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The Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science Playlist: How the Scientific Method Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we're up to I think number five on
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: the list of our science playlist, and this is a
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: good one. Things we believe before the scientific Method. I
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: remember really enjoying this one, so I hope you dive
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: in right now. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: should Know, the Let's get Jiggy with Science edition. You
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: know you're about to get jiggy Chuck with it, Yeah,
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: with it. And it is this episode about what people
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: believe before the scientific method.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we have a pretty good episode on
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the scientific method. And we have talked about some of
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: this stuff here and there throughout the years, like you know,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: early science, and it's easy to make fun of that stuff, right,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: but we are here not to make fun of it
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: and not necessarily to defend it, but to just put
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: it into perspective of where these people were at the time.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: And you can see how a lot of this stuff
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: made since at the time.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: See, that was as jiggy as it comes, all right,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: see you later. Yeah, that was really well put and
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: just as a refresher real quick, so you don't have
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: to pause and go back and listen to our scientific
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: method episode. You can if you want, but if you
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: don't feel like doing that, the scientific method is just
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: basically a plan to keep yourself from going down blind
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: alleys or being misled by what seems to be the
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: case but isn't necessarily the case. Sometimes your own eyes
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: can lie to you, and it basically says is like,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: based on you know, data you've collected or things you've observed,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: form a hypothesis like this happens because of this, figure
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: out how to test it, test it, look at the results,
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  Speaker 2: did it support the hypothsis? Did it not support the hypothesis,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: and either keep going forward or go back to square one?
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: And by testing it, that's where the scientific method really shines.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: And before the scientific method, people didn't do that. They
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: used their eyes, the empiricists, they formed theories, the rationalists
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: or dogmatists, they performed experiments, the methodists, that's really what
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: they called them. But they didn't actually like test this stuff,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: and so they were able to create these theories that
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: were totally wrong. Sometimes we're really right, but in a
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: lot of cases we're really wrong, and that those things
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: were adopted for like thousands of years in some cases.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because a lot of science was mixed up with
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: philosophy for a long long time. And as you'll see
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: with some of these, like if you had a good
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: enough sort of philosophical thought about something and other people said, hey,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that makes sense, and you kept repeating it a lot
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: then at the time and people are like, well that's
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: good enough for us.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which meant also if philosophy was in there, you
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: had to also it had to explain why more than
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: be reliably consistent in its results.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
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  Speaker 2: So one of the first ones that I think people
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: think of when they think of ancient science as the
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: for humors humors of medicine, which was something that came
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: along from Hippocrates all the way back in I think
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: the fourth or fifth century BCE and was in place
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: until the sixteen hundreds. Essentially that was how people practiced medicine.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's a long run. Hippocrates probably did
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: not make it up himself. It's theorized that he probably
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: brought it over or he didn't necessarily, but it was
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: brought over to the Greeks maybe from India, maybe from Egypt,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: but Hippocrates ran with it, and then Galen really with it,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: and Galen is who is probably most people think of
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Galen when they think of the humors, the poor humors, right,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: But humor h U m O r is Latin meaning fluid,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: and that's basically what they're talking about with the poor humors.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Almost at humids, the four humors, which are the fluids
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: of the body, and we should just name them quickly.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I think, yeah, flint, fhlim. Yeah, you got blood, and
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  Speaker 1: then you got the two biles. You got black bile
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  Speaker 1: and yellow bile.
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  Speaker 2: Right, And those things are not just the sum total
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  Speaker 2: of what was studied or what was responsible for ill
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  Speaker 2: health or for health. They almost stood in for a
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  Speaker 2: bunch of other things too, Like your energy could be
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: low or angry or overly happy, and all those were
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  Speaker 2: associated with different humors, right. So I think it was
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Palamar University website on it basically put it like more
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: than just fluids themselves. You could think of the humors
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  Speaker 2: as those things that flow fluids, energy, that kind of stuff. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: and all these humors also had complexions. They had they
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  Speaker 2: were either wet or dry, cold or hot, and there
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  Speaker 2: were combinations.
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  Speaker 1: Of those, but not It's not literally that no, a
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: little confusing, it's super duper confusing.
