The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Killer Demon Core, Victorian Theater-Kid Ghosts, Louis Pasteur's Secrets

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Jess brings adef and jacksonparodi on the show this week to discuss how one sphere killed two men in a matter of days, why folks in Victorian Australia used glowing paint to transform into ghosts, and how Louis Pasteur had more aura than ever imaginable. adef on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@adef adef on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/adef Jackson on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@JacksonParodi Jess on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@JessCapricorn Jess on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tweet at us⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to learn more about all of our stories! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to Jess' Twitch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to all of Jess' content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.jesscapricorn.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Jess Boddy: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Popular Science: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/PopSci⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Theme music by Billy Cadden: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at https://MASTERCLASS.com/WEIRDEST Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? I'm talking about mood.com. They have an incredible line of cannabis dummies and a lot more. And you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code Weirdest. It's third party lab tested and ships directly to you in a discreet box. Best of all, everything's backed by Mood's 100 day satisfaction guarantee. And like I said, you can get 20% off with code Weirdest. So if you're looking to try some new cannabis products, head on over to mood.com. Get 20% off your first order now with code Weirdest.

That's code Weirdest for 20% off. Make every get-together chill. This Memorial Day, get up to an extra $1,000 off select top brand appliances like LG. Plus, get free delivery at the Home Depot. Tackle pool towels and camp laundry with a large capacity washer. And host in style with the fridge-serving craft ice, mini-craft ice, cube dice, and crushed ice. Appliant savings now through June 3rd at the Home Depot. Offer valid May 14th through June 3rd, U.S. only.

Free delivery on appliance purchases of $998 or more. The C Store Online for details. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton.

Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay.

At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and text stories every week. And while a lot of the fun facts we stumble across make it into our articles, there are lots of other weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not sure those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors at Popular Science. I'm Jess. I'm Adiff. And I'm Jackson.

Woo! Welcome. This is awesome. You be hooray. Yeah. So obviously listeners, you guys know, I've been bringing on my creator friends for while Rachel's on parental leave. This is the last one of those. Rachel will be back soon, I think, in about, I think we have one more vintage episode to run, a rerun after this in two weeks and then two weeks after that.

Rachel's back, which is very exciting. But today, Adif and Jackson. ever joining, which is so great. And we all just hung out a whole bunch at the Kaiser Calcium event, which ruled. And that's a cool charity event sponsored by Red Bull, where we go play

video games and raise a bunch of money for spinal cord injury research. We raised a lot of money. Like what? Over 130,000. I believe that's correct. With the Red Bull matching, it would be double that. Oh, yeah. True. Over 200 and something, something, yeah. I'm going to ask you guys now to intro yourselves and tell me a little bit about you and like what you make sure so i'm adef

uh i think what people these days primarily know me for is i make youtube videos where i teach math and science through the lens of video games most primarily Pokemon um i'm just sort of a big Pokemon fanatic that has a background in the sciences and so i've decided to combine those two things, but I know Jess and Jackson most primarily through Twitch streaming. I also do that, and that has far less to do with the STEM fields, and far more to do with just a deep yearning desire to play video games at every waking moment. I get it. I understand completely. Sick. Jackson, what about you? Edith, Adif you're the best man. Adip is the best. You're the best, common man. No, you. Perhaps at this wedding, you will be the best man.

I am actually. Are you really? Yeah. Oh, sick. I'm going to a wedding soon, yeah. Literally the best man. It's perfect. I don't know what I do.

I play music, I guess. Yeah, you did very well. I do play music. Would the term washed Twitch streamer? Would that be? I remember Lindsay on the last one, Misty, I think used the term defunct Twitch streamer, which I was really, I was really appreciating that.

I just play music. I'm a music teacher. I teach privately. and I play music, make YouTube videos, a stream about once every 8 to 14 months. And then got to hang out at wonderful live events like we all did at Kaiser Sol's Coliseum back in February of 2026.

And right now I'm at Heroes of Time, which is another Colosseum adjacent event for Legend of Zelda. So I just like to play music and do silly stuff. And I think you two do as well. Jackson is being humble. very talented accompanist. He's extremely, extremely skilled and talented, yes. Yeah, I think at the end of Saturday and Sunday, there was music time at Kaiser. And Adaf, you saying a lot for Jackson's music. Yeah, because Jackson goads me into singing. It's crazy. Playing with Jackson is very funny to me

because I've been a fan of Jackson's work since, like, 2014. Because Jackson rose to prominence I'll say, doing video game covers primarily on the accordion. Really? I know you were talking about the accordion when I was there. I forgot to bring it up. I mean, I just loved it. I can't get enough of that, Yoshi's Island on the accordion, baby. Oh, yeah.

Did you like singing me next to the shirtless trihex in 2014? That's how I was introduced to you. Oh, man. Me next to buff. Oh, yeah. It's quite big. AGDQ 2014? Yeah, before the fire alarm went off.

Yeah, Jess, what you'll find is back in the day, I used to braid my hair. So I had like two, I would say, I would say quite nice pigtails, quite nice braids. Wow. He's giving interlockin. I was so close to being a Tanglewood girly or an interlockan, you know, fanatic. Oh, my God. Oh, my goodness. But yeah, you know, accordion stuff.

I like that a lot. It's a fun instrument. I still play that. Most of my gigs are on accordion, to be honest. Playing piano at these events is like, that's the secondary thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's okay, I want to ask one million questions about that, but I'm going to ask you after because we have an agenda. Oh, yes, we do, yes.

Yes, we have things to attend to. I will put links to all of their stuff in the show notes and stuff like usual, so people can go find your stuff. Okay, cool. I'm going to say our preamble about the show now. On the weirdest thing we learned this week, we start by each sharing a fact or story about something that we learned over the course of reading, writing YouTube videos, playing video games, or music. raising a bunch of money for charity, et cetera, and decide which one of us goes first. Then after we all have a chance to spin our little science errands, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was, except everything's weird and we don't decide anymore.

Okay. Now we do our teases. My tease is that I'm going to talk about people who used toxic paint and bed sheets to terrorize innocent people. Great. Okay. I'll give my tease. My tease is we're going to find out what happens when you tickle the dragon's tail. Cryptic. What?

I'm going to talk about how the growth of microorganisms in milk eventually led to vaccines. What? That sounds really official and important, actually. But I actually want to hear about the, screw that, I want to hear about the dragon's tail. And you hear about the dragon's tail? All right. All right. Shall we, shall we dive right into it?

Dive right in. Die right into it. All right. Well, yeah, I'll try to vomit everything, everything I know. about what is affectionately called nowadays the demon core. So that's the scary name that we put on this little interesting event. It's interesting, it's sad, it's tragic. I guess my preamble is like, this is a very tragic and very sad story.

Yeah. A couple scientists lost their lives and really gruesome and awful ways. So we don't need to linger on that. We don't need to linger on the real pain and misery and tragedy that came from this. We can instead try to, you know, look at the peculiarity. of it. And really, like, to me, it's very cinematic. It's a shock to me that this event has only been portrayed in movies, like, I think, two times. Or maybe one time prominently in the last 40 years. There was a movie made in 1947, I think. But, like, to me, this reads, like, something

from a movie. It's like, it seems fake. But it actually happened, which is even, even stranger. The whole Manhattan Project, as a whole is a really fascinating, like, straight out of a movie kind of thing, some kind of, some kind of superhero business. But, Yes, what I'd like to talk about is the Demon Corps. And they call it the Demon Corps because this was a core that was to be used for a nuclear weapon, a nuclear bomb. And let's go all the way back now. We're going to go back to 1945. What a great year, everybody.

