The Unmade Podcast - 104: My Moon Bucket is Full (with Destin Sandlin)

Episode Date: January 29, 2022

Tim and Brady are joined by Destin to discuss the moon, an astronaut guest, failure, a coronation spoon, various containers, and some time travel. Go to Storyblocks for stock video, pictures and audio at storyblocks.com/unmade - https://www.storyblocks.com/unmade Support us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/unmadeFM Join the discussion of this episode on our subreddit - https://redd.it/sfh26y Catch the podcast on YouTube where we include accompanying videos and pictures - https://youtu.be/3YYtnU6OHew USEFUL LINKS Destin's YouTube Channel 'Smarter Every Day' - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6107grRI4m0o2-emgoDnAA And his podcast 'No Numb Questions' co-hosted with Matt Whitman - https://www.nodumbquestions.fm/ Tim's Jungle Juice pose - https://twitter.com/Tim_Hein/status/1483010758053330946?s=20&t=3xvb3FJk3_x6nmramDjgLQ Astronaut Don Pettit - https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/donald-r-pettit/biography Don Pettit wears The White Gloves on Objectivity - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnZLGlMbgUI Don and Brady launch the Saturn VI - https://www.instagram.com/p/BqaPZGCACDI/ Pictures of Spoon of the Week - https://www.unmade.fm/spoon-of-the-week The actual Coronation Spoon - https://www.rct.uk/collection/31733/the-coronation-spoon Amphora - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphora Mud Larking - https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848024-mudlarking-in-the-thames-might-be-the-best-thing-i-ve-done-in-london McD.L.T advert - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTSdUOC8Kac Australian squeezey container - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4nUhD92yNU Destin's shelf is featured on Objectivity - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyRO3yci9bI

All right, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Wow, that was a bit of a spaghetti soup of counting, that was. Tim, we have a special guest today who I know you know of, but I don't think you've ever met before. So let me introduce to you Destin Sandlin and I'm also introducing him to everyone listening Destin is an engineer based in Huntsville Alabama but I'm sure everyone will know him much better as the guy behind Smarter Every Day the wildly successful edutainment YouTube channel. I hate that word. And he is also the co-host of

the podcast No Dumb Questions, the excellent podcast No Dumb Questions. But today, none of that matters because we have him all to ourself and we get to hear his podcast ideas here on the Unmade Podcast. Welcome, Destin. So very excited to be here and I'm excited to meet you, Tim. Oh, it's great to meet you. I've been looking forward to this. I've seen you online in your various pursuits, but to see you, well, live here on the screen, you look exactly like you do in all the videos. So it's pretty much similar, except that you're replying to me, so that's great. Well, I've got to say, you are my favorite Twitter Adelaide smoothie booth influencer. Was that Adelaide or was that Melbourne?

It was when I was in Melbourne last week, yeah. But when you said you were my favorite Twitter, I'm like, oh, wow, this is going somewhere nice. Then you go Adelaide and I go, okay, the circle just got a lot smaller. Yeah, I mean, seriously, you took a picture of yourself at that smoothie booth in Melbourne and instantly, the way you,

you had such a serious look on your face and you were like, this smoothie booth has, what's it called? What's the place called? It's called Jungle Juice. Oh, good grief, man. Like you influenced me so hard in that moment and it's like, it's on the bucket list now. You're just, you're an influencer. That's what Jungle Juice. Oh, good grief, man. Like you influenced me so hard in that moment.

And it's like, it's on the bucket list now. You're just, you're an influencer. That's what you are. Do you know, there's almost something a little bit cute, but also a little bit sexy about the way Destin says smoothie booth. What the heck is wrong with you? Say it again. Smoothie booth.

Okay. I'm just going to, wait a sec. I'm just going to go to hover and register smoothie booth.com. Cause I think that's going to blow up. I think that's great. That's a place I've been to forever. It's not for the smoothies. It's called Jungle Juice, but it's for the bagels. I love the bagels and the coffee. And because they just survived through, you know, COVID, it's been so hard with lockdowns i thought i would it's partly saying hey everyone i love this place but also you know to a small degree to my tiny audience letting people know hey come and get a bagel from here as well so that you know youtubers in alabama will put it on their bucket list one day and they'll be oh it's it is on the bucket list next time i'm in melbourne it's half the the serious face though isn't isn't due to my, you know, dour posing. Although I'm, you know, I am partial to a dour pose from time to time. It was more a case of asking a daughter to take a photo. And I think that photo was the one of, like, have you done it yet?

Because I go click, click, click, and I'm like, have you done it yet? And that's the one that ends up looking very serious and swell. To me, you had the same, I don't know, the ethos of the Admiral, like with a double-breasted shirt in your hand in his pocket. Like that's the feeling that it gave me. It's like, you know, you just got done fighting a Trafalgar and then you went to the smoothie booth. Or the jungle juice, I'm sorry.

It was pretty amazing. It wasn't like that James Dean look, that kind of boulevard of broken bagels. No, not that cool. More serious. Now, what we do on this show, Destin, as you may be aware, is we come up with ideas for podcasts. And we want you to give us a couple of ideas for podcasts. But we want to help you warm up first.

We don't want to just throw you in the deep end. So I have actually had an idea for a podcast, which is destined relevant. So I wanted to share that with the group to sort of toss it around. Can I just say something real quick? Like you act like I don't know what this podcast is. Dude, I've gone to the rocking horse with you multiple times. I continuously listen to the most wholesome episode ever. Like I've, dude, Snowy, the llama, like I, the rhombus in, dude, I know about Unmade.

I'm very, very excited to be here. But you're also a professional and professionals will like do a quick skim of a podcast before they appear on it and find two or three little references they can drop to sort of be polite no not at all so i do these things called dad ventures where i take the kids like we all load up in the bus and we go somewhere and then so i had like 14 kids and i said hey we're gonna listen to the most wholesome thing ever and i started playing you know when we went to wamaraka and they loved it. I'm talking like last year. So anyway, you guys are professionals. I really enjoy being in the presence of such awesome people.

