Good Job, Brain! - 70: Go Big or Go Home

Episode Date: July 16, 2013

Hey, Mr. Big Stuff, who do you think you are? From the big man (Colossus of Rhodes) to the Big Mac, we share awesome facts and quizzes about things that are BIG. We find out what space might actually smell like, the noisy nature of oceans, and the mysterious, wondrous, bittersweet....and... "explosive" nature of whales.  ALSO: We try out auditory palindromes!!! And a special Dnuor Cisum quiz! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, audacious, auspicious, auditory audience and aubergines. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode 70, and of course, I'm your humble host. Karen, and we are your motley mess of mind-melting and mystifying misfits. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. No Chris this week.

He is in Seattle at the Seattle, I believe, retro gaming expo. I think that's right. Yes. Spreading his knowledge of old video games and his wares. Yes. Peddling his wares like a cheap merchant. So this is episode 70, and I know long-time listeners, you guys are probably expecting this episode So to be an all-quiz every fifth episode, we do have an all-quiz.

But since Chris is not here this week, we thought we'd push that to next week so that all four of us can come up with quiz segments and quizzing each other because that's kind of the spirit of things. Yeah, it'll be all-quizier. Then without further ado, let's jump into our first general trivia segment, Pop Quiz, Hot Shot. It's just you guys against each other, Dana versus Collier. Heads up. Face off. Take your face off. All right, here we go.

Blue Wedge for geography. What meteorological event happens more in the Democratic Republic of the Congo than anywhere else in the world? Huh. Democratic Republic of the Congo? I mean, it seems like it's not going to be hurricane. It's almost smack in the middle of the continent, too. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not on the coast. I don't. I give up. I don't think you. I could. I couldn't even logic it out. There's no explanation either. I'll just, I'll guess just for sake of a guess, I guess, I don't know.

That's the worst guess. It is lightning. Oh, interesting. Okay. No explanation. Yeah, I kind of want to look this up. Hmm. I wonder why.

More lightning than anywhere else in the world. Anywhere else in the world. All right, Pink Wedge Pop Culture. What movie gave its title to a hit by the band Deep Blue Something? Oh. Breakfast at Tiffany's. Yes. Yellow Wedge?

What queen reportedly had herself rolled up in a rug and given as a gift to Julius Caesar? Cleopatra? Yeah. Surprise. He's like, oh, that rug will look great over there. And then just like a lady comes out. You're one of those birthday games. But it's not being graceful.

You have to unrolled. So random All right Purple Wedge Who wrote the trilogy His Dark Materials? Dana You can do it

You can do it I do know it It is Philip Yes Raw? No No

Also starts with the P Pullman Yes Yes Thank you Philip Pullman Pulled that out Well I guess

The more recognizable Part of his dark Materials is The Golden Compass Oh, okay. Greenwich for a science, a deficiency of what vitamin can lead to night blindness. Ooh.

Is that D? Incorrect. You get D from sunshine, though, right? Okay. It's either K or A. It's the carrot one, right? It's A. Vitamin A known as retinol is required for normal vision, among other things.

So carrots are good for your eyesight. Yeah. Night vision. When I learned that, I was a little kid when I learned that. So I was eating like a ton of carrots and I was hoping I would be able to like... To get night vision. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, because if a deficiency causes a problem, then surely if you eat enough, you'll gain a superhuman amount of it. I mean, it seems pretty logical. Yeah. As a kid, sure. I think it just made my pee a weird color. All right. Well, speaking of orange, last question, orange wedge. What MLB major league baseball?

baseball team has won the second most world series championship second most uh is it the cardinals saintly's okay all right good job yankees yeah oh col is it the same one and number one i would assume yankees yes so as of 2009 cardinals have won 10 which is 17 fewer than the new york yankees well good job brains and so no all quiz this week but we do have a very cool topic and we did in the past an episode dedicated to small things, tiny things, wee things,

itsy bitsy stuff. So we thought we'd go the opposite direction and talk about big herculean giant massive things. So this week we're talking about big stuff. Biggie, biggie, can't you speak? Sometimes your world is

hypnotizing and I just love your flashy wets. Guess that's why they're broken. You're so So, you know, we like to ground things in pub quiz here on the show. People have written in... Oh, sorry. Oh, yes. Quick interruption.

I shared on Twitter and Facebook some of the hard questions we actually get in PubTrivia. I like to feed it into our social channels. And one of the questions we had last week at Pub Trivia was, in the Bible, which book is the first book named after a woman? Right. Yeah. We thought that was a pretty tough question. Like, I didn't really know, you know. We got it down to Ruth or Esther.

Yeah. Everybody who listens to this podcast or follow us on Twitter or Facebook, they all knew. They're all like, easy. It's Ruth. It's not hard. I was like, oh. Well, cool. I wish you guys were there. Well, I think it's a good segue, though, into what I was going to say, which is I think

that's a good example of, if you ever just need to study things for pub quiz, studying the periodic table of elements, you can never go wrong. Studying just the books of the Bible, studying. The Ten Commandments comes up. Right. Yeah, right, right. Bill of Rights, lists. Bill of Rights. Yeah, what amendment is what. Or superlatives. Biggest, smallest, fastest, whatever.