Everybody was having just a fun time in 1945. Everything was really going swimmingly. And we're talking about the Manhattan Project, which was the United States program to develop the world's first, the first. the first nuclear weapons ever. I can only imagine what it must have been like to have been a scientist, like these, the gentleman that we're going to be talking about are everybody that worked at Los Alamos at Manhattan Project.

Like this was brand new science, nuclear physics, particle physics. Whenever, like, you know, when I was in high school learning about, you know, the basics of nuclear stuff in chemistry class or physics class, you hear about all the names of these scientists, scientists like Richard Feynman and Enrico Fermi. and I don't know, Leo Zelard and J. Robert Oppenheimer recently had the big Christopher Nolan film

Edward Teller. All these dudes were around. Neals Bohr, Albert Einstein, all these dudes were alive and more or less working at this time. This is not like back in the 1700s, somebody like, no, this is early 1900s when most of these dudes were around. So quite a wild time, it must have been. Here's a story.

So we know that in August of 1945, the American military dropped two atomic bombs on the island of Japan at Hiroshima Nagasaki. We know that they were named a little boy and fat man. They had two different designs. There were two different kinds of weapons. They worked on totally different principles. And there were plans if the Empire of Japan didn't surrender when they did, I think, on August the 15th. 1945, there were plans for a third weapon to be used. They call it the third shot.

They use the word shot to describe these things. And this demon core was the core that would have been used. What's very interesting, and maybe if people are thinking about nuclear stuff, after watching the Chernobyl miniseries, might be thinking about this is a nuclear disaster or a nuclear incident, like Chernobyl was a nuclear incident, but of course the magnitudes are completely different. mostly part of how much nuclear fuel was involved. Like in a nuclear reactor, there are maybe literally tons of nuclear fuel.

There's a lot of nuclear fuel. Whereas in a weapon, in a bomb, it's relatively small amount. And the demon core itself, or the core used also in the fat man weapon, how big is it? It was only 14 pounds. The mass, you know, it's a ball, it's a sphere. Yeah. About 6.2 kilos, 14 pounds. It was only 3.5 inches in diameter.

It was like a little bigger than a softball size. Yeah. I was picturing bigger. Yeah, you would think, right? You'd think it'd be like some big amount. But also there's so much energy in this little small sphere. And also, by the way, it takes a ton of energy just to make that much. It wasn't pure plutonium.

It was an alloy of plutonium and gallium. And there's a fun little sexy fact about that. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But like it took a lot of refining and, you know, filtering and whatever. they used to get to plutonium out of the ground to make even that much, that little, little, sphere of plutonium. To jump in briefly, that was one of the issues that the Manhattan Project faced, and one of the issues that serves as sort of a core dramatic element in the Oppenheimer movie is the refinement

of uranium and the accessing of plutonium is exceptionally difficult. and in the 40s was, you know, ostensibly uncharted territory. And so getting enough plutonium or enough uranium or enriched uranium or whatever in time before the Germans was a big part of having the nuke first. And, yeah, to Jackson's point, it's just very difficult. Yeah. Took a lot of time, a lot of energy. And indeed, I think both the scientists that we're going to talk about, the two men who lost their lives to the demon or Harry Daglion and Lewis Slotin.

I think they both worked, before they worked on the Manhattan Project, they both worked on cyclotrons, which were a device that was used to enrich uranium. So just getting this much, and this is plutonium, which is different, but still, getting that much took a huge amount of effort in time, and like Adav said, yeah, it was a big part of the race. So also a weird little thing I found out is that what we now call the Demon Corps, apparently it was called Rufus at some point.

Rufus? I don't know why Rufus came into it, but. That's kind of awesome. Fun fact, the demon core was also named Rufus originally. Very, very, very strange. Yeah. But so that, so this core was developed and it was made, produced at a site, I think the Hanford site, which is in Washington State. And so it was meant for the third shot of use for Japan, but then the Empire of Japan surrenders.

And so then they were going to reuse that core again, because it is really expensive. They want to use that thing. They're going to use it in the Operation Crossroads test that eventually took place in mid-1946. And if you've ever seen film footage of like those big huge mushroom clouds, those big nuclear bombs, those were filmed at Operation Crossroads in the Pacific, like in Bikini Atoll area. So the Demon Corps was destined to eventually be using crossroads, which is why they kept using it after the war ended, after World War II ended. And that's where our first incident happens, which was the one that claimed the life of Harry Daglian. So I think this is the one that has less going on with it because there are literally fewer people involved. Harry Daglin was working by himself, and there was only a security guard with him, a private Robert Hemmerly, that was like 10 or 15 feet away from Daglin, he was working by himself.

And the kind of experiments that made these incidents were both similar. They weren't doing the same exact thing, but they were getting similar things, which basically what the experiments were trying to do is they were using a neutron reflecting material to try to reflect the neutrons back to the core to increase. its criticality, to increase the amount of reactivity with the core. Because the core by itself, it's not like you hold the core in your hand, it's not a bomb going off in your hand. You need to do stuff to make it go critical. That's the word that we use critical,

to create a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. In a weapon, they use those explosive prisms. I watched a Kyle Hill video that explained this in a nice detail that shows how the core gets compressed, and then it goes critical like that. So what the experiments of Daglian and Slotin were doing were saying, like, let's use this neutron reflecting material to reflect the neutrons back into the core to make it go critical. But what they were doing, and in both cases, in slightly with different methodologies,

they were trying to, they were really getting like very close, like really getting right on the line of this, this core going critical. Edging the core, I would say. Nuclear edging. This is where the tickling the dragon's tail. Oh. I think the quote is attributed to Feyneman, but he basically was telling them, like, if you continue to do this experiment,

you are tickling the dragon's tail. Yeah, and you can see why. You can see why, because they're getting like, right, they're edging right to the edge, right to the limit of when this thing is going critical. And the bad thing that happened was it did go critical, both of them, both of them in this time.

And what happened with Harry Daglin was, he was using these bricks, these tungsten carbite bricks, that are very good at reflecting neutrons. And so what these neutron bricks are doing are just, they're just bouncing the neutrons back toward the core. And so Harry Daglin, he was getting very close to that limit.

They had like neutron detectors to find out how reactive, you know, the core is getting. And he accidentally dropped one of the bricks. He dropped one of the bricks, and it hit the, and it hit dropped right on the core. Oh my God. So it was just like an oopsie. I dropped my crazy, dangerous brick in the lab.

Just wait until you hear the second one. The first one is bad The second one is like Oh no I dropped my pencil Like it's okay Yeah But really that that's all it was It is oopsie I dropped this brick

This tonne And it just so happened to drop the tungstenite carbide brick Right on the plutonium Core Yeah And just drop just dropping it there And I think I don't remember exactly I think like he had to like pick it up

And move it off After it after it went critical He like disassembled it and removed the other brick which I think caused more damage it calls burns to his hand what happens when it goes critical is it like not a giant explosion it's not a giant expose what it is what it is it's at least for in both these incidents they were for a brief instant okay the cores went critical it wasn't sustained for a long time it was maybe I don't know a second a couple of seconds maybe maybe but what it does is it it induces that self-sustaining

chain reaction that nuclear chain reaction I see where neutrons crash into other fissile atoms was crash into others and it's yeah it's it's it's self-sustaining can't be good for the human body it's a it's a huge blast of of ionizing radiation yeah and it's fortunate for both guys they're standing they're right next to the core when it happens so they get the full brunt even again just for a fraction of a second or so that's all that it takes to deliver a fate indeed a fatal dose yeah of ionizing radiation what you do see very interesting jess what happens is well for one what they feel is uh a a huge wave of heat.