Anyway, you were warming me up. I'm warming you up. Here's my idea for a podcast. It's called Teach Me About the Moon. Oh. Now, the idea for this podcast is Destin comes on the show each week and either he or someone he brings to the episode teaches me, Brady, who thinks he knows a lot about the moon, something I didn't know about the moon. So the challenge is every week Destin has to come to this podcast

and teach Brady something about the moon that he didn't know before That's good, yeah Now, there's a bit of background to this idea And I have told this story before, I think, on No Dumb Questions But I'll tell it for the unmade audience and for Tim's benefit as well Because a number of years ago now We were obviously already pretty good friends, Destin, because you were in Nottingham visiting me. So, we were already friends.

But for some reason, I don't think you knew just how much of an Apollo and Moon aficionado I thought I was. And we started talking about the Moon. We were driving along in the car. I think your wife was with us at the time. And we were driving along in the car. And Destin started telling me something about the moon and he went into kind of bit of a teacher voice and he was a little bit condescending was i really i have that and sometimes it happens when i just get excited about things i get told off for it all the time too i

have what's called teacher voice i i call it professor voice yeah and i i hate it about myself but yeah and basically deston was telling me something which I considered pretty elementary moon knowledge, like beginner level stuff. And I was trying to explain to him that he had to pitch it higher for me because I already knew a lot about the moon. And I don't know, it came out wrong. No, you were not trying to explain anything. It was a visceral lizard brain reaction.

I came across as a bit of a douche, I'll admit it, because I basically said to Destin, you can teach me nothing about the moon. Oh, no, no, no. I remember exactly what you said with a point of the finger. Oh, you will teach me nothing about the moon. That was it. Anyway, anyway, lucky for me, me destin has never brought it up since

yeah right sorry about that it comes it comes up it comes up all the time between us because it was a funny thing i said it's become a bit of an in joke brady saying you can teach me nothing about the moon the great irony of this is is destinin completely won the day because he is the man that got me into mission control and the vault with all the moon rocks in Houston my two most incredible moon experiences completely because of him so he did teach me quite a lot about them about the moon so well I can't take credit for that I have you know I had some friends at Johnson Space Center and they did us both right, I would say.

They did, but you gave me access to your friends, so you can take some credit. But anyway, anyway. So, there's always been this joke between Dest and I about, you can teach me nothing about the moon. So, my podcast idea is every week challenging Destin to teach me about the moon. I would love that because I would have to learn something every week. Because you are one of the most knowledgeable people on the Apollo program that I know. It's incredible.

Tim, does he talk to you about this all the time? What's the deal? Just to clarify, Brady's actually not on the Apollo program. There are other knowledgeable people that are actually on the Apollo program. I know you mean on the topic of the Apollo program. Yeah. But I think Brady does think that he is. It's hard for me to guess because I know nothing about the moon.

And Brady's years of teaching me things means that I've gone from, I now know a little bit about, like I know there is a moon. And I know we've been there. I know a little bit about, like, I know there is a moon and I know we've been there. And beyond that, his knowledge is lost on me because it's sort of, it's comprehensive in all directions. If we did actually make this podcast, for example, right, and Destin was coming on every week to do this, I think the podcast would be 10 times better if he was teaching me and Tim, because then he's got like the guy that knows nothing and the guy that knows quite a bit.

And so I think the conversation would be a lot more fun. That's right. So I'd be going, oh, wow. And you'd be going, yeah, yeah, like I knew that. But this is a really good idea, though. The challenge of trying to teach someone, you know what I mean? Not things they don't know, but things they already know a lot about. That's a wonderful challenge. I like that. You know what? What if we tried it right now?

Can we try this real quick? Yeah. Hey, Don, how's it going? I need a quick favor. Okay. Okay, so I'm recording this real quick. Okay. I need to know, this is Don Pettit, astronaut. I need a quick fact about the moon.

Okay, a quick fact about the moon. It's got one-sixth gravity of Earth. Something I wouldn't know. Tell me, what is the average particle size of the regolith on the moon? Oh, I don't know that off the top of my head. I've got a reference that I could tell you that oh how about this craters in the south and the north pole region are deep enough so that the sunlight never gets into the bottom of the crater and the temperature is 50 kelvin 50 kelvin 50 kelvin in the craters in the north and the south polar regions because the light of the sun never reaches those craters.

So that would be an ideal place for a space telescope. It might be a little cold because you just want the detectors to primarily be cold. be a cold. What I'm thinking is it's an ideal place for the accumulation of galactic water in the form of ice, and over the billions of years that the moon's

been around, there's a good chance there's going to be multiple tons of ice that is accumulated in these craters. Can Brady ask Don one question? Do you remember Brady Heron? You made the Saturn VI with him?

Oh, yeah, yeah, I sure do. Don, can I ask you one question? Well, of course. Don, would you swap all your days in space for one day on the moon? No. However, I might if I had a white glove on. All right.

Thank you very much, Don. Okay, hey, you take care. Bye. Don Pettit is a legend. How many days in space? Don, he's been in a lot of trips to space, hasn't he? I don't know. It's over a year?

He's a veteran of two long-duration stays aboard the International Space Station. Yeah. Born April 20, 1955, from Silverton, Oregon. Did they mention the episode of Objectivity he was on? It's not coming up. Destin, what would you have answered to? Would you take, like, you know, 200 days in low earth orbit or one day on the moon? Oh my goodness. What a question. One day on the moon.

I don't know. I think I'd be inclined to do 200 days in the lower earth orbit. Because you get to see the earth, right? Well, you get a pretty amazing view of the earth from the moon as well. You do as well. You get a better view. You see the whole thing. I honestly don't know, Brady. I would love to be in a position where I'd have to answer that question. But no, that's a really good question. So, Tim, Don is an amazing person. He's an absolute legend.

