SciShow Tangents - Books with Vanessa Zoltan

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

We here on SciShow Tangents may have the market cornered on science podcasting, but that doesn't mean we know everything. Put us in a lab, and we're like fish in water! But put us in a library, with all those big tall shelves and the Dewey Decimal System, and we're like a fish not-in-water! So we called in our friend, podcast, theologian, and noted book-reader Vanessa Zoltan to help us learn more about books!Learn more about Vanessa and her myriad of projects at her website, and follow her on Twitter @vanessamzoltan! SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy your very own, genuine SciShow Tangents sticker!A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley, Tom Mosner, Daisy Whitfield, and Allison Owen for helping to make the show possible!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents. It's the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host Hank Green and joining me this week as always is science expert Sari Riley. Hello. Our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Hello. And also, for some reason, Vanessa Zoltan. To make Sam look smart about science. That's the last nice thing I'm saying about you, Sam, though. Why? Because Hank sent me a text like 10 minutes ago being like, be mean to Sam. That's the whole thing. This is what we, this is, you're not really a member of the Tangents crew.

No, I did not. Everybody loves Sam and Vanessa. I follow orders. Vanessa is the host of podcasts such as Harry Potter and the Sacred Text and Hot and Bothered. If you want to see some of Vanessa, listen to some of Vanessa's's other projects all of you everyone it's starting to be summertime it's officially june it's going to be officially summer fairly soon so i'm curious what all of our favorite things about summer are i've got one that is i don't know if it's going to be a weird curveball but my favorite thing about summer it's gonna be a weird curveball but my favorite thing about summer is big old thunderstorms even if they got hail i love that too we only get like one good like thunderstorm every year but it's so

good when it happens so good yeah for me it's the long days i i love the longer the day, the happier I am. I love being like, it's 9-0-1 and it's still light out. It's just like, it's just the best thing in the world. And then I get very anxious on like June 20th because I'm like, this is it. This is the longest day. Oh no, it's so soon. This is as good as it gets. I know. It gets sad.

It really lures you into a false sense of security too because during this time of the year, the days are pretty much all the same length and they last. And you can't really tell the difference between one day and another. And then all of a sudden, like some moment in fall, it's like every day is 80 minutes shorter. Yeah. Until the day itself is negative an hour. Yeah. Gosh, I almost want to steal your answer, Vanessa.

It's a really good answer. Yeah, in somebody's yard until like 11. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, I almost want to steal your answer, Vanessa. It's a really good answer. Yeah, in somebody's yard until like 11. Yeah. Yeah. It's terrific. Have a gin and tonic. Okay, this is very, I haven't experienced this in a while, but like the purity of a good sprinkler or like a hose in the summer. Yes.

You need a child. It brings it all back. hose in the summer yes when you need a child this it brings it all back the the child running through the sprinkler is just like you just see their little face and you're like i there's nothing better in the world that's it that's like the peak joy every all of this like search for happiness that we're all trying to do as adults that's it is you're hot you're a little sweaty and then you run through cold public water and cold water that was created by by just many human hours of work to come to our house clean and safe so that we could put it under the trampoline and jump on it yeah what is what you know guys i feel really good now now i'm pumped yeah now i'm stuck in my

stupid basement for an hour though yeah i'm just inside getting sweaty way too many clothes every week here on tangents we get together to one-up amaze and delight each other with science facts while trying to stay on topic and failing our panelists all three of you are playing for glory and for hank bucks which i will be awarding as we play. And at the end of the episode, one of you will be crowned the winner. But first, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with a traditional science poem this week from Vanessa. So this is called A Sometimes Ode to Books. Sometimes I only want to want to read you, so you stay on the bookstore shelf. Sometimes I have you on a list called to-do, but Netflix isn't going to watch itself.

