Let's Learn Everything!

How many bones are in the La Brea tar pits? And what can that teach us about life, death, and oil? And what's the point of growing giant vegetables? Well, the pure whimsy of it all, as well as some fascinating techniques and tales.
Images we talk about:
(Also available at https://www.letslearneverything.com/114/)
Tom's Picture from La Brea
2nd Picture from La Brea
Giant Tomatoes
Giant Carrot
Giant Zucchini
Giant Pumpkin
Eating Pumpkin
Pumpkin Race
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:37) La Brea's Bone Count
(00:49:35) Giant Pumpkins
(01:36:04) Outro
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We also learn about:
Good to be back in the bone zone, how many corners does LLE have? wolf skull wall, untangling all the oil words, life uh dies, Coal Oil & Gas, crude oil has over 350 different hydrocarbons, refining oil is just separating different hydrocarbons, the official stance of the podcast is that fossil fuels are cool, hey kids - see what it was like to be in the asphalt’s deathly grip! Kids Yearn for the Tar Pits, La Brea has the bones of Tigers and Lions and Camels, I’m actually an epoch girlie, um actually it’s the La Brea Woman, it’s 10,000 years ago - women can be fossils too, predator traps and carcass domination, the oily stains on bones, fingers crossed the new museum invents new ways to confront my mortality, Summer’s Jumpret response to Michael, what’s y’alls familiarity with vegetables? I have to tell an asparagus story, perhaps Thoreau’s biggest impact was on the large vegetable world, fuck Leaves of Grass - One Big Pumpkin, big pumpkin at the Chicago World’s Fair, we’re going to need a bigger pub, it’s like very slow horse racing, it’s like a drug dealing community, the LLE ruler goes from Big to Fuck Me, seed auctions, the horror that is giant tomatoes, sorry what the fuck is the giant pumpkin common wealth, I love when a number is so preposterous it makes us angry, Ella is disappointed by carrots, pumpkins are an indeterminate plant, pumpkins are nature’s dyson sphere, auxiliary plants are so creepy, the theoretical pumpkin limit is 20,000 pounds, cheating and skullduggery, put me in a giant pumpkin and throw me in the tar pit, pumpkin regatta, I know you meant - no I meant punkin chunkin, you have to completely lack whimsy to not enjoy these guys.
Sources:
La Brea's History
UC Berkley La Brea History
Smithsonian Fossil Fuel Breakdown
NHM Tar Pit Travelogue
SmithsonianMag: Animals Trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits Would Take Months to Sink
UC Berkley La Brea History
IUGS on La Brea
La Brea Camel
The carnivoran fauna of Rancho La Brea: Average or aberrant?
La Brea Carnivore Analysis
Playback Carcass Domination Study
Phys.org La Brea
New York Botanical Garden: Origin of the Giant Pumpkin
Youtube: Giant Veg
Wiki: Giant Pumpkin
BBC: Pumpkin seed bought online for £168
Thompson and Morgan: Pumpkin Payout
Giant Pumpkin Commonwealth
GPC: Newsletter Archive
Thompson and Morgan Blog: How to Grow a Giant Pumpkin
NPR: Why Vegetables Get Freakish In The Land Of The Midnight Sun
BBC: How I grow my giant vegetables to break records
Science News: Here’s how giant pumpkins get so big
LiveScience: Why Pumpkins Can Grow So Large
2016 Paper: The making of giant pumpkins: how selective breeding changed the phloem of Cucurbita maxima from source to sink
Shropshire Star: Pumpkin Controversy
Blog: Beyond the Pond: Growing Giant Pumpkins
BBC: What do giant veg growers eat on Christmas Day?
CTV News: Henry the Polar Bear
SciShow
The Guardian:

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Wait, how are we rediscovering organs in 2026?? Or... are we? Well let's learn about the history and fads of the insides of our bodies! And what is bird watching, why do we all love it, and how casual and competitive can you get with it?
Images we talk about:
(Also available at https://www.letslearneverything.com/113/)
Clay Liver
Online Terminologia Anatomica
Salivary Glands
Bird Study Skins
A Field guide to Birds Example Page
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:56) Rediscovered Organs
(01:05:15) Bird Watching
(01:50:12) Outro
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Join our Discord!
We also learn about:
Huh?? Mesopotamian organ divination, sheep liver phrenology models, everyone needs to talk about this, Al-Razi’s “Doubts about Galen”, the great ignorance time skip, hmm this dead body must be wrong, the dissection fad, the murder act, you don’t know Burke and Hare?? body snatching and anatomy murder, the vestigial craze, Wiedersheim’s minimal viable person, the problem of naming organs, 20 synonyms of organs, Ella goes feral over the online Federative International Programme for Anatomical Terminology, our 3-4, hi Dad and Ella’s mom - hope you enjoyed that clitoris joke, our 4th pair of handlebar moustache salivary glands, the interstitium getting reverse pluto’d, labelling an organ is useful but also not the full picture, gen Z loves birding, FUCK YOU JONO WE’RE DOING THE HISTORY, is paleontology birding if you’re looking at sauricia, ornithomancy, where there have been birds - we have watched birds, study skins, hey what if we looked at them alive? in 1901 Edmund Selous discovers bird empathy, “lay down the gun and take up the glasses”, POWs from WWII publishing their findings, slovenly non scientific bird watchers, it’s a hobby with no proper definition, Merline and ObsIdentify and Birder and Ebird and Rare Bird Alert and Birder’s Interface, it’s pokemon! WHO’S THAT bird, “oh my god I actually cannot do this any more”, apps aren’t perfect, twitchers, the New Jersey World Series of Birding, Big Year, the first book specifically for birding, the first big year was just some guy who wrote how many birds he saw one year and told people about it, a big year is a physical and mental trial for glory, it’s for the birds, has their love curdled or have they unlocked a true kind of love? why do we do anything at all? I do love birds but man do I love humans.
Sources:
NIH: Organ Definition
2024 Paper: The Most Ancient Sources of Anatomic Knowledge
2025 Paper: Galen’s Typology of Organs
2013 Paper: The Air of History (Part IV): Great Muslim Physicians Al Rhazes
BBC Bitesize: Medieval Medicine
Wellcome Collection: Getting Under the Skin
2011 Paper: The Study of Anatomy in England From 1700 to the Early 20th Century
Book: Dissecting the Criminal Corpse: Staging Post-Execution Punishment in Early Modern England by Hurren ET, Chapter 7.
Wiki: Vestigiality
Britannica: Anatomy
Terminologia Anatomica 2019 (TA2) Official
BearBoat Terminologia Anatomica 2019 (TA2)
Cleveland Clinic: Organs
Wiki: List of Organs
2021 Paper: The tubarial salivary glands: A potential new organ at risk for radiotherapy
Article: The tubarial salivary glands: A newly recognized organ with dental significance
CORDIS: Did scientists just discover a secret organ in your head?
Netherland Cancer Institute: Cancer researchers discover new salivary gland
2021 Paper: The tubarial salivary glands: A potential new organ at risk for radiotherapy
Cleveland Clinic: Interstitium
SciAm: Meet Your Interstitium, a Newfound "Organ"
2024 Paper: A comprehensive analysis of the tubarial glands
2018 Paper: Another new organ! is this a golden age of discovery in anatomy?
BBC: Scientists just discovered the largest ever human organ – and we all have it
Independant: Human brain is actually two separate organs, scientists find
2026 Paper: Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain
2005 Paper: Gastrulation Movements: the Logic and the Nuts and Bolts
Neuroscience News: The Brain Is Two Separate Organs Joined by Evolution
LiveScience: 'Useless' female organ discovered over a century ago may actually support ovaries, study finds
Uni of Colorado: Rediscovering the Rete Ovarii: The “Antennae” of the Ovary
2024 Paper: Rediscovering the Rete Ovarii: the Development, Role, and Function of a Secreting Auxiliary Structure to the Ovary
---
BBC: Why Gen Z Birdwatchers Are Flocking to Reserves
CNN: Why Gen Z is going bonkers for birding
Wikipedia: Ornithomancy
Smithsonian Magazine: How Bird Collecting Evolved Into Bird-Watching
My Bird Buddy: History of Bird Watching
Haikubox: Evolution of Birdwatching
Pitville History: Edmund Selous
British Birds: Best Bird Watching Apps
10000 Birds: Can I rely on Merlin
Science Base: Bird ID Apps
Sussex Wildlife Trust: The Good the Bad and the Middling ID Apps
Reddit: Pokemon Go is Basically Birding
Reddit: Ever Wanted to Catch Em All IRL?
Reddit: Why is Gen Z Suddenly Obsessed with Birdwatching
Youtube: Listers
New Jersey Audubon Society: World Series of Birding
Wikipedia: Big Year
Smithsonian Library and Archive: A Field Guide to Birds
American Bird Association: Big Year Rules
Audubon: The Big Year According to Birders
Birding (American Birding Association): The Next Big Thing
Surfbirds (Wayback Machine): Alaska, The Last Frontier Attu Island
NPR: The Real Birdwatchers Behind Hollywood's 'Big Year'

