Citation Needed - Common Misconceptions

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

A common misconception is a viewpoint or factoid that is often accepted as true in current times. They often arise from conventional wisdom (such as old wives' tales), stereotypes, a misundersta...nding of science, or popularisation of pseudoscience. Some common misconceptions are also considered to be urban legends, and they are often involved in moral panics. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 So yeah, Dr. Says is gonna be a long recovery. Dude, I'm so sorry to hear that. And then my car broke down right after. And this all happened after you broke the mirror? Yeah. Hey guys, what's up? How was mom felon broker back, man? Oh, no way, we are having the worst luck today, fuck.
Starting point is 00:00:20 Surprise. God damn it. I knew it was him. Like, deep down in my heart, I knew kind of had to know. I where are you? I'm actually outside the simulator. Welcome to the misconception verse. Oh fuck sake. What is the misconception verse? Thank you Tom. So you know how this week's episode is about common misconceptions? Yeah, well yeah. So this is a simulated universe where all those things are true, right? You can see the great wall of China from space, stepping on a crack,
Starting point is 00:00:52 really breaks your mother's back, and he has this drinking under control. All that stuff. I am an adorable drunk. Thank you, compliment. Wait, wait. So now, all that stuff is true here? Yeah, if you guys wanna go check out Area 51, they have aliens and everything,
Starting point is 00:01:09 and worked really hard on it. I will be right back. Okay, well that was weird. Up, there he is. What's he doing? He's jumping up and down between sidewalk tiles. Yikes! Oh, that tracks. Let him have this one. Fucking monkey killer! Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject with a single
Starting point is 00:01:57 article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Noah and I'm going to be marshaling us through this myriad of misconceptions. But to do that, I'll need the help of a few people who have been holding their expertise on misconceptions since they were sperm and egg. First up, we've had two men who continue to labor under the illusion that Lasagna becomes pizza when you put it in a bread bowl, Tom and Cisa. Hey listen, Chicago pizza is like Chicagoans.
Starting point is 00:02:24 We might be a bit thicker than the traditional beauty standard, but we are not going to leave you unsatisfied. The supermodels needs a way too sharp to bang of pizza jokes. Yeah, the fact that you have categories for the jokes about how bad your pizza is really good. It's just me out on the wrong track. Oh, you're right. No, you're right. Pasta on're right. Post on pizza is disgusting.
Starting point is 00:02:46 Thank you for saying. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Just like he's both. He's super models. Nice. That's to be clear.
Starting point is 00:02:54 I'll fuck any pizza with pasta. I don't understand. Actually, game. And also joining us tonight, of course, two men who are suffering from the misconception that the human eye just averages out hair on the head and face. And you need to check your fair faucet, S. Glocks of privilege. No illusions. How dare you, sir?
Starting point is 00:03:15 You're being mean. Amidst. That's good. That was good. And of course, nope. And nope, my was being mean. And of course, before we get to the essay, I want to take a second to thank our patrons and remind you that thinking your dollar won't make a difference is yet another common misconception.
Starting point is 00:03:32 If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Eli, what person-placed thing concept phenomenon or event will we be talking about today? We'll be talking about common misconceptions. All right. Cecil, you read the, uh, listicle. Are you ready to, uh, well, actually your way through an episode? I learned it from watching you. All right. So tell us, why did you choose this topic, Cecil?
Starting point is 00:04:00 So this week, I want to take a look at a fascinating list on Wikipedia on common misconceptions. The list is enormous and has a lot of different categories of study, and I'll probably, most certainly, come back to it eventually. But today, I'm going to be focusing on the scientific misconceptions. I figure this will be a great opportunity for Noah to tell us, he already knew all this stuff, for Eli to declare that Wikipedia is clearly lying, for time to to take an app and for Heath to call this entire list, the CIA cover up, or he's just going to screen fun fact the entire episode, either one. Fun fact. Interesting. No, it isn't. I knew you guys were going to do that.
