Futility Closet - 189-The "Wild White Man"

Starting point is 00:00:00 As fans of history, we're excited about a new podcast being launched by The Great Courses Plus called Food, a Cultural Culinary History. It's a fascinating look at food as a driving factor in history, from cave people to the present day. You can learn interesting food facts, try delicious historical recipes, and more. Just search for Food, a Cultural Culinary History on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts today. Welcome to the Futility Closet Podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from an ode to radar to a programming language for orangutans. This is episode 189. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross.

Starting point is 00:00:57 In 1835, settlers in Australia discovered a European man dressed in kangaroo skins, a convict who had escaped an earlier settlement and spent 32 years living among the natives of southern Victoria. In today's show, we'll review the extraordinary life of William Buckley, the so-called wild white man of colonial Australia. We'll also try to fend off scurvy and puzzle over some colorful letters. Just a warning, this story involves the names and images of deceased indigenous people. In 1835, the explorer John Batman landed in southeastern Australia to organize a new settlement in the wild country around Port Phillip Bay, near what today is Melbourne. Batman went back to Tasmania to get his family and some provisions, but he left behind seven men to make a base camp. They were in the middle of doing this when a wild-looking man walked into their camp. He was strikingly tall, six foot six, had

Starting point is 00:01:49 long hair and a beard, wore skins, and carried a spear. There were native people in the area, but this man looked European. Someone said he was well-proportioned with an erect military gait. He spoke no English, but when they asked who he was, he pointed to the letters WB tattooed on his arm. They offered him some bread, and when he handled it, he almost involuntarily said the word bread. Over the weeks that followed, as his language came back to him, he claimed to be a shipwrecked sailor, then admitted he was an escaped convict. In fact, he'd been one of the first settlers in Victoria, the only survivor of a settlement decades earlier that had failed. His name was William Buckley, and he had been presumed dead for 32 years. He'd been born in 1780 at Macclesfield in Cheshire, England, to parents who were humble farmers.

Starting point is 00:02:29 At about 15, he was apprenticed to a bricklayer, but didn't like his master, and at about 19, decided instead to become a soldier. He enlisted in the Cheshire militia, then into an infantry regiment of the British Army, in which he was wounded in the hand while fighting in Holland. His height made him a good soldier, but he fell into bad company and was eventually convicted for accepting a stolen bolt of cloth. His sentence was to be transported to Australia for life. This was in 1803. He was 21 years old. He arrived at Port Phillip on the Royal Navy ship Calcutta among 300 soldiers, settlers, and fellow convicts to create Victoria's first official European settlement. The land was beautiful and things looked promising at first, but the soil turned out to be barren and the water was brackish, and after a few months, most of the convicts were ready to desert the

Starting point is 00:03:12 settlement. Buckley determined to escape and make his way to Sydney up the eastern coast. He told his biographer later, the attempt was little short of madness, for there was before me the chances of being retaken and probable death, or other dreadful punishment, or again starvation in an unknown country inhabited by savages, with whose language and habits I was totally unacquainted. He and five other men stole a gun, some boots, and other items, and made their way out of camp on December 27th, and that was the last that was heard of William Buckley for 32 years. He and his companions wandered around Port Phillip Bay, but were soon tired and hungry. Eventually they came upon the Calcutta, the ship that had brought them, and signaled it, hoping to give themselves

Starting point is 00:03:47 up, but the ship didn't respond. His companions finally decided to go back to the camp, but Buckley was determined not to return and they split up, and they took the gun. So now he was alone in an unfamiliar country with no protection and nowhere to go. He said afterward that he realized it was crazy to try to reach Sydney, even if he'd made it, he'd be confined as a runaway and punished accordingly. As he wandered around the Bellarine Peninsula wondering what to do, he began to encounter natives. Generally, he would try to avoid them, and he found that they didn't pursue him. Eventually, he built a hut on the beach and stayed there for several months. One day, he spotted some natives on a promontory above him, armed with spears and looking down at him.

