Futility Closet - 346-A Desperate Winter in Antarctica

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 galactic indifference to an accusatory hatter. This is episode 346. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1898, a Belgian ship on a scientific expedition was frozen into the sea off the coast of Antarctica. During the long polar night, its 18 men would confront fear, death, illness, and despair. In today's show, we'll describe life aboard the Belgica

Starting point is 00:00:43 during its long, dark southern winter. We'll also consider a devaluing signature and puzzle over some missing music. At the end of the 19th century, Antarctica remained virtually unknown. It had first been spotted in 1820, but except for a few coastlines, it was still a blank spot on the map. It was known that its interior was larger than North America, but no one knew whether this was open water, a continent, or an ocean of ice. Only three expeditions had ever sailed south of the 70th parallel. Geographical societies suggested that an era of Antarctic exploration was overdue, and a Belgian naval officer named Adrian de Gerlache was determined

Starting point is 00:01:32 to take part. In 1896, he organized a scientific expedition to document Antarctica's life and geology, sound its seabed, and chart its coastlines. The expedition he proposed would last almost two years, retreating to Australia for the coldest months as no one had yet passed a winter below the Antarctic Circle. With luck, when spring came, they might hope to make a search for the South Magnetic Pole, which was then thought to lie around the 75th parallel. The expedition was funded by a national subscription campaign. de Gerlach acquired a three-masted steam whaler of 25 tons, which he rechristened the Belgica and assembled an international crew. The scientists were Eastern European, the Cook was French, and half the crew was Norwegian, including a 24-year-old first mate named Roald Amundsen. year old first mate named Roald Amundsen. de Gerlach was casting about for a doctor when he received a telegram from Frederick Cook, an American physician who had explored northern Greenland with Robert Peary. de Gerlach agreed to pick him up in South America. The Belgica departed

Starting point is 00:02:36 Ostend on August 23, 1897, with 13 Belgians and 10 foreigners on a journey of 10,000 miles. They encountered problems almost immediately. Tensions among the crew raised continuing discipline problems, and the vessel was so overloaded that as they passed through the Bay of Biscay, the deck was scarcely two feet above the waterline. Frederick Cook came aboard in Rio to serve as the ship's surgeon, photographer, and anthropologist, but by December 14th, the continuing desertions and dismissals had left them with only 19 men aboard, and so far behind schedule that they might not have time to complete their early explorations before winter set in.

Starting point is 00:03:17 They ran aground in Tierra del Fuego, took seven days to cross the southern ocean, and lost a sailor overboard in a gale among the first icebergs. But the next day, they had their first glimpse of the Antarctic continent. Cook wrote, Everything about us had an other-world appearance. The scenery, the life, the clouds, the atmosphere, the water, everything wore an air of mystery. In three weeks, they made 20 separate landings, more than all previous expeditions combined, and named every landmark and species they met, while the nights grew steadily longer and the cold deeper. They lost so much time in surveying the continent's northern reaches that they didn't cross the

Starting point is 00:03:55 Antarctic Circle until mid-February, and as they sailed into the Bellingshausen Sea, a thickening mass of pack ice stretched to the horizon. The sound of the freezing sea alarmed the men, particularly the scientists. One French explorer had likened it to the distant murmur of a great city at the bottom of a valley. They sailed into a vast emptiness, marking their progress on a featureless chart. The gathering ice would hold the ship for an hour or two and then loosen. Cook wrote, we are as hopelessly isolated as if we were on longer sure of de Gerlache's intentions. The delays so far had made for disappointing progress, and if they withdrew now for the winter, as they'd originally planned,

