Casting Smell Spells, the Quantum Slap, the Boniest Jigsaw Puzzle

Twitch Partner Cheebs joins the show to talk about some mega weird quantum physics. Plus, Jess talks about real-life stinky witch magic, and Rachel lays out a jigsaw puzzle made of bones. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories! Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman Link to Jess' Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Produced by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ Thanks to our Sponsors! This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at: https://BetterHelp.com/WEIRDEST Get cozy in Quince's high-quality wardrobe essentials. Go to https://Quince.com/weirdest for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Get Up to 50% OFF @honeylove by going to https://honeylove.com/WEIRDEST #honeylovepod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Black Friday is happening now at The Home Depot, and we've got just the tree for your style, space, and budget. Keep it merry and bright, then make it yours with ornaments and trimmings for every holiday's style. With festive favorites starting at just $49, shop for the perfect tree at the number one Christmas tree retailer. Find the tree that feels just right with low prices guaranteed at The Home Depot. Exclusions apply. Visit homedepot.com price match for details.

• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 0:58Speaker 02

  As wish lists grow, you know where to go. Head to Ulta Beauty. We have gifts they'll love from brands like Tato One and Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez. Shop beauty faves to give or keep from Shark Beauty, Sol de Janeiro, and more. Not sure what they want? You can't go wrong with Balmain, Clinique, or Redken. And don't forget to put yourself on the list. Book a salon moment or add a little more sparkle to your season. Shop holiday in store or at Ulta.com. Ulta Beauty.

• 1:29Rachel Feltman?

  At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feltman.

• 1:49Speaker 04

  I'm Jess Bodie. And I'm

• 1:51Speaker 05

  I'm Cheebs.

• 1:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, Cheebs.

• 1:55Rachel Feltman?

  Cheebs, welcome to the show. Jess, tell us about, as always, you have brought on an incredible guest.

• 2:01Speaker 04

  Yes. So Cheebs is a fellow Twitch streamer, content creator extraordinaire. I've followed Cheebs forever. Wonderful creator, also science and nature enthusiast. Would you like to tell the listeners a bit about the stuff you make?

• 2:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. So I am a full-time variety streamer is how I categorize myself. I love a wide array of different games, anything from FromSoftware to Stardew Valley to The Sims to streaming myself camping outside on the rare occasion. As Jess said, I am

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I love those camping things.

• 2:35Speaker 05

  They're so silly and so fun. They're hard to put together, so they're like once in a blue moon kind of thing. But they're, they're a good time. I have an undergrad in biology, which is where the love of science and nature definitely comes from. And life just took a unexpected, an unexpected different turn into the streaming career, which was not what I had planned for my future, but such is the case with many of us streamers.

• 3:02Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, that sounds strangely familiar.

• 3:05Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, I feel like, you know, my impression of streaming is that folks who are really like, this is it, this is what I'm gonna do with my life are not the most interesting streamers.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, the ones with the weird, you know, curving paths. Yeah.

• 3:20Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. Well, welcome to the show. We're so psyched to have you. Let's get into it. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, streaming, et cetera, and decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then, once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was, sort of. Jess, what's your tease?

• 3:52Speaker 04

  It's the shortest disclaimer yet.

• 3:54Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, I figure it's time to start just assuming people know.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. My tease is I'm going to talk about how you can cast a spell in real life with science.

• 4:06Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 4:08Speaker 04

  Halloween was yesterday, so I was, I'm feeling inspired by something spooky.

• 4:12Rachel Feltman?

  Absolutely. My tease, mine is also a little bit spooky. I want to talk about a bone-based jigsaw puzzle from ancient history.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  Whoa.

• 4:24Rachel Feltman?

  Cheebs, what's your tease?

• 4:25Speaker 05

  My tease, and I guess it's kind of creepy if you think about it. You could slap a surface with your hand and have it go right through the surface because of quantum entanglement.

• 4:43Rachel Feltman?

  Oh, man. Physics is always spooky to me.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  I have a feeling it's gonna get existentially scary.

• 4:51Rachel Feltman?

  Jess, I really want to hear about your spells.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  Great, great.

• 4:57Rachel Feltman?

  Can we start with you?

• 4:58Speaker 04

  Of course. Okay, so yeah, like I said, Halloween was yesterday. I'm feeling a little bit of Halloween magic still. Although people are already talking about Christmas, I am strictly a post-Thanksgiving Christmas enjoyer personally.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  I am as well.