Starting point is 00:04:22 He tried to hide, but they approached him peacefully and made signs to show that they wanted to examine his hut, and they did so. Then they made a fire, caught some fish, and shared it with him, giving him the first and best portion. Then they asked him to follow them. He spent the night with them in their own huts nearby, and they seemed to be friendly, but in the morning, not knowing what to expect from them, he refused to go farther, and at length they let him go. He went back to his camp, but thought twice about his decision. He had no food or fire, and the natives didn't him go. He went back to his camp but thought twice about his decision. He had no food or fire and the natives didn't seem hostile. They had offered to trade fruit for his stockings and when he'd refused they'd left the fruit for him anyway. He tried to follow them but got lost and had to return to his hut where he remained for several more months.

Starting point is 00:04:57 Winter was now approaching and he was making up his mind to return to the Calcutta and give himself up when one day as he was walking along the beach he came upon a mound of earth with a spear stuck in it, the grave of one of the natives. He was very tired, so he took the spear to use as a walking stick. This turned out to be very lucky in a way that he could never have anticipated. The next day, he was spotted by some native women who summoned their husbands, and the group took him to their huts and fed him. They called him Murangurk, which he learned was the name of the man whose grave he'd found and whose spear he was carrying. Murangurk had been a member of the tribe and had died in a fight.

Starting point is 00:05:29 The tribe believed that all their people were reincarnated as white men after they died and that all white men were reincarnated tribesmen. They were friendly to him because they thought he was this dead man. Now come back to them. Buckley wrote, to this providential superstition, I was indebted for all the kindnesses afterwards shown to me. The next day they took him to their village, where they fed him and seemed very curious about him. They expressed sympathy for his sufferings while dying, and any he might have undergone since reappearing on earth. At night they built a fire, sang, and danced. Buckley was worried about his safety at first, but they were friendly to him and explained that they were celebrating his return. He moved with the tribe now and tried to make himself useful to them by fetching water and carrying wood. They seemed to

Starting point is 00:06:08 have accepted him fully into the tribe. Once, when he withdrew to be alone for a bath, they raised an alarm, thinking they'd lost him, and they rejoiced when he turned up again. In time, he met his brother, meaning the dead man's brother, and his family, and there were more celebrations at his return. His sister-in-law gave him an opossum skin rug and he gave her his old jacket, which she greatly valued. As time passed, he began to learn the ways of these people who roamed the country in tribes that often fought one another, usually over women. When these fights happened, Buckley was always kept safely in the rear.

Starting point is 00:06:37 He was invited to join a kangaroo hunt and accepted, he said, for I began to consider myself by compulsion a native and to take part in all their exercises. As he began to learn their language and customs, he still wondered about the future and how to escape someday from these people. He had quickly recovered his health and strength, since the tribe always gave him the best part of everything. They weren't surprised that he couldn't talk with them at first, since turning white had made him foolish, but they taught him patiently. He learned to throw spears and tomahawks to skin kangaroos and opossums, to catch eels and to spear fish by torchlight.

Starting point is 00:07:07 He lost all sense of time. At one point, he said they remained at a lake, quote, for many months, perhaps for a year or two. He said, I knew nothing about it, in fact, except by the return of the seasons. At length, he grew so accustomed to their life that he almost gave up the idea of leaving them. He said, it is very wonderful, but not less strange than true. them. He said, it is very wonderful, but not less strange than true. Almost entirely naked, enduring nearly every kind of privation, sleeping on the ground month after month, year after year, and deprived of all the decencies and comforts of life, still I lived on, only occasionally suffering from temporary indisposition. I look back now mentally to those times and think it

Starting point is 00:07:36 perfectly miraculous how it could have been. I should mention that these quotations come from Buckley's autobiography, which was written for him by a Tasmanian newspaper editor named John Morgan near the end of his life. Buckley himself was illiterate. Most of what we know about Buckley comes from this book. Historically, there's been some debate as to how much faith we should put in it, but it's now thought to be fairly reliable. For many years, Buckley's life among the natives went on in this way, and he found himself getting more and more attached to them. In time, he became an expert in fishing and fluent in the aboriginal language. When his brother-in-law and his wife and their son were killed in an especially savage fight,

Starting point is 00:08:08 he wrote, I should have been most brutally unfeeling had I not suffered the deepest mental anguish from the loss of these poor people, who had all along been so kind and good to me. I am not ashamed to say that for several hours my tears flowed in torrents and that for a long time I wept unceasingly. He wrote later, I had now passed so many years in this sort of way, more I should think that five and twenty, and had got so much accustomed to this kind of life as to have forgotten the use of my own language, and began to be careless about everything civilized, fancying I could never return to a better kind of existence or to the intercourse of any other society than that of the tribes if I was again forced into communication with them. The natives