Sometimes I lie about reading you blow-by-blow when I'm really just here for the Chardonnay. Sometimes I watch your TV show, but when people ask if I've read you, I say, yay. Sometimes you disappoint us over time. The fact of your permanence betrays you. Sometimes you age with gorgeous fine lines. Your genius,

like magic ink, slowly shines through. Sometimes you say more with what you omit. Make us wonder why it is this that we assume sometimes you delight us with your wit make us laugh in the cancer waiting room some of you are crap some of you are great some of you are a waste of space depending on the book i feel love or hate but you make the world a better place books wow not sciencey hank wrote a poem about an eagle eating like a bird or something once that's not science i forgot about that one we can do whatever we want to it's our yeah it's our show

that was a beautiful poem it was it wasn't very good the topic of the day is books and vanessa this is my favorite part of the podcast where i ask sari what a book is and she can't answer because she's too much of a scientist sari what's a book i did look up i was like book science definition the internet did not help me with that shocked yeah unfortunately the biologists and chemists haven't like strictly defined book but what i could find is we had written word in the form of scroll which is one long paper and And then eventually we were like, what if instead of one long paper, we have many small papers together.

Yeah. Interesting. And that became a codex and each sheet of paper and a codex I learned is called a leaf. And each side of a leaf is a page. So even though we call them pages, Oh, there are leaf. Each side of a leaf is a page.

So the page isn't the, is the numbered thing. The page is the numbered thing, yeah. So on one side it's like 100 and the next one is 101. Both of those are pages. But the physical thing I'm touching isn't. When I wiggle it around, that's the leaf. That's the leaf. Yeah, and then at some point we just stopped calling them codices.

Maybe because it felt snooty and we were like, it's a instead that's where it gets kind of fuzzy it is it's too wizardy it's maybe not snooty it's dorky right yeah it's a little bit consult my codex shelf yeah i love the idea that that's how etymology works do you know what this word's kind of snobby let's retire it i mean it kind of is a lot of times people are like we can't use that one that's that's that's got the wrong feel to it bad mouth feel codex and book both referred to or that came from root words that are related to trees or tree trunk. So code, the word, came from tree trunk, and the word book came from beach, like a beach tree. And so apparently linguists think there's some debate,

there's always some debate with words, that both of these words came from the fact that early written language was sometimes carved into barks even though there were so many forms of writing there was like vellum paper animal skin papyrus etc listen to the paper episode if you want to learn more but eventually the word for a specific type of tree or just tree in general was synonymous with book because we were like it's made of this thing and now it's just this thing because we have more uh use we we want to talk about books more than we want to talk about beach trees so we're just gonna steal that word and say we're just gonna call them books now the word code comes from the word for tree trunk is that you said yeah it does earlier caudex c-a-u-d-e-x uh from latin meaning literally

tree trunk but means book all right i feel like i am pretty solid on what a book is now and that means that it's time to move on to the quiz portion of our show this week uh as is the case with our double with our guest episodes it's a double quiz show uh with no fact off so we are going to begin with our game number one which is going to be called truth or fail a new innovative game a new innovative game truth or fail so books are incredible portals they transport us into other worlds but at the end of the day they are also objects that exist in our world. And that means that they sometimes appear in history for practical or even dramatic reasons

that do not have much to do with the text itself. The following are three tales of bookish influence beyond the words on the page. But only one of these is going to be true. The others are going to be lies. Are you ready? I feel the need to take notes, but I'm not going to. Oh, yeah. I always jot them down, too. He'll go over them again at the end. I'll go over it, yeah. I know. I just rely on dumb luck the whole time. There really isn't a way to do well.

Yeah. That's why I win every time we play this game. It's because I'm taking notes. Oh, okay. We'll see if that's true. The true fact might be fact number one. Early drafts of On the Origin of Species were used to board up cracks on the HMS Beagle. So, it took Charles Darwin some time before his expedition on the HMS Beagle to write On the Origin of Species. But when conservators studied one of the cannons from his ship,

they realized that some of the cracks in it had been filled with paper from fragments that came from an early draft that he had thrown away while headed home. Or, it might be fact number two, the early 1900s, a panic spread in the U.S. and the U.K. centered around libraries and the possibility that books lent out by the libraries might be contaminated with disease. And so to test out whether this was the case, one man fed monkeys some milk from pieces of paper that came from books that had been borrowed by people with diseases. And then he found out that those monkeys didn't die. And he saved libraries. Maybe. Book milk?

