Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Antarctica

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer/filmmaker Joey Clift (Netflix's 'Spirit Rangers', new Comedy Central short "How to Cope With Your Team Changing Its Native American Mascot") and comedian/podcaster Craig Fay ('The Villain Was Right' podcast) for a look at why Antarctica is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Antarctica. Known for being cold. Famous for being the bottom. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Antarctica is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Two wonderful guests today, Joey Clift and Craig Fay. I hope you remember Joey Clift from the Microwave Ovens episode of this podcast. Joey's also a fantastic comedy writer, comedy performer, and filmmaker. And Joey just released a new Comedy Central short. It's an animated short, and it's called How to Cope with Your Team Changing Its Native American Mascot. And the short is a comedy PSA. It's about sports teams changing their native mascot, you know, at long last, finally, you know, like, like such as the Cleveland baseball team that

didn't make the playoffs and now their season's over and they finally have to start being called the guardians. Finally, you know, like finally, man, come on. Anyway, awesome short also has an awesome voice cast. It's got Janice Schmieding and Ty LeClaire from Rutherford Falls. It's got John Timothy from Spirit Rangers. It's, it's on all of Comedy Central's social media platforms and stuff, so you might have already seen it. But we'll also, of course, have a link for you to see it in the episode links. Please enjoy. I'm also joined by Craig Fay, who is a new guest, wonderful comedian, very funny on Twitter. He is at Craig Fay Comedy on Twitter. And Craig co-hosts a fantastic comedy podcast. It's called The Villain Was Right.

Every week they ask the question, was the villain of this pop culture touchstone, you know, actually not that bad, or perhaps even right. If you're looking for a starting point, I particularly recommend the Wonder Woman 1984 episode. But you can jump in anywhere. You can also jump into anything else that's on that same podcast network. It's the From Superheroes podcast network. Just really great. Also, I've gathered all of our postal codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the

traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Joey recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Joey recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Craig recorded this on the traditional land of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabeg, Mississauga, and Wendat peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about Antarctica. Antarctica is a patron chosen topic. Thank you very much to Katie Lynn Kochka for that just awesome suggestion. Really fun. I've also got a couple heads ups before we get into this. Structurally, this episode has one big takeaway that has never happened before. And it's

because there's just like so much stuff loaded into the numbers and stats segment that and all of it leads to smaller stories that are really amazing. So so if you're surprised when it takes a while to get to the first takeaway, that's why. And then there's also going to be a spot about three quarters of the way through the show where Joey Clift makes a huge save. There is some research that I did not fully do to fully understand this place and know all about it. And Joey knew about the thing that really completes that section of the show. So I'm going to drop in with a pickup about it afterward to talk about what I read afterward. Super thankful to Joey for his knowledge of that stuff and also his grace about sharing it. And the only other heads up is that this is,

you know, a really fun and kind of wild episode. It turns out Antarctica is very, very, very funny to me on top of being, you know, the title of the podcast. So please sit back or board your plane to Antarctica because it is kind of sort of summer there soon. You can go for it. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Joey Clift and Craig Fay. I'll be back on my own about, you know, three quarters of the way through and then I'll be back again after we wrap up.

Talk to you then. Joey, Craig, so glad to have you. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either of you can start, but how do you feel about Antarctica? I was contemplating this question. I, I don't know anybody from Antarctica. Uh, it's what I came up with. Um, obviously I like their hometown. Yeah. It's like, I know it's like one of the seven continents. I know it's cold. I know it's at the South pole. I know there's lots of penguins. I feel like I've picked up tidbits about it. Um, like just in life in general, like,

you know, watching March of the penguins or something like that. Uh, but like for an entire continent, I am like very much in the dark as to like, what's going on there most of the time. Um, that makes me think of i feel like oftentimes when people meet somebody from a continent if they know another person from that continent they're like hey do you know such and such and now i want to do that if i ever meet somebody who's been to antarctica i'm gonna be like yo do you know the penguins from march of the penguins um but yeah uh similar similar to craig i also unfortunately do not know one of the 5 000 people who currently live in antarctica uh and uh yeah unfortunately i feel i feel very much lesser as a person for me for saying that and joey does not get out yeah i just

don't get out much i'm sorry uh yeah yeah this is this is a this is a psa for how you not get out. Yeah, I just don't get out much. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a PSA for how you should get out and explore your world more. Start with Antarctica, everybody. Start with Antarctica. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, something that I love about Antarctica, I guess, is, like, a concept is that it became this, like, this like this thing for like well-to-do explorers to want to conquer right and like what I love about it is there's not really a ton to to see or do in Antarctica as compared to a lot of other places so basically there were a lot of like

European aristocrats who marched to their death and are now icicles in antarctica due to their own hubris and that rules yeah i think that i think that was the main thing i heard about it as a kid like like my mom had a book or two about ernest shackleton who is basically famous for escaping death like he didn't get to the bottom of it or anything he just got out of there it's like apollo 13 yeah with a bunch of guys and they just decided they're astronauts because they're rich also also santa's there i should say i know that santa's there and that's pretty as somebody who likes presents specifically around december i'm a fan of that as a canadian i gotta say it's north pole it's no santa North Pole. That's us, baby. That's Canadian territorial waters right there. Oh, no.

I don't know. Nothing. Wait. Okay. If I ever. Okay. So you're saying that if I go to the mall and I see a Santa at the mall and I ask him, hey, do you know any of the penguins from March of the Penguins?

It would be a rude question to ask. He'd be like, wrong pole. Wrong pole. This happens all the time or i mean like i feel like not everybody remembers antarctica's one or the other like he might be like yes and then you can own him you know and then i'll be like that was like trap card, Sam. I know North Pole has puffins. South Pole has penguins. That's another thing I know. The puffins are the penguins of the North Pole.

