The Rest Is Science - A Man-Eating Tiger Found In London

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

It begins with a discovery in a loft: a full man eating tiger skin, brought back from a village in northern India where Professor Hannah Fry's ex-mother in law grew up. That find sends Hannah and Michael Stevens into the strange world of man eating big cats: a tigress blamed for a staggering number of deaths, what can turn a tiger toward hunting humans in the first place, and how India now borrows techniques from forensic science…effectively putting a tiger on trial before deciding its fate. And it raises an uncomfortable question: when a critically endangered animal kills a person, how do you weigh human safety against saving a species? Plus the wonderfully simple trick that stops attacks in their tracks.Then it's over to your questions, taking in some of the universe's most beautiful coincidences, from the sky above us to the clockwork of distant moons, and a mysterious number that once haunted one of the great physicists. Come and join our sub-Reddit: /r/TheRestIsScience ------------------- For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit ⁠⁠https://cancerresearchuk.org/restisscience⁠⁠ Cancer Research UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), the Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F). Registered address: 2 Redman Place, London, E20 1JQ. ------------------- Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠ ------------------- Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack MeekAnimator: Sam BensonVideo & Social: Bex TyrrellAssistant Producer: Lucy LipscombeProducer: Simona RataSenior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-CarterChief Digital Officer: Samuel OakleyExec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the rest is science. I'm Michael Stevens. And I'm Hannah Fry. And today on field notes, Hannah has brought something or she's going to show me something. She sent me an email while I was asleep. I did, but don't open it yet. Don't open it yet. I haven't opened it yet because the subject line said, Michael, do not read until we record later. At 2. 201 a.m. she sent that. So we are in different countries, to be fair. This is sort of by the by but I'm going to send it to you on WhatsApp because I think if you open the email it will immediately be obvious for the surprises, okay? Okay. All right. The object that I'm bringing today

is something that we found in my ex-mother-in-law's loft. Okay? Now, important piece of information is that she's called Mary. She's absolutely amazing. I adore her. Still adore her.

We'll continue to adore her forever. She was born and brought up in India And she's lived in this house for a very long time We're going through some boxes On you go Okay, so here it is I've got a video from you I can already see like a cardboard box

With like some rope coming out of it Or wires or something Should I hit play? Off you go Okay, play That's what we found Okay, so the rope I saw coming out was just part of a handle

Now there's a whole bunch of crinkly paper holding, oh, it's a tiger head. It is. It's a taxidermied tiger head, which we found in her loft. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. Our bodies are incredible machines, worrying away making more and more DNA to build the proteins that keep us alive. In fact, in the last minute, your body has made over 200 million new cells and enough DNA to stretch to the moon and back. To the moon and back. That's so much DNA that if you compared it to the size of the cell it fits into, that would be like squeezing the London underground into a suitcase.

By the age of 50, you have copied almost 6 trillion miles of DNA. But every time that your body copies DNA, it risks making mistakes. and over time those mistakes can accumulate, and that collection of errors can lead to cancer. But incredibly, Cancer Research UK scientists can spot these errors. And by finding them, they've helped double UK cancer survival over the last 50 years and are driving even more discoveries that could tackle over 200 types of cancer. For more information about Cancer Research UK,

their research and breakthroughs and how you can support them, visitcanorresearchuk.org slash rest is science. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result?

Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. The 2006 Chevrolet Equinox awarded the most dependable compact SUV in the US by J.D. Power is designed for your everyday. And with available all-wheel drive, you can handle your to-do list with total confidence. Start your build at Chevrolet.ca. Details at J.D.Power.com. Okay, there's a story behind this, right? She's not just collecting large animal taxidermies in a sort of weird and horrible and creepy way. There's this full story behind this. Let me give you this one. Okay, so I'll just send you another link. Okay. Okay, so I'm loading the second video, which is a great view.

It's out of the box now. I was a little bit sad when I first saw this decapitated tiger. Of course. It isn't decapitated, though, to be fair. But then your second video does have you saying, just kind of, I don't know the context, but you say in the background of the video, okay, so once they start eating people, they don't stop. Exactly.