And he's been very, very nice with his time. And Brady actually built a rocket with Don called the Saturn 6. Well, I built the rocket. don called the saturn six well i i built the rocket i let don launch it yeah but that's a whole other story that is no that's a really good that's a really good question so things about the moon i would like to i don't know i think it'd be really cool to have a radio telescope on the far side of the moon yeah you know because the moon's going around the earth and one of the quietest places is on the far side of the moon when it's looking out isn't it always looking out it's it's a it's in it's a tidal lock so the so the one face of the moon always faces away from the earth because it takes the time it

takes to go around the earth is the same it takes the Moon to actually spin on its own axis. But when I say looking out, I'm referring to the Sun as the center of the solar system. So, when it rotates around so that it's looking away from the Sun, that would be a moment when it was most quiet. Especially like if Jupiter is in opposition from Earth. Yeah, that'd be a big deal. You get some really interesting observations there. Broadening out this idea of a podcast, if you wanted to sort of generalize this idea, you could make it, as Tim suggested, basically bringing in a world expert on a topic onto your podcast and then trying to tell them something about their area of expertise. You know,

here's Destin, Destin, let me teach you something about rocket science that you didn't know oh there's so much I don't know so is that is there really a riff between us about this like it's Joe Tim you know Brady really well read his body language is he really perturbed about this moment that happened back in the day in the UK

I think he's probably a little bit annoyed with himself that he ended up looking like he had hubris when he likes to, like all of us, hide his hubris. Yeah, we all do that, don't we? No, I like that it's a line that we bring up from time to time. You could teach me nothing about the moon. You could teach me nothing about the moon. No, but you've taught me far more about the moon than I've ever brought forth and laid at your feet.

Can I just say on behalf of the vast majority of the Unmade audience, I actually don't really, I don't need to know any more about the moon. Like I'm done. You know, like I'm. I know that it's the subject of a Pink Floyd album. I know it affects the tides somehow. I know it looks nice. You know, once a month there's a full moon and then a dark moon and somewhere in between. I know it's not made of cheese after all.

I know... You know what I mean? A bunch of people... I'm done. your moon bucket is full here's something i like to think about the moon that is trivial and i've purposefully never engaged my brain fully to try to understand it we know that like you said tim the moon affects the tides right everybody you know it's the water, you hear, right? So my question, it's a trivial question, is when the moon's overhead, do I weigh less? It's a really dumb

question, but if the gravitational force is enough to pull water and create the tides, there's got to be some force there, right? And so I know that there's an answer I can do on paper, and I know that there's probably an article about this I could read, but I purposefully never sought that out because I want there to be a little bit of a mystery about that. Oh, but also, why can the moon yank so much seawater up that we get these dramatic tides, yet if I'm having a glass of water, it always stays at the same level?

You would have thought the moon would find it easier to lift the water out of a glass because there it always stays at the same level that's you would have thought the moon would find it easier to lift the water out of a glass because there's less of it it should just fly onto the ceiling no it's not the way i would say it is like if i had a scale like an ultra precise scale and i could put a glass of water on it or just whatever i could put you know a one one kilogram mass on it if the moon's overhead versus if the moon's at some other orientation relative to the earth, would it always weigh the same? And I think the answer is probably yes. I just haven't bothered to figure out why yet.

That's what I think. Every time I stand on the scales from now on and I don't like what I see, I'm going to go, oh, the moon's probably underneath me, pulling me down more heavily. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Moon's probably underneath me, pulling me down more heavily. Exactly.

Exactly. Enough of this silly hijinks. Surely, Destin, you have a better podcast idea than my moon one. Okay. Well, I have two to lay at your feet. And I know you guys are the masters of this. And I had wanted to do the one that Derek had come up with before, famous last words. I thought that'd be fantastic. I had some examples in mind, but, you know, I thought that might have been done.

So I asked you and you said, yes, in fact, that had been done. So I have an idea for one called failure is an option. Okay. Failure is an option. The idea is, you know, you've got all these scientists that do all these research studies and they get all this funding and they they find these amazing discoveries but what you don't hear about are all the people that that had these well-funded studies and they did all this scientific research and it didn't pan out like the research didn't work yeah and and they didn't and there's some

there's some person like living in whatever maryland and they've spent their entire life researching water running off a duck's back and whatever they were trying to prove didn't work and i would like to know more about the stories because you know that the stuff that succeeds is like, scientists have discovered a new way to make a radar-absorbing material. I think it'd be cool to learn about the failures and celebrate them. Not as failures, but as, oh, well, now we know that that's a negative answer to that question. Failure is an option. What are your thoughts?

Yeah. I really like it. I really like it. That's a great idea. Yeah. Like, there seems to be a real push to embrace failure, you know, and you're quite right. In science, it is important to disprove things and have negative examples and that. But can it not be okay sometimes for failure to be really devastating? can it not be okay sometimes for failure to be really devastating?

And for some scientists to spend 20 years researching something they really believed was going to change the world. And then towards the end, they realized there was some mistake. There was some flaw. There was some side effect to the drug. There was something that, you know, and just to be a bit devastated about it and wish they hadn't done it do we always have to embrace failure like it seems to be a bit trendy to embrace failure but i'd be gut like if the james webb space telescope had blown up on the launch pad all those people that had

spent 20 years of their life building that telescope what were they going to say like were they going to say well we've got to look on the bright side sometimes failure is devastating so that's a particular slant that this podcast would need to take because what you're saying is the zeitgeist of modern culture is to jump very quickly to the well at least you tried and here are the good things that came out of it and there's a little bit of denial of the truth of why something failed or that it failed or that it was a failure. And that would be an important part of the podcast

to say, how do you look upon this failure now? And for the person to be brave enough to say, well, it's awful, obviously, you know what I mean? And not to rush too quickly to the, oh, well, you know know up's a daisy at least you tried or we at least we know that doesn't work now yeah i like that idea of embracing of being able to sit with it yeah well i don't think you have to narrow it down just to science like you could you could do all kinds of things for example example, Bonhoeffer, right? Tim, you know about Bonhoeffer,

the guy that died, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, thinking that he was going up against the Nazis in World War II was executed and died thinking he was a failure and he didn't succeed in what he was doing. There's all kinds of people that have done things like that in the past. They're like, oh, well, I'm going to try this one thing. And then they die thinking they're a failure and then it ends up working. Or maybe it doesn't work. Maybe there's all these people that did die and we don't know anything about what they did because their life's work didn't work. I don't know.

I think it's interesting. I'm curious to why you say that failure is celebrated and embraced. I mean, it sounds like you hang out in different circles than I do. No, I think what you're saying is a very, it's a very sort of trendy thing to say in science. There's, you know, the BBC were always really big on it too when they were teaching us to be journalists in new ways. They called it freedom to fail. You mustn't be scared to try new things with your filmmaking and your journalism. And if you get it wrong and it doesn't work, it's okay.

