The Rest Is Science - The Fluid Dynamics of Fountain Pens

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

The wait is finally over: Hannah Fry introduces Michael Stevens to her beloved fountain pen collection and the beautiful physics behind how fountain pens work. From a £20 Lamy Safari to vintage Waterman and Montblanc pens, Hannah explains how capillary action, surface tension, air pressure and carefully engineered feeds control the flow of fountain pen ink. Michael tests the collection, chooses his favourite and discovers why the most expensive pen is not necessarily the nicest to write with. Then Hannah and Michael answer your questions: which words are terrible at their jobs, how do aeroplane wings actually generate lift, and which moment in history would they most like to witness? ------------------- 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

Welcome to The Rest of Science. I'm Hannah Frye. And I'm Michael Stevens. It's time, Michael. Is it time? It's time. Finally. The day has finally come. Man, I was just saying, we did a video about my watches and people were like,

stop it, Michael. It's Hannah's turn to do fountain pens. It's fountain pen day. I love it. I brought them in. I wanted to wait until you're in person. That makes sense. That makes sense.

And I can't wait to try these because I've probably used a fountain pen once in my life. Really? I'm not very familiar with them. Okay. you're going to not only be familiar with the delightful range that I brought you, but with the incredibly beautiful physics that lies behind you. Good, because I don't know how they work. Because let me tell you this, right?

Fountain Pairs, it's not just like doodling with a ballpoint, right? This is an elegant dance of hydrodynamics going on behind the scenes. You're about to be blown away by it. And so are you. And so are you. Okay, so here they are. This is not my entire collection, but I just thought I'd bring a range. Yeah, yeah.

Some of these are much more expensive than other. Can I guess which one's the most expensive? You can. You can. And some of them are more special than others. So more expensive and special are not the same thing. I haven't really thought this through. Let me go.

Okay, do you want to have a little look? See what you reckon is the most expensive. Okay, I'm going to guess the most expensive is this one. You're absolutely correct. Okay. Should you hold it up? Yeah. I'll hold this up.

Yeah. It's heavy. It is heavy. Oh my gosh. And big. And it just looks like it's made of platinum probably or something. I don't actually think it is. I don't think it is.

But you're right. That one is. Look at this little dongle. I want to just flick that, but I'm not going to. The reason why this is expensive, though, this is like, this is sort of writing instruments become jewelry, right? Yes, that's what I was looking for, the jewelry component. This is like you're signing autographs with this pen.

Okay. That's what you're doing. Do you want to try it? Should I really start with that? I don't think this is the nicest one. Okay, all right, yeah. It's the most expensive, but I don't think it's the nicest. How do I start?

What do I do? Wait, let me just, let me tell you what this one is really quickly, though. Please. Before you were, okay, the reason why this one is expensive is because it's like a limited edition, Jimmy Hendricks special thing. Do you see how this is like the guitar? You see what I mean? I get it.

That's like the little wah-wah bar. Yeah. What do they call that? Let's call it a wah-wah. No, let's call it what it is. So that everyone goes, wow, he knows guitars so well. Whammy bar The wah-wah pedal

All right, hold Let me say this again Oh, that's like the Whammy bar on my mini guitars Don't pretend for even a second That you don't think it was called The Wah-W-W bar Editors include that entire bit

Because it pays off This episode is brought to you By Cancer Research UK As if they weren't cool enough already Some astronauts have now added Cancer Scientist to their CV They are making use of microgravity conditions in space to carry out experiments. That's because the same thing that lets astronauts experience weightlessness

also affects how cancer cells grow, behave, and respond to drugs. And back down on Earth, Cancer Research UK is working with astronomers to explore tumors with technologies that are typically used to map the Milky Way, which I think gives you an idea of just how complex this disease is. That's right. There are over 200 different types of cancer. But by pushing boundaries and embracing the latest technologies, Cancer Research UK has helped double cancer survival in the UK over the past 50 years. And today it is continuing to save and improve lives around the world. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research and breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancer researchukuk.org slash rest of science.

Mr. President, my company formed for me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap to blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant. What would happen if I stop grilling?

You starve. You freeze to death. That's what? With great power comes great deniability. I'm not the first, Danny. Digger. See the trailer online. Only here's October 2nd. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life?

You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaiaa and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today, I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride.

Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. I have two favorites. One is my favorite to write with and the other is my favorite because of the mechanism. Okay. Your favorite to write with is this one. Incorrect. That is the least interesting. Really? It's also up there with the most expensive. I picked it because I can see ink stains on it, like it's used a lot.

Okay. Your favorite to write with is this one. No, but that is the most special one. That's a 1920s Waterman. That is extremely special, and I'm going to tell you why. But to write with, it's because it's quite old. It's still quite fun to write with. It's got a 14-carat gold nib that's flexible so you can change the width of the line as you write it.

But it's not the nicest to write with. I would say the nicest to write with is this pelican. Oh, okay. A little German design. I've heard this name before. It's absolutely delightful. The nice thing about this one is they got a patent in the 1920s for the way that you fill the ink. So you unscrew and then screw it.

It creates a little vacuum in the table. chamber. It's very delightful to write with. But it's also just, it's the right stiffness of the nib. It's just, it's just absolutely delightful. Okay. Should I give you a little history lesson? Tell, yeah, give me a history and tell me how they work. Okay. Why the fountain? What's a fountain? Okay. The first thing that's worth saying about a fountain pen, okay, is that unlike a ballpoint pen or a pencil, you've got to write slowly. You can't, like, you can't be, like, rushing what you're doing. So I thought I'd bring in, I wanted to, like, prove to you that really I'm a fountain pen obsessive. Yeah, yeah. So I brought in my PhD, right?

Oh. This is the thing that I brought into my Viver. And just to prove to you that I really do love writing in fountain pens, look how beautiful it is when you write equations with a fountain pen. Look at that. Right. You've got, you're not rushing that. You are, you're got to take care, because otherwise you get blocks all over the place. Right. You've got a like, can I keep leafing through it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This is, you're not. You're, you're not. You're, you're, you're These aren't equations, but this is your handwriting in fountain pen. Mm-hmm. Interesting.

The other thing that's worth saying about writing with a fountain pen, I mean, writing more generally, but I think particularly so with a fountain pen, is that it just uses different parts of your brain than when you are typing on a computer. When you're typing on a computer and you hit the letter A, it's the same action every single time. The A comes out exactly the same. But when you're handwriting something, no two A's are ever going to be identical. That's right.

