Kiss study
Nature News: Shared Microbiome
AIP Wormhole Definition & Paper
Astronomy Today on Wormholes
2024 Paper: Children’s Belief in Santa Claus and Moral Behavior
Snopes on Michael Myers Mask
Snopes on Scream Mask
William Shatner interview Entertainment Weekly
Independant: Scientists Taught Rats to Drive
BBC: Rats Taught to Drive Tiny Cars to Lower Their Stress Levels
2020 Paper: Enriched environment exposure accelerates rodent driving skills
Space Shuttle: The First 20 Years
NPR: Ramen Noodle Currency
2013 Paper: Taste perception: From The Tongue To The Testis
NIH In Brief: How Does Our Sense of Taste Work?
1992 NYTimes Article about Cell Phones
CBC Article on the First Text Message

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Where are we in the universe? And what can we learn from all the hilariously wrong guesses and bad maps that got us there? And just how much carrot propaganda was there? Well, we'll see a lot of posters and a few myths to debunk!

Images we Talk About:
Dunn's Earth & Moon Maps
Herschel's Milky Way Map
Wright's Island Universes Drawing
The Image of M31 from 1919
First Full Image of Earth
The World Carrot Museum
Carrot Poster 1
Carrot Poster 2
Disney Carrot Characters
Dr Carrot

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:44) Where are We?
(00:45:11) Carrot Propaganda
(01:24:04) Outro

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We also learn about: we’re allowed to make up topics I guess, Samuel Dunn’s map of the Earth and moon, subtle thematic forshadowing, galactocentrism, the awkward teenage years of science, every human could see the milky way, the backbone of night, the milky origins of galaxy, Herschel’s heliocentric drawing of the milky way, Cosmic Pride, the zone of avoidance, island universes is multiverses for the middle ages, the great or not so great debate, can you debate something more interesting like moo deng, M31 the little cloud, the person whose telescope proceeds him: Edwin Hubble, “here is the letter that has destroyed my universe”, years of fighting over terminology, the World Carrot Museum, the moment this turned from a distraction into a topic, we do actually need vitamin A for night vision and eye health, you can only get vitamin A from meat… and vegetables… and fruits, the blackouts in WWII, carrots to help drivers be safer in the dark, incredible  podcasts - they help you see in the blackout, Cat Eyes Cunningham, no official document shows intentionally hiding radar with carrot vision, the myth happened organically, “the war could be won on the kitchen front”, Walt Disney designed carrot mascots, if you don’t think food is political I have some posters to show you.

Sources:

Yale History of the Center of the Universe
Library of Congress: History of Discovering the Milky Way
NASA Archive of The Great Debate
Hoskin's Amazing "The Great Debate: What Really Happened"
Astronomy of Today Book with the Image of the M31 "Nebula"
Hubble: The Realm of the Nebulae
ESA Bio on Edwin Hubble
NYTimes Hubble Bio
Science Friday Article about Henrietta Leavitt
Kragh's Fantastic "Nebulae or Galaxies? The history of a change in astronomical terminology

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NHS: Macular Health
American Academy of Opthamology on Vitamin Deficiency
American Optometric Society on Vitamin A Eye Health
Healthline: Are Carrots Good for Your Eyes?
Smithsonian Magazine: A WWII Propaganda Campaign Popularized the Myth That Carrots Help You See in the Dark
Web Archive: World Carrot Museum
NYT 1940: London Urges Carrot Diet For 'Blackout Blindness'
NYT 1942: Blackout Hints -- From a Blackout Veteran
NYT 1942: Disney Family
BBC: How 'Cat's Eyes' helped change the world
Britannica: One Good Fact

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It's everyone's favorite holiday: the day we ask you to submit your Q&A questions!!

Go to www.LetsLearnEverything.com/questions and submit your questions about truly anything at all from the science to the serious to the silly!

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