Futility Closet - 046-The 1925 Serum Run to Nome

Episode Date: February 16, 2015

In 1925, Nome, Alaska, was struck by an outbreak of diphtheria, and only a relay of dogsleds could deliver the life-saving serum in time. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the dogs' desperate race through arctic blizzards to save the town from epidemic. We'll also hear a song about S.A. Andree's balloon expedition to the North Pole and puzzle over a lost accomplishment of ancient civilizations. Our segment on the 1925 serum run to Nome was based chiefly on Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury's excellent 2003 book The Cruelest Miles. Here's the statue of Balto, who led the final sled into Nome, in Central Park: The inscription reads "Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxin 600 miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters, through arctic blizzards, from Nenona to the relief of stricken Nome." "The Ballad of Knut and Nils," Yann and Cory Seznec's song honoring S.A. Andrée's disastrous 1897 attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon, is on Yann's blog. You can find more of the brothers' music here. This week's lateral thinking puzzle is from Paul Sloane and Des McHale's 1998 book Ingenious Lateral Thinking Puzzles. Sloane invites interested readers to his Lateral Puzzles Forum, where visitors can set and solve these puzzles interactively. This week's episode is sponsored by our patrons and by Harry's -- go to Harrys.com now and they'll give you $5 off if you use the coupon code CLOSET with your first purchase. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation via the Donate button in the sidebar of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to Futility Closet, a celebration of the quirky and the curious, the thought-provoking and the simply amusing. This is the audio companion to the website that catalogs more than 8,000 curiosities in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Episode 46. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1925, Noam Alaska was struck by an outbreak of diphtheria, and only a relay of dog sleds could deliver the life-saving serum in time. In today's show, we'll follow the dog's desperate race through arctic blizzards to save the town. We'll also

hear a song about S.A. Andre's balloon expedition to the North Pole, and puzzle over a lost accomplishment of ancient civilizations. Just a quick update on our Patreon campaign. We're just about at the 60% mark for continuing the podcast, and this week we're sending out a big thank you to Drew Fleshman and Matthew Fellner, our newest super patrons, who have pledged $10 or more per show. Thanks so much to Drew and Matthew and to everyone who has been donating to help keep the show going. If you want to learn more about contributing to our Patreon campaign,

go to patreon.com slash futilitycloset or look for the link in our show notes. I've been reading this week about what's sometimes called the Great Race of Mercy, the serum run to bring diphtheria medicine to Nome, Alaska in 1925, where there was an incipient outbreak. And the whole story, I guess I'd known it, but I hadn't until I'd looked into it in this much detail. I didn't realize the whole thing is sort of maximally dramatic at every moment. You couldn't write

a better story than this, and it really happened. Nome, Alaska is very far north. It's only four degrees south of the Arctic Circle, and it has a port, but this means that at least in 1925, the port is frozen over for most of the year, about eight months of the year. You can't get to it by steamship. And during that period, the only time really to get to Nome is by dog sled. That far north, dogs were really ideally suited for any kind of transportation. They were using them as mail trucks, as ambulances, any time you needed to travel anywhere in the north, you'd use a dog sled. And that became central to this story. Due to some really bad timing, just the last ship of the year left the port in Nome in November 1925, right before it started to freeze over.

And just a few days after that, a two-year-old Alaskan native child came down with what they thought at first was tonsillitis. Nome had only one doctor, a poor man named Curtis Welch, who was supported by four nurses at a 25-bed hospital. And he diagnosed this little two-year-old at first with tonsillitis, but the child died the next morning, and a number of other cases of what looked like tonsillitis started to turn up through December, and he realized that what he had on his hands was, in fact, diphtheria, which is a very evil, bad disease. What it does is it sort of bad disease. What it does is it sort of coats the back of your throat and nose with a sort of film of bacteria that gradually creeps down your windpipe and suffocates you to death. It's a terrifying and slow and painful way to die. And even worse, it's extremely contagious and it can

survive outside the body for weeks. The good news is there's an antitoxin which is made from the serum of immunized horses. The bad news is that in 1924 Gnome's supply of the antitoxin had expired. They had only 80,000 units of it and Welch had put in a replacement order but it hadn't managed to arrive

on the last ship and so they were going to have to wait since the port froze over. They had to wait until the following spring. and so they were going to have to wait since the port froze over. They had to wait until the following spring. And so they're trapped now with this evil illness that's spreading through the town. More children started to die. On January 20th, the first case of diphtheria was officially diagnosed in a 3-year-old named Bill Barnett