The information that you're writing is just a more holistic, full-body experience than it is when you're just like plugging your brain into it. You don't have to tell me about the beauty of handwriting. I do it with pencils, but you're right. There's so much more information in every letter because you can change its attitude, its size, its boldness. I can say I'm switching to 2B for this. And yes, you can change the typeface and the font in a digital thing. But the connection to my visceral body is not the same, is it? It's so different.

First of all, it's like, it's analog. Exactly how much bigger I make it and where it curves, it's all changeable. And it imprints in my memory because it's not just been up here and on my fingertips. It's been in my whole body. I genuinely find that I make less mistakes when I am handwriting, but particularly when I'm handwriting with a fountain pen because you have no choice but to go slowly. I really want to write with a fountain pen now. I want to see what it's like to have to go slow. Okay, I'm going to start with a cheapie. Okay, this is like a very modern fountain pen. This is the cheapest end. Okay,

this is like 20 quid. This is very functional. It's called a lammy, a lammy safari. There's no, there's no bells, no whistles going on here. But it's a good way to understand exactly what is going on with the fountain pen. Because, okay, you have this little chamber of ink. Let me see if I can remember. This one is a cartridge. You have a little chamber of ink, and then somehow that ink has to make its way down the pen to the page. Now, it can't be just gravity that's working here because otherwise, as you turn your pen upside down, it would come out. So what is going on here is capillary action. So it's the same reason why redwood trees are able to soak up water from underground, despite being unbelievably tall in the sky.

as you touch the fountain pen to the page, the page itself is drinking in the ink. That is what is causing the ink to... So there is ink already at the tip. It's just thin and it's waiting to be sucked in, absorbed into paper. Exactly right. And the reason why there is ink at the tip is because the nib has got a little ridge down it. It's sort of split down the middle. Do you see the line down the middle of the nib?

So that is what is allowing the ink to flip. from the chamber, you can go to some writing. I got you some nice paper as well that it's got it. And I need to press the nib, like, flat side down. Like, if the nib is like this, I don't write on the edge of the nib. I, like, push. I mean, you kind of can. It depends on the design of the nib.

Some of them work better with angles. Okay, but what I also want you to notice with this, he's written an A, do another A. It'll never be the same again. I'm going to write the whole alphabet. Okay, go on. All right. So the other thing that's worth noticing with this very,

eat no frills fountain pen. Oops. I just wrote the alphabet wrong. Shoot. It's because you're over. You're so enamored. I was just so into the flow. The action. I liked my E so much.

I'm like, I'm going to do another E. You can wait, G. Okay. So the other thing that you'll notice with this no frills pen is that not only do you have the channel that allows the ink to come down the front, but there's also a little hole

that's been drilled at the top of that line. What is up with that hole? They all have it. Okay. So they all have it. basically what is happening here is that that hole is like a structural fix to stop that line from cracking further. Oh.

So this is what you do also on aircraft. If you have like a little crack or something, you go and you drill a hole at the top of the crack. And it just spreads out the forces a little bit better so that it doesn't end up cracking further. So it's like it makes the split physically stronger counterintuitive. to have that little hole there at the top. Here's the thing, though, if you just had that line, that kind of capillary line down the top of the nib and the hole, then the ink would just splay out all over the place.

So old-school pens, like really old-fashioned pens, would have that. It would just be like the metal front, the kind of things that you would put on a quill, metal front split down the middle to allow the ink to flow down, and then you'd often end up with like splodges all over the place. So legend has it. In like that 1880s or so,

Lewis Waterman, of Waterman-Pen-Pen fame, was signing a contract, and he just had a normal nib, like the metal nib with this kind of capillary tube in the hole at the top. And then he was signing this contract, and ink went everywhere. Because there's no control of that flow.

Also, if you press the nib too hard, and that capillary channel splits, you just get like this dump of ink. that comes down. In fact, it's almost like, it can be like bellows where you're lowering and raising the pressure as you, if you repeatedly touch the nib down on the paper, which opens and closes this capillary channel,

which draws loads and loads of ink down. Right. So he was like, this is not working, this is not good. So what he did, supposedly, as legend has it, is he got a penknife out and started cutting this shape that you see on the underside of the pencil. This black part. The black part.

What is that called? The feed. Okay, so here is the 1920s Waterman. So that's his design. Oh, yeah. Design. And it's slightly changed. The one, the pink lammy is like, I bought it about two months ago.

You can kind of see the differences. And some of them have like, here's the fancy pants Montblanc. You see how it's almost like a fin? Yeah, like a heat sink. Like a heat sink, exactly. So what happens with this feed is that if you get too much ink coming down, it will end up filling in to all of those channels. It will end up sitting behind the metal front of the nib and stopping it from just flooding onto the page. So do you need to periodically empty that?

No. Or it just eventually makes its way onto the page. But this is where the unbelievably delicate balance of these pens comes into play. and it's where you get the complete difference between a pen that costs 20 quid. Although, to be honest, this one is pretty good. But a pen that costs 20 quid and a pen like this one, which is more like a grand, right? Whoa. What about this one, this Montblanc?

That one, that one, yeah. Anyway. Okay, can I, first of all, can I write with these as well? Please, go ahead. I'll start with the Waterman. Okay, so what you're going to like about the Waterman here. Which I notice? This is, because it's a gold nib, it's flexible.

So it's from the 1920s. I mean, imagine what people are. all right in the 1920s. So it's flexible. So the width of your line changes the harder you press. So you can get really fine lines with it. But if you press it harder, you get like a bit more chum. I can get very fine lines. And this ink is like a purple ink. And so the very fine lines are very purple. But the thicker ones are like a black. Almost much darker. Yeah. So this is this hydrodynamics balance that is going on with these pens because you know, you're having the ink that's coming down. You don't want it to dry too quickly because otherwise it will dry on the nib itself.

You don't want it to come down too fast because otherwise it will flood the feed and then you end up with a really blobby pen. But you also want it to like, you don't want it to choke up. You don't want the pen to choke up and then not to be enough of the fluid coming out. And so this is the thing is that these pen designers end up designing the ink absolutely perfectly in balance with the shape and structure of their nips. So if you've got a Montblanc pen, you need to put Montblanc ink in it. You've got a Waterman pen, you need to put Waterman ink in it. Because especially some of the Japanese ones like Pilot, I don't have one. I'm really like, you're a sailor. Oh my gosh, what I would do. They're so expensive. But you can't just like whack another ink in there because the whole design of it, is very specific to the chemistry of the ink that you're putting through it. I've already got ink on my hair. I think it's because I watched them all yesterday because they're in a drawer and like, you know, I don't use all of them every day.