You know, you were right to try. They encourage this real freedom to fail culture. I think in recent times there is a real culture of celebrating failure. I think in the last sort of 20 years it's become a real right-on trendy thing to do. And in many ways for the better, you know, I'm not against the concept, but I think sometimes we take it a bit too far. I know sometimes when I talk to mathematicians,

they talk about people in different fields of mathematics that have gone down this kind of dead end, this belief they have in a certain area of mathematics. And they've spent the last 30 years of their life trying to do something that everyone else can patently see is not going to work, but they persist. And sometimes they start pulling down PhD students with them and people who come into their sphere and start working in their group. And other mathematicians are like trucks thinking, oh, these poor young people are being sucked into the same black hole as this man or woman who's you know been in this abyss for 30 years or so and i think like there is this belief that you know even even science when it's

wrong is doing something is progressing the field but i think in truth science and mathematicians sometimes think that someone can get too attached to an idea and not see the wood for the trees and not abort when they do, not eject when they should have. Sometimes your failure can truly be a failure and you can spend too long on a failure and not move on to the next thing. I think that's forgotten in this new culture of try everything. Even if you're wrong we learn something i think i think you do need to know when to eject when do you eject so for example fusion nuclear fusion um how much money has been spent on that the tokamak you know the the there's another one

called eater like all these different fusion uh reactors that the world is trying to create, and we're just pouring in incredible amounts of money into it, and it hasn't produced a gain of more than one yet, at what point do you say, ah, you know what, we're going to apply the Brady-Heron principle here, and you've had your time, it's time to cut it off. We're going to not go forward. I wouldn't like the abandonment of future energy sources to be known as the brady principle but but i'm not i am not the one to say i also don't have the knowledge or the expertise to say when one should abort an idea and move on

to the next thing and many many great accomplishments have been made by people who persisted well beyond what they should have. Andrew Weil's Solving for Mars Last Theorem is a classic example of this. So, of course, I'm not going to sit here and pretend to know when one should abort and when one shouldn't. There are other scientists and mathematicians who have a real scattergun approach and will just chase the thing they think is attainable rather than the impossible and you you need both but you can you can waste a lot of time on on things you know have you ever seen um like you've been walking out in the park or something and you see like a a piece of candy or some sweets or something that have been dropped on the ground and it's just covered in ants you ever seen that that? And you're like, oh man, the ants found that. They're just going crazy. When I see that, I don't think, oh man, ants. I think something different. I think, wow,

there's an ant hill somewhere and that ant hill sent out scouts in all different directions. And right now I'm looking at this candy covered in ants, which means one of the scouts in all different directions. And right now I'm looking at this candy covered in ants, which means one of the scouts found the candy and went and told the group. And now they're just feasting. But how many scouts went out from the anthill, found nothing, and came back empty-handed? So we tend to focus, I don't know, I just find that to be interesting. So, I wonder what the other ants thought. You know, they're just kind of wandering around, you know, and then finally the one that finds it is like, oh, hit the jackpot. And they lay their little pheromone trail. It's important to point out though, Destin, what you said about those ants that didn't find the candy.

They eventually stopped and came back. And then they went in a different direction the next day. And then they went in a different, the next day and then they went in a different or they went out on a different day. So like they didn't just go forever and think, well, I'm going to go until I find candy and if I drop dead before I find candy, so be it. And I think some scientists can do that. You make a good point, yeah.

They can swim out and not leave enough energy to swim back. You've got to know your turnaround point and think, okay, I'm not going to find candy today. It's time to head back and try again another day, maybe a different direction. I get the feeling that the people that you're talking about, Brady, who have the magnificent obsession, are unlikely to accept an invitation to come on to failure as an option because their entire existence and life's work is predicated on the fact that they can't be a failure. If I stop now, I'm a failure. So I need to keep going to prove I'm right to not be a failure. So there's a denial going on.

But this is more perhaps for those who have stopped, you know, who did say, well, it didn't work. They've embraced it. I remember seeing a book on the shelf years ago and it was framed a little bit in the way you're talking about you know how modern cultures come to embrace failure it was called failing forward so and that rhetoric came in you know this idea that if you're going to fail let's fail forward not fail back so at least we take what we've got and we learn the lessons and we keep going forwards. That's the way I look at it.

Like if I fail and I don't learn the lesson, then I've just wasted my time. But if I do learn the lesson, then I can count all of that time as tuition. I like it as a podcast. I like the idea of shining a light on not the people that are winning Nobel Prizes or getting amazing patents and who typically get the light shone on them on not the people that are winning Nobel Prizes or getting amazing patents and who typically get the light shone on them, but the people who it didn't turn out the way they anticipated or had hoped and how they feel about that. They may feel really dejected about it. They may feel good about it. But I like the idea of hearing their stories.

I don't think it should be limited to just science. One of the most influential books for me is something called Through Gates of Splendor. It's a story about Nate Saint and Jim Elliott in Ecuador. They were missionaries back in the day, and famously it ended with their death because they tried to make contact with a tribe, and it didn't go well, and they were murdered. But later on subsequent generations ended up making contact and it's it's a really controversial topic but i i think you could expand this to not just science or whatever you could you could expand it to all kinds of things yeah yeah sport yeah or sport speaking of which alabama lost the national championship i know you stayed up all night watching that i'm'm sure, Brady. Actually, I have to admit it did pass under my radar,

but normally I do follow Alabama because of you. But I'm not going to sit here and lament what a failure with an Alabama fan. You guys get more than enough success. Just a quick break in the episode, Tim. Destin's gone off to attend to an important space business, no doubt. Yes. So we would like to take this opportunity to thank our episode sponsor, Storyblocks. Oh, Storyblocks.

Purveyors of stock material, video, audio, pictures, you name it. Storyblocks have got it for royalty-free downloading and use in your projects. Go to storyblocks.com slash unmade to check out that enormous library of 4K and HD footage, After Effects, Premiere Pro, templates, all the good stuff, subscriptions to fit any budget including their unlimited all access which gives you the whole shebang i use storyblocks all the time in my podcasts and videos and if you're doing anything creative you should check them out too you in agreement there with tim you're on board with that i am i'm just wondering if they would have anything under the words fail. So this is an interesting thing to look up.