• 5:13Rachel Feltman?

  Yesterday, I turned to Oliver and I said, isn't it crazy that tomorrow is Christmas? I'm not wrong.

• 5:19Speaker 05

  I mean, it'll feel like it before we know it.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's true.

• 5:24Rachel Feltman?

  Right now, I'm in a hot pantry, so I don't, I don't feel very Christmas-y.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  I was wondering if you were at the SIAM offices or if you were at your house, did you set up your closet?

• 5:35Rachel Feltman?

  I have my pantry setup.

• 5:38Speaker 04

  Amazing. I mean,

• 5:39Rachel Feltman?

  Traffic noise gonna plummet by at least 70%.

• 5:44Speaker 04

  This is huge.

• 5:44Rachel Feltman?

  Cooking with cannella.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  This is big for us. So yes, I've brought you an autumnal story for the show today. I'm going to talk about witches. I've done a handful of witch stories on this show before. I've talked about,

• 5:57Rachel Feltman?

  Harry Styles' third nipple.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  That's exactly what I was gonna say. Cheebs, have you heard about how Harry Styles has an extra nipple?

• 6:02Speaker 05

  No, I have not heard of this.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  So

• 6:06Speaker 05

  Do with witches somehow?

• 6:08Speaker 04

  Yes. Yeah. Back in the day, if you had an extra nipple, like during the Salem witch trials, people thought you were a witch because it was to suckle your demon familiar. And by the transit of property, that means that Harry Styles is a witch.

• 6:22Speaker 05

  I would love to know who his familiar is. Is it like what we do in the shadows?

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Oh, I know.

• 6:26Speaker 05

  Guillermo walking around?

• 6:30Rachel Feltman?

  Oh, I hope. I hope so.

• 6:32Speaker 04

  Oh, that would be, that would be ideal. So yeah, I just really love witch culture and especially like, there's a really rich history of witch culture, especially in America. So today I'm going to talk about smells, witch smells and spells. So I found a story written in Atlas Obscura by Britta Agar, I think is how you say their name. She's a professor of classics at Arizona State University, and she studies both magic and the senses in the ancient world, which like,

• 6:58Rachel Feltman?

  Love that.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  What a dream that is.

• 7:01Rachel Feltman?

  I was just saying to someone, ASU, they like, they love their interdisciplinary shit like.

• 7:07Speaker 04

  Do they really?

• 7:08Rachel Feltman?

  They, yeah. Every, every time a researcher says what they study and I'm like, oh, ooh la la, they're from ASU.

• 7:15Speaker 05

  Oh, interesting.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  I had no idea. It's so funny because they have such a reputation for being like such a party school.

• 7:22Speaker 05

  Maybe there's some correlation with that.

• 7:23Speaker 04

  They can do both. Honestly, as a nerd who loves to party, I get it. So yeah, she wrote this piece about what witches smell like and how they used scents as part of their magic, or you know, at least historically, what people thought, people, people who people thought were witches, you know, how are they cast, quote unquote, casting spells?

• 7:45Speaker 04

  So, you know, you might be thinking, that's not very scientific, but consider this, you can't touch or see a smell, but they can affect us emotionally and physically. Is that not magic?

• 7:56Speaker 05

  It feels pretty magical.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  Perhaps. It feels pretty magical. And really, you know, when you think about how people perceive magic in cultures around the world, it is pretty similar. It's kind of this amorphous thing that can change the way someone acts or feels. So. I'll give you some examples of how smells were used by ancient magicians and witches throughout history and legend. So back in 200 BCE, Greek magicians used fragrances in a lot of their rituals. So they wrote in scented inks, which really just reminds me of Elle Woods.

• 8:26Rachel Feltman?

  Oh, yes.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  And her scented resume.

• 8:30Rachel Feltman?

  But it's also so Elle Woods.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  It's so Elle Woods. Elle Woods was just casting spells when she was in law school. And Greek gods were thought to have smelled really sweet and pleasant. And anywhere they'd go, they'd leave behind this like wonderful smell, which just makes me think of Hades, the game.

