Pod Insights The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week Atomic Priesthood, Space Smells Like Beef, the Power of Pee Fuel About this episode Jess brings on science-minded friends Lindsey and Misti to discuss why space smells like a freshly opened beef stew packet, how having to pee makes you better at video games like Elden Ring, and how rituals and priests might be the solution to long-term nuclear waste warning.
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Transcript 11,161 words · 8 speakers
0:01 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
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1:32 Speaker 03 At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while a lot of the fun facts we stumble across make it into our articles, there are lots of other 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 at Popular Science. I'm Jess.
1:53 Speaker 04 I'm Lindsay. I'm Missy.
1:54 Speaker 03 Misty.
1:56 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
1:59 Speaker 03 Welcome to the show. This is so exciting.
2:03 Speaker 04 Thanks for having us.
2:04 Speaker 05 Yes, thank you.
2:06 Speaker 03 Oh, my God, my pleasure. Um, why don't you guys tell the listeners a little bit about yourselves and what you make and why you're here?
2:15 Speaker 04 Hi, my name is Lindsay. I'm a Twitch streamer. I stream full time. I love it. And why I'm here? Because you asked me, baby.
2:31 Speaker 03 Misty, what about you?
2:32 Speaker 05 I'm Misty. I am in tech sales by day. I am, I would say, a defunct Twitch streamer by night. I don't think my chat technically knows that I am going by defunct, so I might be breaking some news here. I am also
2:51 Speaker 03 And breaking hearts.
2:53 Speaker 05 Oh, I
2:53 Speaker 04 Breaking hearts, for sure.
2:55 Speaker 05 It's hard to stream on Twitch and not do that in some capacity, so bear prep. Yeah, I'm also an amateur perfumer. I'm an etymology enthusiast. And yeah, I mean, I'm here because I'm always looking for an excuse to saddle people with the fact we're going to talk about today.
3:15 Speaker 03 Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait.
3:21 Speaker 03 Excellent. Well, I'm so stoked you guys are here. You guys are like truly two of my favorite people in the whole world and two of the most interesting people in the whole world as well. So this is gonna be very fun to yap for the next hour.
3:34 Speaker 04 Yeah, I can't wait.
3:35 Speaker 05 I'm stoked.
3:36 Speaker 03 Yeah. Okay, so I'll do our intro that we have as a boilerplate, even though it's incorrect, but we just are too stubborn to change it. So on the weirdest thing we learned this week, we start by each sharing a fact or story about something that we learned over the course of reading, writing, gaming, having too many tabs open, being on the computer, et cetera. And then we decide which one of us goes first. Then, after we all have a chance to spin our little science yarns, we decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. But we, that's, that's the part that's not true anymore because we all win and nobody, everyone is weird.
4:12 Speaker 05 Oh, okay. So this is not a competition, in fact?
4:14 Speaker 03 No, it used to be. We don't, we don't do that anymore.
4:17 Speaker 04 When did it cease to become a competition?
4:19 Speaker 03 A couple, like, like a
4:22 Speaker 03 At least a full season ago, maybe two, maybe more.
4:26 Speaker 04 New things.
4:26 Speaker 05 Is there tea? Was somebody upset that they lost?
4:30 Speaker 03 Not that I know of. That would be funnier.
4:33 Speaker 04 Maybe deep down in their hearts that they didn't voice it.
4:38 Speaker 03 Um, okay, I'll start with my tees, which is having to pee makes you better at Elden Ring.
4:45 Speaker 04 Oh.
4:48 Speaker 04 I already know.
4:53 Speaker 04 This is perfect.
4:54 Speaker 03 Yes, it's, it's an amazing journey that I have went on researching this. Um, okay, Lindsay, what's your tease? What's your fact about?
5:02 Speaker 04 My tease is space smells like what?
5:08 Speaker 03 I can't wait to find out. Um, Misty, what's your tease?
5:13 Speaker 05 So my tease is I'm gonna talk about the most terrifying design slash communication challenge of the modern era.
5:25 Speaker 03 That's, that's
5:25 Speaker 05 That's a big, I know.
5:26 Speaker 03 A bold claim.
5:28 Speaker 05 It's bold. It's bold, but hear me out. Trust me. Trust me, bro.
5:34 Speaker 04 I trust you.
5:36 Speaker 03 Okay, well, I think we should start with, uh, Lindsay, uh, because I want to know about space.
5:44 Speaker 04 Okay, let's do this. Um, okay, picture it. It's December 10th, 2024. And I find myself scrolling on TikTok as one does, and I come across a video about a weird perfume called Oh, the Space, uh, which then sends me on a deep dive rabbit hole furious Google search.
6:07 Speaker 03 I like that you know the exact day.
6:10 Speaker 04 I went and I looked it up. I went and I looked it up when she, when this girl posted. Um, and, uh, all about the smell of space, the smell of our universe. And then that then opened me into like the world of weird niche scents in general, which is like, if you haven't looked into some of the weird perfumes that are out there, which Misty, I know you said that you're an amateur perfumist.
6:37 Speaker 05 Yes.
6:37 Speaker 04 Know all about it. There's some weird, in a good way and in a bad way, scents out there.
6:44 Speaker 05 It's fascinating.
6:46 Speaker 04 So technically, we can't actually smell space because if we did, we would die. But we can smell the molecules that have clung to an astronaut's spacesuit. And then scientists can use chemistry to recreate molecules that are found in the universe. So we can smell all sorts of spacey things.
7:05 Speaker 03 So cool.
7:06 Speaker 04 Yeah. There's this really impressive space scientist and fragrance designer, which is like such a cool combination. Her name is Marina Barcenia. I hope I'm saying that right. And I'll talk about her a little bit later, but I wanted to mention that right now. And I think the episode won't be out before this, but she actually has sent recreation on view at the London Natural History Museum right now. Where she recreated the possible scents of Jupiter's moons.
7:42 Speaker 03 Shut up.
7:43 Speaker 04 I really wish that I could go see it. It ends on the 22nd. I think this, you said this will be out after that, but
7:51 Speaker 04 she also has recreated what Cleopatra's hair might have smelled like.
7:55 Speaker 03 Why is she the coolest person I've ever?
7:58 Speaker 04 No, it's so cool.
8:01 Speaker 04 It also reminds me of that video. I don't know if y'all have seen it where they this has nothing to do with smells, but where they recreated a mummy's mouth and vocal cortex.
8:13 Speaker 03 Yes, I forgot about that.
8:17 Speaker 03 I think I think I would have talked about that on this show when it came out because it was so weird.
8:22 Speaker 04 When I saw that she had recreated what Cleopatra's hair smelled like, that's all I could think of. And then I was like cry laughing and I rewatched the video like four times of the of the mummy voice. Anyway, if you haven't heard that, you you need to Google recreating mummy voice because it's funny and you will laugh. I promise.
8:43 Speaker 03 Wait, does it say what the Jupiter's moon and the Cleopatra hair smelled like? Was there, does she describe it at all?
8:50 Speaker 04 I mean, she might have, but I didn't go on another deep dive of that. I'm so sorry.
8:55 Speaker 03 That's for next episode.
8:57 Speaker 04 That's next time.
9:02 Speaker 04 Um, so, okay, so what does space smell like? And what have astronauts described? I don't know about y'all, but I have a really hard time describing what something smells or tastes like.
9:16 Speaker 03 Yes.