Yeah, the Southern Hemisphere, penguins are a real highlight. And, you know, bottom of South America and everything, too. And it's a key animal down there for, like, fun. The rest of it is a lot of, like, moss and lichens and some seals and whales yeah otherwise garbage hemisphere really this other hemisphere i think we can all agree they they had one trick pony penguins that's it uh hey they also have water some of the garbage patch might be there there's a lot of good stuff going on they got a couple they got different they got different constellations than us it's who who can be bothered really yeah like toilets flush in

the opposite direction that's crazy yeah quick quick hello to our australian listeners right away hi guys and also we mean all of this. Not kidding. Yeah. Yeah, we're all experts on both poles and are making an educated choice in saying that. But yeah, and Antarctica, I've done a few of these about places. I usually ask if people have been there. I assume none of us have been to Antarctica, right? there is there is like tourism beyond the research but it's still rare yeah no definitely have not been there i think there was some like in high school i remember

seeing some science competition and the prize was like you can get go on a cruise uh to antarctica and then i of course because I was a high school student, didn't apply because I was like, who gets that sort of thing? And now as an adult, I sort of realize the people who get those sorts of things are the people who apply to them.

Like, and that would have been really cool. But yeah, that's as close as I've ever gotten, which was thinking about applying to a thing that might have ended up with me being going to Antarctica, which is not very close at all. Yeah, I know that's that close. And I feel like that's closer than like ninety nine percent of people that you thought about it. Right. Like, it seems so scary to go there. I don't know. It's tough. tough yeah i don't think that i've ever been in a situation in my life where the prize of something i was doing was antarctica um but uh yeah i would say uh yeah same deal i have not been to antarctica but that said like i would i would love to visit antarctica like what i've seen all the documentaries

that i've seen of the type of like scientists that are on these research stations in antarctica they're 100 the type of people that you'd think would be into that. And they're all just like fun weirdos. Like, you know, they, they do. Um, I think that like every year on like the longest night of the year, they watch like the thing as like a celebration of like, Ooh, this is about Antarctica. Like they're all like, just like delightfully eclectic, I guess is the way to say it. Joey, that,

that thing about watching the movie, the thing. Yeah, that's for real. I, that's amazing. You know, that I ran across the,

I guess at McMurdo station, which is a big U S research station in Antarctica on the night that they send everybody away for the winter, except for a skeleton crew. Like the skeleton crew watches the thing. On the first night, they're like the most alone. Yeah. I love the idea that they do it kind of as a joke and also as like, we need a thing,

the thing protocol, right? Like nobody ever alone. Everyone's a buddy. Everyone makes sure. it's very practical it's very much like how do you how do you use a flamethrower how can you figure out if your friend is the thing or actually your friend there's a test afterwards and everybody's very nervous and aggro about getting this test accurate yeah no no stray dogs as a rule you know shows up on your porch at murdoch station you're uh you're you're not getting it that's sorry yeah yeah or or the dog has to do

the training right like you had a chance right yeah if it passes it's like you know it's the basic health and safety it's like slip trips and falls, hazardous, you know, hazardous chemical labeling and the thing. Yeah. Yeah. I got to say, like, I'm a big cat person. I love cats a lot. But if I was in Antarctica and a stray cat showed up at my door in Antarctica, I'd be like, no, that's the thing. Oh, yeah.

No way. No way. A stray cat is up in Antarctica. Like, unless it's full of tentacles that ain't a cat man people should see john carpenter's the thing if they have not just go do it it's great uh yeah it's great it's great i highly recommend yeah now i'm wondering if there are any other movies set in antarctica i feel like it's the only story that we as humans would choose to tell about it is either a real life survival thing or monsters and death and doom.

This is going to say something about me, but I believe one of the alien versus predator movies is also set in Antarctica. Okay. That's great. Um, yeah, I was going to say the polar express, but apparently the north pole isn't in antarctica joey just starts listing christmas movies and we can't get him to stop he's like uh santa claus obviously santa claus two santa claus two yeah santa claus three uh the one where like martin short was mr frost or whatever

joey joey no no let me finish let me finish santa claus four The one where Martin Short was Mr. Frost or whatever. Oh, yeah. Joey, Joey. No, no, let me finish. Let me finish. Santa Claus 4. That was DVD. Jingle all the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of the Christmas vacation movies, those did not take place in the North Pole.

Yeah, yeah. Die Hard, that was a Christmas movie, so I assume it took place in Antarctica. Yeah. And the Antarctic office towers that they're famous for. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The famous Antarctic, Nagatomi plaza in antarctica yes yeah yeah um i now that i think about it though the antarctica is probably the one place santa doesn't visit you know what i mean like that's oh yeah that's because all the scientists because all the scientists there are naughty, right? Right, exactly. Yeah. Although that makes you wonder if like, okay, so if you're in Antarctica and you're naughty, would Santa still bring you coal?

Because that's probably what you'd want in Antarctica. Or would he bring you like a cool icy beverage or something? That's a great point. I think maybe the coal in the stocking is maybe a little outdated in general is what i would say for naughty kids they'd be like what is this it's like it's coal the industrial revolution used to be based on this so it kind of tells you when maybe this myth was great yeah sorry am i allowed to say Yeah. Now it's just instead of coal, he just gives you a cup of loose gasoline. Yeah. Like a red solo cup, like it's a party. Like, here you go.

Yeah. I put some Sharpie marker on the one that's gasoline so you don't accidentally drink it. It's fine. I did not take the health and safety train i'm just leaving open cups of gasoline around this uh isolated station i'm just picturing he's got like a garbage bag full of gasoline and he just ladles it in the kids like stockings he's just like oh oh here we go i'm high all the time from doing this. Carrying around a bag of gasoline is not good for your brain. What I love is the visual of Santa Claus in his sleigh pulling up to a gas station and being chased away by the 16-year-old attendant

because he's trying to fill up a garbage bag with gasoline. Yes. Appro approved containers only he spills it he's like you distracted me though you distracted me it's your fault it's your fault you distracted me that slays away i'm not paying for it yeah it's like wait does your sleigh run on gasoline no that's why i have the bag idiot someone's getting a cup of gasoline later well guys that's great uh i think we get out of the first chunk of the info in the show, because on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week, that's in a segment called Numbers Time. One last call for stats, y'all. Please consider these findings and facts.

