Futility Closet - 204-Mary Anning's Fossils

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 a mathematical bridge to Mark Twain's Christmas. This is episode 204. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1804, when she was five years old, Mary Anning began to dig in the cliffs that flanked her English seaside town. What she found amazed the scientists of her time and challenged the established view of world

Starting point is 00:00:37 history. In today's show, we'll tell the story of the greatest fossilist the world ever knew. We'll also try to identify a Norwegian commando and puzzle over some further string pulling. In the late 18th century, the world's history was well understood. God had created the earth about 6,000 years ago with all the species that we see today. Animals didn't change and they didn't die out, since an extinction would mean that God's creation wasn't perfect. If the skeleton of an unknown creature came to light, it must have come from a distant place, or possibly it had been placed there by God as a test of faith. The idea of a deeper history was just beginning to take hold. It was only in 1795 that geologist James Hutton proposed the notion of a past and present in which, he said,

Starting point is 00:01:23 geologist James Hutton proposed the notion of a past and present in which, he said, we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end. Into this world in 1799 was born a girl named Mary Anning. She was born to a poor cabinetmaker in Lyme Regis, a village on the southern coast of England where her father liked scouring the beach for oddities which he'd gather to sell to tourists as souvenirs. By the time she was five or six, Mary had become his regular companion on these trips. He even made a little pick for her so she could dig for herself in the cliffs that stood on either side of the town. Those cliffs, known as the Blue Laius, were made of limestone and shale, and as rainwater seeped through them, they were constantly crumbling and sliding into the ocean. As one local farmer put it, all this land is in love with the sea. As they crumbled, the cliffs

Starting point is 00:02:03 turned up little treasures, which the local people gave fanciful names, like snake stones, cupid wings, stone lilies, and ladies' fingers. They called these things fossils, but at the time that only meant things that had been dug up from the ground. No one knew what they were or why they appeared in such numbers at Lyme Regis. The reason lay some 200 million years in the past, when southern Britain lay near the equator, submerged under a subtropical sea full of strange creatures. When the creatures died, the remains fell to the

Starting point is 00:02:29 sea floor and were buried. Then, over unthinkable ages, they were drawn northward and pressed into the cliffs that now flanked Mary Little Village. The cliffs made up one of the most geologically unstable coastlines in the world, where high tides and strong storms carried away two to three feet of earth each year. And that brought these forgotten creatures to light again, just as scientists were starting to suspect that time was much deeper than we'd thought. Mary didn't know any of this, but she knew how to find fossils. When her father died in 1810 at age 44, he left behind a pregnant wife, his two children, and a large debt. Mary was only 11, but after a lady gave her half a crown for a spiral shell,

Starting point is 00:03:05 she began roving the coast each day looking for more curiosities that she could sell to earn money. One summer day in 1811, just after Mary turned 12, her brother Joseph was prospecting alone when he unearthed an enormous skull. It was four feet long and had huge eyes and more than 200 teeth. He ran back to town and got some local men to help him dig it out and bring it home. He believed it had belonged to a crocodile, but Mary had her doubts, and she returned to the site later, where she began to uncover its skeleton. She found that its backbone was made up of 60 vertebrae. It wasn't a crocodile, but an unknown creature 17 feet long. Over the ensuing months, she unearthed the whole thing with help from local workmen. When it was completely excavated, it took several men to carry it to her father's shop. It had the flippers of a dolphin,

Starting point is 00:03:48 the mouth of a crocodile, and a pointed snout like a swordfish. In fact, it was an ichthyosaur, the first one to be known by the scientific community of London. She sold it for 23 pounds, the equivalent of several thousand pounds today, which was enough to feed the family for six months and begin to pay off some of their debts. The skeleton was exhibited in a London Museum of Natural Curiosities, which was the nearest thing in Mary's area to a natural history museum. The ichthyosaur posed a challenge to the Christian understanding of the world. No one could remember seeing such a creature before. How could Mary have found an animal that no longer existed when God had created the world just as it was today?