So I like rinse them all through and I think I didn't dry them properly. So right, what's your favorite so far? Do you notice how much stiffer this nib is? Yeah. This is the like, I noticed the Waterman one with the gold nib was very soft. It felt soft. And the lettering that it put down could be. be so thick, so wet. So, so sloshy. A wet noodle is what they call it. I mean, this one's not quite a wet

noodle. It's a flex nib. But yeah, you can get up to like where you're almost, you're almost painting. Okay, let me try the lambie again. You want to try the lambie? I want to try a $20. The $20 guy. Because this one felt to me the most like just writing with a regular pen. Right, which is what it's supposed to be. It's a workhorse, this one. Yeah. You can get, you can do good speed on that one as well. You can do good speed, yes. Whereas I felt like with the other two, I could not go too quickly. I went too quickly with my autograph with the Waterman, and it just became like a scratch. Slushy.

It is. Not even splotchy, but I just didn't even push hard enough. Right. Yeah. Yeah, incredibly fine balance you've got going on. So you have to find a pen that also matches your handwriting style of what you want it to do. So the other thing about this Waterman, I think, is really interesting, is the way that they fill the chamber. So, you know, in this design of the 1920s, you know, previously you would have an ink well and you would dip into the ink well and then and then, you know, write and then dip and then write.

When you dipped an old style pin, like a quill, into an ink well, the ink through just surface tension gets like stuck on it. Like you've wet the pin. Yeah, which is what's going on behind the scenes here, right? This is like surface tension that keeps it in the feed and all those fins that you get at the back. Yes, but it would be incredibly difficult to get the right line, right? You would start off and it would be very splashy, and then as you go on, it would get more scratchy and scratchy until you can't see it anymore, you need to dip again. So one of the big innovations of fountain pens, which is really nice in this Waterman from the 1920s,

is they create a little chamber inside that's like, it's essentially like a little rubber bag, right, that you can compress, and I don't want to square ink everywhere, but you can compress, Okay, so what you do is this has got this lever here. If you flick it up, what you can do is you can, do you see that? Yeah. Do you see that? Like the little bubble up here? Yeah.

So you compress the little bag inside. Yeah. And so that is how, which causes the ink to flood out. So what you can do is how you fill up this pen. This pen doesn't unscrew. It's not like the modern ones. Oh. You dunk it into a pot of ink.

And it sucks it up. Exactly. You like create a vacuum. Yeah. Compress the bag. inside and then open up the bag and then all the of the ink floods in. So this was like, that was like a really big innovation of a way to fill these, these pens with ink. The only problem with it is that the rubber inside can perish. I was going to say. Yeah. I mean,

it worked really well though. So this is like the really nice, beautiful, kind of innovative design. This one here, this is the Parker. This is the Parker duo fold. I like how that one looks. Do you? Yeah. I thought you might, you know. So, This is like the loud American cousin. Okay. So this pen, also from the 1920s, can you imagine all of the things that this has written in the last hundred years? I just love that idea.

Yeah. Can I write with it? Absolutely, you can. I think you might like this one more because it's much thinner. It's also very short. And it's just kind of a burnt orange color. It is a burnt orange color. Okay, so this pen, Parker created it.

Do you like that one? This is much thinner. It's way thinner. It's too scratchy for me. I like it. I like I'm sploshier. I think I could write smaller with this, which I like to do. Okay, so this pen is like, it's a similar idea to the Waterman.

It's got a little bag inside. But this one, you unscrew the end. And then there's a little button that you can pull and push. So it's the same idea. Be careful not to get inkery where. But if you pull that button out. Should I? I mean, you can.

Probably one. I've got ink all over my hands. This one is inking me a lot. Inking you. I'm sorry. This is actually, unfortunately, they're not. occupational hazards is that you can tell how hard I've been working by how much ink I've got on my hands. Yeah, right. Okay, so this one is the same idea.

Pull this all the way out? No, I wouldn't. Okay. You get ink everywhere, but it's the same idea, same idea that you are physically creating a space that is larger and smaller in order to backfill it with ink. I see. Okay, so this pen, the thing that's nice about this pen is that they released this pen, 1920s, and they charge $7 for it when normally good pen. cost about $3. Yeah, yeah. But they wanted to make this pen super famous, so they literally made it this like burn orange color,

sort of like really, sort of, it reads alarm. And then they did a stunt where they took them into airplanes, chucked them out of airplanes, and then collected them on the ground and be like, look, it still worked. It survived. So this is, this pen isn't so much solving a sort of a physical challenge. It's not like the mechanism of this pen that's so special. It's more that this pen was solving the problem

of like, how do you make a pen really famous? How do you make a pen break through and have loads of people want to buy it? The other ones, hang on, let me just show you what else I've got here. So you know how I said that thing about how the ink drying really can be an issue? You want your ink to not dry too much. You want it to be thin enough that it can find its way down to the paper, but you don't want it to dry really quickly. So this is one innovation that Montblanc came up with. This is from, I think, the 1960s, where they cover the front of the nib in order to reduce how quickly the ink would dry. You might like this one as well. This one's also really thin. I like this one a lot. It's the most like a normal pen. This one, by the way, also was aimed at,

this is a Montblanc that was aimed at school teachers, which I think tells you everything about how this industry of fountain pens has changed. Because it used to be, really just like, oh yeah, of course you would own a fountain pen. It's sort of a thing that everybody needs to have. And now Montblanc has gone like high-end luxury, luxury, luxury. It's not sort of, you know, it's writing instruments as jewellery. Okay, two last ones to show you. These are the ones that I use the most.

Okay. These are the ones that I write with the most. So this is a classic Montblanc, right? They are expensive, but I think that they are worth the investment because this is the full-proof pen. This one doesn't leak. This one doesn't, you don't get ink. everywhere. It's just like, it's just a really good pen. It's a design. It's got a gold nib on the end. Go ahead.

