Futility Closet - 299-Ursula Graham Bower and the Nagas

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 11,000 quirky curiosities from a bachelor's lifespan to a dilemma in hell. This is episode 299. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1937, Englishwoman Ursula Graham Bower became fascinated by the Naga people of northeastern India. She was living among them when World War II broke out and Japan threatened to invade their land.

Starting point is 00:00:43 In today's show, we'll describe Bower's efforts to organize the Naga against an unprecedented foe. We'll also consider a self-censoring font and puzzle over some perplexing spacecraft. In after years, Ursula Graham Bowers' mother recalled that she never would sit still. She'd been born into an English Navy family in 1914 and had inherited their spirit of adventure, but the social strictures of the time severely limited her prospects. She wrote, I was bitterly resentful that I was not a boy. I can remember bursting into floods of tears at the age of three, being quite inconsolable that I couldn't follow my father into the Navy. She had hoped to study archaeology at Oxford, but the family's fortunes fell while she was at boarding school and she was forced to leave

Starting point is 00:01:29 without a certificate so that her brother could attend Cambridge. She wrote later, the thought that I wasn't worth spending money on was a most dreadful thing. It was a very unhappy time. What her mother really wanted, she said, was a really attractive debutante daughter, which was a desirable thing for her generation, who would make an extremely good marriage. In 1937, a friend invited her to come on a winter trip to India. She wrote, She wrote, of course, I jumped at this, and I may say I thought of India entirely in terms of the Taj Mahal and Delhi. Her mother approved, hoping she might find a husband. After a long journey by sea, train, and boat, she met her friend at the railhead at Dimapur in the far northeast of the country.

Starting point is 00:02:22 As they drove into the foothills of the Bahrail Range, they passed a group of four striking men on the roadside. She wrote, the sight of them was a shock. Bead necklaces drooped on their bare brown chests, black kilts with three lines of cowries wrapped their hips, and plaids edged with vivid colors hung on their coppery shoulders. Tall, solid, muscular, Mongolian, they stood, a little startled as we shot by. She would remember that moment for the rest of her life. She asked her friend who the men were. She answered, Nagas, and Bauer had a peculiar feeling of disconnected familiarity. She wrote, just one look and they were gone, and I was left with my head fairly going round, wondering what on earth had happened to me. I knew Nagas. I was certain I knew Nagas. I just

Starting point is 00:03:01 didn't know where I was. Her bewilderment continued when they stopped for refreshment at Kohima, the administrative capital of the Naga territory, and she saw to the east a mysterious country of jungle-covered hills stretching away into the hazy distance. She wrote, that landscape drew me as I had never known anything to do before, with a power transcending the body, a force not of this world at all. They were staying at Imphal, the body, a force not of this world at all. They were staying at Imphal, the main town of Manipur State, at the border with Burma, now Myanmar. The British had built a tiny England here, with golf, tennis, duck shooting, and polo, but Bauer longed to visit the hills and at last took the chance to accompany a civil surgeon, Colonel Taylor, on a dispensary tour to the northeast. There she met

Starting point is 00:03:43 more of the dignified people she had seen by the roadside. They enchanted her. She found them intelligent, hospitable, courteous, and shy. She watched their war dance and sang English songs for them. Their children followed her respectfully, and they fished together. She returned from the trip captivated by the people and their land. Naga land was 400 miles long and 200 miles wide. Its people, originally from Mongolia, were distinct from the neighboring Indians, Chinese, Tibetans, and Burmese and had repelled all attempts to colonize and subdue them. After some initial contention, the British had left them largely to govern themselves. Bauer found herself deeply moved by her brief trip.

Starting point is 00:04:22 She wrote, there is no describing the fascination of the hills. Neither heat, sweat, dirt, nor discomfort could break their hold. It was as though I had rediscovered a world to which I had belonged the whole time, from which, by some accident, I had been estranged. She and her friend had the opportunity to accompany Manipur's state engineer into the hills on a three-week tour of bridge inspection, and Bauer loved it, finding it increasingly easy to communicate with the people they met. She wrote, things would never be the same for me wherever I went. She departed for London with a case full

Starting point is 00:04:54 of Naga artifacts and 850 photographs, believing that she would never return. But the Royal Geographical and the Royal Central Asian Societies showed great interest in her photos and urged her to go back. She had both talent and passion. As it happened, the engineer wrote to say he was planning one last trip to the Barak River before retiring and invited her to accompany him. This was her chance. They would be traveling through country