9:17 Speaker 04 And I feel like what something smells like to me might be different. Like, I might describe it differently than you would describe it. So it makes sense why there is a, a lot of different things that people have described. Um, and there, some of them are really, really weird. A lot of people describe it similar to gunpowder or ozone, which I had actually already Googled what ozone smells like because I had seen it listed as a note in a perfume that I really enjoyed. And what I found when I was Googling is that it kind of smells like static electricity or a laser copier or printer.
9:59 Speaker 03 Okay.
9:59 Speaker 04 Or like, um,
10:00 Speaker 03 Yes, I know that exact.
10:02 Speaker 04 Yes, or like electronics in general, uh, which I think is really interesting. And this, the perfume that I smelled that had ozone in it did smell kind of electric.
10:10 Speaker 03 What perfume was it?
10:12 Speaker 04 It's called, I think it's called Concrete Lightning. Um, it's by this brand called DS and Durga. They're like located here in, in Brooklyn. Yeah. And it's honestly, it smelled really good. I probably would have bought it, but it was $250.
10:29 Speaker 03 They're so expensive, but I love their scents.
10:32 Speaker 04 Yeah.
10:33 Speaker 03 Yeah. There, there are one scent called, I don't know what is the name of it. That is like my favorite next to a Lalabo scent. Those are the two that I always wear.
10:43 Speaker 04 I love the one called Steamed Rainbows.
10:47 Speaker 03 Oh, yes. I need to go and smell them all.
10:50 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's so good. It's so good. It's great.
10:54 Speaker 03 What is that one like?
10:56 Speaker 05 It's, well.
10:57 Speaker 04 Let me, let me look it up real quick.
10:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:59 Speaker 04 I'll, I'll get the notes for you.
11:01 Speaker 05 It kind of has like a petricor, um, like it's heavy in petricor. It smells kind of like after a rainstorm, but there's something kind of like juicy and fruity about it also. It's, it's very interesting.
11:13 Speaker 03 That makes sense with the name.
11:14 Speaker 04 They describe it as Roy G. Biv reflections on soft weightless waters steaming upwards forever fresh. Uh, what? But the notes are red mandarin, orange, yellow, elemi, I don't know if I'm saying that right, resin. Um, the heart notes are green cedar, blue almond flower, indigo grass. And then the base notes are violet, uh, vetiver and vapors.
11:37 Speaker 03 Vapors.
11:38 Speaker 05 Vapors.
11:39 Speaker 04 It's very interesting. I think it's definitely probably not for everybody, but it's so good.
11:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:45 Speaker 04 I really liked it.
11:47 Speaker 03 Smell it.
11:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, you should. They have so many cool scents there. Um, but, uh.
11:53 Speaker 03 But ozone, you were saying.
11:55 Speaker 04 Ozone. Yeah. So some people have said that space smells like ozone. Um, former astronaut Greg Chamitoff said that there's one smell in particular that I quote, is a really unique. We just call it the smell of space. There's this really, really strong metallic smell. Astronaut Alexander Gerst said, this is a direct quote, "To me, space smells like a mixture between walnuts and the brake pads of my motorbike."
12:23 Speaker 03 What? Bro is a poet.
12:27 Speaker 04 Okay. Like he knows how to, you know, describe a scent. Uh, me, no. Don Pettit, uh, in a NASA blog after his mission in 2003, said that it reminded him of his college summers where he labored for many hours with an arc welding torch. He said, "It reminded me of a pleasant, sweet smelling welding fume," which I don't think I've ever smelled welding fumes, but I don't know if I would describe it as sweet.
12:53 Speaker 03 Pleasant? No.
12:54 Speaker 04 So now I'm interested in smelling that.
12:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:57 Speaker 04 Um.
12:58 Speaker 03 Let's get into welding.
13:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
13:02 Speaker 04 Sometimes I watch videos of people like learning how to weld on the internet and it just looks so hard.
13:09 Speaker 03 Really?
13:09 Speaker 05 Okay, wait. So I have, we just got into a discussion, a couple of friends at like a little get together the other night. We were talking about things that we felt like we would be irrationally good at. And mine was literally welding because I look at it and I'm like, I could do that. Like, I know that I could.
13:25 Speaker 03 Well, you chain mail. You chain mail.
13:27 Speaker 05 Yes.
13:28 Speaker 03 I feel like that's kind of related.
13:31 Speaker 05 They're both dealing in metallics, right?
13:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:34 Speaker 04 I think, though, it's like you have, like, to be like a really good welder, I think. And I don't, obviously, I don't know what I'm talking about. So I don't know. But you have to have like your seams like perfect. And I feel like mine would be like zigzagged like all over.
13:46 Speaker 03 It is like an art form. I feel like you need to really like study surgeon's hand or something.
13:50 Speaker 04 I mean, you go to trade school for it, right? Like, it's, it's like, serious business.
13:54 Speaker 05 I think I would be humbled immediately, but irrationally, I think I would be perfect at it. You know what I'm saying?
14:00 Speaker 03 Yes.
14:01 Speaker 04 Honestly, I've been watching a lot of Olympics recently and I'm like, I think I could be a ski, a speeds, speed skater. But I know I couldn't. But it looks really fun.
14:11 Speaker 03 I was thinking about with the ski slalom, where they go like, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, side to side a bunch down the hill.
14:16 Speaker 04 I also, I really want to try like, like a ski jump.
14:21 Speaker 03 You do?
14:21 Speaker 04 Because you can, you can go to like Park City in Utah.
14:25 Speaker 03 Dude.
14:25 Speaker 04 And I don't know if like the public, the general public can do this, but they, when they practice their like ski jumps, they do it into a big pool that's like bubbling, like a hot tub, kind of, so that you don't, you know, slam into the
14:39 Speaker 03 Break your legs.
14:39 Speaker 04 Still surface of the water.
14:41 Speaker 05 Right here.
14:41 Speaker 04 But that's like how they practice and stuff. And I'm like, I want to, I could do that like one time. I mean, I wouldn't be good at it, but it would be fun.
14:48 Speaker 03 I admire your bravery.
14:49 Speaker 04 But landing on the actual snow, landing on the actual snow, there's no way I would break both legs. Maybe my spine. You know what I mean?
14:56 Speaker 05 Yeah, best case scenario, it's both legs, right?
14:58 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:02 Speaker 04 Um, back to space.
15:06 Speaker 04 Okay, other astronauts have simply described there being like a weird tang on their spacesuits and airlocks after a spacewalk. Some have said it's cold and antiseptic. Lots of people describe it as like fried or a seared steak, like a meatiness in general. I've heard that. Yes.
15:23 Speaker 03 I think I've heard that too, which is fascinating because like what meat is up there to be seared but human flesh?
15:28 Speaker 04 Well, I might get to that in a little.
15:30 Speaker 03 Okay, sorry, I'm jumping the gun, I'm jumping the gun.
15:33 Speaker 04 And then I think my favorite description is that it smells like cream of mushroom soup.
15:40 Speaker 03 Stop.
15:42 Speaker 04 Which I'm like, what do you mean?
15:44 Speaker 03 The soup that I never eat alone and only use to cook other things.
15:49 Speaker 04 Make a casserole.
15:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:51 Speaker 04 Or something, you know?
15:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, green bean casserole, baby.
15:55 Speaker 04 Um, so what causes these weird scents in the space? Basically, we don't know.
16:05 Speaker 04 Short, short answer is we don't know what's causing these scents.
16:08 Speaker 03 Hell yeah.
16:10 Speaker 04 But Dr. Louis Almandola, the former director of the NASA Ames Astrophysics and Astrochemistry Lab, says that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are likely the contributors.