Numbers time. Blah, blah, blah. Sorry, I just wanted to do it again because it's twice in the chorus. Yeah. It's a hook. Semisonic. What do you do? Yeah.

That name was submitted by Martin Erickson. Thank you, Martin. We have a new name every week. Please make them as silly and wacky as possible. Submit to Sip Pot on Twitter or to Sip Pot at gmail.com. But yeah, and this episode is like a lot of numbers and stats because they lead into really short, fun stories really well. And the first number here is 14.2 million square kilometers. 14.2 million square kilometers, which is about 5.5 million square miles. That is the size of

Antarctica's land area. That's how big it is as a continent. It's insane to me how bad I am at visualizing area. Like you just said that I was like, I guess that's big. Yes. That's like half the size of California. I don't know. I'm a TV writer. I use a calculator for even the most basic of math. It's more than several blocks. I know you can't believe it. Yeah, that's about how far I walk to the supermarket every day, right? Yeah, I walk an area. Right, right, right.

It really takes me a lot longer than it needs to to always fill in those boxes yeah the uh the numbers from nasa and they also helpfully provided comparisons uh that's almost double the land area of australia so almost two australias or it's bigger than the united states and mexico combined by a little bit that's pretty big. And that's including Alaska and everything like that's, that's bigger than that. Wow. That's, uh, that's just chilling down there. No one's paying attention to it. That's crazy.

Yeah. Deeply chilling. That's true. Yeah. It's yeah. Yeah. Deeply chilling. Yeah.

Yeah. That was good. Good. Good pun. Um, yeah, that's, uh, that's wild. That is something that's like the, the size of things as relates to our like current location is always just so crazy to me. Even just like, you know, like if you look at a map like, you know, it's basically like the thing on the north or south border of the map. But we rarely see like truly how big it is as compared to other things.

So, yeah, that's nuts. I don that's a that's a big old continent yeah i think i thought it was a continent because it's by itself and weird and not necessarily that big but it's also big like that blob on the map doesn't tell you but it's it's big yeah it's like it's i'm just thinking of when like kids draw a scene of like a house and their family and then they put the sun in the corner like a little quarter circle sun like that's antarctica on the map yeah but it's it's an actual thing it's not like incidental yeah wait you mean the sun isn't like a very small thing in the corner with a bad smiley face drawn on it it also has sunglasses obviously obviously. Obviously. Yeah. I mean, the sun calls sunglasses me glasses. So yeah, but yeah, same difference.

Well, and the next number here, there's a lot of just humongous numbers with this place. It's an amazing place. The next number is more than one mile. And more than one mile is the average thickness of the Antarctic ice sheet. And this is, again, from NASA. They say in some places it's as many as three miles thick, but Antarctica is covered in a giant sheet of ice that contains about 90% of all the fresh water on Earth. Now, see, that's nuts to me.

Like, that is absolutely crazy. Yeah. All the rest of us have, like, a little bit to me. Like, that is absolutely crazy. Yeah. All the rest of us have like a little bit of it. Yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, I'm in Toronto. I'm like around the Great Lakes. And like the thing is, like, we've got so much fresh water in around the Great Lakes where it's just like, I don't know.

It's like more than are in those lakes than like a lot of other places in the world. It's like, oh, it's just like paradise of fresh water in the middle of North America. And just to think that there's like more of it just piled, like literally stacked in big ice sheets on top of Antarctica is insane. And three miles is like up, like three miles, whatever. Three miles up is crazy for anything yeah so what i'm gonna say to

that fact is hey antarctica why are you hoarding so much water come on we got droughts in california you could spare a little bit quit being selfish well i got good news for you because boys are giving it up quickly these days. Oh, that's not ominous at all. But yeah, that is an experience for me in life that like I will remember just like throughout my life for the rest of my life is I grew up in Western Washington State and I went to school in Eastern Washington State at Washington State University. And in order to do that, you have to like drive through the mountains because there's a mountain range that kind of separates Eastern and Western Washington. And the first time that I drove through that, it was such a humbling experience of like how small we are compared to like mountains.

And, you know, you look at a mountain and it's like, oh, there's like, you know, the biggest building that we have is like, you know, but a needle compared to a mountain, you know, in terms of like what humans can build and what we have built. So, you know, that's always something that like I think about in terms of scale is like, oh, that mountain was probably like, I don't know, a quarter of a mile high, half a mile high. Whereas Antarctica is like you said, three miles deep. That is nuts. Like we're never going to build a structure that's three miles tall you know that's just not gonna happen yeah yeah and and also uh i don't have a number for it but there's a mountain range called the trans antarctic mountains so it's also got some mountains with then ice on top of them as i understand it so it's like stacking that.

Wait, no, that's too much. Yeah, I know. That's too much. I agree. Wait, you can't have three miles of ice and then mountains on that. No, I refuse to believe that. It's a little much. It's like, come on.

It's a little much. Yeah, we got it. We get it. You're big. So with that ice sheet being three miles thick, does that mean like Antarctica is three miles above sea level? Like if you were to go onto these glaciers or ice sheets or whatever, are you three miles up? Apparently, among other things, Antarctica is the highest continent in elevation on Earth. Like I think it's just a very, very tall continent.

And then when you're, yeah, when you've got like the amount above sea level, plus the ice sheet, you're incredibly high in, in the air off the earth. That's so counterintuitive to me. I don't know. I don't know if it's because it's at the bottom of a map, but you're like, that's the low spot. Yeah. Everybody knows that South is down north is up thank you yeah yeah south low north south low north high yeah also uh this is a spelling question so if antar if

antarctica is three miles thick how many c's we talking here is that thick with two c's three c's five c's is it one C per mile? How are we doing that? All I know is what you do is you lower your sunglasses as it passes on the street, like an 80s movie character. That's what you have to do. It's the law. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So if I see Antarctica, if I'm on that Antarctic cruise that I will hopefully win at some point in my life, now that Craig has taught me about it, I will definitely lower my glasses as we pass Antarctica and say, noise. The next number here is more than 252 gigatons. So again, just these are huge numbers.

