March 10, 2020 • 43 mins
Not to question the wisdom of Gandalf the Grey, but a hobbit might seem like a poor choice for a continent-sprawling journey to rid the world of evil. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe return to the science of Middle Earth with a look at scientific breakdowns of hobbit diet, hobbit physiology and hobbit vitamin requirements.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You asked me to find the fourteenth man for your expedition,
and I chose mister Baggins. Just let anyone say I
chose the wrong man or the wrong house, and you
can stop at thirteen and have all the bad luck
you like, or go back to digging coal. He scowled
so angrily and glowing that the dwarf huddled back in
(00:21):
his chair. And when Bilbo tried to open his mouth
to ask a question, he turned and frowned at him
and stuck out his bushy eyebrows till Bilbo shut his
mouth tight and snap, that's right. Let's have no more argument.
I have chosen mister Baggins, and that ought to be
enough for all of you. If I say he is
a burglar, a burglar he is, or will be when
the time comes. There's a lot more to him than
(00:44):
you guess, and a deal more than he has any
idea of himself. You may possibly all live to thank me. Yet,
welcome to stuff to blow your mind? The production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, are you welcome to stuff to
(01:06):
blow your mind? My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm
Joe McCormick, and I guess it's obvious that we're back
in Hobbit territory today. That's right. You know, we did
an episode, I guess a few months back or several
months back, I'm not sure which, where we talked about
the One Ring, we contemplated the metallurgy of the Rings
of Power and the Lord of the Rings. And in
this episode, we're going to be returning to Middle Earth.
(01:29):
We're going to look at everyone's favorite hole dwelling pipe
smoking six meal a day, eating humanoids, the Hobbit. So
this year I was going back and reading Lord of
the Rings, and I was about halfway through Fellowship of
the Ring, and the question entered my mind. And that
question is are the Hobbits too cute? Are their lives
just too quaint and too sweet for this story? And
(01:52):
I thought about it for a minute. I was like,
you know, I get a little bit board maybe in
some of the early chapters of Fellowship where it's going
on and on about the the quaintness of the Hobbit existence.
But then I realized, no, I think it really does work. It. Uh.
It's important for the story because it makes you feel
the adventure and the pain of the adventure all the more.
(02:13):
When you get a full feeling for how cozy and
unadventurous their their prequest lives were. Yeah, it's in a
fantastic world that just gets more and more fantastic and
dark and magical the further out you go from the Shire,
the realm of the Middle Earth that is home to
the Hobbits, you know, And it makes sense to start
(02:34):
with something that is quaint, that is normal, that is
almost you know, painfully British and cozy and uh uh,
not so much cute, I guess, at least not in
the original intent. I know, I know, I've read that
Tolkien did not like the idea of illustrations that made
the Hobbits look too much like children, because they should
(02:55):
all look like like small little like middle aged or
old men imagine. But yeah, you need you need somebody
ordinary to go on these adventures, to be challenged by
these adventures. Right, you feel the rain and the hardness
of the stones under their feet and the threat of
the Goblin's blade so much more when you've when you've
(03:16):
seen the world of Tea by the Fire. Yeah, and
then and there's certainly the the species of Middle Earth
that we can relate to the most. They are, they're
really they're even more human than the humans or the
men as Token calls them, uh, that we encounter in
the story. Essentially the main storytelling reason that the Hobbits
are central to the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.
(03:37):
But of course there's more to this as well, more
to unwrap. And and that's why we chose that particular
passage from the Hobbit to read at the beginning, because
in this particular section, basically Gandalf, the gray globetrotting wizard
that he is, is injecting himself into dwarf and politics
essentially to rid the world of the last evil dragon
(03:59):
so that it can't aid the coming war with Saaron. Uh.
You know, it's uh, you know, it's it's in a way,
it's kind of like shady politics, I guess, but it's
it's certainly yeah, but it's it's it serves a greater good.
And and but Gandalf is getting a bit frustrated because
he's he's helping the dwarves out, he's enabling this mission,
uh to to retake their mountain from smog. And they
(04:20):
don't want to have thirteen dwarves go on a trip
that's unlucky. They need another person, and Gandalf says, here
you go, Here is a Hobbit, here's Bilbo. He's the
fellow you need. He's a burglar. You're gonna need a burglar.
And of course the whole time Bilbo is like, I
can't go on adventure. I can't do that. I don't
have any of these skills. And the dwarves are agreeing
with him, and they're saying, oh, he's useless, let's not
(04:42):
take him. Don't you have something else. Let's just eat
all his food and move on, right, So you know
it's you. It's it's easy to to understand the criticism
because Bilbo does seem rather useless, and he remains rather
useless feeling for a large portion of the book. Uh
(05:02):
So it raises the question is there something about the Hobbit?
Is there something about this species that that that is
really special? Is there Hobbit exceptionalism that might be exploited?
And that is ultimately what Gandalf is leaning on, that
there's something special about the Hobbits that will help enable,
you know, first of all, victory and this mission to
retake the Lonely Mountain, and then ultimately in the quest
(05:26):
of the Ring that we encounter in the Lord of
the Rings. You know, despite how over the course of
The Lord of the Rings we see several different Hobbits
in different ways, at different times, being seduced by the
power of the Ring, it does seem like Hobbits, more
than other creatures, are somewhat resistant to it. Like they
are somehow able to put up more of a fight,
to be less enticed by the promises of power and
(05:48):
glory that the Ring entails. Yeah, perhaps leaning into their
inherent quaintness, right, I mean, ultimately, all any hobbit wants
is a nice hobbit hole to live in and a
mug of ale and you know, some some mush rooms
and eggs and bacon for for one of their many meals.
I mean, almost any time a man, a human gets
his hands on the ring, he's like, oh great, yes,
(06:10):
so we'll slow down for a second here, because there
may be some people out there. I find it hard
to believe, but there may be some people who don't
know what a hobbit is. Well, just to drive it
home here, the Lord of the Rings the Hobbit. These
books are our fantasy novels full of elves, and goblins, dragons,
uh you know, demonic ball rogs, uh, half living ring races,
(06:34):
and various demigods and wizards. But then we also have
the quaint hobbits, and typically they fit the following profile.
They are quote a little people about half our height.
They walk around barefooted and boast a generous helping of
hair atop each foot. I was to understand they had
hair underneath their feet. Is that not right? I think
you're right as well. We just that the illustrations rarely
(06:55):
show that that the bottom of the foot hair. I
think that was my understanding is that they're they're very um.