16:26 Speaker 03 Okay.
16:28 Speaker 04 Now, I went to. We know about those. I went to a private religious school where I was not taught science at all. So I Googled that because I was like, what is that? I don't know. And found out that in the most basic terms, they're molecules that are found all throughout the universe. And on Earth, specifically, we can find them in things like soot, or burnt toast, or charred meat.
16:52 Speaker 03 What?
16:52 Speaker 04 So that explains all the meaty smells that have been described.
16:56 Speaker 03 That's so cool. Wait, you do research and found the connection?
17:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
17:03 Speaker 04 Um, back in 2008, NASA commissioned chemist Steve Pearce to reconstruct the smells of space, specifically so that astronauts in training would know the difference between what space smells like, um, and like also maybe an unexpected chemical leak or something, um, which makes sense. They train for literally everything. So you would need to know when like, I don't know, an unfamiliar smell pops up. Um, so he took the smells described by the astronauts and then used his knowledge of fragrance and aroma chemistry to make the perfume, um, which I think, or make the scent, I guess. And then fast forward to
17:45 Speaker 04 June 2020, a time I never want to go back to. A Kickstarter launches with hopes to produce the scent on a bigger scale and make it accessible to the public. Uh, the original goal was $1,969, which is way lower than I expected for a Kickstarter for that, but also a cute nod to the moon landing, the year we landed on the moon, which I think is so cute.
18:09 Speaker 03 That's adorable. I love that. Oh, that's really cute.
18:13 Speaker 04 Um, unsurprisingly, the Kickstarter like blew past, uh, the original goal. They ended up raising 6,000, or no, 614,376 dollars.
18:26 Speaker 03 Wow.
18:27 Speaker 04 Um, they, you can currently buy the perfume. It's $49 for 100 milliliters, um, which for a perfume is not that bad.
18:36 Speaker 03 Yeah.
18:37 Speaker 04 Um, uh, but if you, okay, but if you go back to that original TikTok in December of 2024, um, it was not just the knowledge of this space perfume that caught my attention.
18:52 Speaker 03 Oh.
18:53 Speaker 04 It was her reaction to the perfume that really sealed the deal of me needing to know more. Um, in the video, she can't even hold the bottle up close to her face while she's showing it off because she can smell it that, like, that much. Um, In the clip of her smelling it, she gags, covers her mouth immediately and starts like violently coughing.
19:19 Speaker 03 What?
19:21 Speaker 04 She describes it as, all of these things she has said, rancid, horrific, scary, sad, that it smells like fear and danger. Her friend said that it smelled like the inside of a VCR, ozone, perhaps?
19:43 Speaker 04 When I was on my deep dive, I found a bunch of other reviews of the scent and they all had a super similar reaction. One website, it has a 2.1 rating with over 140 reviews, which is really funny to me. Some of the review highlights for me are metallic biscuit latex,
20:05 Speaker 04 urinal cake, hand sanitizer and soon to expire fruit gummies.
20:10 Speaker 03 No, no.
20:11 Speaker 05 Okay, weirdly, that paints a clearer picture for me, right?
20:16 Speaker 03 That is visceral.
20:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, so, I mean, needless to say, I won't be spending $50.
20:21 Speaker 03 I kind of want to smell it.
20:23 Speaker 04 Oh, I'm desperate. I'm desperate to smell it.
20:26 Speaker 03 I might be spending $50. Okay, okay, Misty's got us.
20:30 Speaker 05 Get to LA, we will smell space together.
20:32 Speaker 04 Yes, yes, yes.
20:33 Speaker 03 Oh, that's kind of romantic, even though it smells horrible.
20:36 Speaker 04 Even if it smells bad.
20:37 Speaker 05 At a picnic, yeah.
20:39 Speaker 04 Outside.
20:42 Speaker 04 They also then released Odaluna, which is the smell of the moon as a stretch goal for the Kickstarter. And how we know what the moon smells like, well, people have been there, baby. Charlie Duke of Apollo 16, also fun fact, the youngest person to walk on the moon. How old was he? 36. That's how old I am. And I'm like, what am I doing with my life?
21:07 Speaker 03 Dude, imagining 36 and walking on the moon, that's actually unfathomable to me.
21:11 Speaker 04 My ego would be out of control.
21:13 Speaker 03 Literally, literally.
21:15 Speaker 05 No one would want to know me at that point.
21:17 Speaker 04 I know. I wouldn't talk about anything else. And I don't know, maybe he didn't, but he said that the moon dust on his suit, like truly moon dust on his suit that he got to smell, that it, he said it has that taste of gunpowder and the smell of gunpowder too, so.
21:36 Speaker 04 That's I guess why space smells like gunpowder. I don't know. Um, Don Pettit, who was the one, okay, these are, these are just like other like smells of the, of space and of the universe.
21:47 Speaker 05 Sure.
21:48 Speaker 04 Don Pettit, who was the one who said that space smelled like welding fumes. He also said about the ISS. He, he was there for six months. When he came back, this is a direct quote from him. He said, "It smells like half machine shop engine room laboratory. And then when you're cooking dinner and you rip open a pouch of stew or something and you can smell a little roast beef."
22:13 Speaker 05 Oh, okay.
22:15 Speaker 03 Me when I smell a little roast beef.
22:17 Speaker 05 Yeah, me when I open my dinner pouch of roast beef.
22:22 Speaker 04 And actually I made beef stew for dinner tonight. And when I opened that, I was like, oh, space.
22:28 Speaker 03 There it is.
22:28 Speaker 04 The smell of space. I'm basically on the ISS, baby.
22:33 Speaker 03 Literally, you made it. You made it.
22:35 Speaker 05 Okay, but do we ever think about, you know how like you can go nose blind to things? Do we ever think about people who spend all of this time in space? Like when they come back to Earth, does Earth smell weird? Like, are we nose blind to Earth?
22:47 Speaker 03 That's an amazing thought.
22:47 Speaker 04 Oh my God, I didn't think to, to research that, but I wish I would have.
22:52 Speaker 03 I, I mean, that's a good question for astronauts. We gotta, we gotta.
22:55 Speaker 04 Yeah. Get me an astronaut on the line.
22:58 Speaker 05 Yeah, get me an astronaut.
23:02 Speaker 04 Um, okay, just like two more little scent facts in the night and then I'm done. Um, okay, back to Marina Barson, uh, Barsonia, the, that amazing, uh,
23:13 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:13 Speaker 04 space scientist and fragrance chemist and all that stuff. Um, she was talking about Jupiter, um, and how it's just like the stinkiest thing to, uh, she said, she called it a stink bomb. Um, uh, she said Jupiter has several layers of clouds, right?
23:32 Speaker 03 Right.
23:33 Speaker 04 And she said each layer has a different chemical composition, which means they all would smell different. Uh, they believe that the top layer is made of ammonia ice. So like,
23:44 Speaker 05 Okay.
23:44 Speaker 04 cat pee maybe?
23:46 Speaker 03 Cat piss ice.
23:47 Speaker 05 Cat pee ice, okay.
23:48 Speaker 04 And then the next layer, you have ammonium sulfide, which would be like sulfur.
23:55 Speaker 04 Like rotten eggs. Imagine a combo of cat pee and rotten eggs. No thanks. It would, I mean. That is a stink bomb. That is a stink bomb. That's taking out like an entire Victorian village. Literally. Not even just a Victorian child. Not just the child. The whole village.