Starting point is 00:05:17 that very few Europeans had visited. She had no training in anthropology, but she wrote to two professors at Cambridge and they told her that very little photography had been done in the Manipur Hills, so more would be welcome. And she was invited to lecture at several anthropological societies, which gave her confidence. She wrote,

Starting point is 00:05:34 I had found I could lecture. I thought I could write. I could sometimes take good pictures. I knew I wanted adventure. There wasn't a scrap of certainty that I should ever make anything of it, but I saw, which matters more at 24, unlimited possibilities. By November, she was back in India. She enjoyed the 25-day tour so much that she applied for permission to go out on her own for a further 10 days, and that was a triumph. She wrote, I came home after passionate and affectionate farewells,

Starting point is 00:06:01 laden with specimens, photographs, and information. After that, there was no holding me. She made two more trips before her three months were up, and she had to return to England, where she found they were preparing for war. She volunteered for the London Ambulance Service, but longed to return to the Naga Hills, and by December 1938, she was back in Imphal and planning her next trip. This time, she would visit the Zemi-Naga area of North Kachar, immediately west of Manipur. Her base would be the Zemi Naga area of North Kachar, immediately west of Manipur. Her base would be the village of Lysong, and she planned to stay for a year. The North Kachar Nagas were disaffected from the government, and Bauer was met initially with suspicion and mistrust, but she honored their laws and customs and shared their joys and misfortunes as she

Starting point is 00:06:40 traveled the hills, dispensing medical care and taking photographs. Her one-year stay lengthened into three, and in time she felt herself accepted as a trusted friend. She was aware that the war was going on, and she knew that inevitably the British in the Far East would be drawn into it. Word reached her of the attack on Pearl Harbor and then of the fall of Singapore, but the threat hadn't touched the hill country. She was preoccupied with local worries, such as preventing jungle fires, finding milk for a motherless baby, and rethatching a bungalow. But in March 1942, she visited friends on the plains and found them in a state of high alert. Suddenly, the war was on their doorstep. The Japanese were pressing north into Burma,

Starting point is 00:07:19 driving British troops and refugees across the border. If the Japanese followed them into India, the invasion would probably come straight through Naga territory, where before the Zemi had been remote and unregarded, now they were at the center of the struggle. Their villages lay at every strategic point, and their people knew the jungle better than any foreigner. Bauer began to organize volunteers to help the refugees cross the border. Many of the Zemi were uncertain. This was not their war, and they would prefer to ignore it. But they worried what would happen if the British withdrew from Naga territory just as they'd withdrawn from Burma. When her assistant Namkia came to her with this dilemma, she told him, I don't know what's going to happen either, but my home's here in Lysong,

Starting point is 00:07:57 and I'm coming back to it whatever happens. I don't think you Zemi will be able to stay as neutral as you think, and I doubt you'll find the Japs a fair exchange for the British. In the meantime, there are all these people coming through from Burma in the devil of a state. I've been told to go down and help, and I'm going with anyone I can find to go along with me. If you people won't come, it's my bad luck. I've had the orders, not you. In early August, a British officer came to see her. He was managing reconnaissance for V-Force, a guerrilla organization that hoped to recruit the hill people to gather intelligence along the 800-mile frontier. This was urgent now. The Japanese were ranged along the Burma border, ready to invade. He asked Bauer to set up the Watch and Ward operation, a group of volunteer scouts to patrol

Starting point is 00:08:39 the area. Bauer toured all the Zemi villages to seek their support. They would be defending their own country, she told them, and they'd be paid properly and armed with guns. They decided to trust her. Though she had no military training herself, she did her best to organize them through November, focusing on discipline and teamwork. The goal was to pick up Japanese spies or agents traveling in either direction along three cross-country tracks through the critical area. She stationed scouts to patrol it and runners to convey information and orders. Any suspicious people were to be brought to her at Lysong. When the army forgot to pay what they'd promised, Bauer worked on meager rations and lost 35 pounds. She didn't want to complain. She wrote, as a woman, I was a freak in the job and I was always afraid that they'd find an excuse to fire me. They said that

Starting point is 00:09:24 sooner or later they'd send a British officer to take over. She straightened that out with the deputy commissioner at Christmas, and in the new year she was given captain's pay and a regular army impressed account for expenses and paying the men, as well as some old muzzle-loading guns. As 1943 progressed, her force increased in strength and discipline. Bauer was still a civilian, but the army never did send a replacement. She had shown that she inspired loyalty and dedication among the Zemi as no one else could, and she was doing an extraordinary job. By March 1944, she'd been managing the watch and ward operation for 18 months and had formed it into a well-disciplined operation founded on her long years of friendship with the Zemi. She wrote, I think it was Dundee who said that no one could