Yeah, we gotta come back to this. There's gonna be an extensive discussion on book milk. Or it could be fact number three. In the 1960s, a chemist working at the company Carter's Inc. developing pigments came upon an idea called highlighters. But no one at the company was excited about his awesome idea until one of the executives realized that his kids could use it for the Bible they were studying in sunday school and that saved highlighters uh well but admit but maybe not it could be again fact number one early drafts of on the origin of species uh used to board up cracks in hms beagle cannons or it could be fact number

two the fear of library driven pandemic led one man to feed monkeys book-soaked milk or fact number three highlighters happened because an executive realized that they could help his kids study the bible they all seem entirely plausible to me i call nonsense on the first option because he was working on multiple drafts while still on the boat he hadn't like written it yet i don't feel like you get rid of your field notes when you're still on the boat right do't like written it yet i don't feel like you get rid of your field notes when you're still on the boat right do you know you know how much darwin hated himself though he he just hated he is just so sad and like he's like this no one will ever i can't i can't be perfect so it must be burned i think even if he's sad, even in my fits of depression,

I would not wad up my paper and then stick it in a cannon. Yeah, that's true. I would toss it overboard. If I'm sad, it's going as far away from me as possible. Similarly. Also, they're his field notes.

Aren't they like the drawings of the things? Maybe it's just the part where he was writing stuff down and he was like i don't know i oh no i think kink is trying to mess with us i don't think it's i'm definitely gonna be wrong yeah i think similar to darwin like sari said no matter how much i think everything i've ever done is garbage if somebody tried to like throw it away or make it wet and stick it on a cannon also a cannon like a shooting cannon

yeah yeah that wouldn't do nothing they need to keep their cannons in good working order with that's also water and paper uh-huh sure look cellulose is very strong the second one okay is it like oat milk and it's yeah no it's not it's not monkey milk no no not monkey milk is it like it's is it like oat milk definite it's cow milk with books in it is that you're saying it's so i think what happened is he is he put milk in a little cup of of book like he poured the milk down a little little little book ramp into a monkey. Like you're at a party, except it's instead of like a human body.

It's a book. It's milk. The monkeys are taking a milk shot. Instead of an ice shoot. Yes. An ice shoot. That's what I'm thinking. Yes.

It's like a book shoot, but it's a book and it's milk and it's a monkey. I call nonsense on this too, because the way to test this would not be, we don't lick books. That's not how a book would be contagious. You are giving people of the past far too much credit. You think people in the past licked books? No, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, you think that they ran bad experiments.

Yeah. I'm not dumb you're gonna get all the germs you're gonna get from smelling the book that you would from drinking milk off the book right right so if you're gonna get sick from looking at the book you're definitely gonna get sick from drinking milk off i kind of want this one to be real because i want you to tell us more about it it does does feel like early COVID-19 pandemic when we were wiping down groceries, wiping down library books. My neighbors still do that.

We're just one step away. I mean, I've got to be honest, if you did this with Bailey's, I'd drink it. At the next Tangents Live show, we can do book shots. This is going to be a Patreon perk, is book-infused Bailey's. I see it now. It's going gonna be on a sock i'll buy them jesus it's gonna be a soda syrup okay it is i'm going for bible highlighters i know that bibles

like there's the red parts that like mention Jesus. Like Christians love highlighting the Bible. Yeah. Is that what the red parts are? Yeah, that's what the red parts are. It's his word. It's his word. That's where Jesus is talking. And so I'm going Bible highlighters.

What if this is Vanessa bait, you know? Yeah, no. Oh, I'm falling for it. If this is Vanessa bait, then good for you, Hank. I think I have to go with the monkey drinking milk off the books. My soul is just telling me that I got to go with that one. Okay. All right.

