114: La Brea's Bone Count & Giant Pumpkins

Ella Hubber (0:00)

Someone in the Spotify comments, which I read all of funny way, said, if Tom managed to snipe...

Tom Lum (0:06)

Did you see this, Caroline?

Caroline Roper (0:07)

No, I haven't seen this.

Ella Hubber (0:08)

If Tom managed to snipe one of Ella's jokes, does that mean that Ella finds Tom funny?

Caroline Roper (0:17)

Wait, what episode was that under?

Tom Lum (0:20)

On the most recent one. That was it.

Caroline Roper (0:22)

That's brilliant. I'm going to have that framed.

Ella Hubber (0:25)

No.

My name's Ella and I am the undead student of the episode. Today, I will not be bringing a topic because I'm just learning. I'm learning along with you guys. It's a Halloween episode even though it's the start of October.

Tom Lum (1:18)

It starts now, baby.

Ella Hubber (1:19)

Yeah. It's spooky season. It's spooky month. You're getting it early.

Tom Lum (1:22)

Oh yeah.

Ella Hubber (1:23)

Today, we're going to cover a science topic and a miscellaneous topic, both equally scary in their approach.

Tom Lum (1:29)

My name's Tom and today's spooky science topic is something that I've wanted to talk about for three years now because I went to a tourist destination in Los Angeles, not expecting much and found one of the most macabre museums ever. So my spooky science question is how many bones are in the La Brea tar pits?

Caroline Roper (1:52)

Oh, you don't do like kind of morbid topics very often, Tom. And this is delightful. And I'm so excited. How wonderful.

Tom Lum (2:00)

I'm also it's it's good to be back in the bone zone, baby. It's been a while.

Caroline Roper (2:03)

We haven't been in the bone zone for so long.

Tom Lum (2:07)

And we like that phrasing.

Caroline Roper (2:08)

And I'm sticking with it. We love the bone zone.

Tom Lum (2:11)

I love boning with my friends.

Ella Hubber (2:13)

Oh, no, that is very, very interesting, Tom.

Caroline Roper (2:17)

I'm excited.

Ella Hubber (2:18)

This is very me.

Tom Lum (2:19)

You're excited to get down in boning.

Caroline Roper (2:20)

I'm so excited. My name is Caroline, and this episode's spooky miscellaneous topic is giant vegetable growing.

SPEAKER_4 (2:32)

Yes.

Tom Lum (2:34)

Yes.

SPEAKER_4 (2:35)

Yes!

Ella Hubber (2:37)

It's great. But is it spooky?

Caroline Roper (2:39)

There's quite a lot of giant pumpkin growing happening on the scene. So that's my link.

Tom Lum (2:45)

Sorry, this is such a wonderful, spooky reversal also, though. I did have the thought, as I was writing some of my topics, I was like, my version of macabre is a lot of your guys' normal baseline.

Ella Hubber (2:56)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tom Lum (2:57)

But what a wonderfully autumnal and Halloweeny topic.

Ella Hubber (3:02)

I'm excited. I'm excited.

Tom Lum (3:03)

This is the treat. It's the trick and the treat, as it were.

Ella Hubber (3:06)

Before we start, we have a corrections corner. Last episode, I mentioned Burke and Hare. I said they were body snatchers. That's not true. They were murderers. Yes.

I completely forgot that.

Tom Lum (3:23)

Don't disrespect their names. They were murderers.

Ella Hubber (3:27)

I mean, this is very on-brand for the Halloween episode. They murdered at least 16 people to sell them their bodies for medical.

Tom Lum (3:36)

Sorry. No, it is objectively funny that Ella did use this to backdoor in her spooky fact.

SPEAKER_5 (3:43)

Sorry, that rules.

Ella Hubber (3:45)

Yeah, they murdered at least 16 people that they sold on for anatomical purposes. So I don't know how I forgot that, but I did.

Tom Lum (3:55)

I think we were so body snatch focused that...

Ella Hubber (3:59)

Apologies for that.

Caroline Roper (4:03)

I also have a... It's not a corrections corner.

It's a nuance zone.

Ella Hubber (4:09)

The nuance zone.

Caroline Roper (4:11)

It's so nuanced.

Tom Lum (4:12)

I can't tell if it's a corner or just a flat wall.

Ella Hubber (4:15)

I like that this isn't a corner. I saw someone once in the Discord questioning, how many corners does Let's Learn Everything have? What shape is it?

Tom Lum (4:25)

It's a circle, baby.

Ella Hubber (4:26)

So it's just not a corner. This is the zone in the middle.

Caroline Roper (4:28)

This is the nuanced coffee table that sort of sits in the middle.

Yeah. This is also on my topic, where we talked about organ discovery, and we joked quite a lot about the period of time when not a lot of scientific discovery was happening. Yes, all of the stuff that we discussed at length does stand, but there are some other nuance that I just wanted to touch on as well, which we had a great email from Anna come in about this. So thank you so much, Anna. Anna rightfully pointed out that actually a lot of medicinal work was happening, a lot of medicinal science was happening. But that, of course, it was women who were doing it, and therefore, there's actually not a lot of written record of the work that was happening at the time.