Very classic look. Very classic, right? Designed in the 1920s, I think, and basically has kept the same design ever since. It's just like a really good, amazing pen. But you'll also see these. These are the ones that you'll see when you get presidents or CEOs signing documents. They'll sort of win out one of these. Yeah, they'll sign like their first letter and then they'll donate it to someone who helped. Right. But these ones, the other innovation that these ones had is that they made it so it had a removable piston. So as opposed to these ones from, so all of these earlier ones from the 1920s up to 1960s where you were filling a barrel inside of the pen, this one has a piston. So if you open it up on the bottom bit where you would normally expect it when you're at school, your hands are so. I'm so covered in ink. I'm really sorry. What, uh, where do I open it?

No, you do it. Here we go. Okay, so this one, it has a piston, but the piston is like, sorry, you can see where I've washed it. The piston, you can remove, so it's sort of like halfway between a cartridge and a, okay, okay. So it's still a valve that you're filling. Right. Um, but it's one that, that, that you can, you can take away and switch. So you dip the tip into ink and draw it up. You still do that. Yeah, exactly. And then finally my favorite one. Okay. my Pelican, right? This has been through, been with me in so many good ways. You're not going to like it at all, though.

Let me try. I like it because it's really wide. It's big. This one you have to be very slow with. Huh. Yes. It's very big. It's a big device.

And the letters it writes are very thick. You cannot write little tiny things with this. You've got to mean it. You've got to mean it. You're committed. You're committed. You're committed. You're putting on a show when you write with this.

It's halfway between writing and painting. It does put down ink really well. It's very smooth. I can actually go pretty quick with it, and it still has putting down ink. Some of them, when I go fast, I get like a dotted line. Right. Yes. Rally instability.

Yes. Is that what it is? A bit fluid and out for you, yeah. Because the other thing about this is, especially the older ones where they had a chamber, what can end up happening is you sort of, as you draw down ink, you end up creating a bit of a vacuum in the well, in the chamber, so that it can choke the ink flow. So what happens with these, what ends up happening is the pens have to breathe, basically, right? So within the fins at the back and the feed, they'll have like little ways that air can soak in. Or even, I mean, the other thing that I

really like about some of these is in the hole that's right at the top of the capillary line, they can end up air can get in through that way. But they can be really decorative. Look at this little waterman. It's got a heart instead of a hole, which I think is really sweet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yes, what can end up happening if you go too fast is that rally instability is the thing that when you turn on your tap and it sprays off into little splashes, sprays off into little droplets, you end up with the same thing as air goes back into the, into, the main chamber, but sort of in reverse.

But yeah, you can end up with the pen kind of choking if you're going too far, especially the older ones where they've got these vacuum chambers. Yeah, which one's your fave? Well, I'm not sure. What should I be looking for in a fountain pen? It's about your style. How is this different? Why would you choose a fountain pen and not a felt tip pen?

For example, because I love those. I love how much ink they put down, but also I can, I can, rotate them in my hand without causing a problem whereas here I have to always keep the nib in a certain orientation to the page Yeah but that's why I like them It's the discipline that they require

I do think actually That is genuinely one of the reasons why I like them so much It's because they're really hard Like they're such a pain in the ass And I think that That adds to the joy of them Yeah this is my favorite Is it?

Yeah you know what? It's the solitaire Montblanc You've gone the, this is from the 1970s. It has a solid silver lid. You've basically gone for the fanciest one. Have I? You've gone for the fanciest one. I like it because it's small.

I just feel like I really am in control of it. You've got expensive tastes, basically. I guess so. See, I think this one is the least interesting. I thought the lambie was good too. Let me try that one again. It's just a little, it feels less dense. like there's a lot more emptiness

inside of it because it's larger and it's plastic the plastic I don't like so much because if it's in my pocket or if I sit on it it's going to break yeah no I still I think I prefer what was this one let me try the

what kind of ink this one it's got black ink oh I think it was this one this one you've gone for the two vintage Montblonks well and honestly I think it's because they have the thinnest lines.

That's it. The closest to being a pencil. The closest to not being a fountain pen. So my least favorite would be the gold-tipped watermen. Oh, really? Yeah. This guy. And then you're actually, no, I disliked your favorite the most.

That was ridiculous. That was basically a marker. I don't even, my hand can't even move large enough. But your dream is a Japanese fountain. Oh yeah, there's a particular one. My dream is a sailor Naganata Togi. Because he is probably the best nid maker of all time. He basically approached fountain pens as though they were samurai swords. Okay. So unimaginable craftsmanship, incredibly, perfectly finely balanced in terms of where you're fighting the gravity and the surface tension and the capillary action. Really, really, really carefully. designed ink, beautifully balanced pen, you know, like when you hold it, it just it feels the correct weight in your hand. Honestly, they're gorgeous, but they don't, they are so hard to get. Even if you are willing to spend a lot of money, they are really, really hard to come by.

They are samurai swords. But you know what, Christmas is coming up, so. So you guys all know what's on her list. Gosh, I was looking expectantly at you, Michael. I'm writing, I'm writing with a mechanical pencil, and I'm just enjoying. this so much more. I mean, look, you haven't converted me, but you have enlightened me. I've learned about you, but I've also learned about myself. And that's really what friends are for.

Certainly is. And I mean, we're recording four episodes today, so we're going to have inky hands all day. Well, I do love that you can't change up the ink because there's different kinds of ink, different colors, different permanency. Yeah. But you need to match the ink to the pen design. Yeah. Right.

Okay. Well, thank you. I hope that was worth the way. It was definitely worth it. I also realize I have a lot more to learn because I don't know, they don't feel different enough that I'm like, ooh, I'm noticing this. I'm still just falling back on my old, like, how heavy is it? How big is it in my hand? How quickly can I control it?

Which isn't necessarily the rubric I should be using for fountain pens. Because what I write, when I write, I'm writing because I want to put down an idea. And sometimes I have to go pretty quickly. These feel like the pens where you've got the final draft and you're like, aha, and now I'm going to put it in ink. That's interesting. Yes, I think that they are. Like, let me ask you this.