They're actually good as burglars because they're very light of
step and their footfalls are quiet cushioned by this hair.
They're also known for their hobbit holes. These are fashionable
underground homes, but they don't always reside in these, despite
their their overall subterranean tendencies and a likely history of
(07:17):
borrow habitation and uh oh. A big one, of course,
is their hunger. They're their appetite. They require some six
meals a day or what about second breakfast, and then
they're also at least very good at hiding, which can
be extrapolated into a skill of burglary. And I guess
that's that's one argument for what Gandolf is saying, Like,
(07:37):
here is a species it's naturally good at hiding. So
given time, by the time you get to the Lonely Mountain,
Bilbo will either be dead or very good at adventuring
and the like in a stealthy way, he will have
leveled up appropriately. But another another way to look at
it is to look at the specific biological adaptations of
a hypothetical hobbit species. And so that's what we're gonna
(08:02):
largely focus on in this episode. And the beautiful thing
is that we don't have to just make all of
this up on our own. They're a handful of papers
that we've been able to refer to, generally of the
tongue in cheek variety. So we're not talking like hard,
serious scientific or medical contemplation, but still do get quantitative
about it. And then you get quantitative and they get
into the science of like, all right, let's talk about hobbits.
(08:24):
Let's talk about how much they eat? Would they be healthy?
Would they be actually capable of walking across the continent
with a bunch of adventurers. Uh, you know what, are
they truly this this solid investment that Gandalf the Gray seas.
That's a mighty good question. I mean, not to cast
any doubt on Gandalf the Gray's um in a mindset here.
(08:45):
You know, clearly great wizard. We'd love to have him
on the show sometime for an interview. But uh, to
tune into our new podcast series, Gandalf Mindset. It's where
you learn wizard mindset. Mindset. There's probably way a book
about that. Don't let them steal your staff. Six easy
steps to Wizard dominance. I would not be surprised if
(09:08):
if to find out that a book like that existed.
All right, well, let's start with the with the obvious,
the dietary constraints of the Hobbit. Now, this is going
to be one of the main differences you would notice
in like a physical energy kind of situation with the Hobbits,
because they never stop eating. That's one of the things
that has driven home again and again in the books.
It's always time for a meal. Yeah yeah, and they
(09:30):
Plus they tend to be a little bit portly, leading
many a non halfling to question their sedendary lifestyle and
and and and, as well as their insistence on those
six daily meals because they go with breakfast, second breakfast,
eleven seas, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper. How is
dinner different from supper? Yeah? That that one was the
hardest for me to figure out, because I was like,
(09:52):
all right, let me look at my own, you know,
dietary requirements in my schedule, and and I realized, Okay,
I usually like breakfast for me is like smoothie and coffee,
and then second breakfast is like more coffee and like
an apple or something later on, and then eleven z s.
I'm I have been known to have like a half
a peanut butter sandwich, perhaps with more coffee, and then
I have actual lunch, and then I don't have afternoon tea,
(10:14):
but I generally have more coffee and perhaps another apple,
and then dinner I have an evening meal, But supper
I can't. I can't really come up with a uh,
you know, a possibility for that in my life, like
unless you count an after dinner drink or a you know,
a late night snack as a meal. And I don't
think we were talking about that with Hobbits. I think
(10:34):
for each of these, with the possible exception of the
afternoon tea, we're talking about a full blown meal or
you're closer to Hobbit scheduling than a lot of people.
Though it sounds like it sounds like you kind of graze. Yeah,
I mean, especially if I'm working from home and it's
cold out, then it's just you know, wandering around trying
to figure out what I can smear peanut butter on um.
That's why it's good to get out of the house.
(10:55):
But yeah, it's it's hard to figure out how that
what the difference between uh supper and dinner would be
for the for the Hobbit, And clearly it points towards
just the fact that they need more to eat. They
have just higher dietary requirements than a mere human or
some other species. So here's the question, based on real
world biology, is this sort of diet reasonable for a
(11:19):
creature of the hobbit stature? And unfortunately we have a
paper to refer to in Christio Meno, Horan and sky
Rosetti of the University of Leicester Center for Interdisciplinary Science
weighed in on the issue in their paper Modeling the
BMR of Species in Middle Earth. So the BMR in question,
(11:39):
this is the base metabolic rate. This is the number
of calories that our bodies are very cells need in
order to function well. And the base part of it
would be this is not including whatever extra stuff you're doing.
This is just like to stay alive. Yeah, this is
not just like extra curricular eating, the wandering around the
house looking for peanut butter sort of thing. So ather
(12:00):
of words, the researchers set out to gauge the amount
of energy that a Hobbit's body needs to function at rest,
and they did this not only for the Hobbits of
Middle Earth, but also for the fair elves. They did
this by modeling each fictional race as an actual Mammalian
Earth species. The European road deer stood in for forest
dwelling elves, and the Hobbit, being a burrowing hole dwelling people,
(12:23):
was stuck with the Southwestern pygmy possum. And this is
what they figured out. They decided that for a hobbit BMR,
we're looking at one thousand, eight hundred and eighteen point
seven kilo calories every day. This compared to seventeen h
two point to killer calories every six days for humans
or or men in Middle Earth as they're called, and
(12:46):
then for elves, we're looking at one thousand, four hundred,
sixteen point five kilo calories. As such, they figured the
average hobbit would require some six point seven meals per day,
and uh, indeed that's in keeping with the high hiher
energy demands for smaller birds and mammals. Now, you might think,
why would smaller animals on average have greater relative food requirements, right, Like,
(13:11):
wouldn't it be bigger animals that would have greater relative
food requirements. Well, on average, smaller animals do tend to
have faster metabolisms. There's you know, individual variation, but on average,
the smaller you are, probably the more energy you burn
proportional to your body mass. Why would this be? One
major reason is thermoregulation. So a major part of what
(13:34):
chemical energy from food does in metabolism is keep the
body warm. Heat loss from an organism is a function
of its surface area. So in the past we've talked about,
you know, one reason for the biological implausibility of like
Kaiju sized animals like King Kong is that they would
probably have trouble cooling their bodies they're they're too big.
(13:56):
They've got too much volume and not enough surface area
for heat to escape through. Even worse, if you happen
to be a giant fire breathing dragon like small exactly uh,
smaller animals that would have exactly the opposite problem. Right.
