SciShow Tangents - Bonus Backlog Bonanza - Ep. 23

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

This bonus episode was originally posted on Patreon on January 31, 2023 titled "SciShow! Tangents! Patreon! Podcast! (with hand gestures)."Original Patreon description: It's a new energy for 2023. We don't know what the energy is, but it definitely involves hand gestures and accents. Tune in and catch up with your team of science experts reporting from the science couch.SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents!And go to https://complexly.store/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on socials:Ceri: @ceriley.bsky.social@rhinoceri on InstagramSam: @im-sam-schultz.bsky.social@im_sam_schultz on InstagramHank: @hankgreen on X

Hello and welcome to the SciShow Tangents Patreon podcast. I don't like that. This is after dark. It's a new energy for 2023. I don't know what the energy is yet, but. What if I do like this hand gesture, and like, hello and welcome to the SciShow Tangents Patreon podcast.

Now that's fun, but this isn't a video podcast, so no one will see the hand gesture. But I like that. They know what I was doing. They did. The thing, hey. With that voice. They know what I was doing. The thing. Hey! With that voice, you know what you're doing. Come on. You know what I'm doing. Hello everybody! We're here because you gave us money!

We'll do whatever you tell us to do! Sam, what the fuck's going on? Clown town over here. All three of us are horrible, horrible clown men. You haven't even done The Voice at all, Sarah. You gotta do it real quick. Ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy We ask our science, we ask the audience for science questions, and then we get a lot of them. But we can only answer one per episode. But we don't want to just chuck those good answers out the window. So every, all the questions I mean, so every month we're going to answer some of those questions that didn't make it into this show.

Lightning round style. And I'm going to do it like this the whole time. You're not going to get tired of it at all. I really don't want you to because it's making me sweat for some reason. It's making me really nervous for your voice, for your, uh, for your, uh, uh, brand, your brand. Exactly what I was trying to think of. Yes. Your brand.

You heard Hank's new thing. He talks like a, he talks like an old comedian for some reason. That's just, that's just Hank now. Oh, all right. Raining it in. I just, I needed a little, I need a little energy. Maybe I needed it for myself here on at three o'clock on a Friday. That's true.

It didn't pick the best time for us to do this, but we're gonna get through it somehow. That's really when we do it. So, do we have, has anybody researched any of these questions? Cause I know for sure one person hasn't. Oh, I know for sure two people haven't, but I know for sure one person has a little bit. I research at least five science questions every week. And Sam was like, how do we put that effort into something useful?

How do we monetize this? I see. Because if that effort's being used, how do we actually turn it into something? And also into knowledge, because I don't necessarily know the answers to these questions myself. Sarie puts in maximum effort to basically everything. I'm not good at minimal effort.

I'm working on it. I'm learning. It's one of my greatest skills. I need to learn how to say, eh. That's enough. That's enough. I probably don't need to read another paper about this. I'm good at that.

I'm good at cutting myself off at like a certain amount, but I'm not good at putting in no effort and being like, I just don't need to do that. Everything becomes a, what, five more minutes. I'll just do that. As opposed to, uh, actually I say, or you do not need to take on this particular task. And I can say, could someone else do it or just, it'll be fine if I don't. Instead I catastrophize and I'm like, what if no one knows the answer to anything? And then we all spread misinformation and then someone's like, I can't believe you did that.

I can't believe you did that. Well, here's what would happen. And I know this because I've done it before. You hit the question you don't have the answer to, you sweat, you start sweating and you're like, oh no, panic. And then you're like, I don't know the answer to that But here's a guess but it's a guess so don't take me seriously Here's like a start for your own research if you're interested being able to say oh

That's a superpower right there. I really appreciate everybody who is is Grateful to my tic-tacs where I'm like, I'm not sure and I appreciate everybody who is grateful to my TikToks where I'm like, I'm not sure. And maybe nobody knows. For example, maybe this first question nobody knows would be my guess, because we know so little about this. Oyzzy's asks on Discord, why is it so hard to remember your dreams?