Starting point is 00:04:38 Hey, pipe down. Some of us are trying to sleep. Okay, Jesus. All right, rude. So let's start with astronomy. The gray wall of China isn't the only man-made structure you can see from space or the moon. In fact, astronauts that visited the moon actually couldn't see a single man-made structure from that distance. And astronauts in orbit can't see the gray wall without some kind of visual magnification. You can see some man-made structures from space. The greenhouse of El Maris, Spain can be seen and there's a, they're like a cluster of greenhouses of about a hundred square miles. You can also see the cooling pond at Chernobyl, which is again, six mile long man-made lake.
Starting point is 00:05:24 I mean, it glows really bright. Yeah. Yeah. Things visible from what we would consider space or low earth orbit need to be at least two kilometers in size. So there aren't a lot of things humans have made that are big enough to be detected. Well, also as your examples demonstrate, helps a ton of their super fucking reflective. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:05:47 Okay, look, I know I just woke up and everything, but isn't like space pretty fucking relative to you. I mean, like from most of space, Earth isn't even visible. No, I mentioned this in a previous episode, but I'll mention it here again. Space craft are never in zero G and you don't experience weightlessness because you left the earth's atmosphere. People in spacecraft can experience a free fall effect as the ship orbits the earth. Orbit is essentially the craft falling toward earth and constantly missing because of the forward momentum. Gravitational fields exist well above large planetary objects at 250 miles above the Earth,
Starting point is 00:06:31 which is about where the International Space Station travels. The gravity is about 90% what it is on Earth. Yeah. Fun fact, you can also experience this feeling during every landing on a united flight. So the 1989 passengers on United flight 232 would disagree if they hadn't been passengers on the 1989 United. No, it's fine. It's been a long fucking time. It's not possible. Let's do so now.
Starting point is 00:06:59 Yeah. When we refer to the dark side of the moon, we don't mean that that side of the moon never receives any light from the sun. The moon is tidally locked with the earth, and that means that from the earth's surface, only one hemisphere of the moon is visible. The other side is what we refer to as the dark side. It was dark unseen by us until humans flew up there and looked at the moon's surface, gets the same amount of light, whether we can see it from Earth or not. No. Yeah. And, uh, fun fact, when one of those astronauts wanted to watch the Wizard of Oz up
Starting point is 00:07:31 there, the rest of them were like, no, that's dumb. It's not going to line up. It doesn't make any sense. Yes, Cecil. You also cannot see the dark side of the moon if you hide under a blanket or squeeze your eyes shut real hard. Makes it go right away. Here's one I have never heard of.
Starting point is 00:07:50 I guess some people think that the seasons of the earth are caused by part of the planet being closer to the sun. What causes seasons is not axial tilt closer to the sun, but instead axial tilt of the earth that allows for more sunlight duration on the surface. The fact that the earth is closest to the sun in January and is furthest from the sun in July, as far as the Northern Hemisphere is concerned, it's the exact opposite correlation with temperature trends. The closeness to the sun does affect temperatures on the planet, but the effect is minuscule compared to the length of the daylight. For future generations, let's think through this a season used to be this thing where the weather changed like in a good, you know,
Starting point is 00:08:34 predictable. Reentry into Earth's atmosphere creates a lot of heat on the object and some people mistakenly attribute this heat generation to friction, but it turns out that's not correct. In fact, the heat is caused by a diabetic compression, which is heat generated when gas compresses. So compression of the air in front of the object re-entering is what causes the heat. Right. So an important note, that is not why the ass of your pants feels warm after a fart. That's much more oppressing situation. Man, I don't know. See, it's like gree reentry is hot, but the science talk is kind of killing
Starting point is 00:09:14 the mood, you know, and the compression of gas. Speak for yourself. People my whole life have claimed that you can balance an egg on its end, but you had to do it on the correct day during the terminal in spring equinoxes. Well, that's bullshit. You can do it any day if you're patient enough. There's no special gravitational qualities of a single day. It's just that you didn't give up doing it because you were bored. You thought it was possible, so you kept doing it until it stood on its end.
Starting point is 00:09:47 Okay, fun fact. This is real. I argued exactly what Cecil just said with a high school science teacher until I got suspended. Did he write Boonard on the slip? Like, what's the story of NASA commissioning a million dollar pen to write in the weightlessness of space is bullshit. The story always mentions that the Americans commissioned a pen at great expense in the Soviets used pencils. Well, it turns out that it did cost a million dollars to design and develop the pen.