Starting point is 00:04:42 Belgium would be unlikely to extend their funding. winter, as they'd originally planned, Belgium would be unlikely to extend their funding. But they might win some glory by becoming the first ship to winter south of the Antarctic Circle. On February 23rd, de Gerloche asked his officers and scientists about the prospect of wintering in the ice. Everyone opposed it, everyone but Amundsen, who seemed to enjoy danger. He wrote, They do not want to sail further into the ice any longer. Why did we come here then? Wasn't it to discover unknown territory? That cannot be done by staying at the edge of the ice and waiting. On February 28th, a storm shattered the edge of the pack and opened leads into the heart of the sea ice. Venturing forward would leave them entrapped for months or

Starting point is 00:05:20 even years. The nearest vessel was probably hundreds of miles away, and once trapped, they would lack the resources to row or even march out. But de Gerlache gave the order to sail south, and the ice closed around the ship. Five days later, he wrote in the log, unfurled all the sails. The ship doesn't move. De Gerlache described the pack as an immense field of ice through which not even the most powerful ship could force its way. They had no way of knowing how large it was or the distance to land. They were forced simply to drift with it across the Bellingshausen Sea. That meant the ship was now simply a house for 18 men. De Gerlach wrote, we are no longer navigators but a small colony of

Starting point is 00:06:01 prisoners serving their sentence. They were safe for the time being, but the sun would set for good in mid-May, and three months of darkness would follow. No one knew how cold it would get because no one had ever spent a winter this far south. Cook was the only man with experience in a polar night lasting months, and he'd implored de Gerlache not to do this. The scientists felt betrayed, but it was now clear that they were trapped, and the men went about preparing the ship for winter. Cook began to observe the crew more as an anthropologist than as a doctor. They sought comfort in activity and routine. The scientists built huts near the ship to study astronomy, meteorology, and magnetism.

Starting point is 00:06:51 Geologist Henrik Arktowski made depth soundings and divined correctly that Antarctica is one big continent. But in the bitter winds of late March, the crew began to tire of outdoor work, and de Gerlach worried that morale would drop again. As the autumn deepened, they began to tire of outdoor work, and de Gerlach worried that morale would drop again. As the autumn deepened, they began to shirk their duties, bored and stultified by the monotony. The pack ice carried them along aimlessly at 10 miles per day, but the view never changed. Cook wrote, It is a strange sensation to know that you are moving rapidly over an unknown sea and yet see nothing to indicate a movement. We pass no fixed point and can see no

Starting point is 00:07:26 pieces of ice stir. Everything is quiet. The entire horizon drifts with us. We are part of the endless frozen sea. And Gaels now confined them to the ship for days. To stave off boredom, de Gerlach drew up a calendar of special occasions. They celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, and national holidays, as well as the stocks of food would allow. On April 7th, one man found several volumes of an illustrated magazine that had been donated by a patron in Antwerp. It contained pinups of famous actresses, cabaret performers, and socialites from Paris, so they set up a beauty contest among 500 pictures. Categories included irreproachable character, grace personified,

Starting point is 00:08:06 shapely hands, and supple waist. The winner, for the record, was American socialite Clara Ward. de Gerlach opened some champagne, and the men offered a toast to all the beauties. But by late April, the boredom was unbearable, and the gathering darkness began to prey on them. At this latitude, they were now losing up to 25 minutes of daylight every day. In two weeks, the night grew by more than three hours. Some men refused to perform their daily tasks, exercise, or even take their weekly sponge bath unless they were ordered directly to do so, and they resented the canned food. Cook wrote, the stomach demands things with a natural fiber or some tough, gritty substance. At this time, as a relief, we would have taken kindly to something containing pebbles or sand. How we longed to use our teeth.