More than 252 gigatons is how much of Antarctica's ice melts each year. It's from PBS NewsHour, and they also turned it into like understandable numbers. They said that Antarctica loses 1.7 billion gallons worth of ice every 15 minutes. And that gallon number is twice the daily water use of all the people in New York City. That's crazy. So I know that was kind of a cascading series of things. But every 15 minutes, they lose two New York City uses of water in Antarctica in ice. So a one that fact is nuts for a lot of reasons, but I guess this speaks to, um, my detachment from the future of the, uh, of the planet earth that what wowed me is just like, wow, New Yorkers drink a lot of water. Like not all the horrible, like, you know, like ice melting stuff.

It was just like, oh, oh wow that's a thirsty city that's the problem it's just it's just that new yorkers are drinking so much water all climate models are based on how much new york are drinking yeah hey new york city i think you've had enough leave some for some sea level rise geez yeah yeah yeah save some for the rest of us de blasio i mean if this is true it also explains why new york city always smells like piss so they it's just it's just what the body does folks uh look yeah you drink that much you drink an antarctica's melt water worth of water every day you're gonna have to go and there's just not that many uh many coffee shops you know that you

can jump into and once again we're not basing this on our lack of education around the subject we're hardcore researchers of what smells like pee oh yeah yeah i've been on these streets guys i've been on these streets figuring it out ever since got here yeah just me with a magnifying glass even though that doesn't help it just feels like investigation i'm just like looking at things closely what are you doing i'm smelling it's like i yeah it's like i smell pee wait a second asparagus asparagus asparagus microscopic asparagus no it's pee yeah whenparagus. No, it's P. Yeah. When we, uh, we won't talk much more about the ice melting. Cause I think that's like,

it's one of the famous things about Antarctica, sadly, is that just it's melting. I think people know, and please support ecologically friendly things. Like there's not much more to say. We'll get into things that are surprising. Well, yeah. And that's, I mean, that's the thing that always strikes me is you go, you know, you hear these news stories occasionally like a landmass, the size of Rhode Island has broken off and it's just floating North. It's just somewhere in the Southern ocean. And it's just, it's coming for you. And then it's like, you know, one, the size of Manhattan and like all these huge places.

And you're like, well, this is it. This is the one. We're all dead. Like it's coming for us like Godzilla. And then it doesn't matter. I mean, like it matters in the grand scheme of things, but that one event isn't like the catastrophic thing to end all things. And I guess that kind of puts it into context of just how much ice there is there or you

can lose a manhattan and it goes i don't know yeah well yeah yeah because that's i mean talking about like the the size of antarctica which we talked about earlier about how like just huge it is as a landmass that like yeah it can lose a rhode island and like it's you know that's 0.0003 percent of the size of it but it is also something that like, oh yeah, you see that. Like, I feel like there's a level of fatigue around stuff like that. And that you see a news story like that and you're like, well, that's the most horrifying thing I've ever read in my life. Anyway, what memes can I see today? You know, it's, it's.

But I mean, how would you react if like, come the next election, you were missing a Rhode Island? Like if it just drifted off, you know what I mean? Like continental United States, everyone's like, where's Rhode Island? And it's just gone off into the Atlantic somewhere and everyone's missing. Like that would be a meltdown. You know what I mean? Like the nation would come to a standstill. I'm just picturing the spinning

newspaper that's just like where's rhode island has anybody heard about them we're getting a little worried yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm just picturing the bad stand-up that's just like you heard about this you heard about this rhode island's missing next number here is december 14th 1911 it's a date december 14th 1911 so also that's 110 years ago coming up but that is the date when a norwegian expedition led by ruled amundsen reached the geographic south pole of the Earth. These were the, we are believed to be the first humans to ever reach the South Pole. That's crazy. It was coming up 110 years ago.

You know, we've obviously all like grown up in a pretty modern world where like we have, you know, satellites and we have airplanes and we have things like that. It's insane to think that there were parts of the world that were completely inaccessible. I mean, I feel like now the only thing that exists on our planet for that is like the bottom of the ocean, right? Like I feel like that's still fairly unexplored.

But yeah, like Antarctica does feel like it was kind of like proto-moon launch in the thing of like countries were racing to get there so they could put their flag there and say that they did it as opposed to for like resources they could pull from it exactly yeah yeah even like that the the norwegians truly planted a flag there and took a picture of themselves with it and like it's it's basically apollo mission stuff and amundsen is apollo 11 like he was the first one and they made it back okay it's also crazy to think like how, I guess it's the weather that kills people, right?

Whereas in space, it's lack of air. Nah, it's the thing monster. It's the thing monster that does it. But like, it's also, it's so crazy to think that it's still hard to live and work in Antarctica and explore, but we're like, yeah, International Space Station, that's fine. Like we can live outside of our own atmosphere with almost, I don't know, would you say the same sort of difficulty? Like we, we have to take everybody out of Antarctica, like over the winter, right? Like it's, it's, that seems nuts to me that there's a place on earth that's just so inhospitable to life that we are like, we're better off just being in space.

Yeah. I think that goes straight into the next number here. The next number is another date. It is February 14th of 2020. And I'm using how romantic. It's when I married Antarctica guys. Oh, oh,

it's going to be. So my wedding gift of giving you a blowtorch was a bad, Antarctica. Guys, happy going out. Oh, congrats. So my wedding gift of giving you a blowtorch was a bad... I was not in good taste. I'm sorry. My bride! No! No, she's melting a lot every year, but there's still a lot of her. Hey, are you low

in your sunglasses at my Antarctica bride? Hold on. Hold on. Whoa. I'm going to fight you now. No. And I'm using the 2020 number because I couldn't find the one for 2021. But McMurdo Station in Antarctica, they have a little community newspaper thing called the Antarctic Sun.

