SciShow Tangents - Messes with Joe Hanson

Episode Date: June 4, 2019

Be they big or small, purposeful or accidental, innocuous or potentially-planet-destroying, there is no question that humans are great at making messes and not so great at cleaning them up. Joe Hanson, host of the PBS channel Hot Mess, joins us to talk about some of the more notable messes we’ve made, and what, if anything, we can do to be less messy in the future. Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out themes for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! And if you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out this episode’s page at scishowtangents.org!

Listener supported. WNYC Studios. Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents. It's a lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen and sometimes special guests. This week, we have one of those. It's host of YouTube's It's Okay to Be Smart and PBS Digital Studios' Hot Mess, Joe Hanson. Hey, I'm genuinely happy to be here. Not even like pretend happy. Genuinely happy to be here.

I can't tell if it's a fake smile or a real one. It's real. It's been reported that it's real. I fooled the humans. Joe, what's your tagline? My tagline is, I am the Dread Pirate Roberts. We're also joined on the science couch with Joe, Sari Reilly.

Hello. Do you feel like the science couch has leveled up a step? Oh, yes. A hundred percent. Wow, thanks. Joe's like Hank, but better is what everyone always says. Hank plus plus. Sari, what's your tagline? Blonde for two weeks. We're also joined by Sam

Schultz. Hello. What's your tagline? Sun's out, Sam's out. Stefan is also here. Hi, Stefan Chin. Hello. What's your tagline? Juicy fruit mongoose. What does that mean? Nobody knows. Sounds tasty. And I'm Hank Green.

My tagline is the difference between up and down is left. Every week on Tangents, we get together to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory. We're also playing for Hank Bucks, which we have rewarded from week to week. Sam, I think, is still in the lead. Oh, I don't know. Not anymore. You are now.

I had a very bad episode last episode. And I lost a bunch of points. And you are one point ahead of me. Wow. So you have 40 points. I have 39 points. Sari has 33. That doesn't seem right.

Stefan has 35. I mean, by all the statistical analyses, I'm bad at this game. But you know what? Joe has zero points. Hey, we know who the real loser is. We do everything we can to stay on topic here at Tangents, but we're bad at that, which is why we call it Tangents. So if the rest of the team deems a tangent unworthy, we will force you to give up a Hank Buck.

Tangent with care, everybody. Now, as always, we introduce this week's topic with a traditional science poem this week from Sari. Oops, we say when we spill some juice or find some poops our pup produced. Oops, there's molasses flooding the streets. Oops, that sinkhole is swallowing trees. But sometimes our messes are more than they seem. Oops is on oopses for centuries.

Waste that builds up or oil that spills or space debris that orbits us still. So it's on us to make this our hill to learn and to care for our home until our messes

are less messy. That's what we can do. We're in it together. So, you know, come through. Nice. Let's come through. I'm inspired.

We should have put that on Twitter and maybe everybody will be like, right, we should do something about climate change. Siri, fixed it. Fixed the world.

And at least we'll be on a hill for when the sea level rises. That's good too. So, Sari, what's a mess? I like Googled science plus mess to see if anything would come up. Nothing did. It's just entropy. Yeah. I feel like messes can be accidental most of the time but like also

intentional because i can make a mess on purpose yeah you can go and rampage and not are you making a mess now oh no i have to pick that up but is that a mess because i i feel like if i have one thing that's out of place that's not a mess But if I have clothes across my whole floor, can't walk across my apartment, then that's a proper mess. How many items constitute a mess? I think it's like a per unit of area situation. And relative to the size of the

thing that's making the mess. You guys ever look up etymology of words? Oh, yeah. Love it. So I'm super nerdy, so I looked up mess. And it turns out it was always nerdy, so I looked up mess. And it turns out it was always just about eating. Like a mess was just like a meal. Right.

Which is why soldiers eat in a mess hall. And then apparently somebody mixed something together to feed the pigs, and they're like, we're going to call that a mess now. And that's how it happened. So are we in a mess? Is the world a mess? Yeah, so like extending the mess where I'm going to step on a Lego out to sort of like the conceptual idea of a mess? Yeah. So, like, extending the, like, mess where, like, I'm going to step on a Lego out to sort of, like, the conceptual idea of a mess where we are in a mess. This is a situation that requires action to get out of. It's just sort of, like, the general colloquial mess thing.