24:17 Speaker 04 And then, okay, so when I was doing a lot of this research, I saw a lot
24:22 Speaker 04 of things about space smelling like raspberries. And maybe y'all have seen that as well. Yeah. Well,
24:30 Speaker 04 Marina set me straight, okay? She said, no, that's not right. She, she said that researchers have found ethyl formate in the Milky Way. Ethyl formate is what
24:42 Speaker 04 is the chemical response for the flavor. Oh. Or the chemical responsible for the flavor of raspberries. And that's in specifically Sagittarius B2 in the Milky Way. So some people have said like, oh, the Milky Way must smell like raspberries. Oh. But there's actually like a lot of things that make raspberries smell like that. And also, ethyl formate is in a lot of different things. Like it's in a bunch of different fruits, but it's also in like nail polish remover and rum. Interesting. So if you hear that space smells like strawberries, it's probably a little bit more nuanced than that, but I think it would be cool.
25:20 Speaker 04 You should definitely tell people. You should stop them and be like, actually, it's a little more nuanced than that. It's more nuanced than that.
25:28 Speaker 05 Be everybody's favorite person at the party.
25:31 Speaker 04 No, I'll just be like, did you know that's, uh, the ISS smells like when you rip open a pouch of stew?
25:40 Speaker 04 That's what I'll really tell them.
25:46 Speaker 04 And they'll be like, I met this, the weirdest girl at this party, dude. She would not stop talking about smelling stew in space.
25:56 Speaker 04 And that's it.
25:58 Speaker 03 Woo! Oh, my God. That was a journey. I love that. Honestly, the beef, the beef stew is what makes me laugh the most. But the ozone thing is what I'm taking away, I feel. Like, that is such a cool, because that is like such a specific scent.
26:14 Speaker 04 No, as soon as I, as soon as I read that, I was like, wait, I know exactly that smell. Because I worked in an office part-time in high school and I was the only person that knew how to like fix the printer. And so anytime someone had an issue, I was like in the, in the copier, like fixing it. So I, I mean, I smelled that thing a trillion times and I, I like knew exactly what it was when I read that.
26:37 Speaker 05 There, there's like a whole fragrance family around like ozonic, you know, notes that people enjoy. So it's like, it's interesting that that's included in the scent of space, but it, I guess it doesn't shock me. Like when you dig into it, it seems like it would be included. I think the beef stew is the most shocking note for me, honestly.
26:58 Speaker 03 That's incredibly funny.
27:00 Speaker 04 Yeah. And it's, I don't know, all because of those molecules that are found in like burnt toast and charred meat. And that's why I think that, that's so cool.
27:09 Speaker 03 It's really, really cool. Dang. All right, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more facts.
27:20 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
27:49 Speaker 01 This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
28:23 Speaker 03 Okay, we're back and Misty is going to tell us about the the big thing that she teased, that it's a very big deal.
28:34 Speaker 05 I think I called it the most terrifying design slash communication challenge. I don't know what I even told you.
28:42 Speaker 03 You hyped it up a lot.
28:43 Speaker 04 I think that's what you said and I'm truly, I'm chomping at the bit, I gotta know.
28:48 Speaker 05 Okay, okay, okay.
28:49 Speaker 04 What you're talking about.
28:50 Speaker 05 Well, like Lindsay's former topic, which by the way, incredible, I'm so into weird fragrances that like delighted me to sit and listen to that.
29:01 Speaker 03 Yeah.
29:02 Speaker 05 My thing also started with a humble deep dive. I do not have the date, okay? I'm not as prepared with my date. I was able to locate the original image and I hate to tell you guys that the the deep dive I was on is one of the most unscientific things I think I could have been. I was looking up live, laugh, love wall art, okay? In a way to make myself feel better about my own design choices. I was getting on this whole, yeah, I know, because I saw an ad for like a cricket or something and I was like, what do these things do? Mind you, this was a few years back, right? And then I'm like, everyone has one of these things, they're just cutting out like respectfully,
29:45 Speaker 05 I guess, a little bit derogatory, ugly vinyl lettering for their house all the time. Like, what are we doing as a society? And I came across this image that had like, it was it was in the style of like a live, laugh, love, you know, vinyl cutout, but the exact wording, I'm gonna read it to you really quickly, okay?
30:07 Speaker 03 Is this what you sent us in Discord?
30:09 Speaker 04 Yeah, I pulled it up right now.
30:10 Speaker 03 Okay.
30:11 Speaker 05 It literally says, "This is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here. What is here is dangerous and repulsive. The danger is in a particular location. The danger is still present in your time. This place is best left shunned and uninhabited." This is on someone's wall, okay?
30:33 Speaker 03 Can I, can I post this image on the web post? Is that allowed?
30:37 Speaker 05 Please do.
30:38 Speaker 03 Okay, amazing.
30:39 Speaker 05 Only articulate how benign the text is.
30:42 Speaker 03 It's like, it's like in like Georgia font or something like it's like.
30:46 Speaker 04 And it's like in the corner of someone's office or something.
30:49 Speaker 03 Yes, next to that lamp from Target, that's like also a shelf.
30:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, there's like, there's like a Google Home or something like on the shelf.
30:57 Speaker 05 I cannot, how long I've looked at this photo trying to understand the person that put this on. They, they own a vinyl cutter, but they also are like into what we're going to talk about, which is nuclear semiotics. Like, who are you?
31:11 Speaker 03 And no punctuation on this thing either.
31:13 Speaker 05 No punctuation, no punctuation. So as you can imagine, paging through a bunch of what looks to be like home goods type of wall art, and then coming across this, right? I did what anyone would do and I copied the entire text into Google to see what this, was it from a video game? Was it from a movie? What are they referencing? This is so odd to just be placed on your wall, like with no context. And it, it brought me to the thing I can't stop thinking about. Um, so nuclear semiotics is what it led me to, or long-term waste warning messaging. And I know that I kind of opened up with being a little bit of an etymology nerd.
31:58 Speaker 05 I will own that. Most people I know that, you know, get into any kind of like communication or design. Like etymology just seems to be one of those just below the surface interests. A lot of my friends enjoy digging into, right? So.
32:12 Speaker 03 Yes, myself included. It's.
32:14 Speaker 05 Yes, it's so fascinating. And, you know, like, I think in real time, we've all seen accounts. I know there's like etymology nerd out there that will talk about like how our language is rapidly changing. Thanks to like social media and different, you know, linguistic trends and things like that. Nuclear semiotics kind of bridges science and the study of etymology, or, you know, really the study of language or communication across what we call deep time. And deep time are, deep time is, it's a concept that helps the human mind break down like.
32:52 Speaker 05 Periods of time that are almost incomprehensible to our brain, right?
32:55 Speaker 03 Sure, sure.
32:56 Speaker 05 So.
32:57 Speaker 03 Like, because they're so big?
32:59 Speaker 05 They're so big that it's just hard. It's like when when numbers get too large for our brain, right? And they become difficult for humans to like to process the difference between a million and a billion, right? So we have like certain things that can break these down. So nuclear semiotics bridges, I think I've totally derailed here, but nuclear semiotics bridges like language, uh, science, and it bridges it across deep time because what there there's a problem that we're needing to solve. And that is that, you know, in our modern era, we have created nuclear waste and we've created a decent amount of it. Uh, that waste could be here on the low end of the spectrum for approximately 10,000 years, on the high end, 200,000 years.