But they reported that is when the crew switched from summer mode to winter mode in 2020 was February 14. That is the southern hemisphere. So the seasons are the opposite of what we think of in US, Canada, elsewhere. Got it. Right, right. McMurdo Station during the summer months can have over 1000 people there doing research and other things. And then when it's time for winter mode, cargo planes take out basically everybody except the skeleton crew to manage it. And so on February 14th, they went down to 42 people who just manned the station. And they have a also they have a dinner called the sunset dinner, because there are six months of darkness. And so they have a dinner to like celebrate the last

sunset for a while. And then they screen the thing together because they're, they're just nuts and awesome. They're just great. But that's how it works down there. There's six months where there's very few people because it's not safe to take off and land planes. So it's just not easy to operate there. So it's still, I guess, still a little easier than like space, but you can't get there whenever you want sort of thing. Like it's six months, you're just can't fly in. Yeah. And you need to like bring enough food.

Like it's a space mission, you know, like it's pretty hardcore and you do it on the earth. As I understand it, the temperatures vary across the continent toward the coast. It's warmer in the temperatures vary across the continent. Toward the coast, it's warmer. In the interior, it's colder. But in the winter, in the coast, the warmest part, it can get down to negative 40 Celsius, which is also negative 40 Fahrenheit. So terrible. Wow.

We got there, folks. Bringing the world together with this terrible temperature. Wow. there folks bringing the world together uh with this terrible temperature wow as uh as somebody who um wears hoodies in 80 degree weather i would hate it i think anybody hates it at negative 40 i don't think I don't think this is a cold blood, warm blood. Oh, what's a room temperature to you? Is it 78 or is it 76? Like my hot water heater didn't stop working for a day yesterday and we got it fixed pretty quickly. But I just didn't take a shower because I was like, cold shower. No, thank you.

Yeah, and it's a really self-selecting group that spends any time at this place yeah like like joey said at the start there are a few thousand people there most years and that's also like just enough people that it leads to this next number the next number is two finally a normal number i can two i can conceptualize two oh that area stuff i was like i'm out of my league yeah it's just like yeah we're no longer talking gigatons or whatever i'm not converting celsius to fahrenheit in my head i got two i'm okay with two yeah so two is this mcmurdo station again it's the largest research station on antarctica that is their number of Wells Fargo ATMs. And Wells Fargo is a large bank.

I don't know if it's in every country, but they have two ATMs run by and managed by Wells Fargo at McMurdo Station. Holy cow. I mean, I guess if there's a thousand people there, that makes sense to me. Because, yeah, it's like one atm they like i'm sure there's probably some number that somebody's done of like oh what is the exact convenient number of atms for this amount of people but like i guess what what is there to buy in antarctica ice i don't know. economy and also not everybody takes cards because it's just hard to wire everything for that right but it it dispenses u.s dollars only and then uh yeah wells fargo like works really hard to keep up these atms and they say that every two years they send technicians to update them to the latest

technology and this mental flaw is talking to them. Wells Fargo also claims that the technicians are given a psychological evaluation before they go in case there's storms or trouble or something that traps them on Antarctica for an extended period of time for their ATM repair job. I mean, that's a get, though. Like if you're if you know, I don't think ATM repair person is necessarily advertised as like travel the world, become an ATM repairman. Right. So to get to go to Antarctica, that's a get. have the cool mail route finally after all these years at the post office right yeah something i wanted to talk about uh like i talked about it briefly but that there's only like 30 or so people in antarctica kind of in the skeleton crew stage like it is so interesting to me of like the type of person that would do that like i said earlier they watched the thing like on kind of the last day before the thing and you know like so i feel like there's a level of like i don't know they seem like fun people who are down for bits and love to clown right it's like oh they seem like my kind of people you know yeah and like weird nerdy science

types too right yeah yeah absolutely and weirdly enough as much as i do hate the cold i think i would go like i think i think the idea that it's such a harsh environment that people are like, here's what you need to wear on every single day. And this is the rules about whether or not you can go outside. I would be fine with that. And like, we all know we can spend, you know, six months hold up in our place now, right? After COVID, we all know we can do that. So I'm like, great.

Let's, you know, I think I'd do it. I think I'd be that crazy person. You can pay to be a passenger. There's only like one or two seats available for like cabins. And it is just like, you know, however many thousand dollars to essentially just like spend six months on the Arctic Circle on a transport ship or something like that. And like there is something, you know, just like everybody like on this role, you know, comedy writer, comedian types. And it's like, oh, there is something about like finally time to work on my novel. And by that, I mean, get a perfect animal crossing town yeah and there's like that old school sense of adventure about it right yeah you know like that's that's what you used to do when you had to go on adventures is you were

you know on a boat for six months and you know in, in rough seas and all the rest, you didn't just fly to somewhere. Right. Like that's, that seems very, uh, old school adventurous, I think is probably the generous way to put that. Yeah. Like I get, like, I, I super get the appeal of anybody that would be like down to be a member of that skeleton crew, you know? Well, it'd be an experience, right. And you're not signing up for the rest of your life. You're not like, I'm taking out a mortgage and moving into McMurdo Station for 30-year mortgage at whatever, and we can't sell before five years, otherwise we lose our down payment or whatever. Right. Like, you live in Antarctica, and your main concern is like, how am I going to get the bank to extend the mortgage?

Oh, no. Like, my next door neighbor at the station put up like a weird yard sign. Is my property value going to drop? The HOA says I can't become the thing. This is ridiculous so many rules like there are hoa meetings that are just like yeah this thing invasion is really gonna like tank our housing prices i'm just like oh geez as you're looking at your like mortgage statement and you're like oh what am i gonna do i'm I'm underwater. Yeah, yeah.