So let me ease in here with one that we have definitely, sometimes it's treated us kindly, sometimes it hasn't. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Oh, man. This is just Pub Quiz staple, and I think good trivia nerd stuff. So the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Statue of Zeus, the lighthouse of Alexandria, the mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,

and one of my all-time favorite seven wonders, the Colossus of Rhodes. Whoa. Your favorite, huh? Why? Well, yeah, I don't know. You think a naked guy. Well, so it's funny.

That's why it's his favorite. Yeah, I mean, what's not to like? I think it's the mystery that intrigued me about this. Like, you know, we know the least about the Colossus of Roads. Oh, really? Well, I mean, you know, I mean, as Dana has mentioned in a previous episode, you know, they're all gone except for the pyramids. The pyramids are the only ones that are still standing.

There are no contemporary images of any kind of the Colossus of Roads. What we know about it is it was tall, really, really, really tall. How would you know this? So we have some reliable contemporary account describing it. It's a statue depicting Helius, the god of the sun, and we know it was somewhere adjacent to the opening of the harbor in Rhodes. So that's about all that we know for certain, for certain. Another reason that we don't know a whole lot about it is that we didn't exist very long.

It was only up for about 50 years, and then it toppled an earthquake, and then it laid in ruins in roads for a long, long, long time. Oh, no, they didn't save him. They didn't save pieces of him? Well, you know. Like store a finger or store it eyeball or something. I think it's safe to assume that looters probably would take pieces that they can carry. But this thing is, it's gigantic.

I mean, it was, we'll get to some descriptions here in a minute. So it wasn't something you could kind of just easily pick up pieces and put in your pocket. Let me have you guys a little bit of a description here. This is from the writing of Pliny the Elder. This statue was 70 cubits, high. So that's over 100 feet. 70 cubits high. And 56 years after its erection was overthrown by an earthquake. But even lying on the ground, it is a marvel. Few people can make their arms meet around the thumb of

the figure. Whoa. And the fingers are larger than most statues. So it's a gigantic depiction of Helios. Yeah. So imagine a finger. You could hug a thumb. Few people. He said few people could reach their arms all the way around the thumb. Wow. And what's interesting to me is a lot of the misinformation about it. So do you guys have a mental image of like what the statue would look like? The Colossus arose. I'm thinking of like, kind of like, David.

I'm thinking, you know. Yeah. Jolly Green Giant is what I'm imagining for some reason. Are you imagining naked, tall man? I'm thinking of a super naked guy. They think that he was most likely nude or semi-nude. Yeah, like, you know, statues of the gods would have been at the time. But don't you sail in? Isn't he at the harbor? So do you sail in

between his knees? All right. That's what I was getting at. That's what I was hoping you were going to say. So I'm going to show you guys a picture here. Here's a very common historical image of what they thought it might have looked like. And what I'm showing the guys here is a picture of Helios

standing astride the harbor. One leg on one side of the entrance, one leg on the other with ships sailing below. His legs are so far apart. It's like he's ready to do some lunges. Yeah. So, you know, this is a 16th century illustration. It really puts you in your place.

You have to sail up and look up at Helios' junk on your way into the harbor. It's like, hey, welcome to town. This was a common conception of it, you know, that descriptions are, well, he stood astride the harbor, meaning, you know, straddling the harbor. In the 1800s, a lot of architects and engineers started to really think about, like, well, would this have even been possible, you know, given the technology that they had in 300 BC? Like structural integrity. Yeah, yeah. And most experts really kind of came to the conclusion, like, no, this is, this is probably not possible. They believe that almost certainly he was standing legs together and probably somewhere near the opening to the harbor, not right across. So, I mean, you know, it makes

sense when you really think about it. Like, not just technically, they didn't have the technology to build that high with two legs coming across a harbor, but they would have had to close the entrance to the harbor to build it. If this thing had been standing there when it collapsed, it would have completely blocked the harbor, you know, which would have... Or a lot of the stuff is in the the water. Maybe he was holding like a lantern or a torch in one hand, which might have made sense, you know, a marker to the harbor. They really don't know. So Rhodes was a really important city state, all right? It was really wealthy being a trade city and it was just in a great location. It was, you know, where the Mediterranean meets the Aegean and there were a lot of trade

routes coming through there. So it was strategically important. So the downside of being strategically important is you get conquered a lot because everyone wants to control you. Yeah, you're a good resource point. Yeah, exactly. So they were conquered. the Persians, and then they were conquered by Alexander the Great. And after Alexander the Great died, they were getting a little bit tired of just sort of being a pawn, you know, so they decided to take a little more action in the hands. And there was a power struggle, you know, like, who's going to succeed Alexander the Great? So they sided with one guy. The other guy got mad. He's like, oh, they're going to side with my rival, right? All right, I'm going to take over the city

by force. Okay. So Demetrius, who was the son of the other guy, was sent to basically siege the city. So Demetrius comes in, sails in, and he, you know, his army was like really legendary for having these just massive war engines and siege towers and just great ships. And they tried to attack the city and Rhodes defended itself for a year. Wow. They held off the siege long enough that Demetrius basically is like, you know what? Forget it. It's not worth an effort. I give up.