Starting point is 00:04:23 The Geological Society of London had been founded in 1807 to consider such questions. It was now becoming influential, but it didn't admit women, even as guests. Sir Everard Holme, England's leading anatomist, thanked the people who had bought the skeleton from Mary, but never acknowledged Mary herself for finding it. And he thanked the museum for cleaning it so carefully, though that had been Mary's work too. Because she was poor, Mary lacked the education and position to name her discoveries herself. She wasn't even named in the scholarly papers that other people wrote about the ichthyosaur. But she read whatever she could find

Starting point is 00:04:53 about the puzzling new questions that were confronting science. If she could get hold of a geology article, she'd transcribe it into her journal, and within a few years of receiving her first geology book, at age 14, she began to master anatomy, animal morphology, and science illustration. On her kitchen table, she dissected dead squid, cuttlefish, and other soft-bodied cephalopods to learn what they ate, how they lived, and how their bones and muscles moved. Outside on the beach, years of experience had taught her to judge the best places to find fossils, and that gave her insights that the armchair theorists didn't have. The science writer John Murray wrote, I once gladly availed myself of a geological excursion and was not a

Starting point is 00:05:28 little surprised at her geological tact and acumen. A single glance at the edge of a fossil peeping from the blue lias revealed to her the nature of the fossil and its name and character were instantly announced. Also, Mary had learned to extract them from the rock with patience and care. She did a lot of her work in the winter months, when the cliffs tended to erode most rapidly. She wore a battered top hat and a cloak, with multiple skirts to keep out the cold, and had to search each new landslide for fossils quickly

Starting point is 00:05:54 before they could be lost to the sea. This was very dangerous. Her father had once fallen from a cliff, and her dog Trey was eventually killed in a landslide. Mary's friend Anna Maria Pinney wrote in her journal, Mary goes out just before the waters begin to ebb, and we climb down to places which I'd have thought impossible to have descended had I been alone. The wind was high, the ground slippery, the waves beating against the church cliffs as we went down. Our dangers were by no means over,

Starting point is 00:06:17 for when we had clambered to the bottom of the corporation wall, we had frequently to walk along the blue-lias cliffs, where there was just room to stand and no more, the sea being behind us. In one place, we had to make haste to pass between the dashing of two waves. Before I knew what she meant to do, she caught me with one arm around the waist and carried me for some distance with the same ease as you would a baby. Between 1815 and 1819, when she wasn't even 20, she unearthed several more complete specimens of ichthyosaur, some tiny and some large, which allowed geologists to study their anatomy more closely. One of these ichthyosaurs was bought by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas James Birch, a well-to-do collector who would take into visiting Mary and her mother and buying specimens

Starting point is 00:06:54 from them. The family were desperately poor, and he decided to sell off his own fossils to support them. He wrote to a fellow geologist, Gideon Mantell, I am going to sell my collection for the benefit of the poor woman and her son and daughter at Lyme, who have in truth found almost all the fine things which have been submitted to scientific investigation. When I went to Charmouth and Lyme last summer, I found these people in considerable difficulty on the act of selling their furniture to pay their rent, in consequence of their not having found one good fossil for near a twelve-month. I may never again possess what I am about to part with, yet in doing so I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that the money will be well applied. The three-day sale drew record interest, and Birch sold 102 items for 400 pounds, about $50,000 today. He gave it all to the Annings, which gave them some financial security as well as a big boost in publicity and business. A year and a half after the auction, in early 1821, Mary found a five-foot ichthyosaur which went to the British Museum. Within the next year, she found three more, one of them 20 feet long. As before, all these finds were credited to the gentleman collectors who bought them from her.