Starting point is 00:08:42 had told him long before that the ship that had brought him had left the bay and that the settlement it had founded had been abandoned. He did keep an eye out for other ships that might pass by, but he saw none. He said, although so desolately placed, I, for a long time, fancied myself comparatively happy, and that I could gladly have ended my days there. If I had had books, they would have been totally useless, having forgotten all the little knowledge I had learned in my early days. Therefore, I could only seek my food, eat, drink, and sleep. But how I could have passed so long a time in such a way is to me now a matter of bewildering astonishment. There were chapters in his life, but most of it was peaceful and happy. In time, he built a hut of his own near

Starting point is 00:09:16 a river where he built a weir and lived on fish, joined occasionally by friendly tribesmen. Eventually, they married him to a widow about 20 years old without consulting him, but she was taken by some other men, as often happened among these people. He took charge of a little blind boy and a girl, children of his supposed brother-in-law. The little boy was eventually killed in a fight, and the girl was betrothed to another native, and he was joined for a time by a young native woman who had run away from her own tribe. During all of this, he'd seen no ship on the coast, nor heard of one, and he'd renounced all hope of rejoining civilization. He wrote, I had seen a race on the coast, nor heard of one, and he'd renounced all hope of rejoining civilization. He wrote, I had seen a race of children grow up into women and men, and many of the old people die away,

Starting point is 00:09:49 and by my harmless and peaceable manner amongst them had acquired great influence in settling their disputes. Numbers of murderous fights I had prevented by my interference, which was received by them as well-meant, so much so that they would often allow me to go amongst them previous to a battle and take away their spears and wadis and boomerangs. would often allow me to go amongst them previous to a battle and take away their spears and wadis and boomerangs. My visits were always welcomed, and they kindly and often supplied me with a portion of the provisions they had, assuring me in their language of the interest they took in my welfare. But one day in the interior, he met a group of natives carrying a flag. He asked them about it, and they said they'd seen a vessel at anchor in Port Phillip Bay and had slipped aboard while the crew were ashore. A few days later, Buckley himself saw the ship. He made a fire on the beach and could see men on deck looking at him, but they

Starting point is 00:10:28 didn't respond. Apparently they were wary of mischief since their ship had been robbed. Buckley couldn't hail him and identify himself because he'd forgotten all his English. This was maddening. He wrote, all that day and night I continued making signals, my heart ready to break with grief and anxiety, seeing all my efforts futile. The next day the strangers took a boat to the shore to cut wood, but had left the shore again by the time he got there. He wrote, only laughing at my violent gesticulations and unintelligible cries, little thinking who I was or that I was any other than I appeared to be in my native dress. He gave up and went back to his tribe. The vessel stayed in the bay for several more days, which Buckley called a period to me of

Starting point is 00:11:02 indescribable misery. He never found out what the ship was, where it had come from, or where it was headed. A few months later, he learned that two men had somehow been left behind when the ship had departed. The natives had tried to explain to them that a white man lived among them, but they couldn't make them understand, and the men had eventually headed inland, where Buckley later learned they were murdered. He grieved at this, as he was sure he could have saved them. One day not long after this, he was gathering roots when two boys approached him who had colored handkerchiefs tied around their spears. They said they'd met a group of men who had been left behind by a ship. They said the men had put up two white houses, by which they probably meant tents, and had many interesting provisions, blankets, and other items, some of which they'd

Starting point is 00:11:36 given to another tribe. The local natives were organizing a party to murder the white people and get their property. Buckley couldn't think how to warn the white men, and he knew that if the natives understood he was doing this, they'd consider it treachery, and he'd forgotten his English. But finally he resolved to go to them. They were 15 miles away, so he reached their camp the following day. He saw they had the British colors hoisted on a staff. One of the settlers, William Todd, wrote in his diary, On Buckley's coming to the place, he was observed by one of the men, and it was with no little surprise, if not with a mixture of fear, that he and the other men contemplated the approach of a man so gigantic in appearance and whose general aspect, erect as he was and enveloped in his kangaroo-skin rug, with his long beard and a head of hair thirty-three years' growth, and bearing his spears, shield, and clubs, was well calculated to instill fear into anyone.