If you're watching a movie and something in the movie makes you go, oh, that would be a really good idea for a video. Oh, I would do that. You can't just pull out a fountain pen and be like, Like, okay, no, but at the same time, if I was starting a day of work and I was like, okay, what is it that I want to achieve today? I want to think about that, you know? I think the world is so fast and so many things are coming at you all over the place. You know, you go on your computer and then your WhatsApp's going and then your Instagram's

going, then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There is nothing, I think, more centering. It's almost like meditation of like sitting down with my favorite notebook. my favorite founding pen, and just alone with my thoughts and deciding what it is that I want to achieve or what the idea is that I want to get out. Okay, I completely agree with that for sure. But I feel like I can accomplish that with pencils as well. Because if I want to really sit down and make this like making tea, then I'll be like, ah, yes.

I'm going to grab my right in the rain 1.3 millimeter. I got to switch it to the 2B lead and I got to sharpen it. And there's all these processes. And then it writes with this like thicker, slower quality. I think they're writing in pencil. It's like you're showing some self-doubt there. You know, it can be undone. Whereas in pen, it's in pen.

Yeah, you know, there's room for both. I think doubt is doubt is one of the best kinds of skeletons to be built with. And I doubt everything. And so the pencil is for me. The pen is like laughing at God. And don't get me wrong, my father was a pen man. He taught me to always solve the crosswords in pen, as we discussed. Because to use a pencil shows a lack of confidence.

You're going to let the puzzle beat you. You don't bring a knife to the crossword fight. You bring a gun. Maybe in America, you do. Yeah. But you bring a two-beed pencil and a sharpener. I'll have one more question. So which one, do you travel with a fountain pen at all times?

Okay, so one or more? Usually these two. This one. That one and remind me what they are again. The Montblanc Meisterstroke, slightly smaller size. And the Pelican, Suverin, this is the M-1000, but I also have an M-800, which I like a lot. Is that smaller? I might like that one more.

You won't. Is it still all gushy? It's still all, not gushy, but just like, bam, look at me. Yes. Right, right. With the brightest ink I can find. Well, Hannah, thank you. You're welcome.

As I said, yeah, I learned about you and myself. So next up, we're going to learn about you guys. We're going to visit some of your questions after the break. Flight with 350 passengers. We assess a Prime Minister with high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex.

Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing! We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. Kill the President of Rural-Mobile. kill the president of Russia. Yes.

Who is going to be able to pull this off? Sergeant Tom McDonough. Devised as a technically rigorous, geopolitical action thriller. We have two towns friendly key. Where Britain plays its strongest arm. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt.

Available now in full, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. Think of some things that glow. Okay, fireflies, glow sticks, the northern lights. They're very cool. But what if we could replicate that glow inside our bodies and what if doing so could help us save lives? Because Cancer Research's UK scientists,

they're investigating whether a special fluorescent dye that sticks to prostate cancer cells could tackle an ongoing challenge in the operating room, removing every single trace of cancer. Because when cancer cells are glowing, and easy to spot, surgeons can precisely remove them, leaving healthy cells untouched, meaning there's less chance of the cancer returning and fewer nasty side effects. Cancer Research UK's vision is a world where everybody lives longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer,

with breakthroughs like this leading to kinder, more effective treatments. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research and breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit canterresearchuk.org slash rest is science. Okay, we're back. I brought my laptop out. It means business. It means business, yeah. And by business, I mean, your questions.

Okay, here we go. One for you, Michael first. This is from rock hard maple syrup. Rock hard maple syrup. I've had some of that before. What are your favorite bad words, not cuss words, but words that are bad at their job? that could be a lot of different things

so I will leave the interpretation up to you. Part of me wants to say something like inflammable because it means the exact same as flammable but the end of the day it's a valuable word because it still at least describes something. Yeah. Oh, I love this idea, like a bad word rather than some weird cultural taboo that makes it bad, what's a word that's bad at its job?

For example, the first one I think of is noisome. Go on. What do you think noisome means? You probably know. I don't. Okay, so what do you think it means? Noisome. If I said, oh, yeah, he actually just lives underneath the freeway.

It's a really noisome gross place. So some, you know, like awesome is full of awe. So I would assume that it was full of noise. Yeah, you would. Which I would guess is noise. And that's not what it means. Go on. Noisome.

Noisome means stinky smelly. Does it? Yeah. The word noise comes from actually the word annoy. Right. So does Onwee, by the way, which is a whole other discussion, which people don't understand where this comes from. But yeah, noisome means really, really smelly in a bad way, even though it has the word noise in it. And it just causes a lot of confusion all the time.

I think there's also confusion with nauseous. What do you think nauseous means? where you are overcome by a feeling of needing to vomit. That's what I thought too. But actually, nausea means producing the feeling of nausea. Like, ah, his shirt is nauseous. Oh, but what about nauseating? That means the same thing.

Right. Norsesious and nauseating technique. Right. People often use nauseous to mean the feeling itself. Like, oh, I'm feeling nauseous. That means, oh, so you're feeling. like you're going to be creating nausea in other people. And the thing is, I'm getting obsessed with this because I bought this kind of dictionary.

It's called a usage dictionary. And it's not about what words mean. It's about how they can be used best because David Foster Wallace said that all you need is a dictionary and a usage dictionary. And it really is helpful. You read through and you go, oh, that's the difference between these words. Right. So I think nauseous does its job.

People don't let it do its job. They use it to mean like the feeling itself of like almost puking. Like, oh, I'm nauseous. If you're nauseous, that means that you are nauseating. In others. Or maybe yourself as well. You're causing you cause yourself. What are some other words that don't do their jobs?

The one that I always think about is how emasculate or emasculating and effeminate mean the same thing, which, I mean, look, there's a, you know, flammable, inflammable, they mean the same thing. But what bothers me about it is that there's no version for the female version. That's right. Right. You can be masculine and you can be emasculated. Right. But a woman can't be effeminated.

Right. Right. Because effeminate means you're already at the bottom. Yeah. I mean, that is what the language is causing. It causes us to go, well, well, we're not. look, you're either feminine and you have no lower to go or you become, or you, you can't leave, you can't go up.

There is no up. Masculinated? Masculinated. Or, yeah, I guess. Because immasculate, you're right, is like, if masculine is there, you go down to be immasculated. Right. And then effeminate is like there.

And then feminine is at the bottom. I mean, we can turn this 90 degrees and just make. a spectrum, but you're right, there's no word for a woman losing her femininity. That's what we're getting at. To be, right, it's, it's not like a, ooh, you were infaminated. It's just masculinized. The dominant word is the male, the mailness. Right. You're either becoming more or less male. More or less male. That's it. Yeah, that's it. Because the focus is on the male side. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. The other one that, um, uh, uh, bothers me a bit, but I can't ever remember the real definition, is the phrase begs the question.