That's why I think, like, the universe getting more disordered isn't really a mess. Right. Because we did all the stuff that we're in a mess about. The universe is just like being. Yeah, so it's not so much an entropy thing. I feel like we're well-defined, which means that it's time for Truth or Fail. One of our panelists has prepared three science facts for our education

and enjoyment, but only one of them is real. The rest of us have to figure out, either by deduction or wild guess, which is the true fact. If they do, they get a Hank Buck. If they don't, the presenter gets a Hank Buck. This week, it's Sam, which I feel like you've put yourself in a situation where you're more likely to get more Hank Bucks. Yeah. Jay, Sam, it's time for you to present your facts. All right. On an unseasonably warm January day in Boston in the year 1919, a molasses tank belonging to the Purity Distilling Company recently filled to capacity with warm molasses burst open and let loose a wave of the sticky stuff that traveled through the streets of Boston's North End

at about 35 miles an hour. It destroyed buildings. It hurled trucks around it killed 21 people it injured 150 more people and it killed like tons of animals and stuff too horses people talked about horses dying a lot in all the newspaper clipping yeah because they were like thrashing around and it was apparently very horrible uh so the distilling company claimed that the tank was sabotaged by anarchists but scientists hypothesize now that carbon dioxide rising from the warm molasses coupled with how badly the tank was built was

what the thing was so cool story but that's not the only molasses based disaster in human history so all of the industrial spills i'm going to read are basically real, but only one of them was actually a molasses accident. Okay. Number one. In 2013, an underwater molasses pipeline burst off the coast of Honolulu, spilling thousands of barrels of molasses that smothered local fish and coral number two in 1800s london distilleries all over the city were having a little fun and competing to build the biggest distilling vat that all went terribly

wrong in 1814 when somebody finally built a vat that was too big and it burst uh spilling 1500 barrels of molasses and killing eight people. Or in 2000, a distillery warehouse in Kentucky caught fire, sending a flood of flaming molasses down a hill into the woods in a nearby river. No humans were killed, but 228,000 fish died along a 66-mile stretch of river. Which one was molasses? Wow. So my big question here is, what is molasses?

Okay. And why do we have so much of it? Because in my head, molasses is like something you put like one teaspoon of into like a cookie ingredient. Like why do they need so much molasses in Boston and Hawaii? Well, okay, I'll explain the Boston one though. It was used for distilling. Oh, for like making booze? Yeah, and so the company was trying to beat Prohibition, which passed the day after the flood, I believe, Prohibition passed.

And then a year later, it was going to go into effect. So they were racing against the clock to get as much molasses as they could and make as much booze as they could before they couldn't do it anymore. So they filled the molasses tank up too high because they were like, we need to stockpile all the molasses before they could and make as much booze as they could before they couldn't do it anymore. So they filled the molasses tank up too high because they were like, we need to stockpile all the molasses before they stop the shipments.

Yeah. Can you tell me what molasses is? That is a great question that I probably should have read a little bit. It's a byproduct, right? What? It's a byproduct.

I know this. Oh, please. I grew up in a town called Sugarland, Texas. Like, they literally made sugar there. Oh, it's not just because it's cute?

No. So when you make sugar, like from raw sugar, it comes out like really browny and, you know, kind of like brown sugar, like you bake with.

And if you extract the brown part out of that, it's sticky molasses and you get the white sugar crystals. It's the brown of brown sugar? It's like a sticky, raw, cooked...

So, it's all the flavor parts of brown sugar. It's everything that tastes good about brown sugar. Yeah. Yeah. If you ever run out of brown sugar, just put mol flavor parts of brown sugar. Everything that tastes good about brown sugar. Yeah. If you ever run out of brown sugar, just put molasses in some white sugar. But who keeps molasses around? I actually have, weirdly enough, recently discovered that I have two bottles of molasses.

