Technology, Connected - A Fusion Startup Just Turned Mercury Into Gold

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Every year, Tom Whitwell—reformed journalist, reformed consultant, electronic instrument designer—publishes 52 surprising things he learned. This year's list reveals how the world actually works.Mark and Jeremy steal his homework (like OpenAI scraping the internet) and pick their favorites across AI, energy, labor, culture, psychology, and—yes—shrimp.Some findings are encouraging:- Deaths from air pollution fell 21% between 2013-2023. Tens of millions of people are alive today because pollution controls worked.Some are weird:- Nearly 0.7% of US exports by value are human blood or blood products.- In the UK, you can legally register as a "farm" by keeping snails in plastic tubes in an office block (tax avoidance solved).Most sit somewhere in between:- 51% of farmed animals on Earth are shrimp.- Attractive servers earn $1,261 more per year in tips—mostly because female customers tip attractive female servers more.- The serial killer epidemic of the 1970s-80s may have been caused by lead exposure from cars and factories (solved by environmental regulations).- Chinese CO2 emissions fell 1% in 2025, the first decline ever, driven by record solar power.- Writing is a way to escape your mind's default settings.We explore what these facts reveal about technology's unintended consequences, human behavior, and systems we take for granted.Why does the UK communicate with offshore oil rigs by bouncing radio waves off meteorite trails? Why did Google launch a process to turn mercury into gold (and why do you have to wait 18 years to use it)? Why do job apps for nurses analyze credit card debt to set wages?This isn't trivia. These are signals about how the world is changing—for better and worse—while we're busy predicting the future.Tom Whitwell's annual list has become essential reading for anyone trying to understand what actually happened this year (not what we thought would happen).For the last episode of 2025, Thinking on Paper goes backwards. And it's worth it.---Source: Tom Whitwell, "52 Things I Learned in 2025"Link: https://medium.com/@tomwhitwell/52-things-i-learned-in-2025-edeca7e3fdd8Topics: Technology, society, environment, culture, psychology, economics, human behavior, annual reviewFormat: Co-hosted discussion (Mark Fielding, Jeremy Gilbertson)Please enjoy the show.And remember: Stay curious. Be disruptive. Keep Thinking on Paper.Cheers, Mark & JeremyPS: Please subscribe. It’s the best way you can help other curious minds find our channel.Think On Paper with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠Follow us on ⁠X⁠Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠Read our ⁠Substack⁠Email: [e-mail]--TIMESTAMPS(00:00) Disruptors & Curious Minds(01:15) Deaths From Air Pollution(01:56) UK Tax Breaks Via Farms(02:29) Meteorite Radio Stations(04:03) Turn Mercury Into Gold(06:10) Manipulative AI Apps For Nurses(07:43) Bin Laden's Casio Watch(08:31) Radioactive Shrimps(08:53) Apple's Air Demo Cock-Up(10:10) Does Jeremy Wear Crocs?(11:13) What Is Raw Dogging(12:00) Human Blood Products(12:36) Relaxed Mowing(13:20) Bugles At Funerals(13:55) Robot Hands Need Fingernails(14:40) First Names Affect Your Job(15:27) Retrospect VHS(16:04) Attractive Servers Earn More(17:21) Hong Kong Phone Service(17:33) McDonald's Loses First Place(19:26) Shrimp Farming(20:35) Peanut Allergies are Falling(20:55) The Serial Killer Epidemic(21:17) Namibian Politics(21:50) Big Doors In LA(22:40) Escape Your Mind With Writing (23:43) HP Printer Ineptitude(24:25) British Chaos(25:20) Thank You Tom Whitwell

Disruptors and curious minds, citizens of earth, conscious entities, humanoid from the year 2052. Welcome to Thinking on Paper. And thousands of you now are joining us to connect the dots of AI, quantum, space, society, music, life, the human condition. Thank you. And we're going to end the year. Well, we were going to end the year with 52 things that we learned at thinking on paper this year. But that would take a lot of work and we also decided that sometimes other people's learnings are so much more interesting than our own, maybe because we can become so submerged in our own life and our own learning that we forget the strange unique curiosity that brought us there in the first place. So for the last show of the year, we are learning what a man called