33:44 Speaker 05 So when we look at how rapid, you know, in again, on a long enough scale, how rapid language evolves, we're kind of stuck with this issue of how do we warn future generations that we have this thing that could kill them, you know, if they dig in a certain area or if they, um, you know, if if for some reason they start farming there or, you know, it it really think of it in a number amount of scenarios where someone might stumble upon something like this and curiosity get the best of them, right?
34:17 Speaker 03 Yeah.
34:18 Speaker 05 So it's the the I I think I've been very long winded in saying that it is it is basically the problem of how do we communicate danger?
34:27 Speaker 03 Right.
34:28 Speaker 05 In a way that balances a warning without it becoming enticing, right? We don't want to, we don't want to draw so much attention that it causes someone to seek out what's underneath, right?
34:41 Speaker 03 Reverse psychology.
34:42 Speaker 05 Yeah. It's it's kind of, it's kind of crazy. Um, how many different, like, um, how many different principles have been brought in to try and address this? They brought in, you know, linguists and philosophers even, um, obviously physicists, um, it kind of, you name it, it they form this kind of task force of people to solve this problem for future generations. Um, and it's interesting because it's it's seemingly all done kind of just by this, this ethos of of like, it's our responsibility to warn them, right? There's not really. There's not really anything pressing on us to do this. It's kind of just like these people that have banded together to be like, how can we solve this problem?
35:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's interesting because it's very, it's almost altruistic.
35:30 Speaker 05 Yeah. It feels that way. It feels that way. I will say that, you know, um, there are a few government task force in the United States that have been put together. But it's, it's not as, um, it's not as like tightly woven as you would think for something as important as what they're trying to do. Hmm. Um, and I think my favorite part of this is that, you know, some of the proposed solutions are just, uh, they're just like very wacky.
36:01 Speaker 03 Okay.
36:02 Speaker 05 The further that I got into this rabbit hole, the more I realized like, wow, we really are just like, we pretty much just can do whatever we want. We have free will. You know what I mean?
36:11 Speaker 03 Like, what are they saying to do?
36:14 Speaker 05 Well, there's a couple of like, there's a couple of, I guess, methods that they are exploring to approach this. Some of them are very, I would say, practical. The most practical one, I think, is what they're calling like the black hole method, which is basically taking an enormous slab of like basalt or a very like, um, obviously dyed, like a black dyed concrete, and just filling in an enormous space, um, you know, like a void basically above where the waste is so that no one can farm there or really, you know, get into the site without
36:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
36:55 Speaker 05 already having like a decent grasp of technology to get into a site like that, if that makes sense. Hmm. Um, but you know, it kind of just like spirals out from there. I feel like somebody had like a very practical idea, this black hole. And then like several other people came in and they're like, yeah, okay, but what about forbidding blocks? Hear me out. It's a network of hundreds of house-sized stone blocks. We dye them black and we arrange them in a regular grid that looks maybe like streets, but they're like liminal and ominous and they lead nowhere. And it's like-
37:29 Speaker 03 What?
37:29 Speaker 05 Okay, maybe.
37:32 Speaker 03 Bro loves Minecraft.
37:33 Speaker 05 Yes, like it, it literally, it, it's like some sort of like Roblox sort of solution like I don't know. And I'm kind of thinking, you know, as a human being myself, right? Like granted of, of the modern variety. I don't know what future human beings will be like, but if I came across that, I feel like it would tiptoe more into that. Maybe like enticing, you know, I want to see what's going on here. If I'm just like traveling, right? Like across the desert and then you come across this.
38:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, that is enticing.
38:07 Speaker 04 I'm like, somebody left this here for me to find.
38:08 Speaker 03 That is hidden treasure.
38:10 Speaker 05 Yes.
38:10 Speaker 04 And now I, I will find what they want me to, you know, what they wanted me to see.
38:14 Speaker 03 This is a sign to look at this.
38:16 Speaker 04 I, I feel like I am a nosey individual to begin with. So if, even if I find, if I'm like digging and I find that, you know, giant ro- rock.
38:26 Speaker 03 The slab.
38:27 Speaker 04 The slab.
38:28 Speaker 05 Slab.
38:29 Speaker 04 I'm like, what's under the slab?
38:31 Speaker 05 Yes.
38:31 Speaker 04 There's some important stuff under the slab and I must know. And you know, I don't know how to dig through it, but I can maybe find someone who does.
38:42 Speaker 05 Yeah, literally. Get me an astronaut. No, I'm kidding.
38:46 Speaker 04 Get an astronaut on the line.
38:49 Speaker 05 No, it's, it's, you know, there's a bunch of, um, you know, I guess ideas that branch out from that initial black hole idea. Another one they had was the landscape of thorns, which is just a mass of like irregularly sized enormous spikes that protrude out from the ground in all directions.
39:09 Speaker 04 Why?
39:10 Speaker 05 Again. Do what?
39:12 Speaker 04 Are they metal?
39:13 Speaker 05 Yes, it, it metal or, or some sort of, um, compound that won't, uh, be subject to like concrete won't really work if it's out and exposed to the elements because over the course of 10,000 or even
39:26 Speaker 04 Right.
39:26 Speaker 05 200,000 years, it, it just won't last, right?
39:30 Speaker 04 Yeah.
39:31 Speaker 05 So, um. You know, there's, there's, I would say five to six different, uh, you know, what they're calling physical site designs, um, that are just kind of all equally insane. I, they seem insane to me. Like if I wandered across these again, uh, you know, in the middle of New Mexico or something out in the desert, I would spend the rest of my life trying to get into these.
39:55 Speaker 03 Yes, like this is, I would be like, this is evidence of an ancient civilization.
40:00 Speaker 04 Yes.
40:00 Speaker 03 Let me dig deeper.
40:02 Speaker 04 Okay. Y'all have seen like Cadillac Ranch in
40:05 Speaker 05 Yes.
40:06 Speaker 04 West Texas. It's this place. It's, um, it's near, uh, Amarillo, Texas, and it's just a bunch of Cadillacs that are, um, have been like half buried in the ground, like sticking up.
40:18 Speaker 03 Oh.
40:19 Speaker 04 And you, I don't even, I don't know, like the origins of it. I've never actually been there, even though I grew up around there. Um, but you, people will go there, take pictures. They'll, they'll take, uh, spray paint and spray paint them. But I'm like, what if that is someone trying to like, you know, that what if that's what that is? And we're just like, ew, fun photo op. Like, I'm gonna write my name in.
40:42 Speaker 05 That gives me hope then, right?
40:44 Speaker 04 Spray paint my name, right? Yeah.
40:46 Speaker 05 At least they're not digging up the Cadillacs, like.
40:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, maybe they've tried. I don't know, but.
40:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
40:51 Speaker 05 Yeah, maybe they did. Maybe, but also we have, you know, you think about things like Stonehenge, right? Like
40:56 Speaker 04 Yeah.
40:57 Speaker 05 This has been around a long enough that I guess presumably we could dig up Stonehenge. I don't know that it's necessary. We've probably done all sorts of testing to see if there is anything underneath it, you know, without having to disturb it. But I don't know that the inclination is immediate, um, you know, an immediate like exploration in a physical way. Uh, so the, the physical site designs I think are interesting and I do think. I guess they could ward off some of the curiosity, but you know, there were other people that kind of got into the mix that were saying, we really, we really should have like this layered
41:36 Speaker 05 approach. It can't just be this one, you know, ominous block of, you know, houses that go nowhere. Like, we can't guarantee, that's not, that's not like sturdy enough, you know, for how important this is. So, uh, there was a linguist by the name of Thomas Seabock, again, hoping I'm pronouncing that correctly, um, that was consulted and came up with the idea of creating a new type of priesthood, called the Atomic Priesthood.
