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Maximum Fun

Science communicators Ella Hubber, Tom Lum, and Caroline Roper learn about anything and everything interesting! Each episode they teach each other about a science topic, and learn about a miscellaneous topic. Whether it's bugs on drugs, temporal illusions, or fanfiction, there's so much out there, so let's learn everything! Join our Discord, email us, and follow us everywhere at www.LetsLearnEverything.com

Let's Learn Everything!

What are the flaws in scientific publishing, who's responsible, and how can we fix it?

ALSO SEE US LIVE IN LONDON!!! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:02:47) Scientific Publishing Part I

 (00:35:57) Scientific Publishing Part II

 (01:13:07) Outro

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Join our Discord!

We also learn about: We almost do the same grim joke, the live show will have 50% more hosts than this, before publications there were societies and books and letters, in 1665 a Henry Oldenburg of the royal society starts “Philosophical Transactions”, the longest continuous journal (ignoring the time Olderburg was put in a tower for criticizing the king), the discovery of Jupiter’s red spot and also a deformed calf, Newton’s Optics was published in Philosophical Transactions first, Science has bad SEO, the doubling time of papers is 14 years since the 1950s, Ella’s peer review process, errors can be missed and biases affected, not paying reviewers is a bug that’s labelled as a feature, government funded research can still be privately owned, we’ve all agreed “processing fee” just means bullshit, there’s some things I don’t want to be “fun”, Elsevier has a 38% profit margin while Alphabet’s is 32%, editorial resignations in protest, I’m excited to add Robert Maxwell to my Arya Stark list of people, Maxwell died on his yes-that-Ghislaine-Maxwell Yacht, the scheme to buyout scientists for their papers, cover upfront costs - own copyright - flood with new journals - reap the subscription costs, “jesus wept”, retractions are growing by about 20% each year, I’m buying Ella a dictionary so she can learn what “fun” means, fool me 239 time shame on me, paper mills, predatory journals are pay to win, the Chinese restaurant metaphor keeps staying accurate, no it’s not nature our journal is nurture, is this finally rock bottom? the public review curate model, the pros and cons of preprints, diamond open access, the nelson memo, “I think the Ghislaine Mawell death yacht is fun”.

Sources:
Royal Society: History of Scientific Journals
Royal Society: Philosophical Transactions The Early Years
Royal Society: Philosophical Transactions Issue 1
University College London: A History of Scientific Journals
Philosophical Transactions A: Newton Shows the Light
Royal Society Notes and Records: 350 Years of Scientific Periodicals
Broad Research Communication Lab: Peer Review - a Historical Perspective
Nature Humanities and Social Sciences Communications: Growth Rates of Modern Science
JSTOR: The History of Peer Review is More Interesting Than You Think
British Journal of Biomedical Science: The Peer Review Process: Past, Present, and Future
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine: Peer Review: A Flawed Process at the Heart of Science and Journals
The Conversation: Academic Publishing is a Multibillion Dollar Industry
New Scientists: Time to Break Academic Publishing’s Stranglehold on Research
The Lancet: Should Peer Reviewers Be Paid?
Guardian: Is the Staggeringly Profitable Business of Scientific Publishing Bad for Science? (Robert Maxwell Longread)
Research Professional News: Elsevier Profit
Guardian: George Monbiot on Academic Publishers
Retraction Watch: Statistics and Computing Resignation
Guardian: The Murky Life of Robert Maxwell
Journal of the Academy of Public Health: The Rise and Fall of Scientific Journals and a Way Forward
EBSCO Research: Publish or Perish Paradox
University of Technology Sydney: The ‘Publish or Perish’ Mentality is Undermining Science
Retraction Watch: COVID Retractions
Retraction Watch: Most Cited
Retraction Watch: Retractions by Nobel Prize Winners
Retraction Watch: Most Retractions
British Medical Journal: Boldt the Great Pretender
Nato Strategic Communication Centre: Disinformation and Scholarly Communications
The Conversation: Paper Mills
Toxicologic Pathology: Predatory Journals: What They Are and How to Avoid Them
The Lancet: Lessons From the Influx of Preprints During the Early COVID-19 Pandemic
The Conversation: Diamond Open Access
San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

109: Scientific Publishing

We all thought quicksand would be a bigger deal than it is, but what is the science behind them and all the other worries I had as a kid? And how does pinball reflect the changing cultures of our time, and could now be the best era of pinball?