• 8:45Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Smelling good in that game, for sure.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Like, I bet Greek gods smelled like Aphrodite looks in Hades. She just looks like she smells delicious. If you know, you know. And then consider some ancient Greek literature. So there's the epic poem Argonautica, where the hero Jason is on his quest to get the golden fleece. And he enlists the help of Medea, I believe it's pronounced, who is often depicted as like a sorceress, or a priestess, or a witch. And she uses a lot of smelly magic.

• 9:17Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. Medea, classic, a lady with feelings.

• 9:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:21Speaker 05

  A lady with feelings.

• 9:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Medea even puts like the fierce dragon that's guarding the fleece to sleep by chanting spells and then drizzling herbal potions in its eyes. That's a, that's a technique for sure. And the, the odor of her herbal concoctions is what overcomes the monster in the end. So scent magic saves the day, or, you know.

• 9:44Rachel Feltman?

  That's like me with a lush bath bomb.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, my God. And then there's also this ancient Roman poet Horus, who wrote a few poems about a witch named Canidia. And she is like way scarier than Medea. She has like scary black teeth and long fingernails that she uses to dig up graves. And in these poems, she used liver and bone marrow that she like digs up to put into a magical perfume to reenchant her lover who left her. So she's making like love potions and stuff.

• 10:18Rachel Feltman?

  Industrious.

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. And we've also got the Iliad, where the goddess Hera distracts her husband Zeus from the Trojan War by seducing him. And she does that by perfuming herself with fragrant ambrosia. Zeus falls asleep.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  Doesn't, is not aware that a battle is going on. Finally, the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, which we've talked about on this show, not infrequently, commented that the best perfume was one that made all the men in the area forget what they were doing when a woman wearing it walked by. So this kind of just makes me think about patriarchal values and women, a lot of these witch and smell stories, especially way back in the day. You know, they're, they're painting these like ancient sorceresses and witches as like temptresses, you know? And it's, it's not the men's fault, it's the witches' fault. And, you know, even today, like this is people, people are quick to put the blame on women, especially when it comes to money and sex and that kind of stuff. And stories about magical sense encode these ideas too, especially like fears about the

• 11:18Speaker 04

  dangers of sexually alluring women, yada, yada. And it said that women who used perfumes and cosmetics could seduce men into behaving in ways they would not choose to if they were in their right minds, which like, to me, just kind of sounds like another way to victim blame back in the day.

• 11:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:33Speaker 04

  Totally. You know, I don't know for sure, as I am not a classics scholar, and this was a very, very long time ago, but you know, it sounds dangerously similar to the discourse around like, don't want to get catcalled? Don't wear that outfit or don't wear the perfume. Like, you know, it's not the perfume's fault that you were violent. Come on now. But, but what is it, you know, bringing it back to science for a moment? What is it about, about smell that is so powerful compared to other senses? And there is some neuroscience to back it up. So when you experience like any sense, for example, like, let's say there's a delicious, warm, autumnal apple pie sitting in front of you. If you were to look at it or pick up a fork and cut into it, those visual and tactile

• 12:16Speaker 04

  signals would travel from your eye or your hand to a part of your brain called the thalamus. And the thalamus, it's basically like air traffic control. So it's like deciding where to send those signals to your brain. Probably to your hippocampus for memory or the amygdala for emotional processing. But with smell, so let's say you smell the apple pie. That signal skips the thalamus and goes straight to the amygdala and the hippocampus, or you know, wherever else in your brain. So it's thought to be a much-

• 12:43Rachel Feltman?

  It's right there.

• 12:44Speaker 04

  It's right there. So it's thought to be like, you know, it's, it's, it's much more direct, I suppose. It might explain why smells trigger memories like much more quickly and so vividly. And it can explain how smells can influence our moods more intensely, like, you know, these, like they did in these witch stories. So finally, I'll bring us back to the modern day. I think a lot of folks, myself included, consider witch stuff to be largely like reclaimed in a sort of feminist way. It feels like, I, I find it empowering. And, you know, for sure, like lighting a candle, picking out a perfume, like it can affect my mood and my mindset, or a lush bath bomb, you know, all of these things. It's our own little witchcraft. It's like I'm casting my own little spells when I light my Trader

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Joe's Honeycrisp candle on my living room coffee table. And yeah, it's really fun also to decide which perfume to wear. It's kind of like it gives me the confidence to step into a different persona a little bit. Like if I want to feel extra hot, I wear my favorite scent, which is La Labo Another 13. And if I want to feel extra hot, I have a little solid perfume. Have you guys seen the Glossier U solid perfume? It comes in a little clamshell. If you see it at Sephora, you, you have to pick up the packaging because it's like the, it's like metal and heavy. It's so nice. Non, non spawn. I mean Glossier, please hit me up, but non spawn. It's, it's lovely. And it's solid perfume. So I just like put it on the ends of my hair and that was like a witchy

• 14:11Speaker 04

  ritual as well. And it gives me confidence. You know, it's my little confidence spell. So anyway, smell magic is real and you can cast it. The end.