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  Speaker 2: And I think this is an example of what happens
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: when people over a couple thousand years kind of contribute
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: to stuff. It gets a little off kilter.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, like blood is hot and wet, But that didn't
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: necessarily mean they're saying that when you touch blood it
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: was hot to the touch, right, It's almost like what
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: a synesthesiac approach right to the body.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, put so like water is cold, boiling water
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: is cold, ice is hot. I don't understand some of
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: it exactly right. So the upshot of it was is
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: that each humor was hot and hot or it has
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: It had a temperature and humidity hotter, cold, wet or dry,
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  Speaker 2: and depending on what symptoms you had, you either had
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: like a hot and wet disease, right, or a cold
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: and dry disease, and the treatment was to use the opposite.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: So I think pneumonia was cold and wet because it
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: came on during the winter, which is very cold and
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: wet around the Mediterranean at the time, and you would
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: treat that with something warm and dry. So herbs were
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: warm and dry, you would treat use herbs to treat pneumonia.
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  Speaker 2: And the whole pursuit was just to regain balance. Each
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  Speaker 2: person at a pre I guess ordained balance of those
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  Speaker 2: four humors, and when they got out of whack, that's
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: when you were you came down with the disease.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you've heard about, you know, forcing yourself to
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: vomit or you know, the bleeding, the old great Steve
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Martin sketch from Saturday Antlive years ago. You just need
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: a good bleeding. That's what they were doing. They were
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: trying to get you back into balance by removing whatever
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  Speaker 1: humor they thought, you know, either the flimme or the
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: blood thought would you needed you had an excess of
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: at the time, to bring you back into homeostasis. So
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: they were again they were wrong, but you know, things
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: like homeostasis, they were on the right track with some
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: of this, some of these ideas at least for sure.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's I think kind of a recurring theme
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: in this. When you look in on ancient science and
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: ancient knowledge, it's like they kind of had like the
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: contours of some of these and that's a good example
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: of that contours exactly. So It wasn't until Paracelsus who
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: came up I think in our Zenobiotics episode. When he
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: came along, he was definitely an outlier and an outsider thinker,
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: and he was like, I think Galen was just really wrong.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: This stuff just doesn't quite add up. Yeah. And I
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: think William Harvey, who was an English i think physician
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  Speaker 2: in sixteen sixteen, he shows that the heart pumps blood
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  Speaker 2: and that just completely undermined the humoral medicine thought that
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  Speaker 2: these these humors moved around the body through attractive forces.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, again, this is one of those
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: kind of what I said in the intro, like, this
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: is one of those that people believed and got on
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  Speaker 1: board with because it made sense at the time. It
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: was something that they were very persistent about. And if
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: you're persistent about something, even if it wasn't proven at
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the time, that was enough for people. It was the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: consistency of sort of the idea that's repeated over and
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: over that got people on board for a long time,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: hundreds of years.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's interesting, like the humoral medicine
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: is still one of the foundations of ayervedic medicine from
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: India and that's why they think it might have come
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: from India originally to Greece. But the basis of it
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  Speaker 2: is that you use like movement and diet to keep
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  Speaker 2: your humors in balance, and that was kind of the
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: basis of the Greek interpretation too, But then they took
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: it too far and started using it to treat disease
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  Speaker 2: and doing all sorts of weird stuff. So now we
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: have modern medicine, and modern medicine likes to disown its predecessors.
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  Speaker 2: But it wouldn't be here if we didn't have things
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  Speaker 2: like humoral medicine.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: First up with Galen.
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  Speaker 2: Why not.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: You have sneakily not mentioned that this is a top five.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's right, it's a top five, maybe part one
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: of a top ten. Who knows.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll see. Should we try and knock out the
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: next one?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I say that, I say so. I agree, that's
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: what I say.
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  Speaker 1: All right, this one's interesting and this has to do
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: with Yeah, it sounds a little whack, but again you
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: have to keep in mind where they were at the time.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: So this is the idea put forth by how do
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: you pronounce that name?
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  Speaker 2: I'm going with Adoxus, Eudoxus eudoxis, Yeah, I think eudoxis
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: all right.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Eudoxus of Nidos was born between three ninety five and
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: three ninety BCC lived to kind of early to mid fifties.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: And he came along and said, all right, I've got
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: some pretty radical things to throw out there that are fivefold.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Part one, the Earth is the center of the universe.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Check.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: And everyone was like, sounds reasonable, And it was reasonable
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: at the time. And we'll talk about that in a second.