Starting point is 00:07:53 Eventually, it would be understood that the ichthyosaurs she was finding were of different species, but at the time they weren't considered spectacular, and the Annings were beginning to face competition from other fossil hunters, which increased their worries about money. In September 1821, Mary's mother had to write to the curator at the British Museum to beg him to pay for an ichthyosaur that he'd purchased. She wrote, As I am a widow woman and my chief dependents for supporting my family being by the sale of the fossils, I hope you will not be offended by my wishing to receive the money for the last fossil, as I assure you, sir, I stand much in need of it. Mary would go on to find several more ichthyosaurs, but scientifically, her most important discovery

Starting point is 00:08:28 occurred on December 10, 1823, when she unearthed the remains of a curious creature nine feet long and six feet wide, with a head only four to five inches long. She'd found remnants of this type of creature before, but never a skull, and often the bones had been in poor condition. This was a complete skeleton. The geologist William Buckland arranged for it to be shipped to London, and Mary was paid 110 pounds, the highest price she'd ever fetched for a single fossil. Buckland was fascinated by the creature, which he described as a serpent threaded through a turtle. He wrote, to the head of the lizard, it united the teeth of the crocodile, a neck of enormous length, resembling the body of a serpent, a trunk and tail having the proportions

Starting point is 00:09:03 of an ordinary quadruped, the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles of a whale. What it was was a plesiosaur, a creature entirely different from any sort of existing animal, and its discovery increased Mary's respect and legitimacy in the scientific community. Her finds were now sought not only by scientists and museums, but by European nobles who collected curiosities, and even by American museum curators. She was still excluded from the formal scientific discussions in London, but she kept digging and kept studying anatomy by cutting up modern fish and studying the bones of ancient animals. In 1824, she wrote to the British Museum to ask for a full list of its collection, and there are reports that she studied French, so she might try to contact Georges Cuvier,

Starting point is 00:09:42 the influential French naturalist, in his own language. After visiting Mary in 1824, Lady Harriet Sylvester, the widow of the former recorder of the City of London, wrote in her diary, The extraordinary thing in this young woman is that she has made herself so thoroughly acquainted with the science that the moment she finds any bones, she knows to what tribe they belong. She fixes the bones on a frame with cement and then makes drawings and has them engraved. It is certainly a wonderful instance of divine favor that this poor ignorant girl should be so blessed, for by reading and application she has arrived to that degree of knowledge as to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject,

Starting point is 00:10:16 and they all acknowledge that she understands more of the science than anyone else in this kingdom. In Lyme Regis, Mary's mother had always run the business end of the family's fossil hunting enterprise, but by the mid-1820s, Mary had begun to take charge. They lived in the center of town where they kept a table of curiosity set up outside the house, but Mary's father had always dreamed of opening a proper fossil shop with a glass window in which he could display his finds. In 1826, when she was 27, Mary bought a cottage farther from the sea and named it Anning's Fossil Depot with a glass window in the front, just as he'd always wanted. And her discoveries continued.

Starting point is 00:10:48 In 1828, she unearthed what Buckland called a monster resembling nothing that has ever been seen or heard of upon Earth, excepting the dragons of romance and heraldry. It was the four-foot skeleton of a flying reptile, a pterosaur, the first such specimen found outside Germany and the first complete remains to be found anywhere. Buckland described the creature in the Transactions of the Geological Society in February 1829. He noted that Mary had found it, but he himself was given credit for the discovery. That December, she made her fourth major discovery, a new fish, Squaloraja polyspondylo, which was an ancestor to both the shark and the ray. At the end of 1830, she found yet another

Starting point is 00:11:23 species of plesiosaur, her fifth major discovery, and two years later she found the skull of a 30-foot ichthyosaur. The fossil hunter Thomas Hawkins, who later unearthed that skeleton, wrote of her, this lady, devoting herself to science, explored the frowning and precipitous cliffs there, when the furious springtide conspired with the howling tempest to overthrow them, and rescued from the gaping ocean, sometimes at the peril of her life, the few specimens which originated all the fact and ingenious theories. Throughout this period, Mary was receiving visits by eminent scientists, including Louis Agassiz,