So I should just get into the whiskey business, apparently. So what about the Hawaiian economy mandates a pipeline of underwater molasses? Something about this is true. So what do they have an underground pipeline of in Hawaii? Do they do oil exploration in Hawaii? Is there like natural gas there? Is it pineapples? Underground pineapple pipeline?

Spam delivery. It's just spam. It's just like a pipe of spam. It comes from the mainland. Yeah, yeah. Like, are the Hawaiian islands close enough together that it's just easier to, like, lay pipe and then you can, like,

you just turn a faucet on and it comes from the central, like, molasses distribution hub. You know? Like pneumatic tubes. Yeah, like a pneumatic system. Put your pancake under it. So overview, we have 2013 underwater molasses pipeline burst off the coast of Honolulu. 1800s London distillery competitions ended horribly when 1500 barrels spilled.

Or number three, in Kentucky, this was recently, flaming molasses killed schools of fish in the nearby river. It was flaming? Yeah. Okay. How is it on fire? you can catch pretty much anything on fire try hard to increase the amount of i guess it's it's sugar sugar is they did they did oopsie and it got just a little oopsie yeah so the london one was people kept building bigger and bigger vats that seems like a very human thing to Like, bet you can't build a bigger vat

and then doing that to the point of... And they're like, so far, none of them have burst. Yeah. I'm going to go with the flaming molasses. Flaming Kentucky molasses. That sounds great. They definitely make whiskey there. Yeah.

So they would have molasses. And if molasses is going to be on fire... It's going to be in Kentucky. I will... To diversify our answers, I'll go with vats because I think it would be equally the last two. I got to go with vats too. It just seems like such a British thing to do to have vat-offs.

Yeah. I can't imagine that there is an underwater molasses pipeline. If that's the real one, you deserve the points. So I'm going to go with the the london distillery competitions oh boy okay so it was the underwater molasses i have so many more questions uh i couldn't find too many answers about why exactly they started this pipeline but molasses is unregulated

so you can do whatever you want with molasses Sam is so far in the lead right now so they would pump molasses from the molasses factory to tankers offshore and nobody ever had to come see if this was okay or if the pipes were in order or anything,

and one day they just burst and killed everything instantly, basically. It cleaned itself up really fast, and the fact that there was sugar left kind of helped things come back, but instant death for the coral and the fish that were in the area. Not a good way to go. No. Boiling molasses, we've learned. I still can't believe

that there's a molasses pipe. We all like laughed together when you said that. This is something that I should have known about the world, that there's this big... It's the silliest thing

to pipe around. I mean, you couldn't eat anything silly. Yeah, I was picturing like from island to island, but it makes sense to go out to a ship.

Yeah, yeah, to boats. So, the London distillery thing, I admit this is kind of bullshit, but I found so many good messes. The London distillery thing was more, it was a brewery,

and so they build these big barrels, basically, or like distilling vats, and people would come from miles around to see their cool, huge distilling vats, and they just took it too far. Best mess ever. I'll come from miles around. I just need to see a bigger vat.

There was a TV back then. The industrialization of our economy is amazing. I want to see a big container. You could go see the giant vat and then get a bumper sticker about that. What are you going to put your bumper sticker on? On your horse? On your buggy.

Or your horse. They could brand your horse. That's how that... The old biggest ball of twine. You just pull up to it and then they burn your horse. Instead of pressed pennies, that's how you collected things.

Just your horse is in more and more pain. And then the Kentucky thing was a bourbon. A bourbon storage facility or an aging facility. And it caught on fire. Nobody knows how. It seemed kind of mysterious. And the fiery whiskey swept down into the woods and killed a bunch of fish.

That one seems like anarchists. Yeah, that does seem more like anarchists. I like the idea that the anarchists were like, we're going to target the vat of molasses. That's the worst thing we thought of. They said that they were trying, the company made it all up, but they said they were trying to steal the molasses because somehow you could turn

molasses into some kind of gunpowder or something like that. There's some kind of munition you could make with molasses, but the court didn't believe them and they paid $9 million to the victims of the molasses flood. As someone who lived in Boston for four years, I took a tour and they were like, you can still smell the molasses around

here. I don't know if you could. I have a bad sense of smell, but it was a big placebo effect because everyone else there was like, it does smell sweet in the water, in the air here. When you go to Boston, go sniff. Go sniff Boston. Don't sniff Boston.