And the monster pipes up at the meeting like, on my property, I can do, and just tentacles going everywhere. Someone's head pops off and runs across the table. Well, there's one last number here, and the number is one. That is the number of doctors who were working at the Amundsen Scott Research Station in June of 1999. And the Amundsen Scott Research Station is a research station like on the South Pole. You're actually on the South Pole in the middle of Antarctica. And the date's significant because in June 1999, the one doctor was a lady named Jerry Nielsen. And they were in

winter mode, nobody could fly in or out or anything. It was a small group. And she found a lump in her breast. She did a self exam and was like, Oh, I have a lump in my breast. And I'm in the I'm at the South Pole, and I'm the only doctor. And then from there, it became a story that became a book that became a TV movie. It's a whole thing. She trained other staff to help her do a biopsy on herself. It was cancerous. She used satellite consultations to figure out what to do. She's a doctor, but got help. They airdropped chemotherapy drugs. She just self-administered treatment for cancer at the south pole and then kind of before the winter was over they managed to fly a ski plane in and almost died doing it but they got her out and got her to like real treatment four months later and then she that

cancer came back years later but that bout of it she survived despite getting it at the south pole that's insane yeah it's like i complain if i like want to like eat lunch and i'm out of bread like like that she you know like basically cut out her own like lump on the like that's insane like that's nuts yeah i i i thought i had heard something about someone else having to do their own appendectomy like they they like had to like something similar to this i don't know if that was a doctor yeah i don't know if that was also in antarctica but it's just like as you say this is like, I'm realizing this is a body horror thing for me. The idea of having to perform surgery on yourself. Horrify.

Horrify. And also self-confidence. Like, I know, you know, we've probably all done something and be like, really? I'm the person doing this? Okay. I'm like, I'm nervous putting a bandaid on myself. Right. Yeah. There's that voice in your head that goes'm nervous putting a bandaid on myself. Right. Yeah.

There's that voice in your head that goes, you're going to screw this up. Right. Yeah. Because you haven't done this before or or whatever. And like for it to be like surgery on you would be that crank to a thousand, I would think. It feels like it's almost from the past of Antarctica. Like it's it's such a 1700sarctica like it's a it's such

a 1700s doctor thing where it's like i'm the only person in this place and so i have to cut off my own leg like no this was no this was 22 years ago this was very this is this was in our lifetimes yeah yeah yeah this was after the release of will Smith's Willennium album. The thing that, you know, there's that's the hallmark of time. That's that's that's the thing in the early 2000s that we all go. That's when everything changed. Yeah, it's it's it's his Willennium. We're just living in it.

All right. Off of that, we're going to a short break, followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes.

I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. The JV Club with Janet Varney is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. So the rest of the show, it is just going to be one big takeaway. And it's a long story, but it's it's I think this first episode where there's just one takeaway because there were so many other stories.

So here we go into takeaway number one. Antarctica used to be a theoretical concept named Australia. What? This is a big story, but it's always been the thing it is. the it's, it's always been the thing it is, but the human perception of Antarctica, it until very recently was a theory and it was something that most people called Australia. Hang on. Like, so like, like a missing planet sort of thing. Like we're like, Oh, there's like a, a planet out there that we can't see. That's what, what Antarctica was. Like they were just like, we think there might be another continent there was a it turns out

there was a widespread belief especially in europe and especially in the 1500s 1600s 1700s that for the world to make sense there had to be an unknown southern continent at the bottom and they happened to be right that there is a continent there, but it wasn't for any of the reasons they thought. They just thought that needed to be there. Wait, so they originally thought that was Australia or they called Antarctica Australia? The second thing, yeah. So the Latin name that people used for this was Terra Australis Incognita, which is Latin for unknown southern land. And according to the National Library of Australia, in 1545, a mapmaker shortened that to just Australia.

And that's the first time the name Australia ever appeared on a map in recorded history. And then somebody found Australia and was like, this is it. This is what we've been looking for and then because i was about to say like the indigenous maori population in australia like they knew australia was australia before that yeah this is like a a names thing just like using the the latin name australia from the word australis yeah got it got it got it and and maybe this is like maybe this speaks to how remote it is and maybe maybe I just don't understand it because like Antarctica is how far is it from other continents? Because it is close to South America and it is close to like the Horn of Africa. Right. And like New Zealand and Australia to a certain extent as well. Is this not something that like sailors stumbled across at some point? Like, like I know in ancient times, you know, they were going to China from Europe.

Were they not going around like the Horn of Africa and like somebody accidentally finds this big continent of ice? Yeah, apparently it was the seas are too cold and too difficult. And as far as we can tell, no humans reached it until 1820 no humans saw it no humans reached it they just like figured there was something down there maybe and this is this is and this is what i really want to know about this this is this is actually this is quite fascinating to me what did they base this prediction on like why did they think there has to be uh uh what well would it have been the seventh continent then did they know about north or south america i mean yeah actually i'm gonna call out like i get what you're talking about uh the new zealand indigenous there was actually a recent study in um uh this

year that came out on june 8th uh new zealand indigenous people reached antarctica a thousand years before the first known european so they they were there in like 800 ad or something oh my god really yeah oh i mean it's by the new york daily news so like how trustworthy is it but yeah you know i was about to say like it's like uh all this is asterisk european people but like you know indigenous people have been in in and around Antarctica for hundreds of years before that. Man, I don't know. And like, how would they get there? Like, are we talking like, like, I mean, sailing ships?

Like what's like there were a lot of like, like very long canoes and stuff like that, like different tribes used. I'm not totally an expert on like new zealand indigenous kind of modes of travel but um they had ways to do it it's like um it wasn't necessarily like you know huge ships with sails or whatever but there were like i think that you can find like long canoes that some indigenous tribes use that could like sail the seas and hundreds of people could row on them and stuff oh yeah for sure i mean certainly polynesia like they were seeing huge differences distances and things like that but like wow that's one thing and joey thank you for finding that because like i i'll probably do a pickup about it or something because i i truly thought it was not just europeans didn't get there i thought

like absolutely no humans could could access this horrible cold continent that that's amazing when that yeah when that's uh yeah actually if this is all you know off mic stuff yeah it is it is kind of like uh yeah i guess that like they're and you know you don't have to use this for the show but i feel like there is this thing oftentimes with like exploration history and that it's sort of like european history as treated as as all history of course whereas like there are definitely like i don't know it's like like like i don't think that there are any people that are indigenous to antarctica but for sure there are tribes that like went to antarctica and hunted around antarctica and stuff like that like it's just sort of like