Normally, I would do game strategy and just guess that I sincerely do not believe Darwin stuffed his thing in the can in this. So I think it has to be, I i'm gonna go with the highlighter as well all right well uh sari and vanessa carter's ink was one of the first companies to sell highlighters but this story is actually inspired by how post-it notes came to be because that was invented by a chemist at 3m named spencer silver he developed a new adhesive that was easy to apply and then reapply without leaving any residue behind he didn't really know what it would be good for until his colleague art fry realized that the adhesive would be really handy for one of his own personal problems keeping track

of the pages in his hymnal in his church choir which he usually like use little just paper book marks but they'd fall out yeah he loses them. And this would allow them to stick them in there, keep it there, and the bookmarks would stay. And that was one of the very first uses for post-it notes. And everybody was like, actually, these things are going to be great. I led you astray. It's okay. I usually lead myself astray, so it's nice to have a companion in this and be like, no,

I went with theologian Vanessa Zolton with this. Yeah. No, I went with theologian Vanessa Zolton with this. Me. And Sam, taking place during the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the Great Book Scare was a panic that led people to think that books could be contaminated with one from a scientist who claimed that 40 guinea pigs had died from being inoculated with book paper. Inoculated? Well, yeah. Who wouldn't?

They injected paper into the guinea pigs. And they were like, oh, no. They didn't like it. And the monkey experiment was indeed a thing that was detailed by an editor of a journal called library oh so it was it is a real thing they really put put book milk into monkeys and the monkeys were fine that's so goofy didn't let them drink the book milk they inoculated them with the book milk. No, no, no, no. They fed the book milk to them. Yeah, they only inoculated the hamsters.

Excuse me, yeah. I got too confused about how wild this research is. So the Great Book Scare led libraries to develop a bunch of different methods for disinfecting books, like steam or formaldehyde, or just straight up burning them, which definitely did disinfect them but caused other problems. Yeah, there's a lot of it. She's there. Meanwhile, in 1907, the UK updated their Public Health Act of 1875, which had originally been written to prevent people from lending bedding

or other items exposed to diseases. In this updated version, people who were suspected of having a disease could be fined up to 40 shillings, which is about $200 today, if they borrowed, lent, or returned library books. The panic eventually subsided, especially when people realized that librarians weren't getting sick at any higher rate than normal people. Not that librarians aren't normal people. But you kind of aren't. But in a good way. I can confirm being close proximity to many librarians, not normal people.

I love that at the end of the day, it was data science. They were like, wait a minute, let's collect some data, not run an experiment, but look at the librarians. Let's look at the, let's just, and everybody's like, you know what, you're right. Yeah. I have seen that the librarians are fine yeah saved a lot of milk could have saved a lot of guinea pigs could have said yeah but the monkeys were fine yeah the monkeys came out of the deal ahead they were like thanks for the milk bro see you later and that's how the monkeys learned hamlet and were able to write

it on the typewriters because they probably drank they drank all the books yeah i think new study strategy everyone talks about textbook under your pillow osmosis learning you gotta drink milk off of the book yeah soak it in the milk and then the knowledge will soak through you yeah yeah well you just you need a lot of milk for like your average chemistry textbook but like i could drink a lot of milk worth it yeah i to all the cows out there uh the darwin thing was a big fat lie but it was inspired by the fact that uh conservators were studying the canon from the wreckage of the queen anne's revenge a ship used by the pirate blackbeard so that's a real person and a real name of a real ship and it was a real it sounds like a diarrhea disease sorry to take us there but no one else okay it was just me they were studying this canon

and uh they found that there were little bits of paper on in it sealed up somehow i'm not it's it's it seems complicated how this canon worked but anyway there's little bits of paper they spend a lot of time trying to figure out what uh book this these bits of paper might be from and after analyzing them for a long time and trying to fit them together they found out they figured out that it was from an 18th century book called a voyage to the south sea around the world written by edward cook i love the idea that they had a book about just being out on the ocean on this on this boat that's out on the ocean they really love you know what i want to read more about is this awful life that i'm living right now uh but apparently they didn't like it enough

to keep it uh all in one piece because it did ends up uh stuffed into a cannon. Well, maybe they stole it from some snooty rich guy who decorated his cabin with nautical things and then they stole it all. Because pirates only got porno on their boats, I'm pretty sure, right? Boy, one of the worst stories I know is about pirate porn. Okay.