And I think in the Slotin accent, where there were many more people, they describe, I think, an intense heat wave and indeed blue light. And if you see the movie Fat Man and Little Boy where the Slotin incident is dramatized, they do show like a blue flash of light. Interesting.

I want to watch that now. Mm-hmm. Yeah, John Cusack. Yeah. And that blue light is called Charenko radiation. And you can see there on Wikipedia there's a beautiful image inside a nuclear reactor of this like warm blue glow.

And, you know, again, I do want to skip the gruesome details. But indeed, I guess in hindsight, it's, it's a good thing in history that incidents like this have been so very few. Yeah. That there are not like a ton of cases to be studied. And certainly in 1945, there were not a ton of cases to be studied. The very first nuclear reactor that we know today was the Chicago pile. Go Chicago, by the way.

Enrico Fermi. That was 1942. So again, like these things are being advanced at a crazy pace. Yeah, super recent. So Harry Daglin and Louis Luton, these are, these are a few, you know, some of the very few guys that have ever experienced this kind of burst of ionizing radiation. And unfortunately, it did claim their lives. Harry Daglin, he died 25 days later. I was going to ask how fast it all went down.

So what happened with the second one that was like even crazier then? So what do you think? Like after the first action, you'd say, Shirley, let's like, let's revisit kind of our safety procedures and our protocols. Why is this guy working by him? Why is he handling all this stuff by hand? Yeah. You might think that it took two accidents for them to get to that conclusion. So Lewis Loughton, his incident happened only a few months later, May 21st, 1946 was when this happened.

And I want to talk a little bit more about Lewis Loughton. And please yell at me if I'm going over because you're getting close. I'm getting close. Okay. Lewis Loughton, I think this guy was a super wild character. I mean, a really crazy guy. He was 35 years old in the time of his incident. His parents had emigrated to Canada.

He was born in Canada. His parents emigrated from Russia to escape the anti-Jewish pogroms. They settled there. A little slothin from an early age. He was very smart, extremely bright. Studied in London, went to school in London. He was an amateur boxer in college, and apparently very good.

He won some championship at a college that he went to. Damn. But his sort of, I guess sort of his reputation or his demeanor while he was at Los Alamos, I think, what's best of all. And actually, you can see this in photos. There are not a ton of photos from the time of the Manhattan Project,

but there are some, including of Harry Daglian and Louis Slotin, and one of them, one of the two of them together next to the gadget. And what the gadget was, was the very first atomic bomb ever detonated.

It was the Trinity Test at Los Alamos. And the cool thing is, you see, like, all the dudes there, Louis Slotin, he's in, okay, he's wearing Daisy Dukes. He's in, like, booty shorts. He's wearing booty shorts. He has a buttoned up shirt

that's unbuttoned. No, bare-chested black sunglasses and like his like hiking boots next to leaning against the world's first atomic weapon about to be detonated oh my god the aura on that man the aura is next level so it's like following the up with this guy doing this incredibly reckless and dangerous nuclear experiment I heard that he did this experiment he did it very many times he did this experiment many times to people that didn't need to see it it was like to show off And I heard that he did it in cowboy boots and jeans

on a number of occasions. I would love to see a picture. A real character, indeed, Louis Sloaton. So his experiment, what it was, was a similar experiment to Harry Daglian's, but rather than using the bricks, they had a beryllium sphere. So it was like a hollow sphere, and the plutonium core was in the center of that.

Again, this is the same core that was in the Harry Daglin incident. And so there were two halves of this sphere. I'm sorry, I'm doing hands like people can see it. And the point is, if you close... It's like opening like a Pac-Man almost, right? Yes, like a PAC person. If you close both spheres, that reflects all the neutrons,

and that will make the core go-critical. So you cannot let both of the hemispheres close on each other and, like, completely seal it in. So you have... But you want to edge it, you want to just kind of close the two hemispheres, but leave a little bit of a gap. The safe way to do this, which they knew before then, was to use shims.

You use shims there, so you can't... So you prevent the hemispheres from closing completely. he used screwdrivers or us or a screwdriver. I don't know if it was one or two. What? And he just, he put the screwdriver blade in there and then twisted it just to have a little bit of a gap there

between the two hemispheres. So this is a guy that's like, visibly too cool for school. And he's like, I'm not going to use the shims. I'm just going to jam a screwdriver in here. Yeah. And then get them really close, get them really close,

but not 100% closed. So what the incident was, again, he'd done this dozens of times before he'd done this before so you know he had some bravado some confidence the screwdriver slipped both hemispheres shut closed and then what we experienced was documented heavily again because i think there are eight or nine people in the room when it happened including the guy he was doing this experiment to train alvin graves who was going to replace lewis loughton because louis loughton was done with the manhattan project he wanted to go back to teaching he wanted to be done with this nonsense he was

done with working with the military he was training the new guy and who by the way was standing right beside him when this incident happened. And Lewis Loughton, it may be in a quasi-horroric way, absorbed a lot of the radiation, so that didn't hit Alvin Graves. So, yeah, very, very tragic, very sad. Louis Loughton died after, I think, nine days. Yeah, damn. It's just really, really just tragic and very, very sad.

I can only imagine the horror one must feel when the screwdriver slips. Well, so I want to, I want to say one of the, I don't know if this is apocryphal or not, but I'm pretty sure it's true. And I think this is one of the coolest things about this story, especially this second story, which is that when it went critical, obviously he opens it because if you leave it, it will maintain criticality and continue outputting life-threatening amounts of radiation essentially constantly. So he opens it, understanding instantly that he is dead.

Like, he's a smart man. He knows literally the second the screwdriver slips. He's aware he's dead. Like, there's no question in his mind he's dead. That's crazy. So instead, what he does is after he opens it, he tells everyone not to move. And he, they plot out in a diagram where everyone was standing because he realizes in this moment that this is actually a legitimate test now to see how far away from it you have to be to not die. That's, wow.

And so there are incredibly detailed diagrams of literally where every single man in the room was standing. because he yelled at everyone to like write like in chalk like basically circle like where you were standing which is I think very cool. Truly insane to have that foresight but I guess if you are fully aware you're dead and there's nothing you can do you're like well I guess how do I make this useful? I know well like doing these experiments too that has to be in your mind the whole time right like I could kick the bucket doing this stuff right? So it's very again very tragic but a very

interesting and bizarre and horrifying wrinkle in nuclear science history. And again, you can watch the film Fat Man Little Boy, which dramatizes this exact incident, including like, just going to ask what it was called against so I could go watch it. 1989's Fat Man Little Boy starring John Cusack. The names are changed, but he's playing the Lewis Slotin-inspired role. Oh, cool. The cowboy boot, Daisy Dukes guy? I wish.

I wish. I don't know if he goes that sexy, but I'd like it if he does. But the incident is just like Adip Describes. He says, everyone take up everything metallic. that you have, mark with chalk where you stood and get out of here. And you can look up online, like data says, you can see the diagrams showing exactly who was standing where and the fates and like how everybody else died. There's some people that died perhaps of nuclear, you know, radiation related incidents.

Did the other people die like fast or slow? No, I think everybody else died within, you know, a more reasonable amount of time. Yeah. Like Jackson is saying, it's sort of unclear if those people died as a. result of this or if it was just natural causes that may have been accelerated but like they all lived longer lives whereas he was dead almost instantly i think right and jess you can cut this if you want but i just want to cover two things in this story that i think are interesting physically um that's great the first one is the reason that you need the reflecting material and why like

closing it is so bad um so jackson was talking about these these neutrons so there are many different types of ionizing radiation. The reason neutron radiation is so dangerous is because neutrons permeate most surfaces. Most materials cannot halt the passing of neutrons. One of the reasons for this is that neutrons are electrically neutral, so they don't interact with electrostatic forces. So, like, they can't be deflected by, like, you know, magnetization or like nearby electrons or whatever. They aren't repelled or attracted by that. So they just pass right. through stuff, which is one of the reasons why it's so dangerous to people, because it passes right through your skin and muscle tissue and can go straight into cells. And when neutrons impact

nuclei of other atoms, they can cause this cascading effect where those neutrons are stripped and then it can continue. And this can cause, like if it interacts with your DNA, for example, it can completely dismantle your DNA causing mutated. That's like, what radiation sickness is, basically. And the reason the reflecting material is so important is because the core is not going critical because there is room for the neutrons to escape outwards. But when you close the mirrors, basically, when you close the two halves, now the neutrons are almost all bouncing back in and causing this like avalanche effect.

