Good Job, Brain! - 81: Danger! Danger!

Episode Date: October 2, 2013

Watch out, brains because it's going to get dangerous up in here. Learn about the deadly secrets behind animal kingdom's own goofball - the blowfish, and why people actually want to eat it. (Get it? Goof-BALL? Ok.) Hear Dana ROAR about the legendary "Big 5." Just exactly how lethal are your day-to-day activities? Find out about the most dangerous jobs in America, and why Alfred Nobel was such a (smart) weirdo. And why a turn-of-the-century craze is still haunting France and France's wallet today. ALSO: 1960's Jeopardy, SQUARE TRIVIA! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, wise allies and guys who love surprise and French fries. Welcome to Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and Opi trivia podcast. This is episode 81, and I am your humble host, Karen. And we are your spangly spandex spanning spaniels. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris.

Now I have a mental image of a spaniel wearing spandex. And it's not good. Spangled spandex. A spandex, yes. And time for our first general trivia segment. Pop quiz, hot shot. And this week we are bringing back 1960s Jeopardy. Hooray.

It's a 60s edition of Jeopardy, the board game that we found at a flea market. You might get some of these questions. and you might not get some of these things change and some things stay the same. So especially for Colin, our sports guy, we are going to have a round of sport. Oh, dear. So for a single Jeopardy, so for $100, everybody at your barnyard buzzers ready. All right. Here we go.

For $100. In ice hockey, player who almost never scores a goal. Karen. The goalie. Yes. What is the goalie? What is the goalie? What is the goalie?

Yes, this is, uh, yes. For $200, you know what I haven't even noticed about this game? The dollar items are, no, the dollar, the dollar amounts are actually not what we're assuming they are. That was the $10 question. Oh. This is 1960s Jeopardy. So for $20, which went a lot further back then, they wear a red heart on their uniforms. A red.

They wear a red heart. Dana. The care bears. No. Okay. A little too early, yes. This could be one of those, like, teams where they... Remember, this is sports.

They were a red heart on their uniforms. Oh, is it... Colin. What are fensers? What are fensers? They wear a red heart on their uniforms. Yeah, you guys are thinking sports team. For the princely sum of $30.

Country that has played for the Davis Cup every year since 38. Davis Cup is golf. I will guess what is the United States? It is not the United States. Karen. What is the United Kingdom? It is what is Australia. This question may no longer be accurate.

What is the Davis Cup? Davis Cup is tennis. I believe so. I'm pretty sure that's the international tennis, yeah. Number of seconds within which a team must shoot in pro basketball. Colin. What is 24? What is 24 seconds?

Yes. And finally, well, this one should be really easy. Former giant, now the QB coach for the 49ers. Former giant. And this is in 1960s. This is about the end of the 1960s. Yeah. He is currently, as in the end of the 60s, the QB coach for the 49ers.

Oh, man. I don't know. I don't know. Who is Joe Montana? No. No, it is incredibly famous football player, Y.A. Tittle. Oh, okay. He is a very famous football player, but I would have never known.

that. I had no idea who that even was. I just, I picked this category because the name Y.A. Tittle is really funny. He is one of the just legendary, legendary football players. Okay. Should we have another round? Yeah, yeah. Okay, one more round. Here is a round about foreign phrases. This is your double jeopardy round. All right. How exotic. The dollar values are doubled, which means that for $20, this means in the style, but we use it for with ice cream. Dana. What is Alamode? What is Alamode? All right. For $40. Frenchman's question concerning another's linguistic ability.

Dana. What is Pra la Vu franca? Yes. What is Parley-Vu-Francée? Do you speak French? Right, right. For $60, French, for apparently the only foreign language. Yes, yes, was French.

French phrase for a group's spirit. Spirit of Fellowship. Oh. Colin. What is Esprit de corps? Esprit de corps. For $80, sign on a store, caveat emptor, means this.

Uh, Dana. What is buyer beware? What is buyer beware? Oh. Finally, for the $100. Oh, my God. Latin for something indispensable. Latin.

Latin. Latin for Something indispensable. It's going to do something that we all know. We do use this today. Yeah, it's true. Necessary. Oh, that's French.

Go. What is prerequisite? No, it's not prerequisite. So the Latin phrase... Proforma? No, the, yeah. So the Latin phrase is sine qua non. Oh, okay.

Sinequana means indispensable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, hey, good job on 60s Jeopardy, except for the things that totally changed. We totally know. No. All right. Thanks, Chris, for our 1960s Jeopardy.

This week, we hear a good jabbering. We like to talk about things that will hurt you, whether it's food or crazy animals or stupidity. So we thought this week we'd be more general and we're going to talk about just things that are dangerous. The frailty of human life. So this week, it's all about dangerous stuff. Danger! danger get on the floor

the right here sang it been so long he's been on get on the flower right here all right guys well yes

I have something that hits all of the classic good job brain notes all at once we're talking about weird animals that do weird things talking about poison

and weird things that happen inside of your body, and of course, cuisine. So when we think about, I think when anybody right now thinks about dangerous food items, I'm guessing a lot of people's mind goes immediately, of course, too. The blowfish. Oh, I was going to say razor twinkies. But I guess a close second would be the blowfish, the fugu, the puffer fish.