And they withdrew from the city, but they left all of their equipment there. Oh, that's nice of them. Sweet for a lot of reasons. So the people of Rhodes, they decided, well, we've got a resource here. They took all the military equipment, they sold off a lot of it to raise money, they melted down a lot of the bronze that they would in turn use to build a giant statue celebrating this victory. I used to have this image that it was like made of stone, you know, but it's not. It's actually, it was a, they believe it was primarily constructed by bronze plates scaffolded over a skeleton of iron rods. That sounds like the Statue of Liberty.

You were just right on line with what I'm gunning for. It does. It sounds a lot like the statue of libelts. Liberty. It's very similar, except substitute copper instead of bronze. More than just superficial connections between the Colossus of Rhodes and the Statue of Liberty. Remember I mentioned earlier that one of the conceptions that thought maybe he was holding a torch or a lantern, let me show you guys another potential depiction of what the Colossus of Rhodes might have looked like. Oh, okay. It's a naked dude with a spiky crown, legs together. Yes. And then

holding a torch. Now, this style of figure was not uncommon. It, and, fact, act was an inspiration for Frederick Bartholdi, who was the sculptor of the original model for the Statue of Liberty, that it was really sort of designed in this tradition of ancient world, you know, Egyptian and Greek colossus statue. Right, right, right. So visually inspired by that, structurally, it happened to be built the same way. That's a little bit more of a coincidence. You know, on top of all that, you know, just to drive home the point that these are not just coincidences, the famous poem by Emma Lazarus, which is inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty, the title of that poem is The New Colossus.

Oh, it's 2.0. Yes. Now, let me read the opening two lines. Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land. So she's contrasting the Statue of Liberty with clearly the bronze Colossus of Road, describing the incorrect version, you know, with limbs astride from land to land. You know what? That one's stickier, right? I think that one's funny.

Yeah. So for this episode, I really wanted to talk about space, which I think is probably the biggest thing, the most encompassing, biggest, massive thing I can think of. But that's, there's a lot of stuff that's space-related. Yeah, I would say space encompasses a lot. Yeah, it could be its own show. It's fair to say that. So I did find something that is very good job bringing. Before I tell you guys what that is, do you guys know what Sagittarius B-2 is?

Heard about it? I'm guessing it says star somewhere. It is a giant cloud, a molecular cloud, gas and dust, located about 390 light years away from the center of the Milky Way. The weird thing is, what is this cloud, like, of gas and dust? What does that mean? What's in it? Right. And we've known that for a long time, a lot of astronomers and experts, astrobiologists, chemists, they've been trying to find any kind of clue that,

might signify life in space. And this is to a molecular level. So they're looking for like amino acids and little things, things that might suggest life. Things that might be able to make life. Yeah. I'm going to guess what's in the cloud. Based on, based on you saying it was something that good job brain would be into. Okay. Alien farts. Or, or some kind of poop, some kind of bacterium poop. That's my guess. You know, indirectly, it is kind of related to something we've we've mentioned before, but we'll get there. All right. So basically, that's what kind of the holy grail of a lot of these scientists are going after

is looking for life particles, amino acids, building blocks, and whatnot. Sadly, there is none of that in Sagittarius B2 because it's just gas and dust. But they did find a substance in this cloud called ethylformate. And it is responsible for the flavor of raspberries. Castorium. It's the same chemical that gives raspberry the taste of raspberries.

From your local grocery store. So, like, what does that mean? It's in the space cloud. It smells like raspberry. What? In space. So, yes, one of our favorite facts from Good Job Brain is

Castorium. Castorium is a secretion from the nether regions of a beaver. That secretion is used in the world, all over the world, to enhance vanilla and raspberry flavoring. And it's crazy that space, or at least parts of space,

smells like raspberries. Isn't that weird? Yeah, it is so, it kind of scares me a little. And speaking of alien farts, I actually found this. I'm glad you brought that out to you. I am. I wasn't going to talk about this, but now that it's out in the open. So on one hand, we have pleasant places in space

that smells like pleasant things like raspberries. And on the other hand, we have some places that smell not so great, particularly Jupiter's moon, I-O, smells like rotten eggs, smells like alien farts. Mm, sulfur. Sorry, or what alien farts would smell like, yeah, smells like sulfur. I-O is kind of the same size of our moon, but I-O has an atmosphere. People are like, well, where's this atmosphere coming from? On the surface I-O are a lot of volcanoes, and volcanoes, they erupt due to, like, the gravinational pool because it's so close to Jupiter.

It heats up, lava spews out, and it releases all this sulfuric types of gas and just kind of stays as a blanket around the moon. Oh, that makes sense. So we're talking about Big Stuff today, and I have a quiz for you guys called Mr. Big Stuff. Oh. All right. First question, who's saying that song? Who sang Mr. Big Stuff? Oh, Gene something.