who died the next day. On January 21st, a 7-year-old was diagnosed in the late stages. Welch gave her some of the old expired antitoxin sort of desperately, but she died later that day anyway. So Welch realized they had a public health emergency on their hands. He called the mayor, and they held an emergency meeting of the town council. Welch basically said that he needed a million units to stave off an epidemic. They imposed a quarantine so everyone stayed in their houses for two full weeks. No one was just a ghost town just to try to minimize the spread of this incipient epidemic. They imposed a quarantine so everyone stayed in their houses for two full weeks. No one was just a ghost town just to try to minimize the spread of this incipient epidemic. But they were

going to need some antitoxin to brought in from the outside. On January 20th, Welch sent a radio telegram to all the major towns in Alaska and to the governor that said basically, an epidemic of diphtheria is almost inevitable here. Stop. I am in urgent need of one million units of diphtheria antitoxin. Stop. Mail is only form of transportation. Stop. I have made application to Commissioner of Health of the territories for antitoxin already. Stop. By January 24th, there were two more deaths, and they diagnosed 20 more cases and 50 more people at risk. So it's spreading quickly, and there are about 10,000 people around Nome who were threatened. And without the antitoxin, the mortality rate was about 100%.

Oh. So it's just about the worst possible situation you can have. On January 24th, they held a meeting with the Board of Health and proposed a dog sled relay, which was really the only way to get help to them. If you picture a map of Alaska, which is famously huge, and picture a railroad line running up on the right-hand side of the map, straight up from the south to Fairbanks, just before it gets to Fairbanks, it crosses a dog sled trail

that goes straight across the whole interior of Alaska out to Nome, which is way out to the west. It's on a peninsula sticking out into the Bering Sea. So if they can get some medicine onto the rail line, that can take it up to where it crosses the trail, and then they'll set up a relay of dog sleds going all the way across the state to hopefully get it to Nome before the epidemic can spread enough to where it can't be contained. That was the plan. But it's a really ambitious plan, and dog sleds are the only way to where it can't be contained. That was the plan. But it's a really ambitious plan, and dog sleds are the only way to make it work.

The fastest trip across the interior that way had been done in nine days, but Welch, the doctor, estimated that the serum would last only six days on these brutal conditions on the trail. This just keeps getting more and more dramatic. So they were going to have a relay of dog sides going west, uh, across from the rail line and also have, uh, other dog sides coming out from Nome, coming in the other direction to meet them in the middle. Uh, in particular, there's a Norwegian outdoorsman named Leonard Seppala, who was chosen for

a big part of that run coming out from Nome, who had an almost supernatural rapport with Siberian huskies. He was the fastest musher in Alaska, and he normally covered 100 miles a day. And his daughter was one of those who were afflicted with diphtheria, so he had a real personal stake in this. We'll come back to him in a second. The next problem was where to find the serum. They could collect a lot of it from hospitals on the west coast of the continental U.S., but there was no way to get them up in time to the south end of the rail line in order to reach the dog sleds in time. Happily, they found 300,000 units in an Anchorage hospital, which wasn't enough, but it should be enough if they got it there quickly to sort of stave off the epidemic until they could get more of the antitoxin up there. they could get more of the antitoxin up there. So they wrapped up these 300,000 units in ampules in a 20-pound cylinder that would have to make its way all the way up through this dangerous route to get it to Nome. Add to all this that the weather was absolutely desperately miserable.

Temperatures across the Alaskan interior were at 20-year lows. Fairbanks, Alaska, the temperature was 50 below zero Fahrenheit. And the days were short because we're going into the polar winter. The only other potential alternative to dog sedge would be to take it by plane, which some people were proposing, but the weather just put that right out. It was just completely impossible to operate an airplane in those conditions. So the governor of Alaska engaged the company that normally contracted to deliver mail across the interior, and they organized those mushers into a relay across

the interior. And it all comes down to the dogs, really. I'm getting a lot of this from a wonderful book called The Cruelest Miles by two cousins, Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury, a beautifully well-researched book. And they quote a man named Olaf Swenson, who Salisbury and Laney Salisbury, a beautifully well-researched book. And they quote a man named Olaf Swenson, who was a trader and hunter in Siberia who helped Seppala import his huskies. Swenson said, it is absolutely almost impossible to place a price on a good dog, especially if he's a leader. Buying one is almost like buying a human being who is to undertake a joint venture with you. You know that before your trip is over, the dog may have saved your life by his intelligence, instinct, and courage. A dog isn't really your servant in an undertaking like this. He's really a partner because a dog has to know the land and where you're going and how to lead the rest of the team and also,