Tom Whitwell learned this year. Some of them are technology. Some of them aren't. We're going to go through it. We're going to pick our favorites. Mark, what's your first one? Global deaths from air pollution are falling fast. Between 2013 and 2023,

deaths per 100,000 fell 21%. I dived into that to check because I know that if you go on the internet and say things like that, there will be a rebuttal. There will be some trolls. There will be some, no, that's not true. Well, according to these data points,

It is. So I liked that one. I didn't know that. What about you, Jamie, your first one? If you live in the UK and you're looking to reduce your tax obligations, you can actually put some plastic tubes containing things like snails and lettuce. That becomes legally a farm, believe it or not. He found the minimum requirement to be a farm and you can maybe get tax exempt status. The method is simple. First, this guy, this Italian Naples Mafia connector, sets up shell companies that breed snails in empty office blocks. Then he claims that the office block is legally against all indications to the contrary, a farm. Tom Whitwell, so we'll keep it in the United Kingdom.

So there's a couple of lessons he learnt about Deep Seek. He learned about how you can unlock the wheels on a shopping cart by playing sounds on your phone. Not where I live, you can't do that. And then number five in the UK, water companies and offshore rigs communicate by bouncing radio waves off trails created by millions of small meteorites as they burn up in the atmosphere. I had to learn more about that. That was cool. Yeah, it's exactly what it says.

They're by accident, obviously, that they found that radio signals were being boosted at times of meteorite shower events, and they couldn't work out why. And eventually, yeah, the signal was bouncing off the trails from the meteorites. Or, think, think, think, think, like a stone bouncing across the water, bouncing the signal. amazing and then it's been that technique is being used was being used and is to a certain degree being used in obviously military and radio domains to boost signals amazing what a happy accident right like that's like the serendipitous technological breakthrough you'll never guess what name

cropped up in that development when i was studying or learning a bit about me to your burst communications can you guess what lab turned up? Oh, no, I can't. Bell Labs, Bell Labs appeared. They were studying ways to improve nighttime radio propagation and suggested that the oddities that many researchers were seeing were due to meteor nighttime radio propagation. So basically they were trying to listen to middle of a night radio call-ins

when they were in their labs kind of creating Brilliant. This is number seven. A fusion energy startup has developed a process to turn mercury into gold. The alchemist. The alchemist.

So each year, their plant would produce five tons of gold and one gigawatt of electricity. Both worth a similar amount. That's really interesting. So there's balance in alchemy. But bad news, Mark.

Bad news, you actually have to wait about 14 to 18. years for all the radioactivity, all the radioactive stuff to kind of disperse from your gold. I just spit on the microphone. Radioactive gold. Can you wait 14? I don't know.

That's long range. That's like maybe we should do that instead of putting our money in like ETFs and index funds. Maybe we chuck it in there because we got to wait 14 to 18 anyway. Well, that marathon fusion they're called. I've reached out to them because I was fascinated by that. If we can turn, if you can make a goal then and learn about fusion at the same time. Yeah, Marathon Fusion.

It's a new American startup in the big fusion. Around 2026 is going to be a big fusion year for us, I think, Jeremy. I agree. There's definitely some interesting stuff happening. Energy tech in and of itself, and we've got to figure this energy tech thing out, you know, and is it in space, is it space-based? Do we put the stuff we're trying to power in space? Do we figure out how to harness different physics to do more things on the planet?

Because right now, right now we're runway is going out. I mean, you know, all of these power deployments are taking way longer. Energy grid is taking way longer to kind of catch up to the demand generated by, guess what, AI? Talking of AI, so it takes us to number eight of the things that, He loved. 20, 25. So number six, that was very positive. London is safe today.