Yeah. Because people always use it to say, well, this is strange, and that begs the question, blah, blah, blah, right? Right. And it causes us to ask another question. Exactly. That's not what it means. It's not what it means, but I can never remember the actual definition. It means to assume the answer in the question itself.

Right. So, for example, if you were to say, well, look, that medicine causes you to feel sleepy because it contains a sleep-inducing drug. That's begging the question. Okay. As in like, you've answered the question already. Let me think of a better example. Okay, here's one. So I looked at up as we were going.

Okay. Okay. This fabric is the best because it's superior to all other fabrics. Exactly. See, you're just kind of not actually providing an answer. you're causing the question to just be stated as a statement. Here's what it says. It says putting forward an argument where the premise secretly assumes the conclusion is already true.

Yeah, right, right. That's begging the question. Same with question begging is the exception that proves the rule. That one took me a long time to understand because I thought, well, if there's an exception, then it's disproving the rule. But here's, do you know what it really means? I don't know if I do. What it really means is two things. One is that you thought of that exception because it is so exceptional, it proves that it's exceptional because it's just not the norm at all.

Like if someone said, oh, it's so quiet in the country. And someone said, well, no, because two years ago, there was a concert one night and it was so loud. And you're like, that's the exception that proves the rule. And it's because it's an exception. Yes, because two years ago, you're able to still remember that loud night. in the country, that's because the country is as a rule, like, always so quiet. Right, I see. I see.

The other thing, and this is what, this is, I think, actually very useful, is when you are notified of an exception to a rule, so you can immediately assume that the rule exists. For example, in a shop, if you see a sign that says all refrigerator orders must prepay for delivery, that's an exception to the rule, which probably exists, which is you don't have to prepay for delivery for anything else. Right, of course. Okay. And that is the exception proving the rule. It's showing that the rule exists because an exception must have been made against some rule that actually exists. So yeah, you can assume that a rule exists and it's not even been spoken. It's been proved by its exception.

Okay. I just like the idea of going shopping with you and you sort of walking by the sign like that and being like, aha. Aha, exceptions are proving rules today. Yeah. That's me. This is about bad sentences, right? Bad phrases. Well, bad words.

Bad words. I think it's bad if no one knows what it means. I'm putting, begs the question in there because no one knows what it means. Exactly. And even though we've just sat and explained it and I've read out the definition, I still know for sure what it means. Oh, yeah, exactly. Are people going to start using it correctly now?

Nope. Nope. So, okay, that's going in. There's also words that mean the opposite thing, right? So I'm thinking here, dust is the classic one, right? of like to dust something means that you get rid of the dust, and then to dust something can also mean that you add. The other one that I always think about is the American definition for quite versus the British definition for quite. Because in America, am I correct in saying that quite

quite means very? And here it means not very. Oh, right. If I say, oh, that's quite good. I mean, it's really good. Yeah. And if I say that's quite good, it means it's not very good. Really? Yeah. Okay. I mean, okay, if you were doing like posh old English and you were like, that was quite lovely, then yes, it means very good. Okay, so we're doing it the old-fashioned way. I think you are doing it the old-fashioned way because if you said to me now, did you have a nice weekend?

And I said, it was quite good. It means it wasn't very good at the whole. What does chuffed mean? Happy. Happy. Okay. It doesn't sound like it means happy. What doesn't sound like?

My wife is like, oh, she's so chuffed. I'm like, oh, does she need like some ointment? it sounded like the worst thing to be, oh, guys, I'm chuffed. Like, I've, my skin's coming off and it's all red. But no, chuffed means happy. And I was like, how? You had so many sounds to choose from and you chose chuffed. You Americans are missing out some great words, though.

You don't have the word fath. Ah, yeah, fath about. You honestly, I think that is, that is, I think America as a country would be doing much better if they only had the word. We've got lolligag. We've got dilly gag. Lolligag sounds like an X-rated channel, frankly. It does, actually. Whoa.

Okay, we've got Dilly Dally. I use that one a lot. Okay, Dilly Daly. But Dillie Dally's Old School English. Is it? Yeah. Just copying stuff from us when we were in charge of you. Okay, let's move on to another question.

Okay, all right, let's go for it. Okay. This is from Quest for Neon, also from Reddit. I work at an aerospace company. One of the basic principles we rely on is the lift generated by the aerofoils, the shape of the wing. While talking to a group of engineers, it came up that the old explanation of what causes low pressure above the wing and high pressure below, that the longer part of an air molecule over the wing causes it to travel faster, is not valid due to the false assumption of continuity between the two particles. However, none of us knew the proper explanation that succeeded it. Can you help update this mental model for a curious engineer?

Can you? Can I tell you my favorite thing about this question? Yeah. This is an engineer at an aerospace company. He's asking about how aeropoils work. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what?

I once was on a flight, a BA flight, a transatlantic BA flight. And it was one of those situations where the captain, because I think they get a list of the names of the passengers. And the captain recognized my name on the list and then came over for a chat and I got to go in the cockpit and so on. Oh my gosh. But when I was in the cockpit, while we were over the Atlantic, I was like, guys, do any of you know how planes fly? Do you only of you know how Aerofoils work? And the three pilots got into this massive argument with each other, and none of them could actually agree as to what it is that makes planes fly.

Yeah, I believe it. Right. It's not as simple as most of the explanations were given are. I mean, it also sort of doesn't matter because we know that they do. They work. They work and they work reliably, and we know how to tune the design in order to make them work extremely well. So it sort of doesn't matter. But what's going on?

on. Okay, so the traditional explanation that Quest for Neon is describing here is that you have this shape of the wing, sort of like a tear drop shape almost. Yeah, it's curved on top, flat on the bottom. Exactly. And the idea is that you have two air particles, you can kind of change your frame of reference, so you can imagine that you've got the wing passing through the air, or you can imagine that the wing stays still and the air moves around it. Okay. So if you go over the first version where the wing cuts through the air. Let's say you've got two little air particles here that are just mining their own business having a lovely time. And then all of a sudden, this wing slices through them. Okay, one of them's

going to go up, it's going to be pushed up, the other one's going to be slightly pushed down, and then they meet again at the end. This is the old-school explanation. If you then change that frame of reference that you keep the wing steady, essentially what these particles are doing is one's going up and over the long way around, around this curve, and the other one is just going straight to the back. Yeah. So when they meet again, one of them has traveled further than the other. Therefore, it's moved faster.