Even before I found out about that, I thought Boston was quite sticky. And then when I heard that, I was like, that makes sense now. Next up, we're going to take a short break and then The Fact Off. up, we're going to take a short break and then the fact off. people. At a time when so many important conversations are happening in our world, your voice is more essential than ever. Skillshare offers creative classes designed for real life and all the circumstances that come with it. Break up your routine with spontaneous acts of creativity. Explore workshops, classes, and more. With new live classes, experience real-time inspiration with popular teachers along with other Skillshare members. Most classes are under 60 minutes with short lessons to fit any schedule. Explore your

creativity at Skillshare.com slash SciShow, and the first 1,000 people to use our link will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership. Be one of the first 1,000 to sign up at Skillshare.com slash SciShow. Welcome back. Hank Buck totals. Sarah's got a point because of Science Poem. Nobody else has any points except for Sam who has four. Oofa. Oofa.

A whole pipeline full of points. Yeah. You're pumping them right to me. Straight from the big island of Hawaii to Sam's pockets. From the idiot factories that are your brains. Wow! Sam, we just made some oopsies. You profited. You really did.

Now it is time for the fact off. Joe versus Stefan. You're going to present two amazing facts, and the rest of us are going to decide which fact was the most mind-blowing. And we each have a Hank Buck to award to to decide which fact was the most mind-blowing and we each have a hank buck to award to the one that we like the most and we're going to decide who goes first for the person who least recently cleaned their room least recently yeah so whose room is messier basically i can't actually quantify whose room is messier but i know who least like when did you

last clean your bedroom step Stefan? I cleaned my whole place on Saturday because I had some people over. I cleaned on Sunday for Mother's Day. Oh, nice! Not to place this in time or anything. Because you live with your mom? Yeah. Because I live with my mom.

She was like, clean your room! I live with a mom, not my mom. So, I guess that means that Joe gets to go first. Okay, so in 1963, the Earth looked kind of like Saturn for just a little while because the U.S. government decided that it would be a super good idea to launch like a billion tiny copper wires into space and put a ring around the Earth. And they made a huge mess in the process spoiler okay so if you go back to the late 50s there are no communication satellites right we hadn't really figured out shooting stuff into space and not blowing it up so for long-range communications

like all you can do is undersea cables or like some weird radio but like the soviets can cut your cables and the sun can mess up these long range radio broadcasts. So people had tried bouncing radio off the moon and like floating these big silver balloons and bouncing radio off that. And that didn't work because of course that's not going to work. And so one guy's like, we'll put a ring of copper around the earth and then we can bounce radio waves off it. And they cut these little wires just so they'd be like perfectly little micro antennas. So NASA was basically operating on this idea that's like, oh, space

is really big. We can do anything up there. It'll be fine. Spoiler, it wasn't fine. Radio astronomers are like, this is a horrible idea. The National Academy of Sciences is like, please don't do this. So of course NASA's like, 1961, we launched the rocket up, carrying

these needles needles and things immediately go wrong it doesn't deploy the needles correctly nobody knows what happens to it it's just floating around the earth somewhere in come the soviets and they're like please don't try that again we're begging you you're messing up space russia is like america you're being irresponsible and they're like well let's do it again. Oh, yeah? So in 1963, they launch another one of these things, 20 kilograms of copper needles. It successfully deploys.

And sure enough, they bounce radio waves off of these copper needles, send a transcontinental radio message across the United States. And then, like, the next year, they launch the first communications satellite. Everybody's like, these things will just reenter. It'll be fine. No problem. Not going to have any permanent damage. But they didn't realize that something called cold welding could happen in space. And all of these copper wires clumped together.

And many of them have not reentered. Like they're a small percentage of our current space junk problem, but we absolutely left part of the ring around the planet up there, orbiting the planet as a very big, but cool mess. What kinds of messages are they bouncing off of these? Because I feel like if it's just this ring, like you could pretty easily intercept that.