Smaller animals have a greater surface area to volume ratio,
meaning they lose heat faster than larger animals. Think of
(14:17):
the way that a smaller ice cube melts faster than
a bigger one. Uh. So they often have to eat
a lot more relative to their body weight to maintain
a stable body temperature. Uh. Some very small animals have
just unbelievable metabolic requirements and can eat huge amounts of
food relative to their bodies. I was reading a Good
(14:38):
nat Geo article about this by Liz Langley, and uh,
it made an interesting point in comparison, so it brings
up the biggest animal on the earth, the blue whale.
The blue whale on average eats about four tons of
krill every day, and that is definitely a lot of food,
or it sounds like a lot, But the blue whale
has a body mass of around two hundred tons, so
(15:00):
on average the whale is only eating about two percent
worth of its body weight every twenty four hours. Meanwhile,
the pigmy shrew of Britain, which only weighs about an ounce,
can eat about a hundred and twenty five percent of
its body weight per day. So think about this, It's
like a one hundred and sixty pound human eight a
(15:21):
hundred and twenty five percent of their body weight every day.
This would be about two hundred pounds worth of food.
I did some math and if it was all Big Max,
that's about three hundred and seventy six Big Max a day. Wow,
just spread out before you. That's that's something they divided
into six meals. The shrew factoid reminds me of I
(15:43):
imagine you've seen this because it was on MSTY three
K back in the day. They did Attack of the
Killer Shrews. Terrible black and white movie. But I think
it was like dogs with carpet draped over them. Yeah,
but fun in a way because I think they tried so. Basically,
the situation was, hey, shrews are these ravenous creek tres,
but thankfully they're small. If they ever got big, they
would be the most dangerous predator on the planet. And
(16:05):
then love and behold that's what happens in this movie. Oh,
that's a great premise, except it it didn't work. It
doesn't work because if they got bigger, they wouldn't have
the same surface to volume problem. Yeah but but yeah,
that that reminded me of of that. I think they
end up like building a tank out of like stuff
in their cabin too, then survive the trees. It's it's
(16:27):
a terrible movie, but way better than it should be.
One of the things I remember about it is the
way that like the dogs that they've got dressed up
to be the shrews really act like dogs, and you
just see them kind of like trotting around at people
like dogs do, and it's cute. They're supposed to be
these menacing monsters, but like they're clearly happy to see
the people on set. And it's not just that like
(16:48):
this one species, the pygmy shure of Britain, is is like,
you know, freakish, Like even the common trew needs to
eat every two to three hours and has to consume
an average of like of its body weight ere days.
This is fairly common among very small organisms. They need
to eat a lot of food relative to their body size,
and again that's just the base metabolic rate. That's not
(17:10):
to mention other necessary expenditures for say, creatures that engage
in very energy intensive activities. One great example here is hummingbirds.
So they're very small, they have big thermoregulation requirements, but
they also have huge caloric requirements from physical activity. They've
got to stay in the air. I mean, think about
how much energy it takes to keep vehicles in the air.
(17:33):
Uh So, they use these rapid wing beats that require
their heart to beat about twelve hundred times a minute,
maybe like twenty beats per second. Sometimes that's that's a lot. Yeah, yeah,
so they do. They are just constantly having to feed,
and then if they can't, if you have it's like
I imagine most if you have seen the various documentaries
that show how the like. In some cases they'll just
(17:53):
have to shut their bodies down. They have to go
in a kind of suspended animation at times. But on
an average day, a hummingbird will often have to eat
roughly twice its body weight and nectar. Uh So, I
was trying to think would hobbits have any such requirements
based on activity? You can see why having smaller bodies
that have a higher surface area of volume ratio. Okay,
(18:15):
but I can't really think of any activities that are
along the lines of the hummingbirds. I'm not sure how
much energy it takes to smoke pipeweed or to like
eat tea cakes and gossip about other families. But maybe
there's something going on there. I wonder if blowing rings
of pipe weed smoke might actually be a highly energy
intensive activity. Well, some of them are farmers, you do
remember farmer maggot. Okay, so that's a lot of work.
(18:37):
A lot of work goes into that. And then there
there are at least tales of of warring Hobbits in
the past. Which one it was that is said to
have actually ridden a horse and battle to Goblin and
in a pass skirmish. So there are exceptions, but for
the most part, the typical hobbit life that when visions
does entail a lot of sitting around and reflecting. I
(18:58):
guess another option is, what if there's something going on
in the hobbit brain that makes their their nervous system
very energy intensive. Yeah, so maybe they're like secret ment
ats like the hobbit. The fact that they can you know,
remember so much gossip about the other families in the shire.
Or maybe it takes a huge amount of mental energy
to constantly resist the call to adventure. Yeah, or they
(19:23):
they do worry a lot, like what what if they're
they're high energy cognitive powers are used exclusively to worrying
about where their next meal is going to come from?
And and uh and and how tiresome the journey is. Alright,
we're gonna take a break, but when we come back,
we're going to continue this discussion and we're gonna start
talking about some some elven bread. Than alright, we're back.
(19:47):
So there's an interesting follow up to this article we
were talking about with the base metabolic rate. Again, that
was from the author's Chris Show amount of Horran and
sky Rosetti. Well, they followed it up with another paper
simply walking into more door. How much limbus would the
Fellowship have needed? So Limbus, as you might remember, is
(20:08):
the special travel bread of the elves that helps sustain
our adventurers. It's wrapped in leaves. It's brown on the
outside and sweet and white on the inside, and it
and it never spoils. It's just always perfect. And I
don't know, maybe even a little bit warm. It's Galadriel
that gives them the limbus, right, I think so, And yeah,
it's it's supposed to be great stuff. I aways imagine
(20:30):
it is being like a scone, you know, like a
really good scone. Like they're just living exclusively off scones
on this journey. So it becomes one of the key
provisions that they eat a lot on these on the
journey and the Lord of the Rings, so naturally the
authors wanted to know how much of this one would
need to sustain all nine members of the Fellowship of
(20:50):
the Ring on a ninety two day quest across the continent. Well,
they concluded that a single Hobbit would require seventy six
pieces of Elvin limbus bread to march all the way
to Mount Doom. That amount, that's seventy six pieces of
limbus compared with ninety nine for a dwarf, sixty for
an elf in seventy one for humans. As such, the
(21:12):
nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring, they concluded,
would require six hundred and seventy five pieces of limbus,
with three hundred and four pieces allotted to the four
Hobbit members. Uh Gimili alone would need ninety nine pieces
of limbus. Well, now I know they didn't get that
much limbus. I think they would have said something. I
remember they talked about how you know, you eat one
(21:32):
bite of limbus in your full for you know a while. Yeah,
that's the other thing it is. It is magic, and
that that's the underlying footnote on all of these discussions. Right. Uh,
it is ultimately magical bread and so forth. Therefore it
has its own rules. But still it's it's this. It's
a neat it's a neat consideration here. Now, of course
it's probably a little bit dry. I always imagine it
(21:53):
being a little dry, So you're gonna need something to
wash it all down with. You're gonna need some some water.