Therefore, the pressure must be lower, because faster air has lower pressure. That's what I was told as a kid. Right. And then in addition to that, then if there is lower pressure, the wing moves up in order to match it. Okay, the problem with this explanation is there is no rule that says that these two particles have to meet up at the back, right? Yeah.

Yeah. While they're halfway across the wing, why was the guy on the top going, I got to go faster? Right. It doesn't make it any sense. Yeah. Okay. That doesn't mean that the shape of the wing being curved doesn't change the pressure because it almost certainly does. But here is the thing, okay, if it is only because the curve of the wing makes the pressure lower on the top, how can planes fly upside down?

Exactly. How is that possible? I don't know. You tell me. Okay. I will. Okay. lower pressure makes things move up.

Yep. So if it is all to do with the shape of the wing means you get lower pressure on the tops and that's the reason why the wing moves up, sure, fine, happy. But then how can planes can fly upside up, right? It doesn't make any sense. So the alternative explanation,

the first explanation is called Benui. He's the guy who says fast air is lower pressure. The second explanation is Newton. So Newton says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So the Newton explanation says, that if you've got air that's coming along like this and your wing is sort of angled like this,

your wing is angled ever so slightly upwards, you've got air that's coming in this direction. That air is then going to be deflected downwards, and so the equal and opposite reaction is that... You go up. Yeah. So the Newton explanation basically says that it's about the angle of attack,

which is the angle that you set your wings at. And thus, you can fly upside down if you fly at an angle where you have... Yeah, that makes sense. So that's fine. The only problem with that being the only explanation is that when you run smoke particles in advance of an airplane wing, in advance of an aerofoil, the air particles start moving upwards way before they get to the wing.

So this is what these pilots were saying on this BA flight. They were like, sometimes the toilets will let out, if you're like following another plane, you can see another plane out of the window. The toilets let out some sort of, I don't know, like chemicals, hopefully it's not we. Do they? I don't know. I can't remember what they actually said. Just kind of out.

Anyway, there's some stuff. During the flight. During the flight. And you can see the trail of it and it departs and goes over the wing, but well in advance of the wing, right? Like, it's not just waiting to the wing and then hitting the wing and going downwards. There's been so much debate about this, by the way. There's been so many arguments about which of the two is it actually.

And I think that the ultimate conclusion is it. It's sort of both. It's sort of both. You can't have Newton irrespective of Benouy, right? The two things are together. When you have fast air, you do have lower pressure. And you can't have Benoui and ignore Newton. The two of them are both in there.

Working together to hold the plane up. And that's why they need two wings. A Newtonian wing and a Bernoulian wing. Exactly. The thing is, Benoui and Newton, they're like explanations as to what's going on. that kind of compete with one another, that can kind of exist side by side. I mean, when you're actually trying to do this, when you're actually trying to design an aerofoil, you don't sort of like sit down and write down Bernouille and Newton and whether that which one.

It's that way more complicated than that. But they're sort of, they're just, they're shorthand explanations as to why you actually generate lift over an aerofoil. I still don't understand planes, though. I mean, I literally flew here on one and I left the plane in London, looked out the window at the plane I just flew in. And I'm like, there's no way that stays up in the air. I completely agree with you. It's still so magic to me. And I did an entire live show where half of the show was about how things fly.

And I'm still like, how are we up here? Is this just luck? Because I don't get it. The thing, it's like whenever I'm getting on a player, especially a big one. one, if you're on like an A380 or something, also, by the way, you think I'm obsessed about it, fountain pens, you should see how obsessed they are on planes. We get on a nice A380 and Airbus, one of the classics of the genre, not the best one, but one of the classics. And the number of people that are waiting by the gay, it's like, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't make any sense. But it is because air, when it's fast moving, just had different properties than air when you're almost stationary. I mean, planes can be small. But if you were to tell me, I had never heard of an airplane before and you were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can build a machine that flies. It can be like the heaviest thing ever. Like people use its size and weight to describe big stuff. It'd be like, no, no, no.

A plane has to be made of gossamer whispers. How else is going to stay up? Canvas, yeah. But they've just got powerful engines that hit that air so fast. Wack it through. They whack it through. Wack it through. Yeah.

Oh, man, do you know the design of jet engines? Oh, and the one for another day. They're amazing. They're amazing. Ask me a question about how jet ends are made so I can have an excuse to talk about them. Okay. Last question. This one is from Wren, who sent in an email.

Ren asked, if you could be there to experience any event in history or prehistory, what event would that be? I'd like to see language being invented. I don't think that it happened fast enough that you could just like show up in, I don't know, like how long ago, say 100,000 years ago, and there'd be some prehistoric human being like, oh, oh, rock? And they're all like, wait, what was that? That sound was different.

And he's like, rock. I'm only going to say rock for that one thing. And they're like, whoa, one sound for one object? Dude, that could be so useful. And he's like, yes. And like, boom, language is born on like that day. And then you've got the old people walking around being like, back in my day, we only had grunts, and now you've got all these.

There must have been a first word. Well, that's the thing. You'd have to define words so precisely that you really could say, and now that sound is being used as a word, as opposed to something else, a proto word. But if I could go back in time and witness the emergence of language over a period of millennia, that would be incredible. Wouldn't it? It would almost certainly be a name for another individual.

Well, we already know that non-human animals have different sounds for different predators and for different problems. Is that a language? Like, what point does it tip over into being like, oh, no, this is a whole creative tool set that can even describe things that don't exist? Yeah. You know, I did a documentary on this, right? of like it was about whether technology can help translate non-human language.

Oh, yeah. It was amazing. Anyway, went to go and see all these different animals, elephants, dogs, dolphins, whatever, and look at the structure of their vocalizations towards one another. Anyway, my favorite thing about this whole documentary is I went to go and see some elephant seals in California, which are called that because the males have this like very long nose. It looks like a trunk. Anyway, the thing I learned from elephant seals is that even where, even if you are generous and say that these creatures have language, some of them have much more to say than others because male elephant seals only have one word that they repeat throughout their entire lives.

Oh. And they just repeatedly say their own names. Really? So we know that it's their name? Yes. Right. Yes. Yes.

that they just say over and over again, their own personal. And what I like about this, the way it works is you have like an alpha male and then you have like a harim of women, of women, of females. What are the women doing here?