• 14:19Speaker 05

  I love that. That's wonderful. Absolutely. I mean, the scent, the sense of smell is so powerful. Um, like this is a really silly example, but my doc, he stinks. Objectively, that little man smells bad, but I love the smell of his spirits so much and it puts me in a good mood.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  We did a whole, somebody did a fact on that here about why we love like our stinky, well, I think, was it a stinky pets or stinky partner?

• 14:48Rachel Feltman?

  Amanda was like, why do I love sniffing my cat?

• 14:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:52Rachel Feltman?

  I said just getting a big ol' whiff of.

• 14:54Speaker 05

  I said this to my partner as well. I was like, you know, I think one of this, like, I know that I love you because when you smell bad, it smells good to me, which is EMI, but.

• 15:08Rachel Feltman?

  I was on this show, Burn Before Reading, that is hosted by some weirdest thing listeners. It's a great show. I definitely recommend checking it out. And I did an episode where the premise of the podcast is great. It's that you're reading or just talking about sort of like embarrassing writing from your past in this very like wholesome.

• 15:28Speaker 04

  That's, I love that.

• 15:29Rachel Feltman?

  Way. And I talked about an essay that got published in, I guess, The Atlantic. I don't remember if it was actually The Atlantic or one of the other sites under the Atlantic umbrella back when I was interning at Quartz, which was owned by the same company at the time. And it was literally about like, I started dating this guy and I think about how he smelled so good. It's like humiliating because I did it for like 24 hours and like six months later, he was, you know, just another dude I knew. He's a nice guy. There's nothing wrong with him. But that was the embarrassing part of the article was that I had really been like, why doesn't he want to date me? And why does he smell so good?

• 16:09Speaker 05

  Own little potion going. He smelled so good.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, he had you under his spell.

• 16:14Rachel Feltman?

  Oh my gosh, it's so true. But yeah, I did talk a lot in there about like, you know, why scents are so evocative to us? And how humans don't have pheromones in the way other animals do, no matter like what people try to sell you on the internet. But that doesn't mean we're not super susceptible to smell. To me, it's like the, the pheromone thing is kind of a red herring. Like, yeah, we don't make pheromones that we know of that people can detect. But that, that just means you get to just pick what random thing you smell like that is going to drive people nuts. And that's really powerful.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 16:51Rachel Feltman?

  I like to smell like a swamp witch. I have a bunch of different.

• 16:53Speaker 04

  Hell, yeah.

• 16:54Rachel Feltman?

  From Alchimia and.

• 16:57Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, I've seen that brand.

• 16:59Rachel Feltman?

  Sugar Bay. And yeah, just like, I love weird. Grassy.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  Earthy.

• 17:04Speaker 04

  Oh, I love that.

• 17:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, I love that.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:07Rachel Feltman?

  Well, we're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be back with some more facts.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  Black Friday is happening now at The Home Depot and we've got just the tree for your style, space, and budget. Keep it merry and bright, then make it yours with ornaments and trimmings for every holiday style. With festive favorites starting at just $49, shop for the perfect tree at the number one Christmas tree retailer. Find the tree that feels just right with low prices guaranteed at The Home Depot. Exclusions apply. Visit homedepot.com slash price match for details.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Are you ever shopping online and suddenly a discount that helps you save pops up? It makes your day, sometimes even your week. Want that feeling month after month? Well, new customers who save by switching their home and auto insurance to Progressive save hundreds. Cue your happy dance. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers not available in all states.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  As wish lists grow, you know where to go. Head to Ulta Beauty. We have gifts they'll love from brands like Tato One and Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez. Shop beauty faves to give or keep from Shark Beauty, Sol de Janeiro, and more. Not sure what they want? You can't go wrong with Balmain, Clinique, or Redken. And don't forget to put yourself on the list. Book a salon moment or add a little more sparkle to your season. Shop holiday in-store or at Ulta.com. Ulta Beauty.