And then once the density, the criticality reaches a certain point, then the neutrons, there are sufficient numbers of them that now some of them are even going to, going to get through the reflecting material. I see. And escape outwards. And the reason the people closest to it, and I suppose this probably intuitively makes sense that like the closer you are to it, the more lethal it will be. This is due to something called the inverse square law, which dictates basically,

you can Google image search it and it immediately is evident what I'm talking about. But basically the proportionality of how much radioactive material you come into contact with, or how much ionizing radiation, rather, you come into contact with, is related to the square of the distance. So if you are two times further away, you receive four times less radiation. I see. If you are three times further away, you receive nine times less radiation. Okay.

And I think this is probably intuitive. You could imagine like spraying a water hose and putting your thumb over the top of it. And as the funnel spreads, you know, you are far less likely to get hit by water the further away you are. Yeah. It's the same thing, basically. The amount of flux, which is the physical word for, like, amount of passing particles per square meter or whatever. Yeah. It's way higher the closer you are.

So it's far more lethal. Yeah. That's it. Sick. So to tie a bow on this, like for me, the big story of this is an emotional one. I cannot imagine the emotional feeling that both these guys would have had knowing that they were dead within days. Yeah. Like Adif was saying.

Like the amount like what that has to do to you I can't even think about that totally you just got hit with this burst and they know they know what's going to happen and it's not pleasant It's very agonizing and and miserable crazy place for your mind to go Exactly, Jess so that's the demon core wild times after the slowed incident they stopped doing those these by hand experiments This cowboy stuff was done. They were doing these with robots and cameras where is the demon core now? It got melted down and was reused in other cores. Okay, so the There was baby demon cores. Yeah, you could say other cores have bits of it, but I don't know when it was called a demon core. That actually, I really don't know who's the first one to say that or how soon it was called that. Sure, yeah.

It got the one ring treatment. It did, yeah. It got melted down. They threw it into the fires of Mount Doom. Yeah, okay. Yeah, they took it to Mount Doom. So there we go. It's tragic.

It's sad. It's interesting. It's bizarre. Yeah. But that was nuclear physics back then. The first, the Chicago pile was built under the bleachers at like the football stadium or something. You Chicago, yeah. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Enrico Fermi. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and then I'll be back with more facts. Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? And talking about mood.com, they have an incredible line of cannabis gummies and a lot more. And you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code weirdest. I'm not a smoker myself, but I do love the occasional weed gummy to, you know, help me go off to drew. land, and I can't have one right now because I have a new kit, and, you know, I definitely

miss it a little bit. But maybe you can have a weed dummy, and you can get one at mood.com. So the reason that different cannabis grains can make you feel different ways isn't just about the THC. It seems like it's also based on other components called terpenes. Terpenes influence how a product tastes and smells, and it seems like they can also impact the way you feel. Mood partnered with dozens of small American farms to custom cultivate flour with specific turpine profiles designed for specific moods. So you can choose your cannabis gummy, edible, flour, or pre-roll based on how you want to feel. Just go to mood.com and click shop by mood. And yes, it is now 100% federally legal to have really great bud shipped right to your door.

It's third party lab tested and ships directly to you in a discreet box. Best of all, everything's backed by mood's 100-day satisfaction guarantee. And like I said, you can get 20% off with code weirdest. I'm eyeing mood.com's delta night. THC buttercream caramels, because in addition to not being able to have THC, I also can't have dairy right now. So the idea of having a caramel that also mellows me out and sends into Dreamland sounds very nice. And speaking of fun edibles, mood.com has delta9 THC freezer pops. So if you're looking to try some new cannabis products, head on over to mood.com. Get 20% off your first order now with code weirdest.

That's code weirdest for 20% off. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out it was more of a thinking about. outrun club era. The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start. Sell your workout gear on Deepop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying. Someone on Deepop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Deepop where taste recognizes taste. Did you know if your windows are bare, indoor temperatures can go up 20 degrees. Get ahead.

of summer with custom window treatments like solar roller shades from blinds.com and save up to 45% during the Memorial Day Early Access Sale. Whether you want to DIY it or have a pro handle everything, we've got you. Free samples, real design experts, and zero pressure. Just help when you need it. Shop up to 45% off site wide right now during the early access Memorial Day sale at blinds.com. Rules and restrictions apply. Okay, we're back and I'm going to talk about something just as serious as the Demon Corps, which is Ghost. So first I want to shout out an Atlas Obscura article by Joseph Hayes, which is where I discovered this whole phenomenon. And that was based on in part a work by Dr. David Waldron, who's a professor of history and anthropology at Federation University in Australia, who wrote an entire peer-reviewed paper all about this.

That's where I based my fact for today. That's why I got my info. So, okay, we're going to rewind to the late 1800s over in Australia. And this was not even like, you know, a hundred years after it was colonized. Like it's a super new, newly colonized place. Not a lot of hard and fast rules. There was no professional police force. And also just a lot of new culture and folklore popping up left and right. And also, coincidentally, a lot of people with big personalities and perhaps not enough hobbies

These are creative outlets on their hands. All of this set the perfect stage for the phenomenon known as ghost hoaxing. So what is it? What did it entail? I will start by telling you some of my favorite ghost hoaxers, or at least some of the weirdest ones, and it'll all start to make sense. So they range from like cute and weird and funny to like actually quite sinister and villainous. So first, there was this guy and he was known as the wizard Bombadier and he wore white robes

and a sugarloaf hat. I didn't know what a sugarloaf hat was, but it's kind of like a top hat that has like a rounded edge. It's like, yeah, it's like a round top hat almost. And so this guy would wear his white robes and his sugarloaf hat and he would have suddenly appear out of nowhere, deliver a few disorienting loud screams, hurl, stones, and he would and other junk at people, and then he'd run away just as fast as he had appeared. So that's one ghost hoaxer, pretending to be a ghost.

Then there was a guy named Herbert Patrick McLennan. He wore a top hat, a frock, coat, and boots, all of which he soaked in phosphorescent paint, which means he was glowing. Oh, my God. Yeah. And perhaps even more notably, he would carry a Cat of Nine Tails whip, and he used it on women that he encountered. Oh, no.

Not a chill dude. No. Oh, my God. No. I would say if I went to a bar and a man walked in glow in the dark with a whip, I'm not even, I am so far out the door and or phoning 911 that it's not even, like, within a second. Yep.

Well, and think about it. Australia had no centralized police force at the time. So people just had agency to do this stuff. It sounds like someone, someone's a bloodborne bill. Literally. So this guy, and people did get fed up with him doing this. So the community put a five-pound bounty on, like, catching him, which I think is low. Low?

What year is this? Back then, that was like a million dollars. Like late 1800s. All right. I'll look up the inflation. The conversion. Is that like more or less insulting if it's a low bounty? Like at least I want a high bounty.

Do I not have value in being caught? Okay. What year? Oh, it only goes as far back. Oh, no, baby. It goes back. What year? Like 1882.