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  Speaker 1: Number two, all celestial motion is circular Roger number three,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: all celestial motion is regular. Number four, The center of
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: the path of any celestial motion is the same as
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the center of its motion, all right. And then number
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: on the center of all celestial motion is the center
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: of the universe. And I said, you know, he can't
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: be blamed for that first one, even though he was
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: wrong about geocentrism. At the time, when you stood on
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: the planet and you looked up and you saw you know,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: stars sort of moving and other things moving in a
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: circle around the Earth, you probably felt like you were
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: the center of the universe exactly.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, it would just make sense. You'd be a
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: fool to think otherwise because there's no indication that the
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Earth itself is also moving. It seems like everything else
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: is moving around the Earth, so it's not so far
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: fetched to think that, oh, the Earth is the center
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: of the universe. Part of it also tied into that
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: natural philosophy thing where humans were the center of the universe.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: They were like the creation of the gods, and of
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: course why would Earth be anything but the center of
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: the universe. But it also had to do with practical stuff,
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: like what they saw with their own eyes.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, he wasn't the first person to come up
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: with this, like this has been around for a long
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: long time. Was just sort of officially reaffirming it.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: But he was the first person to give us a
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: model of the movement of the cosmos, celestial bodies moving
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: through the sky and trying to explain it. And somebody
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: who came before him an Aximin's I'm going with that.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: He was the first one to say, Hey, I've got it.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: This is back in the sixth century VC. It shells.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Everything exists in shells, man.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the idea that, like, I mean, it almost sounds
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: like he was creating little miniature galaxies and like everything
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: we see is contained inside its own little miniature galaxy,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: like literally contained in a shell.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, but all of these shells are rotating in different
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: orbits around.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Earth, right, but they can affect one another, right Or
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: did that come along later?
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: That came along with Eudoxus and Aximni's basically said it's shells.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: And then Eudoxis was the first one to really lay
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: out an explanation of theory for how these shells worked.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: And I think he came up with twenty seven different shells.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Some shells had shells within shells. It got really kind
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: of crazy. But the point of this isn't like because
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Eudoxus was mad or anything like that. He had to
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: keep adding shells to explain things they saw in the
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: night sky.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's almost like they dug themselves a bit
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: of a hole. Instead of course correcting and saying, well,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: maybe we should look into a different theory or something,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: they were just like kept adding shells exactly.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: So one of the big problems was that first of all,
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: the Earth is not the center of the universe, but
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: also that the motion of celestial bodies is not circular
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: and it's not regulars. He was basically wrong. Yeah, on
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: all five of those points. But the reason that they
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: that he thought it was circular was that circles were perfect.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: And again, the Earth was the center of the universe
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: and it was created by the gods, so of course
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: it was perfect. But other people have pointed out that
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: it had to be circular if he was going to
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: apply math, because non circular math for movement hadn't really
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: been created yet. Yeah, that's basically that's all he had
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: to work with was circular motion. So if he was
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: going to actually investigate this and try to figure it
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: out with math, he had to be circular. So just
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: by what he had available at the time, that's why
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: this motion was supposedly circular. But that was a huge
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: boondoggle because it's not circular, as we found out finally
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: from Kepler, who came along and I think the seventeenth century.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: So again this is like two thousand years. People are
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: like shells is where it's at. Even Copernicus who said
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: he was the first one to really say the Sun
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: is at the center of the universe, and what he
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: was talking about was this solar system and he created
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: a revolution with that. He still was saying, but it's
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: all within shells.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: It's just everyone's like, that makes a lot more sense.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: And then he brings up.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: The shells exactly so Copernicus lays it out, and then
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Kepler comes along, it's like there's no shells and these
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: orbits aren't circular, they're elliptical, and he ended up laying
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: the groundwork for astrophysics to come.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's so easy now that we have
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: telescopes and beyond, Like, it's hard to even put your
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: mind in a framework of the only thing you have
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: is standing on the earth and looking at something with
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: your eyeballs and trying to take a guess at what's
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: happening out there.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's what gets lost too, is
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: when we look back and like poke fun at our
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: ancient predecessors for being so dumb that like they were
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: really trying to figure this out with what they had
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: available at the time. And even if it does seem wacky,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: it's like, can you explain how adams come together to
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: form a rock hi cans?