Fewer murders at any time since he moved there almost 30 years ago. But then number eight, job apps for nurses can set payment rates by analyzing a nurse's credit card debt to decide how desperate they are for work. That is, couldn't be more frustrating to hear, man. Manipulative. You know, there's a personal. sovereignty issue there, obviously. The gig economy, just even for nurses, it's just pariah is taking advantage. That's a bad doom-laden use of AI to check credit scores.

And then obviously, the idea being to offer lower wages for the more desperate. Well, that's also happening in loan applications now. I think there's a lot of information being used by these, by these AIs to make determination. on whether you get a loan or not based on stuff that shouldn't factor into that. I mean, Carissa Velas talked to us about that on the show. Definitely more on the Doom pendulum side, but it's stuff that needs to be talked about. And it's exactly what Tom's referencing in number eight.

I'm not psyched about it. Companies are using AI to check credit scores to see how desperate they are for money and then lowering salary wages accordingly. Come on. We should do better humanity. we can do better than that. Maybe there's a counterbalance technological initiative there that can happen. You know, who's to say those on the top of the stack only have access to the tech, right?

You know, maybe it's a bottom-up thing that could write that ship. Let's see, what's next? Number 10, the ubiquitous digital watch worn by Bin Laden that costs 12 pounds has been faked for years and the fakes are getting better and better. And I looked at that. And what surprised me about that was the choice of this. the Casio F91W as a watch to fake, a watch that's very cheap by our standards anyway, being faked to be made even cheaper.

So is that because 12 pounds doesn't seem a lot to me, but it does to most of the world? And so if you make a cheap version of a cheap watch, then you are getting access to a huge market. After reading the order of time, Carlo Rovelli, I don't buy watches anyway because he says time doesn't exist. Yeah, well, that's another lesson. Yeah, quantum, quantum time.

Quantum clocks exist, though. So I was speaking to people about this, number 11, the radioactive shrimp scare of 2025. Oh, no, sorry, there was another shrimp appear twice. No, this was not the shrimp one. The shrimp one is the later one. No, ignore me. There's another shrimp one later, which was interested in. There's two shrimp.

There's two shrimp ones there. Yeah. Who knew the importance of prawns? Did you want to skip over number nine? I didn't even look at this, but just like just reading it right now? Apple's iPhone air demo video was modified for the Korean market because the gibison gesture is intensely controversial. Is that what that is? Well, it looks like what the emoji is there.

I can't tell exactly, but it looks like that. What is the gibison gesture? I didn't even look at this one. But men in gaming communities believe it means Korean men have small genitals, and it sparked various consumer boycotts. Is that a marketing, is that a marketing mess, a translation marketing mess from Apple's marketing department? Well, yeah. Wow.

iPhone air, don't I? Not seeing it. Number 12, woodwork is older than humans. He learned that. How is that? How is that? Woodworking is older than humans. Who's working the world? Well, woodworking, woodwork. Okay. What does that mean? I guess it means that nature. Harvest its own self? Like, it's woodwork. Nature makes nice things. things out of wood. Nature's always made nice things out of wood. You can see

withered, wind-swept benches, which are actually benches, but nature's made them, I guess it's talking about that. Driftwood. And they've found examples, yeah, I've got, yeah, driftwood. Number 13, most characters in the film, Idiocracy Wear Crocs, because the film's wardrobe

director thought they were too horrible looking to ever become popular. I don't have any crocs, and I've not seen the film Idiocracy, so I have no comment. Yeah, you wear crocs. I bet you've got some crocs. Crocks are in my house for sure. I don't wear them. I have worn them before, mainly to kind of throw something on my feet if I'm taking the dog outside in the back, but you get made fun of severely if you wear crocs without socks, believe it or not.

Do you, are your crocs original crocs or are they fake crocs? Oh, they've, they've since been discarded. I don't have them anymore, but I think they're original crocs, yeah. Okay. Yeah, But if you, yeah, you got to wait. If you decide to bet on some crocs and buy some, you have to wear them with socks or your kids will make fun of you for quote-unquote raw-dogging your crocs, which is kind of a gnarly. Yeah. So we're socks. What raw dogging is, by the way. I learned that this year.