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What happens to life inside exclusion zones like Chernobyl? Is it good? Bad? Or something much more interesting? And what happens when you try to codify every single character from human language? Well, it definitely leads to some fascinating linguistic rabbit holes!
Images we talk about:
Przewalski’s horse (yes that’s how it’s spelled)
Frogs
Character U+FDFD
Arabic Text
Decorative U+FDFD's
Tom's Favorite Use of Kashida
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:12) Life in Exclusion Zones
(01:01:48) Every Single Character
(01:52:06) Outro
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Join our Discord!
We also learn about: Actually defining it made it creepier, the zone rouge, we an area of Earth uninhabitable from war, chernobyl release over 100 radioactive elements, they really need to name the zone of alienation the zone of doing taxes, the liquidators actually did a good job of stopping the spread, is this a rewilding experiment? Ella deleted emails to poach this topic, Przewalski’s horse (yes that’s how it’s spelled), technically feral vs wild horses, I’ve reached the nuance center of my nuance pop, why isn’t it my job so sample chernobyl frogs, nearly all pine trees near chernobyl were wiped out, “the selective pressures of radiation”, bright birds used up their carotenoids for color, we’re doing nuclear ecological biochemistry, god that was an ugly laugh, maybe its counterintuitive for the small things - no this one sucks, the slow horror of a lack of decomposition, the ecosystem is not rewilded it’s entirely new, the Korean DMZ is like an ecological semi permeable membrane, DMZ ecology research institute, the DMZ has 40% of Korea’s endangered species, it’s a pitstop along the east asian australasian flyway, endangered cranes have bounced back in the DMZ, the DMZ crane watch, the cranes and natterjack toad require human farming to thrive, synonyms of nuance and thrive, Baarter economy standing ovation, conflictful chicken, Unicode is the ISO standard for text on computers, ASCII’s 128 characters is surely enough right? why do you have a period accurate phone? it turns out other cultures want to use the computer, there are 159,801 characters in unicode, the basic multilingual plane sounds like startrek shit and it kind of is, I mean it’s not like it has cuneiform except it does, braille unicode exists for a reason, braille doesn’t just map one to one with letters it also has contractions, contracted braille is a stenography, tweeting more in japanese, 101,996 CJK characters, Max Woolf’s Big List of Naughty Strings, after Mamdani was elected I had to learn how to pronounce the bismillah, “Bismillah is the Przewalski’s Horse of this topic”, I said we shouldn’t dive into the history of a language halfway through a topic but fuck it, LR0’s terrific Arabic typography essay, arabic script can be perfectly justified, “the justification lives inside the words”, Kashidas stretching across a map made it click for Tom, maing the bismillah beautiful, we all just want to make text look cool, the ottoman printing press ban myth, the cursed lost printed quran, oh my god is this the unifying thing, weirdly internet explorer had kashida justification for 1 year? Inshallah you find on the internet what you’re exploring for.
Sources:
Chernobyl Frogs Image
Wikipedia: Exclusion Zones
World Nuclear Association
Wikipedia: Zone Rouge
Explorers Web: Montserrat and its Exclusion Zone
Guardian: UN Buffer Zone in Cyprus
International Atomic Energy Agency: Chernobyl
United Nations Development Programme: Chernobyl Recovery Development
BBC Future: Chernobyl’s Wildlife
Royal Society Proceedings B: The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as a Wildlife Refuge
Wikipedia: Red Forest
Current Biology: Long-term Census Data Reveal Abundant Wildlife Populations at Chernobyl
Science: Chernobyl Hits Birds Hard
Microorganisms: Soil Microbes and Plant-Associated Microbes in Response to Radioactive Pollution
The Conversation: The Mystery of Chernobyl’s Wild Horses
San Diego Zoo: The Last Wild Horse
Animals: Endangered Przewalski’s Horse, Equus przewalskii, Cloned from Historically Cryopreserved Cells
San Diego Zoo: Birth of Cloned Przewalski’s Foal
Korean Konsult: DMZ - Demilitarized Zone
DMZ: The Civilian Control Line (CCL) towns of the Korean Peninsula
Reuters: South Korea to Shift Civilian Restricted Line
South China Morning Post: The Korean DMZ
Guardian: How Wildlife is Thriving in the Korean DMZ
Royal Society Notes and Records: From Warzone to Bioreserve
Zooniverse: DMZ Crane Watch
Biological Conservation: Winter Foraging of Threatened Cranes in the Demilitarized Zone of Korea
Cultural Anthropology: Toward an Anthropology of Landmines
KNews: Nature Thrives in Cyprus’ Forgotten Buffer Zone
UFZ EuMon conference: Monitoring Biodiversity of the Buffer Zone in Cyprus
Satoyama Initiative: The Cyprus Buffer Zone as a Socio-Ecological Landscape
---
UC Berkley Unicode Overview
Unicode's History
Unicode on Braille
RNIB Contracted Braille
Buzzfeed on Japanese Tweets
LR0's Incredible Arabic Type Essay
Design Principles of Kashida Justification: A Unique Technique in Arabic and Persian Mapping
The Lost Quran's Discovery
Kathryn Schwartz's "Did Ottoman Sultans Ban Print?"