Was this a man killer? This was a man-eater. Okay, so she grew up in this village in India, which is right next to Nepal, right? So the northern part of India. So up north, yeah. It's this area called Uttarakahund in India. And there's lots of wild tigers all around there. And this particular tiger was a man-eater.

had been attacking people in the village and killing them. This is like way back in the 1940s, 1950s, by the way. And her dad was this quite important person in the village. And what they would do when a tiger started eating humans, they knew that it wouldn't stop. Like humans are very easy prey. And they're delicious. And they're delicious.

Thank you very much. Still hoping for that invitation to eat some genuine human flesh, I see. Me too, yeah. Well, oh, I thought you started speaking for yourself. No, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. All right. I'm still waiting. Yeah, you're right. But once they get, once they realize that they can very easily kill and eat humans,

they don't tend to stop. And so when you get a man eater, it's sort of quite important that the village goes out there and hunts down this particular tiger and essentially takes it out of the question. So a group of men from the village, including her dad, went. out and they found the tiger. They create this platform in the jungle and they hit dangle meat from it and they wait for the correct tiger to come past. They sort of know the different tigers by sight, by their patterning and so on.

So this was the tiger, ended up in her loft and this like nice old ladies loft, like thousands of miles away from where it started. But what I wanted to talk to you about today was in general this idea of man eating tigers because this is something that still absolutely happens and the different way. that they try and approach it and tackle it. It's like a kind of crazy idea that you could just be wandering around near your home and then have an actual predator come and attack you. I know. I know.

I actually, let me tell you, I encountered something like this when I was in Kenya. I went there many years ago to speak to YouTubers in Kenya. And a lion showed up. And it was very cool. You know, oh, look at the lion, snap some photos. And then I saw a guy walking out with a gun, like a big gun. And I said, well, you can't shoot a lion, right? Like they're like endangered, you know, but they did.

And it was explained to me that, first of all, lions, Panthera Leo is not endangered. It's vulnerable. Right. But the lion is too dangerous to the community, especially the children. And so once they've come that close, more lives are safe. I guess the human lives are saved by getting rid of that lion. So where were you when this happened? Were you out in the National Park or were you sort of in much more of an urban environment?

I don't know where I was. So it was the morning after the meetings and a friend and I just asked a guy if he could take us out. And we just drove a little further out to a different village. and I don't even remember the name of it. But it was a village. It was like a sort of a human settlement, essentially. It was a human settlement. This was not on like a reserve park or anything.

This was more like, oh, and here's a place. In fact, it was a place we stopped in because I hadn't had any caffeine yet that day. And they were selling Red Bull. So we stopped to get a Red Bull. And I remember just being really annoyed because they didn't have sugar-free Red Bull. And I didn't want all the sugar. So I was like, gosh, dang it. And I got this in the caffeine.

only in the sugar only made me more irritable. And then a lion showed up. The lion was hanging out around the bathrooms. Wow, that is dangerous. We drove near them and we saw the lion was just chilling, just like, yo, what up? And I'm like, oh, it's so cute. And then that's when I saw the men coming out with the guns, like big automatic weapons. And I was like, oh, that that lion came into the wrong place.

Did they have to do it? And I was told that they had to. Yeah. I mean, what I will say in India now, I mean, tigers are extremely endangered, extremely protected. Yeah. So when this happens, there's this whole set of circumstances that come into play. But just I think, let me just talk very briefly about the types of danger that they actually can pose to humans. So there's one very famous story that called the Chambalwat Tiger, which is, it's about a three-hour drive.

from where my mother-in-law grew up, right? So really close, okay. This Champa-Wat Tiger, it started off, this is like 1895, something like that. And she started killing some humans in this tiny little village in Nepal. And hunters went in to try and kill her as a result of this, but she managed to evade them and carried on hunting. Eventually the Nepalese army come out to try and track her,

but fail and yet managed to push her. her over the border into India. And then when she was in India, she would just pick off victim after victim after victim. And often they would be young women and children who were going to the forest to collect firewood to feed livestock, whatever else it might be. Also, she just became boulder and boulder and boulder. She would make these kills during daylight, whereas like a lot of the tiger attacks happen at nighttime. And across the entire region, like people were really genuinely paralyzed with fear. So they would hear her roar. and then nobody would leave their huts for ages afterwards

because they were like, I'm not, I'm not going to risk it. Anyway, they think in the end she killed 436 people. Wow. Yeah, which is phenomenal, phenomenal. In the end, there was one young, youngish girl, 16-year-old girl who she killed, and that allowed them to sort of by following the torn clothes and trail into the jungle. They managed to find her. And when they, I mean, I do think that if there's one animal who's responsible for 436 deaths of villages, you know, it's not great.