Starting point is 00:11:57 Gideon Mantel, and Richard Owen. In 1838, Buckland convinced the British Association for the Advancement of Science to give her an annuity, and the Geological Society of London made her an honorary member, though being a woman, she was not allowed to become a regular member. When she wrote her name in the pocketbook of the visiting German physician Karl Gustav Karls, she was able to add, I am well known throughout the whole of Europe. Incidentally, it's often claimed that Mary Anning inspired the tongue twister She Sells Seashells by the Seashore, which was written by Terry Sullivan in 1908. I can't say for sure that that's false, but I'm not sure it's true.

Starting point is 00:12:24 I don't think that's known for certain. In 1846, after a long career, she finally grew ill. William Buckland persuaded the Geological Society to make a special fund for her, but she died of breast cancer on March 9, 1847, at the age of 47. She was given an official obituary in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, an unprecedented honor for a woman and a non-member. In his address the following year, the president of the society praised her contributions, but the organization did not admit women for another 72 years. Ben Franklin said that if you want to be remembered, you should either do something

Starting point is 00:12:57 worth writing about or write something worth reading, because in the long run, it's only what gets written down that survives. Mary Anning did something worth writing about. She found four ichthyosaurs, two plesiosaurs, and a pterosaur, plus squaloraja, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other fossils. But she was a woman, an uneducated, poor woman, who spoke a regional dialect, and most of her finds ended up in museums and private collections without credit to her. She knew most of the leading geologists of her day, but her gender and lack of education prevented her from publishing and kept her out of the Geological Society, where the new science of paleontology was most intensively discussed. Instead, men wrote up her finds, and men got the credit for her discoveries.

Starting point is 00:13:34 Her friend Anna Maria Pinney wrote, To be fair, none of this was malicious or mean-spirited. The male scientists she worked with were actively grateful for her contributions. They praised her publicly, and some of them made efforts to reward her. But until William Buckland convinced the establishment to give her an annuity, her family were nearly destitute. Because her contributions weren't documented, as time passed, they began to be forgotten by the scientific community and by most historians. After 1885, her private papers were distributed as curiosities, and as late as 1930, one local historian described her as a handmaid of scientific men. Today, she's begun to take her proper place in the history of paleontology,

Starting point is 00:14:15 but the record of her contributions is still sadly incomplete. The skull of her first ichthyosaur is on display at the Natural History Museum of London, but its body has been lost. Her fourth notebook survives, but the first three are gone. Her plesiosaur is also at the Natural History Museum of London, but its body has been lost. Her fourth notebook survives, but the first three are gone. Her plesiosaur is also at the Natural History Museum, but the pterosaur is not on display, and her squaloradra was destroyed during World War II. But the importance of her role is finally becoming fully recognized. Today, there are more biographical works written about Mary Anning than any other British or Irish geologist other than Charles Darwin. In 2010, the Royal Society named her one of the 10 most influential women scientists in British history, and the Natural History Museum calls her the greatest fossil hunter ever known.

Starting point is 00:14:52 In her home village, Lyme Regis, there's now a road named after her, and the local museum presents exhibits about her discoveries. And a stained glass window in the Lyme Parish Church honors her memory. Our podcast really relies on the support of our listeners. So if you value our efforts to help keep alive stories like those of Mary Anning that we think should not be forgotten, please consider becoming a patron to help support the show. You can check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the link in our show notes.

Starting point is 00:15:32 And thanks so much to all of our supporters who enable us to tell these stories. Our show has been noticeably bear-less since episode 199, and we're about to rectify that. Keith Snodgrass wrote, Dear Greg, Sharon, and Sasha, I love the continuing coverage of bears. As an information management professional, I must ask why bears is not listed as a category on your webpage right sidebar. So bear story. My in-laws owned a house on the north shore of Lake Tahoe in Nevada.