What? Are you going to tell us or is that all you're gonna say hank is this one of your party stories not to keep it in the podcast but um but because uh pirates were uh pretty heteronormative and uh also it was only dudes they dudes. They would have a thing that would sort of be passed around, and it was like a device for just humping to get off. And this is how many a pirate got chlamydia and other sexually transmitted diseases, because they did not wash that thing often enough. Wow. That's not one of the worst stories i've ever heard no yeah i guess not i mean if i'm a pirate i just do it the normal way yeah they got hooks for hands though hank it's too dangerous

you think pirates have two hooks for him? Every one of them just got hit. And they're like, the only thing I can do is hook onto this massive fleshlight and just wail away at it. I mean, have any of you watched Our Flag Means Death? I haven't yet. I'm very excited. That's other solution. Just all pirates just have fluid sexuality. Gay.

Like there's plenty of perfectly good people to smooch holes to do that in. If you just look around you. It wouldn't have necessarily solved the chlamydia problem. No, unfortunately not. I think it would have been more fun. It's like a funner way to get chlamydia. It's a much more fun way to get chlamydia.

Yeah, that's true. If you're going to get itlamydia it's a much more fun way to get chlamydia yeah that's true if you're gonna get it you get some emotional connection yeah yeah you might as well also get emotional chlamydia of your heart broken yeah you're heartbroken by a pirate well sam's gonna cut all of that out i liked it i liked my joke about the hook hand so yeah it was a good one very funny all right everybody now we're gonna take a short break and then i have another game I liked my joke about the hook hand. Yeah, it was a good one. Very funny. All right, everybody. Now we're going to take a short break, and then I have another game for our second game of the episode this is called secret messages there are plenty of messages written in books that's one of the main things that they do

but sometimes the most compelling thing about books are the things that you can't see so today we're going to be playing a game called secret Message. I'm going to tell you a story of people diving deep into a book in ways that do not involve actually reading the text, and then I'm going to give you two options for the secrets they found as a result, and you have to guess which secret is the real secret, and you'll get a point. So round number one is Galileo's Starry Messenger. In 2005, a rare copy from the original printing of Galileo's Starry Messenger. In 2005, a rare copy from the original printing of Galileo's Starry Messenger was found. It was not called that. It's called something else in Latin, and I'm not going to try and pronounce it. It was found by a New York City

bookseller. I'm sure that this person was extraordinarily excited. It was particularly special because it had been signed by Galileo himself and featured like actual watercolor art painted by people. And as historians studied the signature and the artwork in the book, they realized that this book was hiding something else. What did they realize? A. It might have been a personalized edition sent by Galileo to the astronomer Johannes Kepler. Or B. It might be that the addition was in fact a forgery. So either it's extraordinarily even more valuable, or it's a bunch of BS.

I would have guessed that Galileo lived in 400 BC and Kepler lived in 1965. I have no idea. Were they contemporaries? Pretty sure they were contemporaries. Okay. So what I know, Galileo was in a lot of trouble

a lot of the time and there was a trial. I don't know if like sending the book to someone could implicate them. I think it's that. I think that it is a secret message to a friend book

and he didn't want to get his friend in trouble by being like we're friends and so he sent this like beautiful hand-painted addition to his friend but he didn't want to implicate his friend that's my theory i like that that's like a very deep story it's beautiful i made it up like i like the very like the implications of the smuggling i want to read this novel of the smuggler who carried this book from one astronomer to another astronomer i'm gonna i'm gonna guess the opposite way i think just for just to be contrarian i think and like what if it's a secret story on the other like

galileo his name was in the mud kepler who knew who that guy was stars whatever no one would no self-respecting artist even for a commission would be like all watercolor paint in your book you'd be like please please add some art to my book and they'd say no i know you're in the doghouse the pope hates you yeah right i will absolutely not decorate these pieces of paper and affiliate myself with you that's a really good point too now i don't uh i'm gonna go i want to go with vanessa though i want to okay thanks sam well guess what everybody points to sam and vanessa oh no no no take it back sorry oh no which opposite of that. You have to give us points anyway. Yeah. That was rude.