Like are these top secret messages? You can make a coded message though. Yeah, I guess so. Encrypted radio was probably a thing. I think it is. It still is. pretty easily intercept that well like are these top secret you can make a coded message yeah i guess encrypted radio was probably a thing i think it is it still is i'm sure armies know how to do this stuff yeah but once you put it up there like the soviets can use it too yeah like it's not like it's a proprietary system like anybody can bounce a radio signal off a needle definitely and this thing was going around like the to South Pole, like a vertical ring around there, because they wanted to use it for

transatlantic communication to talk to our allies. So they fused into chunks up there that can do damage to things that would hit them? Each of them was like the size of a postage stamp in length, and so in the vacuum cold of where they were in space,

they just, something called cold welding, like metal on metal can just fuse to each other up there in the weirdness that is not being on Earth. What if I got hit by one? What would happen? If you were in orbit and you got hit by one, it would rip straight through your body. Immediately. With no warning and you would be very hurt. You could be either very dead or very hurt, but nothing in between. Outside of that range. You could be either very dead or very hurt, but nothing in between. This is basically why the United Nations established rules for what you're allowed to do in space.

The first thing when people were like, we can do whatever, and the UN's like, okay, you can't. We thought it would be okay to just let you be responsible, and you proved us wrong. Is there just another capsule still up there with a bunch of these needles? Like, has that been re-entry or burned up? Yes, the first one. They believe the first one might have fallen apart or fragmented and they don't really know what happened to those. So that might have been some of the ones they're picking up on radar today. They got special space radar to look for this stuff i just imagine that like it just left the solar system and like some aliens picked it up and they opened it up and they're like they got glitter bombed basically damn it we can't get these out it's a

pretty big mess all over space is it the biggest mess no i mean maybe in terms of like square miles yeah i want to reiterate that in the meantime we have put so much more stuff in space that is up there. Like this is a small fraction of all of the other space junk. Yeah. But it's the weirdest space junk. Stefan, that was a good fact. Can you do it better? So my hot mess is about the flushable wipes industry.

Oh, that's a really good one. It's a pretty big mess. So there's this team at Ryerson University in Toronto that had in their lab, they set up like a toilet with all like the piping that's attached and it flushes. And they wanted to test a bunch of different, a different like wipe products and things, some of which were flushable or labeled as flushable and see if they could be processed by like sewer systems. The two main things are like within a

certain number of flushes, the product has to clear like the piping. It's like 20 meters of pipe with a couple like 90 degree bends. All the products did that, like within five flushes, like everything was through the piping. But then they do like a disintegration test where they sort of slosh the water around in a box. It's all very specific like the number of degrees that you tilt the box

so that it matches like what you would experience in the sewer system. And so their standard was that it needs to disintegrate within 30 minutes to avoid having danger

of clogging. And zero of the products out of 101 passed this test. I thought there'd be at least like one on the market maybe that would like actually actually do the thing but none of them did it makes sense i hadn't really thought about flushable wipes before looking into it for this but like these are are causing problems around sewer systems around the world so in toronto where the university that they did this test,

in the city of Toronto, they get 10,000 calls annually about blockages that are related to the flushing of various items that should not be flushed. And have you all heard of the Fatberg thing? Oh, I just Googled it. I was like, we're going to talk about Fatbergs now, aren't we? Fatbergs are just these giant thousands of pound collections of grease and animal fat and these wipes. And they get stuck together and they clog up sewer systems.

And they cost tons of money to remove. And also tons of just life. Human beings have to go down there and spend their time removing a fatberg. So is it the wipes removing a fatberg. Yeah. So is it the wipes that the fatbergs are coalescing around? I think it's wipes and other just anything that's non-biodegradable. But I think wipes are one of the more common things that go down there.

But like Q-tips, like diapers, like all kinds of things that people flush. What kind of toilet can you flush a diaper in? Some like rocket toilet? Aren't there like people who monitor advertising where people would get in trouble for saying these are flushable? They're flushable. You can flush them. They are able to be flushed. There's not like a solid regulation about it.