Starting point is 00:12:23 One of the settlers came up and asked him questions which he couldn't understand, but when the man offered him bread, calling it by its name, Buckley said, a cloud appeared to pass from over my brain, and I soon repeated that and other English words after him. When they understood that he wasn't native-born, they took him to their tents and gave him clothing, biscuits, tea, and meat. In a day or two, he was at home with them and made himself as useful as he could, telling them about the surrounding country, but almost immediately was caught up in a drama between the two sides. The natives were planning to attack the settlers and said that they'd kill him too if he didn't join in. But he was fearful of warning the settlers for fear that they'd respond with violence when they were badly outnumbered. In the end, he convinced the natives to wait until the ship returned when

Starting point is 00:12:58 he said they would have many presents, and he arranged for the whites to fulfill this promise by giving them bread, blankets, and other valuables. Buckley now became a sort of diplomat between the two sides as the whites began to build a settlement. Buckley had told them he was a castaway seaman because he feared they'd shoot him if they knew the truth. Now he confessed that he was an escaped convict from the 1803 settlement, and, thankful for his help, they promised to seek a pardon for him. In time, they were ordered to move the settlement to the right bank of the Yarrow River, where it would eventually grow into the city of Melbourne. In fact, he was able to put his old trade of bricklaying

Starting point is 00:13:27 to work. The settler John Hepburn wrote, Buckley built chimneys of bricks imported from Van Diemen's land for Mr. Batman. This, I consider, constituted the foundation of the capital of Victoria, which seems to have been entirely lost sight of, but nevertheless is true. He was also engaged as an interpreter at 50 pounds a year, and emigrants began to arrive from Sydney and Van Diemen's Land, especially as word was spreading that this country offered excellent pasturage for sheep and cattle, and he helped to arrange for some of the natives to work in helping to build the settlement in exchange for goods. There are eyewitness accounts by settlers of Buckley's interactions with the natives that show their affection for him. On February 4, 1836, Buckley led the explorer Joseph Gellibrand on a trip to Geelong.

Starting point is 00:14:04 Gellibrand wrote, We started very early this morning under the expectation that we should see the natives, and in order that they should not be frightened, I directed Buckley to advance, and we would follow him at a distance of a quarter of a mile. Buckley made towards a native well, and after he had ridden about eight miles, we heard a coo-ee, and when we arrived at the spot, I witnessed one of the most pleasing and affecting sights. There were three men, five women, and about twelve children Buckley had dismounted, and they were all clinging around him in tears of joy and delight running down their cheeks. It was truly an affecting sight and proved the affection which these people entertained for Buckley. But as time went on, Buckley came to feel that he was caught

Starting point is 00:14:36 between these two worlds. The Europeans saw him as a savage and an ex-convict, and the Aborigines saw him as a friend who had rejected them for the whites. These tensions came to a head in April 1837 when someone hamstrung his horse, which was a grave crime at the time. He couldn't see a way to resolve this, so with a heavy heart he resigned that October and emigrated to Hobart in Tasmania. William Goodall, superintendent of the Aboriginal station at Framlingham, wrote, when Buckley was taken away in the ship, the natives were much distressed at losing him, and when, sometime after, they received a letter informing them of his marriage in Hobart Town, they lost all hope of his return to them and grieved accordingly. In Tasmania, he reunited with a friend from the Calcutta and got work as a

Starting point is 00:15:13 storekeeper's assistant and then as a gatekeeper at a hospital and a nursery. He retired in 1850 and got by on some modest pensions and eventually told a story to John Morgan, who published it in 1852. Three years later, in December 1855, Buckley was fatally injured when he fell from a carriage and he died at home in Hobart the following month at age 76. His name lives on in Australian slang with the saying, you've got Buckley's chance, which means a very small chance or no chance at all. In the last two episodes, we covered the follow-up to the main story from episode 182. But we also had some follow-up from that episode on the story of how Christian Eichmann, with the help of some chickens, helped discover that beriberi was caused by a vitamin B1 deficiency. Shane Bell wrote,