Night? Yes. Oh, Jane Knight. In the 1980s, Mr. Big Stuff was used in a cookie commercial. Do you remember which cookie that was for, Colin. It was Oreo. No. But what?

Double stuff Oreos. It was called the Oreo Big Stuff. It was like a supersized one, right? What's the difference between double stuff and big stuff? It's just called different things. The name. What song by the band Mr. Big hit number one in 1991? Karen.

Oh, no. I was thinking of more than words, but that's extreme. It's a be with you. To be with you. To be with you. I'm not to feel it too. Feel it too. Okay.

Which Bond novel and movie included the villain Mr. Big. And he died in this movie or probably also in the book by being thrown out of a boat that Bond exploded and then being eaten by sharks and barracuda. Sharks and barracuda. Yeah. Man, that's adding insult to injury. Was it Diamonds Are Forever? No.

He's the first one with Roger Moore in it. I know people are screaming at their iPods, right? You know what? That is our weakness. Our weakness is James Bond. Yeah, speaking of things to study for pub quiz. James Bond comes up. Oh, man.

Karen. The one with the Carly Simon song. Is it that one? The Spy Who Loves me? No, it's live and let die. Live and let die. All right. Last question.

The name of Dr. Evil's cat and Austin Powers is named. Oh, it's going to come to me. Mr. Squiggles, Wiggles. Think about the name of the quiz. Mr. Bigglesworth. Yes, Mr. Bigglesworth. It just came to me in a flash. Yeah, Mr. Bigglesworth.

Bigglesworth. Sharks with laser beams on their heads. Awesome. Good job. So I tackled space. Now I'm going to tackle another big subject, which is the ocean. And I want to start off this segment by reading a little bit from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, very famous. So when Captain Nemo, the captain of the submarine, took the submarine down to deep into the ocean, the protagonist, Professor Pierre Aronax, he said, what quiet, what silence, what peace.

Unfortunately, nowadays, the ocean is surprisingly, and you don't really think about it, is not. a quiet place anymore, because of military exercises. You have like sonar blasts. You have commercial ships. It's weird to think about it this way, but the ocean has a lot of noise now because of human interference. You're right. It does seem kind of counterintuitive. You imagine just being fast, quiet. And it's to a point where it's kind of worrisome. The federal government actually right now is completing the first phase of what could become one of the world's largest effort to curb noise pollution. The main reason why is because it's really screwing up with a lot of living things in the ocean. So what the government and the national oceanic and atmospheric administration

of what they're doing is trying to make the world's first largest sound map. And it's visualization of ocean noises using color to kind of symbolize sound and what's happening where across the globe. This is a magnificent project. But it's also very disturbing because they're realizing that there's so much noise pollution. And a lot of oceanic animals and living creatures rely almost 100% on sound. And this is really screwing things up for them. So do you guys know what is the largest animal in the world? The blue whale.

The blue whale. The most massive. Yeah. When I say the largest, I mean, there's size is an area. Longest. Well, I think we had talked on an earlier episode. There was, yeah, like weird worms that grew longer than whales. Exactly.

But, yeah, that's not. Or, like, if you count fungus, then that would be the kind of the strong. Right, the greatest total area. Exactly. So, but when we say biggest or greatest, we usually mean by weight. And, of course, the blue whale is the largest or heaviest animal in the entire world. The top 10 heaviest animals in the world are all whales. Really?

All whales. Whales are one of these animals that are being affected by noise pollution because whales and also dolphins, other oceanic mammals, rely on sound. Yeah. Well, not sight because the light particles that come in from the sun get scattered. It's not going to be smell because of how fluids move, so they rely on sound. This is super important to their whole, like, culture and their whole behavior. They have mating sounds. they have, you know, as well as like navigating by sonar, you know. That's how they move.

So the good news is, at least now people are aware of this. And there is a serious effort to curbing noise pollution in the world. And here's something really interesting about whales, especially humpback whales. And this is kind of cute. So male humpback whales, they sing mating songs or a mating tune. And it's really weird because experts are now discovering that the pattern of the song changes. Sometimes they'll adopt or change a new version of the song. And they keep doing this.

And it's like as if it's a pop song, as if there's a song that's trending, all the male whales would start singing that. It went viral. And sometimes one pod will introduce a tune to another pod. And it's just like it's their radio. It's their top 40 songs. This made me think of, I don't know if you guys remember, but I think a year ago, some person release Justin Bieber songs slow down to like 800 times or something. It's super slow down. And when you play it, it sounds like whales, right? It's like super slow and super low. So in 2004,

the New York Times had a very eye-opening article about a certain discovery, a certain whale discovery. And this whale, we don't know if it's a girl or boy yet, but let's, for the purpose, I'm just going to call him a boy, like a hymn. And his name is 52 hertz. That's his name. What happened was whale biologists and other experts started tracking and noticed in 1992 that there was a weird sound. So most whales, for context, they create sounds between 15 to 20 hertz, which already is incredibly, incredibly deep and low. Now, 52 hertz is called 52 hertz because that is the sound it's making is at 52. So this one whale is creating a sound that other whales cannot hear.