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: That's a good teaser, you know. Yeah, Yeah, I think
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: it's easy to poke fun of now. But the other
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: alternative is they didn't even try, and as we see
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: time and time again. A lot of the stuff that
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: they came up with at least led to the next
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: thing and the next thing. And that's what science is.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: So like, hats my toga is off to them.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: You took your toga off.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Oh wait a minute, my grapevine atop my head is
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: off you. All right, my toga is back on.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, because I was gonna say, they're like a helicopter
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: won't be invented for a thousand plus years.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: All right, I think we should take a break now
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: and we will talk about the idea that the Earth
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: is rotating around to central fire right after this, all right.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: I promised talk of wackiness before we left, about the
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: idea that the Earth circled a central fire capital C,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: capital F like the big fire. And this was a
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: thing Pythagoreans, which are the people, the group that you know,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: followed in the footsteps of Pythagoras himself in the sixth century.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: They thought that the Earth circled a big central fire,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: and not only the Earth, but basically everything, all the planets,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: all the stars, the sun, and the moon, everything circled
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: around a central fire, and that there was also a
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: counter earth, like another earth, and I don't know how
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: pronounced that.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: And titch Thun I think it's Antichthon and Tickson. Yeah,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: it's a really odd word.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: It is. It's not capitalized, which makes me feel weird.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems fishy, but that's the name of a
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: counter earth that's either in the same orbit or in
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: its own orbit, but always opposite the Sun from Earth.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Right right, This wasn't something where they were pointing up
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: in it was Mars unless they called Mars. This is
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: a hypothetical planet that they were saying was out there,
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: we just can't see it. And then also with the
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Central Fire, they're not saying that was the Sun. The
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Sun had its own orbit around the Central Fire. Yeah,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: and the Central Fire was unseen because Greece always revolved
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: in a way, or the Earth always revolved in a
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: way that Greece was opposite the Central Fire, so it
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: could never see it.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So there was this guy, uh Philileus.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Probably I think that's exactly right.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Of Croton, which sounds like a planet that would circle
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: of fire.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Take me to your leader, Croton.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: But Croton was actually in southern Italy and he was
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: another Greek philosopher. Scientists there were a lot of those guys,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: and he was hanging around with Socrates. He was a
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: pretty prominent Pythagorean. Oh yeah, and he was one of
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: these guys that put forth this, you know, this idea
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: even though like they moved away from geocentrism, which is great,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: but instead of moving directly into heliocentrism, they moved to
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: the central fire thing.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: First central fire sism.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: So yeah, he basically said, there's a central fire, everything
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: orbits around the central fire, and the all of the
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: orbits are circular. They love circular orbits, and that the Earth,
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets each had
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: their own orbit. And there was that counter Earth too,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: bizarro Earth and Tikman that was opposite Earth at all times.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: That made ten ten orbits altogether. And there are a
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: couple of reasons for that. One is that to the Pythagoreans,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: ten was a perfect number. So of course there were
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: ten orbits, but also it explained having that counter Earth,
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: that tenth orbit explained lunar eclipses because then that meant
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: that that was just a tick thin shadow being cast
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: on the Moon.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Also to in defense of these sort of wild ideas,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: they did have the idea that these orbits, they varied
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: quite a bit in how long they took. The Earth's
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: took twenty four hours, the suns took a year, the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: moons took a month. And you know, they were on
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: a right track at that point as far as lunar
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: orbits and Earth's orbits in the Sun and things like that,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: because they all do take different amounts of time, and
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: they were pretty on track with the Earth taking twenty
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: four hours, except the way they describe it was I
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: think it was more that not the Earth is spinning
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: on its axis as at orbits the Sun, but more
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: like we're really circulating the central fire a lot faster
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: than the Sun, and we lap the Sun every twenty
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: four hours, and that's how we have day and night.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: It's just so wrong, but you can understand. It's so
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: fascinating that they had that data, they had that information available,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: and they just went the exact wrong direction with it. Yeah,
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: but again, this is just what this is what they
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: had available to them at the time. I find that
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: fascinating that that's how they explained it. It's pretty cool.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: So in this IFL Science article I found, they basically
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: said it's actually possible, hypothetically for a counter Earth to
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: exist in the same orbit as Earth, but always opposite Earth,
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: like traveling at the same rate. We've discovered extra solar
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: planets that have that same arrangement, so it's possible, but
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: it's impossible that there actually is a counter Earth because
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: we've run models on it. Our astrophysicists have, I should say,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: you and I haven't, and it would It would affect
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: other planets. Even just a small counter Earth would affect
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: other planets orbits very noticeably. Is starting with Venus, and
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Venus's orbit is not being affected by any mysterious object,
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: so there is no counter Earth. That turns out.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: That's right, I'm sure. Jim Morrison was very disappointed to
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: hear that the central fire went away. This all reminded
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: me of like a door song.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Central fire, Yeah, for sure.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: You know, everything revolving around a central fire a counter earth.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it does kind of seem doors issh also
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: pink floidy.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true because the doors didn't get super spacey
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: as like literal space.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: No, but he a central fire sounds Jim Morrison, the
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: counter Earth sounds pink floidy. Yeah, you're right, Okay, I'm
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: glad we finally settled it.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: All right, what do we get next?