you know indigenous populations have been doing it for a long time it's just europeans hadn't been there for you know until fairly recently but this is all just like you know edit this out or whatever just uh fyi yeah no i uh well and i'll link sources for it too because yeah the the main source they had here a book called antarctica the last continent written by kim hecox and then a podcast miniseries by pbs news hour also called the last continent but uh but yeah they didn't touch on it at all i'll send you this yeah i'll send you this chat link sweet thank you yeah because as you were saying that i was like i feel like and indigenous people have been there before that and then i googled have indigenous people been to antarctica before whatever and

then this came up yeah and i mean that's what i mean though because like you look at a map and like you see antarctica from like below and you know well south america is right there and like there are people there right and and you go and africa is like right there and there are people there yeah yeah yeah it's like yeah the 1800s is like that's the first time like rich european aristocrats went there but that's not the first time that anybody went there you know but they all took one look around and said forget this we're going yeah they all said not getting a mortgage no uh wait a second is that a polar bear drinking cola coca-cola no thank you wait that's the north pole again. Oh, no, I'm missing it up.

Hey, folks, this is me on my own after that conversation and after I did some reading, because as you heard, I made an oversight and I'm thrilled Joey, you know, picked it up and saved the day there. My key sources for this section had been a range of things, like I mentioned, but especially a PBS NewsHour series from 2019 and some other internet sources from around then. It turns out since then, there's been an amazing study you need to know about. As Joey said, there's an amazing new study from June of 2021. There's also a bunch of sources beyond the New York Daily News that talk about it. I'm going to link the New York Times and The Guardian in particular. Please check those out in detail. To give you a brief summary, this is a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand. It was done by a team at Massey University in Auckland, and they went back through the literary, oral, and artistic archives of Maori people

and found many accounts describing Maori people exploring sub-Antarctic and Antarctic regions of the world. And one key story that keeps coming up is about a navigator named Hui Te Ranyora, who led a fleet that reached Antarctica in the 600s AD. The scholars say that they reference that story against what we know about Maori ships and Maori navigational skills, and also against the modern day stories that go around Maori communities. I guess especially on the South Island of New Zealand, this gets talked about a lot, and it had just never been studied or printed in a journal or something. But long before June of 2021, people were talking about this too. And the upshot of all that is the team believes we have evidence

that Maori people reached Antarctica more than a thousand years ago. Anyway, I'm thrilled Joey found that. Please read on in the episode links for more information. And please listen on for the historical European take on Antarctica's name and Antarctica's existence, because, you know, it's hilarious. The European theories on it were not based on any skilled sailing or anything that went back centuries. The main belief they had was they just decided that since the Northern Hemisphere had so much land, and they believed they had found less land in the Southern Hemisphere, like there just had to be some extra land way down in the southern hemisphere so that the amounts of land on the earth would be even between hemispheres. They just believed that that needed to be how the earth works.

Okay, so they're just like basically aesthetics. They were like, this needs to balance itself out. It has to be symmetrical. Yeah. like this needs to balance it has to be symmetrical yeah yeah they just they were making globes and it just kept tipping over and they were like we need some more weight on the bottom here to but is that and now i'm thinking like is that borne out scientifically like in any way these days just because like plate tectonics and things like that like is that the reason that antarctica like you know as the earth spins and the plates move and stuff like that is that why it ended up at the south pole to in some way balance out the continents

in the northern hemisphere like is that does that make any sense or is that just medieval thinking on my part yeah it's just medieval thinking, it turns out. Because the shape of the Earth is not really impacted that much by what is above or below sea level. It's just sort of the plates do what they do. I disagree. I'm going with Craig's, there has to be something on the bottom to keep it from tipping over theory. That makes the most sense to me. I'm going to get labeled a flat earther here and i'll be oh god no you're not a flat earther you're a symmetrical earther

it just makes sense yeah that was they were symmetrical earthers up there yeah that's correct so they thought it existed and they just kind of got lucky that there was something there yeah and then the other impetus for europeans going was that they had done a lot of hunting animals in the arctic up north especially seals and whales and they just killed so many of them so fast that they said if it's also cold to the south maybe we should go there to find things to hunt, you know, to overhunt there, basically. Right, right, right. Just like, oh, we're out of whales to kill here.

Are there any whales to kill over there? Yeah. So just the rapacious hunting, that was another big reason to go. And then it's disputed which European or American was the first to go, but there are three different claims, from 1820 for that group. So that's when they got there. And that's just discovering the coast. Yeah, just getting to the coast at all, yeah. Wow.

Like not Amundsen to the South Pole later or anything, yeah. And so then with the way Europe did maps, it was very big map news that they found this in 1820 because they said, okay, Terra Australis Incognita, unknown southern land. We found it. Great. Even though people had been there. In the meantime, some other people had decided to rename some land Australia. Like they had already grabbed that name for other stuff. Yeah, they were like, we have to, Australia is too good of a name. We got to give it to something.

Yeah, basically. And it was also mainly driven by a conflict between Europeans, because the first European navigators to go to what's now Australia were the Dutch. And they charted the northern, western and southern coasts and then named it all New Holland. And then from there, they did not really colonize it, but the British did. And so over time, as the more and more British people moved in there, they said, Oh, it's strange, we call it New Holland. It's it's mostly us and us like killing people. So So why are we calling it New Holland? And then they decided to find a word that just meant southern and so they pulled australis from latin and then named that land

australia i don't i keep going back to this like they found a new continent so it was a big deal for map making i'd be like i bet it was like you know like that's that's a big new land to put on a map is i think cartographers have not had that in however long you know like everyone's just kind of working on like i did an elevation map and it was fine but like a whole new continent oh you could really put your stamp on that that's uh that's uh that's great i'm just picturing that you're like you're one cartographer who's like spent a year building the perfect map you drew like here be dragons on stuff you like you know like drew like a funny picture of the king and like over england or whatever and then like somebody bursts in your door and is just like just right as you're saying i've

finished my masterpiece and somebody's like mrmaker, there's an entirely new continent. And then he pauses and then just rips his map off the wall and tears it in half. New continent just dropped. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, yo, new continent just dropped. Yeah. Yeah, and they also put themselves in this bind of like, Europeans decided to call Antarctica Terra Australis Incognita.