Starting point is 00:16:07 The Wikipedia article on Takaki Kanahiro glances over a lot of the difficulty of getting the Japanese Navy to accept that beriberi was not caused by bacterial infection, but it's a pretty cool story. Basically, around the turn of the century in Japan, it was fashionable to eat polished white rice, and much of the Japanese Navy suffered from beriberi. This did turn out to be a rather interesting story. In the 1880s, around the same time that Eikman was puzzling over his sick chickens in Indonesia, Japanese naval physician Takaki Kanahiro was trying to solve the pressing problem of beriberi in Japan, as one-third of the navy was suffering

Starting point is 00:16:45 from this serious and potentially deadly disease. Similar to Eikman, Takaki eventually narrowed in on diet as the most likely factor, although unlike Eikman, who took many years to give up his belief that bacteria were somehow the culprit, Takaki more quickly realized that there was likely some nutritional deficiency at work. Unfortunately, he had to battle the prevailing bacteriological beliefs of others in the Japanese medical community, and it took some work for him to finally convince the Navy to at least try his recommendation of a different diet. Cost was an issue here, as the Navy didn't see the point of spending so much money on the more expensive foods Takaki was proposing, as well as opposition by those who

Starting point is 00:17:25 didn't actually want to change their primarily rice diets. But after a rather fraught voyage in 1883, in which 169 sailors out of a 376-member crew were sickened with beriberi, the Navy agreed to a trial of the new diet. Another ship would sail the same route as the last one, during the same time of year, only this time with the new rations that Takaki had fought for. This was all actually quite a gamble for him, with his reputation and good name on the line, and he had many sleepless nights while waiting to hear the fate of the second crew. As it turned out, he was quite vindicated. Accounts vary slightly, but it seems that only about 14 sailors in this new crew of 333 developed beriberi, and they were those who had refused to eat the new foods. So the Navy was

Starting point is 00:18:11 pretty convinced, adopted the new diet, and practically eliminated beriberi within a few years. Unfortunately, the Japanese army persisted in its belief that beriberi represented an infectious disease, and was not quite as quick to replace its rations. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905, more than 250,000 soldiers were hospitalized with beriberi before the army decided to follow the navy's example. An article in the Journal of Nutrition notes that although Takaki had not managed to discover vitamins, he was the first person to produce actual evidence that suggested their existence, well before Eichmann and the other Europeans,

Starting point is 00:18:50 whose combined efforts led to the discovery of vitamins in general, and B1 in particular. I had thought it was unfair enough that Eichmann was the main person to get credit in the Berry Berry story, winning the Nobel Prize and being remembered as the one who had discovered the link with B1, despite the very significant contributions by several others. So I appreciated Shane's pointing out that there is someone else who has managed to get overlooked even more than some of Iqman's European contemporaries. Jason Bukata and Tom Stewart both sent us a link to a very interesting story about another nutrition-related disease. Tom said, Hello podcats and podfeline. I was struck by your discussion of the difficulties in breaking out of

Starting point is 00:19:32 established ways of thinking in your discussion of the discovery of vitamin B-related deficiency diseases. There is another slightly older example of this related to vitamin C and scurvy, beautifully written up here. I took so much away from this article, not just the difficulty in thinking in new ways and how easily hard-won knowledge can be lost, but also the terror scurvy must have put in the hearts of sailors without the knowledge of its cause. Thanks so much for all your work on the podcast. Interestingly, the very well-written article by Maciej Seguowski that Jason and Tom referenced was inspired by the author's rereading The Worst Journey in the World, the book that had inspired Greg's story in episode 173 about Robert Falcon Scott's second Antarctic expedition

Starting point is 00:20:17 and the struggle to acquire penguins. Scurvy is a potentially fatal disease that has likely afflicted humans sporadically throughout all of history with the first written accounts of it dating back to 1500 BCE in Egypt but scurvy became a truly pernicious problem for sailors when maritime voyages started getting increasingly long Vasco da Gama for example lost two-thirds of his crude to scurvy in 1499, and Magellan lost more than 80% of his in 1520. And this is because humans are one of a small group of animals that need to get vitamin C from food, rather than being able to synthesize it themselves. Many fresh foods contain at least some vitamin C, but the nutrient breaks down quickly from light, heat, or air, and so is