So they don't even know he's there. So there are a lot of theories why there's this one weirdo whale making this sound. And one of the theories is that it could be deformed or malformed. it could be a rare hybrid between different species of whale and it's just this one this one poor whale who's singing and making sounds

and nobody can hear him isn't that sad that's like he's sending out messages and nobody's even knows he's sending out nope and there's no there's no photographic evidence or any visual evidence did they like follow the sound back to this specific whale

they've been tracking Like, it seems like he's pretty healthy because he's swimming around. But we don't know if he has any friends because all his whale buddies can't hear him and can't communicate with him. And this story in New York Times have captured, like, the hearts of so many people. There's even a documentary that's going to be released this year. It's called 52, the search for the loneliest whale in the world. And here, let me play a clip of the whale noise. And this is sped up a lot so that we can hear it.

And so that you, dear listener, can hear it through. your radio or through your iPod. Absolutely lyrical. I know. I think the title of the movie should be 52 Hertz, H-U-R-T-S. Oh, that's so sad. But it's so weird thinking about this whale, 52-hertz, being one of the largest types of animal in the entire world yet is invisible.

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Click to shop now Before your sizes and styles are gone Once again, we're on the same wavelength I think we both had whales on the mine It's the biggest animal! Yeah, I mean you think big, you go right to whales, yeah I've never seen one I don't think a lot of people have seen one like close up

face-to-face. Maybe the closest thing is like, Shamu. Right. So sometime last year, I was flipping through the channels, and I was going through the TiVo on-screen guide, and the title of a program caught my eye. And I was flipping through, and the title of the program is, The Whale That Exploded. All right, I would watch that. I'd stop right there.

It got me. My first thought was like, is this like just some terrible children's cartoon? The Whale that exploded? Right. Or is it some precursor? Like sci-fi. shark to pus or something right yeah uh so it turns out it was a uh is a documentary about about a whale that exploded uh so this will be uh yeah you you know where this story

ends already wow wow so this is it's a little bit sad because it starts the story real starts with a dead whale i have to say just again this is you know this is not a paid plug this was an enthralling documentary it was a national geographic special about an event that happened uh in 2004 and I remember this. I think I sent you an email, like probably a way too excited nerdy email, because this happened in Taiwan. So like all stories about exploding whales, they're, you know, equal parts just tragedy, equal parts comedy. So what happened is there was a sperm whale, a giant sperm whale,

50 tons, over 50 feet long, that died after beaching itself in southwestern Taiwan. And the documentary right from the beginning really tells this story as like a race against time, okay? It's super, it's like 24. It'll become clear why, yeah. So there was a professor. I'm glad it's not a bomb. So very soon after they discovered the beach well, they contacted Professor Wang Chen Ping, who was a marine specialist at the university in Tainan.

And so they called him out to the scene, basically, what do we do? You know, yeah, what do we do next? So he, you know, decided, all right, we got to get this thing back. to my university. I want to perform a necropsy on it, see what happened to it, study it. You know, it was by far the largest specimen he had ever encountered. So this is, I mean, it's

crazy. So they brought out a truck and a crane, you know, at first, and it was too heavy. They couldn't lift it. It ultimately took them three cranes and half a day to get the whale up and loaded onto an enormous flatbed truck. Whoa. Okay. Now, so again,

race against the clock here. Again, we're leading up to the explosion. I'm trying to build some mystery here. Yeah, I got to add in some clock ticking to the second. So he brought it back and he was not actually given permission to perform the necropsy in his

lab. And at that point he's like, oh my God, well, you know, the next best place he could take it was to a nature reserve basically that he was affiliated with where he knew he could perform the examination there. But here's where, you know, it's one of the stories where everything that could slow it up happened.

Like I say, first of all, it took them, you know, over 12 hours to get them on the truck. Then they had to go to one place. Then the truck with the whale and it was way laid overnight. Finally, they're like, all right, we're going to take this to the Wildlife Reserve. They load it back up on the flatbed truck. They're carting it away from the university. So they're driving through city traffic in the morning. Now, at this point, in case you haven't maybe realized this, you know, dead whales, like a lot of dead animals, after they start to decompose, a lot of gases start building up on the inside. And a lot of pressure starts building up on the inside.

Uh-huh. And this, this wasn't something that they didn't know about. Uh, and in fact, sometimes when whales are beach, they'll cut holes actually in them. It's a little gruesome, but to alleviate the pressure. So as they're driving this 50-ton whale on the back of a giant flatbed truck through the streets of Tynon, it explodes. Just, boom, because the gases had built up and built up, and in the heat, it just reached the breaking point. Literally. And it's not, driving through town. They're driving through the middle of morning rush hour traffic. Nobody was hurt.

I've seen photos of it and obviously the documentary. It looked like just a murder scene. There was whale guts, whale blood everywhere. Just people showered with whale bits. Oh, no. Decomposing. The stench apparently was horrible. And I mean, just imagine you're like walking down the sidewalk.

No, one instant you're fine. The next instance that you're coated in whale blood. And rotting whale guts. You know what? That would just ruin your day, the morning. So, I mean, the scene, I mean, you can find images. It's just absolutely gruesome. The reason that this explosion kind of caught them by a surprise is when they looked at where it exploded, basically.