Starting point is 00:08:51 To compound their misery, on May 17th, the sun disappeared. It would not reappear for 70 days. De Gerlach spent most of his time in his cabin, and even the cat withdrew. Cook wrote, Around the tables, in the laboratory, and in the fo'c'sle, men are sitting about, sad and dejected, lost in dreams of melancholy. We are at this moment as tired of each other's company as we are of the cold monotony of the black night. He had expected this, but was surprised at its depth. A melancholy or a depression seemed to

Starting point is 00:09:21 pervade the ship. Cook wrote, The curtain of blackness which has fallen over the outer world of icy desolation has descended upon the inner world of our souls. The most active men coped best, so Cook wrote, exercised, tinkered with equipment, did photographic work, and attended to his shipmates, who began to complain of headaches, insomnia, sleepiness, and surprising cardiac symptoms. Their heart rates rose alarmingly with even mild exercise. Cook wrote, The sun seems to supply an indescribable something which controls and steadies the heart. In its absence, it goes like an engine without a governor. de Gerlach imposed a schedule, but the men couldn't follow it. They lay awake,

Starting point is 00:10:01 listening to the creaking of floorboards and the pressures of the ice pack, which drove up the prow and tilted the ship to starboard so that the floor slanted under their feet. On June 4th, Lieutenant Emil Danko died of heart failure. He was buried at sea and his memory haunted the men. Cook wrote, We are constantly picturing to ourselves the form of our late companion, floating about in a standing position with the weights to his feet, under the frozen surface and perhaps under the Belgica. Three weeks later, the ship's cat died. Cook called her the only speck of sentimental life within reach. Her loss brought a proliferation of rats, which invaded cabins looking for crumbs. The men plugged their ears

Starting point is 00:10:42 with bits of old cloth but could still hear them scurrying. The darkness, the depression, the slanted floor, the rats, and the constant fear that ice might crush the hull began to threaten the men's sense of sanity. In July, Cook and Amundsen heard screams from the afterdeck but found no one there. Cook wrote, the long night with its potential capacity for tragedy makes a madhouse of every polar camp. Here men love and hate each other in a passion which defies description. Murder, suicide, starvation, insanity, icy death, and all the acts of the devil become regular mental pictures. Arktowski said simply, we are in a madhouse. It was Cook who made sense of it. What he called polar anemia, fatigue, erratic pulse, inattentiveness, confusion, and blankness

Starting point is 00:11:27 is now more commonly known as winter over syndrome, a recognized malady that afflicts those who spend a winter in the Antarctic. Cook attributed it to lack of sun. He wrote, oh, for that heavenly ball of fire, not for the heat, the human economy can regulate that, but for the light, the hope of life. He thought humans needed sunlight just as plants do. So he ordered the most severely affected men to strip and stand for hours in the glow of a red-hot stove, a procedure he called the baking treatment. Many who did this

Starting point is 00:11:56 reported that it eased their psychological distress. This is considered the first known medical application of light therapy, which is used today to treat seasonal affective disorder and related forms of depression. This was an improvement, but some physical ailment still afflicted the men. To keep them active, Cook made them walk on the ice around the ship for an hour each day, an exercise that got the nickname the Madhouse Promenade. Cook suspected that the illness was scurvy, but the ship's stores of lime juice seemed powerless to reverse it. He recalled his time with the Inuit in the north, who subsisted on meat and blubber and did not get scurvy. So he began to give the men fresh penguin and seal meat every day, as rare as they could stomach,

Starting point is 00:12:37 though even he admitted that penguin was an ordeal. He wrote, He wrote, Amundsen ate his raw and was back nearly to normal within a few days. Cook couldn't really explain why this worked because the cause of scurvy wasn't yet understood, but we understand it today. There was no vitamin C in the canned food they'd been eating, and the ascorbic acid in the lime juice would have oxidized during bottling. Most animals can synthesize their own ascorbic acid, and the oils in penguin and

Starting point is 00:13:16 seal meat contain enough vitamin C to allay scurvy in humans. On July 22nd, after more than two months of darkness, the sun crept back into view. De Gerlach wrote, Looking at his companions, Cook found they'd aged ten years. He wrote, the accumulated suffering of the 70 dayless nights. Their skin had a sickly jaundiced color, green and yellow and muddy. We accused each other of appearing as if we had not washed for months. As the days lengthened, the ship came back to life. The men cut their hair and beards and returned to their former duties. But the effects of their suffering still lingered among them,