But I do see the argument that actually the safety of the humans is really important. Well, yeah, if you don't have any other options, like I think it would be better if we had the resources to capture the tiger and relocate it or rehome it. Which is what they try and do now, but this is like over 100 years ago. But they found that when, you know, after she was dead, they found that actually she had some broken teeth. They think that maybe she had been like shot or clipped by a bullet when she was much younger. And the theory was that that was the reason why she then became a man-eater. Oh.

That actually tigers generally don't try and hunt humans. But if they find it harder to sort of attack prey on their own right, then humans are easier to attack, and so you go for the humans instead. Right. Fast forward to the modern day, and now when there are attacks, and they still happen instantly. So in late 2010, early 2011, there were four people who were killed in around this same area, right? In the same area where my mother-in-law grew up. And what they did is the tiger, who they thought was responsible, they went off,

and found it, but they also managed to recover DNA samples from the attack sites, from the sort of the remains of the people who have been attacked by the tiger. And as a result, they did this forensic analysis in the same way that you would do if there was a human murder. And they managed to prove after the fact that the tiger had been the guilty party, right? They did DNA evidence against the tiger. They proved he was the guilty party. I think it might have been a female tiger actually on that instance. The female tiger was the guilty party and she'd killed these humans and that was fine.

Okay, so her sort of taking her out was okay. It was fine. So they had the trial after the execution and luckily it was okay. But now, now they do the trials before the execution. Okay. So now what they do, you know, if you accept that actually having a tiger that's hunting humans is a really bad thing, and that that tiger needs to be removed from that situation in somewhere or another, then you need to be sure that you are getting the correct tiger.

And so what they do is they take the DNA from the crime scene, and then they go around, they sort of try and stalk the different tigers that are in the neighbourhood, and they manage to get DNA from the tigers from like urine samples, from like brushing past leaves. They basically do a full forensic analysis, a full forensic like crime scene, thing, then run what is effectively a trial, right? To work out who the guilty tiger is. And then they like start with this process of like, can we dart the tiger, put the tiger

in a zoo, can we relocate the tiger? Is there anything, anything we can do? Killing the tiger does still happen, but it's the absolute last resort now. Well, that's all really good to hear. I love that. I love that we're giving these like human rights to the animal criminals. And this should be an episode. of some, like, crime show, there should be, like, the animal detectives who are like,

okay, I got a urine sample from a tiger. We're going to bring it to the lab and we're going to find out if they're the criminal, if they're the murderer. Totally. Well, I want to know, so first of all, this taxidermied tiger head that your former mother-in-law has. It's the full tiger body. It's the full tiger body. If you watch the second video, it's the full body. It's the full tiger body. Pause everything. It's unbelievably beautiful. unbelievably beautiful. Oh my goodness. So what a special story also to have from her life.

Why did she not have it on display? Because I think it's not that nice, you know? Yeah, it's a little un-nice. It's a little macab. It's a little like you need to explain the context. Yeah, I mean, that's the point, right? I think if you've got the posty coming around your house, you know what I mean? Some plumber's come around to fix you.

to fix your sink and then it's like, oh, yeah, massive tiger on your wall. That's, um, that's quite the thing. How did you acquire that? How did you, you'd have to sort of put a plaque next to it being like, it's okay, this is not game hunting. This is not sort of big cat hunting. This is not like a trophy kill. This is like, you know, in the service of human life. And I think actually, even in that situation, I think that some people still would not be happy about it. Incidentally, by the way, this particular tiger skin, it can stay in their family, right? It can stay in the family of your hands down,

but you can't sell it. Right. You can't trade it. I think carrying across borders is extremely difficult. Quite rightly, all of the rules of these things of like tiger skins, of elephant tusks, all of that have completely clamped down in a really, really serious way.

And since the 1970s, actually, you haven't just been allowed to go out and kill tigers. only in a situation where you know that they're in Manita. Has it even been on the cards that they could be shot? Wow. Well, yeah, I mean, it's such a, we don't always think about it. I know there are bears and sharks. We are prey on this planet still to a certain degree.