crucially, has to know when to disobey you. If you're running across ice, for instance, and the lead dog realizes that you're moving onto dangerous territory, it has to know to take you in another direction. So there are a couple of dogs involved in this that were really magnificent performers and famous now as a result. So they got this 20-pound package to the train station at Nanana, which was at the top of the rail line to the train station at Nenana, which was at the top of the rail line to the head of the dog sled trail. At 9 p.m. on January 27th, in the first musher, a man named Wild Bill Shannon took it and took off immediately to the west.

The temperature already then was 50 degrees below zero and dropping. He ran beside the sled to keep warm but developed hypothermia anyway, and by the he reached minto which is his next town at 3 a.m parts of his face were already black from frostbite oh he spent four hours warming himself in the serum by the fire here's some more drama for you if that wasn't enough the serum is kept in glass ampoules so even though they're going through these ridiculously cold temperatures you have to avoid letting it freeze entirely because when it freezes it will expand and crack the glass and ruin the whole operation if that wasn't enough drama for you so uh shannon kept going to the west the temperature was now 62 degrees below zero and he had to leave three dogs behind which subsequently died here's

another hazard dogs that over over exert themselves in cold weather develop pulmonary hemorrhages. Their lungs start to bleed, and eventually their lungs can fill up with blood, and they'll drown in harness. The Salisbury's mention something called the rule of 40s, which says don't let a sled dog run above 40 degrees Fahrenheit because it may overheat. But also don't let it run below minus 40 because there's so little room for error. There's an Alaskan proverb that says, traveling at 50 below is all right as long as it's all right. Meaning, if you're doing anything outside when the weather is that bitterly cold, it's not that there's one particular danger. It's that any mistake of any kind that you make is now fatal. If you read Jack London's story, To Build a Fire,

it's about exactly that. It's about a man who freezes to death in the Yukon because of a series of small mistakes. And the weather here is just awful. It's the worst you could hope for when you're trying to undertake something like this. Anyway, Shannon managed to hand off the package to Edgar Calland at Tolavana. They're still 650 miles east of Nome. Calland carried it as far as a roadhouse at Manly Hot Springs, and so on from there. They're basically handing off to a fresh driver every 30 miles or so, so that way they can keep the package moving west as quickly as possible. No one ever sleeps. It's always just constantly moving west. Meanwhile, on January 29th, the diphtheria, despite the quarantine, is getting worse and worse.

Two new cases had been diagnosed by the 29th, and a fifth death occurred on the 30th. They considered using planes again, but still the weather just made that completely impossible. So they authorized some more drivers on the western leg. The people are going to be coming out from Nome to meet the oncoming dog sleds. So after all these shifts, now altogether there were 20 men involved and 150 dogs altogether who were trying to get the serum through. On January 30th, the number of cases in Nome had reached 27, and they'd run out of antitoxin. They were using this old expired badge that was six years old just to have something to use. They didn't even have that anymore. A local reporter wrote, all hope is in the dogs and their heroic drivers. Nome appears to be a deserted city.

Everyone's just hunkered down in their homes and hoping not to get diphtheria before the serum arrives. So Leonard Seppala, this amazing musher, with Togo, his lead dog, who's now famous, traveled out from Nome going eastward now, from January 27th to the 31st, into the teeth of an oncoming storm with gale- force wind chills.

Now the temperature is now 85 degrees below zero. Oh my gosh. It just gets worse and worse. If this was a movie, you'd be like, no. Right, exactly. And almost missed the handoff because of this change in the plan there. Seppala thought he had another 100 miles to go

and the oncoming dog side had to wave him down and say, I have the serum. So that's one disaster averted. Seppala had already driven 200 miles to meet the relay. Now he had to return over the most dangerous part of the route because they're getting to the sea coast of the Bering Sea. They had a choice to make here with Togo leading the pack. They could stick to the trail going around this sound called Norton Sound or take a risk and go right across the frozen sound. The risk there, it's a shortcut. It'll cut a day off

their time. But if the wind changes, they could break up the ice and carry them all out to sea. They took the risk and actually made it across to the farther shore just before the ice broke up, which saved an entire day. And then they descended to the next roadhouse and passed the it across to the farther shore just before the ice broke up, which saved an entire day. And then they descended to the next roadhouse and passed the serum on to Charlie Olson at 3 p.m. on February 1st. Here's more drama. Now the number of cases had risen to 28, and the serum that they were carrying would treat 30 people.