And here, according to yet another paper, this time from
Catherine Barrage, the conclusion is that they wouldn't have been
able to carry all of their water with them on
the journey. She points out that there's no agreed upon
method to calculate water requirements for adult humans, but surface
(22:16):
area of the individual is typically invoked, and she concludes
that one hobbit would have would have required two point
four leaders per day. And when you extrapolate that to
all the days of the journey, you're encountering an amount
of water that would be impossible for a Hobbit to
carry for itself. Now you, aside from Sam mentioning some
concern over water on their travels, I don't remember them
(22:39):
really detailing a lot of their woes. Getting potable water
is good because I guess surely there would have been
some other ways to get drinking water on the way,
like when they visited this place or another, Occasionally there's
going to be a stream of of moving water that
they can trust. I don't recall them ever being concerned
about like getting giardia from drinking water out of the
(23:01):
stream or something. Yeah, it would have been a different
book of all the Hobbits just constantly had dysenteria the
whole way to Mortal Lord of the Diarrhea. Okay, so
here's a Here's here's another fun wrinkle in all of this.
Token rights meals didn't come quite as often as Bilbo
would have liked them, but still he began to feel
that adventures were not so bad after all. So Bilbo
(23:23):
continually complains about being hungry and tired, but he makes do,
and he digs into a wide variety of foods during
the journey. Uh. This is this is one of the
pleasures of a lot of books, really, but especially in
the Hobbit. It's like all these foods that he encountered,
they're not that diverse, but there, but every he eats
a lot of interesting things, you know, like they meet
up with a vegetarian wear bear and he serves them
(23:45):
cream and honey, you know, yeah, yeah, or um you know,
or there, or they're scavenging sorrel and berries in the
mountain wilds and then making do with that, you know.
So he may have wanted bacon and eggs and mushrooms
like any normal Hobbit, of of taste and means, but
means of course, but he was able to get by
(24:06):
on all of these various foods. So I think we
can conclude from that possibly that you know, Hobbits, like
other highly adaptive organisms, benefit from a varied omnivorous diet.
So even though they require quite a few calories, they're
able to get them in a variety of ways. I'm
reminded of the primal state to which we see the
(24:27):
Hobbit Snegel reduced in Lord of the Rings sneegel like
a gollum. You know, he's the sneaky, opportunistic creature that
hunts that scavenge scavenges. He'll eat anything he can get
his hands on, even though he prefers meat. Yeah, he'll well,
he likes fish. He in the movies at least I
don't recall the scene in the books, but he uh
(24:48):
you know what's taters precious. He does not seem to
be a fan of the carbs. He could be what
happens to a hobbit on the paleo diet. Yeah, of course,
of course. One thing we have to remember about about
Sneckel is that he's been living underground for a long
time and he's basically evolved into this more subterranean form,
and he's eating he has the sort of diet you
(25:09):
would expect from like a mostly subterranean creature, Like he's
having to eat just a bunch of fish, uh, you know,
ioas fish whatever you can find, the occasional goblin that
he can murder in a passageway. But he does have
that beach bod is very skinny relative to the other hobbits.
It's true, he's in some ways, he's in better shape um,
and of course he has this one fitness secret that
(25:31):
drives people crazy. And then of course it's the One Ring, right, Yeah,
nutritionists hate him. Click here to find his one secret. Yeah,
it's It's often overlooked the fitness advantages of the of
the One Ring and the various rings of power, because
the Nascal we're all in pretty good shape as well,
you know, regardless of their they're possibly you know, incorporeal
(25:52):
form and unliving status and soulless nature. Now to speak
more about the biological effects of the One Ring, that
reminds me I was thinking about how the Hobbit fits
into theories about basal metabolic rate versus lifespan, because we
know the Ring does something to lifespan. Hobbits live a
long time, Bilbo Baggins live to the old age of
(26:12):
a hundred and thirty one, but that is apparently due
to the unnatural life extending powers of the One Ring. Right,
That's one of the things the Ring supposedly does. It
helps you live a long time or maybe even indefinitely.
If you never lose it, though that your life becomes
reduced to a hollow echo of what it once was. Right,
And as we mentioned in the last episode about the Ring,
(26:33):
the ring will lose you if it no longer needs you,
So basically it just has the option of keeping its
host alive for an extended period of time if it
if it aids the ring right. But even without the Ring,
Hobbits seem to live for a long time. The ringless
Hobbit old Took live to the ripe old age of
a hundred and thirty, just one year less than Bilbo,
without any kind of special magic that we know of.
(26:56):
Apparently it's normal for Hobbits to live to about hundred
uh if if the Hobbit were a real species on Earth,
that would be towards the longest end of the lifespan spectrum.
I think it said at some point in Lord of
the Rings that Hobbits tend to come of age in
their thirties. So you might say that, I don't know
what that that's like puberty or something for Hobbits. So
(27:17):
so not just like actually get their life together in
their theorties, it actually like go through puberty at that point. Well,
I I don't know. I mean, he doesn't say puberty,
that's when they come of age. I assume that's what
that means there's something like the tweens of the Hobbit
world are in their twenties probably, But the long lifespan
of Hobbits is another place where you might look at
the Hobbit and say, Okay, this seems to conflict with
(27:40):
stuff we know about Earth biology, because when you look
at the animals on Earth, especially you look at the mammals,
it can certainly seem like the longest lived animals tend
to be large and the small ones tend to have
short lives. Like you know, mice and rats can live
for just a couple of years, Whales can live for
(28:00):
a very very long time. If you expand that to
vertebrates more generally, you know, I think the longest lived
vertebrate that I know of is the greenland shark, which
can live hundreds of years. Four hundred years I think
was an estimate on on one recently. Yeah, but it
tends to be a little bit larger. In the twentieth century, actually,
there was a popular theory in biology that made this connection.