There's something I learned in this, this year. Premiership footballers, it's quite common amongst premiership footballers. When they go play away games, they go on the plane and do. nothing. The only thing they're allowed to do is have the map on the chair of where the plane is, no films, no music, no books. They just have to sit there and roar dog the flight. And there's one of the last, Erling, with like 14 hours or something just sitting there. Wow. So boring. It's like meditation, isn't it? I guess. Wow. So, all right. So I learned a very new definition of that. And there are a few other definitions of that that were probably not

to talk about on the show. But moving right along. Nearly 0.7% of US exports by value are human blood or blood products. For some reason, despite my curiosity, so I went deeper and I read about that. Because, in fact, he says

0.7%. Originally not many people have stood at this, but they were saying 2%, and he actually broke it down by going into the export records of the US. You can see exactly what those products are. Yeah, 0.7% some billions are human blood products. Wow.

Plasma, things like that. So 15. Relaxed mowing. How excited did you get about this one? Not terribly excited. I don't have a lawn, so I didn't read this one. Relax mowing is when local councils cut grass less often to reduce cost and encourage biodiversity. Richard Beach.

Man, mowing. So I have a lawn. And I kind of struggle with it because it's like, it's, again, humans trying to wrangle nature. And it's like, who told us that this was what we were supposed to have versus just the natural background? Long since dead French kings, I think. Jeez, freaking Louie. The Louys, they're killing us. Number 16. Ceremonio Bugle.

Yeah, it's all in there. So, Mereo Bougal is a small plastic device that slides into a real Bucle. and allows a non-musician to perform at a funeral. There you go. Is that similar to how AI is creating access to let people do things that they wouldn't be able to do? Is this a physical AI analogy for us? I don't know how many bugle players there are at any one funeral.

Maybe this is a useful use of... That's like putting something on your guitar that lets you play Iron Man or something. very similar, interesting. All right, 17, moving along. Robot hands need fingernails. So figure, I know you guys are all listening. I would love your thoughts on if you guys are putting fingernails on your robots. But allegedly, it kind of helps people, helps them,

helps them grab stuff a little bit better according to this. According to Robot Man, Matt Webb. Like they help us. It helps us with small repetitive tasks. It helps us to pick things up. It helps to grip things. it helps, yeah, it helps a lot. I'm glad I have fingernails and I want my huge to be annoyed to have fingernails. Well, let them pick their nose too. You know, when they're trying to

relate to humans, they can, uh, they can do that. When they're bridging the uncanny valley. If a robot's picking his nose, picking his nose, you're, you're going to think it's more human than not, I guess. All right, Anna and Joseph. Anna and Joseph. Number 18, first names affect how you are perceived at work. If your name is Anna or Joseph, you're consistently considered trustworthy, honest, and reliable. But if your name is Victoria or Ryan, sorry guys, competitive,

ambitious, and extrovert. What about Mark and Jeremy? Is there anything in there? I think Mark just meant awesome. I think it meant, yeah. They're still trying to categorize. Still trying to categorize.

Number 19, this is our new would-be sponsor. You don't know this yet, retrospect, but you are actually a perfect sponsor for the show. Mark, tell them why. Retrospect is a Milwaukee company with 14 employees that sells old technology. Early 2000s, digital cameras, iPods, recorded phones. They recently brought 40 pallets of

old VHS tapes. I had a look, yeah, Nintendo 64's, old Snez's, old Walkman's, old headphones, really cool retro, refurbished, vintage tech, my favorite kind of tech, that analog old 90s style of tech. It would be kind of cool. Retrospect, hit us up. Let's talk.