Because not a lot of things you would describe as dangerous food. Dangerous food items. Like who would be dangerous? Right. Well, that's the thing. Most dangerous food, you just don't eat it because it's dangerous food. Right. But people do eat puffer fish, known as fugu in Japanese, which means river pig. Oh.

River pig. So before we talk about puffer fish as cuisine, let's talk about the actual animal and like what it does in its daily life when it's not getting eaten. The family of puffer fish is actually many species. They're connected by the unique physical feature that they have elastic. stomachs, which they can very quickly, at a moment's notice, fill with water or air. They can fill it with air in a pinch, but they're typically underwater, and they can fill it up with water.

Either or. And they will assume they will go from looking very much like a typical everyday fish into a ball, into a ball-like shape, a round balloon of a fish. Why is this? Well, as it turns out, the puffer fish are kind of like the huffel puffs of the sea. It's like, they're not really that good at swimming. They're not really that fast at it. And when they swim, it's kind of like, they're not even good at really swimming in a straight line.

They're just sort of awkward. They're not so great. This makes them very attractive to predators because they can't really swim away that fast. In response, they responded by evolving these inflatable stomachs. And so when a would-be eater of the puffer fish comes up, they can puff up and suddenly they become this balloon that is. basically inedible because if you're a fish you can't shove this thing into your mouth and eat it you can't your mouth around it there is a there is a video of a seal I think a sea lion like trying to eat a puffer fit and it drags it up out of the

water and it fills itself up with air when it's like above the surface of the water and the seal just it's like trying it's like you were I trying to eat a balloon right you can't do it you can't shove it into your mouth and the seal tries for like a minute And then he's like, well. Whatever. That's not going to happen. Right. And then he leaves it alone. And then he just walks away and the puffer fish deflates and swims back into the ocean.

I thought it was like, you know how like with Puma attacks you're supposed to look larger than you appear? Yeah. That's exactly what I thought to do. It's not even that big. I mean, when they puff up, it is like a small balloon. Now, there might be an element of that, but it's really because they just become inedible. And you see that, and you'll see the predator just dragging it around. So much sense.

But I never thought about that. way. So, if they do manage to eat one, that animal would not be very happy about the food that they've just consumed, because Fugu contain very large quantities of a neurotoxin. Specifically, this won't be on the quiz, you don't have to remember this, but it's called tetrodotoxin. It lives in the liver of the fugu and also in the ovaries and the eyes. Wow. So, three very random body parts. Yes, they want to make sure they got a whole body covered. Yeah, that's where the most It's just sprinkled around the body, different areas. Eyeballs to ovaries as the phrase goes.

So what does it do? Well, we can have a call back to an earlier good job brain episode about electrolytes and things like sodium ions and how they're absorbed into your body and how you need sodium to live, right? So tetrodotoxin blocks your sodium channels and it makes it impossible for your nerves to intake that sodium. And what that does is it shuts you down. Because if your nerves don't get the sodium, they can't fire, which means that nothing works. It's like as if there is no sodium in your body. Yes. Because it's blocking.

Oh, very similar. And you stop doing stuff real fast. You stop breathing because your lungs can't contract anymore because your nerves can't fire because the sodium is blocked and then you die. If you take too much of it, there is no antidote. They have to wait until it leaves your system and they have to, like, support you. But there's no antidote that, like, cures you. So, fugu, of course, is a delicacy in Japan. People love to eat it because if you prepare it the right way, you cut out the liver, you cut out the eyes, the ovaries, and you just serve the meat.

And as long as there's no contamination, you can eat the meat. You have to be certified by the Japanese government. You have to take a test that only a small group of sushi chefs pass. It's illegal to serve parts of the fugu that are not the meat, basically. Because people like to eat fish eyeballs and fish livers. But it's not, it's actually illegal to serve those parts of it. Fair enough. And if you want to do this, it would cost you about $2 to $300 for a full meal made up of a food.

Okay, so I have a couple questions. Go on. First question. I thought blowfish are like porcupines and they have spiky. Some of them do. Okay, not all. Some of them have spiky things, but not all. Okay.

Yeah. Number two. Go on. In one puffer fish, just how strong is the dose? If you were to eat the whole puffer fish, you would die. Okay. Yeah. So, like, how, at what point in the history of eating Fugu, did they figure out, like, oh, this is really poisonous?

We've got to be careful. I mean, this must go way back. Millennia ago. They have found Fugu bones inside corpses or burial mounds that are thousands of years old. Wow. You know, centuries ago, they had, on and off, they had banned the eating of it entirely in Japan. When was the last time someone died from eating fugu? Is it like a long time ago?