Okay, this is from the Bank of England. Five pounds would be about 500 pounds now. Oh, okay. So. It's a good starting point. Yeah. But also, you got to think about the buying power. Because, let's be honest, 500 pounds now gets you like a short plane ride.

But 500 pounds then, I mean, that's a house, baby. That you're exactly correct. But also like the middle of nowhere, Australia. Like, I don't know. Five pounds, you can buy the country. Get you a nice little province. Yeah. Yeah.

So I put it that, you know, the five pound then translates to 500 pound bounty on him, on catching him. That, you know, enraged him so much that he decided to declare war back. And he threatened to shoot anyone who came after him with a gun. Yeah. That sounds about right. And this threat was decreed an official letter addressed to some of the local leaders, and he signed it, the ghost.

Yeah, wait, that's kind of epic, actually. Yeah, I know. He's a character. And then eventually he was captured and jailed for a bit. And it turned out that he was actually a really very influential clerk and public speaker. Wait, so did people know, so when he showed up covered in phosphorescent paint with the whip, they didn't know who he was. So he was masquerading.

Yes, yes, which is the case for, I think, most of the ghost. hoaxers. They were moonlighting. Okay, so I thought maybe for a second there, the way you described it, I thought he signed the ghost, but everyone was like, we know who you are. I'm sure some people did. I'm sure some people were like, give it a rest, man. I know, this is what happens when theater kids don't have like any theater to do.

They just become vigilantes. The world is their stage. And trust me, you do not want a theater kid to be the vigilante in your town. You're never going to hear the end of it. Speaking of, other ghost hoaxers, DIY'd their kind of. costumes and like did like cosplays. So speaking of theater kids, some of them, uh, attached coffins to their backs to make it look like they had been like rising out of the coffin from the dead.

This is awesome. I know. I know what I, when I, when I are bloodborne characters. Literally. When I found this fact, I was like, how have I never heard about this? This is insane. Uh, there was another guy who dressed up as a knight like a suit of armor with a glowing breastplate. And he, he painted on it on the breastplate.

Prepare to meet thy doom. These are like this, I mean, what's crazy is that these are just guys you can meet at Party City. Literally. Like, these are just dudes you can see at Spirit Halloween now. Yeah. But this is like the guy that makes the cart, the guy that makes the car, the guy that makes the barrels, the guy that, you know, a farmer. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Except the difference is, this was probably a real suit of armor. Yeah. Yeah. Just clanking around. And then there were like the, you know, the less scary ones. I think this one's kind of nice.

Because there are some women that did this too. One lady painted her face and arms white. She dunked a wedding dress in the phosphorescent paint so it glowed and then she would perch on various roofs and play guitar at night. It's kind of awesome. I think it's kind of sick. That's just a Twitch streamer nowadays.

That's us, actually. Okay, wait, Jess, can I say, you know what I think the conclusion here is? is that someone had like someone like overbought phosphorescent paint they had way too much so i was going to talk about this later too but apparently it was like a new it's like i think that was newly available so it was like a new technology people were like ooh like fun shiny literally um and so they were all about it so everybody was using it and now we'll circle back later because obviously there might be some health risks oh are there but i will get to that later so

The last kind of funny, like theatrical thing that I'll talk about that they did was they would sometimes, like, we were actually just talking about persona before we started recording, but they would leave like a little calling card before they would commence their hunt or haunt rather. So they would like use the glowy paint to draw like a skull and crossbones at a place. And then they would later arrive to terrorize people. So yeah, these people were really theatrical. They really wanted to scare people. and the crazy thing was, like I was saying, they were for sure some like really messed up people doing this stuff. They would do like violent crimes while all ghosted up.

But a lot of people were just, you know, like school teachers or like ladies who want to play guitar, literally. Be thankful. Listeners, be thankful that Hot Topic now exists. So these people have an outlet. Okay. Back in the 1800s in Australia, they didn't have anything. And this is what happens. They needed Hot Topic.

They needed Hot Topic. Like a fish needs water Truly Couldn't I wait for Spencer's gifts to come to the wall Yeah Think of all the good that those places are doing in the world You know As far as like

The scary stuff that the ghost hoaxers did I mean they were doing all kinds of fucked up stuff So they were doing like indecent exposure Assault stealing stuff Which again think about it Like if you're a criminal Kind of an enticing situation because like There's a trend going

around of wearing a disguise and messing with people. Like, of course, if you're criminal, you're like, I'm in. Right. And then if you add in the lack of professional centralized police force, that sort of stuff. Because there being no real police force, the citizens would band together and fight back against the ghost hoaxers. There was a guy who was an ex-soldier who loaded his gun with rock salt, and he would shoot the ghosts in the butt with his rock salt gun.

um and then there was an incident this is so bloodborn i can't believe i didn't connect this there was a guy who saw a ghost assaulting a woman and he brought he got his cane and sort of whacking the the ghost so then he left her alone and then finally there was a lady whose child had been attacked by a ghost hoaxer and she released her bull terrier dog on the ghost and said you're cooked actually um we were having we were having fun when it was like playing the guitar yeah you know like well okay now you're releasing the house that's not This tracks with like, I feel like you hear stories like this or any story about the zoology present on, you know, the various flora and fauna present on the aisle of Australia. And it is not so confusing why it's such a wacky place.

Like, yes. Of course it is. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on there since the dawn of the colonization, perhaps far earlier as well. But so, yeah, there was this like civil uprising against the ghost hoaxers. And all like the news reporting on this stuff at the time was like very, very anti-ghost hoaxer, understandably. I can't wait to hear the pro ghost hoaxer article. We'll start our own newspaper.

The splinter newspaper. By the ghost hoaxers. I don't know, guys, we should give them a chance. They seem kind of cool. Hold on. Wait, let me hear their side of it. I want to. Yeah.

We're all looking for the guy who did this. Wiping off the pain Of this like thing So yeah Now that I've explained the ghost hoaxer You might be wondering Why? And I've kind of talked about this a little bit But actually

The idea of ghost hoaxing actually goes back to England And back in the 1700s Where young rich teenagers With too much time and money And boredom on their hands Would dress up as ghosts and attack people And that kind of seems like lower stakes Like there was more like prank

kind of vibe. But still it ended up being such a huge problem, especially like in these more affluent noble communities that like the royal court itself ended up putting out a hundred pound bounties on their heads. Hang on. Yeah. And that's in the 1700s.

And I guess like, you know, if it is like these aristocratic families, like I guess their scale of money is different than like early colonized Australia. I guess, yeah, you know, yeah. If you're rolling in it, yeah, 100, 100, 100 squids. A hundred. Let's get these fools. A hundred pounds in 1799 is 10,000 pounds now. Yeah.

Yeah. Insane. Which when you think about like, I don't know, some crazy rich, like New York City family, like if their kid is fucking around. I mean, they literally just put, you put a public notice out to all the Dickensian little miscreants. Reed urchins. And you're like, Tiny Tim. If you kill one ghost, you can be set for life.

Bro, I think if you're a ghost, you stop immediately as soon as that order drops. Because there are some hungry individuals that will happily delete you off the face of the earth to change their life. Yeah, it actually is like a solid plan. You'll see Tiny Tim come with the rock salt shotgun like Omar from the wire coming to get you. Coming to get you. Yeah, so. This is awesome. That culture from England, obviously Britain colonized Australia, tons of British culture remains there even now, but back in the 1800s ghost hoaxing was one of the commonalities.