And I think it's good to be reminded of that, that we are just sharing this planet and sometimes things are going to get a little dark. A little bit dark. One thing that I would say, that old assumption, based on the tiger that killed 436 people, that she had this tooth broken, and that was the reason why she was hunting for humans.

With all of this DNA evidence that has been going on in India in the last 15 years or so, they have tried to work out essentially what percentage of tigers are problematic, by which I mean interacting with sort of humans themselves or with livestock that the humans keep. And the old assumption was that, you know, there'd only be one or two tigers if they were hurt who would do something like that.

But actually, now that they've done these DNA swabs on like livestock carcasses that have been sort of dragged into the jungle by these tigers, it's more like 40% of the tiger population. It's like, hey, you know, it's like a Big Mac, right? It's like, look at this easy lunch that's just right there. Why would I, why would I not? Well, yeah, I mean, I was just thinking about that. Like, I was using the word criminal to describe these animals.

And yet, I don't think that's a fair description. It's literal fast food, you know? Yeah, they're just getting fast food. They're just getting a nice little snack the same way they would with any other animal. Their intentions are not, aha, I'm going to get away with this. I'm going to commit an act that will weigh on my conscience. And I don't care because it won't because I'm a psychopath. They're just eating meat as they do.

Yeah, of course. I mean, and the thing is, is that like, hold on a second, that livestock were going to get eaten anyway, you know? It's just going to be, it's like, hey, that's my food rather than that. That's right. You stole our food. Or, hey, you ate food, but it's not the food we want you to eat. So penalty is death. Golly.

No, so actually, there's, you cannot kill a tiger if it attacked like. livestock. Livestock, a sort of, not quite fair game, but there's no, you know, Tiger, in a battle between Tiger and Cow, the Tiger wins every single time. There is something you can do about it though, which is very humane. I really like the simplicity of this as a solution. So in the 1980s, people notice that the way that tigers hunt, it's sort of like some folklore about this as well, but the way that Tigers hunt is that if they, they sort of stalk their victims, and then if they feel like they've been spotted, they'll give up and they'll go find something else, D. Uh-huh.

So what people did in the 1980s, when in West Bengal, this is, because you have people who are out there in the jungle, in the forest, you know, collecting honey, fishermen, woodcutters, whatever it might be, they gave out these sort of helmets that had faces on the back of the head. Oh. And it turns out that the number of tiger attacks just really dramatically, dropped because tigers thought that the people were looking the other way and so didn't bother killing them. Now, tigers have got, they've got smart to it. So now they look, but it doesn't work quite as well. However, on cows, this is, I'm going to move across to lions now rather than cows.

But in Botswana, there was one study. This is really recently, right? It's like 2020, I think, that the paper was published. What they did is they got cows rumps in Botswana and they painted eyes on them. It basically dropped the number of lion attacks, lions eating the cows, to zero. No kidding. The lions just stopped eating the castle. Just stopped, just didn't bother. It's like the old butterfly trick.

Just put some big eyes. Just put some big eyes in the right place. Yeah. Well, you know what? This is all making me think about, have you heard of Osama bin Laden? His name's come up. The elephant. No.

There was an elephant named Osama bin Laden in the Indian state of Assam. Wait, named after the man or just in coincidence with? It was named after the human because this elephant was a rogue elephant that killed 27 people and was not afraid of fireworks, which is, I guess, how they normally get rid of rogue elephants. Right, yeah. It's my favorite Wikipedia article. Well, it's in my top 20. Because the article is titled Osama bin Laden, elephant, just to be clear. We're talking about the elephant.

And this elephant, unfortunately, also got executed for its not crimes, but behavior. How did it kill them, trample people? Well, it doesn't even say. I can't find any articles describing what it did. I like the idea that it was just slapping around the face with its trunk instead. Okay, well, I'm going to read the Wikipedia page for Osama Bin Laden and the Elephant while you guys go for a break and when we come back, we'll answer your questions. All right, see you then.