Nope. People, there are like one or two deaths roughly every year from eating Fugu. But the thing is, it's not from like going to a restaurant and having it prepared specially for you by a trained chef. A lot of times it's people who catch them like on their own and they don't, maybe they don't know what it is or maybe they're dumb and they think, oh, I know what an ovary looks like. I'll just cut out the ovaries. And they don't. And that's typically what happens. Fugu, however, did come back into the news in 2011 because a woman was eating at a very famous two-star Michelin Fugu-specific restaurant in the Ginza, the high-end district in Tokyo.

The man that she was dining with asked the chef if he would serve them the liver. Because you can eat a little bit of the liver, and maybe you would get a little bit of like a tingling sensation. Oh, my God. Yeah. As you've said, Chris, it's the dose. that makes the poison. Exactly, that's right. Because they like danger.

They'll eat a little bit of it. Yeah. Parting with danger. Exactly. Well, the guy was a regular customer, and the chef was just like, ah, okay, we'll just eat a little bit of it, you know, just for the heck of it. So the guy eats a little bit of it. The guy was fine.

The chef eats a little bit of it. He was fine. The woman eats some. She goes to the hospital. She did not die. She was partially paralyzed for a little while. Not for the rest of her life. Had to go to the hospital and is okay now.

So the restaurant is still open, still serving Fugu, but the chef was, suspended. The charges are still pending against him. But you did say it's illegal to serve. He had broken the law. Yeah. Okay. Right. Right. The Guardian reported that between 2000 and 2009, there were 338 cases of poisoning, which resulted in 23 deaths. That's still high. It's really, but the thing is, but remember, there's restaurants that serve people Fugu day in and day out. People are constantly eating this stuff. This is where it gets really interesting. Hugu do not make the toxin in their own bodies.

For a while, they thought that they prepared, that the toxin just came from them. No. What? They get it from eating other animals that have bacteria in their system that produce the tetrida toxin. And Fugu farms have shown that if you strictly control their feed and make sure that bacteria is not in their feed, you can raise totally safe Fugu. Well, people have convinced themselves that this fish is delicious.

is even though people are like, it's not actually that good. It's kind of tough. Like, that's why it's always, when you see Fugu prepared, it's sliced really thinly. They have to do the Sashimi really thin because it's actually kind of a tough fish in the first place. People just eat it for the piece of history or thrill. People will tell you that they actually really, really like it. And, you know, there's probably kind of a Povlovian response. If you eat it enough, you will start to like it.

Wow. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, eating Fugu is about 0.33 micromorts. Micro-mort. I have a feeling we're going to learn what this is soon. Yes. So a micromort is a unit of risk measuring, and it means one in a million probability of death. Oh, okay. So you have a one in 300 million-ish chance of dying from eating fugu. Right. So this is a way of understanding risk and your chances of dying, of dying by doing different actions. There's all these numbers, all this probability. And so this is a really standardized way.

Like insurance companies use it. Yeah. Yeah, so micro-mort. Micromor. Yes. Nice. So I was developed by Ron Howard. Opie.

The director. Not Opie. I'm a Stanford professor who does work in decision analysis. The choices you make, the behaviors you engage in. What is the micromort rating on that? That's such a cute name for such a not cute thing. Micromor. Yeah, no.

It sounds like a Pokemon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So kind of to give you a sense of what one micromort is, it's like flipping a quarter 20 times. and getting heads every time. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So you accumulate every day that you're alive. On average, 39 micromorts, but there are things that add to your micromort total. Stuff like smoking 1.4 cigarettes adds one micromort. These are all things worth one micromort. You have a one in a million chance of dying, doing it, or it's added to the chances that

you're going to die. So drinking half a liter of wine is one micromort, traveling six minutes by canoe or six miles by motorbike or motorcycle, those are both one micro... It's so weird. It's like you can translate every action into a unit. Yes, that you're going to die. I want to ask you guys, what do you think is the most

dangerous? Hang gliding, scuba diving, or skydiving? Oh. I'll go with scuba diving. Yeah, I'm going to go scuba diving as well. Hang gliding. Hang gliding. Oh, really? Hang gliding's eight micromorts. Skydiving, seven. And scuba is 4.7.

7-2. Oh. Yeah. That's good. Actually, the safest. Yeah. This sounds like an awesome game. Yeah.

It's fascinating to look at the numbers. Yeah. What will kill you more? Dying from a lightning strike is only 0.4 micromorts. Doesn't happen that much, huh? It does not happen. One in 2.5 million chance or so.