Now you just sound like that voice filter on TikTok, like the automatic reader, you know? The one that sounds like the guy from Hercules So why is it so hard to remember your dreams? I feel like anything that happens in the brain is a mystery no matter what but I but if I'm gonna talk out of my butt here, which I'd say it's just a whole separate different set of systems going at that point Are your brains and your brains not even trying to remember them. Maybe. I also feel like the only dreams this might just be completely wrong

with the only dreams I ever remember the ones that I wake up having and there must be so many more that I have that I don't remember at all. Yeah, there's definitely some kind of like sleep dream stuff related amnesia where you can actually measure that people can't remember things not just while they're dreaming but shortly after they awaken, which makes me think it's intentional. There's like your brain doesn't want you to remember stuff from that period of time. But neither of us know. And maybe Sari does.

Maybe. I can say some words, but they'll just be slightly more cohesive because Yeah, we don't know anything about brains. I think, and I've said this on the podcast before, I think in a couple hundred years we'll be like, what were they thinking in the 1900s and the 2000s about brains? They were measuring blood flow? What? That's the only way they could get any data. Yeah, that's giant magnets. Antiquated, these giant, these huge machines.

They stuck people inside and then they came out with these heat mapped images about where blood flowed to different regions of the brain. How primitive, how foolish. Not like how we do it, where we put somebody's head in a machine that slices them into 10 million pieces and then upload them into a computer. Yeah. And then you've got DigiBrain and then you know how every little piece interacts. So using our current mushy methods, we think memory has to do with the part of the brain called the hippocampus,

and it does a lot of memory processing and storage. So when we ask people, basically what this means is when we ask people to do memory tasks while inside a giant magnet, fMRI, then the hippocampus gets activated. And our current models of memory include, you start with a sensory input. So you're seeing something, you're hearing something, you're thinking something, and that's where it gets mushy, is like when you have a thought, how do you remember it? But then that input goes into your short-term memory, and then that gets encoded into your long-term memory.

And so what's happening in dreams is that there's a lot of information being passed back and forth from the hippocampus to the hippocampus, processing a lot of sensory input. And that's the idea that like dreams, you're processing stuff from your day, from your life, information about the world and yourself, and kind of synthesizing it. And your brain is doing whatever brains do. And so there's that short-term memory blip. And when you wake up from a dream, that's what is there. It's that short-term memory blip,

where you can kind of remember what you were just processing because the information is still fresh in there. But at no point in this process while you're asleep is long-term memory encoding happening because you're not like memorizing a flash card or meeting someone for the first time and really processing that information as if it's something you need to save for later. It's just a bunch of like sleep processing that's going on. So because there's that break in the, in the memory formation process, that's why you don't have any dreams encoded into long-term memory. And unless you really put through the effort to encode them in some way, so like you

wake up from a dream, you write it down in a dream journal, and then you repeat it to yourself over and over again, and you tell five friends, then you're starting to form that long-term memory. But otherwise, that short-term memory is just not gonna be stored anywhere. Your dream will disappear and float into the ether. I mean, that sounds like a pretty good, like pretty good, like significant knowledge. That seems pretty concrete to me.

Like we understand a fair bit about how- Well, I'm just good at saying things. In a way that makes them sound, sure. Well, maybe. It sounds like we have some idea of how memory is formed and we have some idea of how that doesn't work as well during the dream state or is intentionally interrupted during the dream state. Because I wouldn't want to have all of my dreams go into long-term memory. They didn't actually happen. That would be very confusing.

And that would be confusing. Yeah. That is already a problem I have with my dreams is that they're very boring. And so when I wake up, sometimes I have a panic moment because it's like, oh, I should be doing something. I need to email that person or I'm really mad at Sam right now. Oh no. And then it goes away in a second because I'm like, no, that was fake.

That was a dream. I have really boring dreams too. Sometimes I can hold onto it for a second where somebody was mean to me in a dream and it takes me like a couple of days to get over it. Wow. My main recurring dream is that I wake up and take a shower and then I wake up and I am like, oh God, I got to go take a shower. That sucks

It's the fucking worst when you have a dream. That's the thing that you're about to do Yeah, it's like I had a dream that I woke up and I didn't like it You ever had a video game. I played a video game too much and then you dream about the video game though That's always fun for sure. Only the bad parts only the bad Yeah, I used to be really afraid of Only the bad parts of video games? Yeah, like I used to be really afraid of drowning in video games. Drowning in real life, I'm a very confident swimmer,

but drowning in video games, so scared of it. And I would hear the music in my sleep of like, Yes, Sonic the Hedgehog! Yeah, and you gotta go, and eat the little bubble, and then you're okay. Yeah, gotta eat the little bubble. That doesn't work in real life, by the way. Whoa, wait a minute. Could it though?