Starting point is 00:10:20 The Fisher pen company did develop the pen with their own funding. NASA did also purchase the pen from the company. They bought 400 pens at $6 a pen. And then the Soviet Union also bought some for their Soyez set of space flights. Yeah, with a regular pen in orbit, the ink, it keeps falling toward the paper, but miss it. Especially. Oh, so, and yes, they knew all about fucking pencils.
Starting point is 00:10:45 Pencil led, can float into electronic instruments. That can cause short circuits. That can cause fucking fires. Just go ahead and assume that you're never correcting a goddamn rocket scientist about goddamn rocket science. You see that? Contrary to popular repetition,
Starting point is 00:11:00 Tang Velcro and Teflon were not spin-off products from space exploration. Tang was used in space flights, but was available to the public in 1959. Velcro was patented in 1955, inspired by seeds sticking to the inventor shoes. Teflon also existed well before manned space flight. It has been covering pan since 1954. Okay. And I actually, I wrote a bunch of tough long jokes here, Cecil, but I just, I couldn't get any of them to stick. Okay. Glad you said that. There are some products that have been introduced to the public
Starting point is 00:11:39 or have been improved because of space travel, memory foam, anti-icing technology, a little late for one of the spacecrafts. They found that too challenging. Space, space blankets, the dustbuster, cochlear implants, nanofiber, water filters, GPS, the list goes on. But those three that are commonly cited are not among them. All right. Well, see, so just reminded my taste buds about tang, so I need to admit to
Starting point is 00:12:08 vomit uncontrollably. He's running across for a little apropos of the thing we've been talking about this whole time. Gentlemen, our guest today is controversial for sure, but we at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are dedicated to truth, science, and we are not too proud to put our egos away and learn. Now are we. Thank you, Mr. Rector. And thank you all for your, your humblitude.
Starting point is 00:12:46 First, you all may be aware that most aircraft contained an indestructible black box. Well, what I proposed to you today is to make the whole plane out of the black box stuff. Yeah, go ahead and take a second. Sorry, are you saying we should make our planes square? I don't really have time to get into the details. You have the outline. It's right there. I'm going to let you run with it.
Starting point is 00:13:10 Okay, so item two, airplane mode, really airplane mode. If my cell phone is on, it's going to crash the plane. Come on. Actually, airplane mode is from when the original cell phones would click on the headsets of the pilots as they would have. And finally, Boonard, of course, why would my carry on be too heavy? I mean, but then I can put it underneath that very same plane. Come on.
Starting point is 00:13:37 Done. Check. It's a different part of the plane. There are different parts. This is not how any of this works. Sorry. Yes. Mustache guy question much as i appreciate your feedback and i ask where you draw these conclusions
Starting point is 00:13:51 what university do you work for maybe uh... i went to a little place called the the school of hard knocks maybe heard of it new york anyway if you'll excuse me i have one simple trick to speak to Congress about gonna fix the economy entirely, so I gotta head out. Hey, did anybody else hate that guy?