Dying from a falling coconut is 0.004 micromats. Very good. It's some. It's still some. Yeah. And so Fugu is higher than dying from a falling coconut, but lower than lightning strike. Okay. Okay. That actually makes it seem much safer. Yes. Yeah. Because those are two pretty low, low likelihood activities for me. Yeah. Coconut. Yeah. And then I was looking, I was like

animal attacks. I wanted to find the micromorts. And there are a lot of websites about sharks and they want to make you feel safe about sharks. So shark, just so you know, it's 0.0033 micro mort. Oh. So that's a very low chance. One in 300 million. chance of a shark attack. Is there a high animal, micromort? Dogs are kind of high. Dog bites. I didn't want to talk about it. No, I can see that, because

they're more dogs than, you know, walking around than sharks. You'll encounter dogs more than your animals. Yeah. Not many sharks out on the street. No. Not many. Micromorts. Yeah. Oh, that makes me feel weird. So, on the show, we've talked a lot about Mercury before. One of those

like, it looks like it's magical thing. It turns out it's really bad. for you. So there's another thing that kind of has the same effect of mercury where people were just enthralled and so perplexed by the magical properties of this thing and used it in everything. This thing is radium. So in France, obviously, a Nobel Prize winner, Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium in 1898. And she basically set off this big. Great craze in France over radium. Parisians love this stuff because they're like, oh, it's glowing and it seems it's mystical.

It's luminous and they used it for everything. Curie did show that radium could be used to destroy cancerous cells. So then people assumed, oh, it's so good for your body. And the list goes on. They had makeup with radium. They had radioactive makeup, radioactive soap, radioactive paints. They put it in water, so water fountains would glow. They put it in water and would drink it thinking that it's good for you.

I'm glowing on the inside. And there's this thing called the Cosmos bag. And this is, we're going into kind of quack town a little bit. It's like, it's just a cloth bag made out of cotton that has some radium. in it, you're supposed to rub around your body to make your joints feel nice. There was radioactive water. Basically, it's like a, like a container that's lined with radioactive lining, and you would put water in it, and you would steep, and you would drink it, you know, like every day, like tea. It just, it sounds so dangerous. It sounds so dangerous, but everybody thought it was a

really awesome thing. Currently, right now in France, there's still traces amounts of leftover radio. Oh, really? Yes. And because they used it for paint. They used it for, you know, things in the factory. And so a lot of has seeped in through the floorboard, through the ground. There's actually an organization that's in charge of monitoring and handling all of the radioactive waste. And they spend a lot of money on decontaminating all this old stuff that was spread everywhere. Like, say, one house, you know, they would have traces of paint that has, you know, that's still radioactive. They say it's not enough to present a risk, but it's there. It's detectable. And it's going to be there. To decontaminate a house, it costs about 260,000 euros or 300,000 U.S.

dollars. And for one house. The agency has a four million euro annual budget just to decontaminate houses. Yeah, because it's a public health issue. It's not like, you know, you're responsible for your own house. For the radium plan. Wow. And it makes me think. What is it that we're using now? What is it that we're using now? Is it plastic? Is it ketchup?

They put carbon dioxide bubbles in their water and they would just drink it. They were like, oh, it's fizzy. Yeah, every time it's lead or asbestos or radium, it's like, oh, those people were so dumb. It's podcasts. They've been. People. That's silent killer, right? Nobody knew.

Catch up. If I would ask you guys What product Almost was known as Nobel's safety powder? What would you guys answer? Karen. The dude, Mr. Nobel

Is the inventor of Dynamite. That's right. Mr. Alfred Nobel, yes. Before settling on the name Dynamite, one of the names he was Nobel's safety powder. Totally.

That's one way to spin it. Yeah, yeah. For whose safety? Well, so it's interesting. And we'll get there in a minute, but it's, you know, we don't think about dynamite being a particularly safe substance, but in comparison to the explosives that came before it, it is an extreme improvement in terms of safety. So let's back up a minute. Alfred Nobel is a really fascinating guy to me because he's one of those rare people whose name is tied with two radically different things. So Alfred Nobel Nobel, that's a dynamite.

Alfred Nobel is also the Nobel in the Nobel Prize. Nobel Prizes. That's right. The series of prizes given out. That's right. You know, he's just another one of these, as we've talked about on the show before, just a modern day Renaissance man from the 1800s. And he was an engineer. He was a chemist. He spoke six languages. He held 350 patents. And he made himself quite rich through his inventions, primarily all in the field of explosives and armaments, really. He came from sort of a family of engineers and inventors. And father Emmanuel, Well, after several failed inventions started what became the successful family business making arms, making explosives. And so into the mid-1800s, they made a lot of money supplying arms during the Crimean War. And after the war ended, Dad sort of turned control of the company over to his four sons. So there was Alfred, Ludwig, Robert, and Emil Nobel. Alfred really devoted himself to making explosives safer, all right? And so it's sort of the roots of safety powder.

So now keep in mind, all right. So for hundreds of years, hundreds of years, really the only explosive that we as humans had was gunpowder. Gunpowder, right, black powder. More or less unchanged from the black powder that the ancient Chinese used, it was very simple to make. Powerful enough, relatively safe, but it wasn't quite strong enough as we got into the 1800s for some of these large steel projects that explosives really need to be used for. They were using, like, more and more of it. More and more of it. That's right.