(28:24):
It connected aging and lifespan to metabolism. Uh. It was
known as the rate of living theory, and essentially it
said that animals with a slower metabolism that burn energy
more slowly will tend to live longer because expending energy
literally ages you. Uh, So animals with higher dietary requirements,
(28:46):
faster heart rates, faster metabolism, etcetera, will have shorter lives
under this hypothesis. There are even some humans who who
seem to at least intuitively believe some version of this theory. Yes,
I've I have seen them quoted on this indeed. But
but a side effect of this, of course would be
(29:06):
the animals with smaller bodies, because they tend to have
faster metabolisms like we were talking about earlier, will also
on average have shorter lives, and so at a glance,
that does seem to line up with the animal world. Right. So,
this theory, first proposed in the early nineteen twenties, is
often associated primarily with early work done by an American
biologist named Raymond Pearl, and it really did seem plausible
(29:30):
for a while, but eventually it was undercut by evidence.
So you had early studies of animal lifespans that sort
of seemed to support it, but then later studies with
more detailed data sets and better analysis didn't actually find
a broad correlation between metabolism and lifespan. For example, birds
tend to have higher metabolisms than than mammals of about
(29:52):
the same size, yet on average, the birds tend to
live longer. So even though we can find a lot
of examples of smaller animals that have short lives and
larger animals that have long lives, it turns out the
correlation doesn't hold up. The better your analysis is, I
was reading about another study that undercut the rate of
living hypothesis by looking at metabolic manipulations within the same species.
(30:16):
So the very short version is you have rats in
two different conditions. One set of rats lives in a
world of twenty two degrees celsius or seventy one degrees fahrenheit,
the nice warm world, and then there's another group of
rats that lives at ten degrees celsius or fifty degrees fahrenheit.
So obviously the group living in colder conditions has to
(30:37):
burn more energy to maintain body temperature, so by rate
of living logic, you would expect them to die younger,
but they didn't. The study found that the the rodents
and the two conditions lived the same average lifespan, so
the rate of living hypothesis is no longer thought to
be correct, and it represents no threat whatsoever to the
plausibility of Hobbits. Excellent. All right, On that note, we're
(31:01):
going to take one more break and hopefully they'll be
an ad for Limbus in here. We've been trying to
get Limbus as a sponsor for a while, but we'll
see how it goes. Anyway, one more break and then
we'll be right back. Alright, we're back. You know what's
great is dipping your limbus in a nice bowl of
brown Yeah. I don't know. I always figured it was
(31:24):
it's just dessert, Like it's dessert all the time. Maybe
they just well that I read it originally as a kid,
so at the time, I'm like, yeah, it's like this,
it's like short bread all day, every day. Ever been
into short bread? I don't even like it as dessert. Uh, well,
you know, you're not a Hobbit. They maybe they're more
into it, or elves. Maybe the elves themselves have, you know,
(31:45):
different tolerance for sweets. What's the Middle Earth species that
really likes like pickles? That's that's I think it's probably Hobbits. Again,
I feel like Hobbits can be totally into pickles. I
don't remember specifically if if there was ever mentioned of
hobbit seating pickles, but I bet they like pickles. Dude,
you should try dwarf and century eggs, all right. So,
(32:08):
if we're to entertain the idea that Hobbits as a
species factor so heavily into the struggle for Middle Earth,
based in part on their biology, it raises this question
how suited are the various other species or or races
as they're sometimes called, especially due to you know, this
is another fantasy as well, Like in Dungeons and Dragons,
you talk about the different races even though you're essentially
(32:30):
talking about different species. Um So, so you know, how
do these other various species stack up in the struggle
for global dominance just based on their biology? And it's
interesting to think about this because while Homo sapiens came
into contact with the likes of the Neanderthals, Middle Earth
is an entirely different situation because you have multiple species
(32:51):
of similar cognitive and technological abilities coming into contact with
each other, warring against each other, forming factions, and and
granted some of the players involved, our magical beings others
are artificial creations, and others still or essentially demigods. But
we're we're talking a world full of humans, elves, dwarfs, hobbits, goblins, orcs, trolls, giants, dragons,
(33:14):
and then various animals with human level intelligence such as
the eagles, just to name a few. The deciding factor, however,
might just come down to sunlight, what which which? Isn't
that surprising, right, because sunlight is good, darkness bad. This
is the basic dichotomy of of our of our fantasy
and our myth make But but, but let's think back
(33:37):
to the hobbits omnivorous diet and its subterranean tendencies, because
I want to talk about briefly about a fun little
paper that you can find in full in PDF form
on online if you want to read it for yourself,
by Dr Joseph A. Hopkinson and and his son Nicholas S.
Hopkinson uh and. This was published in the Medical Journal
(33:58):
of Australia paper The hobbit An Unexpected Deficiency and uh
And what they end up arguing is that their very diet,
the very diet of the hobbit um, would be key
to elevating their vitamin D levels. So vitamin D, as
I think we've discussed on the show before, is crucial
(34:19):
for skeletal health and the immune system, with deficiency symptoms
ranging from stuff like depression and weakness to increased bone fragility. Uh,
none of those are things you want while adventuring on
a great quest to save the world, right or to
conquer it. Either way, you want to want to look
at it. You don't want to be depressed and weak
(34:40):
and possibly more susceptible to bone breaks. Now a note here,
oily fish are a great place to get your vitamin
D if you're not getting it from the sun. So
advantage to sniegel here. Oh that's right, he loves them wriggling. Yeah,
but I don't know, do we see him eating oily fish?
Is he getting start to I don't know how oily
(35:02):
the subterranean fish of the Misty Mountains happened to be.
But but maybe he's getting the occasional like ten of
sardines from the goblins anyway. Uh, he loves a good
mahi mahi. So anyway, Bilbo's diverse diet and willingness to
travel long distances in the sun, according to the Hopkinson's
(35:25):
not only boost his vitamin D intake, but also makes
the Hobbit species one of Middle Earth's top vitamin D consumers.
So they assigned major Middle Earth species and individuals a
vitamin D score between zero and four. Hobbits, men, and
high elves they topped the list that they get fours
across the board. Dwarves scored to three gallum score or
(35:48):
Sniegel scored a lowly one. And then the evil species
of Middle Earth, the dragons, the goblins, and the trolls,
and I'm assuming they're they're they're putting the works in
with the goblins here since they're essentially the same species.
All of them scored zeros. Right, because these are basically
entirely indoor underground species right right, or they live in
in darkness and read I mean more door itself. Right
(36:10):
is is often depicted and described as being like clothed,
you know, shielded from the sun by the volcanic ashes
of Mount Doom. Right, it is a realm of darkness. Yeah,
I know Tolkien said that he did not write these
books as allegory, but yeah, I wonder if where was
he really just trying to get his kids to go outside.