Starting point is 00:14:14 Like a lot, right? My heart is racing. How much I hate him. I'm shaking. Look at me shaking. Bye, Luna Coin! Luna coin. And we're back when we last left off. We were wrong and Cesar was right. Cesar, what else are you writers and the audience about? This is going to be a good week on Twitter. So onto some biological misconceptions, there is a myth that it's actually a pretty good
Starting point is 00:14:46 size. Sorry, it's not under the butt. You don't look under the butt. There is a myth that old elephants, when they know they're going to die, head off to some kind of old elephant dying grounds, and that becomes an elephant graveyard. Well, there isn't any proof to back up this claim. There are some theories on how it started. One of them is that during times when it's difficult to find food, older elephants that can't chew more fibrous vegetation just group together where the food is easier to eat. Oh, there's other suggests that since the tuss are missing and some of the group die
Starting point is 00:15:30 off, that it might be just hunters looking for ivory and leaving the rest. What fun fact old humans do actually gather together when they're ready to die at these special places called anti lockdown protests. It's actually pretty beautiful. It is. Poor legacy. Bulls don't see color the way we do. Bulls are dichromats. So red doesn't look bright to them. So the idea that bulls are enraged by the color red is a myth. Bulls that charge at a red cape of a Matador and anthropomorphic
Starting point is 00:16:05 bunny are just perceiving the movement of a cape as a threat. And the color has nothing to do with it. Yeah. They might also be mad about all the darts full of barbs that got shoved into their bodies. And I don't know man, the guy who just stabbed several of his friends to death with a sword could be one of these. Lemmings will not throw themselves off cliffs in a heaven's gate like group suicide. The concept that Lemmings would kill themselves off if the population needed to be rebooted
Starting point is 00:16:37 was popularized by a Disney documentary called White Wilderness. The legend itself goes back to the 1800s, but the film depicted and popularized this myth. In fact, the movie was filmed in Alberta and they had to import all the lemmings to be shot in the film. There was also only a few dozen lemmings shot in the film. They had to use some good editing to make it look like there was like thousands of them. There's also a mention of the crew placing the lemmings on quote, turn tables to create frenzied migration effect and then hurting them off a cliff into the water. And yeah, also Catherine Rye is a stupid title for a bad book.
Starting point is 00:17:18 Okay, but we've got to admit that a metaphor about self-destruction actually being about being murdered by asshole white guys. Pretty spot on for humanity, right? It's true. It's fair. Faces of the moon have no effect on if wolves haul. Wolves haul for a multitude of reasons. None of them have anything to do with lunar cycles.
Starting point is 00:17:39 Wolves also don't have an alpha wolf packs operate like human families in a lot of ways. The parents take care of the young wolves and then the young wolves go off accumulate crushing college loan debt and come back to live in their parents. Then no, but seriously, young wolves do not overthrow old wolves for supremacy of the pack to become the alpha. That's not how it works. Okay. This is a new one for me. I learned something today. My whole I like to imagine a young wolf just lock in eyes with the old leader wolf and taking a shit while he's staring. So here's the thing he with wolves is bullshit, but it turns out that scientifically, if you identify as an alpha male as a human, you are actually five times more likely
Starting point is 00:18:20 to die rolling your truck that has a monster energy logo on the side. That's true. Sorry. Probably same stuff for staring at people and shooting fights against. Bats are not blind and some have excellent vision. Small bats that are in the microbat family do use aqua location to help navigate, but they can see most of the big bats, the megabats as well as fruit bats have excellent vision and can even have excellent vision and can even have excellent night vision.
Starting point is 00:18:47 And since we're on the subject of biblical birds, ostriches don't bury their heads in the sand to sleep or to hide from danger. This appears to be a misconception that stems from the work of Pliny the Elder quote, ostriches imagine when they have thrust their head or neck into a bush, Kelli Antey, that the whole of their body is concealed. And quote, also a duck's quack has an echo. Why would it not? The weirdest thing about these kind of lists for me is always learning shit like some people thought duck quacks. Did it.
Starting point is 00:19:21 It's insane. Fuck it. What? Why would you know, I love it when obvious metaphors are so lost on clueless fuckwits, the generations of people just take them as truth. And then soon some idiot just thinks like water stops getting hotter. If you look at it, like, hey, stop watching that pot of water. We ain't never going to have dinner. The tail that a frog put into water won't jump out if the water is heated. And thus will boil the frog to death is a myth. I have no idea why the Wikipedia article needs
Starting point is 00:19:58 to point this out, but it says, quote, that frogs that are dropped into boiling water die. My God. So does everything. But you're mentally disturbed children of divorce listening to this episode. Sightation. Fucking need it. Man. It goes on to say that frogs that enter cold water that slowly gets heated will leave the water before they reach a damaging temperature.
Starting point is 00:20:24 Also, I just want to say boiling a frog is a terrible preparation. You want to fry the legs quickly and then toss it with like a per se-odd. That's not you, sir. It's a loathing. Again, metaphor, guys, like, like, fiddles aren't actually like really good at burpees. And like, clams are not known for their particular joe reality. What the fuck is wrong with people? People falsely think that sharks cannot develop cancer, and that is not true. With Compedia points to a source on this, a book called Shark Stone Get Cancer.