What if it was a really big bubble? What was a really big bubble? Could you get your head inside of it? It's going to be moving so fast. They go up. They are very light bubbles compared to that. And also they break apart. They can't be very big.

They, they. Coming right at it. Okay. Fine. Well, we'll ask the Mythbusters. I used to try and do that in the jacuzzi. We had a jacuzzi in our backyard if I used to try and do that in the jacuzzi. We had a jacuzzi in our backyard I used to try like three is the

Like put your mouth over the bubble shooter. Yes, like oh, can I breathe your family soup? You're trying to breathe in your family soup, huh? No the air that's I know really what you're actually doing is just getting it's breathing In some family soup. I don't like to talk about it This next question comes from here Erianda on discord who asks sometimes they shut down airports when the air is too hot for takeoffs could it ever be too hot for a bird or insect to fly can I add a new rule also to this though we can only spend like five minutes tops on each of these series so I'm sorry I'm starting a timer well what I know is that hot air bounces more. So like the molecules are

moving faster and that pushes them apart so that's the lower pressure. There's less air in the air and that means that there's less stuff for the wings of the plane to push against. So it would definitely be true that for a bird or insect it would be similarly more difficult to fly. But I think that planes are pretty, you know, specifically balanced to be able to fly, uh, in normal air or to be able to take off in normal air. So, but a bird, I feel like you can get around with that by just like putting fewer people on it. But I guess you're at an airport, you've already booked all the tickets. You can't say, all right, all of you, but 10.

Uh, it would work if you did do that. I think bugs and birds are too small for it to matter at all. I think they still gotta push against molecules. Still gotta push against molecules. And I don't think we've actually measured any studies, but like the size difference is what. Size does matter in this case, because also birds and bugs, instead of generating lift,

like airplane wings are pretty static and just go, so they really depend on the air density in order to take off and, and generate that, that, that all the physics-y things that keep plane, that keep planes in the air. It's very scary to think about. But birds and bugs to launch off from the branch or the ground, some of them like glide while in the air, but a lot of them flap to generate that lift. And it, so that is affected by the density of air molecules, but when your wings are pushing down air molecules anyway,

then there is going to be a small vacuum and a small bunched up version of them. Um, it's like swimming through a ball pit versus something like a less dense ball pit. You're still hitting balls either way, uh, and they'll be able to fly up. And so the main problem is heat exhaustion when they're like too hot and tired. And then you'll see birds or bugs perched in the shade or I don't know. That's when you see bees like on the sidewalk. And that's very sad.

Oh, they need a little nectar. They use up all their sugar reserves on flying and it's too hot. Nobody spritz me. I we did make a video or something. It was some SciShow thing about bees at different elevations and that they could fly at higher elevations, there's fewer air molecules, so they could fly at higher elevations than they ever existed, but they expended significantly more energy. And they didn't actually take them to the elevations, they just put them in a chamber with lower pressure.

They could still do it even when it was just way less efficient so they could still fly and they could still hover They could still like figure it out and adjust their wing speeds Which is wild to like that's cool a circumstance that was they were not Would not ever naturally be in and still fly. It was just like really exhausting for them. No weirdly I don't know something about that, but I couldn't tell you what piece of SciShow content that doesn't sound familiar to me at all I can't tell you what piece of SciShow content that that doesn't sound familiar to me at all. I can't think of what that is either. Maybe we talked about it on HFS a billion years ago when we were drunk or something. No, it was more recent than that. Yeah. Oh, okay. I miss HFS because it felt like I could totally get drunk during that. Hey man, go crack a beer right now. Let's go get a beer. I feel that way about this podcast.

Let's go get a beer. Go that way about this podcast. Yeah, I'm sure that me having a beer would really help with the A problem. Anyway. It would probably make me do a better A to be clear. So maybe sometime. I'm still reeling from how bad yours was, Sarie. Okay. I bring value in other ways.

Okay. Whenever you say. Here's, I'm going to bring my value now. Reality minus three asks, how do antidotes work? Is that like a better, a cartoon horse farmer? Yes, definitely cartoon horse farmer. That's I liked that. Actually, I really liked that a lot.