It's just like there's this industry test that has a less strict standard to be able to say, this is flushable. And it's like, it has to disintegrate within three hours or something, but they're hitting the systems in faster time than three hours. And so like, it needs to disintegrate faster to avoid clogging. All right, people, the solution to this problem, like a spray bottle next to the toilet. A bidet. It's called a bidet.

Well, we're not all kings here. What are you spraying? Your butt. Dampen that toilet paper that you already have in the bathroom. If you need something soft and moist. That makes sense. The toilet paper dissolves in 10 seconds. That dissolves too fast. Double ply.

Wrap it a few times. Some quad ply. I'm never wiping again. I'm just taking a shower afterward. That's the solution. All right, it's time for us to distribute our Hank Bucks, you guys. I knew about both of these facts. I think I learned more from Joe,

because I didn't know about the two different missions, and I didn't know that this is what spurred the UN into actually starting to regulate our space. What were they doing before then? I don't know, like solving smallpox? Keeping peace on Earth. Just mind your details. I also want to give mine to Joe.

They're both very good facts, but I had heard of Fatbergs before. I think Stefan's done an important service for the world. It's true. Stefan's is a better service for people. Yeah, so I'm going to service for the world. It's true. Stefan's is a better service for people. Yeah, so I'm going to give mine to Stefan. Thanks. And now it's time to Ask the Science Couch. We have got listener questions for our couch

of finely honed scientific minds which does not include me, which is wonderful. And that question will be read to us by Sam. At The Beekeeper asks, Is there any evidence in the fossil record of man-made messes will things like the bp oil spill show up in the fossil record in a few millennia there there will be but like not a few millennia like millennia of millennia it takes a long time for things to

fossilize and for the ground to squish and find and create those geologic layers so go millions of years into the future aliens show up i guess they're geologists they start digging around and figuring out what was on this planet um humans have been around 200 000 years or something like that that's going to be a paper thin layer in the geologic record but there will be some weird stuff there is actually a mineral made from all of the paint that fell at car and automobile factories. I just Googled it.

Fordite. Fordite. What? Which will be compressed and people will probably think this is some precious gem from all of the layers of paint that went down upon each other

and made these, oh, they're beautiful. Google Fordite. One of my favorites is, so our cars have catalytic converters. Everybody knows it helps keep heavy metals out of the atmosphere. There's still a lot of heavy metals and pollution that comes out of your tailpipe, though. They will see a network of heavy metals, like a river system

on a map of a continent, and not be able to figure out what was there from all of the pollution that gets distributed from cars on our highways and road systems my final favorite one you mentioned geosynchronous orbits earlier and those decay so slowly that it won't be a fossil like in the geologic record but if aliens fly up to earth and we're long gone millions of years in the future like they could very well bump into a geosynchronous satellite that's up there today. And they could just be these weird like techno fossils orbiting Earth. They're totally going to be there.

Some of them probably already are techno fossils. If we brought one down, we'd be like, look at this. Look at how they did this. What I thought was fascinating is just how many minerals there are that are either originated because of humans or like mostly because of humans but a paper in 2017 said there were 208 mineral species that were because of humans in some way uh we make a mineral like like on purpose yeah on purpose or accidentally so

portlandite i think is one of them and And it's a compound in Portland cement or concrete. Oh, I thought it would be fossilized beard wax. Or a lot of these are in like abandoned mines, like on the sides of the tunnels. They're just formations of like crystalline compounds that have a unique chemical composition and crystal structure that we just haven't seen before. From the way, like the tools that we've used to dig out these mines and the residues that we've left behind, new compounds form that otherwise were unlikely to form naturally. There is one that was formed in storage cabinets and museums, which I thought was really cool, called calclysite. Calclysite. It's just this mineral that forms on rock and fossil specimens and pottery shards in oak

museum storage cabinets. Specifically oak. That sounds very much like something that people who work at museums would figure out. Yeah, they notice it and it's like, what's this on my specimen? I bet we can science that. So will things like

oil spills and stuff show up in geologic records? I don't know about oil spills. There's not a lot of research. I didn't find it. I don't think. I mean, oil is broken down by microbes. And I don't know why they would eat it. There's so many better things to eat.