So I'm wondering about some images of failure. Failure? Yeah. Because of Destin's failure idea. There were lots of stock footage of unhappy-looking businessmen that have lost all their money, I can see. There are, yes. Sad man sitting on a bench, male worker in despair. Here's a video called epic skateboard fail. Who's not going to, oh, oh, oh, he's down. He's down. That's a crash. Skateboarding is, well, it's a bit like scientific experimentation,

isn't it? There's a lot of practicing and a lot of failure before there's um a fleeting moment of success do you know what i thought when you suggested that that was a bit of a dud suggestion storyblocks have got loads of stuff they've got stamps saying fail people falling over and unhappy looking people so if you were making a film or something about failure and you needed footage amazingly storyblocks has got you covered no that's not amazing i should i should have known i should have done of course of course we had two podcast suggestions before this sponsorship moment we had one about the moon and one about the abstract concept of failure and then when we did the storyblocks promo you chose the failure as the one that we should look

for pictures of. Yeah. Not the glorious silver object in our sky, which Storyblocks will have a billion amazing videos and pictures of. I'm a bit mooned out, to be honest, from this. All right. Look, storyblocks.com slash unmade. Give them a look, people. Just go and have a browse through.

You'll be amazed what they've got. And sign on. Sign on to one of their subscriptions and get access to all that good stuff. Thanks, Storyblocks. This is the part of the podcast that Tim and I like to call... Spoon of the Week. This is the failure part of the podcast. Normally we will have a spoon from the Hein Family Archive, but we've decided to hand the cutlery drawer over to you, Destin,

because I understand maybe you have a spoon for us. Yeah, so here's the problem. I own one souvenir spoon and I could not find it I remember it specifically it's a it's a little bitty souvenir spoon from uh from Johnson Space Center I believe and it had a little space shuttle dangly down from the top nice beautiful beautiful spoon I still have it in the plastic case the whole bit I could not find it. And I feel shame for that. But what I did do is because I live in a city with a bunch of antique shops, I could just run in. I know this doesn't count, Tim.

I'm sorry. But I just ran and said, hey, do you have any souvenir spoons? Because I had to drop something off at the post office. I just wanted to see what they had. And I wasn't going to buy anything. But then I found this. And I decided to to buy it so i know it doesn't count because it's not from like a family trip totally counts look at this so this is a replica from the 1950s of queen elizabeth's coronation spoon oh wow oh that's very much in the zone of the My Mum's Spoon collection,

that's for sure. So, it's not a spoon to celebrate the coronation and it's not a souvenir spoon as such. It's a replica of a spoon, what, that she used as part of the ceremony? Exactly. So, there were all types of spoons there. You know, they all had the little, I don't know, what do you call the part on top, Tim? The little place where you put like Illinois or wherever you, Kentucky? Tim won't know. I don't know. What do we call it?

The opposite end of the scoopy bit. It's the handle. The handle, yeah. No, no, but the handle's this. No, that's the stem. That's the stem. The handle's on top of the stem. Oh, okay.

Sorry, sorry. Yeah, so the handle. That's all right. Failure's not an option. That's the stem. The handle's on top of the stem. Oh, okay. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, so the handle. Failure's not an option. It's all right. So this spoon doesn't have a handle. It only has a stem, but it's very ornate, and it's beautiful. And it has on, I don't know, it's just beautiful. I thought it was really neat, but I thought it was really cool

because it was a coronation spoon. I thought it was really neat, but I thought it was really cool because it was a coronation spoon. And being from Alabama, the idea of a coronation spoon was foreign to me. And I recorded the lady as I bought it, just her talking, you know, just talking me into the spoon. She's like, oh, yeah, the lady that owns this booth is from England. And, you know, she knows all about spoons and all that. I was like, all right, I'll'll buy your spoon so you're saying this is a replica coronation spoon yeah um the person who uh has that piece is um

actually english and so she probably would definitely know that, you know. Oh, okay. So now it's, what it is, okay, it's not Queen Elizabeth's coronation spoon. Okay. It's a replica of the Queen's spoon. But it's from the 50s when her coronation, so they were. They like made a bunch of them and sold them. Right, yeah, but... Interesting.

Yeah, obviously Queen Elizabeth's spoon probably wouldn't... Yeah, I think I'll get it. Okay. Yeah. All right. Sounds great. Thank you. What do we think the Queen would have used a spoon for in her coronation?

Like, to put the official sugar into the official tea, the royal tea? Why don't you ask Prince Charles, Brady? Just phone him up. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. If you can call off an astronaut mid-podcast, why can't I call him? That is a very pretty spoon. If you will take a lovely picture of it for us, we will put it in the show notes so people can look at your spoon.

Absolutely. Destin, I can't quite see. Is anything written on it at all? Are there any words? No. There's a fancy, it looks like two eights side by side. I will send you a picture via Twitter DM right now. But it looks like two eights side by side.

I don't know what that means, but it's beautiful. Is there a royal – like, is there anything to verify the story from this lady? Tim, don't do this to me. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you may be right. So we're in Alabama,ama and people in alabama can believe anything when it comes to england you could tell us literally anything oh yeah this is the the dog collar style that the the queen's corgis wear and we'll be like oh really that

makes it special all right so i just sent you pictures uh no i do not it says 1950s replica so i don't know you need to verify that this is in fact a replica of the coronation spoon i'll tell you what destin that spoon is a lot prettier than it looked on your webcam that's a that's a magnificent piece of craftsmanship it is it really is yeah so i i thought it was amazing and uh this can be yours too if you shop at antique stores in North Alabama. Fantastic. It's the top of it, the handle kind of looks like half a baseball bat, doesn't it? Like it's sort of like got grip on it.

And then, or the top of a saber, a sword, and then it seems to get fatter in the middle. That's all quite unique. That is a- Well done. That is a beautiful spoon. Congratulations. Can we verify that this... Here, I'm going to show you what it looked like when I purchased it. It was right next to the tobacco tags, whatever that means.

Well, I've just Googled coronation spoon. And yeah, a whole bunch of them have come up looking exactly the same. The coronation spoon. Okay, we're onto something here. So yeah, google has verified that wow the royal collection trust yeah so i guess the point is when i saw it i thought you know souvenir spoons aren't just a thing on the unmade podcast i mean this this transcends all classes of society everybody understands the importance of souvenir spoons. You're right.