So they were almost at the point where even if they make it through, if they're just a little bit late, it won't be enough to stave off epidemic. Olsen, who's now got the serum, suffered frostbite while he was putting blankets on his dogs, but he arrived anyway at Bluff on February 1st at 7 p.m. and handed it off to what turned out to be the last man, Gunnar Kasson. Kasson waited for the storm to break and gave up and finally took off in the teeth of this awful storm at 10 p.m and his lead dog a sauvian siberian husky named balto who had never led a team before uh took off for gnome and now they're just white out conditions they're just traveling through just this blanket of white weather um casson said later that he couldn't see his hand in front of his face for a lot of the trip. He couldn't see the dogs.

He couldn't see the trail. He was just trusting the dogs to get them through. A dog's sense of smell is 600 times as good as a human's. So the dogs can make their way through this awful weather if they have to. And he was just trusting them to do that. He traveled through the night, passed the town of Solomon without realizing it, and was blown over by the wind. And the cylinder contained this precious medicine was thrown into the snow and he got frostbite trying to dig it out again and find it. They're just averting disaster narrowly time

and time again. Casson finally reached point safety ahead of schedule and found that the next musher, the guy he was supposed to hand it off to, had gone to sleep thinking that he'd been detained at the last town. So rather than wait for this guy to wake up and put his dogs in order, he just kept going and covered the last 25 miles himself. So Casson and Balto arrived in Nome at 5.30 a.m. Witnesses who were there say that Casson arrived in town, staggered off the sled, stumbled up to Balto, the the at the head of the line said three words and collapsed and the three words were damn fine dog they hadn't when they opened the cylinder they found that not a single ampule of the medicine had been broken and they had it thawed

out and ready to use by noon which is amazing so altogether these teams uh had covered 20 men and 150 dogs had covered 674 miles in five and a half days, which is a record, in extreme sub-zero temperatures, near blizzard conditions, and hurricane force winds. But it worked. By February 3rd, the epidemic was under control. As I say, there were about 10,000 people who were at risk of this epidemic, and the total death toll is listed as either five, six, or seven, depending on how you count it, because some of the native populations didn't always report they're dead, but it's, you know, it's, they basically cut it off in time. It wasn't nearly as bad as it was threatening to be. There were further cases later on, but by that time they were able to get even more serum

up there and the danger was averted. So the whole thing succeeded narrowly. The dogs became famous, justly so, I think. They both, Togo and Balto, both toured the continental United States. And Balto in particular got a lot of attention. The mayor of Los Angeles gave him a bone-shaped key to the city. And the film star Mary Pickford put a wreath around his neck. And today there's a statue of Balto. It was unveiled in Central Park on December 15th, 1925. And you can go see it today if you a statue of Balto. It was unveiled in Central Park on December 15th, 1925, and you can go see it today if you want to. Balto did wonderful things and deserves a lot of credit, but a lot of people think that Leonard Seppala and Togo actually made the greater contribution. They covered the longest, most dangerous leg, and together those two covered

nearly twice the distance of any other team. Altogether, Togo ran 350 miles, and he's the one who got them across the dangerous ice of the Norton Sound, which was breaking up. He navigated when Seppala couldn't see, and he climbed, led the team over 5,000 feet up to cross Little McKinley Mountain. Seppala tried not to be bitter about this. What had happened is that newspaper photographers in particular,

if you wanted to sort of encapsulate the whole episode, what you'd show is the last dog team coming into town. And in fact, they reenacted that with Balto. So it was Balto's face that was all over the newspapers while Togo was out chasing reindeer. I mean, just to the mass media down in the continental United States, it was Balto's face that was put on the whole exploit. But Togo really contributed.

You could make a good case that he contributed more. Seppala tried not to be bitter about that, but he said, It was almost more than I could bear when the newspaper dog Balto received a statue for his glorious achievements. The two dogs, Balto and Togo are both when they died both were mounted and are now on display if you want to see their remains, Balto's in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History

and Togo's at the Iditarod Museum in Wasilla, Alaska I can't believe nobody's made a movie of this like I just, I'm listening to it and just picturing it, like I can't believe that a movie hasn't been done of this I was, in reading this, I remember thinking, I read somewhere that when James Cameron was writing the screenplay for Titanic,

he said the more research he did, he realized it was like a great novel that had actually happened. He didn't have to embroider it at all. It was just this fantastically dramatic story, and the same is true here. And I think as great as the contribution was of the human drivers, I think you really have to admire the dogs even more because a dog doesn't know what diphtheria is or why it's being asked to drive west hundreds of miles through these awful conditions.