ALSO SEE US LIVE IN LONDON!!! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE

Things we Talk About: 

Bagatelle
Redgrave's Pinball
Humpty Dumpty
Beat Time
Lambeth & Sarceni's Amazing Pinball Talk at Magfest
David Barber's Magfest Pinball Panel
Technology Connection's Great Pinball Breakdown
PinballMap.com

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:06:22) Quicksand and Other Childhood Worries

 (01:05:22) The Undying Game of Pinball

 (01:55:32) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: Ella’s spoon collection is much more important than our live show, the never ending story, quicksand was in 3% of in the 1960s, the problem with gen z is they’re not afraid of quicksand, quicksand is reverse oobleck (sheer-thinning), the settled sand at the bottom requires the force of lifting a car, quicksand is unfortunate physics circumstances burying you, 11th century quicksand art in the Bayeux Tapestry (also Haley’s comet), we’re less dense than quicksand so you’d float at your waist, you could listen to this podcast twice while hanging out in quicksand, Ella cried so much she couldn’t cross the piranha plank, piranha fear is President Roosevelt’s fault, you know you’re making fun of a ten year old child right now, my main takeaway was what a cogent president he was, piranhas reloading their teeth, piranhas have 10x the relative bite force to size of a crocodile, piranhas aren’t carnivores - they’re opportunistic omnivores and a skittish prey species, the cow just walking out of the piranhas, it’s like two truths and a lie but all three are true, ARE WE DOING SPIDERS GEORG, spiders have acute mechanoceptors, tarantulas aren’t just hairy for fun, debunking the Lisa Birgit Holst debunking, a 50 spiders salute for georg, Beans Britain is a statistical outlier and should not be counted, spiders georg as a stats teaching tool, spiders georg was NOT an outlier, the moment Tom and pinball fell in love, we’ve been throwing balls at pins since ancient Egypt, indoor parlor games were for the aristocracy, fixing the pins to the table with bagatelle, the depression sparked the start of pinball’s craze, evolving their legs back, truly pinball is what caused the depression, pinball was the avocado toast of the time, pinballs were literally turned into billy clubs and bullets, pinball was banned for 34 years in new york city, the historic humpty dumpty machine first gave us flippers in 1947, pinball was cooler than porn, the bootles, it’s games sex and games AGAIN - but this time it’s bad, Suzanne Ciani’s digital design for Xenon, guess the pinball cabinet from the sound, the sopranos’ profanity filter, NBA fastbreak isn’t a basketball themed pinball - you are playing basketball, Dave demonstrating a Tap Pass, pinball is the most open it’s ever been, finding cabinets is a somehow even nerdier version of birdwatching, oh nooo don’t send me pictures of pinball cabinets.

Sources:
2021 Fibromyalgia Acupuncture Review
Wildland Trekking: Is Quicksand Real?
EBSCO: Non Newtonian Fluid
Wiki: Shear Thinning
Slate: The Rise and Fall of Quicksand
Getty: Bayeux Tapestry Quicksand Scene
BBC Future: Can Quicksand Suck You to Your Death?
Nature Comms: Liquefaction of Quicksand Under Stress
Europhysics News: Quicksand!
National Geographic: Quicksand 
Greater Cleveland Aquarium: How a President Propagated a Myth
Zootaxa: Molecular Systematics of Serrasalmidae
Nature Scientific Reports: Extreme Jaw Forces of Living and Extinct Piranhas 
University of Washington News: Piranha Fish Swap Old Teeth
Evolution and Development: Heterodonty and Dental Replacement in Piranhas
BBC: Piranha 'less deadly than feared'
Studies on Neotropical Fauna and Environment: Attacks on Humans by the Piranha Serrasalmus rhombeus in Suriname
The Harvard Gazette: Piranha Lab 
BBC: Do People Really Swallow Spiders in their Sleep
Snopes: Do People Swallow Eight Spiders Per Year?
Scientific American: Fact or Fiction? People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep |
Springer Nature: The Vibrational Sense of Spiders
Wiki: Fried Spider
r/HelloInternet Reddit: Lisa Birgit Holst Doesn't Exist 
Snopes: Lisa Birgit Holst
Tumblr: Spiders Georg
Wiki: Spiders Georg
Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics: View of How Many Spiders Would Spiders Georg Have To Eat? 
Medium: The Spiders Georg Problem