Starting point is 00:21:02 lacking in most preserved foods that have been cooked or dried. Copper speeds up its destruction even more, which would have further increased the susceptibility of sailors who often used copper cooking containers. Seguovsky notes that he'd been taught that scurvy had been finally conquered in 1747, when Scottish physician James Lynn had proved in one of the first controlled medical experiments that citrus fruit was able to cure the disease. So he was confused to read that scurvy was a significant problem in Scott's 1911 expedition, with the expedition doctors clearly quite ignorant of what caused scurvy or how to treat it. Seguofsky says, Somehow, a highly trained group of scientists at the start of the 20th century

Starting point is 00:21:44 knew less about scurvy than the average sea captain in Napoleonic times. Scurvy had gone from being understood as a dietary deficiency to suddenly seeming to be a rather unpredictable disease. Although Lind had clearly demonstrated the citrus cure for scurvy in the mid-18th century, it took more than 40 years of experiments, analysis, and politics for the British Royal Navy to implement his findings, and it wasn't until 1795 that they started requiring that sailors be provided with lemon juice. The effect was pretty significant. In 1780, there had been 1,456 scurvy cases admitted to the Hassler Naval Hospital. From 1806 to 1810, there were two. So pretty

Starting point is 00:22:28 significant difference. Unfortunately, in the 1860s, the British Admiralty began replacing the lemon juice they'd been using with a much less effective lime juice. As had been the case with beriberi, there was no clear understanding of what the nature of scurvy was. Even after citrus was shown to be effective, lacking an understanding of what the nature of scurvy was. Even after citrus was shown to be effective, lacking an understanding of even the concept of vitamins, it was widely thought that it was the acidity that was the significant factor. So replacing Mediterranean lemons with an even more acidic Caribbean lime seemed like a good idea,

Starting point is 00:22:58 even beyond the political motivations of wanting to purchase from British colonies. Unfortunately, these limes contained much less vitamin C, and after spending periods of time in tanks open to the air and then being pumped through copper tubing, the juice probably lacked any of the vitamin at all. It's interesting that they work out what works long before they understand why it works, you know? Well, I guess that makes sense. You don't know even where to look until you find something that does work. Yeah. After switching to the limes, what this meant was that scurvy again became a significant problem. George Neres' Arctic Expedition in 1875 was a disaster after scurvy struck many in the party, despite the use of the lime juice. Seguofsky notes that the very ubiquity of vitamin C made it harder to understand.

Starting point is 00:23:43 Various foods seemed to help with scurvy with no clear pattern among them. Even fresh meat, particularly organ meat, contains enough vitamin C to beat the disease, further confusing the association of scurvy with the lack of fresh greens. Seguofsky says, unless you already understand and believe in the vitamin model of nutrition, the notion of a trace substance that exists in both fresh limes and bear kidneys, but is absent from a cask of lime juice because you happen to prepare it in a copper vessel begins to sound pretty contrived. Quite a list of causes and treatments of scurvies were proposed over the centuries, but after the new bacteria model of illness began to take hold, the tomaine theory of scurvy was

Starting point is 00:24:24 born. Tomaine was thought to be a noxious waste product of bacteria, and it was thought that tomaine poisoning could occur from poorly preserved meats, possibly exacerbated by certain environmental factors such as darkness or intense exertion. Citrus juice prevented scurvy, it was thought, because its acidity either denatured the tomaines or killed the bacteria that produced them. So this was the thinking about scurvy that guided Scott's preparations for his Antarctic expeditions, which explains why the disease struck, despite all of his careful attempts to prevent it. Interestingly, the discovery of vitamin C and its role in scurvy ties back to beriberi. Two Norwegian physicians studying beriberi serendipitously chose guinea pigs to experiment on.

Starting point is 00:25:06 Guinea pigs are another species that don't produce their own vitamin C, but require it in their diet. So while trying to induce beriberi in guinea pigs in 1907, Axel Holst and Theodor Frohlich accidentally produced scurvy. And finding this animal model to experiment on was a turning point in the study of the disease, especially after Kazimierz Funk developed the concept of vitamins in 1912. And incidentally, I had briefly mentioned the contribution of guinea pigs to the discovery of vitamin C in episode 106 in my discussion of the animals and their ill-fitting name. Overall, as Tom said, one of the lessons of the history of scurvy is how easily hard-won knowledge can be lost.