Points to Sari. Sam, I led you astray with my story of nonsense. Yeah, and I was so happy. Yeah. I mean, I wish that that was the thing. Maybe that's what got me confused. So it was published in 1610. Galileo included a bunch of observations

he'd made through his telescope, including the fact that the surface of the moon was mountainous and that Jupiter had its own satellites, its own moons. And it was published. There were 550 copies printed and 150 copies remain today. So that's pretty good, honestly, for 1610. Historians were super excited when a bookseller thought that they had found another copy, even more so when they saw that it was signed by Galileo and illustrated in watercolors

and had been given a stamp from the library of the Linkean Academy in Rome. Maybe, I don't know how that's pronounced. Then a few things caused this all to fall apart. First, there was an actual astronomy mistake made in the watercolors with a lunar phase depicted not happening in time for the book to have been published so there was like something wrong with the astronomy where it couldn't have happened when it was published which is like i don't know maybe and then there were some like inconsistencies in the paper found with x-ray fluorescence which is probably pretty good uh signed to people who understand these things but the big thing that was the linchpin there was a little blotch that uh was in the book but it was only there because it was in another book accidentally so they accidentally copied a

blotch that was a stain as if it were a part of the original manuscript so that was the thing that sort of sealed the deal interesting eventually it was revealed that the forgery had been created by Marino Massimo del Caro, the former director of the Gioralmini Library in Naples, who was arrested for also stealing and selling books from the library. Oh, shoot. What year?

It was modern times. So relatively recently. I think that he was the head of the library in like 2011, 2012. Oh, wow. Wow. Like really recently. Yeah, he's like our age. And the forgeries from around then too?

Yeah. Got Galileo talking on a cell phone in some of those watercolors. Accidentally like with a water bottle in the background yeah he's spilled my starbucks cup spill my gatorade on it on one of the pages oh shoot what confused everyone was that it was an iphone 4 and they were like no that's old that don't seem old to me those are around 400 bc or whenever galile was alive. All right. What's going on to round number two? In 2016, researchers reported finding three rare books in the library collection of the University of Southern Denmark dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries. They covered various historical topics, but the researchers wanted to see if there were any secrets buried in the text. So they studied the books with X-ray fluorescence, and they were surprised

by what they found. But what was it that surprised them so much? Was it A, that the paper in the books was made from a tree that scientists thought had gone extinct in the 1400s? Or was it B, that the exterior of these books was covered in poisonous arsenic? I mean, to not overthink this one, they if they touch the arsenic wouldn't that be bad wouldn't you just notice like oh i touched this book i got a rash uh-oh well honestly i don't know what happens when you touch arsenic do you get a rash do you get the poops like sometimes you just get the poops anyway i guess sometimes sometimes you get the revenge of the Queen Anne and it's not.

You don't know. I'll go with the tree one because that seems like just the kind of thing a nerd would be into. I'd be into that. Oh, this paper. This is from a tree that we didn't think existed at this time. That's cool. Did they save a tree that we didn't think existed at this time that's cool did they save a tree did they have special paper for hundreds of years or did they just have a tree nearby where they

were like oh i'm saving the last one yeah they didn't have wikipedia to see if it was a critically endangered tree or not they didn't have i naturalist on their phone to like look at the trees around them um yeah so i think it's the tree paper one maybe it's maybe it's the arsenic one because there's some fun story of a booby-trapped book or something i don't know i think it's arsenic and that it was like some secret society and it was like if you knew you would know to wear gloves and if not they could test or for religious reasons to keep like kids out of something. It was like the equivalent of like murder children. That book is from the restricted section. Exactly.

You deserve what you get. Do not parental controls of the 17th century. Well, not for the reasons Vanessa said, but Vanessa and Sam are correct. Yes, finally. Is it real this time, Hank? It's real this time.

So they're trying to do a bunch of analyses on these books and they turn to X-ray fluorescence to get sort of under the paint that covered the top of the covers. And in the process, they realized that the paint was made from arsenic, which was used as a green pigment to create art at the time, which means they had some poison books on their hands

they don't know exactly why the arsenic was used they think maybe to protect from insects um but also maybe it was just like this is the paint that we have they books these books are now carefully stored that so people won't accidentally stumble onto poisonous books and get themselves into trouble. And I looked up the symptoms, and indeed, it is a gastrointestinal problem that you have to worry about. Oh, I just feel like my reasons were so wrong, I shouldn't get the point.

Oh, yeah, that's how it works. I know, but my reasons were so wrong. I wouldn't get any points ever if that was a stipulation of these games. No one ever has good reasons in this show. All right. Our final round, round number three. While we're busy looking for things hidden in past books, people are also creating books that will have their own hidden messages for people both today and in the future to uncover.