42:05 Speaker 03 What?
42:06 Speaker 05 Where-
42:06 Speaker 03 Okay.
42:07 Speaker 05 Yes, right, right? Where a certain group of selected individuals who act as sort of like stewards over this task are designated to help develop and perpetuate stories and folklore and ritual around, you know, this-
42:26 Speaker 03 That's so cool!
42:27 Speaker 05 This, around nuclear semiotics, in hopes that it carries down, right?
42:32 Speaker 04 I want like a, I want like a movie or something about this immediately.
42:35 Speaker 03 Yeah, this is so cool.
42:37 Speaker 04 This is really cool.
42:39 Speaker 05 It's so interesting. And they thought that this might help in, you know, again, it, it, we think about how stories and things become corrupted, might not be the right word, but they're very malleable, right? And so-
42:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, like a game of telephone, right?
42:53 Speaker 05 Exactly, right? So there is a little bit of, uh, I wouldn't say a little bit, there's a, a large amount of risk associated with also leaning only on a like ritualistic, um, I guess, way of handling this. But-
43:09 Speaker 03 Yeah.
43:09 Speaker 05 Yeah, so, but a layered approach where these two things kind of maybe merge, you know, and there's like, um, rituals around these certain sites that get passed down, or- You know, again, we steward the idea of even if symbols change, we ensure that we change the symbols around what these sites actually are over the course of time. But again, deep time, it kind of works in that way where we can kind of imagine things working for maybe 200, 300, even 1,000 years. But beyond that, it's harder and harder for the psyche to grasp, you know, just how fast our language and symbols can and do change. So that will inevitably, you know, fail us at some level.
43:53 Speaker 05 The last kind of like school of thought, I would say of the the the main ones, there's kind of other little ancillary ones that branch out. I will call that homework because it's a pretty deep rabbit hole. But a few folks thought it might be interesting to, you know, sprinkle the area, pepper the area with flowers and foliage that react a certain way if exposed to radiation. Making them like, we don't, again, these ideas did not get very far. So we don't know if the flowers would glow. We don't know if, you know, whatever they would do when they were exposed, it would
44:35 Speaker 05 signal to the person that obviously something is occurring here and maybe it's it's good to proceed with caution. But I will say, one of the, the flowers is kind of interesting in itself, but my favorite thing was that someone actually explored the idea of ray cats. And that's where you get that, yeah, no, it's
44:57 Speaker 03 If the listeners could see both of me and Lindsay's face and head tilt we just did in unison.
45:05 Speaker 05 Yes, and Jess and I just finished a nice little romp through a Minecraft server where we actually had an X-ray cat in our house that was from a radioactive mod, right, to the game. And I now know that that is actually paying homage to this idea that they thought they could at one time in the late 80s genetically modify animals. Animals to react to nuclear waste, to radiation.
45:35 Speaker 04 What?
45:36 Speaker 05 So that, yeah, it's.
45:37 Speaker 03 So they're like a bio indicator, basically?
45:39 Speaker 05 Yes. And again, they explored, you know, glowing, they explored changing color. They even wrote little songs in kind of the vein of the priesthood and the ritualistic thing.
45:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
45:51 Speaker 05 Around, you know, it was like gray cat, gray cat, stay gray, green cat, green cat, go away, or something like that.
45:58 Speaker 03 Oh.
45:59 Speaker 05 They would have like this record of, you know.
46:02 Speaker 03 That's so cool.
46:03 Speaker 05 It's very interesting. Like, it is exactly the, the, you know, crossing of paths that is most interesting to me, which is.
46:13 Speaker 04 Yeah.
46:13 Speaker 05 I mean, obviously, this is a scientific issue, but we're going to have to use something other than science to solve the problem, but.
46:20 Speaker 03 Like perhaps a cricket machine with a live left love style.
46:25 Speaker 05 Can you imagine this one wall just standing alone, everything else crumbled around it? You know, history has touched everything except this guy's one apartment wall with his vinyl lettering.
46:36 Speaker 04 I'm dying to know what he's, what he's got there. That is so dangerous.
46:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's also true. What is he signaling?
46:42 Speaker 04 What's he got in his basement?
46:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:44 Speaker 05 It feels very, I mean, I, I love that we all just immediately assumed this was a man's apartment. This isn't.
46:56 Speaker 03 Oh, my God.
46:57 Speaker 05 Which is the other most terrifying design challenge of all time, male living spaces.
47:09 Speaker 05 A first date, but you go over and there's a nuclear, a long-term nuclear waste warning message on the wall.
47:14 Speaker 04 Oh, my God.
47:18 Speaker 05 Yeah, so, um, yeah, I, I don't know anything about this person that, um, you know, I, I, I don't have any, any insight into who they are outside of this very tightly cropped photo of what looks to be, like you said, an apartment wall with a, a target lamp and maybe some sort of Amazon Echo or something on a shelf.
47:37 Speaker 03 Yes, yeah.
47:39 Speaker 05 Yeah.
47:41 Speaker 04 Wow.
47:42 Speaker 05 I think that's about it for mine. I mean, I unless you guys yeah, have anything else to say about it, but I just, I couldn't stop. I have not been able to stop thinking about this since I learned about it.
47:55 Speaker 03 And now you've cursed us or blessed?
47:58 Speaker 04 I feel like I'm gonna immediately go Google this when I get in bed for the night.
48:04 Speaker 03 It's such a crazy thing because like, anything you would do to signal like, stay away. It's like we was in the beginning.
48:11 Speaker 05 Yes.
48:12 Speaker 03 It just invites attention, like the glowing flowers, like, come over here. Like, I guess maybe if it would kill a bunch of foliage, like, then maybe, you know.
48:21 Speaker 05 Right.
48:21 Speaker 03 Who's to say that?
48:22 Speaker 05 Exactly.
48:23 Speaker 03 Something else isn't killing it, you know, like, it's such an interest. I like the, the priest and the ritualistic stuff, I think is
48:30 Speaker 05 I know.
48:31 Speaker 03 coolest piece.
48:33 Speaker 05 There's like, there's some, like, a sort of multidisciplinary group of, like, artists also that kind of got involved and they were pitching some ideas for, you know, extremely like sustainable materials that would, you know, kind of span that, that length of time that we're talking about. And ironically enough, I think we think of it as very fragile, but one of the materials that they landed on was using actually a lot of glass, a lot of like reinforced glass because it does not break down in the way that other materials do. And
49:03 Speaker 04 Oh, interesting.
49:04 Speaker 05 Yeah, there, there was, there's so many different little offshoots and I think that's another one of the things that every time I'm brought back to this, it gets kind of fun to dig in if there's any, you know, new updates or like new schools of thought. I think the most recent one that I read about was called menacing earthworks, which is very similar to what we kind of already touched on, but I should have brought this up when we were going through all the, I just totally forgot about it, but. They were kind of entertaining the idea of shaping the land itself. So like if you flew over, it would be like, you know, lightning bolts all in a circle around the space, right? Like so that from above from a drone or, you know, an airplane presumably you would be able to see.
49:48 Speaker 03 Like crop circle style.
49:49 Speaker 05 Yes, exactly.
49:50 Speaker 04 Car reforming.