We did not invent souvenir spoons. We will admit that. But the scoopy bit, I like the concavity of the scoopy bit. I think it's deeper than most spoons, and I think that's why I like it. It's a quality piece. That's a quality, quality spoon. And Tim, the gauntlet has been thrown down to you for next episode. Yeah.

Nothing short of Moses' own spoon is going to top this. Is there a famous Bible spoon? Is there a famous Bible? No. No? The holy spoon. Are there any spoon references in the Bible? Who is it that, Tim, who is it that eats, he gives up his birthright? Is it Isaac and Esau?

Esau gives up his birthright. No, Jacob. Jacob, sorry. No, Esau gives it up for Jacob, yeah. So he gives it up to Jacob in exchange for his supper. So that may have been a handing of the spoons there. Okay, so I'm Googling spoons in the Bible. Yeah, basically they're just made, you know,

when they're talking about all the stuff they're going to make for the temple, they made some spoons in there. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Very wise. The coronation spoon, this design, it's not from the 1950s coronation. It goes way back to the 14th century.

So it's used at every coronation. They've got a whole bunch of things they use at every coronation, like a fork and a pair of underpants and and everything they've got all the coronation gear well that's right this is used as part of the um anointing he pours holy oil from the vessel into the spoon and anoints the sovereign on the hands breast and head so this is does the anointing there you go that's what they use that's what they do for the oil there you go. That's what they use. That's what they do for the oil. There you go, Destin. What? There you go. Are you serious? That's the oil spoon.

Yeah. It's not a cup of tea afterwards. It's during. I was going to mix my cream in my coffee with it. That thing must be worth a fortune. How did I end up in Alabama? Oh, it's a replica. Why is that?

I mean, the person that sold it to me was wearing like an archaeologist hat. That belongs in a museum. That belongs in a museum. That belongs in a museum. I'm going to get over there with my hat and whip and steal it back. All right. Fantastic Spoon of the Week effort there, Destin. You've really raised the bar. I did my best.

Now, bring this show home with your second podcast idea. Wow us once again. Oh, okay. I kind of feel shame about this one because this is just something that's personally interesting to me. I don't know how many episodes you could make on this podcast, but genuinely, I find it to be quite interesting. I wanted to go originally with engineering disasters but turns out that one's been made doesn't qualify but but the thing that is very interesting to me is what i'm calling forgotten containers that is the worst the worst title ever

i'm i'm proud of you for that title just That's a real Tim title. I love that. Forgotten Container. Story history or something like that. So hear me out. So ever since the invention of plastic, so we have containers that persist. So, for example, you might have a plastic cup at a fast food joint or something like that, or, you know, some kind of plastic, you know, I think often about, you know, is it necessary that this thing I drink out of right now, is it really important for this thing to last tens of thousands of years before it breaks down?

And, you know, I'm not in a crusade against single-use plastics, but I do find it interesting that entire empires came and went, and we know nothing about what they kept their liquids in. So, for example, I could imagine a deep dive into the amphora. Am I saying that right? Ephemera? No, not ephemera. Not ephemera. Not with an E.

With an A. Ah. Amphora. A-M-P-H-O-R-A. I don't know that word. Do you know this word? No. Oh, you will. Google amphora. Okay. And you'll A-M-P-H-O-R-A. I don't know that word. Do you know this word? No. Oh, you will. Google Amphora.

Okay. And you'll A-M-P-H-O-R-A. And as soon as you Google it, just go to images and you'll see what I'm talking about. It's a tapered container. Yeah. With two handles on it. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

It's an earthenware vessel. Yeah. And so I find it to be extremely interesting that entire civilizations came and went and they had ways that they stored liquid, they stored grain, they stored all these different things. And there's so many different ways to develop a container to store things. And because prior to now, they were all made out of clay or glass. At some point, they break and they get ground back up into dust and they're just a part of the world around us. But now, because we have, you know, plastics and polymers, we create these containers that last forever. And so, you know, let's say, whatever, nuclear event, the whole

world gets vaporized. A few people, you know, are still on the earth and they start digging, A few people are still on the earth, and they start digging, the future archaeologists. They're going to dig down through the ash layer, and they're going to get to this layer of plastic, and they're going to find the tubs that your butter came in. They're going to find your yogurt container. They're going to find all these things, and then they're going to keep digging and find nothing. I think it's really interesting, if we could go back to the past a little bit. One of my favorite things at the British Museum or even at the Alabama Natural History Museum are the containers that old civilizations had and built and used. I find it to be fascinating. And so I would like to do a deep dive on one specific style of container.

For example, this amphora that I'm talking about, you'll notice there's no bottom to it. It's tapered. And in Pompeii, from what I've never been to Pompeii, but I'm sure you have, Brady, I'm told that in the kitchens they have a desk or like the countertop where they cook. They'll just have a circle cut out of the countertop. And my understanding is these amphora will just sit down in that circle and they won't move. I don't know. Is this stupid? of the countertop. And my understanding is these amphora will just sit down in that circle and

they won't move. I don't know. Is this stupid? I mean, it's pretty niche. It's pretty niche. Is this stupid? Brady goes,

nah, like, no, no, no. I find it interesting. I mean, I would have thought of all the things that have survived from ancient

history, kind of cups and containers is one of the things we do better with. Like, I feel like I don't know much about what ancient people did, but I feel like I see lots of pots and vases and cups. I feel like it's like the only thing I know about ancient history. So as far as things that haven't survived the time, I would have thought that's something that has. But I guess at least you've got something to work with then for your podcast idea. I don't know. Like, I find it

interesting, an interesting discussion i'd never knew about those holes in the countertops that's what that is interesting and also it sounds quite visual so again you're you're pushing it uphill for a podcast okay so it's a flop tim you'll tell me the truth can i tell you what my favorite bad for the environment plastic container is from my lifetime please so this is not an endorsement of this plastic i'm all for getting rid of single-use plastics and and all that but if i could if we could have one that did biodegrading i got to use it again don't you remember in the 1980s when like a mackers burger actually came in that that plastic container thing and you got to

pop it open styrofoam and then styrofoam and then they but there was a way in which and i can never quite remember how this happened you could put like 10 of them together to form like a big ball did you ever see those things they kind of click together people would put them together and you could create a big ball like a big moon almost out of it so i don't know if i could bring back anything it would be the little click pop thing to bring that would be my i do have a lot of nostalgia for those star if i'm containers for the burger that brings back that that just makes me happy thinking about it yeah yeah actually i actually saw a commercial yes who's george costanza what what's what's the actor's name jason alexander Oh, Alexander. Yeah, Jason Alexander.