Starting point is 00:14:01 and Cook knew that their survival depended on freeing the ship that summer. He told the officers that many men would die if this weren't done. They must abandon their goals and focus on survival. In late September, warm temperatures began to thaw the ice, but the ship remained stuck in a flow two miles wide. By the summer solstice, the sun still had not broken the pack, and the men began to despair. Cook had already identified four men who he suspected would die in a second winter, and he expected that more would go insane. At a meeting of officers, he pressed strongly for an effort to exit the pack, but no one could think how to accomplish this. Finally, de Gerlach proposed cutting their way out with ice saws. This was almost impossibly ambitious. In the weeks that remained to them before winter,

Starting point is 00:14:49 they'd have to clear a canal hundreds of meters long to open water, and the ice that trapped the ship was still several feet thick. But there was nothing for it. The daylight and the temperature were both dropping fast. The men threw themselves into the work, eating seven meals a day, and on February 15th, the canal was free enough to permit passage. They used explosives to break up the last ice around the stern, and for the first time since March 1898, the ship could move. They sailed into the port of Punta Arenas, Chile, at sunrise on March 28th, 1899, and set foot on land for the first time in more than a year. After so many months on sea, skis, and ice, they had forgotten how to walk normally. Cook wrote, we spread our legs, dragged our feet, braced and balanced our bodies with

Starting point is 00:15:30 every step, and altogether our gait was ridiculous. The sight of two pretty girls, he said, sent a new sensation through us like that of a phoradic battery, but the women avoided their gaze. Cook wrote, our skins were rough like nutmeg graters, and our hair was long, stubborn, and liberally lined with bunches of gray, though the eldest among us was less than 35 years of age. The expedition ended there. They lacked both the money and the resolution to undertake a second season. De Gerlach hadn't reached a record latitude or found the South Magnetic Pole, but he did establish many historic firsts.

Starting point is 00:16:05 They'd made several important geographical discoveries, charted the coast, recorded weather conditions for a year, and begun magnetic studies of the southern continent. As the party broke up, Cook and Amundsen promised to write and hoped to see each other again. That was ironic because in the years that followed, they drove to opposite ends of the earth. That was ironic because in the years that followed, they drove to opposite ends of the earth. Amundsen conquered the South Pole in 1911, and Cook claimed to reach the North Pole in 1908. Two years before that, he'd claimed to reach the summit of Alaska's Mount McKinley, as we discussed in Episode 77. Both of Cook's claims came under a cloud, and though Amundsen remained a stalwart supporter,

Starting point is 00:16:45 Cook remained a controversial figure, a different man, somehow somehow than the resourceful optimist of the Belgica. In 1923, in sentencing him to 14 years in prison for a fraudulent oil company promotion, the judge called Cook the Machiavelli of the 20th century, and the New York Times wrote he will count forever among the greatest imposters of the world. Amundsen said, to me, he was always a genius. In episode 339, I read an email from a listener who had sold a baseball signed by Babe Ruth that turned out to be worth more than most such balls, since his had been signed only by Ruth, and many other baseballs had been signed by both Ruth and Lou Gehrig, thus making the listener's ball more rare and valuable for the lack of Gehrig's signature. Alain Etan sent a follow-up

Starting point is 00:17:43 to this, along with a helpful audiophile for the pronunciation of his name, saying, Salutations, Futilitators. This was a pleasant coincidence to hear, as I just yesterday saw the following Vlogbrothers video, which outlines how author John Green signed his name 250,000 times for the first printing of his new book, The Anthropocene Reviewed, thus making unsigned copies of the book more valuable than signed ones because they are rarer, exactly like the baseball. Thanks for potting and casting. And Alon sent a link to a video of Hank Green,