The DNA from Jurassic Park. Yeah. I think antidotes work in a lot of different ways depending on how different molecules. There's some that are kind of general purpose that just absorb. They're just good pour like charcoal is one way just like chug charcoal and it just absorbs up stuff that would otherwise be absorbed into your body. But then I think that there are others like antivenoms that are kind of specific to the

thing that is hurting you. How'd I do, Sari? Wonderful. Yes. So like activated charcoal is the generalist of things. It's just so good at binding. It's in ear filters. It's in those whitening toothpastes.

It's every, it's like in a lot of things that shouldn't be in fact, because people are like, it'll sap toxins from your body. But- A bit of a snake oil kind of situation, maybe? Yeah, but it's useful. That's the thing. It's like, it's a bit of a snake oil situation, but it works.

It's just most useful in situations where there is a large quantity of a dangerous thing that you want to absorb and neutralize, as opposed to something you should be integrating regularly into your diet because it will bind lots of things. So don't just eat a spoonful of activated charcoal all the time. Maybe that's why I feel so bad all the time. Yeah, you gotta stop gnawing on firewood and going like... That's not even been activated. Or maybe it has. I don't know what that means. I think it needs an acid to activate it or something or like really make it porous. Scores it up.

Yeah, makes it makes the extra holy. H-O-L.E.Y. But so we can bind to the poison. Nothing to do with God. Just for clarity. Yes. You can poison someone. Not activated charcoal has nothing to do with the church. It's very secular and like even demonic. A the church. It's very secular and even demonic, some might say.

And so then there are chemicals that work the same way in the way that we have enzymes that bind certain molecules. There are just molecules that bind well to each other. And that's the concept of like a venom and an anti-ivenom, where there's something that is like, Oh, I know, or like an antibody binds to specific bacteria and antivenom is like, Oh, that's the venom protein. I have a high probability of binding to that. So you dump a bunch of antivenom in with the venom, then there's a high chance that it will get bound up and not be able to be metabolized into the dangerous stuff or act dangerously. And then there is like a third group of antidotes that's just like, let's try to reverse, like

the poison's going to do something, the toxin's going to do something to your body. How do we reverse that as intensely as possible? So if there is like a stimulant that's a toxin, then you might prescribe a sedative right away to counteract the heart rate spiking or the blood pressure going up or a blood pumping really fast. You might be like, okay, the best we can do is to like start sending out other neurotransmitters and calm the whole system down. So I don't know. Antidote is a very general term. Okay. That's wild to me where it's like the problem that you have

a dangerous drug in you is that we're going to put a dangerous drug in you that works opposite ways. It's cartoon logic, you know? Yeah, which I mean, I guess that makes sense. Like if I've lost a lot of blood, you put blood in me. Like that's, that makes sense to me. But if I've taken a, if I've taken like way too much cocaine, the idea that you should give me barbiturates is not a good vibe.

I'm like, no, I think that's not stack, but hey, I'm not a doctor. What are you saying about when you lose blood, you're getting too much air in your body, too much anti-blood in your body you need to replace with real blood? I'm being poisoned of lack of blood. Yeah, you know, it's the lack of... Alba's not blood in my body.

Yeah. It's empty. Luckily, it doesn't. You don't just get a bunch of air in your veins and arteries when you lose blood. You just get negative pressure, which is not what you want. Just get flat or something. You want positive pressure in your veins and arteries so that it keeps moving around.

Maybe you are. It sure is a little fragile little case that we're all in. That's fun. That's fun. That's fun. Keep beating heart. Don't stop or I'll be dead in three minutes. That's not terrifying at all. So, Sarie, thank you very much for being so smart.

Now it's my turn to be smart. After years of hosting the show, I think at this point I basically qualify as a scientist. And with that in mind, I've deputized AP Faith as my research assistant. And the two of us have undertaken the important scientific research

of polling our Discord community about some of the stupid junk that we talk about on the show. And we will present that data to you in an attempt to make some sense out of this crazy world in a segment that I'm calling, Sam and Faith's Every Person's Science Corner. So in the episode, Gas, Hank said his New Year's resolution was to schedule his next haircut as he's leaving his current one.

And then, Sarri and I said, you idiot, everybody does that. Why don't you do that? But I was curious, and so I asked our audience a question we will present. Research assistant, AP Faith, will you please read this month's poll? Man, I've had a lot of titles in my life, but I don't know that I ever thought I would have research assistant. And it makes me feel very, very special. Does it make you feel smart?