It's like you know, you live your whole life inside
(36:31):
you become a bad goblin like me. Well yeah, I
mean it's I mean that critique has been applied to
his work before. Right. The idea that like Mordor is
industrialism and uh and modernity and and the shire is
the you know, is that the rural countryside in traditional
ways of England. Right, So anyway, moral attributes and marshall
(36:51):
prowess are also going to play a factor, they argue.
But they think that vitamin D consumption might be a
key predictor for victory in mid Earth and uh. And
it's worth noting that Dr Hopkinson uh knew what he
knows what he's talking about with vitamin D. He previously
studied the effects of vitamin D and people with lung disease.
As a result, he's not a fan of all the
(37:13):
smoking that goes on, especially with the Hobbits and the
wizarding folk like Gandalf. Uh that would not be be
good for their overall health. But still no, wait a minute,
I was reading. According to Sauron, uh, smoking has not
been definitively linked with any negative health effects. Oh yeah, yeah,
if you can trust Sauron on that one, um so anyway,
(37:35):
the lie? Why would he lie? It's a great deceiver, right,
You're forgetting his prior forms. You're only thinking about the
all seeing eye, and you think that just because he
has an all seeing eye, he's privy to all truth.
But he's still a liar. Worm Tongue said it too,
He said that this is anti pipeweed alarmism. Alright, So
taking all of this into account, we can look at
(37:56):
the Hobbit and we say the Hobbit ultimately offers us
a high metabolism creature with a very diet able to
march across Middle Earths varied ecosystems and eat whatever they
can find within, you know, reason, in order to maintain
their vitamin D levels and therefore contribute to the victory
of good over evil in Middle Earth. I buy it now, Robert.
(38:17):
I've got to ask what what got you looking for
Hobbit papers? I know somehow you must have set out
on this journey. Well this, this happens a lot where
something will enter my head and I'll think, well, let's
see if their papers about the Lord of the Rings.
Let's see if people are mentioning, you know, because sometimes
it's you'll find examples where where authors of even very
(38:39):
very serious uh scientific papers will just at least for
fun reference, say a particular myth or a particular uh
you know, the line from Shakespeare. So sometimes you have
like that level of treatment or it's a pun in
the title of that's frequently used in the title of
a scientific study. But but then you have these this
level of study as well, which which I think is great.
(38:59):
You know, again, very tongue in cheek. All of these
were written at least in part to entertain uh. And
the vitamin D paper specific especially has like a fun
little illustration in it as well, so it was very
much I think it was part of like a Christmas
uh special that they put out where they have a
lot of tongue in cheap papers. Uh. But it's it's
also I think these are all fun because, especially for
(39:20):
a show like ours, we might normally not really discuss
vitamin D deficiency on the show at length, but this
gives us a reason to get into it and and
kind of an angle that makes it more interesting than
it might otherwise be. And and it's of course it's
a it's an important topic as well, right because it
comes down to human health. Like one of the one
(39:40):
of the things that the Hopkinson's arguing in their paper
is that, you know, ultimately, if we're to draw some
sort of conclusion from all of this, it's that we
all need to consider having a more very diet and
uh getting out in the sun, um, you know, with
proper protection of course, if concerning the rays of the sun,
but you know, get your vitamin D, have a very
(40:00):
diet and stay active and it's going to benefit you.
And also stay away from that those hobbit pipes and
those wizarding pipes because it's no good for you. But
this is just one This is just one angle on
Middle Earth and science. I'm sure there are numerous other
articles out there that that that go after a different
angle of Tolkien's work and work some science on it.
So maybe we'll be able to come back in a
(40:21):
future episode and discuss some other corner of Middle Earth.
I had the idea that we could do an episode
about inns. I'm not sure what we we'd figure it out.
We have to play the episode at half speed. Unfortunately,
we could totally do an episode on it's getting into
the like the movements of plants and uh uh you know,
trees that quote unquote walk uh. I mean there are
(40:42):
examples that are that are pretty fascinating and and really
when you start, when you essentially consider that that plants
are are living at this different time frame than this
different rate than animals. You know, when you start, you know,
speeding things up, you you see some amazing movements on
the part of of trees and vines and so forth.
(41:04):
So I think there would be something to discuss with
INNS if we wanted to come back to that, or
or getting into the whole in in a way we
wouldn't wave. We wouldn't want to cover this in an
episode on NS. This really deserves its own episode. But
just the idea of plant intelligence, plant communication, there's some
pretty fascinating theories out there, especially on plant communication. That's
a that is a topic I'd like to come back to.
(41:26):
You know, I've thought before like what types of plants
would evolve intelligence if they ever did, And I think
maybe it would have to be carnivorous plants, right like
venus fly traps, because they'd have they have a movement mechanism.
The movement mechanism is something that could be exploited over
time and evolution as a manipulation mechanism, which in turn
maybe prioritizes UH strategies for manipulation of objects. Yeah. There,
(41:51):
you basically rights itself. You'll have to come back and
talk about inns sometime, all right. In the meantime, if
you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Blow your Mind, we recommend do so. Again. We did
a previous episode titled The One Ring that gets into
metallurgy and what, basically asking the question what could the
One Ring have potentially been made of if it were
(42:11):
to have the various attributes that are described in the
books and the films. UH. It's a fun, a fun
back and forth, So check that one out if you want.
If you want to find that episode, or any episode,
you can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot
com and that will shoot you over to the I
heart listing for our show. But you can find Stuff
to Blow your Mind wherever you get your podcasts, wherever
that happens to be. Just make sure you rate, review,
and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
(42:34):
producers Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
any other to suggest topic for the future, just to
say hi. You can email us at contact at Stuff
to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
(42:54):
It's production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple pod casts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
You asked me to find the fourteenth man for your expedition,
and I chose mister Baggins. Just let anyone say I
chose the wrong man or the wrong house, and you
can stop at thirteen and have all the bad luck
you like, or go back to digging coal. He scowled
so angrily and glowing that the dwarf huddled back in
(00:21):
his chair. And when Bilbo tried to open his mouth
to ask a question, he turned and frowned at him
and stuck out his bushy eyebrows till Bilbo shut his
mouth tight and snap, that's right. Let's have no more argument.