49:51 Speaker 05 Yes, it is. It's so Minecraft core. Like I can't get away from it. But it also marries like, yeah, like honestly, it marries a lot of the things that I find really fascinating, like exactly like crop circles, right? Like things that people of today still study from, you know, previous, who knows methodologies or whatever was going on with those. Like, um, I imagine it to be something like that in the future, right? Hopefully, hopefully though, no one goes digging.
50:24 Speaker 03 I know. It's tricky. It's really tricky.
50:27 Speaker 05 Yeah.
50:30 Speaker 03 Amazing.
50:31 Speaker 04 Oh my God. That's so cool. I can't wait to Google more about it later.
50:36 Speaker 03 Same.
50:36 Speaker 05 It's really fun. It's really fun. I, I enjoy reading about it occasionally. I just kind of end up pulled back into it. I don't know. I'll come across something.
50:46 Speaker 04 I don't blame you.
50:47 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's.
50:48 Speaker 03 There's always more to add, I'm sure.
50:51 Speaker 05 Totally. And lately I've seen some creators like on TikTok and things that have brought up this idea. And I'm like, oh, maybe this is finally like proliferating as something that people care about. But it seems to be just a couple of crazies like myself still.
51:04 Speaker 03 Well, maybe this is the inflection point. The weirdest thing listeners.
51:07 Speaker 05 Let's hope. Flash in a pan.
51:10 Speaker 03 Yeah. Amazing. Okay, we're gonna take one more quick break and then we'll be back with more facts.
51:20 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
51:48 Speaker 01 This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
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52:53 Speaker 03 Okay, we're back and I'm going to talk about why having to pee makes you better at Elden Ring, which is, okay, so to start, basically, Lindsay, I know you know about this.
53:04 Speaker 05 Oh, I know all about it.
53:06 Speaker 03 Misty probably maybe, I don't know if you know about this phenomenon, do you?
53:09 Speaker 05 I don't think I know about this and I feel like I struggled so much with the game that I should have just needed to pee a lot more.
53:16 Speaker 03 This is a new tactic for you. Okay, so when I play games on stream, sometimes they're like really hard games with like crazy boss fights like Elden Ring or Bloodborne or Dark Souls or Hollow Knight Silk Song or whatever. And something I have documented in my streaming career is that whenever I've been fighting a boss for a while, like, you know, a lot of attempts, time passes, and when time passes, I start to have to go to the bathroom because I've been hydrating after all, you know, toiling away, learning the boss patterns, and eventually I have to pee. So what I've noticed is that if I let myself stay having to pee, I usually play better
53:58 Speaker 03 and beat bosses faster than if I go pee and come back and then am playing on an empty bladder.
54:06 Speaker 05 Okay.
54:07 Speaker 03 This is the phenomenon that I have coined pee fuel because pee fuels me to be better at Elden Ring.
54:16 Speaker 04 Get G Fuel.
54:18 Speaker 03 Literally.
54:19 Speaker 04 It's pee fuel, baby.
54:20 Speaker 03 Pee fuel. And I've talked about pee fuel being a thing for years, like since Elden Ring. So like four, over four years, which is also crazy that Elden Ring is that old.
54:29 Speaker 04 Honestly, maybe even before, or was it Elden Ring?
54:31 Speaker 03 Yeah. No, I think it was before.
54:33 Speaker 04 I feel like it could have been even as early as like Bloodborne, you know what I mean?
54:37 Speaker 03 I think so too. It could be like five or six year old phenomenon.
54:40 Speaker 04 You've been preaching about pee fuel for a long time.
54:46 Speaker 05 He's a pee fuel truther, so I respect it.
54:50 Speaker 03 Indeed. And, you know, my chat knows about this. And, you know, lo and behold, one morning I opened my Discord server and listeners, I'm gonna, I'm gonna plug the Discord. If you want to join my Discord, it's full of weird, wonderful gaming and science freaks like the three of us. And I'll put it in the description if you want to join, or it's discord.gg/jesscapricorn. But, you know, I digress. But anyway, I opened my Discord and one of my chatters had linked a study titled this, Inhibitory Spillover: Increased Urination Urgency Facilitates Impulse Control in Unrelated Domains.
55:29 Speaker 04 What?
55:31 Speaker 03 And then I, you know, take a gander. And basically, in regular words, this means having to piss makes you make less impulsive decisions. So in the context of something like Elden Ring, an impulsive decision might be something like going for a greedy hit that gets you killed. Like if you're acting impulsively playing Elden Ring, you're acting reckless, right? Like you're not thinking, you're not following the patterns, you're being impulsive, you're just going for it. And that usually does get you killed. If you have to pee, apparently that inhibits you playing impulsively or doing, doing things impulsively in general.
56:08 Speaker 04 Oh, my God.
56:10 Speaker 03 This is a study that verified, that verifies that pee fuel works. How? I will explain.
56:18 Speaker 03 So this is a study by, I believe her, her name is pronounced Miriam Took. She's a psychologist and behavioral scientist at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly. But it all started, okay, great, great, great, great. It all started when she was looking into this other phenomenon where having.
56:40 Speaker 03 Whether having one of your main bodily needs unmet, like basically if you were a sim and one of your meters was like in the red.
56:48 Speaker 05 Okay, I'm I'm tracking now.
56:50 Speaker 03 Yes, yes. Like if if having one of your meters in the red could spill over and affect other parts of your life that are unrelated. So like, one example that psychologists talk about is that when you're really, really hungry, you were quicker to buy things, even if it isn't food. Like if you're hungry, you spend more money.
57:09 Speaker 05 Oh, my God.
57:10 Speaker 03 And it's like, kind of related to the pee thing. So like, you become more impulsive. You're trying to, you're trying to like, fill the hunger itch with like, another parallel avenue, like by buying something. And if you think about it, it's plausible, because, you know, eating a snack that you love and buying yourself a present are kind of like, they probably activate similar brain pathways or chemical cascades, you know, it's kind of a similar feeling.
57:38 Speaker 05 Totally.
57:40 Speaker 03 So, Dr. Took was thinking about this. And one day she was giving a lecture, and she drank a bunch of coffee beforehand. And by the end, she really, really had to go. And so she wondered, could having to pee affect other parts of our lives, like how being hungry makes us spend more money?
58:03 Speaker 03 So she went to the lab.
58:06 Speaker 05 As one does.
58:07 Speaker 03 As one does. She gathered a bunch of volunteers for her study, and she got to work. She had them do a few different things, but I'll tell you like, the most important core part of the study, which was, she had the participants drink five cups of water each, or at least as much as they could drink from the five cups. They waited forty minutes, which is apparently like, the average amount of time it takes for water that you drink to reach your bladder. And then, she asked them to choose between two different monetary rewards. One, a smaller and quicker reward, like eighteen dollars tomorrow, or a bigger, but more delayed reward,
58:51 Speaker 03 like thirty dollars in twenty-five days.
58:55 Speaker 03 And for people who had to pee the most, they were able to wait the longest for more money.
59:01 Speaker 04 Oh, whoa.
59:03 Speaker 05 Interesting.
59:04 Speaker 03 It's it's kind of like they're already in this mindset of waiting, like for their delayed gratification of getting to pee later.
59:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
59:12 Speaker 03 And that's spilling over into also having delayed gratification of thirty dollars in twenty five days.
59:20 Speaker 03 So it's like this, this.
59:21 Speaker 04 So wild.
59:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's like you're in this mindset already and your brain doesn't like really differentiate, at least this is her theory. Your brain isn't differentiating between, I'm already in the mindset of, you know, waiting to get to pee later. So I'm, when I'm thinking about this money, I'm also stuck in this mindset and I'm gonna wait to get more money later.
59:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's like, what's a couple more days?
59:44 Speaker 05 Yeah.
59:44 Speaker 03 Right. Or, uh, you know, and, and what's, what's a couple more seconds waiting before you hit an Elden Ring boss?
59:53 Speaker 04 Yeah.
59:53 Speaker 03 So yeah, that's like kind of how it connects to actually having to pee and being good at video games. It's like you're, you're purposefully waiting and having better delayed gratification and it makes you less impulsive. Uh, you're actually just reacting instead of panic button mashing and trying to get in one too many hits on Radahn or whoever.
1:00:13 Speaker 05 I can't relate, sorry.
1:00:18 Speaker 03 Um, and you know, I guess this also extends beyond video games or whatever.
1:00:23 Speaker 04 Well, that's beyond video games.
1:00:26 Speaker 03 I don't know, nothing, nothing that's important. Um, Dr. Took said this in an interview, quote, "This is of course a generalization of experimental evidence, but any type of financial decision making might benefit from increased bladder control. People might be more likely to invest money in retirement funds instead of spending it on more short-term benefits, for example." End quote.
1:00:47 Speaker 04 Whoa.
1:00:48 Speaker 03 She's saying, if you need to make an important financial life decision or any life decision, go chug some H2O and wait forty minutes first. Like it'll put you in the right mindset.
1:00:58 Speaker 04 Okay, I'm gonna keep that in mind.
1:00:59 Speaker 05 Yeah, the way I'm going to test that out.
1:01:02 Speaker 03 I know.
1:01:04 Speaker 05 The next time I'm ready to pick a fight, I'm gonna be like, you know what? Let me get some water on board before I.
1:01:09 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:01:09 Speaker 05 I might be overreacting.
1:01:11 Speaker 04 Forty minutes seems shorter than I would have expected, I think.
1:01:14 Speaker 03 I agree, but that's the average time, I guess.
1:01:17 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:01:18 Speaker 05 Me when I find out I have kidney disease.
1:01:24 Speaker 03 Um, and, uh, so yeah, that's basically my fact. And this study also did win an Ig Nobel Prize. Have you got, have you guys heard of that?
1:01:33 Speaker 05 No, I don't think so.
1:01:35 Speaker 03 Okay. So they're this really, really fun, like group of prizes they give out every year at the same time that they give out the Nobel Peace Prizes. But they give them out to like the silliest, funniest, coolest studies of the year. And they're all still very good science, like sound science, but that's like, there's always a handful of these studies that get an Ig Nobel, IG, like Ig Nobel Prize. Um, and like my personal Ig Nobel favorite is the one where they found that dung beetles use the stars to navigate.
1:02:05 Speaker 05 Yeah. Oh, my God.
1:02:06 Speaker 03 Yeah. So that's, it's, it's really fun. If you like, you know, want to read about some cool stuff, just Google like Ig Nobel Prize winners. It's, there's so much good stuff in there. And this, this is one that, won one of those.
1:02:19 Speaker 05 That will be my homework. That's so awesome.
1:02:22 Speaker 03 Yeah. So, but yeah, I also, speaking of testing this out, I, I kind of want to like, do this more in earnest as well, like doing an Elden Ring run, but only playing when I have to pee.
1:02:35 Speaker 03 It's, it's tricky though, you know, you gotta do it in a healthful way.
1:02:39 Speaker 05 In a healthy way. Yeah. You don't want to hold it for too long.
1:02:42 Speaker 03 No, there's a sweet spot in there somewhere.
1:02:45 Speaker 05 There is.
1:02:46 Speaker 03 Yeah. Um, yeah.
1:02:49 Speaker 05 That's so cool. Who knew pee fuel was scientific?
1:02:54 Speaker 03 Pee fuel is scientific. It blew my mind when I found this.
1:02:58 Speaker 05 Never doubted you, you know, like shame on us for doubting you.
1:03:01 Speaker 03 Doubters proven wrong.
1:03:04 Speaker 05 Doubting your intuition. That's crazy of us.
1:03:08 Speaker 03 Yeah. Yep.
1:03:09 Speaker 05 I don't know though. I think I might be like broken because when I think about how I am when I have to pee, I am one of the worst people on the planet to be around. Like,
1:03:17 Speaker 03 Really?
1:03:18 Speaker 05 I don't know that I'm making rational decisions. Like, I feel like I'm incredibly mad, you know?
1:03:25 Speaker 03 Maybe you're making like logical delayed gratification decisions, but maybe.
1:03:30 Speaker 03 You know, or maybe you're an outlier. Who's to say?
1:03:33 Speaker 04 Yeah, maybe you're just an angry pisser. I don't know.
1:03:35 Speaker 05 Maybe I'm an angry pisser. I'm, I'm starting to think like, I'm not going to question the science. It's science, right? I'm, I'm not, I'm, I, I certainly won't start with that.
1:03:44 Speaker 03 There are always exceptions, right?
1:03:45 Speaker 05 Yeah, I just, I'm imagining like the last couple of times that I like really had to pee and couldn't. And basically everything on the planet just irritated me. You know what I mean?
1:03:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:03:57 Speaker 05 Um.
1:03:57 Speaker 03 That's valid.
1:03:59 Speaker 05 I need to test this out myself. It won't have to deal with Elden Ring, but I need to test out, I'm gonna wait. And then when I have to pee really bad, I'm just gonna see how I react to a conversation with my boyfriend. I'll put him on the.
1:04:11 Speaker 03 Oh, my God. Could you please update us?
1:04:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, let us know, please.
1:04:15 Speaker 03 Update us. Oh, my God.
1:04:18 Speaker 05 Well, I'm single and I am an outlier.
1:04:25 Speaker 05 Yeah, you know.
1:04:27 Speaker 03 Gosh, well, this was too much fun, perhaps. Um, thanks for coming on the show, both of you.
1:04:34 Speaker 04 Thank you so much for asking us. It was really fun.
1:04:38 Speaker 03 It was really fun. Um, remind our listeners who you guys are and where they can find any of the stuff you make.
1:04:45 Speaker 04 Yeah, I'm Lindsay and you can find me, um, on Twitch at twitch.tv slash O Lindsay, O H L I N D S E Y. Um, I stream all sorts of stuff. I'm playing Final Fantasy VII right now.
1:05:00 Speaker 03 It's an incredible time.
1:05:02 Speaker 05 I vouch for that stream. It is a banger all the time. Great streams.
1:05:06 Speaker 04 Fun there.
1:05:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, yes, indeed.
1:05:09 Speaker 05 I'm Misty and you know, I just prefer to, I'm gonna float out into the ether of deep time. There's no way to contact me.
1:05:16 Speaker 03 I respect that.
1:05:17 Speaker 05 But I had a great time and thank you for the invite. This was, this was absolutely wonderful.
1:05:22 Speaker 03 My pleasure. Maybe we'll one day perceive a cricket cut out wall, live, laugh, love message about you.
1:05:30 Speaker 05 Prepare yourselves. I will just, just prepare your, we are gonna meet up and smell space together. And that means that inevitably you're gonna have to get a wall cut out of something during. So.
1:05:41 Speaker 03 I can't wait. That's.
1:05:43 Speaker 05 It's commemorative.
1:05:43 Speaker 04 Already excited.
1:05:44 Speaker 03 Commemorative.
1:05:48 Speaker 06 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.
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