Starting point is 00:10:04 lead a highland army who had not shaken every man in it by the hand, and much the same is true of the Assam Hill man, to whom any leader is first among equals and nothing more. His attachment is not to the unit, but is entirely personal, and you cannot count on any man unless that attachment exists. It still seemed unlikely that they'd face more than a handful of undercover Japanese operators in their territory, but that changed on March 28th, when she got word that the Japanese had attacked along the Manapur Front and were pressing forward. Two British sergeants arrived to tell her that the front line was no longer 150 miles in front of her, but 20 miles behind her. She and her Nagas were now the only thing between the advancing Japanese and the railway. The sergeants asked what forces she had, and she told them, 150 semi-scouts, one service rifle, one single-barreled

Starting point is 00:10:51 shotgun, and 70 muzzle loaders. They agreed on a plan. She would put every man she had along the line of the Jiri River and would report back if they saw any Japanese approach. They told her they'd report to headquarters and have some support sent up from Silchar. The district officer summoned her to a conference in Mahor on April 1st. The Japanese were advancing, but no one knew where they would arrive first. It was crucial to find out quickly because they didn't have enough troops to cover the whole line. As the Japanese moved through the jungle toward the city of Kohima, two other V-force operations in the area had broken up and were scattered, and worse, many of their scouts had changed sides and were now helping the Japanese,

Starting point is 00:11:34 leading them to V-Force camps and supply caches. The RAF could take photos from the air, but the jungle hid the enemy's movements. Bauer sent a request for rifles and ammunition and quickly received a message from headquarters telling her to get out quickly. Apparently, the two messages had crossed in transit. She decided to ignore the order to flee. She knew that if she ran away, the Nagas' resolve would weaken, and she didn't want to desert them. That was the right decision. When V-Force understood her request, they sent her cases of rifles, Tommy guns, ammunition, grenades, and extra rations. The British were not only supporting her, but sending proof of their confidence. Her Nagas now offered the only reliable flow of intelligence to second division on Japanese movements around Kohima, and they organized themselves expertly. The main body of each

Starting point is 00:12:14 patrol was preceded by a single scout 50 yards ahead. If he spotted any Japanese, he could retreat without being seen, and the patrol could set up an ambush. They had no wireless communication, so Bauer set up a system of fire beacons that could be lit if the enemy were sighted. She wrote, We lived like gazelle with lions about. They were ready to flee into the woods at a moment's notice and would keep their guns with them even during a trip to the kitchen garden. By now, the British had sent some trained soldiers, and Bauer would have understood if her original recruits had wanted to abandon their defense. The Japanese were expected any day, and they had families to look after. When her 12 rifle-bearing bodyguards asked for 24 hours leave, she wrote, I thought, here it

Starting point is 00:12:54 comes. They've reached the limit, and I don't blame them. We never recruited them for this. They're not trained for it. They're not armed for it, and I cannot hold them. We've got this very small chance of getting out of it alive, and I simply cannot ask them to go with me on a suicide mission. So I said, all right, you go, never thinking I would see them again. Much to my surprise, every single man was back within the stipulated 24 hours, and it wasn't until about 10 days later, when the excitement was over and we had time to breathe and reinforcements had arrived, I noticed that Namkia was not wearing his beautiful gold and yellow Daomoni bead necklaces, which were such a valuable feature of his costume. I asked him what had happened to them, and he then explained that all of them had gone home, arranged for the

Starting point is 00:13:34 guardianship of their wives and families in the event of their death, which they expected to take place within three days, had made their wills and handed over their heirlooms and property to their families for their heirs. They were all comparatively young men, they had young families, quite young children, and everything to lose, and they never thought they would survive. I didn't think I was going to either, so we were all square on that, but they had returned to meet the end with us, and they now wore only their beads for burial. I'm afraid I rather goggled at Namkia, this had taken me so much by surprise, and he said, what did you expect? How could we have abandoned you, She wrote, I felt about six inches high.