Starting point is 00:25:46 Or, as Seguofsky put it, we tend to think that knowledge, once acquired, is something permanent. Instead, even holding on to it requires constant, careful effort. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We're always sorry that we can't use all the email we get on the show, but we really appreciate getting so much interesting email from our super interesting listeners. So if you have anything of interest that you'd like to send, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle.

Starting point is 00:26:22 I am going to give him an odd sounding situation, and he has to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Miles. A common form of synesthesia involves associating colors with letters or vice versa, as in seeing the letter A will make the viewer think of the color red while the letter B invokes orange. Because there are so many possible combinations of colors and letters, the odds of two people having the same color letter combinations for the whole alphabet should be extremely unlikely. However, researchers were surprised to discover that a large group of people have very similar color and letter associations. Why? That's really interesting. Yeah, there's a specific reason for it.

Starting point is 00:27:04 I think there's a tangent. I think that happens in music. Like if you have synesthesia for music, like you hear an E major is associated with the green or something consistently from person to person. I might be wrong about that. But that always fascinated me. Like why on earth should that be? Okay, so consistently across people, they associate certain letters with the same colors.

Starting point is 00:27:22 Yes, and they were thinking that wouldn't happen randomly no that people would have you know one person's a would be red and another person's would be green but they found a group of people that have a lot of overlap and there is a very specific reason that they were able to trace it to with okay within a within a certain group of people though yes yes who have some similar past experience, I guess? Yes. As children? Yes.

Starting point is 00:27:51 You're doing great. Is it something to do with a shared resource that they all used in learning to read or learning the letters? I would say yes. That just popped into my head. Yes, yes. So it's either television or some book or something that's very influential. No. Neither of those. Neither of those, but something along those lines say yes. That's just popped into my head. Yes, yeah. So it's either television or some book or something that's very influential. No. Neither of those.

Starting point is 00:28:06 Neither of those, but something along those lines, yes. I mean, what do kids use? Like, they still use alphabet blocks? Probably not. Something along those lines. A toy? Yeah, kind of like a toy. I'm sure you've seen these, if you can think.

Starting point is 00:28:21 Okay, but just to close the loop there. All these kids, all these people as children used the same- They did. Where, say just to close the loop there. Yeah. All these kids, all these people as children used the same... They did. Where, say, A was always red. Yes. And somehow that got imprinted on them. Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:32 That's very interesting right there. So what remains is I have to figure out what it was. You say it's a toy of some kind, but not alphabet blocks. Not alphabet blocks, but it was of the alphabet. I don't know if you're going to think of this or not.

Starting point is 00:28:44 I know you've seen them. I'm i have there's so many ways to teach kids the letters i'm just trying to go through them all um maybe i should just tell you because you've got the gist of it yeah i think that's the basic idea it was uh the fisher price a refrigerator magnet set oh yeah miles says fisher price sold an extremely popular set of refrigerator magnets in America from 1971 to 1990. This set consisted of the alphabet and was designed to help kids learn to read. Each letter of the alphabet was a different bright color and all sets were identical. Adult synesthetes who were kids in the U.S. when these magnets were popular are more likely to have color letter associations that mirror those of the alphabet magnets.

Starting point is 00:29:23 What does that mean? Well, this is Miles included a link to an article on discovermagazine.com, so I was reading that because I was wondering what that means too. And they say that they don't, they're not saying that playing with the colored letters leads to the development of synesthesia or that synesthesia is learned. They just think that their research suggests that the people who are predisposed to the condition are incorporating cues from their environment that happen to shape their individual letter-color pairings. But what they found was that more than 6% of Americans' synesthetes

Starting point is 00:29:56 have color associations that match a particular one of those magnet sets. And the proportion is even higher for those born during the toy's peak popularity from 1975 to 1980, which is 15% of that cohort of synesthetes have those specific. And you have to imagine that not all kids played with those magnets.

Starting point is 00:30:16 So that's a pretty high proportion, 15% of them, because given all the different letter color combinations there could be, yeah, the odds for that would be pretty rare. I how they even figured that out like even thought to look at that oh maybe there's something in their past that they all had in common yeah i don't know i think i think it was that they noted that that different synesthetes were showing some overlap yeah and they were looking into what it was and it turned out that it matched these fisher price magnets that's really interesting so thanks so much to Miles for that very interesting and completely non-fatal puzzle.

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Futility Closet - 189-The "Wild White Man"

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