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: So another one that I think a lot of people
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: are familiar with is the four elements, like earth, air, wind, fire,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: earth wind, fire, and air.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Great band Okay, screws it all up? Feature air another
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: great band? Air should open for earth, wind and fire exactly.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: And those that that whole idea it dates back to,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: like the humoral sense of medicine as well. This was
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: something that was found in I think the sixth century BCE,
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: and that an x Menes, the guy who also said
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: it's shells, also was like, it's air.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I love this guy.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he really was out there, but he like he
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: lives in a van down by the river, but he
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: was very well regarded.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean a lot of people were sort
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: of thinking at the time that things were all made
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: from a single thing, none of no one could get
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: together and agree on what that single thing might be.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: But like you said, for what was it an x
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I think so he was all about the air.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: And Plato came along and then later said, actually we've
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: got earth, fire, water, and air. And Aristotle said, don't
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: forget about the ether. And they're like, all right, yeah, fine.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: That's something that comes up a lot when you start
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: researching ancient knowledge. Aristotle in particular was the guy everyone
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: looked at for a thumbs up or thumbs down and
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: knowledge at the time, and just him giving a thumbs
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: up would mean that people would keep doing it for
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: two thousand years until the scientific revolution. He was that
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: well regarded in his time and following his time as well,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: so he definitely was like, yes, I'm totally down with
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: the whole earth, air, fire, water, and ether idea that
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: everything is made of that and that everything is touching
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: everything else. So like the space between you and me
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: filled with the air element, but not only that. It's
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: not only like if you look at the earth that's
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: obviously earth element, or if feel like a fire this
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: fire element. Everything is made up of a combination of
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: some degree of each of these elements. And there's actually
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: method to that madness too. It wasn't just like because
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: where we know what water is, we know what air is,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: we know what fire is, and earth that's what we're
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: gonna say, everything's made up. They actually made observations that
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: either led them to this or that really supported their
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: ideas in the first place.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Like, for example, this is how Stuff Works article gives
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: a great example. Wood was solid, which means that it
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: had earth in it. It floated, which means that it
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: had an air element to it, and then it.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Burns, which right, then it burned, which did.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: So part fire too. So you can see how these
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: things kind of came together to form a log or
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: a stone or a rabbit. Is another recurring theme.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so that's where we are. Then this
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: guy Empedocles comes along. He's from Sicily, fifth century BCE,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: and he was one of the first people to kind
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: of put forth the theory that, you know, maybe things
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: are built out of things that are so small that
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: we can't see them, right, that there are actual building blocks,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: we can't touch them, we can't see them or feel them.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: And if you look at a stone, like look at
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: that big rock over there, that's not we call it rock,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: but it's not rock. It's made up of these small elements.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: And people went elements and he said, yes, elements. And
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: this was a pretty like far out but on the
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: right track way of thinking for fifth century BCE.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he was in Pedocolis was the guy
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: who came along and said no, that these things are
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: all made up of different combinations and interactions of these
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: four elements. And he also suggested that the transformations or
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: the creations of these things took place through an attractive
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: force known as love.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I love that part.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: That that was the combiner, the creator force. So if
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: you step back and think about epidocolis, he's just introduced
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: the idea that there are elements. There are elements, it's
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: just the earth, air, fire, wind, and water. And he
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: also introduced the idea of attractive horses that bring elements together.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: And it's not love. Maybe it's more like electro magnetism
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: or the nuclear force something like that.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Boy, talk about Jim Morrison. He would have
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: been all over this episode totally. I think it would
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: have been a big stuff. You should know, fan, Do
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: you think so?