That was the only way to scale the power of it. Around about 1850 was the invention of nitroglycerin. It is extremely powerful. It is also extremely unstable. Working with nitroglycerin, really, really dangerous. Many deaths in the manufacturing of it. Deaths and using of it. Transportation.

It's transporting it, absolutely. It was a dicey proposition. It would just explode. It would, I mean, you know, not spontaneously explode, but close. close to it. It didn't, you know, it was really, it didn't take much to get it to blow up. Yeah, to set off nitroglycerin. This was, it was so powerful and so profitable that if you were in the explosives industry, this is what you were making. And indeed, the Nobel family made a lot of money manufacturing nitroglycerin. But Alfred in particular really thought like there's

got to be a better, safer way to make this. There's got to be a better way. Tired of losing limbs to nitroglycerin. It was so unsafe that even if you really knew what you were doing and you were professional, there was a high level of danger. In fact, younger brother Emil Nobel was killed in a nitro-glistern explosion at their factory in Sweden. I killed him and several other workers, and this striking so close to home really

sort of drove Alford. This was personal. This time? This time, it's personal nitroglycerin. So without getting too into the real specifics of the chemistry, basically, he came up with a safer way of working with nitroglycerin. So at its, at its heart, dynamite does have nitrolycerin in it.

It's sort of just, I'll simplify it a lot, but it's soaking nitroglycerin in a more safe, inert substance, a specific type of earth. So it's a lot more tolerant to heat. It's a lot more tolerant to shock, things like that. So you can work with it much more safely. And it became the go-to-explosive for all of the massive building projects of time. Dynamite is nitroglycerin plus dirt?

Yeah. If you want to really, really simplify it, and I'm sure we'll, yeah, we'll trigger some letters from explosive experts. But yeah, yeah, it's nitroglycerin sort of infused into a safe form. Where does dynamite come from? Because that's an awesome word. So that was coined by Alfred Nobel. Dinah, the root in Greek, means power.

And he kind of just added on the might onto the end of it. As in might. Yeah. Power and power. Yeah. So, you know, I think it's... Dino mite. Dino might.

That's a good name. Yeah. Good job. Yes. He made a lot of money off of dynamite. This was the late 1800s, railways, tunnels. Here's where it gets to some of the interesting personality part of Alfred Nobel's character.

He was a past. pacifist. He considered himself he was anti-war. He was a pacifist. And he, you know, I think like a lot of other people who are in this industry, he had the view that by making explosives more controllable and safer, he could maybe help bring about an end to gruesome warfare. But yeah, there is the obvious contradiction on the face of it of a man who is an avowed pacifist known more for explosives and armaments and making his money off of war. Now, again, as we talked about at the top, he is also connected with the Nobel Prize. Now, when he died, he willed many, many millions of dollars to the establishment of the Nobel Prizes for physics, chemistry, peace, physiology, physiology, and literature. So he himself wanted to be like, oh, I want to recognize. Give prizes with my name on it to people. Yep. That's why the peace one's in there, too, I guess. Yes, he's a pacifist.

Yes, absolutely. And he bequeathed a huge amount of money to this cause. It was virtually his entire estate, 94% of his money. He left to the establishment of the Nobel Foundation. That's kind of cool. Yeah. Well, I mean, and they're still running off of, with interest and stuff. They're still running off of his initial bequeathment.

Oh, it's millions and millions of dollars that he left. Yeah. So now, what I did not know about Alfred Nobel is that all of this was a complete and total surprise to everybody. Oh. Nobody knew until they opened up and read his will that he wanted to create a foundation. That they were getting his 6% of the money. His family didn't know. None of his business associates knew.

The only people who knew that he had made this request was the people who drew up as will. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, you can kind of see, all right, well, you know, he was a pacifist. I can see why he would want to devote, you know, these efforts to recognizing good, worthwhile causes. But there's another fascinating incident that I think really informs his decision to found the Nobel Prizes. So he died in 1896. Okay. But I want to flash back to eight years before then.

So this is 1888. And remember we had talked about his brothers. So brother Ludwig, who was himself, a very wealthy businessman, had other business ventures. He was living in France at the time. And Ludwig died. And the French newspapers reported his death. They covered the story. Except they got it wrong.

And they thought Alfred was the one who had died. So the French newspapers were running obituaries for Alfred Nobel. And not you had Big Nobel. Yep. And they were not kind. So this is a plot like right out of a movie where the man gets to read his own obituary. It was not nice. No.

So there was one headline famously, The Marchant de la mort is mort. The merchant of death is dead. And he was, he's reading these descriptions of himself being called the merchant of death. Yeah. And you will never know for sure. To swallow. He's a very private man. He never talked about it. But it certainly, his biographers and historians think that this really just shook him. Like this moment is like, oh my God, I'm going to be remembered as the merchant of death, even though I was trying to make things safer. So it certainly seems highly, highly plausible that this incident drove him to kind of be like, wow, you know what? I don't want this to be my legacy. I don't, I've gotten a sneak preview of what people are going to say when I'm gone. And sure enough, he was absolutely right. I mean, whether this was manipulative, or not.