It turns out that it was at a weakened point in the whale's spine. Oh, I see. They think what has happened was that the whale collided with a ship, like a large tanker of some kind. And, you know, you had mentioned going back to the issue of noise pollution and sound confusion. You know, we can't ever know for sure. One theory was maybe the whale sonar got confused. You know, maybe it just wasn't in tune to the ship. And that's where the body cavity ended up exploding guts all over the streets.

Wow. Now, there's a lot of podcasts out there that would say, you know what, one exploding whale, that's good enough. But no, no, I care enough about you guys. Here it, good job, brain. Yeah, here a good job, Brian. We go the extra mile. So in the course of me reading up on the Taiwan Exploding Whale, after the fact, oh, I was just a, yeah, voracious appetite for more details, I discovered a much more famous, apparently in the world of exploding whales, a much more famous exploding whale, which was the Oregon Exploding Whale. Now, my coworker was there.

Anyway, this story is one of my favorite stories of all time. And again, I do want to say It starts with a sad event Which is a whale beaching itself and dying Okay, so in 1970 Off the coast of Florence, Oregon 45 feet long they say And you know, for obvious reasons

You can't leave a dead whale just sitting there Can you roll it back in the ocean? It's so heavy It would just come right back Yeah, one, it's heavy I mean it's floaty Tons and tons it's just going to wash right back up Yeah

So you know they call the state officials out there They're looking at it They're like all right what are we going to do Yeah I mean there's not really an established protocol for dead whale removal. It doesn't happen that frequently. Much of this story, I should say, comes to us from a fantastic piece of video archive from the local news station that covered it. They couldn't cut it up, primarily because they couldn't find anybody willing to do the task. They couldn't find anybody who's willing to come out there and cut up

a dead whale body. They couldn't burn it. So here was their decision, and this may or may not seem logical. They decided naturally, let's use some dynamite. Let's blow it up. Let's blow up the whales. This is what I thought you... When I said exploding whale. Like someone put a bomb in a whale. That's pretty much what they did. Their theory was

dynamite is the best way to go. It sounds crazy, but now I can see because the fact that no one or there's no good equipment to actually cut up the whale or hoist it. Let the explosion break up the whale and those pieces that was their hope was we'll get the dynamite in it'll vaporize the whale they're like you know

well there'll certainly be a lot of chunks left over but their hope was the chunks will be small manageable that like seagulls and scavengers would just eat them what could possibly go wrong this this plan seems pretty foolproof they dug a hole under the whale they put 500 pounds of dynamite under the whale this is where who was the person who had to do that then you have to like scram and sprint well they did they put up the charge and stuff, yeah. Oh, got it. Luckily, we have...

You're mentioning, like, it blows up behind you. You dive away. It's like a Michael Bay movie, right? So luckily, we have the wonderful reporters from KATU in Oregon. We have video documentary of what happens next. So they had enough time, reporters on the scene. So they started backing people up, you know. They, like, onlookers, you know, get a safe distance away.

You know, because we're blowing up whales here. Come on. Don't stand too close. And we have some great video of quiet, see the whale in distance. than a giant boom, just a huge boom where there used to be a whale. And you hear people cheering in the video, yay! And about 10 seconds later, the cheers just turned to the sound of horror as people are fleeing a rain of decomposing whale.

They used way too much dynamite, and they were more successful than they needed to be. Chunks of whale landed a quarter of a mile away from the boy. last site. I encourage you to go look on YouTube for Oregon's Exploding Whale. I can watch this again and again and again. It cracks me up. So here's a question. Is there now a dead whale removal protocol around the world? An official dead whale protocol. Yeah. Interesting. Even at the time when they were interviewing people, there were people saying like, the dynamite itself wasn't a bad idea, but there are people who were like, it was clear from the beginning that they're using, you know, an order of magnitude, way too much explosives.

They use 20 cases of dynamite when a couple dozen sticks would have sufficed, it sounds like. They wanted to blow it up good. It sounds like the preferred approach, if they're able to, is to cut up the carcass. And researchers will either research, you know, take what they can for their labs, or they'll dispose of them in small pieces. But, I mean, it's a problem. You have these giant animals, and we're just not equipped to deal with them. Wow. It's hard to follow that.

Well, when you guys think of big, both of you thought of whales. I was like, Big Mac. I think that's fair. Yeah. And I kind of think if there's something poetic and following the exploding whales story with the story about Big Macs. It's the whale of burgers. Sure. It is quite iconic.

The most popular dish at McDonald's a burger they have. In the world, probably, too. Yeah, it's served in over 120 countries. It's huge. Right. But I actually think Big Mac tastes really, really good. You know what? I have never ever in my life.

life had a Big Mac. What? I mean, I've had quarter-pounders. I'm not like, I was not like anti-McDonald's. I've just never had a Big Mac. I, wow. It's the proportion of the meat patty and the amount of bread, because I like a lot of bread and buns.