 ---
Lambeth & Sarceni's Amazing Pinball Talk at Magfest
David Barber's Magfest Pinball Panel
Clive Thompson for Smithsonian Mag on Pinball
National Museum of American History on Pinball and Bagatelle
Montague Redgrave's Pinball Patent
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on Pinball and Gambling
Technology Connection's Great Pinball Breakdown
Suzanne Ciani's Audio Design for Xenon

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

108: Quicksand and Other Childhood Worries & The Undying Game of Pinball

We've added a SECOND live show in London, and it's a Sunday matinee! See all the details at LetsLearnEverything.com/live

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

Second London Live Show! 1pm Sunday Oct 18th!

Corry and Luke from the Sci Guys podcast join us, at last completing elaborate 4 year scheme to have them on! We learn about whether acupuncture is bullshit, and learn a bit more about That famous dolphin story. We also talk shop about mistakes, debunking, and curiosity!

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:10:51) Acupuncture

 (00:32:27) THAT Dolphin Story

 (00:54:20) Mistakes & Debunking

 (01:21:10) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

I’m biggly judging, the only thing I love more than science is a weird bit, Caroline’s 4 year plan to get in a zoom call with these bozos, kind of feels like you came to the top of the mountain and came down to meet us, Brian Cox does Not follow Tom, I know something that will fix Ella’s connection, the corry-luke scale, the peripheral nervous system, free opiod receptors, endogynous, different kind of needles for that opiod, fake accupuncture, treating sever hiccups, min-maxing heroin, it’s tricky to study pain, maybe therapy works more than accupuncture, by the way I don’t need you to share everything, dolphins weren’t so great at finding land mines, I’ll just leave some dead air, an open bar for editting, the sensory deprivation tank, you’re paying for this open bar Tom, I won’t tell you the name of the paper but I will tell you about lisa simpson, was really hoping the apartment would have a dolphinarium, now do your duolingo, this was all to communicate with aliens, Tom tries to have a teachable moment, well someone was certainly “arriving”, raising a chimp as a human, Bunny’s backlash, weird studies, language is complicated and we don’t even think about it so we underestimate it, did we not all read coco transcripts in college - oh i guess not, Corry’s corona mistake, double checking even when we know someone’s wrong, can you believe there are podcasts where people try to learn everything? a meta message not about being right but about science, QI’s mistake rate, the science debunking complex can get toxic, when we debunk it’s not with antagonism but curiosity, the mould effect saga, I think what you were trying to say correy is that it’s important to foster curiosity.

Sources:
Harvard Medical School, Science of Acupuncture
Review: Is Acupuncture Placebo?
Review: Acupuncture for Fibromyalgia Treatment
Guardian: NASA's Dolphin Project
Atlantic: Margaret Lovatt's Dolphin Experiment

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

107: The Sci Guys, Acupuncture, and THAT Dolphin Story

It's the Best of Everything! The episode where we look at the topics that YOU thought were our best from the past year, and chat some behind the scenes about them! It's a great place to start and a great time to brush up on things you may have forgotten.

Images we Talk About: 
Etching from the Great Moon Hoax
Bumble Bee Ocelli

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:03:51) The Vitamin Saga

 (00:20:55) Why is the Sky Blue?

 (00:33:19) Speech Disfluency

 (00:53:11) The Great Moon Hoax of 1835

 (01:09:07) Superheavy Elements II

 (01:27:33) Eyevolution II

 (01:45:17) Outro 

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

You wouldn’t marry a husband, oh here comes the vitamin guy, you think we’ll still have history, you missed a spot, literally having to ask for extra time, we don’t learn like computers - relearning is normal, the I’ve just turned 30 pilgramage to Japan, I’ve ruined the algorithm, oh YAY, excited for marriages and reality fracture, 30 seconds of laughter.

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

The Best of Everything 2026

You may know the polygraph is junk science, but what is the real science of lying and what wild turns did the polygraph take to get to today? And how old is dentistry? If ancient cave men didn't brush why do I have to? Well it turns out for good reason, and some fascinating dental science.