Starting point is 00:14:23 This precarious situation continued into May without updates or proper communications. But then they learned that British reinforcements had arrived to break the siege of Kohima, and with help from the 14th Army, they set up a wireless network of four stations, one at each of four strategic villages. As intelligence improved, it became clear that the Japanese hadn't tried to invade Bauer's original area of command, but had diverted troops southward. It appeared that the best way to locate the Japanese would be to move forward. In the middle of May, they got permission to advance to Tamanglong, the most forward of the wireless outposts, and extended their patrols from there. There they learned of Japanese activity

Starting point is 00:14:58 only 30 miles away. This was a tempting target within close range, but their orders were to wait, and at length they were asked to withdraw. Other Naga did encounter the enemy. They heard of one scout who had confronted a Japanese patrol armed only with a spear. He had killed five in hand-to-hand combat. Another had stumbled into an advancing Japanese patrol and had chosen to fight alone with his muzzleloader rather than retreat and reveal the patrol behind him. He was killed, but the patrol avenged him by ambushing and capturing the Japanese. As it turned out, when Bauer got the alarm signal to withdraw

Starting point is 00:15:31 from Tamanglong, the Japanese were already in retreat, moving back toward Burma. The scouts continued their work through the summer, collecting stray Japanese agents, escapees, and stragglers, but in November 1944, the watch and ward operation drew to a close. General Bill Slim, commander of the 14th Army, thanked Bauer scouts for their contribution. He wrote, These were the gallant Nagas whose loyalty, even in the most depressing times of the invasion, had never faltered. Their active help to us was beyond value or praise. They guided our columns, collected information, ambushed enemy patrols, carried our supplies, and brought in our wounded The officers and scouts returned to Lysong with Bauer for the final meeting, which turned into a celebration with dancing, a roast pig, a shooting competition,

Starting point is 00:16:24 and a final presentation in which the scouts came to the table one by one to receive their formal discharge papers as well as prizes such as guns, ivory armlets, and knives. The next morning, all the military gear was loaded up and carried out up the village street, and the camp was an ordinary settlement again. Though she had never held military rank, Ursula Bauer had become the senior woman in all of V-Force, the only woman in command of active troops, and indeed the only female guerrilla leader in the history of the British Army. There was all sorts of nonsense in the press calling her a female Lawrence of Arabia, a queen among headhunters, and saying that she had repelled

Starting point is 00:16:59 Japanese attacks. She rolled her eyes at all of it, but was featured on the cover of Time magazine for leading the Nagas against the Japanese. V-Force put her in a jungle training camp for six months, where she taught survival techniques to the RAF with her usual indomitability. One trainee said, We were captivated. Every one of us said later that if she'd said, I want you to hang yourself by the neck from the nearest tree, I am sure we would have done it. I would have followed her into the jaws of hell. She was an exceptional person. At the end of the war, she married a British officer, twice, first in a conventional ceremony and then among the Naga. They moved to Kenya, where they grew coffee, then to the Isle of Mull, where they brought up two daughters.

Starting point is 00:17:38 The family eventually settled in Hampshire in 1967. Though she had never had any formal training, in 1950 the University of London awarded her a doctorate in anthropology. She never returned to the Naga, though she felt deeply connected with them throughout her life, remembering her first glimpse of the hills in 1937. In her 1950 book Naga Path, she wrote, There are blessed oases in the drab desert where beads and feathers, red-dyed goat's hair and rich-hued plaids still gladden the eye, where the ancient candors and ancient moralities survive uncorrupted, where chipped enamel and cheap glass have not ousted the hand-carved product, where men go armed with spear and dow instead of notebook and fountain pen, where the dog-eat-dog existence of modern economics has not swamped

Starting point is 00:18:25 the primitive decencies, and where life is simple and pagan and brief and happy. The main story in episode 293 was about how in 1932, nine-year-old Lenny Gwyther rode a horse a thousand kilometers to see the opening of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Rosalind Hicks wrote, Hello, Futility Closet team. I'm a Sydneysider, and I got so excited when a notification popped up about today's episode with the title Lenny Gwyther. The particular reason for my excitement is that, believe it or not, I work on the Sydney Harbour Bridge as a climb leader. I take tourists up to the summit of the arch on a regular basis, though not at the moment due to COVID-19. I listened to it straight away and so enjoyed listening to you tell a story that I have told to tourists probably hundreds of times. so enjoyed listening to you tell a story that I have told to tourists probably hundreds of times.