Hello and welcome to Doing It Anyway, a brand new series from Goalhanger. I'm Cathy Kaye. I've spent years studying the science and art of confidence, writing books about how we can close the confidence gap between men and women, and talking to experts and younger women about how to pass it on. Confidence means taking risks, acknowledging your fears, and, you know, and, well, doing it anyway. In this series, I'll be talking to psychologists,

entrepreneurs, and business leaders to unpack how you can rethink challenges and grow your own confidence. We'll talk about how to spot the difference between confidence and competence, how to deal with office politics and stolen credit and, yes, handling rejection, and ultimately how you can become a better leader,

teammate, and yes, a better person. Doing it anyway with Katty Kay every Friday, wherever you get your podcast. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. What if your immune system could learn to recognize cancer cells? That's immunotherapy. One type is car T-cell therapy. T-cells are your body's watchmen,

and doctors can now extract these and reprogram them to spot cancer. They've started showing this real promise in treating cancers of the blood like leukemia, because unlike most cancers, blood cancer cells, they float around separately, and that makes it easier for CAR-T cells to seek them out and destroy them. And now, Cancer Research UK-funded scientists are designing CAR-T cells that can tackle solid tumors too, making them tougher so they can survive a more crowded and hostile cancer environment. Now, these approaches are experimental, but they do start to show where treatment might go next. And over the past 50 years, Cancer Research UK's pioneering work has helped to double cancer survival in the UK.

I mean, this shows you how far research can take us. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org forward slash rest is science. The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus, starring Emmy Rossum. Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, The line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus.

Welcome back. We are now going to dive into questions from you, our listeners. I want to start with this one from Logan Osorio, who asks, Why is eating food so much more pleasurable than drinking water? I would expect our evolution to make drinking a far more dopaminergic activity because we can't survive more than a few days without water, but we can go months without food. Did you make up that word, Logan? It's a great word. Dopaminergic. It's a new one on me. I like it. I'm going to use it from now on.

I don't know, Logan. I mean, speak for yourself. I love drinking water. But I think it is a really interesting way to think here because, yeah, we definitely have all kinds of foods that we love. But you would think that water being even more important to have would be more like even more pleasurable. What I think is that there might be a little bit of a super normal stimulus thing going on here where compared to, you know, two hour, like the diets that we had as we evolved 100,000 years ago, water was really good. And water can be really good. We've all had that sip of water that was just like so perfect because we needed water at that moment. Yeah. And that pleasure we get from eating and drinking is is a way for our body to say, yes, you need to be doing this. But we have since manufactured foods to be so,

good to take advantage of exactly what our bodies are trained to give us pleasure for, that we've been able to make foods that are like so much better than anything you would just find out there. Such a good point. If you're eating gruel, you know, eating gruel and drinking water, then actually they're quite similar in terms of the joy that they're going to give you, right? Well, yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. I think like a seared anelope state.

probably did really hit the spot when you were hungry. But now we can base that antelope steak and butter with some herbs. And we can raise the, not just the antelopes, but we can raise cattle to have like all this fat marbling in them. And food has just become so much better. It's not a normal stimuli anymore. It's super normal. And Hannah, you and I have talked about this on the podcast and in real life before. But like, you know, the processing that we can do to food to make it just so good, water can't compete. Now, we have processed super normal liquids that are like more delicious than anything we would

normally have found. For example, what am I drinking right now? I'm drinking a vanilla flavored, no sugar, Coca-Cola. So I'm getting like no nutrient value at all from this, not even food energy. I'm just getting these flavors. And I can drink 12 of these during a podcast, you know? You'd be quite burpee. You'd be quite burpee.

Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I still think that Logan is on to something here where like I've, I've definitely eaten food and been like, oh my gosh, this is so. Oh, good. And although I sometimes really enjoy a beverage, I've never had as strong of a pleasure from a beverage as a food. Do you think so? I think I have, you know. You do. Yeah, if it's like, it's mostly cold beer or like, or like a really, really, really good glass of white wine, like crisp and dry and delicious in the right setting.

it's like, just give me more. I've definitely had that sensation. I mean, it doesn't last very long. And there's a point where you're like, actually after about two of them, I'm like, okay, I'm done. But I definitely, yes. For me, I think that there's like a similar satiation, as it were. I'm not a foodie, though, right?

I think if someone was a foodie. They might privilege food. Yeah, I think that everyone's a little bit different, but I still think that at a fundamental level, I think you're right, Logan, and here's why it might make sense. And this is just me coming up with a hypothetical, you know, speculative answer. But I think that when it comes to beverages and hydration, there really is this upper limit to where you can't drink anymore because it is actually dangerous for you. And we've talked about this all the way back in our first episode.