Thank you. He did an ad in the 80s, in 1985. There was a thing called the McDLT, and it was a hamburger. It was a double styrofoam container, and the hot side stayed hot, so that was the burger and the bottom bun. And on the left side, you had the top of the bun, and you had the lettuce, tomato, and cheese. So the hot side stayed hot, and the cold side stayed cold. They didn't care anything about how much styrofoam was used.

I watched the commercial and I was like, that looks really good. I want to eat that right now. I'm with you, man. If we can figure out a way that you can make styrofoam that biodegrades quickly, I think that'd be fantastic. Destin, if I gave you out a way that you can make styrofoam that biodegrades quickly, I think that'd be fantastic. Destin, if I gave you a one-use time machine where you could go back and spend a couple

of hours at any point in history, just poke around, just watch what's going on, not interfere, but just check it out and then come back, but you can only do it once, where would you go? What would you want to see? I mean, there's the obvious answers that you would expect. But one that might not be as obvious is I would like to go have a meal at a chain restaurant in Rome, ancient Rome. Because you know fast food restaurants had to exist. And you know they had to be chains.

Like you know there was an equivalent of a taco bell or a kfc excuse me i forgot i'm on the unmade podcast there's an equivalent of the kfc in ancient rome is that do we know this there had to have been do we like some businesses would have grown and multiplied yeah automatically you think you're just presuming we don't know that because we've found i'm presuming because of the way market forces work. Like, it would have to... I mean, there's a guy or a lady that made a chicken restaurant, and it was really, really good chicken.

And she didn't say like, oh, you know what? I'm happy with the amount of money I've made from my single chicken restaurant here on this corner. She's going to say, I can go five miles that way and make another one with the same recipe, and I can make more money. You know what happened and so i think it would be really interesting to see what types of standardization happen in that realm like the everyday mundaneness of life you brought up the word ephemera earlier on accident but ephemera meaning the like the transitory nature of just humans doing human things,

like receipts and tickets to plays. You know, to go to the gladiator show or whatever, gladiator show, excuse me, to go to the gladiator fights in the Coliseum, there had to be some kind of ticket that they used. Like they probably had a thing or a chip that they would hand over or they'd punch a piece of papyrus or whatever, however they did that. And so, I think it would be really interesting to learn the everyday mundaneness of how they

do things back in ancient Rome. I think that would be fascinating. All right. So... I mean, when you said the obvious one, obviously, you were referring to something from, like, biblical times, like Jesus or something. Yeah. Would it be, like, the crucifixion or the resurrection or something?

Yeah, the resurrection. That's the big show. Yeah. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Well, it's only three years. I'd go to that whole time. If I only get to use it once, I'd hang around for at least three years before I came back.

No, I'm only going to give you a couple of hours. I'm not going to let you just become one of the disciples for three years. That's right. If I'm given a couple of hours, I'm sitting right beside Thomas because I empathize with that guy. So I think that's where I'm at. So yeah, but I don't know.

I think, forgive me for the container thing being so dumb, but for me, I still remember my grandfather, there was this thing that happened in the early 90s in Alabama. This pine beetle came through Alabama and destroyed most of the pine trees. And my grandfather had a stand of timber, and he knew the trees were about to be destroyed. So he had all the pine trees cut, and he sold them for timber. And he used that money to take me to New Zealand.

We didn't have a clue what we were doing. It was the first time I've ever flown, first time he'd ever flown commercial, and it was just interesting. And I still remember one of the most formative memories was I ordered ketchup at a restaurant in New Zealand, and instead of it being packets, like you open a little bag and you squirt it on your thing. Tim, you may have this in Australia now.

It was a little container with two hard plastic pouches on the bottom, and then you cracked it in half. Yeah, yeah. And then you folded it, and then it squirted out a little nozzle in the middle. What do you call those? Well, it's just sauce. It's a sachet of – it's not quite a sachet. Tomato sauce.

Yeah, it's just one of the – yeah. You get them a lot in like at petrol stations in the outback, don't you? That's where I remember them a lot. So you grew up with that. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, that's right. It's so much better because you're not sitting there with a sachet where you've got to pull it apart and it comes out each side and you've got to squeeze it out.

I mean, it's more plastic, but you don't get any on you, particularly because we use them on our pastries like a Pie and a sausage roll So you can go like that with one hand and then and then you're and then you're all good And then you spread your finger a pie floater So you don't have a word for that little container squeeze like a squeezy I don't know. It's just like what the source comes in. But see, that's a genius solution to the same problem. Now I think about it, I'm surprised. You're right. I grew up with them and I've never seen them outside Australia.

And they are a really good way to dispense ketchup. We have them in other things too. Like you have aioli, you know, mayonnaise or stuff like that. You want to have, if you're having fish, fish and chips. So other things come, tartar sauce. So there's a place on the Arsenal where I used to work that the public isn't allowed to go. It's a controlled area. And I can remember walking back in there.

It's in the backwaters of the Tennessee River. And I can remember walking back in there looking for things that had gone awry. The rocket went the wrong way kind of stuff. And you're walking and you will see bottles that had, you know, when the water level had risen, the bottles pollution had floated back into the back and then the water receded in the in the bottle would stay. forgotten containers, the history of containers, like during the American Civil War, or the formation of Australia even, birch beer was served in clay bottles, and that moved forward, and eventually they got to glass bottles for really fine champagnes and things like that. And so the refinement of these bottles has improved throughout the years. And I think when we got to plastic, we went backwards. And so I remember the moment when it all kind of

reversed. I was in Austin, Texas for a conference and I got a yogurt and it was in a clay pot with a little foil lid on the top. And I thought, oh, oh interesting the old container now feels more special because it's the old way of doing it and this clay pottle just turned into dust eventually anyway i i thought it's fascinating um i think about this particular topic all the time but you're right it's probably not a great podcast have you been mud larking on any of your trips to london yet it sounds like something that would be right up your street mud larking have any of your trips to london yet it sounds like something that would be right up your street mud larking have you done that or heard of it no i haven't what is it so i'd say in the last five years it's become one of the real trendy juju things for people to do basically

and you do it in small groups usually a five or six people and a special guide will take you when the tide goes down usually on the river thames is where they do it um when the tide goes down and all the mud gets exposed because people have been throwing all their rubbish in the thames for how many hundreds of years it exposes all sorts of interesting things like spoons and cups and bricks and tins and everything and people just go and fossick around for an hour or two in the mud, like you wear all this protective gear because you're up to your knees in mud, and just see what you can find in an hour or two. And then you come back with your souvenirs from London past.