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: I could see him really just talking smack about us
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: for no good reason on the internet.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, how old would he be today? He died
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: at It's a twenty seven clubber and he died in
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: the seventies, so.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: I would say probably forty eight. Let's say he was
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: born in nineteen forty eight. So seventy five, he'd be
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: something that's perfect age to complaint on the internet these days.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: I remember I remember seeing a phony gap ad this
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: is a long time ago, where they showed like an
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: aged Jim Morrison in like gap jeans or something what,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: and they did a really good job with it and
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: it looked like totally like what you could picture him
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: looking like.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Are you sure you didn't just dream that?
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. I also saw the thing recently where
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: they use AI to create like what would they look
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: like now kind of things? Uh huh. For a lot
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: of people who died young, and some of them were
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: pretty good, and some of them, like Elvis's was just
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: like you just basically gussied up Vernon Presley his dad.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Oh really it was like obviously his dad lazy AI. Yeah,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: some of them were okay. Some of them were pretty dumb.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: Well like Coo, who was one that was okay that
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: you saw?
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Uh oh boy, I'm trying to remember. I don't know.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: I don't have to go look that up. I always
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: forget to look up the stuff you talk about on
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: the episodes because the moment we're done, I'm all of
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: it just vanishes. Yeah, you stop existing.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: That's great. That's a secret to our longevity.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: That's right. We just both stop existing in the other's
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: minds until the next time.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: All right, so where are we? We are a democritis okay, yeah, yeah,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Democritis then comes along, Yeah, and he's like, all right,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: I got this new theory because there were some problems
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: with what Empedocles was talking about. First of all, he
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: has offered no evidence. I don't know if anyone noticed
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: that at all. And second of all, you take that
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: rock of it there, and he said, it's made up
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: you know, if you if you break it up, it's
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: made up of smaller things. But if you keep breaking
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: that thing up, you're never gonna get down to fire,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: no matter how small you break that thing up.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Right, So he came up with this idea that you
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: could break something down to finally its most basic unit,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: an indivisible unit that he called atomos, which is Latin
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: or Greek for adams. Yeah, this guy came up with
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: the idea of adams, which he not only mad said
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: were the indivisible base units of everything everything. He also
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: said that they were into instructible and eternal. And then
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: he also said that they exist in free space around
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: us what you would call today a vacuum. So this
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: guy basically predicted atomic theory a couple thousand years ago, right, yeah,
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: and it's known as the best guess in antiquity. He
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: got it so close. Where he went astray is that
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: he said that when you broke down a rock, you
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: would get to the rock atom. And that was it.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Like what you saw a rock, a rabbit something like that,
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: you would if you broke it down to its constituent part,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: like its base atom. It was a rabbit atom, or
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: a rock atom, or a log atom, or a chuck atom,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: the things. The thing it was, it was like that
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: specific kind of atom rather than a combination of just
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: a few types of atoms that can make anything.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which you know you did pretty get up into
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: that point. For sure, you did very good. I dare
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: say excellent up in that point.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Would you take your toge off for him?
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: I'd flash it, okay, but you know, with permission, of course,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: sure I would. You know, it's like, do you mind
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: if I lift my togad? And he could?
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: You added that?
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: So you know, everyone of course wanted to know what
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Aristotle and Plato thought, even you know at the time
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: or especially at the time, and they both basically rejected
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: these ideas. Aristotle sort of accepted it, but he said, well, also,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: there are those four core elements, but they can be
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: transformed into one another. And everyone was like, oh God,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: here he goes again, Like now we have to start
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: thinking that because Aristotle said.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: It exactly, he was. He threw his lot in with
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: the four elements, in part because he totally rejected Democritis's
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: assertion that there was such a thing as Adams moving
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: in a void in free space. He said, there's no
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: such thing as a void. Everything around us is connected,
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: Like the stuff that looks like space between you and me,
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: that's the air element filling that up. Like there's nothing
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: that's not connected. And because he just would not accept
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: the idea of a vacuum, he gave the thumbs up
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: to Empedocle's idea with the elements thumbs down to Democritis.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: So Democritis is incredibly accurate. Prediction would have to wait
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: about two thousand years before people finally came around and
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: were like, oh, Democritis was super.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, exactly. And that's in sixteen forty three. Evangelista
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Torricelli came along.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Linda Evangelista Torricelli, that's.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Right, an Italian mathematician, this time studying under Galileo, came
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: along and showed that air and I believe he was
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: he the first person to create a vacuum in an
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: experiment like this. Yeah, so that's a pretty key part here,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: But in a vacuum, showed that air had weight, like
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: this thing that we can't see or well, sometimes you
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: can smell it, I guess, but you can't see it
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: or feel it or anything like that. But it was
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: still capable of pushing down liquid mercury, which is also
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: how he got the barometer, by the way, and everyone
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: was like it rocked everyone's world, basically, like we can't
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: feel it, we can't see it, but it has weight,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: so it's got to be made of something, and so
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: what's it made of?