We've talked about water poisoning. But if you find a food source that's going to give you a lot of. of energy to live, there isn't so much of an upper bound because your body can take the excess calories and convert them to fat to store that help you survive in case you don't find food later. And so, of course, under that thinking, I would get why food would be more pleasurable because your body has evolved to say, yes, have more of this, have more, have more, have more, because we can store it for later.

But when you drink a beverage, your body might say, oh, yes, the hydration we needed, but also don't keep going because it will make you uncomfortable and there's no benefit beyond a certain point at this moment. What we should have evolved to feel pleasure in is in storing potable water. Like, oh, yeah, pour that stream water into a canteen. I love doing this. But we didn't. That would have been useful. Maybe if we had sensory organs in the canteens, it could have happened. But I think that's probably what's going on.

Your body is like, look, we need to encourage the food eating because it's always worth it. But the beverage, we're going to limit more. So you just don't get the same dopaminergic effect from beverages. I like the idea that you could even have the water storage pouches, you know, maybe on your hips, just like extra. Yeah. If we had biological water storage pouches, you know, outches evolved into our bodies, then I think we would feel the same kind of like, oh, this is so good, I got to order more. And we would just like overdrink all the time.

Okay, next question. This one's from Timothy. Timothy says, Dear Hannah and Michael, what are some of your favorite ratios? Naring it to just one seems too difficult. Here's some of mine. High of tallest mountain, height of tallest building, 10 to 1. Distance of the earth to sun against the diameter of the sun 100 to 1. Isn't it amazing that Everest is only 10 times taller than the Birch Kalifa? And yes, it's a long way from the Earth to the Sun, but the Sun itself is very large. I really like this question. I've got some of my own. I've got some of my own ratios. You feel free to jump in as well, Michael, here. Obviously, I think we should start with the Earth's sun and moon, right? That the Sun is 400 times wider than the Moon and by pure chances is 400 times

further away. That seems like an absolutely extraordinary ratio. It's extraordinary. What a great coincidence. Yeah. There's others though. Do you want to hear others? Yeah, please. Give me some more. In the 1930s, Paul Dirac was trying to work out the ratio between the electric force, right, sort of subatomic particle level and the force of gravity. And he worked out the ratio was 10 to the 40. So that's a one followed by 40 zeros. And then he was like, obviously, you can do something else now. So he worked out the age of the universe measured in atomic ticks. How many times a clock the sort of size of an atom basically has been beating since the beginning? And ended up with 10 to the 40 again.

And he was like, that can't be a coincidence. This is, I don't believe in coincidence this in the physical world. So he was like, okay, surely there's something going on here. Maybe gravity, maybe they started off as one to one. And the gravity itself must be slowly weakening as the universe ages. It just doesn't make sense that they'd be the same number. But there's a few other places where the same number popped up. So in Jupiter, this might be my favorite one, I think.

In Jupiter, Jupiter's got three moons, right? And in the time that Ganymede loops Jupiter once, Europa goes around exactly twice. Boop boop-boop. And I-O goes around four times. Boop-boop-boop. it's like that's a weird coincidence

isn't it? Isn't that a weird coincidence that you've basically got this actual sort of clockwork

moon system that's just this absolute clean one to two to four you know? I think that's

a weird coincidence anyway there's lots of these and it makes me question the existence of God. Yeah, right?

One that I really like is that almost exactly halfway between the Plunk scale and the size of the

observable universe. So right in the middle between the smallest and the biggest things is a human cell. That's good. That's a coincidence, isn't it? Yeah, a few tenths of a millimeter is right there in the middle. So what we are made out of is just right there in the middle. We are average. Isn't that interesting? Just as much stuff is bigger. There's just as many measurements bigger than us as smaller than us in this universe we find ourselves in. Freaky. Freaky and unexplained. Freaky. Thank you, God. Here's a question from the Restis Science subreddit.

This comes from Drunk Sox. I didn't even know we had a subreddit. I'm very excited about this news. Oh, yeah, all of you out there. I'd love to see you there. Bring your questions, your comments. Tell me how unkept my beard now looks. I apologize for that.