Hey, he's got the money. Yeah. He knows how to play the game. Yeah, he played the game. He's been good at it. I want to be known for something else. I'm going to throw money at it. That's what my name on six awards or five awards.

And if you say Nobel today, most people, the first instance can come to their mind is, oh, Nobel Prize. Yeah, peace and advancing the cause of human endeavors. Yeah, yeah, yes. Not blowing people up. Wow. Yeah, so that was really a way to take control of your own destiny. That's right. Yeah, by having a sneak preview of your obituary.

Awkward. That's so awkward. All right. Time for an ad break. So in honor of our sponsor, Squarespace, I've prepared quick trivia, and it's all about squares. Oh. So you guys, get your barnyard buzzers ready. Here's some questions about squares.

All right. Room for Squares is the debut studio album of what American musician. Is this John Mayer? Yes, it is John Mayer. I was going to throw more hints. Featuring songs like No Such Thing, Neon, and Love Song for No One, Dana. Dana needs not your hints. All right.

The address of this place is Four Pennsylvania Plaza. Oh, that must be Madison Square Garden? Yes, Madison Square Garden. In 1985, I didn't know this. The Garden hosted the inaugural WrestleMania presented by the WW. I guess not E. That was back in the days when it's WWF. Name me the four different actual squares on a monopoly board.

Chris. Oh, go free parking, jail, and go directly to jail. Correct. Very good. Everything else is a rectangle. Well, the squares are also rectangles. Little square trivia. All squares are rectangles.

But not all rectangles are squares. Trivia. Stephen McDonnell Hillenberg is an American marine biologist. He also created what beloved marine creature or character? Would that be SpongeBob SquarePants? Yes. He's an actual marine biologist. I did not know that.

I mean, also an animator and producer and writer, but he's an actual science person. Well, we know the square root of two is an irrational number. what exactly is in a rational number? It is a number that has like a decimal point and then numbers after the decimal point that never end. You can't express it completely. Right.

Is there a good definition for this? Good teamwork. It is any number that cannot be expressed as a ratio. So something or a fraction. Square Peggs is an American comedy series that debuted in 1982, starring what Sex and City actress? You can take this one, Colin? That's Sarah Jessica Parker.

Yeah, very young, Sarah, Jessica Parker. It's about two awkward, awkward, unpopular girls. And it's so weird that she became Carrie Bretchen's. That's true. Sex and City. All right. Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy are game franchises of what video game company? Please.

Oh, I was going to, you know, not do this one and just like... It's Square Enix, right? Yes. Square Enix. And there you go. Some questions about squares. Thank you guys for playing. Yeah, squares.

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your podcasts. You're listening to Good Job Brain. Smooth puzzles, smart trivia. Good job, brain. All right. Have you guys heard of the Big Five? Big Five. five sporting goods, but that's probably not what you mean.

It might be related to that term, actually. So this is a term that was coined by big game hunters to describe the most difficult, dangerous animals to hunt. Okay. In Africa. Can we get to them? Oh, okay. Elephant?

Okay, yeah. African elephant. Lion? Lion? Tiger? No. Oh. This is African elephants.

I know hippos are dangerous. Are hippos on there? No. Um, cheetah? Nope. We're fast. We're doing bad. Similar to...

Leopard? Yes. Okay. Because they're fast. So leopard, lion, elephant. Yeah. Two more. Giraffe?

No. Dangerous. Okay. They're very dangerous to hunt. How about rhinoceros? Yes. Oh, yeah. Of course.

All right. And one more. This one's maybe the most obscure that you never think of. Antelope? Oh, you're so close. Springbok? Deer. Deer.

Kind of close. Kind of close. Kind of close. Will the beast. Cape Buffalo. Oh, okay. They have the horns. It kind of looks like a little hair, like the good job brain mustache.

Oh, yeah. Like with a really cool. Someone slicked down their hair. Oh. Hipster. Hipster, buffaloes. Hipster buffaloes, yes. I'll give you a little bit of info about the different animals, the big five.

So the African elephant, they're huge, of course. Yeah. But they're also, they can hide in the tall grass. The grass is so tall in Savannah. You might not see them. Oh, you might just get walked on by them. And they charge. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you guys ever, like, in science class, it was always an example. If you're being chased by an elephant, you have to run in a zigzag pattern. Oh, yeah, I think I heard that before. Because they might catch up. So if you run in zigzag because they're so big and clunky that if they're following your zigzag. Yeah, they start turning. I think that's also how you're supposed to evade snipers.

Yeah, and gunshots. Snipers and elephants. Right, right. Because they can keep moving the gun back. Yeah, it's right to know. Serpentine patterns. All right. So rhinoceros, specifically the black one is the one that's more desirable.

but it's so desirable that it's on the critically endangered list now. Oh, no. Yeah. But it is the most aggressive creature. It is so aggressive. It has the highest rate of mortal combat for any mammal. Really? When they fight with each other, yeah.