For example, in 2015, scientists created a book whose pages are embedded with copper nanoparticles. What is the secret message in these pages? Is it A, that these pages could be used as a filter to kill bacteria in drinking water, or B, that these pages

are more resistant to light damage and will be harder to destroy over time? Seems like too many steps to make a book and then make them a filter when you could just make a filter does it have stuff printed on it i guess you didn't say did you say uh it does have stuff printed on it but like i don't think that not not for like they didn't like they didn't like make the books to be books and then get them to also help filtering water. Because it could have just text on it that says, run water through this page.

It's a filter. It's like an instructional manual. Yeah, you can say whatever you want. The first day of the rest of your life is today. Drink safe. Hang in there. Pour water here. If you looked here, you'd be home right now.

It's the Snapple cap of paper. Well, she's not going with that one because that sounds fun. Yeah, I kind of want to go with it too. I mean, more resistant to light damage feels more logical. Yeah. But I feel like, like why not have a magazine page there's so many fun things that people put in magazines we gotta get more fun why not a water filter i'm it like the light one is just so obvious that it's obviously a trap should i just the trap is the true one but no go with your heart vanessa no my heart is the true one. But no, go with your heart, Vanessa. No, my heart is the light one. Then you got to go with it.

Okay, well, I'm going for it. I'm going for it. It's the light one. I'm shooting the moon. What a disaster you have created for Vanessa. Because it is indeed that it's just a little book of pages that you can tear out and put into a filter and and make it so that it kills all the bacteria now there are problems with this idea one it's not very good

um so carbon nanoparticles are taken up by bacteria. They kill bacteria. But, like, look, there are other things beside bacteria that might be a problem for water. And so, we have other filters that are much more effective than this thing that literally does say, use this as a filter. That's what it says on the pages of the book. And they're also, like, super thick, so you can't get that many in. And you have to have a special device to sort of slide them into so all the water goes through the paper. What's the point if you have to have a device? I know! I agree! It's called a drinkable book, and it's from 2015,

and I think we have better systems now. We continue to progress to the point where we no longer need drinkable books. And we no longer need to have monkeys drink milk off of books. And instead, we can just do vodka on ice luges. So, what does that mean for our final scores?

I'm checking right now. Now, it means that Sam has done the hard work of making it so that Vanessa doesn't win and he does. I made a big mistake because if you had guessed with us, we would have all tied. And that would have been nice, wouldn't it? Oh, that would have been nice oh that would be beautiful you wouldn't have all that's not true i would have still lost dirty comfort i don't feel bad anymore sam congratulations on your win this episode uh i know how much, how that feels for you.

I know it feels good. I know how this is the only joy. You're sad little boy. I know that's all you have left. I was feeling pretty good about it. No, you did great. But now it's time to ask the science couch where we ask a listener question to our virtual couch of finely honed scientific minds. science couch where we ask a listener question to our virtual couch of finely owned scientific minds this is from james on discord who asks what were some ancient pest repellents for libraries

i know old books had a real problem with bugs eating all of them maybe apparently arsenic uh we've discovered but i think that i think that that there's been lots of terrible substances that have been used for pest control. I figure you probably use some naphthalene because we kept using that for a long time in the closet so that the moths wouldn't eat our sweaters. So probably similar. But, you know, we got a lot of stuff that kills bugs. It also kills people.

So, yes, there are a lot of things that eat books over time. And I think still plague books, as far as I can tell. Any sort of collection of books faces the uphill battle of protecting this collection from pests. And these pests can range from rodents, big mice, rats, to any number of small larvae or other insects so there are things like moths and cockroaches and silverfish and a lot of beetle larvae and we've known about them for a while so aristotle that guy described uh what he said was quote the smallest creature of all in books. So he found- The smallest one ever is found? Yeah, he was like,

they can't get any smaller than that. I've never seen anything smaller, which means there is nothing smaller. That's Aristotelian logic. Yeah. Yep. Over the course of time, as we started using agricultural methods to get rid of pests,

so learning about biological elements, ways to stop fungal diseases, ways to control weeds or other pests, then we started applying some of these to book collections as well so the big one for rodents was cats that's where library cats came from it's like you got little mice eating our grain we've got we've also got mice eating our books because it's made basically from the same stuff just kind of grain and so like the library of alexandria which had scrolls rather than codices but still library had library cats and there's this documentation about how like the librarians eventually built up this this group of cats that just hunted rats and they nice they named them all and they had a little system going got another novel novel right ready to happen.