But what happens is the sneakers, the beta males, they'll circle around the harim and then they will, when the alpha's not looking, they'll tuck their nose in, pretend that they're a female to get in amongst the females.

And then they'll just slide up to one of the females, sort of put their flipper out, and then be like, in the air. Steve. Their own name. Yeah.

And the women are like, whoa, there's a Steve here. I came for Jonathan, but hello, Tyler. I heard years ago. Yeah. And I'll have to look up whether this is true or not, but they used a neural network to study whale sounds. And it was able to piece together whale language and would know how to respond. But of course, we just didn't figure out what any of it meant.

But we knew that it had the structure of a language, enough that a neural network could deal with it. Exactly right. Exactly right. There's also this amazing stuff about whales where certain whales in Australia will share vocalizations. There's so much recorded audio of this. They will start with particular vocalizations. And then over the course of two years, those same signature vocalizations will make their way up to like, northern Canada and completely different whales will be singing essentially the same tunes

that existed prior. It's almost like a whale culture. Right, completely. And this is the thing, you know, humans are what, 300,000 years old, maximum? Wales, like way, way, way, way, way, way, way older. There's all sorts of stuff going on that we have no idea about. So could I even go back and see language emerge. It was probably already there in some form. We just created a different, not in kind, but in complexity. Perhaps, yeah. Yeah, perhaps. This is a dark answer, but I'd like to go back, there might have been a time when suicide was discovered. Because we don't see it in the animal kingdom in the same way. You're right. Yeah, Nicholas Humphrey, wrote an essay in, I want to say it's the Oxford handbook to cognitive archaeology.

Okay, studying how people thought in the past by finding evidence for it. And he brought up this idea that like the concept of ending your own life must have occurred to a first person who would have thought, hey, I could do that. And he developed that into an entire theory that our awareness of our own selves was actually an evolved process that makes us love life. And he's like, if you look at higher organisms, which I don't like that term, but if you look at birds, or if you look at chimpanzees, they do stuff seemingly just because they enjoy it. They will fly, they will play with water simply because they enjoy existing. They enjoy those sensations. And he thinks that a lot of qualia and experiences came about so that we would love to be alive.

Because we'd become complicated enough mentally to understand that we could solve a problem by leaving. And that that wasn't actually a solution. And so instead, those of us that were fit and survived fell in love with tomorrow. Gosh, that's so fascinating. That's so fascinating. Because I sort of, as you say, you don't see the same thing in the animal kingdom. And I sort of wonder whether the flip side of that is that are we uniquely able to suffer from our mental health because we are such complex beings in a way that you don't see in others?

I mean, this is a question, right? This is not making this as a statement. And then maybe what you need is you need the enjoyment of life, right? The sort of thirst for existing, the falling in love with tomorrow in order to counter that. You would seemingly need an understanding of time in the future so that you could be afraid of something that wouldn't end. But then from that, the solution evolves, which is hope and other people that you just don't need if you're a cockroach. Hey, also, if you're a cockroach, you're going to survive nuclear wind. It doesn't matter.

Yeah, you'll be like, I'm here forever no matter what. Cut my head off. No big deal. No big deal. I just become two cockroaches. I don't know how it works. Wow, that's such a beautiful idea. What was that book called again?

I want to go and find out. Okay, so the book is a handbook of Cognitive Archaeology. Amazing. And it's full of just wonderful essays about trying to understand how people used to think. I like that so much. And it's very serious. It's not a bunch of those like just so stories where you're like, yes, obviously.

It's more like, look, we've studied like all the ancient stone tools that we found and we can see that they were often made in ways that didn't make them sharper, but made them look like each other. Like people wanted to fit in. Some of the earliest evidence we have of, oh, no, I learned from this group, and that's why I make it this way,

even though it's more work. Yeah. He wrote an entire book about it called Soul Dust, which sounds a little woo-woo, but the guy's not like a little wooinator. He's... Wait, wasn't that what the guitar thing was called? The whammy bar

No, but he went to Trinity College and he's a neuropsychologist I got you, amazing. I've got a slightly silly one to finish on. I would have liked to be there the first day that somebody worked out that you could put salt on meat as you cook it. Oh, yeah.

Seasoning. That's the birth of seasoning. That would be so cool. Everyone would be like, you would not believe what just happened. Yeah, why is this so. good. Guys, I put, I put those white rocks on it.

And they'd be like, whoa. What? You would not believe how good a cook. And then like two weeks later, they're like, the meat you put the rocks on isn't covered in mold. You made it last longer. And the guy's like, uh, I meant to do that. Hey, I'm a magician.

Jeez. That was a very good day. I'd love to see their faces when they tried seasoned food for the first time. And they're like, well, gosh, how come the animal doesn't already come this way? I don't we're never going back. We're never going back. We're changing the world. Yeah, we are no longer nature.

We are now humans. Yeah, too right. And we're changing the word with you, you guys. I was out for a segue with your questions every week. Every week. Keep them coming in. We've got our subreddit, The Rest is Science. You can also email us at the rest is science at goalhanger.com or leave us comments wherever

you are watching this, listening to this. We try and get through all of them. This is my favorite part of the week, by the way, when we get to do your questions. But yeah, we will see you. We will see you next, sir. Later. Bye-bye. The big struggle between Britain and Russia.

We assess Prime Minister. With high confidence, it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing.

We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. And disseminated into an operation order, or Fraggo. A Fragor that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes. New from Goldhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off? You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff.

Duffy. An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy. are our most valuable weapons. Devised as a technically rigorous, geopolitical action thriller. We have two times friendly key. Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best.

Against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everybody. It's Dominic Sambrook here from The Rest Is History, and we are here to tell you about a thrilling new series on the blood-soaked climax of the French Revolution. the reign of terror. So the French Revolution is one of the most significant episodes in the whole of world history. It essentially lays the foundations for contemporary politics as we know it,

but it is also unbelievably dramatic. We'll be discussing the murder of the firebrand Jean-Pour Marais in his bathtub. We will be going to the guillotine with Marie Antoinette. And in our final episode, we will be telling the story of the extraordinary and grotesque downfall of one of the chief architects of the terror, one of the most evil men in history, some would say, Maximilier Crobespierre. So if you want to hear this epic series, search for the rested history wherever you get your podcasts.