And then the British decided to call what we now call Australia, Australia, even though it had a previous name from the indigenous people there. And then also the Dutch called it New Holland. And so for about a century, their maps were just a mess. And it's only relatively recent that we consistently call these things the names we have been calling them. I'm just going to go on record and say, as someone of European descent, Europeans are the worst at naming things. Yeah. New York, New Holland, like come up with a new name. Like you can't just put new in front of things forever calling them old places you know i'm just saying if you're gonna go quote unquote discover things

just have a you know have a few original names that you could throw out there right well i i guess that calling something new like calling a city new like new whatever new london new york it's it's one of those things that's cool in the moment but i feel like it's the equivalent of like call having the word boys in your boy band name of like oh at some point you're gonna be in your 50s and you're still gonna be the beach boys you know yeah it's it's like the junior of the city it's like yeah i'm also thinking now how impressed i was that like they predicted that there was land there. And now that I think more about it, I'm like, that was literally a 50-50 shot.

Like, there's either land or not land, you know? And they just happened to get it right. Well, that's like, that's something that I feel like we still do today in space exploration in that for a section of time, I want to say, you know, like not too long ago, there was like a planet X somewhere in our solar system where we didn't necessarily know where it was. It was just like based on the gravitational effects on other things. We just figured there was probably a planet there. gravitational effects on other things we just figured there was probably a planet there isn't there like on the the periodic table aren't there a lot of like unknown elements where it's just like oh there should be yeah an element here based on you know these other factors we just don't know what it is or what to call it yet yeah yeah no definitely and like the space one was is pretty interesting that's why i was wondering like what was it about you know the society that thought that there was land here that led them to believe this?

Because the planet thing is exactly where I went to, where I was just like, but they were measuring things, right? They were like modern scientists with like understanding of gravity and things like that. So, like, I didn't know, you know, you know, sailors are way better at like winds and currents and things like that than like we are. So was there something about the way that the ocean moved that led them to believe like there's land there or something? Like, I don't know. But like, yeah, the fact that it's just a blind 50, 50 guess, like could be land, could not be is, is crazy. Yeah. That was, that was kind of the same deal for, um, for Washington state. grew up in washington and for the longest time there was a belief there was a northwest passage that went through the united states and canada

just because it was like oh that'd be real cool if there was a trade route here yeah and like they thought for the longest time a lot of um european explorers and french explorers thought that the strait of wanda fuka which is basically if you look at Washington, it's that like waterway that's that's kind of in the northwest section of Washington that's like right above the peninsula between the peninsula or kind of the waterway between Washington and Canada. And like people thought that was the Northwest Passage. They thought the Columbia River was the Northwest Passage. Then at a certain point, like I'm sure they just like talk to the indigenous population and they were just like, yeah, you're dumb or whatever. Or it's just like, yeah, that's not there.

Why do you think that that's there? That's very stupid. Do you see those mountains? What do you think is getting through those mountains, man? Come on. These are huge. Rivers don't just go over a mountain. Yeah, it's like there's not a big waterway just because it would be convenient for you yeah i guess it's not unprecedented though like the mississippi is like basically goes from

like great lakes all the way down to like gulf of mexico right so like if you're just taking that and turned it you know east west yeah but again yeah like everybody's guessing yeah well yeah it's sort of like oh yeah the great lakes yeah like if the mississippi river goes north to south then surely there has to be a waterway that goes east to west yeah yeah yeah obviously and it's 50 50 kind of yeah you know guess what i'm saying is that uh every colonist in the 1700s was dumb. Yes. Yeah. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Joey Clift and Craig Fay for being absolutely hilarious about the absolute

highest, coldest, driest continent on earth. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is a double bonus. It's two stories. One is about Antarctic fungus that could live on Mars, and the other is about a surprising group of people from Argentina trying to take over Antarctica. Visit SIFpod.fun for that loaded bonus show, for a library of more than five dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation.

And thank you for exploring Antarctica with us. Wow, you are some kind of Shackleton. Amazing. Anyway, here's one more run through the big takeaway and more. Takeaway number one, Antarctica used to be thought of as a theoretical concept that was named Australia. And then a huge run of stories in the numbers section this week, everything from the unbelievably massive scale of the place, to the difficulties of South Pole breast cancer, to how to get money from the ATM. Plus, oh wow, Maori sailors reached Antarctica before anybody else did.

Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Joey Clift has a new Comedy Central short. It's amazing. It's animated. It's called How to Cope with Your Team, Changing Its Native American Mascot. Highly recommend. It's a perfect chaser for Cleveland's baseball team finally getting around to doing a change that it's been obvious they needed to do for like a century.

Also, please check out a Netflix show in the future. In 2022, they're putting out a show called Spirit Rangers, and Joey Clift is one of many great writers working on that show. So it's a thing to check out. Do it. Also, Joey Clift is at Joeytainment on Twitter. Craig Fay is at Craig Fay Comedy on Twitter. And Craig Fay has a fantastic podcast. The title of it is The Villain Was Right. It's co-hosted with Rebecca Reeds. And all that stuff's just awesome. Many research

sources this week. Here are some key ones. And I want to highlight the particularly illuminating and amazing sources this week. One of them is a webpage for the Antarctic Sun, which is basically a community newsletter for McMurdo Station in Antarctica. They have a 2020 article talking about the winter crew traditions that you can just read. Also linking a great PBS NewsHour miniseries from 2019. It's called The Last Continent. They visit Antarctica and everything. And then there's a whole link section for the story Joey Clift saved the day with about Maori voyages to Antarctica my favorite source might be a New York Times piece it's titled The Maori Vision of Antarctica's Future

it's by Sabrina Embler it also explores a lot of ideas about what it means to be the first people to reach a place, if that's even a thing, and the values we express by focusing on that. It's amazing. Find that and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons.

I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.