Starting point is 00:18:16 author John Green's brother, from April 2nd. I hadn't realized that John Green has apparently been signing hundreds of thousands of copies of his recent books when they're printed, leading Hank to say, ostensibly to his brother, you have one of the least valuable signatures of any author in the world. Hank explains that all copies of the first edition of The Fault in Our Stars were signed, except for a few that were essentially mistakes, making the unsigned copies more rare, and says, your signature on a copy of

Starting point is 00:18:45 The Fault in Our Stars makes it less valuable. It has negative value. Hank does say at the end of the video that this concept of value is only in terms of collectors, where rarity is so important, but that the signature does add special value to the readers, and so it is a rather nice and impressive thing for John to do. That does raise the question of the point or value of an autograph. What's the point? Why are they done at all? It's just an odd convention. That it sums somebody's signature on any random thing is worth money.

Starting point is 00:19:15 Yeah, I guess because it's rare. Just because it's rare. Creating it in order to make something that's rare. We've discussed the what three words location encoding system a few times on this show, starting in episode 218 for those who want more of an explanation for it. Briefly, in this system, the Earth is divided into three by three meter squares, each having its own three word address. Several of our listeners sent us follow ups on this topic recently.

Starting point is 00:19:41 Toby Wardman and Robin Kruger sent us links to recent BBC News articles about some concerns being raised with the system. What three words, which the BBC says is used by 85% of emergency services in the UK, is facing scrutiny after a security consultant found, an April 29th article says, thousands of locations with similar words less than one kilometer, 0.6 miles

Starting point is 00:20:06 apart. The article quotes researcher Andrew Tierney as saying, I discovered that large numbers of plurals and homophones are actually very close to each other. In time-critical situations such as a life-threatening accident, emergency services personnel going to the wrong location could be the difference between life and death. The article cites concerning examples such as Circle Goal Leader versus Circle Goal Leaders that are less than two kilometers apart along the Thames, and Stream Rivers Abode versus Steam Rivers Abode that are about 50 kilometers away from each other in Sheffield and Leeds. A BBC article from June 1st says that the Head of Information and Communications Technology for Mountain Rescue England and Wales gave them

Starting point is 00:20:51 a list of 45 locations from the last year that rescuers had been given from walkers or climbers needing help, but these locations turned out to be incorrect, in some cases very incorrect, as they should have all been in England or Wales and some of them were in Asia, Australia, or North America. And as the rescue teams are often getting these addresses from emergency services rather than directly from the people in distress, the rescuers don't have an easy way to try to verify the addresses they think they have. The BBC reports that W3W acknowledges that there are some similar addresses near each other, but that such examples are rare. Chris Sheldrick, one of the co-founders of the system, told the BBC,

Starting point is 00:21:31 whilst the overwhelming proportion of similar-sounding three-word combinations will be so far apart that an error is obvious, there will still be cases where similar-sounding word combinations are nearby. And said that while you could find such examples of similar addresses near each other, they represent a 1 in 2.5 million occurrence out of the 242 billion three-word addresses used in the UK. A spokesperson for the company said that we regularly check in with the emergency services that use the system to receive feedback.

Starting point is 00:22:04 The overwhelming response is positive, and time and time again, we have been humbled to see stories where our technology has turned out to be life-saving. W3W noted that other address systems can also cause what they called communication errors, and I have to say that this is certainly true for traditional addresses, as we live near a street that sounds similar to our street's name and we get mail for the other street pretty often or even people at our door looking for someone who lives on the other street. So I can imagine that this type of problem could occur in almost any address system where people can misspeak or mishear or just confuse two similar things. It was noted in the article that there can also be issues with