Starting point is 00:16:07 They returned from grocery shopping one day and my father-in-law carried the first couple of bags of groceries from the garage to the house while my mother-in-law started to organize the other bags. My father-in-law entered the kitchen where he encountered

Starting point is 00:16:20 an approximately 600 pound mama bear who had torn off the screen door to gain entry. Mama Bear was at the kitchen sink and immediately ran back outside when her presence caused my father-in-law to exclaim loudly, investigation revealed that Mama Bear had carefully opened all the kitchen cabinets, found a very large bottle of chondroitin, and had eaten it. Perhaps she had barethritis. She also ate quite a few still-wrapped thin mints. Otherwise, the only damage was the screen door. They really can be graceful creatures. Thanks for the podcast. I always enjoy it. Chondroitin is a supplement

Starting point is 00:16:56 that's taken for arthritis, and it's generally made from animal cartilage, so I guess that's why the bear was interested in it, unless, as Keith suggested, it happened to have arthritis. It's interesting how some of the bear stories we've heard do mention that bears did very little damage to the area. It seems like it's mostly when they can't get to the food that they smell or when they get trapped, like in a vehicle, that then they tend to do a lot more damage. I wonder what the bears think is happening in a situation like that. I guess they don't think about it. But it must be very strange for them to just find these foods in, I guess, what they think is a cave somewhere and have the owners come back. I also thought that if the bears were going to be tearing the doors off, then the question of what kind of doorknob is on the door is actually kind of moot at this point.

Starting point is 00:17:41 Good point. André Kordemusch sent us a link to another bear story, this one from New Jersey. On May 10th, a black bear in Rockaway Township smashed the window of an SUV and ate two dozen cupcakes that a baker had made for a special order, leaving behind a paw print and some smeared icing. WFAA, a Dallas, Texas TV station, posted the story on their website and tweeted it out and was amazed at the reaction that they got. On May 12th, they posted an article that said, sometimes a piece of journalism is so important and profound that its impact is felt far and wide

Starting point is 00:18:17 among readers. Other times, all it takes is a story about a bear eating a bunch of cupcakes. They noted that it didn't matter that the cupcake heist happened more than 1,500 miles from Dallas. The story got a flood of Twitter mentions, many of which were in support of the bear, such as, not so fast, WFAA. The bear allegedly smashed a car window and ate two dozen cupcakes. Let a jury of his bear peer decide.

Starting point is 00:18:44 And I need to hear the bear's side. Thank you. And challenge accepted, which I guess refers to trying to eat 24 cupcakes in one sitting. I'm not sure what the challenge was otherwise. The baker whose cupcakes they actually were was mostly concerned that she didn't want anything to happen to the bear, as sometimes in these types of situations the bears are put down. So she even created a special cupcake that looks like a bear face in honor of the event and was tweeting using the hashtag Save Mr. Bear. So clearly no hard feelings.

Starting point is 00:19:18 After I read the story that Andra sent the link to, I was trying to learn more about it and googled bear ate cupcakes thinking, well, how many bear and cupcake stories could there be, right? So the answer to that turns out to be at least two. Back in June 2014, a bear fell through a living room skylight in Juneau, Alaska as a couple was setting up a first birthday party for their child. The startled couple fled the room while the bear proceeded to eat all the cupcakes. The bear was believed to be a juvenile weighing about 82 kilograms or 180 pounds. One of the homeowners told the local newspaper that he heard a cracking sound and then watched a bear fall into the room about one meter away from where he was standing.

Starting point is 00:20:01 Can you imagine? Do they know why it was on the skylight? That seems like a story. No, I don't. I don't know. Maybe that's so common that they don't even ask the question. I guess he smelled the cupcakes. I don't know. At some point, the homeowners opened a door that led to the backyard and yelled at the animal until it strolled out of their house. And I don't know what happened with the cupcake-less birthday party, but USA Today reported that half an hour later, what appeared to be the same bear walked into another occupied home and was shot by the Juneau Police Department. Yeah, so not a happy ending for the bear, even though he did get the cupcakes.