I'm just not around the kinds of equipment I need to tend it well. But I will be. Oh, I didn't think it looks. You know what, until you pointed it out, it hadn't occurred to me. I just feel a bit rough. But look, here's drunk socks's question. Hello, I am investigating what makes a good question. Because I'm developing an app to have good and interesting conversations based on what people are curious about.

I've come to the conclusion that there are some archetypes of questions that open up something interesting. What good question have you been asked? And what's your favorite question this podcast has addressed? I would love to see your list of question archetypes, drunk socks, because I've never thought of questions in that way. I've never thought of what, is there a taxonomy of types of questions or ways a question can be constructed? But when it comes to a good question I've been asked, man, I think kids, of course, always ask the best ones because they're not afraid. And sometimes the way they phrase the question shows a connection or a lack of connection that we all, all the older ones of us have all just assumed. Once a kid asked me, hey, what's the opposite of a duck?

And I was like, whoa, I love this because it really forces us to question what opposite means. Yeah. And it's also got room for a lot of create. because you could say, oh, the opposite of a duck is a jump. See, I'm interpreting duck as in like to duck down to crouch down. And you get to do some wordplay. And then you start to wonder about like why words mean the things that they mean. And so yeah, I don't know. I just, I keep going back to that question. I like that a lot. I mean, I guess, sorry, I'm just thinking about the duck question. It's just a really good one. Because the duck is comfortable on land,

water and in the air, right? Right. So the opposite would be a creature that's not comfortable anywhere. It'd be me. Yeah. You are the opposite of a duck. I also think that it's about, I think that the really good questions are ones that actually the duck question fits into, which take something that feels really familiar and then

give you a route to seeing an entirely new light. Yeah. I think those are the really good questions. that start on common ground and take you somewhere completely original and unexpected. I think those are really good questions. Yeah, yeah. They don't always have clear answers, but a good question is more about directing and disrupting thinking. So I'm going to be at OpenSauce soon, and I'm going to be on Hank Green's podcast.

Nice. where you ask him questions before you arrive and he tries to prepare and give you answers. I'm very excited, but I asked questions like, how big do dogs think the world is? Like, you know, a dog might, you know, live in North Carolina and then it moves with its family to Florida. Like, what does it think happened? Is it like, whoa, I'm far away? Or is it like, oh, hey, all the smells are different? I wonder what happened. I also asked if humanity suddenly forgot the concept of love, would we ever, and if so, how long would it take for us to rediscover it?

Oh, that's a nice question. Because we still have all the related feelings of companionship and loyalty and all of that. But how long would it take for us to be like, hey, I think these all are fitting into a thing that should have its own name. Let's call it love. And I don't think that there is an answer to that in the same way that there is an answer to the question, what's the average height of a human? Sure. I think instead good questions just make you stop and think very differently about stuff that you normally, well, it was normally left unquestioned. Yeah. That sounds really good. I'd always be tempted with the Hank Gray one. I'd always be tempted to ask in something quite sort of deep and human about himself too. Well, I did. I also, I don't know which ones he's going to choose. I had to give more than he's going to pick. But I also asked, when was the loneliest you ever felt?

We'll see if he's brave enough and trusts me enough to tell me. That's interesting. When's that coming out? I have no idea. Well, we'll watch out for it. We'll watch out for it. Those are all excellent questions. And all the questions from you guys were excellent as well.

I've just been on the subreddit for the rest of science. It's really lovely in there. It's just loads of lovely people talking about things just really enjoyable. Maybe we should do an AMA at some point. So where should people go to participate in our subreddit? just to R slash the rest of science. But we should definitely do an AMA. Maybe we should do a rule where it's like it has to have a certain number of posts or something and then we'll do it.

I don't want to hold, I don't want to hold that hostage. I don't want to force people because then they'll all join. We'll do the AMA and then they'll all just leave. We got to earn this the old fashioned way. So yeah, we do look at it. So leave questions there, R slash the rest is science. As always, you can email them to the rest is science at goalhanger.com. We love those questions. Keep them coming. And thanks for watching.

Yes, indeed. We will see you next week for our normal episode on what days it come out now? I'm not sure. Sometime on Sunday or Monday, depending on where you are in the world. And then another field notes episode. See then.