So that's how they clean up oil spills today is with that stuff. It starts organic. It enters the chain of life a lot better than all this weird stuff that we're putting out there right right so the and the other thing that they talk about is for sort of like the definition of when like humans will be like very visible in the fossil record is like a layer of radioactive materials because we did a bunch of nuclear tests and all of a sudden not oil exactly but some people think that there might end up being plastic conglomerates within the fossil record so there are these formations that are called plastic glomerates they're like this new type of in quote stone that was found on hawaiian beaches

where it's like plastic beach sediment a lot of volcanic rocks like basalt and debris that when people make campfires or stuff on trashy beaches they form these like stones essentially these very sturdy things and uh we're not sure what's going to happen to them over time because generally people think over like a lot of geologic time plastics will be reduced back to oil like compounds but these conglomerate materials we have no idea what's going to happen like they could get buried and over millennia of millennia stick around in some way i'm super not happy those exist yeah well i Well, I mean, the first thought I had was like, that's actually maybe a good way to like

not have as much plastic floating around. Because if plastic's like inside of a stone, I'm fine with that. If it's floating on the surface of the water and looking like a jellyfish for a sea turtle to eat, bad. So what you got to do is make more plastic rock so it sinks to the bottom of the ocean where nobody can eat it.

Can you throw it in a volcano? Throw it in a volcano! That's the solution to everything. Can you throw it in a volcano? You can throw pretty much anything in a volcano. If you throw it in a volcano, it's practically the same thing as just lighting it on fire. We've come up with a lot of solutions here today. Yeah, too bad we have more problems.

We've barely scratched the surface of messes at large here. Yeah, we're talking about the fun little messes at large yeah yeah we're talking about the fun little messes there's oh gosh oh boy let's not talk about the big ones just throw them all in volcanoes yeah can we throw climate change into a volcano oh yeah you can like cause the eruption of super volcanoes so that ash coats the earth and then reduces the temperature yeah drastically volcanoes seem to be the solution to all our problems, though. Yeah, Joe versus the volcano. You just gotta get Joe to jump in the volcano.

All the problems will be solved. Not me! It's a character played by Tom Hanks. I know that. He doesn't jump in the volcano, though. He does jump in the volcano. And then the volcano spits him out. And then he floats home on his luggage. Sorry, spoilers. The heck? Joe versus the volcano is a fucking masterpiece. It his luggage. Sorry, spoilers. The heck? You guys haven't seen it. Joe vs. the Volcano is a fucking masterpiece.

It really is. It is fantastic. He has very nice luggage. The final Hank book score. It's important to the movie. I am coming out with negative one point because of my Joe vs. the Volcano tangents. Oh, no.

I was going to cut it out. Sari has one point from your science poem joke. It's two. Congratulations. Nice. Stephan, you got one point. And Sam ended up with four points, our leader, because no one could believe that there were underwater molasses pipes.

I still don't believe it. If you want to ask your questions to the Science Couch, you can follow us on twitter at scishowtangents where we will tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week thank you to

at sensibleb and at shaylin g and everybody else who tweeted us your questions this week if you like this show and you want to help us out

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from this episode which will also help us know what you like about the show. You can also tweet out your favorite moment from this episode, which will also help us know what you like about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, you can just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Stefan Chin. I've been Sam Schultz. I've been Sarah Riley. And I have been Joe Hanson. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz and Caitlin Hoffmeister. Our sound is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno. And we couldn't make any of this 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 okay so you know that bone called the coccyx it's a tailbone right well it's called your tailbone because that's where a tail would be like millions and millions of years ago. But the coccyx gets its name from the Greek word for the cuckoo bird, which is coccyx, because it looks like a cuckoo's beak. Oh. When anatomists were taking people apart in ancient Greece. And a French anatomist named Jean-Roland the Younger made a study of anatomy with a cuckoo call fart joke in it when he said the sound of farts leave the anus and dash against this bone and it sounds like the call of a cuckoo. You got all the butts in there.

Tailbone, anus, farts.