• 18:49Rachel Feltman?

  Okay, we're back and I'm gonna talk about this bony jigsaw puzzle.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:54Rachel Feltman?

  So, this story starts back in the 1970s in part of Belgium and researchers were tooling around this second-century Roman cemetery. So, in Belgium, but you know, the Romans spread out at that time. And they found a body, as you might expect, in a cemetery. And it had this... Bone pin, like a pin made of bone that was like very Roman, very typical of the second century. And they were like, you know, easy peasy. That's what this is. A body from a member of the Roman Empire buried in the second century. It ended up in a museum

• 19:35Rachel Feltman?

  in Belgium. Case closed. Except, no, case not closed. Case wide open. Recently, researchers started to be like, there is something weird about this skeleton. First of all, it was curled up on its side, like on its right side with its legs tucked up. And in the second century, the Romans were not burying people that way. They were generally flat on their backs. So that was one sort of red flag. But then also, they were like, the bones don't really match. They're a little miscellaneous. For example, looking at the vertebrae, they were like, some of these look like they're from an elderly person. Some of them look like they're from an adolescent in terms of the state of the vertebrae. And

• 20:20Rachel Feltman?

  then there were like, the femur, they said, looked like it didn't fit the pelvis. So researchers were like, let's investigate. That's so creepy. Yeah, there is something a little creepy about this. And they knew that they had all of these tools that were not available to archaeologists in the 1970s. And they were like, we're going to do a full radiocarbon dating on this so that we know when all of these bones are from. And we're also going to analyze their DNA. And of course, as we've talked about on Weird or Thing a bunch, analyzing ancient DNA is really hard. DNA degrades. So first of all, the conditions have to be right for there to even be DNA to study. But we weren't good enough at analyzing DNA to study really old DNA until like, quite

• 21:05Rachel Feltman?

  recently. So there was reason to hope that we would learn stuff that had not been possible to learn back in the 1970s. But kudos to the scientists who were like,

• 21:17Rachel Feltman?

  We're not just leaving this skeleton sitting in the museum.

• 21:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:20Rachel Feltman?

  With this skeleton.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  Something is a foot.

• 21:23Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, exactly. Something is a foot, something is a femur.

• 21:28Speaker 04

  Hey.

• 21:30Rachel Feltman?

  Hey, you set him up by knocking him down, Jess.

• 21:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:34Rachel Feltman?

  They, sure enough, they found that the dates did not match and the DNA did not match. This skeleton actually contained bones from seven different people. And just having a grave with multiple people in it, not that unusual, as you can imagine. But this had been a like, really well articulated skeleton. These bones had been put together with enough anatomical accuracy that in the 1970s, researchers had been like, yeah, that's just a person. That is, that is one person. And that's interesting, you know, what's up with that? But the thing is, this isn't the first time that's happened.

• 22:18Rachel Feltman?

  There've been a couple other incidents of finding like bones arranged into something resembling a, a single skeleton. There were some excavations around like 2009, 2010 in like some Scottish Isles that found basically several burials where remains that came from like different times and different people had been sort of put together as if they were one body. And there was another instance of this in, in Scotland as well. But it's still not, it's not common. And it is something that like begs the question, why? And researchers don't have a good answer for that.

• 23:01Rachel Feltman?

  And like, I love this kind of archaeology story because it's the kind of thing that like, we almost certainly will never know why. Like the sort of evidence that would have to emerge from somewhere to be like, this is it. This is, this is the definitive explanation for why they put these bones together like this. Very unlikely to.

• 23:22Speaker 04

  I want to know. It's so weird.

• 23:25Rachel Feltman?

  I know. And that is frustrating, but I feel like it's also really cool to be like, all we can do is speculate. And like, you know, archaeologists will like come up with stories to try to explain it. And anyone who says.

• 23:37Rachel Feltman?

  They are certain about, or even like quite sure about why this was done is that's, that's a sign that they're not a great archaeologist.

• 23:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:45Rachel Feltman?

  What's really fun is that we can just like put together different explanations for why this may have been. And as I've talked about a lot on weird thing, it would be a huge mistake to try to come up with some unified explanation for why several graves around the world have skeletons put together. Almost certainly different stuff was going on in different places at different times. But yeah, there's something extra weird about this particular grave. So the DNA analysis showed that there were these seven unrelated individuals. They spanned different generations. They probably were between like 4,200 and

• 24:24Rachel Feltman?