Starting point is 00:22:43 people writing things down incorrectly or with understanding different accents. I had mentioned in episode 218 that Sheldrick, one of the co-founders of W3W, had been motivated to create a new address system when he was working as a concert organizer, and he had to deal with equipment and bands sometimes ending up at wrong locations because of problems with existing address systems, and that included using GPS coordinates to try to be more accurate. The BBC reports that W3W said that any tool can be subject to human error, and I have to say that that does unfortunately sound about right to me, although I can see how the use of similar words for different addresses would potentially increase the chance of errors. That's a big task, avoiding ambiguity among billions of locations. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:28 I mean, there's 57 trillion locations in what, three words? Yeah. So, but any system, you're just going to have that problem. Yeah, you think it might be more reliable to switch to numbers instead of words, but then it's just, that's a lot less accessible. Try to get people to remember or correctly report a long string of numbers without transposing them or misspeaking any of them. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:49 Yeah. And just in case you were planning a day in the British mountains, Mountain Rescue England and Wales would very much like to encourage you to carry a paper map and a compass and to know how to use both. Dane Labonte from Fiskdale, Massachusetts wrote, Hi Greg and Sharon. You've mentioned what three words a few times and I just saw this article you may find interesting. A security researcher created a free version of the idea called what free words and what three words threaten legal action. I guess a business needs to do

Starting point is 00:24:20 what it needs to do, but with an aspirational goal of helping people and the relatively incredibly small adoption rate of tools like this, you'd think they could coexist. I've listened to your podcast for years and I'm excited to finally have something to write in about. I'm subscribed to way too many podcasts, but Futility Closet is always at the top of my queue and listen to as soon as it's available. Thanks for making great content. And Dane sent a link to an article from TechCrunch from April 30th about how Aaron Topanz received a letter from the law firm representing What3Words asking him to delete his tweets related to the open source alternative, WhatFreeWords, to disclose who he had shared copies of the software with, to agree to not make any more copies of the software, and to delete any copies that he had.

Starting point is 00:25:09 The letter implied possible legal action against him if he didn't comply, and TechCrunch reported that Topanz did accede to the demands to avoid such a possibility. The article notes that critics of W3W argue that its proprietary technology makes it difficult to scrutinize for potential problems or security vulnerabilities. It was partly these concerns about the lack of openness that led to the creation of What Free Words. TechCrunch reported that the project's website stated that this open source system was created by reverse engineering W3W, but that to avoid violating the other company's copyright, they didn't use any of their code. However, W3W chief executive Chris Sheldrick characterized the incident as action being taken against an unauthorized version of our software, which was offered for distribution, but also stated that they weren't requesting any criticisms of W3W to be

Starting point is 00:25:56 taken down. TechCrunch reported that at the time of their article, several websites still had copies of the What Free Words code, so you may still be able to find it if you have a hankering to use it or to check it out. And when I saw his Twitter account on June 5th, Topanz's bio read, Cis Admin at X Mission, creator of atCypherMonkey, threatened by atWhat3Words for sharing open source. And beyond W3W claims of copyright violations, I can see that having more than one version of three-word addresses in use could potentially cause significant confusion. And these are global systems, so there's not one governing body to decide what to do, what solution to adopt. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:26:37 And Matt Sides wrote, Dear Futilitarians, Looking online this morning for a local garage at which to get my car tires checked, I noticed the first one had a What3Words address on their website. This is great, although maybe not surprising as it turns out I live in the same town as W3W's founder. In looking to see which other W3W codes they could have selected from within their building, I accidentally clicked on the building next door. The square I hit next door had the code SUMMITSLUGKEBAB. This seems particularly unfortunate as it's a Turkish

Starting point is 00:27:09 restaurant specializing in kebabs. Mmm, slug kebabs. I then wondered where kebab kebab kebab went and it turns out to be a restaurant in Quito, Ecuador, but it's a Japanese restaurant and doesn't do kebabs. A wasted opportunity. Thought you might be momentarily amused. I wonder if that's a cause for legal action. Or if you could sell a desirable location, you know. Right, if a kebab restaurant could purchase the address kebab, kebab, kebab. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We always appreciate your comments and follow-ups.