Starting point is 00:20:57 There you go. I see where it came from. It was used as an advertisement for Shark Carlage Act Track to prevent cancer. There it was. Also, I just want to interject here that just because you ate a thing that never had cancer doesn't make to a moon. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Apple's don't get cancer. Doesn't even make sense homeopathically, which already doesn't make sense. Cut to Eli surreptitiouslyiously put it away as naked mole rat cartilage. They do also get kids.
Starting point is 00:21:26 It's super, super rare. This is a shark smoking cigarettes. I do what I want. Also, people claim that sharks will attack humans because they resemble seals or sea lines in the water, which is not true. When a shark attacks those creatures, they roll up in like a huge chomp on them. But when they attack humans, they're actually just trying to test out what the hell is in the water. They like slowly give it a nibble and it's just that sharks are not designed to nibble. I love the idea that sharks just haven't figured out the, you know, sup nod and that's
Starting point is 00:21:58 the problem. A common misconception is that tomato juice can wash away the smell of skunks spray. This is not the case. And the wiki article recommends a mixture of quote, dilute hydrogen peroxide at 3% baking soda and dish washing liquid. End quote. I would also recommend getting a new house to that. Yes.
Starting point is 00:22:22 That said, room temperature tomato juice is a great way to get rid of a waiter's respect for you. That's true. Real fast. I will say having believed this one myself and having had myself and my two dogs skunked, I can confirm that all washing with tomato juice accomplishes is turning what once was a terrible stench into a terrible stench with red stains. Yeah, that's all you get. Why would it just get rid of the one odor though?
Starting point is 00:22:50 Like, why would that be how it works? Yeah, I admit I should have thought that through, Heath. But I washed two dogs and myself with tomato juice. I'm not going to lie about that. Like, God created pairs of smells and antidotes that all just one to one. You like cross multiply the smells and just cut it right off. Well, since we're sharing, here's one I thought was real, but immediately I don't know, Jack shit about snakes. Snakes do not unhinge their jaw when they swallow food. There's an extra bone in there that increases mouth gabe, Caliante. But there's also has a ligament that connects them to the stand, but then they just stay hinged.
Starting point is 00:23:31 Okay. How would they re-hinge it afterwards? I don't know. People think they think snakes would finish eating and then just like punch themselves in the face. So like snap it. They run into a locker like Mill Gibson and lethal weapon. This slam in their face to the inside of a building three.
Starting point is 00:23:49 Oh, I'm shaking, I gotta get real life. Earthworms do not turn into two separate earthworms when they're cut in half. Most species of earthworm just can't survive that. One is they can. Don't become two separate earthworms. One side has a mouth and the other doesn't. So when they're cutting a half the side with the mouth lives and the other side dies, although some flower worms can become two worms if they're bisected down the middle.
Starting point is 00:24:15 The wiki article says, it's fucking weird that we kept having different worms at different angles until we found one of the ones. Okay. No, there's divorced kids supposed to do it. They go, no, no. Admittedly. Housewives don't die in 24 hours. Housewives live for three to four weeks. This part of the article has this amazing line though.
Starting point is 00:24:37 Quote, the misconception may arise from the confusion with Mayflies, which in some species have an adult lifespan of a little is five minutes. And quote, so jealous. Also, European bees are not essential to food production according to this article. I'm sure many of us have heard about the doom and gloom surrounding the death of bees, and that might be a really bad thing, but it isn't because of their role as food pollinators. Quote, many important crops need no insect pollination at all. The 10 most important crops, accounting for 60% of all human food energy all fall into
Starting point is 00:25:12 this category. I hate who is pushing this line, then, OB. Is there a B with a press agent? Daddy long like spider is not the most venomous spider in the whole world. And if the spider wants to, it can actually break human skin. It causes a few seconds of a burning sensation, so it's not instant death. The legend may come from the fact that these spiders hunt other spiders that are venomous to humans, so people think they just figured that it must pack a hell of a punch. You also don't eat spiders when you sleep. Wikipedia says, quote, a sleeping
Starting point is 00:25:46 person makes noises that warn spiders of danger. And I guess since it's an entire episode about misconceptions, the pedid enemy can't help up point out that daddy long legs aren't actually spiders either. It's also a common misconception among pedants that anyone gives a shit enough to warrant that. That's not good. That part. No.