The story of the cats of Alexandria. Yeah. I need it to end before the fire. Definitely don't. I want to feel good about these cats. Yeah. Or the cats caused the fire. Yeah.

And the final shot is the back of the cats watching it burn. Some cats it's like a candle. Just push, push, push, plop. Yeah. Their insect advice also, which was on the bad end of the spectrum, it was things like rub the books in certain months, like March, July, and September with pepper and cloth and alum. That sounds like advice given by a book.

I just want to get it rubbed yeah and another another um recommendation was just to read the books that's that sounds like very librarian book advice like read me and then the insects won't come um then like hank said there were tons of chemicals over time camphor uh in quotes poison paste don't know what that was but it was definitely bad for the librarians in addition to the books um and one that's not so bad which is neem leaves so neem trees and neem oil it's with the rise of indoor house plants being a fad uh neem oil has been has risen in i don't know popularity as like an organic gardening chemical and that's all i got i stopped looking at the late 1800s early 1900s because that didn't feel old enough it's a big problem and we've been working on it. And I don't know, like, I look at my books and I don't feel like a bug could take

that on, but look, they can do anything. They got a lot of time. They got nothing else to do. They got nothing but time. Well, if you want to ask your question to the Science Couch, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShowTangents where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to Maya Biard at Nebichueba

and everybody else who tweeted us your questions for this episode thank you vanessa for joining us for this episode of size show tangents if we want to find more of your insight and and um approachable humor where shall we find you i'm so bummed that my humor is approachable. It's not what I've been going for at all. She's edgy. Yeah, yeah. Sorry for your very, very harsh, edgy humor. We have three podcasts.

The Real Question, where it's an advice show where we don't give advice. And then we have Hot and Bothered, where, no, but we don't even try to give advice. We listen. We listen. We listen. Nice, nice. We have Hot and Bothered where this season we're talking about pride and prejudice. My whole shtick is we treat secular things as if they're sacred. And then we have Harry Potter and the Sacred Text where we treat Harry Potter as a sacred text while not liking or condoning much of anything that J.K. Rowling says.

You ever do any Hot and Bothered about sexy pirates, though? We have an episode called, I think, Sexy Pirates. Okay. In season one. Can't wait. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's super easy to do that. You can go on patreon.com slash scishowtangents to become a patron, get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes

and our Cars 2 commentary, all that stuff that we've been making for all this time now there's like a whole thing built up that you can consume uh there at patreon.com slash sideshow tangents second you can leave us a review wherever you listen we've heard that that's helpful but i know that it helps us know what you think about the show because we don't have that much opportunity to get feedback and we thrive on feedback and finally if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Tell people about them.

Oh, man. That's good. I like that. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Sam Schultz. I've been Vanessa Zoltan.

SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz, who edits a lot of these episodes episodes along with Seth Glicksman. Our story editor is Alex Billow. Our social media organizer is Paola Garciapieto. Our editorial assistants are Debuki Chakravarti and Emma Douster. Our sound design is by Joseph Tunamedish. Our executive producers are Caitlin Hoffmeister and me, Hank Green. And we couldn't make any of this, of course, without our patrons on Patreon.

Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing, librarians. Keep an eye out for book-eating pests like beetle larvae by looking for evidence like frass, which is basically insect poop that looks like piles of sand. Besides being unsightly, the frass holds moisture, food particles, and chemical compounds that attract even more adult insects who will eat,

mate, and keep damaging the books. You can easily vacuum up frass on the shelves, but a lot of poop dust can get inside the partially eaten books. So a librarian from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu wrote up a guide about how they dealt with a huge beetle infestation, including thunking some more sturdy books to knock out the frass and the quote, effective and amusing solution of

using personal massagers, aka vibrators, along the spines of more fragile books to loosen up any stray poop. Now that is a romance novel. It's not.