Starting point is 00:27:41 And I do still really appreciate pronunciation help for tricky names. If you'd like the chance to hear me try to pronounce your name, you can email us at 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's going to try to guess what's going on by asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Izzy Cope who says that this actually happened to her. I listened to a Futility Closet podcast episode. It's completely normal but there's no music. I listened to a different podcast and I hear music. Later that day I listened to the exact

Starting point is 00:28:21 same Futility Closet podcast episode as before, and it has music. What's going on? Okay. Just to be clear, by exactly the same, she means exactly that. Yes. That it's the same file. Yes. The same recording.

Starting point is 00:28:34 Yes. So it's nothing we did on our end. Right. Doesn't hear music. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Is this the general phenomenon with her where she doesn't hear music in certain situations, music that's present that other people would hear? I think that's not correct, if I understand correctly.

Starting point is 00:28:57 If someone else listened to the same... Okay. The first time she listened to our episode, she didn't hear music. Right. Would someone else listening to the same file in the same circumstances have heard music? Probably not. Oh. That's interesting. So the second time she listened to it, it was in different circumstances somehow.

Starting point is 00:29:16 Yes. Was there some, I don't even know what this would be. Is there some device or facility that can remove music from either an audio file or a... Not that I'm aware of. I mean, there might be, but that's not what's going on here. Okay. Um. Okay.

Starting point is 00:29:39 So you're saying someone else probably wouldn't have heard music... In the same circumstances. But music was present music was present was it that could she hear other like the text or us speaking or whatever yes she said she could yes and she said she listened to a different podcast and heard the music she just didn't hear it on ours until she listened to it later and then heard it but it's not the time it's not the timing alone that accounts for the difference. Right. It's the circumstances in which she was listening.

Starting point is 00:30:10 Yes. Okay, so she listens to our episode and doesn't hear music. Right. And listens to this other podcast and does hear it. Yes. Did she do that second thing, listen to the other show, in the same circumstances? Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:22 That she failed to hear music in ours? Yes. Wow. Would you say that, I don't even know how to ask this, that she herself hadn't changed in any way? She herself had not changed in any way. Yeah, like biologically? I don't know what I'm asking.

Starting point is 00:30:37 She's in a neurological condition where she doesn't hear music. She had not changed. Yeah, because you said someone else wouldn't have heard it either. Right, in the same circumstances. Is it something to do with our, no, with our particular music? Yes. The low frequencies? Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:52 Really? This really happened? She said this really happened to her. She thought we'd taken the music out of the podcast at first. Is it because there was something else going on in the background of wherever she was listening to it that that I don't interfered with it or drowned it out or prevented her from hearing low frequencies. Yes, yes, that's pretty much it. She says, I was listening on my headphones in the car because your podcast only

Starting point is 00:31:13 uses bass guitar. The rumbling of my car, an old VW bus covers it up completely and I hear nothing. On any other podcast, I would hear the music because it would have higher instruments too. It's a very specific problem to Futility Closet because of your unusual and totally awesome music. When I listen to the same Futility Closet podcast again later, I hear the music because I'm at home where it's quiet. And she says, I was shocked when I was listening because I thought you suddenly had ditched your music. So thanks to Izzy for that puzzle, which might prove enlightening to someone else if they find themselves in the same situation. And if you have a puzzle you'd like to have us try, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our amazing listeners.

Starting point is 00:31:58 If you'd like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com or you can join our Patreon campaign where you'll not only help support the show, but also get more information on some of the stories, extralateral thinking puzzles, outtakes and peeks behind the scenes. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futility closet or see our website for the link at our website.

Starting point is 00:32:25 You can graze through Greg's collection of of over 11 000 singular snatics browse the futility closet store learn about the futility closet books and see the show notes for the podcast with the 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 futility closet dot com our music was written and performed by my magnificent brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 346-A Desperate Winter in Antarctica

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.