And it seems to have taken such an extreme turn from what it was like in England, just like rich, annoying kid pranksters, rich kids, to like violent criminals doing bad shi as ghosts. That extreme turn is kind of what I mentioned earlier, for one, like the no centralized police force, no consequences if you're a real sinister. person and want to do crime dressed as a ghost but culturally too the stage was set so like Australia back then was not just like a narrow slice of British culture but there are a ton of immigrants also moving there because it was similar to America right like it was like a new frontier so people came into mine gold uh and stuff like that and when they did they brought in a whole bunch of like new folklore and superstitions so the huge influx of new culture was coming over and then if you think about the time period this was right after the age of enlightenment.

So, or I guess the tail end of it. So, like, that was when people were newly obsessed with science and logic and reason. They were all, you know, cut and dry. Here's how things work. You know, very logical. So take that, smash it on top of this newly colonized world with basically no rules. And also, like, you know, there were emancipated convicts there that could own land and rise to political power. And then there's, like, rich noble guys who were also just down in the mind.

lines, literally, alongside common people. So it was like no rules, everything is turned upside down. And in this non-traditional sort of place, people kind of started to rebel against those traditional scientific ideologies. So like people got really into the supernatural again. And like ghosts. So when that stuff's popular again and people are really into it, it's like when you're actively thinking about the supernatural stuff all the time, it's really easy to scare people with it. So people are more susceptible. And that's how you get people dunk in their if it's in phosphorescent paint in order to pretend to be dead, which is hilarious when you consider that paint,

the phosphorescent paint is really, really, really toxic, like deadly toxic. They didn't know this at the time. But the side effects include cardiovascular and respiratory disease, gastrointestinal dysfunction, diarrhea, incontinence, blurred vision, hypertension, anxiety, tremors, seizures, ataxia, coma, and death. Ask your doctor if phosphorescent pain is right for you. So by trying to portray themselves as the utmost image of death, they were actually unconsciously becoming dead.

They're becoming real ghosts. Real ghosts. It's just commitment. They're committed to the bit. They really, really are. But don't worry. Once they realized the phosphorescent paint was doing damage to their bodies, they switched to a different one that also glit.

load radium paint. Oh, good. What a great segue between our two things. I know. There's a commonality. And this went on, you know, the ghost hoax thing went on for a while, but it all fizzled around World War I when death got a little too real again. So that's my story.

But the last thing I'll say about this is like, I wanted to see what a modern equivalency would be, like if this thing has happened since then. And I realize it completely has. back in 2016 and people would dress up as clowns. Dude, when you were talking about this, the first thing I thought of was clowning. Yes.

Yeah, so there was that time in 2016 where people would dress as clowns and like scary clowns and like lurk in like the forest or like in the neighborhoods. And it did start as an innocent, spooky trend. I think because like, I think Stephen King's It movie was like

in production and... I think the sort of maybe apocryphal, maybe not story I had heard was that it was like started as publicity city for it or something. Sure. I don't know how true that is. But my friends and I definitely went clown hunting

for sure. Yes. So you're like the civil... The rock salt shotgun. Yes. Yeah, but we went just for sillies. We didn't... Yes. Yeah, well... And like, it escalated way back when, like, clowns,

there were some scary clowns that actually did, like, assault people. Like, they were evil ones because when there's a trend of going around in a disguise for fun people are going to do it for real um but uh so yeah who knows what'll be next i can't imagine i can't imagine these these these ghost structures being like how pissed would they be when Halloween comes around when Halloween gets invented like this is my turf dude come on guys we've been doing this for years and you guys hunted us down and you put bounty on us now kids can just do this

and get paid when candy yeah what a rip off well the kids aren't assaulting people i think is a key well well well well you live in a a nice neighborhood. My neighborhood they gave you with a cat of nine tails. They steal your stuff and play guitar on the roof.

Jess, that was awesome. That was so fun. I couldn't believe what I had unearthed. That's fun. All right, we'll take one more quick break and then we'll be back with one more fact. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use

indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion-dollar swings.

There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. Okay, we're back. And Adaf is going to tell us about the microbes and why people are mad or something. Okay. So in the mid-1800s,

there's this French scientist named Louis Pasteur. Oh, yeah. You may be familiar with him. And he is doing a lot of research at this time around like microorganisms. The germ theory of disease is not very prevalent at this time. The idea that like, you know, if you're performing surgery, you should sterilize your tools or your hands.

That's not really a part of popular culture at this time. Antiseptic measures are not really a thing. Yeah. This is one of the biggest, in fact, interestingly in a lot of wars in this era, the side that more readily disinfected tools usually won. So like, you know, if you were sterilizing the equipment that you were treating your soldiers with, you were more likely to succeed. That tracks, I guess.

So Louis Pester is doing work in France, and he has, I can't remember if it's a student, but or an admirer, some guy who is familiar with Louis Pester, his death. dad is a, is a wine maker. And his name is Monsieur Bego. And Monsieur Begoe asks for Louis Pester's help in figuring out why his alcohol sours. So he makes, the wine he makes is very strange. Let me, let me find it.

Okay, Bego's son was one of Pester's students. And he was making, I think his plums or something. Anyway, he's making a strange wine, whatever, and it's souring. So his wine is souring more quickly than he would like. And this is a problem that Vintners at the time would deal with, obviously, is like your product, whether you're making wine or beer, any kind of alcohol, it would sour quickly, you know, be undrinkable. And the question was why. Yeah. And so at the time, a lot of scientists of the era postulated that fermentation was caused by the decomposition of microorganisms.

yeast within alcohol and that was what caused the beverage to ferment and become alcoholic. So they attributed that to like, okay, well, as they die over time, that must sour the wine or the beer over time. Right, which is not the case. But Pasture believed that it was the opposite, which was that the yeast was growing and the culture would increase causing the alcohol to ferment. and that if this process was allowed to continue too far or was contaminated, then undesirable microorganisms would grow and cause the souring of an alcohol.

So through experimental testing, he basically finds that this is true and that he is right and that his hypothesis is correct. And he also finds that if he heats the alcohol to a high temperature for a brief amount of time, and the temperature sort of depends on the solution. It most directly correlates to the acidity of the solution. He finds generally that temperatures between 70 degrees Celsius to like 100 degrees Celsius, which 100 degrees Celsius is the boiling point of water, which is definitely relevant because it's a temperature at which a lot of microorganisms die.

He finds that if he heats the alcohol to a high temperature, it will kill a lot of these negative microorganisms, namely molds and bacteria. and allow the drink to stay good for much longer. And this obviously now is known as pasteurization. And the reason I want to talk about this, this is not exactly a wacky fact. I think the wacky part is that it didn't come from milk.

It came from alcohol. I didn't know that. Just comes to show you how important alcohol has been over the course of human history. Yeah, I mean, yeah. A lot of important scientific discoveries have come from, advancements in alcohol development, primarily because alcohol has been such a desirable thing for people for so long, but also a thing you could drink without being worried about getting sick and many times in human history. Anyway, so this process is eventually known as pasteurization,

and it is found that it can be applied to milk, which is a big thing now, obviously. And the reason I want to talk about this is because raw milk is currently a fad. And I just want to tell everyone listening, because I was under the impression that pasteurization, until a few years ago, I was under the impression that pasteurization was some kind of chemical process, that the milk was being treated with some kind of chemical that was killing the microorganisms in the milk, and that was pasteurization. Right. That's not true at all. Milk is literally just being heated briefly. Actually? Yes.

Yes. you are literally just the process of pasteurization basically here's how it works so you heat the milk to a high temperature and the higher the temperature you heated to the shorter amount of time you pasteurize for so obviously it is it is a more delicate process the hotter you go because you could boil the milk or you could cause a myard reaction in the milk which is the chemical reaction when you cook that causes food to brown you could brown the milk by accident So the hotter you go for the pasteurization, the shorter amount of time you pasteurize for. So generally, milk pasteurization happens between like 70 to 100, 150 degrees Celsius, somewhere in that range, which I recognize is a broad range.