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Right? So how can an element be made of something else?
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: I guess is the point of that. And then even
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: more to the point, Torricelli, by creating the first experimental vacuum,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: proved that Democratis's assertion that there is a vacuum, his
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: predictions part of his atomic theory, was right. So that
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: was what really led to the investigation into atomic theory,
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: which is finally I think put forth in I think
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: eighteen oh three maybe by John Dalton. Amazing, It really
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: is amazing that he got that close. Like imagine just
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: and again he's guessing. He had no way of testing
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: any of this, but it was a really good guess.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very very smart forward thinking guy.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll bet he was a heck of a discus thrower. Two.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: All right, well, we're gonna take our final break and
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: we're gonna come back and talk about our final topic.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Number one, spontaneous generation.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: All right, chuck. So there's a well worn trope that
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: if you throw some grain in like a cellar and
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: leave it alone for a little while, it'll spontaneously generate mice,
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: right have you you've heard that before.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Haven't you sure? That old bumper sticker.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Apparently there's an element that I'd never heard of before.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: You have to put the grains of wheat on a
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: soiled shirt, and then it'll generate mice after a given
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: amount of time. And that came from the mind of
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: a guy named Antoine Lewen Hook Levin' hook whoa von Levinhook,
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah who? In the sixteen seventies, basically pointed to a
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: bunch of stuff and said, spontaneous generation, spontaneous generation, spontaneous generation.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: And again he was so he wasn't actually coming up
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: with this idea of spontaneous generation. He was giving it
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: a boost in the seventeenth century. It was actually a
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: really ancient way of explaining where life came from. And
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: at the time of again Aristotle, there were three competing theories, right,
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: there was spontaneous generation, there was Preformationism, and then there
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: was epigenesis. And depending on what you thought about what
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: you subscribe to at least one, if not two, of
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: those at the same time.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Can I name my favorite spontaneous generation from Jean Baptista
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: von Helmont. Yes, that if you took a brick mold
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: and lined it with basil, you would spawn scorpions.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that weird?
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: It's pretty good.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: He also said, and I think I said it was
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Antoine von Leevinhook who said that. No, I'm sorry, that
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: was the guy who started to perfect the microscope. He
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: comes in later on. I was wrong, But von Helmont
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: van Helmont, he was the one that came up with
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: a whole bunch of different ones like mice from grain,
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: scorpions from brick molds. I think insects was a huge
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: one that if you laid out rotting meat. Yeah, this
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: is a big one, maggots would spontaneously generate. And again
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: it sounds mad, it sounds ridiculous, preposterous to us today,
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: but that was before Antoine von Leevenhook, the Dutch scientists
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: introduced or popularized the microscope, and could show with his
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: much more improved version of the microscope that there was
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: a whole other world out there that's invisible to the
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: naked eye. Prior to that, they had no idea and
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: if they did it, they were just guessing. And so
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: it would make sense that you're like, okay, if you
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: lease some rotting meat out, these totally these things just
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: come out of nowhere. The maggots generate from spontaneously from
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: rotting meat.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know that was disproved before the microscope.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: The maggots at least yeah by Francesco ready was a
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Tuscan position and said, you know, all you gotta do
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: is keep the flies off of it. You're not going
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: to get maggots, So let's just cover it with some
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: muslin and voila no maggot. So everyone was a little disappointed.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: I think the microscope comes along right, and it didn't
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: like blow up everything automatically. As far as these theories go,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: it did not settle anything out of the gate, because
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: what basically they were saying was, you know, there are
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: things that are so tiny we can't see them with
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: our naked eye, but now we can see them with
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: this microscope. But then all of a sudden people started saying, oh, well,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: those tiny things are what's causing the spontaneous generation. Then
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: we just couldn't see.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Them before, right, But then the microscope also said the
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: people who were in favor of spontaneous generation said, great,
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: those are the things that are spontaneously generating. Then we
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: just don't see them until they become maggots. And so
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: they performed experiments where they would seal a flask of water,
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: boil it to sterilize it, and then wait a few