Number 20, a gram of silica gel has almost the same surface area as two basketball courts. 21, the study of 500 diners. Bad news. Attractive servers actually earn more per year in tips than unattractive servers. And not by a

little bit, $1,261. Per year. Yeah. Is it why you think like why? Well, as it continues here, mostly because of female customers tipping attractive females more than unattractive females. That's interesting. You figure like a dude would, you know, tip the more attractive woman. Come on, Jeremy.

I'm not saying I would. I'm saying someone would. Let us know. Do you tip more if your waiter or waitress is attractive in your eyes or not? Number 22, one of the first ever Velvet Underground gigs was entertaining the New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry. I didn't know that, but I'm not surprised by that. Wonder if they played Venus in first and that.

I wonder if they did. Sure, but let's, should we get into Venus and First? No, I might leave that for another day. Okay. Number 23, in the 2000s, at least 20% of the phones used in sub-Saharan Africa physically passed through one building on Nathan Road in Hong Kong. So who is the largest fast food chain in the world, Mark? Who would you get? Oh, McDonald's, of course.

McDonald's. That is incorrect, my friend. According to Sam Tang, number 24, during 2024, the bubble tea and ice cream chain mix you. M-I-X-U-E, overtook McDonald's 47,000 branches. Wow, that's a lot of ice cream and bubble tea. Do you drink bubble tea? Have you ever drunk bubble tea? You, look, guys, I still, that's one thing I don't get.

I don't understand that. What is it you don't understand about bubble tea? I just don't get it. I don't get it. What is it for? I like the sensation of the tapioca bubbles exploding in my mouth in a nice refreshing drink. Leave that one alone. This was 25. This was really interesting.

As writers and thinkers and people who like to meander with ideas, especially in front of microphones and that sort of thing, dependency length is the number of words during which the reader needs to hold their breath, quote, hold their breath before they reach a resolution. So that, I guess, is the amount of time. No, I'm sorry, the number of words. a reader can hold in their head while synthesizing an idea? Yep.

So number 25 and 26 mentioned Mitsubishi. Number 27 is about MIT. They've developed a fiber computer that is stretchable and machine washable with six hours of battery life, weighing about as much as a sheet of A4 paper. It looked really cool, washable wearables. I don't know what use it would be to have such a device in your jumper, but I'm glad that they're building this tech so that we can put computers in our t-shirts and jumpers. Number 28, 51% of the animals in farms across the world are shrimp.

What's the difference between a prawn and a shrimp? Ooh, I don't know. What is it? Did you ask a question you don't have the answer to you? Yeah, of course I did. Of course I did. Shrimp are smaller than prawns, ranging his size from four to seven centimeters. while shrimp can reach up to 12 to 15 centimeters.

And 51% of the animals, it's not the mass of these animals. It's the numbers and they're 51% of all the animals. And this was a really interesting article because eventually it gets into animal sentience and do shrimp feel pain. There's an expert on animal consciousness, essentially. We can all agree that a dog feels pain. We can see that happening. We can all agree that a sheep or a cow or a giraffe or a lion.

they feel pain. But what about fish? What about? And then like, when does it stop? When do the animals stop feeling pain? And when the animals stop feeling pain so much that we shouldn't be eating a trillion of them a year or treating them better. And that's, that articles about that. I thought it was very interesting.

Yes. Absolutely. Let's see. Peanut allergies are falling. Mark? Good news. Yes. Good news.

Peanut allergies are falling. But perhaps because advice to avoid peanuts was reversed. So instead of avoiding peanuts, kind of exposure therapy? Is that where this was going? Enoculate yourself to peanuts by eating little bits of peanut. Not medical advice. Not medical advice. Let's see what else here. The serial killer epidemic in 1970s, 80s, U.S.

may have been caused by lead fumes from cars and factories and solved by environmental regulations. So EPA, making serial killers go away. since 1999. Who's your favorite serial killer? Namibia is the first country in the world where women hold the top three positions of power simultaneously, president, vice president, and speaker of the house. That's it.