It makes me feel extremely smart. And I don't feel like I deserve it, but I'm gonna take it anyway. Just wait until we get our honorary doctorates from doing this kind of important work. Then you can be doctor research assistant AP Fifth and that will be exciting. That would be wild. All of the hair cutter people will be desperate to find out the results of this question,

which I also want to know. All right. So the question we have officially is, do you schedule your next haircut while you are paying for slash leaving your current haircut? The options are yes, no, sometimes and other. So what do you think people said? I think that there are more than 20% garbage people like me. That's all I'll say.

Wow. Well, okay. But you're not the garbage people. Garbage people? Yeah, that's an interesting way to put it. Yeah, I think that we don't have it together, you know? I think if you have it all together, you realize in six to eight weeks, I'm going to need another one of these and you schedule it.

But I think if you don't have it all together, you think, I don't know, maybe it'll be six months. Maybe it'll be two years before. I don't know how long this is going to grow, how fast. Wow. See, I would call that cool and chill people, not garbage people. I agree. Saria, what do you think?

I think whenever you give an option for other, people love to talk about themselves. And I love this about humans in general. And I think that this, in the way that we were able to spin off a conversation about this, people won't have a straightforward yes or no answer. They're gonna be like, oh yeah, sometimes, like when I had this haircut person that I really liked, I scheduled over and over again.

But then other times I couldn't afford hair dye. So I said no, and like, I have to click other. That's you saying that. That's your answer? Well, that's what an answer could be. That's what an answer could be. It depends on, I've been in multiple situations throughout my life.

Yeah. And when you got that really great stylist and you always want to come back and you're flush with cash, you schedule. But maybe you're not sure. Maybe you want to live with this haircut a little bit before you commit to another haircut with this person. That makes sense. All kinds of situations.

Okay, let's take a look at the results then. Okay. Okay. So the official results from our SciShow Tangents audience were 20% said yes. Oh, wow. Just a simple yes. Solid 20% of well-organized people out there. Yeah. 48% just straight up no. Wow.

My people. Can't garbage just a little bit. Sometimes was a 10%. 10% just said sometimes. And 20% of people said other. So that was definitely not an insignificant number. Just like Sari said. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, as many people as do it were others. And almost all the others. What do you do then, other person? All the other, there were comments and all the other ones were like, my wife shaves my head or. Oh, I don't do haircuts. There was, yeah, N2OS4A2 from Discord says,

I shave my head so when I schedule it, I schedule it by asking my wife very nicely. One person also said that one person also said that since the pandemic, I just buzzed my whole head to keep it consistent. No need for appointments. Yeah. I did two years of self haircuts. Uh, it was, I was, I got pretty serious about it. I got okay at doing it.

But you're back to the barber now. Back to the barber now. I just like the social experience. If nothing else, it's also way faster. My worst nightmare is going to get my haircut because you are looking simultaneously at yourself, which is something I hate doing simultaneously at yourself, which is something I hate doing, and someone else, which is something I hate doing, and you have to talk to somebody and make conversation,

which is something I hate doing. And my barber was mean, which was awful. So. Oh, well that's. I feel like. That's not a good part. It is like a weirdly intimate experience. Yeah.

Like I've, I at some point, I always hated getting my hair cut. And so I just started doing it myself. Like, I don't know, like eight years ago at this point. And since all my friends were like, Oh, you know how to cut hair. Can you cut my hair? And I'm like,

That's not really it. No, it's just, yeah. It's, I like, I know that I know how to do it, but just like having your hands all up in someone's head is weird. Could you pretty much only give people your haircut also? No, I'm pretty good. I'm just like, yeah. No, I don't know.

I just looked up a couple of videos. I know that there is so much to hair cutting and it can be like very precise, but I've it's never gone that badly for me. Just like trying it. Which is I know that I've gotten bad haircuts, so it's possible. Yeah. Thank you so much everyone for being a patron of our of our silly little podcast, SciShow Tangents. We love to do what we do and we hope that we can continue to do it in bigger and different

and fun, weird ways. I'm glad above all that you like it. So thank you for liking it enough to support us on Patreon and get these extra little bits. I hope that you are headed into the new year with hope and gusto, and we'll see you on the other side of this podcast. Not of life. That sounded like I thought we were all gonna die.

Our hearts are failing right now. Bye. That's Sari's last words, bye. Bye. That's a pretty good last words. Bye. Bye. That's a pretty good last word, all things considered. It's the main one!