Starting point is 00:20:36 Maybe looking for more cupcakes. Maybe. And Coloradans have probably been thinking that it's about time that we did a whole bear segment that didn't pick on their state, but I do have one more bear story. This is one that I happened to see recently, and yes, of course, it was in Colorado. It was actually a bit of a scary story in which a five year old girl was bitten and almost dragged into the woods by a bear in Grand Junction, Colorado on May 13th. Apparently the child, Kimberly Sear, heard noises outside her house in the early morning that she believed were from a dog and she went outside to investigate.

Starting point is 00:21:11 Her mother heard Kimberly screaming around 2 30 a.m. and ran out to find a large black bear dragging the girl. Her mother screamed at the bear which then let Kimberly go. It's thought that Kimberly probably really surprised the bear which wasn't expecting to encounter people at that time of night. Kimberly had to undergo nearly three hours of surgery to repair injuries caused by the bear's teeth, and according to her surgeon, had hundreds of stitches, but was released from the hospital a few days later and was said to be in good health and good spirits. But unfortunately, there wasn't a very happy ending for the bear in this story either, as Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers killed the bear three days after it attacked Kimberly. So if there are any bears listening to this show, the lesson for today is don't threaten anybody and maybe don't eat cupcakes that don't belong to you.

Starting point is 00:21:57 And then I thought, well, maybe that's a good lesson for all of us and not just bears. and not just bears. In episode 181, Greg told us about World War II's Operation Gunnerside, a daring commando raid in Norway to try to destroy some strategic Nazi equipment. Paul Mendelsohn wrote,

Starting point is 00:22:15 I love your podcast and I'm going through them whenever I can. The segment on Operation Gunnerside reminded me of an old episode of To Tell the Truth, re-watching and it matches. One of the commandos of the team appeared on the show. Some of the details vary a bit from

Starting point is 00:22:30 the podcast, but it's an interesting watch. Can you guess which one is Casper before the end of the episode? And Paul sent a link to a video of a 1966 episode of To Tell the Truth, which was a game show in which a panel of contestants were presented with three people all claiming to be the same person, and the contestants had to guess which one was the real one. The contestants were given a limited amount of time to try to question the three people, and the real person was supposed to give truthful answers while the pretenders would make things up to try their best to fool the contestants. I have to admit that I did not guess the right one

Starting point is 00:23:05 for being Casper Idlan, and the link will be in the show notes for anyone who wants to see if they can do better than me. But both Greg and I were pretty surprised to learn that one of the commandos had been on this show. Of all places, yeah. In looking this up, I learned that the show To Tell the Truth ran continuously from 1956 to 1978 and intermittently after that, making it, according to Wikipedia, one of only two game shows in the U.S. that has aired at least one new episode in seven consecutive decades, with the other one being The Price is Right. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We're sorry that we can't read all the email that we get on the show, but we do appreciate hearing what you have to say. So if you have anything that you would like to say, please send

Starting point is 00:23:49 that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm 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 one comes from Stefan, a self-proclaimed Englishman in Edinburgh, who wrote to say that he was catching up on our older episodes and had just heard episode 146. He says, I thought I had the lateral thinking puzzle solved as soon as you finished speaking. Boy, was I wrong. So here's a slightly differently worded lateral thinking

Starting point is 00:24:29 puzzle that takes you to the place my brain went. And the puzzle in episode 146 was a man pulls some strings following which his brother speaks to thousands. Remember that one? But Stefan's puzzle is a man pulls a string following which his guest's brother speaks to millions what's going on a man pulls a string yes following which his guest's brother speaks to millions all right so now i have to get the old one out of my head yes yes it's not the old one okay uh his guest's brother all right i guess let's start at the far end speaks to millions does that mean it's a celebrity or well-known personality of some way you know what i mean i i'm not sure is who someone the guest's brother is speaking to millions meaning millions of people

Starting point is 00:25:18 an audience of millions of people yes by some means yes so I guess what I'm asking is, is that personality, whoever it is, known to the audience? Is it sort of a recognized public personality? The guest's brother? Yes. No. The one who's doing the speaking. No, he is not. But he's speaking to millions of them.