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: days and go back and look, and there would be
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: microbes again where there hadn't been before, and they're like,
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: see spontaneous generation. And then some of the critics of
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: those experiments said, you guys just aren't boiling it long enough.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: It's not actually right. And it wasn't until I think
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: eighteen sixty when Louis Pasture came along and said, this
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: is how you precisely sterilize things and showed the world
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: how to do it, that he really was He managed
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: to really kind of put the final nail in the
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: coffin for spontaneous generation.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was kind of it. From that moment
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: we knew, or you know, we started to build on
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: the idea that life arises from life. That's the only
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: way things do not spontaneously generate. As fun of an
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: idea as that is, life comes from life and that's
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: the only place that comes from.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Yes. So I said that in the ancient world you
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: may have subscribed to two of those, and the reason
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: why is because one of them epigenesis, an Aristotle product
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Aristotle brand was pretty pretty accurate. It was Aristotle explaining
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: that the fluids from the mother and the fluids from
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: the father exchanged during sexual reproduction, are what of rise
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: to biology, what gives rise to life, and after that
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: it just becomes an embryo and starts growing. And the
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: main rival that epigenesis was Preformationism, which said that if
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: you could get a sample of your dad's sperm and
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: could zoom in on an individual sperm cell, you would
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: see a mini version of yourself and that you that
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: was just that was deposited in your mom where you
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: started to grow, You came out of your mom, you
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: kept growing until you finally reached your adult size. But
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: you were pre formed even before you were conceived. And
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: those were the two rivals. But the cool thing about
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: epigenesis is that you could say epigenesis and spontaneous generation
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: can coexist because something spontaneously generate, like say crocodiles out
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: of an exposed riverbank. They once they spontaneously generate, then
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: they'll just start reproducing biologically through epigenesis.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Pretty interesting that Aristotle finally got one, right.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: That guy, Yeah, that guy. I like the Aristotle brand.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: I had a really great time, and I know you did,
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: so I say we do a part two of this someday,
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: all right, we'll see. Okay. Well, as everyone's waiting for that,
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: you can go check out this housetuff Works article about
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: things we believe before the scientific method. And I think
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: since I said that, it's time for listener mail.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I dug this one out. Jeez, this one's been
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: out there for a long time, so I'm just gonna
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: say long time coming. Okay, hey, guys, just listen to
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: how conversion therapy doesn't work. Oh yeah, Joe, the listener
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: got on you. I guess this was another listener mail
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: got on to you about saying and historic, and then
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: you started to doubt every H word. But the rule
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: is super simple, guys. As long as you know how
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: things sound, does the word start with a vowel sound?
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: If the answer is yes, then and is correct, it
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: starts with a consonant use a. So here's some examples.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: The Undertaker tapped people out with a Hell's gate. I
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: guess that's a wrestling thing.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: The atomic leg drop is a Hulk Hogan move.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: I like this guy.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: It was an honor to have seen bray Wyatt's creativity
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: on screen and honor. The pre show for this pay
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: per view lasted an hour, so n historic. It sounds
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: snooty almost to say nhistoric, but it's true because you
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: say it takes about an hour, and that doesn't sound snooty.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: No, But it depends on how much you emphasize the
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: H and historic, because most people don't say historic. It's historic, right,
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: whereas Honor, it's like that it starts with an oh,
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: like the h is silent.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Almost right, like if England and Henry Higgins is biking
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: to ya.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: These examples, guys, brings me to the request from my email,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: could you do a show in pro wrestling?
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: Nice?
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: And that is from Aviva.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: Thanks Aviva, that was a great email, one of the
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: all time greats. I agree, and yes, we'll do one
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: on pro wrestling someday We've done We've nibbled around the edges,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: but we'll finally do one on just pro wrestling.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We did Mexican wrestling, right, Lucha Libra.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we also did a live one on Andre the Giant.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: M So maybe not on pro wrestling.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: Then well, if you want to be like a Viva
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: and take your shot at requesting an episode, you can
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: do that by sending us an email to Stuff podcast
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.