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Due to some house woes, we're recasting Ella's excellent appearance on That's Absurd, Please Elaborate, where they actually solve a meme and invent Pee Day.

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What does an astronaut actually learn in training? And what surprises them about having to live in space? Well, fortunately astronaut Cady Coleman is here to answer these and many more of our questions!!

See us live in London! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE

See Tom live in NYC! OurFindingsShow.com

Images we talk about:
Cady's Background Image

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Intro

(00:05:03) Astronaut Training and Space Life

(01:10:42) Space Suits

(01:23:45) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: Astronaut school, “the mission is exploration and only a part of it is human spaceflight”, the telerobotic surgery was real, living in NEEMO, Cady learned to remove a gallbladder, “what is it that I have to remember is not being simulated well?”, oh the telerobotic surgery was happening under water, it’s about sharing what you’re learning at the same time, spending 11 days underwater, bedrest studies in hawaii are actually a toll and a service, communication is key even in space, trust us space food is going to get old, not every day of training is remove 10 gallbladders, putting yourself in the picture humanizes it, which way is up? sleep flashes from cosmic rays, liquid sensors in our neck make you pee when you lie down and reduce blood volume in space, you can’t cough to hide your pee on the ISS, the future of the ISS, astronaut feet facts, Paolo and Cady’s toenail system, learning to fly in zero g, “you learn to live in 3 dimensions”, losing things in zero g sucks, CO2 buildup for the group photo, not washing clothes upset the balance, it’s all about fluid physics, “it’s all about interfaces between solids and liquids - and up in space it’s the biggest game in town”, peeing in space is easier than camping, how you determine your space order with feet, the domino effect of space suit sizes, your space suit is your space ship, IT’S LESS MATERIAL, there are people who are still waiting their turn, “how do you make sure these voices are heard when their presence is not missed?”, how to work for change collaboratively, you shouldn’t have to work so hard to participate, “oh that’s going on the website Cady”, one small step for you and one big step for democracy.

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