Starting point is 00:19:29 Thank you for sharing a story about our beloved coat hanger, one of the local nicknames for the bridge. So that was cool to hear from someone who actually works on the bridge, and I'll admit that I had to google why the bridge is called the coat hanger. Apparently it is rather commonly called this by Sydney Siders due to the arch shape of the bridge that reminds people of a coat hanger. Because this nickname is so popular, you can even now buy coat hangers that are designed to look like the bridge. I tried to look into what other nicknames the bridge has, and the only other one I was able to find was that, as Greg had mentioned, it had originally been nicknamed the Iron Lung because it kept so many Depression-era workers employed for so long, helping to keep them and their families alive. At that point, construction of the bridge was one of Australia's largest employment projects up to that point.

Starting point is 00:20:10 Yeah, I hadn't realized until I started working on that story. It was just a huge news item, just as an engineering feat. It was making news around the world. We received an interesting alternative answer to the puzzle in episode 294, and this won't include what the actual answer was. The puzzle was about a man who is driving above the speed limit, and even though when he sees a police car, he speeds up even more, the police officer does not attempt to give the man a ticket. Stuart Armstrong wrote, Hey there! I've recently been able to catch up with Futility Closet again, still superlative, well done, and I've just heard the speeding slash police lateral thinking puzzle of episode 294.

Starting point is 00:20:49 For most of the puzzle, I was convinced that I had the solution, especially after Sharon hesitated about the type of vehicle, the police car not pursuing the vehicle, the driver's profession being important, and several other incidental clues that all seemed to fit. My solution was, the vehicle is a small airplane taxiing on the road. The driver is a pilot. When the pilot spies the police car, the pilot accelerates to take off. Obviously, the police car is not going to try and pursue them,

Starting point is 00:21:15 and they're not going to get a ticket for speeding. Cheers in any case, and to the end of the pandemic. That makes sense. It makes sense. I guess people can use it as a new lateral thinking puzzle on their friends. We have discussed the Scunthorpe problem in a few episodes, most recently in episode 283, when we've discussed the problems that some people run into with computer software if their names contain or are similar to what are considered to be rude words.

Starting point is 00:21:42 The term is a reference to the town of Scunthorpe, which contains a string of letters that spell an offensive word, so the town name was blocked by some obscenity filters in the early days of such software filters. Several of our listeners sent us a recent update on this topic. For example, Vadis Gintotis, who sent us a greeting from Chapel Hill, which isn't all that far from us, wrote, Dear Sharon and Greg, yet another reason to revisit Scunthorpe. There is a font named after the town, Scunthorpe Sands. The font is capable of auto-censoring rude words, but provides a special exception for the word Scunthorpe, because that town has suffered enough. So Scunthorpe Sands is a font that censors offensive words as you type them. Playing around with this on their website, I found that, for example, if you type S-H-I-P, you just see the word ship. But if you replace

Starting point is 00:22:30 the last letter with a different one, then you only see the initial S with the rest of the word covered by a black box. Although an exception was made for Scunthorpe, the font does have the usual problem of not being able to recognize context. So I discovered, for example, that if you try to type Pussycat or Charles Dickens, you end up with parts of those being covered by a black box. Because, you know, you know how offensive Charles Dickens can be. The creators of the font are selling a t-shirt that says the Scunthorpe problem on its front with the potentially offensive string of letters in Scunthorpe covered by a box. And their site says, if you wear this, any passing nerds who've worked on content filters will nod sagely.

Starting point is 00:23:17 So it's like a way to recognize each other, right? And on this topic, Niall Goulding sent an email from London with the subject line, another Scunthorpe problem. Dear Sharon and Greg, hope you are keeping well in these difficult times. Your podcast has continued to be a cherished distraction from the contemporary worries. Nevertheless, they do provide some novel updates to your past stories, another issue of automated filters getting in the way of functionality. I quite enjoyed this article's discussion of Twitter's attempts to mitigate the issue and the resulting inconsistencies. I expect in the future there will be AI solutions to this that know what to filter based on a wider context of what's going on in the world, but I'm sure that'll create issues of its own. Keep up the fantastic work. It is worth every cent on Patreon. And Niall sent a link to an article in The Guardian from May 27th about how anti-obscenity

Starting point is 00:24:00 filters on Twitter were blocking Dominic Cummings's name from the list of trending topics when the chief advisor to the UK's prime minister was in the Britishmings' name from the list of trending topics, when the chief advisor to the UK's prime minister was in the British news quite a bit at the end of May. According to the article, Twitter by default blocks photo and video results from search terms that it has put on a filter list for being potentially offensive. So unless those filters are deliberately turned off, a media search for the name Cummings would return no results. The Guardian noted that as a result of the correct spelling name Cummings would return no results. The Guardian noted that as a result of the correct spelling of Cummings' name being blocked, a variety of misspellings of his name ended up trending instead. And since the filtering also affects suggested hashtags,