It could be things that are hundreds of years old. It's become a really popular thing to do. If you look up mudlarking, you'll see all sorts of interesting pictures. You find lots of, like, pipes. Lots of people would throw their pipes in the Thames. So one of the common things you find lots of like pipes lots of people would throw their pipes in the thames so one of the common things you find are pipes uh yeah it's become the a real a real thing to do oh i would love that i you would man you would absolutely be in heaven i was at the uh i lived in chattanooga for a summer and i i attended the meetings of a an american civil war history

society and one of the things they would do at this, it was a metal detector club, basically. And one of the things they would do is they would say, all right, guys, well, it's time for this week's finds. And everybody would get real quiet, and everybody would look around, and everybody would have these really interesting grins on their face. And they'd say, all right, what you got, John?

And John would stand up, and he would kind of lumber up to the top, and he would reach in his pocket, and he would pull out a button, and he would lay it a button and he would lay it on the table and everybody go oh and it was like and then he would like smile and real prideful and he'd go back he'd sit back down all right what what you got william william would come up and he would you know set down a coin i loved it i loved it like show and tell. That's great. Oh, yeah.

But he's grown men and it's like, oh, he got a copper this week. You know, last week, you know, I heard that James got a brass from the union side. It was amazing. Do you reckon those guys would have like a stash of three or four things? And if you were last and you had a really good thing and an amazing thing and the other guys hadn't been that good that week, you would hold back your really good one to spend it at a future meeting and you'd pull out your medium one because you think,

I'm not going to play my trump card today because I don't need it. Here's my rifle. I'm not going to play the rifle this week because the other guys only pulled out buttons. I'm going to save my rifle because I reckon John's sitting on something better and I don't want him to do me next week. Like, there's this whole gaming to it.

Oh, that'd be so fun. I love that stuff, man. Follow up the guy with a hairpin with, here's Lincoln's Bible. Boom. Do you know, I would like to engage in a variation on on mudlarking which is which is when you you get sort of suited up and you're allowed to go fossicking on destin's shelves behind him there just to see what you can find from his many adventures in his life oh yeah it's all real i've already done a video about that tim that right. This is sort of an objectivity on Unmade Podcast.

Is there something there you would like to highlight? What are you most proud of or thrilled about or get a buzz out of holding on the shelves behind you, Destin? I don't know. It's like, what genre do you want to go with? So... Nothing to do with the moon. These are my service pins from when I worked for the army for many, many years. Oh, wow.

So I got those. Those are... I wasn't actually in the army. Yeah, ooh. I think this one's... Have you got something theological there for Tim? No, I have some C.S. Lewis books up there. Ooh.

I really like Lewis. Now you're talking. Forget all that earlier moon stuff. Now Tim Lewis books up there. Ooh. I really like Lewis. Now you're talking. Forget all that earlier moon stuff. Now Tim's in the zone. Yeah. You can't teach me anything about C.S. Lewis. Yeah, I really like Lewis. Have you been to the kilns, Tim?

I have, yeah. Yeah, did you have a pint at the bird and the baby? Yes, I have, yes. I did the same. I did the same. Oh, my goodness, Destin, we're going to have to send you to the episode that's all about Tim's visit to the kilns. Tim's visit to the kilns is famous.

Oh, I haven't listened to that. I'm sorry. It's going back a ways. Yeah, it was a moment for me. I took some grave rubbings on Lewis's grave. Well, hang on, what's a grave rubbing? You know, you put a piece of paper on it and you, what do you use? Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, yeah. You use like a pastel crayon kind of thing and you rub the, you know, and the letters protrude through. So I did that and I gave three or four of those to some people that have been formative in my life. The first guy that handed me a book of mere Christianity, I gave him a grave rubbing, is my uncle. And then a couple of other people that were special. Here's one thing from the shelf that I think is interesting. This is a single frame out of Henry Reich's Minute Physics series. This is a single frame from one of his videos.

One of his original drawings from his animated physics videos. Yeah, it is. And I ordered it. He was giving it away for charity, and I didn't tell him it was me, but he figured it out, and he autographed it to Destin from Henry. Oh, that's nice. And so I framed it. It looks like an early sketch for one of the recent Coldplay albums,

I think. Yeah, there's – oh, and I just dropped it. It's gone. There's a lot of – You just dropped it. It's gone. This is precious to me. How special this is.

And then I just throw it down. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff here. I mean, this is a whole thing. Whoops, that moon rock has just crumbled. Yep, okay. Go, if you haven't checked out No Dumb Questions yet, people, you're obviously into podcasts that involve, like, idiots just talking. So if you want another one.

What are you saying? If you want another one, there's another one waiting for you there. No Dumb Questions. I'll link to No Dumb Questions questions. And of course, I'll link to Smarter Every Day in the notes for this episode. So Destin, if you see a bit of a spike in Smarter Every Day subscriptions, you know who to thank. Thank you. Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. No, I'm honored to be here. I mean, frankly, I've wanted to meet you for a really, really long time, Tim. I really like the way you internet and I enjoy consuming your content that you make. And I always, I always enjoy listening to you guys talk because it's, I think what I

love about this show so much is that it's clear that it's real. Like you genuinely love each other in a very interesting way. To quote Lewis in The Four Loves, Tim, I think it's more Storgi than Philia, right? And so I think that's what I, well, I don't know. It's probably a lot of Philia too, but I really like it. And I'm just honored to be here. Thanks for the time.

Just one last question then. Seeing you have, you're familiar with the podcast, would you say you have a favorite host between the two of us? Oh, Tim, no question. Yeah, there's no question. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's Tim. I thought that.

Mostly because I know that you would want it to be you, and you and I have this longstanding tradition of ribbing each other. You have chosen wisely