That's awesome. So try and pronounce them. Netumbio Nandi Nadawa became Namibia's first female president on March the 21st this year. Hmm. I wonder what we could learn from Namibia. And how to scale that, because there is a, there's high resistance to that still, which blows my mind. So, all right. So if you're looking to elevate your status and you live in Los Angeles, here's a quick hack for you from Cleo Chang.

Just get a big ass front door. I didn't get it on. Like, what? The new domestic status symbol in L.A. is a massive front door. Massive something. Good Lord. At least we're focused on the important shit. Um, all right.

Well, speaking of Americans, number 38, Americans have been shrinking since the early 1980s. The doors are growing, but the people are shrinking. Maybe the door, maybe the doors aren't bigger. We're just getting smaller. Maybe LA is just getting smaller. Holy crap. Um, all right. What else?

Oh, dude, this has got to be one of my favorites, number 40. You know, this is, we live by this, Mark. Like, writing is a, writing is a way to escape your mind's default settings. Coupaggio is the reference for this article. I couldn't agree with this more. And it's really a powerful way to break patterns that don't serve you and to be an outside observer of who you are. It's the only way to do it. You put thoughts on paper.

Those thoughts turn into objects. And you can become a third-party observer. I think that's one of the most important ones here. Holy cow. Good job. Good job, Tom. I love this. Number 42, some more good news.

Chinese CO2 missions fell by 1% in 2025 due to a record solar power and falling in coal use for energy generation. Go solar power. Go space-based solar power. In number 45, the Danish government pays over $1 million each year to private metal detectorists for archaeological fines according to a law passed in 1241. So let's close this out. Any of the last few that grab you, Jeremy? Let's see.

This is kind of funny. When returned Hewlett-Packard printers are refurbished, a printer cable is added to the packaging. This solves the most common cause of returns, people who can't get the Wi-Fi to connect. Have you tried connecting a printer to the Wi-Fi? I'm not surprised. It is a bit convoluted, I would agree. I like number in 48 in September 2005, Steve Jobs announced a feature called Smart Shuffle,

which made iPod randomization less random in order to appear more random. 20 years later, Spotify are still trying to find a shuffle algorithm that users like Spotify isn't random. British chaos refers to a cluster of TikTok personalities that once might have been a local character in a pub in Stevenage, but have become international celebrities. Yeah, I like that one. Clive Martin, British chaos, yeah. Let's never become British chaos, Jeremy. Oh my gosh.

Well, you did set up thinking on paper TikTok, so. There is one. I'm not touching it. Half British. Well, I'm British. I've got British, Amy. Mom was born in Norwich. So this podcast is probably, what, 70%?

Right. Let's end. Foles Lusay, is a complex system that works is invariably found. to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of 2025 for thinking on paper. I hope you've enjoyed our last show, the 52 things that we learned via somebody else, this. Tom Whitwell, thank you for making the time to make this. so many rabbit holes that you sent me down that I will continue. So many cool medium posts and substacks and websites to read and learn from.

So thank you for that. And happy Christmas, Merry New Year. See you in 2026. Jeremy, anything that you want to. That's it. Thanks, thanks,

Tom, for putting this together. This takes a lot of time and energy. But, you know, I'm sure it in a way helps you learn and synthesize this stuff. That's why we do what we do as well. So maybe come on the show.

Let's talk. Have a great rest of the year, folks. Thanks for listening. we know you're listening. We see your comments. We love seeing your comments. Big year for us next year.

Book club starting space to grow is a book. We're going to stay in the space world. I'm going to reference High Frontier about 30 times during our breakdown of that. What else, Mark? What do we have to look forward to? We're doing a show on High Frontier with a man who runs a satellite company in January. I am reading the High Frontier at the moment so I can stay up with you. You better.

Gerard O'Neill. fans and yeah looking forward to that. Like, subscribe, share. If you like what you listen to, share it with somebody. It's the time, it's the season of sharing of good work. Sharing is caring. Sharing is caring. Love you guys.

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