  4,500 years old. But the skull, the radiocarbon dating on it was not conclusive. But when they analyzed the DNA, they found that it belonged to a Roman woman who was like very closely related, relatively speaking, to some other people buried in a Roman cemetery, like 100 kilometers away. And that was 1800 years ago. So we're talking about like most of the skeleton is around 4,200 years old. And then the skull that's in there and the pin that threw them off initially, that made them be like, this is just, you know, your standard second century Roman grave. That was 1800 years ago, give or take. So yeah,

• 25:08Rachel Feltman?

  who knows? I've seen researchers, you know, sort of spitball on why people might put the bones together in the first place. My mom, a physician, was like, it must have been for medical training. And I'm like, I think that's very speculative, Mom, and you're not an archaeologist. But listen, it's a fair, it's a fair guess.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  It's like one of the schoolroom.

• 25:28Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:29Speaker 04

  Classroom skeletons that just got buried.

• 25:32Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, yeah. I don't know how much anatomical training they were doing like 2000 years ago in the Roman Empire. But maybe, maybe that's what this was. I've also seen some researchers say like, maybe this was sort of a like a symbolic thing to like combine people from different lineages as like a way of saying like, we are all now one people. This is the like, the symbolic grave that unifies our people. Or even that like, maybe there was something that actually related these people to one another. And there was some symbolic reason for putting them in a grave together, even though they did not die at the same time. Or it could

• 26:14Rachel Feltman?

  have been like a prank, like we truly don't know. I think that's, you know, we have this bias to try to assign like higher meaning to things people did in ancient times when like truly, it could have just been somebody messing around. Who knows? There was not a lot to do at that time. And the skull being, you know, from like 2000 years later, the researchers behind this new study were saying, you know, maybe Romans like found this grave and had inadvertently destroyed the skull that was in it. Or maybe it was skullless and that bothered them. But like, Yeah. It's possible that for whatever reason, they were like, we're putting this here. I don't know. Something about it kind of reminds me of somebody like, like, Yeah. making a graffiti tag being like, oh, I like what they did here. I'm gonna add

• 26:59Rachel Feltman?

  my, Yeah. I'm gonna add my signature. But again, we, we simply won't know. But the researchers behind this study and similar studies looking at, you know, composite graves of multiple bones, always reiterate, like, this is just a reminder that people were doing complex and varied things with their dead. That like, there are so many rituals that existed that we just have no record of. And that's just really cool. You know, people have always been doing interesting things for their funerary rites. And I just, I love this study.

• 27:42Rachel Feltman?

  Obviously, it's a little spooky. The researcher was like, don't call it a Frankenstein. That's disrespectful. And that's fair. But I will call it a spooky friend. Who I respect immensely.

• 27:53Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 27:53Rachel Feltman?

  Exactly. A whole pile of spooky friends who I respect immensely. But yeah, that's my fact for today. Pretty short.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  I want to know why.

• 28:02Rachel Feltman?

  I know.

• 28:04Speaker 05

  Because the why just isn't there. That's, that's what makes it so fascinating and probably will never definitively be there. But I had no idea that this was a thing that has been found to have been, to have happened ever.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  I mean, either. I'm, that's, I, yep. I want to know why, but I will accept that I will never know why. I like the theories too. That's, it is fun to speculate.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  Theorizing is very, very fun.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:31Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. Yeah. I think there's, there's something really satisfying to me about like,

• 28:38Rachel Feltman?

  researchers having to admit at the end of the day, this could have just been somebody being weird.

• 28:42Speaker 04

  Messing around. Yeah.

• 28:43Rachel Feltman?

  Yes. Person doing a weird thing.

• 28:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:46Rachel Feltman?

  Again, and again, I think it's like, it's so important to remember that that is always possible because we have this tendency to be very like, ah, the ancient times. What was the spiritual significance? Yeah.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:02Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. And some people are people. So.

• 29:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:06Rachel Feltman?

  Teens, teens did prank.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. Or like the equivalent of your weird neighbor.

• 29:10Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:11Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:12Rachel Feltman?

  Okay. We're going to take one more break and then we'll be back with one more fact.