Even after it's over, the dog doesn't understand what the meaning of all this was. And dogs weren't at risk of getting the disease. I mean, it was all done in the service of the humans. So if there are any Siberian huskies in the listening audiences, thanks for all of us. We'll have a photo of Balto's statue in Central Park in our show notes at futilitycloset.com.

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I've got it all planned out, I'm going up in the sky I've got a big handmade balloon I'm gonna see you on the other side And these two big long ropes will steer me where I need to go 27 points to the wind is enough, that's all you need to know And you can never tell me that I'm wrong. So when my friend did, I sent him along. So when my friend did, I sent him along. We'll have a link to Yan's blog summary of this and other ballooning adventures and the full song in our show notes.

And if you have anything that you'd like to send in to us, musical or otherwise, you can write to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. This week, Greg is going to be trying to solve a lateral thinking puzzle for us. We get to hear him try to figure out a situation, asking only yes or no questions. Try. Try. We all try. This week's puzzle comes from Paul Sloan and Des McHale's 1998 Ingenious Lateral Thinking Puzzles.

Okay. Are you ready? Iuzzles. Okay. Are you ready? I hope so. Okay. We generally consider ourselves to be a lot smarter and better educated than the people who lived in the prehistoric periods of the Stone Age, Iron Age, and Bronze Age. But what was it that the men and women did in those times that no man or woman has managed to achieve for the last 4,000 years?

What were they able to achieve? Is that the word? Yes. What did they do in those times that no one has managed to achieve for the last 4,000 years? Okay. And you're asking that broadly? It's people in general in that time could do something? It's not that there was one particular achievement or civilization or person that did one thing once?

I believe that's correct um although it's maybe somewhere in between the two the way you defined them at different ends of the spectrum there okay i mean is it does it have to do with people themselves or is just that there was something that was able to be done back then that's not able now to be done you see what i'm saying i can't even think of an example you can't answer that yeah i'm having i'm i don't even know what that would be i need you to maybe be a little more specific i withdraw the question thank you okay uh achievement you said does that have to do with astronomy no would you call it a technological achievement no um you wouldn't i wouldn't something they could do but it didn't have to do with knowledge they had that we don't have today? That's correct. Would you agree that it's

accurate to say that they could do something, though, that we can't do today? I wouldn't say it like that. I would say they did something back then that we have not done in 4,000 years. Because we don't need to do it anymore? Maybe that's possible. Yeah, that's... I'm kind of hung up on the word achievement because it sounds like that's... Yeah. I don't know if you should hang up too much on that, but this is just the way the world is worded. You know what I'm saying? I'm trying to get my hands around what sort of thing this is. right so would you call it a practice something that was done repeatedly and across a wide area i don't know that i would call it like that um okay but you wouldn't say it was something you're saying something people used to do

something people did something people well used to do. Something people did. Something people not. Well, used to do sort of implies that like they might do it every day or, you know, continuously or. Okay. Was it this thing, whatever it was, was it restricted to a certain geographical area? No, I don't believe so. Really? Really.

So tell me the ages again. Bronze, iron. He says the Stone Age, Iron Age, and Bronze Age. And he just basically says it's something that no man or woman has achieved in the last 4,000 years. Has achieved. Is it something they could do? Like could I, could a modern civilization achieve this in principle? In principle, in theory, yeah.

Today? Yes. But it hasn't happened. It hasn't been done okay okay and you'd say it isn't technological i would say that's correct and it's not because of lost information or knowledge i would say that's correct and you wouldn't say that it's because the need for this well you could maybe say it that way maybe i'm not sure that that's the best way to say it, but it's not 100% wrong. God, this is such a big question. I don't even know how to attack it.

You say it's not technological. It doesn't have to do with information. It's not what you would call a practice, but it was the case around the world that people did this. Yeah, it happened in different places. It might be a practice. Some of the semantics are hard to sometimes... Okay, all right. Would it make any sense to zero in on one instance of this?