Starting point is 00:24:35 when users tried to type hashtag Dominic Cummings, autocomplete would instead show one of the misspelled versions, which further helped them to trend. And one of the odder twists to this story is that just the first syllable of Cummings' name is apparently not included in Twitter's filter list, likely so that acceptable words such as scum or cumulative won't be blocked. So while hashtags that included all of Cummings' correctly spelled name were blocked, at least one that only included the first syllable, intended, I imagine, to stand in for his entire name, did manage to drend. So this is definitely another example of how this kind of automated filtering software can end up with some odd unintended consequences. And by the way, I checked and Scunthorpe Sands did not block

Starting point is 00:25:21 out any part of Cummings's name, so obviously its list of objectionable words does not completely overlap with Twitter's, but I haven't checked on Twitter to see what it would do with Scunthorpe. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We always appreciate your follow-ups, comments, and feedback, so if you have any that you'd like to send to us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. you'd like to send to us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation, and I have to try to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Jeremy van der Munik. The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft are traveling at 57

Starting point is 00:26:04 to 62 kilometers per second. Depending on when you measure their speed, it appears they are slowing down and even moving closer to Earth. Why? Depending on, you said, when you measure their speed? Yes. Okay. All right. I don't know a lot about this.

Starting point is 00:26:23 Are we presuming that they're orbiting the Earth? No, they were launched in 1977 and are both intended to explore the outer solar system, and I think they both just left the solar system, so they're just heading away from the Earth. They're just traveling away from the Earth. Out of the whole system. Okay. All right. But depending on when you measure their speed, they appear to be slowing down and possibly approaching the earth. Yes.

Starting point is 00:26:48 When you say when, do you mean which year or which years, plural? No. No. Do you mean in the future from now? No. Okay. I'm trying to figure out the when, like how precise. So when you say the when, could that be within the next half hour from now? Technically conceivably.

Starting point is 00:27:17 Does it have to be under specific circumstances? Yes. Ah, so something else needs to be occurring? Yes. Ah, so something else needs to be occurring. No, I wouldn't say that. Okay. Not that something else needs to be occurring, but does the when have anything to do with the Earth's rotation? Like where we are, what time of day it is, basically. No. Anything to do with the Earth's rotation, the orbit around the sun.

Starting point is 00:27:46 Yes. Ah, okay. So depending on where we are in our circuit around the sun is going to make a difference for this phenomenon with Voyagers. Okay. So what about the Earth's orbit around the sun? Does this have to do with anything about the way the Earth is tilted? No. But where it is? Oh, does it have anything to do with whether we're on one side of the sun and the Voyagers on the other side of the sun? No, but you're on the right track. Does it have anything to do with something else uh

Starting point is 00:28:26 interposing itself between the earth and voyager like the moon or another planet or okay so it specifically has to do with the earth and the sun yes and voyager or the two voyagers and nothing else yes no other heavenly bodies i need to worry about. That's right. Does this have anything to do with, oh, because of the, I'm not sure, because if like the Earth is moving towards Voyager versus away from Voyager, depending on where it is in its orbit? Yeah, basically that's it. It's the relative positions of everything. Jeremy writes, Earth moves around the sun at 67 kilometers per second. So depending on the time of year that you measure, Earth will be moving closer to the spacecraft

Starting point is 00:29:10 faster than they can move away. Oh. Because we're moving faster than they are. Oh. Certain times of the orbit, we're actually approaching. Yeah, yeah. I see. Thanks, Jeremy.

Starting point is 00:29:18 Excellent. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our incredible listeners. If you'd like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Support a section of the website at futilitycloset.com or you can join our Patreon campaign

Starting point is 00:29:45 where you'll not only support our show, but also get outtakes, more discussions on some of the stories, extralateral thinking puzzles, and peeks behind the scenes. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see our website for the link.

Starting point is 00:30:00 At our website, you can graze through Greg's collection of over 11,000 exceptional esoterica browse the futility closet store learn about the futility closet books and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered if you have any questions or comments for us you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com all our music was written and performed by the incomparable Doug Ross thanks Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 299-Ursula Graham Bower and the Nagas

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