I'm not a milk pasteurizer. Anyway, this kills microorganisms in the milk, but critically it also denatures enzymes in the milk that help promote the growth of molds and bacteria. Oh, wow. But these enzymes, what's good about these enzymes is that they can be tested for and observed whether they've been denatured or not. So it's a good indicator if the milk has been properly pasteurized. Yeah. Because a lot of these microorganisms are much more difficult to look at without taking like big samples of the milk. So you can test for these enzymes being denatured, and that is a good way to instantly know if the milk is safe.

Yeah. And so this obviously has the primary benefit of preventing foodborne illness. I'm going to now list some foodborne illnesses you can contract if you drink raw milk to try to disincentivize you from drinking raw milk I know that it seems cool and we're I think a big term these days on social media is like processed foods and like that's a completely different discussion if we're talking about yes like a McDonald's chicken nugget is a very overly processed food pink slime a hundred percent agree but you also process foods by cutting them yeah like true dice yeah if you're dice an onion that is processing. So I think it's a very ambiguous term and you need to be really careful when you take food advice from people online because there could be any number of bad actors. And also, if a millionaire is telling you to drink raw milk, just think about it for a second before you go to your local dairy provider and ask for them to give you raw milk because

unpasteurized milk is very, very dangerous. There is a reason that pasteurization saved so many lives over the 150, 170 years it's been used. And that's because, especially back in the day when these diseases were less treatable, but even now, from raw milk, you can get salmonella poisoning, ecoli, listeria, campillobacter, and more. So like, we're talking vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, seizures, death. Like, these are all possible from drinking raw milk or consuming raw milk products, cheese, butter.

So raw milk bad and I think the important takeaway is that the way that they can sensationalize this. And it worked on me to a certain extent of like there is this outward sentiment that pasteurization is some kind of chemical process. But again, you are literally heating the milk or other liquids. It's not just milk that gets pasteurized. Alcohols also still get pasteurized. And a liquid egg product also gets. It's pasteurized. You heat the milk to a certain temperature for a brief period of time, and then there is a cooling

process, and this cooling process prevents the myard reaction, but also stabilizes the milk. Yeah. And the secondary benefit of pasteurization is that when you remove a lot of these negative microorganisms, you increase the shelf life of milk massively. Right. So, like, whereas before, if you drink milk straight out of a cow's udder, you've got a couple of days where the milk is palatable, you know, like a day or two or three, and then you just got to go butter mode.

Is that like what people, butter mode, is that what people like talk, that is raw milk, right? Like just truly just right out of the cow. So yes, but one of the problems, right, is that like, okay, so if I'm living on a dairy farm in the 1600s and I'm drinking milk out of the cow's utter. I raised this cow. I know what the cow eats. I know where the cow has been. It's the only cow we have. There's minimal or at least much smaller risk of getting sick because I'm choosing the feed. The cow is not interacting with other cows and it's also not interfacing with anything toxic.

So when I milk the cow, I can have a higher degree of certainty that the milk is safe. Nowadays, if you're getting raw milk, probably you're still getting it from some kind of milk farm or milk provider where there's a far higher risk for cross-contamination. Not even to mention the cross-contamination that could take place in the bottling process. I was just going to say packaging is like a whole other thing.

And the shipping process because unless you are driving your ass to the farm and picking the milk up fresh, this milk might travel for a day or two before it gets to you. And just pure refrigeration can only go so far. Yeah. The shelf life of milk under certain pasteurization standards can be increased from three days to like three months.

Right. Which is incredible. That's, yeah. It's still perfectly safe to drink. And there is no downside, basically. There is essentially no downside. Yeah. I didn't realize.

Positive microorganisms are not killed. Yeah. I didn't realize it was simply a temperature thing. Like, that's it. That's it. You're just heating the milk. briefly to kill the negative things. Yeah. And then also, and I think something people might think is like, okay, well, what about the positive effects of milk? Like, you know, the vitamins or minerals or whatever.

A lot of that is added after. Oh, sure. Like the vitamin D fortified. Exactly. Vitamin D or omega-3 fortified milk, like that is a post-milking process. So that's not, that has nothing to do with pasteurization. Yeah. So I want to dispel that. But an interesting thing here is that after Louis Pasteur works on this and works on the pasteurization of alcohol, this then causes him to believe that maybe microorganism growth is what causes disease in animals and people.

Because if microorganisms sour the milk or sour the alcohol, maybe it sours us. Yeah. And he's not the first person to sort of forward this microorganism. Bacteria causes disease thing, but he's a big proponent of it. And it directly leads to him to start big work on inoculation. And so he discovers vaccines, or at least helps to discover vaccines for anthrax and rabies. And a crazy wacky thing that happens is Louis Pasteur is a very bullish guy. He's very confident, and he is exceptionally sure.

he's so sure that he's right about basically everything. And a lot of the times he is. But he's so sure. A lot of people in the scientific, like his adversaries hate him. The people he works directly across from hate him. Because anytime they come up with a counter hypothesis, he's like, bet put some money on it and let's see who's right. Oh my God.

So like frequently in his career, Royal Academies or whatever, or like French Academies for Sciences will put like a cash bounty on his hypothesis. And then he will win. Yeah, that rules. So he's kind of an asshole But he also low-key has saved millions of lives So like whatever Yeah

But in in 1885 this kid named Joseph Meister Rabies is a big problem A much bigger problem in this era When people are interfacing with wild animals Far more commonly And there are wild animals in the street Far more commonly He is mauled by a dog

This 13 or this young boy He's like nine or 10 years old or something And Louis Pasteur straight up is like I can cure him And everyone's like, whoa. Yeah. Because there's no cure for rabies at the time. And he says, he says, let me inoculate him with my vaccine that I've tested on 50 dogs.

I've tested my rabies vaccine on 50 dogs. It was later proved, here's another fun wrinkle. He told his family never to let his journals be read. He was like, don't ever let anybody publish my personal diaries. in journals ever. What? And they held him to this. After he died of strokes later in his life,

his family never published his things until his grandson in the 1900s donated the journals to a like a French library or something and said that they weren't allowed to be read for anything other than historical research. Dude, what's in there? And then when he died, the French library was like, anyone can read it. So he was his last living male descendant. And so once he died, they just published it. And basically he had lied about how good his treatments were a lot of the time.

He luckily wound up still being right most of the time. Oh, but he was just going on like... He had inflated the numbers. Yeah. So he had claimed he had tested his rabies vaccine on like 50 dogs. Turns out he tested it on like 13. And some of them still died. Yeah.

He was like, let me inoculate this young boy. And basically his whole career wrote on this. decision because if he killed the child or if it didn't work, he's not a doctor. Right. He'll be sued into oblivion and he'll probably go to prison. Right. It works. He inoculates the boy 13 times over 11 days with his rabies vaccine.

And he is one of these proponents of live vaccines where he's injecting you with like a cousin bacteria that is similar in structure to basically, I mean, he didn't know that your your body is creating these, you know, things that would match the shape of the microorganism. Right. But he just saw that it was working. Yeah. And so he inoculates the boy with basically like, I can't remember if this one was a living vaccine.

I think he claimed it was a living vaccine, but in reality he had actually killed the bacteria with a chemical process and it still worked. But in claiming that it was a living vaccine, he then basically propelled living vaccine research forward right for decades imagine a world where he killed the kid with rabies right so as a direct result of this um this guy edward jenner who's working in related fields through basically similar process he's inspired partly by louis pasture finds the smallpox vaccine oh uh which is one of the single greatest human achievements of the last 200 years right so and this is the last the last thing I'll say that it was a really interesting part of this that I found in my research,

Edward Jenner finds the vaccine first for cowpox, because cowpox is a big problem. We actually, I think just, like, at the end of last season, I think Rachel did a whole fact about the cowpox thing, because there was, there were crazy political smear campaigns about it. Interesting. You should look it up. I'll send you the episode. There's like political art and ads of like demon babies because they thought, sorry, you, you tell, You finish your thought about the cowpox thing, but this is...