I have chosen mister Baggins, and that ought to be
enough for all of you. If I say he is
a burglar, a burglar he is, or will be when
the time comes. There's a lot more to him than
(00:44):
you guess, and a deal more than he has any
idea of himself. You may possibly all live to thank me. Yet,
welcome to stuff to blow your mind? The production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, are you welcome to stuff to
(01:06):
blow your mind? My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm
Joe McCormick, and I guess it's obvious that we're back
in Hobbit territory today. That's right. You know, we did
an episode, I guess a few months back or several
months back, I'm not sure which, where we talked about
the One Ring, we contemplated the metallurgy of the Rings
of Power and the Lord of the Rings. And in
this episode, we're going to be returning to Middle Earth.
(01:29):
We're going to look at everyone's favorite hole dwelling pipe
smoking six meal a day, eating humanoids, the Hobbit. So
this year I was going back and reading Lord of
the Rings, and I was about halfway through Fellowship of
the Ring, and the question entered my mind. And that
question is are the Hobbits too cute? Are their lives
just too quaint and too sweet for this story? And
(01:52):
I thought about it for a minute. I was like,
you know, I get a little bit board maybe in
some of the early chapters of Fellowship where it's going
on and on about the the quaintness of the Hobbit existence.
But then I realized, no, I think it really does work. It. Uh.
It's important for the story because it makes you feel
the adventure and the pain of the adventure all the more.
(02:13):
When you get a full feeling for how cozy and
unadventurous their their prequest lives were. Yeah, it's in a
fantastic world that just gets more and more fantastic and
dark and magical the further out you go from the Shire,
the realm of the Middle Earth that is home to
the Hobbits, you know, And it makes sense to start
(02:34):
with something that is quaint, that is normal, that is
almost you know, painfully British and cozy and uh uh,
not so much cute, I guess, at least not in
the original intent. I know, I know, I've read that
Tolkien did not like the idea of illustrations that made
the Hobbits look too much like children, because they should
(02:55):
all look like like small little like middle aged or
old men imagine. But yeah, you need you need somebody
ordinary to go on these adventures, to be challenged by
these adventures. Right, you feel the rain and the hardness
of the stones under their feet and the threat of
the Goblin's blade so much more when you've when you've
(03:16):
seen the world of Tea by the Fire. Yeah, and
then and there's certainly the the species of Middle Earth
that we can relate to the most. They are, they're
really they're even more human than the humans or the
men as Token calls them, uh, that we encounter in
the story. Essentially the main storytelling reason that the Hobbits
are central to the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.
(03:37):
But of course there's more to this as well, more
to unwrap. And and that's why we chose that particular
passage from the Hobbit to read at the beginning, because
in this particular section, basically Gandalf, the gray globetrotting wizard
that he is, is injecting himself into dwarf and politics
essentially to rid the world of the last evil dragon
(03:59):
so that it can't aid the coming war with Saaron. Uh.
You know, it's uh, you know, it's it's in a way,
it's kind of like shady politics, I guess, but it's
it's certainly yeah, but it's it's it serves a greater good.
And and but Gandalf is getting a bit frustrated because
he's he's helping the dwarves out, he's enabling this mission,
uh to to retake their mountain from smog. And they
(04:20):
don't want to have thirteen dwarves go on a trip
that's unlucky. They need another person, and Gandalf says, here
you go, Here is a Hobbit, here's Bilbo. He's the
fellow you need. He's a burglar. You're gonna need a burglar.
And of course the whole time Bilbo is like, I
can't go on adventure. I can't do that. I don't
have any of these skills. And the dwarves are agreeing
with him, and they're saying, oh, he's useless, let's not
(04:42):
take him. Don't you have something else. Let's just eat
all his food and move on, right, So you know
it's you. It's it's easy to to understand the criticism
because Bilbo does seem rather useless, and he remains rather
useless feeling for a large portion of the book. Uh
(05:02):
So it raises the question is there something about the Hobbit?
Is there something about this species that that that is
really special? Is there Hobbit exceptionalism that might be exploited?
And that is ultimately what Gandalf is leaning on, that
there's something special about the Hobbits that will help enable,
you know, first of all, victory and this mission to
retake the Lonely Mountain, and then ultimately in the quest
(05:26):
of the Ring that we encounter in the Lord of
the Rings. You know, despite how over the course of
The Lord of the Rings we see several different Hobbits
in different ways, at different times, being seduced by the
power of the Ring, it does seem like Hobbits, more
than other creatures, are somewhat resistant to it. Like they
are somehow able to put up more of a fight,
to be less enticed by the promises of power and
(05:48):
glory that the Ring entails. Yeah, perhaps leaning into their
inherent quaintness, right, I mean, ultimately, all any hobbit wants
is a nice hobbit hole to live in and a
mug of ale and you know, some some mush rooms
and eggs and bacon for for one of their many meals.
I mean, almost any time a man, a human gets
his hands on the ring, he's like, oh great, yes,
(06:10):
so we'll slow down for a second here, because there
may be some people out there. I find it hard
to believe, but there may be some people who don't
know what a hobbit is. Well, just to drive it
home here, the Lord of the Rings the Hobbit. These
books are our fantasy novels full of elves, and goblins, dragons,
uh you know, demonic ball rogs, uh, half living ring races,
(06:34):
and various demigods and wizards. But then we also have
the quaint hobbits, and typically they fit the following profile.
They are quote a little people about half our height.
They walk around barefooted and boast a generous helping of
hair atop each foot. I was to understand they had
hair underneath their feet. Is that not right? I think
you're right as well. We just that the illustrations rarely
(06:55):
show that that the bottom of the foot hair. I
think that was my understanding is that they're they're very um.
They're actually good as burglars because they're very light of
step and their footfalls are quiet cushioned by this hair.
They're also known for their hobbit holes. These are fashionable
underground homes, but they don't always reside in these, despite
their their overall subterranean tendencies and a likely history of
(07:17):
borrow habitation and uh oh. A big one, of course,
is their hunger. They're their appetite. They require some six
meals a day or what about second breakfast, and then
they're also at least very good at hiding, which can
be extrapolated into a skill of burglary. And I guess
that's that's one argument for what Gandolf is saying, Like,
(07:37):
here is a species it's naturally good at hiding. So
given time, by the time you get to the Lonely Mountain,
Bilbo will either be dead or very good at adventuring
and the like in a stealthy way, he will have
leveled up appropriately. But another another way to look at
it is to look at the specific biological adaptations of
a hypothetical hobbit species. And so that's what we're gonna
(08:02):
largely focus on in this episode. And the beautiful thing
is that we don't have to just make all of
this up on our own. They're a handful of papers
that we've been able to refer to, generally of the
tongue in cheek variety. So we're not talking like hard,
serious scientific or medical contemplation, but still do get quantitative
about it. And then you get quantitative and they get
into the science of like, all right, let's talk about hobbits.