They're kind of dumb. They've been, like, I had a horn on their face. Often they have two. The African ones have two. Oh, yeah. They have a prehorn and the prize horn. They get you with the prehorn and then they kill you with the good horn. Man, that, oh, God.

They can run speeds up to 35 miles per hour. So you probably won't get away if they're chasing you. Then the Cape Buffalo. This animal is actually kind of in contention with the hippo as being the most deadly in Africa. It has killed the most humans. Right. Because they are super aggressive. They look cute.

You know, like Buffalo you don't think of as being. Well, they're big and, they're just like a cow. They're just like sad all the time. They're like mean is the way that people talk about them. They're antagonistic. Well, it does look like they have a giant mustache on the. head. They ambush people. They attack, like, people who are chasing them. They'll turn around. They'll chase them back. Like, they're aggressive. Their horns are sharp. And then lions. Big cats, the way

they stalk people. It's just like the way you watch a cat. Yeah. It's like you watch your cat killing a mouse. That's you and a lion. Yeah. They like they creep up. They can creep up on you. You don't know they're there until they're about to pounce on you. They are known as apex predators. They're also keystone species. Do you guys know what an apex predator is? That means that There's nothing that hunts them, right? There's nothing that predates them. Yeah, very few or no predators for them. Oh, okay.

Not counting people, of course. They're so like a keystone. Oh, we're not counting people. And then they're keystone predators. You know what that is? No. That is they have a disproportionately large effect on their environment. So if they went away, their ecology would be very different.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. And, okay. Oh, because they're controlling major populations because they're killing so many antelopes. Circle of. It's kind of like starfish are also a keystone species. Really? They took them out of an ecology.

The muscles would overpopulate without the starfish there. But other things eat starfish, so they don't have to be an apex predator to also be a keystone. Interesting. Interesting. So, that's really interesting. And then the leopard. So they're nocturnal, which adds to the, I think, an element of difficulty to hunt. Also, they're freaking fast.

They're very fast. They can go to 36 miles per hour, a bit faster than the rhino. And they're really good at climbing trees. They can get up a tree even carrying like a carcass with them, a heavy carcass. Yeah, I've seen that on the nature channel. Yeah, like, well, I've, this is the, like they'll stash prey and trees, right? And come back and get it later. So intense, yes.

In antiquities, people thought leopards were a hybrid of two animals. Do you guys know which two animals they thought they were? Cheetah. And giraffe. I think, I think, yeah. I think it's spots, you know. I don't know. Well, like, think about their names.

Think about the name, leopard. Leo, lion. Yeah. Pan? Panther. Yes. Interesting. Leopard.

Don't call them that, though. They do not. They get some real mad. So, most of these animals are kind of on the endangered list now. They've been overhunted because they're part of the big five. They're the elite species for big game hunter. The only one that's not endangered or is still okay to hunt is Cape Buffalo. Oh.

They still kill a lot. of people, so it's probably totally fine. We could go on a Cape Buffalo like good job brain field trip. No, let's not. Oh, really? They're the mean. They're the meanest.

They're mean. So these animals are the hardest to hunt. And because they're the hardest to hunt, hunters want to take that challenge. That's so weird. Like, why would I, like, I want to hunt things I can get. You're showing how good of a hunter you are. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, yeah, you put that, you know, lion head up in your Dan or whatever. You're like, oh, I'm a big man. Yeah. We do not advocate putting lion heads up. Don't do it. Yeah. It's not nice. No, don't do it. You don't put it in the living room.

That's just ridiculous. Bathroom. How gosh. Yeah. That's right, lion. Watch me in the bathroom. Yeah, you put it facing the toilet. Oh, yeah.

You know, you pee in the lion's mouth. Ew. That would be a great year. Okay, if I open a restaurant. You're paying it's a dog. A lion head that you have to pee at him. Because you know it's dead, but you're cocked. constantly going to be thinking it's going to clamp down.

Because, I mean, lion heads are huge. They're really massive and scary. It's like how far would you, you know. Exactly. How far, how close would you get? Yeah. You should open the mouth just a little bit, so you have to get really good. Yeah, yeah, the mouth is just like real close.

Yeah. All right. We open our restaurant. Good job, brain restaurant. Good job, stomach. No frills. Delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frails with PC Express.

Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. Well, this episode is coming to a close, but we have one last quiz segment and topic segment. Colin, you got a quiz about something dangerous. I'm keeping it dangerous. I'm keeping it dangerous. So let me start with a question here for you guys. This is one of my favorite just pub trivia questions.

Statistically speaking, what is the most dangerous job in American history? Okay, at one point, I think it was swordfish fishing. So let me say, this isn't really a trick question. It is a tricky question. The answer is President of the United States. Oh, sure, yes. There have only been 44 people to hold the job. Four of them have been assassinated, and two of them have been shot.