No, please continue. I mean, remind me of the relation of the cowpox and then the smallpox, is that... So they're of the same, like, genus or whatever. And so in finding the cowpox vaccine, which cowpox is... I can't remember if it's cowpox or the virus that causes both. But the species name is vaccinia. That's the Latin name. And that's where the word vaccine comes from.

because this was one of the first like proper use on humans save lives vaccines and the cowpox vaccine directly led to smallpox being inoculated against. So there is this sort of like lineage of if this one winemaker doesn't ask Louis Pasteur to solve his production problems, we don't have the smallpox vaccine. Yeah, I think that people didn't like that. My dog. I didn't like the smallpox vaccine being so closely related to cowpox because I thought it was turning their children into cows and demons. I mean, that's a problem we deal with even now. And that's, that was kind of Rachel's whole crux is like the fearmongering around vaccines is like always been a thing.

It's not just fearmongering around vaccines, but also around like animal pathogens. Sure. This idea that like, you know, a big swine flu, bird flu, COVID. COVID. when a disease jumps from an animal to a human, the big issue is that, you know, with a lot of these other diseases, we've had generations to create immunity. Whereas if a disease jumps from a pig, we have no defense, basically. And so there's a lot of fear around that.

And of course, like you said, the fear around vaccines. I know this isn't my topic, but I just want to say out loud for everyone listening. It's clear I'm a skeptical person, I think. Raw milk is not safe to drink, drink pasteurized milk. It's also cheaper and easier to get. So who cares? And it also, like, okay, the taste changes almost so minutely that, like, even if you're a taste snob, I promise it's not worth it. Also, vaccines don't cause autism.

Anyway, thanks for listening to my TED talk. Vaccines are completely safe. Yeah. I love the. domino effect of like some pissed off Ventnor making wine out of like like making pruno he's making present wine out of like some leftover bunk fruit. Someone

left the thing of plums on the side of the road I'll make some wine out of that because it's free and then hey Louis Pasteur you're kind of a smart guy. You don't know what's going on. Why's why is my hooch taste that rancet? Could it be because I use some plums that I found on the side of the road? Could that be why? No, there's got to be

some other reason. Here you take a look at this thing and more so I love you going I love you getting into the dirt because I hear, you know, now that I'm a little bit older, I hear about like all these great figures of history and this, you know, famous person, this famous person, this explorer. I'm like, there's always, there's always some dirt. Yeah, peel back the curtain. This person's a pervert in some way. They got some skeletons in their closet. And I love Louis Pester. What he's doing, he's rising and grinding. Yeah. He was living the Sigma male mindset, Gary Vanier-Truck in the 18, mid-1800. He spray mugs those guys. Yes, yes, Jess. And I love it. And nowadays, it would be a huge scandal and there would be like articles. need to be like shamed or whatever.

Back then it's like, I don't know, we're playing fast and loose with the science. I mean, truly, I think all of these guys, like you said, they all have skeletons in their clout. I mean, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, right? But like, I do think that it's important. I don't think it's paramount to look critically back at these guys and be like, oh, that guy who saved three million people

was actually a scumbag. Like, who cares, I guess? But I do think it is important to recognize that, like, you know, the guy you idolize, might have not been perfect. Right. There's complexity, you know. Albert Einstein famously an imperfect individual

that is portrayed in media as being a perfect genius. What, didn't he like marry his first cousin and cheat on his wife or something? He did some shit. Also like Stephen Hawking. Yeah, not a good guy. It turns out. No.

So anyway, all that to say, science is an imperfect process and a weird process. And the men and women who perpetrators, trade it also strange. Yeah. And they give us amazing things and things to talk about and discuss. But you know, the line for me, if Louis Pasteur, if I found out ahead that he dipped his clothes in Foschrest and paint and went around playing the guitar, that would

cross the line for me. That's the line. I'm cutting ties with Louis Pasteur. I'm putting a five pound bounty on his head no more. Wow, what a callback. I saw, just taking everything. I saw Louis Pester jester maxing on the roof of someone's house. I saw Louis Pasteur doing Comedia del Arte in public, and I will never speak to him again.

No, stay away from my child, my rabies ridden child. Keep that rusty needle away from me. He was Arlequinomexing. Oh, I forgot to mention the Oppenheimer Opera. I'm sorry. Okay. Oh, yeah, what is it called? The whole reason why I got dicked up on Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project was because I saw an opera that was based on it.

It was an opera from 2005 called Dr. Atomic. It's by John Adams. If you liked Oppenheimer film, the Christopher Nolan watched the opera. And it's not the same, but just watch it anyway. Yeah. And so I'm like, oh, what's going on here? What's all this business with the bomb and these people and the kitty? His wife's name was Kitty Oppenheimer.

I'm like, that's a strange name for a lady. She, she, her story, by the way, Oppenheimer's wife, the movie probably talks about it a lot. She has a wild origin story. We'll say that for another episode. We'll find a Kitty Oppenheimer stand. Something I love about the Oppenheimer and the. Manhattan Project story is as a I studied physics in college and uh in the in the modern era you learned that era of physics a lot especially in undergrad modern physics and quantum physics are a

big part of it and you learn these names of these guys and you kind of touch on it for a second jackson but for me watching oppenheimer was like when comic book fans watch the avengers like truly a guy gets introduced And it's like, oh my God, it's him. Like, Nealz-Bor is here? Enrico Fermi's on screen? Neal's Borr-vis visited the man. He visited Los Alamos. He was there.

Richard Feynman was there. Richard Feynman coined the term. Enrico Fermi told Slotin, you're going to be dead within a year if you keep doing this nonsense with the screwdriver. Enrico Fermi, the guy who made the first nuclear reactor in the world said, hey, cut it out. Fix your stuff.

It's truly the who's who of 1900s physics heroes were all there. Superhero. Yeah, the Avengers is the exact thing. Perfect way it put it. All right. Well, this was sick. This was so fun. Will you both remind listeners where they can find your stuff?

You can't find me anywhere. I know what? Actually, I made a website last year. Jacksonprody.com. It looks like a 10-year-old made it on Myspace using CSS that you learned from a Google video tutorial. I can see A. Typing it into his browser right now. It's an awful website.

Jackson, there's nothing on the homepage. Exactly. See? I don't know. YouTube, Jackson. Jackson, P-A-R-O-D-I. That's the hard part. Just Google that name.

And I'll put the links in the description. And ignore all the expose articles about me. Just go to the Twitch, YouTube, yeah, so on and so forth. Adif, you're more professional about this. I need to be inspired by you. You can find me as Adef on basically everything. If you enjoyed anything we talked about today, my career is dedicated mostly to communicating science.

So you can find me as Adef, ADEF on YouTube. And if you like Pokemon, boy howdy, do I have the YouTube channel for you? The Weirdest Thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Fultman, along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore Thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goal. because we're built for what you're building fit for your ambition for citizens' bank. Wireless can feel like a world of traps, but not with Visible. It's one-line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot. Powered by Verizon for $25 a month, taxes and fees included.

Plus, for a limited time, new members pay just $20 a month for one year on the Visible plan, using the code Fresh Start. Refresh your wireless with Visible. Tap the banner to switch today. Terms apply, limited time offer subject to change. See visible.com for plan features and network management details.