So the texture to me is very pleasant. So it was developed by one of the franchises, one of the early people who was at McDonald's or who had set up his own McDonald's restaurant in the Pittsburgh area. And I'm just telling you that because it comes up a lot. And if you have trivia, Pittsburgh is the home of the Big Mac. They renamed Pittsburgh, Big Mac, USA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So anyway, if you read a bit about McDonald's or the Big Mac, and the thing is, it's very similar to a burger that a competitor of theirs had called Big Boy,

Bob's Big Boy, Burgers. Oh, Bob's Big Boy, sure. And so the Big Boy Burger had two patties on a double-cut bun with Thousand Island dressing. And that came first. That came first. And in fact, their mascot, you know, Bob's is. big boy. He's like a, he's kind of a fattish, you know, a chibi-looking statue and he has like a swoopy-bang haircut. He has a platter with a hamburger on it. The hamburger on his tray looks. It looks exactly like

ever realized that. That you're totally right. He was influenced, inspired by. When they launched it, they named it the aristocrat. Whoa, that's like the arch deluxe or so fancy. That's way too highfalutin. It was too fancy for people. So, because people. People couldn't pronounce it or they weren't sure with that mint or whatever. It's just kind of like a lot. The aristocrat. It doesn't tell me what the burger is. Yeah.

And if you say it wrong when you order it, you feel embarrassed. And you're just trying to get a hamburger. You don't want to, whatever. You don't want to have to prove anything to anybody. And they were thinking about calling it the Blue Ribbon Burger, which is okay. Number one. Okay. Yeah.

That's a little, but it's a little more, yeah, folksy. It's not that sticky. And then this 21-year-old advertising secretary in their main office named Esther Glickstein Rose was like, what about the Big Mac? And they kind of laughed and said, whatever. But it was so sticky like people. People remember. They were like, oh, actually Big Mac is a good name. And it took, it's like madman. Yeah. It's a very badman moment. So that was like 1967. She was a secretary. She's 21. They didn't give her any credit for this for like until the 80s. And then they gave her a plaque. But she never got any money or royalties or anything like that because she worked for

them, I guess. Right. It was work for hire. Oh, that's true. You know what goes into a Big Mac, right? You know the jingle? Yeah, man. That is one of the best pieces of advertising. I've eaten many Big Macs and don't know the jingle. Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun.

And they designed it to be kind of a tongue twister and be catchy. And it was so catchy that they had these promotions in McDonald's where if you could say it within two to three seconds, you'd get a free one. I was practicing today. I had time that I could get in. Is it hard? You just have to be confident. yeah there's no stumbling you have to go you have to go for it yeah to all be paddy special sauce let's cheese because I bet you made it I bet you made it I bet that was good actually yeah

would you say it okay I'll try it I'll try it wait hold on I need to look this up you need a moment you need a moment of what it is okay all right this first time of me even uttering this okay to all feet patty special sauce let's cheese pickles aniaz on a sesame seed bun oh yeah that's good that's good it's probably like 3.3 seconds or something probably it's a little slow that's a backhand to conflin if I ever heard one oh it's pretty good Karen yeah you only think I'll buy a little bit. It wasn't a free hamburger, guys. Do you guys remember, and I remember, I think in the early 2000s, McDonald's also had a crazy

Big Mac campaign where they paid rappers money to name drop Big Mac. No, really? Yes, by radio play. Yeah, they said at $5 every song, every time your song gets played on the radio, that talks about Big Macs, yeah. That seems so crass. I understand how product placement works. That's around the same time when rap was about making a lot of money and writing

Bentleys and drinking, you know, champagne and stuff. So it's like people are name-dropping all these expensive luxury things. And then it's like Big Mac. So I have one piece of trivia that I found fascinating. I don't know if it will ever help you in your life. Probably not. But one third of all the sesame seeds that are grown in Mexico go to McDonald's for the Sesame Seeds.

One third? Yeah. That's... That's a... Isn't that crazy? A lot. Wow. Yeah.

I learned not too long ago, because it's got the three buns. And I always thought that it was a top bun, a bottom bun, and then a second bottom button in the middle. No, it's a special middle bun. Yeah. Do you know what that's called? Oh. There is a very particular name.

It's the club layer. It helps... It's to stabilize it with all the sauce and all the other stuff. Oh, so one like slide up. Yeah. It's a load bearing bun. It's a load bearing bun. Yes.

That's why I stuck in my brain was just in case it ever came up at pub quiz. Top bun. Club layer, club slice. Yeah, bottom bun. The mezzanine. The mezzanine. That makes sense. We started off with a big man and it with a big Mac.

Huh? Not bad. With a lot of whales in between. Yeah. The whale sandwich. Join us aboard CN's new podcast, The Inside Track. Your front row seat to the railroads and supply chains powering North America. Hear real stories, expert.

insights and bold innovations. Episode one dives into transloading with Cien's Benoit La Chants. Learn how it works, why it matters, and how to get involved. Listen now to the inside track. So I have a final quiz segment for you guys. You know what? I was so fascinated by our last week's episode. Colin, you talked about backmasking, about hidden secret messages or not.