ALSO SEE US LIVE IN LONDON!!! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE

Images we Talk About: 
Mackenzie's First Polygraph
Ancient Teeth Image
Dentistry Tool 1
Dentistry Tool 2
Dentistry Tool 3
Dentistry Tool 4

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:06:38) The Polygraph

 (01:00:33) Dentistry History

 (01:49:19) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

Go to https://surfshark.com/learneverything or use code LEARNEVERYTHING at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

We also learn about: 2 truths and a lie, the jeremy kyle show, the first lie from the devil to eve (or when children first lie), the official stance of the podcast is lying is good and cool, deontic reasoning and theory of mind, flexible and explicit TOM, Ella aces the Sally-Anne test, discovering new advanced levels of lying, lying is normal for kids it’s not evil, lying is complex… but what if it wasn’t and we could just know, James Mackenzie’s original polygraph, the polygraph actually worked (just not for lying but for cardiology), sphygmomanometers, proto-feminist William Marston, back then just thinking women had a theory of mind made you a proto feminist, Tom falls down the rabbit hole of Marston’s feminism, what’s the difference between a lie you believe and the truth, Marston is the first to bring the polygraph to court in Frye vs the United States, the polygraphs turns into a one band band machine, Marston invented wonder woman and the lasso of truth, table the feminism of wonder woman another time, if corporations are people they should all go to therapy, polygraphs are still a 2 billion dollar industry, police firefighters and paramedics still take polygraphs, Caroline pre-empts the but, a polygraph is not a machine you need the interpreter, lying is useful, it’s fun to lie so who’s your favorite co-host, wow we can bond over private healthcare, dentistry asmr, tooth decay is from bacteria acid, stone age morocco acorn sweets, you can blame agriculture for cavities, fossilized plaque can give us an oral history, determining women did a job from paint in teeth, fuck I drank the paint water at least no one will know, did you say we were kissing the rats or was that my inner monologue, would you like to read the tooth worm poem? how could this possibly get to a tooth worm, most of recorded human history we believed in tooth worms, the earliest example of dentistry was a week ago, sorry it changed a week ago, an ancient beeswax filling, a 59,000 year old tooth hole, what’s a worse hyphenate than barber-surgeon, blacksmith barbers, traveling tooth pullers, so many jobs I’m glad don’t exist, a medieval dentist clown is literally someone’s worst nightmare, victorian job questionnaire, What The Eff is That, dental tools that look like weapons made in a dream, I didn’t realize until we got into this how much I hate teeth! the truth of my soul is private in Germany,

Sources:
The Emergence of Lying in Very Young Children
Marjorie Rhodes NPR
Social and Cognitive Correlates of Children's Lying Behavior
Review of Theory of Mind in Chilren
James Mackenzie's "The Study of the Pulse"
Mark Harris' Great Wired Piece on Polygraphs
Matthew Brown's Deep Dive into Marston's Feminism
JAAPL Frye v. United States
Cornell Law Frye Standard
Harvard center for Law Brain and Behavior on the Polygraph
Scientific American on Lying

 ---
National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research
National Library of Medicine: Microbiology of Dental Decay and Periodontal Disease
2014 Paper: Earliest evidence for caries and exploitation of starchy plant foods in Pleistocene hunter-gatherers from Morocco
SciAm: Oral Mystery: Are Agriculture and Rats Responsible for Tooth Decay?
NHGRI: Digging into the past to uncover the cause of our cavities
Wiki: Tooth Worm
Smithsonian: 6,500-Year Old Beeswax May Be Oldest Known Dental Filling
NewScientist: Oldest dental filling is found in a Stone Age tooth
The Guardian: Neanderthals Used Stone Drills to Treat Cavities 59,000 Years Ago, Tooth Suggests
Wiki: Barber Surgeon
Bath Medical Museum: Teeth Pullers and Denture Makers
2007 Paper: The Tooth Puller
2025 Paper: Pierre Fauchard
Science Museum: Dental Pelican 
Science Museum: Dental Pelican for Tooth Pulling
Science Museum: Dental Key
BBC: When Blacksmiths Were Dentists
Science Museum: Dental drill
Science Museum: Syringe
Spear: A Brief History of Dental Anesthesia
Blog: The Gruesome History of Dental Implants
BBC: The Dentures Made From the Teeth of Dead Soldiers at Waterloo
Science Museum: Shade Guide 
Blog: What Are Dentures Made Of?
Dentists Act 1878