• 29:20Speaker 00

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• 30:24Rachel Feltman?

  Okay, we're back. And Teepz, talk to me about some spooky physics, please.

• 30:28Speaker 05

  Yes. Okay. So when I was getting my undergrad in biology, I hated physics, like my least favorite. I just couldn't understand it. And it made me so mad that it was so important in our day to day life, and it was so beyond my understanding. So this, this topic is coming from a very surface level understanding of these things, which is good, because I think that's the best way to explain it in like, a concise manner of 10 minutes. Okay, so, we are going to be diving into the mind bending world of quantum mechanics a little bit, but primarily focusing on the phenomenon known as quantum entanglement. So, both of you, like, look at a surface nearby, just like a flat surface. There is a non-zero chance

• 31:13Speaker 05

  that at some point, with you slapping your hand, your entire hand could go through the solid surface. So this concept challenges not only your understanding of reality completely, but leads us to some bizarre ideas, including the possibility that if you, you know, slapped a surface, your hand could just go right through it. So what is quantum entanglement as a whole? So let's say, okay, you have a pair of dice that are somehow linked in a special way. When you roll one die and it lands on a six, the other die instantly reflects that outcome, no matter how far apart they are. In quantum mechanics, entangled particles behave in a similar manner. When two particles become entangled, the measurement

• 31:58Speaker 05

  of one particle's state, whether it's spin, polarization, or a different property, it will instantly determine the state of another particle, even if they are light years apart. So like, this might be a weird analogy, maybe potentially not allowed to be on the podcast, but it's like when you and a friend are hanging out and you're like, hey, we should maybe eat this fun little treat at the same time. So we're on the same page, no matter what. So it hits at the same time. Kind of like the same thing, but not really. So for some historical context on how this came to be, this concept puzzled many physicists, including Albert Einstein.

• 32:39Speaker 05

  He famously referred to the entanglement as spooky action at a distance because it seemed to defy the classical ideas of locality and casuality. Einstein, along with his colleagues, presented this paradox, questioning whether quantum mechanics could provide a complete description of like our physical reality. And they argued that if entangled particles could communicate instantaneously, then quantum mechanics must be incomplete in some weird way. That's like saying a lot with, to me, not really saying anything at all. So to get into the mechanics of quantum tunneling a little bit further,

• 33:21Speaker 05

  this phenomenon describes how particles can pass through barriers that, according to just classic physics that we know and love, they shouldn't be able to cross. Picture a ball rolling towards a hill. Classically, if it doesn't have enough energy to reach the top, it rolls back. But in the quantum world, there's a probability that the ball would simply tunnel through the hill to the other side, just through it, despite not having the energy to overcome the barrier. Okay, now let's go back to the slap, the idea of the slap. Let's entertain this wild idea. If you slapped a solid surface in the quantum realm, there's an extremely tiny, super small chance

• 34:06Speaker 05

  that your hand could just quantum tunnel through that wall or whatever you're slapping. This isn't something that like you should just sit at home and just like slap until it goes through. Although there are TikTok accounts of people doing this. It's like day 100, day 400 of slapping a surface to see if my hand goes through it.

• 34:25Speaker 04

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 34:27Speaker 05

  So for macroscopic objects like human hands, the probability of this happening is virtually zero because the effects of quantum tunneling are significant only at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. But it's like fun to entertain the idea. I mean, there's like a non-zero chance. So you're saying there's a chance it could happen.

• 34:48Speaker 05

  So I mean, this, this topic obviously causes some implications for our understanding of reality at large. It goes beyond technology. They challenge our understanding of reality itself, and it raises philosophical questions about the nature of space and time. If two entangled particles can affect each other instantaneously, does that mean information can travel faster than light? I don't know. And what does that say about our perception of the universe at large? So like, in conclusion, quantum entanglement is a striking reminder of how intricate and strange our universe can be. And it forces us to reconsider the fundamental rules that govern reality. And while you're probably not going

• 35:33Speaker 05

  to slap your hand through a wall, the interplay between entanglement and quantum tunneling illustrates how bizarre the quantum world truly is. And you could probably sit here and talk for five hours and not even scratch the surface of quantum mechanics. But it's fun to entertain the idea of it all.

• 35:53Speaker 04

  Totally. I love this stuff. Have you played Alan Wake 2?

• 35:58Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  This makes me think.