You could. You could say this happened at least once in some place. Yes, yes. Okay, without pinning this down too much. Let's say it happened in Europe, say. Oh, that wouldn't be a way to attack it. Okay, it happened once somewhere at least. More than once, but yes.

Let's look at one instance of it then. Okay. Does it take more than one person to do this, whatever it is? I would say yes. More than 10? I don't know an exact number, but... A group of people. Sure, yeah.

Is it about, does it concern religion or... No. No type of ritual or... Correct. And it's not... Does it have to do with agriculture? It could. It could it could yeah actually does it have to do with many cases um transmitting information in some way or recording it no okay so it's got sort of a physical feel to it they're accomplishing something physically as opposed to like a science or um no i know i i i don't think so yeah i don't think

you wouldn't say that i wouldn't say it's like a physical thing that they're accomplishing they're are they learning something no i wouldn't say that either um No, I wouldn't say that either. I would go with the agriculture. That's the closest you've gotten. Okay. And it takes a group of people to do this, whatever it is. Yes. And let's say it concerns agriculture.

Oh, hello, pussycat. Sasha is just showing up. Maybe she can help. We didn't do a good job. I had my eyes closed. All right. Maybe that's good luck. Actually, it might be. All right. Agriculture. So it involves, say, food production?

Possibly. Or providing for the community? It could. It could, but it might not. But it doesn't have to, but it could and did in some cases. This is multiple instances over time and places, so it's not... So it varies. Somewhat. From time to time and from place to place. Good thought, Sasha. I wish I spoke that language.

She's got it all figured out. Okay, agriculture. You say it might sort of kind of have to do with food production all right so there's a group of people who haven't done this thing and they set about to do it right i suppose and then they've finished it they have something to show for it i suppose not exactly really though but um we could think of it that way, but that's not really the words you'd use. Would you say, see, this is so amorphous, I can't. Is it mostly an intellectual action? No, I don't think so. Mostly physical? I guess it would be things you would do, but by physical, do you mean like making something,

constructing something? Well, anything. Like, you know, a sport, say, is by physical, do you mean like making something, constructing something? Well, anything. Like, you know, a sport, say, is mostly physical. Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, it would involve actions that humans took rather than... With tools? No, not really, probably. Does it involve animals? Yes. It does involve animals.

It does involve animals, which is why Sasha figured it out before you. Good work, Sasha. All right, well, that's getting somewhere. Animals. Do you know specifically what kind of animals? I mean, is it a particular species? No. Draft animals? I mean, is it just used as a source of energy? No. Just think more broadly.

Domestication? Yes. Domesticating animals? That's it. Oh, that's the answer? That's the answer! We haven't domesticated any new species of animals in the last 4,000 years. That's really ironic that Sasha pointedly walked up on the table as if trying to tell us that. I know. I was thinking, well, maybe she'll spark him to think that. And I completely missed it. Thank you, Sasha. Yes. This was one of Paul Sloan's puzzles, and it's interesting. We've used puzzles from several of his books in our shows, and we actually recently heard from Mr. Paul Sloan himself saying that he appreciated his books being acknowledged in our shows.

And he asked us to pass on to our listeners. He said, please mention the Lateral Puzzles Forum where people can set and solve these puzzles interactively. Great. And that's a forum at lateralpuzzles.com, and we'll have a link to that in our show notes. We haven't really checked it out ourselves because we're trying not to see lateral thinking puzzles other than the ones we're giving each other, so as to not possibly spoil any that we try on each other. Because we have several different books of lateral thinking puzzles, Paul Sloan's and some others,

and we've kind of split them up between the two of us. But we're afraid if we go to something like this on the web, like if I see a puzzle that's in one of the books that Greg was going to use on me, then I'd already know the puzzle. Yeah, it would just spoil everything. But if listeners want to check it out, they are welcome to.

And if you see good ones, please do send them to us. We're still actively soliciting puzzles from the listeners. Yeah, if you have any puzzles that you'd like to send us, because we really enjoy the ones that the listeners make up for themselves, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That wraps up another episode for us and Sasha. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, check out our books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample over 8,000 captivating diversions. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes.

Just click podcast in the sidebar. If you'd like to support Futility Closet, please consider becoming a patron to help keep us going. You can find more information at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. You can also help us out by telling your friends about us, by leaving a review of the books or podcast on Amazon or iTunes, or by clicking the donate button on the sidebar of the website. If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can reach us by email at podcast at putilitycloset.com. Our music was written and produced by Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.