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

106: The Polygraph & Dentistry History

It's that time of year to vote for the Best Of Everything!

https://www.letslearneverything.com/vote

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

Vote for the Best Of Everything! LetsLearnEverything.com/vote

Are there more carnivores in the ocean than land? Yes! But... why? And what does that teach us about how we study ecosystems? And what constitutes a collection? Well it goes way back in time, and can cover anything and everything interesting, and maybe even teach us about ourselves and each other.

Images we Talk About:
Giraffe
Biomass Pyramid 1
Biomass Pyramid 2
Dolphin
Tiger
Purple Otter Skull

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:03:30) The Marine Carnivore Conundrum

 (00:56:33) Collecting

 (01:51:34) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: Oh yeah that topic’s gonna hit, only 5% of fish are herbivorous compared to 30% of terrestrial animals, zoopharmacognosy, carnivora is not all carnivores and not exclusively carnivores, hypercarnivores eat 70% or more meat, polar bears are some of the most carnivorous animals we know of, grizzly bears only eat 10% meat, osteophagia, suckin on bone, trophic levels, Ella’s clearly an apex predator but are all humans, trying to beat the trophic level high score, let us know your level in the discord, average trophic levels, humans are 2.2 on average, trophic jorg, lopsided biomass pyramids, there are simply less plant diversity in the oceans, land predators hunt animals with at least 45% of their body size whereas whales do .01%, oh yeah aquatic animals don’t have paws or storage, aquatic carnivores have homodont dentition, trophic cascades, sea urchins can turn otter bones purple, hunter collector society, don’t pre-empt my question, the earliest collection we know of is from 105,000 years ago, shell collectors were just like me fr, coin collecting was a hobby of kings, a quick detour for the worst pope, but maybe Pope Boniface VIII is just like me for real, I like collecting 50 and 100 dollar bills actually, the wunderkamer or cabinets of curiosities, the industrial revolution ignited collecting, Americans turned British spoons into collecting, Ella’s love spoon, say the line Ella, this is really a “what’s wrong with Ella” topic, Edward Wharton-Tigar’s cigarette card collection and incredible quotes, David Attenburough convinced him not to take his cards with him into the 8th ring of hell, you’ve activated my trap card, magpies don’t collect shiny things and may have neophobia, animal collection, the cursed bug katamari, it’s like if I collected cards with boobs AND HE JUST LIKE ME FR, pack rat brain activation, a pack rat piss detour, amberat, collections represent our ability to abstract and think of the future, and that’s why I should get another spoon, Freud’s toilet hypothesis for collecting, Baudrillard on collecting, collecting builds yourself, They Collect What? baggers, I now collect banana friends.

Sources:

So, once again there are actually too many sources to fit here, it literally won't let us put them all here hahaha so please find the sources at https://www.letslearneverything.com/105-sources

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

105: The Marine Carnivore Question & Collecting

Caroline's Frogs campaign and our improv class were some of our favorite bonus episodes we've done, so we wanted to share a sample of what they sound like!

If your interest is piqued, you can hear the rest AND support the show at www.LetsLearnEverything.com/join

Sources:
JSTOR: Portmaneau Origins

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

Preview: Frogs & Improv

Folks we're halfway through the MaxFunDrive! And to keep the celebration we have Tom chatting behinds the scenes with other Max Fun hosts!

For all the details about MFD perks, the livestream, and how to support the show, go to LetsLearnEverything.com!

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:01:26) Casters on Casters

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

MaxFunDrive Bonus: Tom's Casters on Casters

Science communicators Ella Hubber, Tom Lum, and Caroline Roper share anything and everything interesting! Each episode they teach each other about a science topic, answer a question, and learn about a miscellaneous topic. Whether it's bugs on drugs, temporal illusions, or reality tv, there's so much out there, so let's learn everything!

 
Join our Discord, message us, and follow us everywhere at

 
https://www.LetsLearnEverythingPod.com/

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

Trailer: Let's Learn Everything!

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