Starting point is 00:26:11 I'm really happy we don't eat a bunch of spiders in our life. Whatever the number is, I learned that today too. That's. I am doing a prank war on you. You are going to eat a bunch of spiders. They have the ones that fly now. He let he let it just they just dive off. I don't know what it is. They could go right into your mouth as you breathe in. What's that? They're coming. I hear them. Tick-a-chop. Tick-a-chop. You're not trying to make the noise of parachute.
Starting point is 00:26:37 Anything. What that was the noise of parachuting? That was the spider noise. Yeah. Tick-a-chop. Tick-a-chop. No, that is what spiders, that's the nice to spider's make. Chikachah. Thank you. Oh, the female praying mantises rarely kill their mate during reproduction. This is especially untrue when mantises are in a natural environment. They cite a study from the University of Central Arkansas where they watched 45 pairs of mantis's bump uglies and they said, quote, one out of 45 times the female ate the male
Starting point is 00:27:12 before mating and the male ate the female with the same frequency. One study of a particular species of mantis found that, quote, 83% of males escape cannibalism after an encounter with a female, but since multiple matings occur, the probability of a male being eaten increases cumulatively. End quote. Okay. I want to see the one out of 2025 when they finish fucking and both start eating the other one at the same time.
Starting point is 00:27:40 Oh my God, you're one of these two. Who is? This is so us, right? Right. Same time. Here's a few plant and geology misconceptions. Point set us aren't highly poisonous to cats or people. They can make you sick and give you an upset stomach causing diarrhea or vomiting, but so
Starting point is 00:28:03 we'll excessive consumption of mango nectar. Citation needed. I don't think it is. Yeah, how's your stomach health? Bad. There's the citation. There we go. They rarely.
Starting point is 00:28:13 There we go. So they rarely produce serial, serious medical problems in either of the two species. So while they, I wouldn't go out of my way to chomp on one, I wouldn't treat it like its leaves are basically coated in Iocaine powder. Okay. You heard it here, guys. Cecil just said that point said is make a delicious tea. That's what he just said. The claim that the Amazon rainforest contributes to 20% of the world's oxygen into the atmosphere is not true. The oxygen present in our atmosphere has been accumulated there for over billions of years. 20% figure comes from a misrepresentation of a study from 2010 that showed that 34% of photosynthesis occurred in tropical rainforests, and because
Starting point is 00:28:57 of its size, the Amazon rainforest would be over half the rainforests of the world. So that's where the figure comes from. But because of the life that lives in that forest, the net output of that rainforest and oxygen is essentially zero. You heard it right here, guys. Cecil just said that rainforests are our ways to space. There's no real purpose in having them. Put up some condos. You could be the president of Brazil. could be the president of Brazil. See, so he's wasn't killed that many times. Nobody's needed. So I need glass does not slowly change shape because of gravity. The assertion that glass is highly viscous solid is false at room temperature glasses are
Starting point is 00:29:38 solid. It takes hundreds of degrees above room temperature for it to flow. The misconception stems from old glass being thicker at the bottom of the pain, but that was caused by an inconsistency in the manufacturing process, not glass flowing over time. Okay, thank you. Fun fact, I argued exactly what these are just said with a high school science feature until I got suspended. It was, she tried to say it was a super cool liquid or something that I was like, no, it
Starting point is 00:30:03 has a melting point. It has a melting point. It's a suck. I got in trouble for that. Heath, if it makes you feel any better, I think at that point, the teacher probably just hated you for being egg balance kid. It didn't really matter what you were talking about. It's two different teachers, but I got this for so much cooler shit than you did. I know.
Starting point is 00:30:24 I did drugs and got into fights. Where did you go? Like, folksy wisdom high school. Not at all. I was just the nerd at a public school. Diamonds are formed at 140 kilometers below the surface of the earth. Call is formed right below the earth's surface and unlikely to reach below 3.2 kilometers. So the idea that most diamonds are formed from coal is not true. In fact, most diamonds date to a time before plants existed on Earth. So therefore, they date to a time before there is any coal. And fossil fuel is not really formed from dinosaur fossils.