Starting point is 00:25:38 Yes. Guest's brother. So the man who pulls the string has a guest. Yes. Who has a brother. So the man who pulls the string has a guest. Yes. Who has a brother. Yes. Let me back up. Is this true?

Starting point is 00:25:51 Whatever it is. Yes. Whatever it is. Yes. This really happened. Yes. I keep wanting to start it then. Speaks to millions.

Starting point is 00:26:03 Meaning someone, okay, so some real figure in history somewhere, a human being. Yes. Someone's brother. Yes. Actual brother. Yes. Spoke to millions of people.

Starting point is 00:26:13 Yes. Would it help me to know what medium he used? Whether it was radio, TV, or something. Would that shed any light on this? It's TV. This happened on TV, which is how it was an audience of millions. Okay. Guest's brother.

Starting point is 00:26:26 Yes. By guest, do you mean... Man. Not like a house guest? Right. Not like a house guest. Like he's a host of some... In some way?

Starting point is 00:26:39 Yes. The man who pulls the string. Right. Like a master of ceremonies, would you say? No. No. a host of some kind yeah yeah is he well known uh yes in the uk and it doesn't it doesn't matter you don't need to know who he is okay it's it's how is he like pulling a string and that causes his guest's brother to speak to millions um by pulling is pulling a string is that meant figuratively no literally pulls a string literally pulls a string

Starting point is 00:27:13 guest see i want to understand what guest means guest's brother speaks to millions and that's a direct effect of pulling the string. Yes. The speaking wouldn't happen without pulling the string. Correct. Speaks to millions. I keep thinking of like a... Yeah? Go ahead and say it.

Starting point is 00:27:39 Whatever it is. Like a wind-up dollar sign where you pull a string and it speaks? Yes, exactly. That is exactly what happened. But you said the guest's brother is human. Yes.

Starting point is 00:27:49 He's the one who recorded the voice. Oh, oh, oh. This happened on the Graham Norton Show, which is a weekly UK TV chat show. On Series 9, Episode 9, broadcast in 2011, one of Graham's guests was Tom Hanks. Graham pulls the string on the back of a Toy Story Woody doll, which says, Ha ha, boy, am I glad to see you. After which Graham asks Tom, is that you? And Tom admits that it's his brother, Jim, who does a lot of audio recording that requires Tom Hanks' voice.

Starting point is 00:28:19 They sound very alike, so most people don't notice the difference. And Stefan sent a link to a youtube clip of tom hanks discussing this with graham norton and we'll have that in the show notes it's a really fun clip of hanks explaining about how his brother does a lot of his voice work for him and then hanks describing what it was like to do all the voice acting for toy story which was just amusing and i recommend people if they have any interest in looking at that. Stefan then ended his email with, P.S. I love how you say futilitycloset.com. To my British ears, it sounds like futilitycloset.com,

Starting point is 00:28:53 as the time I spend listening to Futility Closet is often an island of calm. In an otherwise hectic day, this works out rather well. Good. So thanks to Stefan for a second brotherly puzzle. And if anyone else has a puzzle that they want us to try out, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. If you would like to become one of our wonderful patrons who help support the show and get bonus material,

Starting point is 00:29:23 such as extra discussions, outtakes, and updates on Sasha the Podcat, Thank you. over 10,000 concise curiosities. Browse the Futility Closet store, check out the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for today's topics. If you have any questions or comments for any of the three of us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by the magnificent bass string puller, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 204-Mary Anning's Fossils

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