• 36:00Speaker 05

  Okay, so I haven't finished it.

• 36:01Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 36:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:02Speaker 04

  But still, it's so cool and interesting. It makes me think of all of that. And listeners, if you haven't played that game, you should play it. It's so good. And Rachel, you should play it, too.

• 36:09Rachel Feltman?

  I've heard good things. I haven't played it. But I have a confession about physics, which I almost never confess to people, which is that technically, I never had any physics classes, because I had like, physical science in middle school, you know, the sort of like, you know, very basic, like, police systems kind of stuff. And then I only did two years of high school before I went to college. And that was bio and chem. And then I actually think maybe I just took chemistry twice in high school because I switched high schools. But anyway, then in college, I did environmental science as my major. And I just like, I was like, I bypassed physics. I was like, it's not technically required. No, thank you.

• 36:49Speaker 04

  I would have done the same.

• 36:50Rachel Feltman?

  But then that really came back to bite me in the butt, because like, when I was working at the Washington Post, and I had to cover the Nobel Prizes, which means like waking up at like four AM.

• 37:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:01Rachel Feltman?

  You know, churning out an article about something you've had no heads up about neutrinos one. And I was like,

• 37:09Rachel Feltman?

  you know, I, I have learned a lot about physics and I think learning how to learn about science is a skill that applies to any field of science. And I've done a lot of, you know, reading to, to catch up and now I'm sort of comfortable writing about physics. But yeah, no, sitting on my couch at four thirty in the morning being like neutrinos. I really was like, wow, this is, this was entirely preventable. I could have taken but one physics class in my higher education.

• 37:46Rachel Feltman?

  Lesson, lesson to you children.

• 37:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was gonna say, you know, I don't even know how much this class taught me about neutrinos, so.

• 37:54Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, that's fair. But I was like, oh, do I even know what a subatomic particle is? I did, but it was really easy at that moment to be like, I messed up, I messed up.

• 38:04Speaker 05

  And it's just so interesting to think how much we don't know about the world we live in.

• 38:10Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 38:11Speaker 05

  You know, there's so much going on and I'm just so.

• 38:15Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So true.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  Agreed. Even the smartest people are like, with like with the quantum stuff, they're like, oh,

• 38:21Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  There's a lot of stuff going on, probably maybe that is really weird. That doesn't make sense.

• 38:27Speaker 05

  Quantum physics, it's a lot of like, this could happen, this also could not happen.

• 38:37Speaker 04

  That's basically all of quantum physics.

• 38:38Rachel Feltman?

  Yes.

• 38:40Speaker 05

  Which, um, another good movie, Interstellar.

• 38:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I love Interstellar.

• 38:45Speaker 05

  Interstellar really, I, I feel like hits home.

• 38:51Speaker 05

  The fascination for quantum mechanics at large, because it's like, it then goes into the other dimensions that, you know, some physicists like Albert Einstein have confirmed to be true. We just can't perceive these things, perceive these things and how quantum mechanics plays into that. And like, you know, you could go on tangents of like, oh, you know, this, the, the ghosts or spirits that people see, is that just, are those, you know, dead people? Or are those people in another dimension that we can't perceive? Who knows?

• 39:18Rachel Feltman?

  My friend, Ryan Mandelwitz, who's been on the show a couple of times now writes about quantum stuff for IBM and has, has a physics background and like loves, loves talking about quantum physics. And they are one of the weirdest people I know. So

• 39:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:37Speaker 05

  Ryan's great. How is Ryan? I miss him.

• 39:40Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, Ryan's good. I need to, I've actually, I'm gonna try to get him back on the pod soon. So

• 39:43Speaker 05

  Huge.

• 39:44Rachel Feltman?

  Chibbs, thanks so much for coming on. It was great getting to chat with you. Would you remind folks like where they can find all of your content?

• 39:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure. Thank you for having me. This was so fun. I mean,

• 39:55Rachel Feltman?

  It was so fun.

• 39:56Speaker 05

  I would love to sit here and talk about these things for another two hours. Like, it's just, it's just so interesting. Um, you can find me at twitch.tv/chibbs. And then my other handles on Twitter and Instagram are chillbo, Baggins with a Z.

• 40:14Rachel Feltman?

  The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Feltman, along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at weirdest underscore thing. Thanks for listening, weirdos.

• 40:47Speaker 00

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• 41:18Speaker 01

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