Starting point is 00:31:03 Petroleum is formed when algae and zeal plankton die and are buried under the ocean floor. Coal is formed from plants that are buried. Coal can contain dinosaur fossils, but coal is almost all plant matter. And most coal comes from the coal forest, which date back to 50 million years before dinosaurs existed. All right. So if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? Even after all this vigorous fact checking, I'm still probably not going to fuck a praying
Starting point is 00:31:29 mantis. It's good to always qualify statements like that with a probably so are you ready for the quiz? Well, actually, right, Cecil, metaphors are just convenient rhetorical tools that are offered because they clarify or explain complex concepts and sometimes just because they offer linguistic beauty. Sure. It might be true, but they are not necessarily factual. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:31:56 Why is this so difficult to understand? Hey, most people in America read at or below the fifth grade level. B, most people in America don't read. C, it is not difficult to understand D, but things will get worse anyway. Jesus Christ. Secret answer, E, I'm going to kill myself after this recording. Yes, that is an excellent plan. And I'm going to we're doing it that together. Okay, most people don't read. Most people can't read below the fifth grade level. You're right. A and B cannot both be true. Well done. Thank you. Got them. All
Starting point is 00:32:36 right. He's a good fuck you. All right, Cecil, which of the following myths about our podcast is actually true? Hey, Noah's name is a pseudonym and a clever pun. No illusions. Okay. B, Keith tried the same thing and failed just spectacularly. Keith and he then write. Okay, I'm not sure what he was going for. I thought we said we weren't going to do this on air. See, Tom loves his job. Not all of them. You would die. Oh, yeah. Can't even get it out of the seat. Oh, don't. Really.
Starting point is 00:33:25 You've not had it that easy, so I can't be the guest. It gets it. It's just hard for me not to cry. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Dean, you and I are in fact best friends. It's A. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:40 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Who is it? Excellent. Not me. I did not fail spectacularly. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:33:51 I have one more question. Which of the following is my favorite unpopular misconception? Hey, Donald Trump thought the moon was part of Mars. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no, no, no, no. Trump thought he was going to build a border wall in the state of Colorado. No, he did. No, he did. No. See, GOP congressman Todd Akin thought
Starting point is 00:34:17 the uterus could detect lack of consent and boycott a pregnancy accordingly. I know that we're for don't need to be right. I know that one's true. D. Marjorie Taylor Green thought Gestapo was Gaspacho, but most recently she also thought Petri Dish was peach trees. You say that's most recently, but we record this in advance. So who the fuck? Yeah. That's not much. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no So who the fuck? Yes, or he Ben Shapiro thinks what wet vagina is disease?
Starting point is 00:34:48 All right, the last one convinced me all the above secret answer off. No, it was just e Ben Shapiro. No, it actually is all them whatever. I'm scared of it. Yeah, no, but you know what? He's you win anyway because anytime you get a mention that Ben Shapiro thinks a wet vagina is a disease, you make us all winners. So you've got to pick next week's essayist.
Starting point is 00:35:09 Excellent. That continues to be true about him, for sure. Next week, let's have Noah. Alright, well for Cecil Eli Heath and Tom, I'm Noah, thinking and fraying it out with us today. We're gonna be back next week, and by then I'll be an expert on something else. Between now and then you can listen to the fucking archives. God damn it, and you can like it. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per-observate donation at patreon.com slash
Starting point is 00:35:31 citation pod or leave us a five star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes, be sure to check out citation pod.com. And that, my friends, is how just 10% of the population voting third party will save democracy in America. So any questions?
Starting point is 00:35:55 Yes, question? Yeah, the NASA guys gave us a heads up that you were coming and we're just going to beat you to death with shovels. Oh, that's not. That's not a question. Yeah, it's more of a statement, I think. and we're just gonna beat a death with shovels. Oh, that's not, that's not a question.
Starting point is 00:36:10 Yeah, it's more of a statement, I think.

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