So you're looking at 9% of the people to hold this job had been killed on the job. Now, what are the big caveats for that? Obviously, this is an extremely small sample size spread over many, many decades. And in fact, since Reagan was shot in 1981, it's actually been fairly safe. So that's sort of the tongue-in-cheek question. But it is true, statistically speaking, by percentage-wise, yeah, there's no other job in America that that comes close. It's true.

So, but what I really want to talk about is dangerous jobs, deadly jobs, using real statistical measures. So the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is the government agency that keeps tabs on worker deaths, worker injuries, all of these kind of things are in the labor field. And periodically, they will publish their lists of the most deadly jobs in the United States. And their measure is essentially is fatalities per 100,000. workers. So they're sort of normalized that way, which you can see why president of the U.S. does not make it onto this list. So I have some questions for you guys here based on America's

deadliest, most dangerous jobs. And this data is current as of 2012. So this is really up to date. So get your buzzers ready. And here we go. After many years of topping the list of most dangerous jobs. This occupation finally slipped to number two on the list in 2012. And I'll give you a hint. There is an aptly named hit TV show about this job.

Karen. Is it the fishing? Yes. Yes. Oh, deadliest catch. Deadliest catch. Yes, for many, many years, the fishing industry was statistically

the most deadly occupation in America. Just fishing industry in general? Fishing and fishing workers. and primarily these are people out on the fishing boats. And, I mean, as you've seen on many harrowing movies and TV shows, there's lots of dangers. You get swept overboard. There's equipment, all kinds of things.

There is a rate of 117 fatalities per 100,000 fishery workers. That's number two. They finally fell to number two on the list. So, this leads into my next question. This occupation now holds the dubious distinction of being the deadliest job in America, with workers facing such hazards as widow makers. Did you guys care to take again? Karen.

Is this exercise or fitness related? It is not exercise or fitness related. Because there's an exercise called widow maker. I'll give you a hint. The second most common cause of injury is from chainsaws. Dena. Lumberjack? Yes, lumberjack.

Yes. Or logging workers is the more up-to-date term. So that is now number one. That is now, as of 2012. the highest rate of fatalities. Yes, 128 fatalities per 100,000 workers. And a widow maker is the industry term for loose limbs or dead limbs up in the tops of trees that fall as you're cutting. And as you can imagine in giant trees, you get crushed by a limb or something.

It can take you out. More so than a coconut. Yes, much more so than a coconut. Yeah, it's tough, tough, dangerous work. Although there are rules governing rest periods in this occupation, nearly has to be. Half of the people with this job report falling asleep while working at least once in the previous year. Dana? Is this truckers?

It is truckers. Yes. Truckers and truck driving. And as you can imagine, the leading cause of death in the truck driving industry is crashes. And many of them can be attributed to drowsy driving. All right. Last one here. We'll close it out.

This occupation comes in at a surprising number six on the list of deadliest jobs in the U.S. with workers facing daily hazards, like dangerous materials, traffic, and having to work with heavy equipment. Karen. Is it that, like, highway patrol police? Not a bad, yes. I'll give you a hint. Without these workers, your neighborhood would start to smell pretty bad.

Oh. Garbage, garbage truck drivers. Yes, trash collectors, recycling collectors. Number six. Oh, wow. So what are the main causes of death? So the main causes are, as I say, getting hit by oncoming traffic. Because they're constantly on major roads and stopping and jumping off of the truck and putting things on the trucks.

They're working around trucks that have crushing abilities and big, heavy moving things. Apparently, another big hazard is hazardous materials in the trash. Oh, yeah. And this could be as simple as just glass or hypodermic needles. So give a thanks to your trash collector when you see him or her in the street. So I happen to have with me the complete list of most dangerous deadly jobs in the U.S. So here we go. Number one, logging workers.

Number two, fissures. Number three, aircraft pilots and flat engineers. Number four, roofers. Roofing industry. Sure. Yes. Number five is iron and steel workers, especially in construction. Number six, as we just mentioned, trash collectors, recyclable collectors.

Number seven, electrical power line workers. That makes sense. Not too surprising. Number eight, truck drivers. Number nine, farmers, ranchers, agricultural workers. Yeah, that makes sense. And number 10, construction workers. Just construction laborers.

Podcast worker, I'm assuming, is 11. Pretty low. 11. 11. Just missed the cut. What are the hazardous conditions? Exploding microphones. Yeah, exactly.

These lots of electronics. Making Karen mad. Lots of sitting. Yeah, exactly. Sitting's bad for you. Yep. Repetitive stress injuries from pressing buzzers. And that's our show.

Thank you guys for joining me. And thank you guys listeners for listening in. Hope you learn a lot about. micro morts about Fugu, about dangerous jobs, about radium water. And you can find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, and also on our website, goodjobbrain.com. And check it our sponsor, Squarespace at Squarespace.com slash good job brain. And we'll see you guys next week.

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