Not. Yeah. Playing music backwards. and that got me thinking, I was like, oh, this is really interesting. In the last episode, I did ask a question, kind of just like, I threw it out there asking, are there any words or phrases that are auditory palindromes where it's not that they're spelled the same way forwards and backwards. It's that when you say it, it sounds the same forward and backwards.

Right, right. I think on the spot we got as far as poop. Yeah, which didn't, which totally wasn't. I found some. Oh, cool. Oh, great. So each one of you guys, including me, have a piece of paper with a weird phrase on it. I want you to say it normally, and I'm going to play it backwards to see if it really does work.

Oh, okay, all right. Well, Dana, since you're a fan of Twilight, thanks for calling me out. I gave you the phrase, new moon. Okay, let's play it backwards to see if it actually works. No, no, that's for the devil. Wow. I'm a little scared right now. It's a beautiful language. Kind of.

I knew a moon. I like fake backwards. I kept doing that the last episode. I'm like, it's surprisingly easy to do. And then Colin, I gave you a phrase, ominous cinema. All right, let's play it backwards. Amonis cinema

Oh That was scary That was really close That was close All right And I have Work crew Here it is backwards

Oh no Wow Ominous cinema is the winner I wonder if it's because it was longer Maybe like both of your guys were two syllables Where did you find those? So I was just scouring the internet

looking for good ones. Oh, cool. Well, anyways, so my music round, prepare yourself. I pick some of the biggest hits, from oldies to even hits today. Okay. Big hits, and I've reversed it. Oh, okay. So I'm going to play it backwards, and I want you guys to guess what song.

Buzzin. Okay. And tell me who is the artist and what song. Here are some tips that I've learned while I was editing. The tone of the artist. Kind of remains the same. So that's a good clue if you can figure out the voice, even though they're speaking backwards gibberish.

And then the other thing is like the bass line or the drum line sounds kind of familiar. Because they're always in repetition. So you can get a feel of it. So those are my two tips. Well, we'll see. We'll see how this goes. All right. Here we go.

Number one. Dana Dana Oh, is Karley Ray Jefferson Call me Maybe Yes, call me maybe You can kind of hear it now That was really weird totally

As you said, it was like It was the beat and the quality of her voice Okay, number two So, queen and David Bowie, Queen and David Bowie, under pressure. Yes. That's great. Especially at the end there. Wow.

Man, Freddie Mercury, forward, backward. That guy can sing. Yeah. All right. Number three. That little ending is definitely the trick. Oh, I can't help myself. Yeah.

Oh, I can't help. By. I always forget. Is it the temptations? It's not the temptation. You're not tempted by this sugar. But you are... Four tops.

Yeah. Four tops. Yeah. All right. Next one. even? Yes. And they must have had an auditory palindrum in there, because the on and on part. Yep, absolutely.

It sounded just like pretty dead. All right, next one. That was gin. That was gin and juice. That was gin and juice. Snoop Doggown. Wow. That was good. That was like French Snoop. Man, I really liked that a lot. Music backwards is good.

Next one. I was like, oh, who sings it? Very good. Very good. Blurred lines by Robin Thick. And last. We have a classic here Oh, oh. Almost sounds Thai.

Yeah, they're a classic. I'm not... There are two singers. Yeah. In the song. Yeah. I heard that it was a song of Male and Female. Take a guess.

Ain't no mountain? Yes, ain't no mountain by. It's Diana Ross. Ding, ning, d'n, and... Oh, man, it wasn't Marvin Gay, was it? It was Marvin Gay. All right, all right. Very good.

Well, that was very fun. I thought, cool. That was fun. That was fun. Good job. And now we know, there are auditory palindromes. You just have to try them out, but ominous cinema. On and on and on and on and on.

On and on and on. So, there you go. That is our show. Thank you guys for joining me. Thank you guys, listeners, for listening in. Hope you learn a lot about whales. Man, we really covered the whales. We've talked about whales a lot.

How they sing and how to explode them when they... How are not to explode them. The Big Mac. We also talked about space raspberries and definitely some cool palindrome stuff. Palindromes are always super interesting. I'm going to go research more of those on tour palindromes. That's so fascinating. You can find us on iTunes.

You can find us on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, and also on our website, good job, brain.com. And join us on Twitter and Facebook. We talk about PubChia a lot. I share some links. The other day, I found like a picture of a... Some dude invented a carriage, like, you know, like a horse-drawn carriage, but it's not a horse. It's for an ostrich. Sure.

You know what? You know what? You have ostriches. Use what you have around. I mean... It's so weird. Isn't it, laziness is the mother of invention or whatever? Yeah, yeah.

What are we going to do with all these ostriches? I know. And I'm so tired of walking. There's got to be a better way. And so we'll see you guys next week. Bye. Bye. until September.

What? Leguans. Is that why we're in Coburg Beach? Here, here. Order me the mother-cluckers. A chicken sandwich. Not just a chicken sandwich, Arthur. Chicken.

Marinated for 24 hours and tossed in their blend of herbs and spices before they become cold and crispy. Slapped between two Guyanese sweet buns that are toasted to burry perfection. It's the best chicken sandwich in the world. All right, yeah, that does sound pretty good. You're damn right.