(08:24):
Let's talk about how much they eat? Would they be healthy?
Would they be actually capable of walking across the continent
with a bunch of adventurers. Uh, you know what, are
they truly this this solid investment that Gandalf the Gray seas.
That's a mighty good question. I mean, not to cast
any doubt on Gandalf the Gray's um in a mindset here.
(08:45):
You know, clearly great wizard. We'd love to have him
on the show sometime for an interview. But uh, to
tune into our new podcast series, Gandalf Mindset. It's where
you learn wizard mindset. Mindset. There's probably way a book
about that. Don't let them steal your staff. Six easy
steps to Wizard dominance. I would not be surprised if
(09:08):
if to find out that a book like that existed.
All right, well, let's start with the with the obvious,
the dietary constraints of the Hobbit. Now, this is going
to be one of the main differences you would notice
in like a physical energy kind of situation with the Hobbits,
because they never stop eating. That's one of the things
that has driven home again and again in the books.
It's always time for a meal. Yeah yeah, and they
(09:30):
Plus they tend to be a little bit portly, leading
many a non halfling to question their sedendary lifestyle and
and and and, as well as their insistence on those
six daily meals because they go with breakfast, second breakfast,
eleven seas, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper. How is
dinner different from supper? Yeah? That that one was the
hardest for me to figure out, because I was like,
(09:52):
all right, let me look at my own, you know,
dietary requirements in my schedule, and and I realized, Okay,
I usually like breakfast for me is like smoothie and coffee,
and then second breakfast is like more coffee and like
an apple or something later on, and then eleven z s.
I'm I have been known to have like a half
a peanut butter sandwich, perhaps with more coffee, and then
I have actual lunch, and then I don't have afternoon tea,
(10:14):
but I generally have more coffee and perhaps another apple,
and then dinner I have an evening meal, But supper
I can't. I can't really come up with a uh,
you know, a possibility for that in my life, like
unless you count an after dinner drink or a you know,
a late night snack as a meal. And I don't
think we were talking about that with Hobbits. I think
(10:34):
for each of these, with the possible exception of the
afternoon tea, we're talking about a full blown meal or
you're closer to Hobbit scheduling than a lot of people.
Though it sounds like it sounds like you kind of graze. Yeah,
I mean, especially if I'm working from home and it's
cold out, then it's just you know, wandering around trying
to figure out what I can smear peanut butter on um.
That's why it's good to get out of the house.
(10:55):
But yeah, it's it's hard to figure out how that
what the difference between uh supper and dinner would be
for the for the Hobbit, And clearly it points towards
just the fact that they need more to eat. They
have just higher dietary requirements than a mere human or
some other species. So here's the question, based on real
world biology, is this sort of diet reasonable for a
(11:19):
creature of the hobbit stature? And unfortunately we have a
paper to refer to in Christio Meno, Horan and sky
Rosetti of the University of Leicester Center for Interdisciplinary Science
weighed in on the issue in their paper Modeling the
BMR of Species in Middle Earth. So the BMR in question,
(11:39):
this is the base metabolic rate. This is the number
of calories that our bodies are very cells need in
order to function well. And the base part of it
would be this is not including whatever extra stuff you're doing.
This is just like to stay alive. Yeah, this is
not just like extra curricular eating, the wandering around the
house looking for peanut butter sort of thing. So ather
(12:00):
of words, the researchers set out to gauge the amount
of energy that a Hobbit's body needs to function at rest,
and they did this not only for the Hobbits of
Middle Earth, but also for the fair elves. They did
this by modeling each fictional race as an actual Mammalian
Earth species. The European road deer stood in for forest
dwelling elves, and the Hobbit, being a burrowing hole dwelling people,
(12:23):
was stuck with the Southwestern pygmy possum. And this is
what they figured out. They decided that for a hobbit BMR,
we're looking at one thousand, eight hundred and eighteen point
seven kilo calories every day. This compared to seventeen h
two point to killer calories every six days for humans
or or men in Middle Earth as they're called, and
(12:46):
then for elves, we're looking at one thousand, four hundred,
sixteen point five kilo calories. As such, they figured the
average hobbit would require some six point seven meals per day,
and uh, indeed that's in keeping with the high hiher
energy demands for smaller birds and mammals. Now, you might think,
why would smaller animals on average have greater relative food requirements, right, Like,
(13:11):
wouldn't it be bigger animals that would have greater relative
food requirements. Well, on average, smaller animals do tend to
have faster metabolisms. There's you know, individual variation, but on average,
the smaller you are, probably the more energy you burn
proportional to your body mass. Why would this be? One
major reason is thermoregulation. So a major part of what
(13:34):
chemical energy from food does in metabolism is keep the
body warm. Heat loss from an organism is a function
of its surface area. So in the past we've talked about,
you know, one reason for the biological implausibility of like
Kaiju sized animals like King Kong is that they would
probably have trouble cooling their bodies they're they're too big.
(13:56):
They've got too much volume and not enough surface area
for heat to escape through. Even worse, if you happen
to be a giant fire breathing dragon like small exactly uh,
smaller animals that would have exactly the opposite problem. Right.
Smaller animals have a greater surface area to volume ratio,
meaning they lose heat faster than larger animals. Think of
(14:17):
the way that a smaller ice cube melts faster than
a bigger one. Uh. So they often have to eat
a lot more relative to their body weight to maintain
a stable body temperature. Uh. Some very small animals have
just unbelievable metabolic requirements and can eat huge amounts of
food relative to their bodies. I was reading a Good
(14:38):
nat Geo article about this by Liz Langley, and uh,
it made an interesting point in comparison, so it brings
up the biggest animal on the earth, the blue whale.
The blue whale on average eats about four tons of
krill every day, and that is definitely a lot of food,
or it sounds like a lot, But the blue whale
has a body mass of around two hundred tons, so
(15:00):
on average the whale is only eating about two percent
worth of its body weight every twenty four hours. Meanwhile,
the pigmy shrew of Britain, which only weighs about an ounce,
can eat about a hundred and twenty five percent of
its body weight per day. So think about this, It's
like a one hundred and sixty pound human eight a
(15:21):
hundred and twenty five percent of their body weight every day.
This would be about two hundred pounds worth of food.
I did some math and if it was all Big Max,
that's about three hundred and seventy six Big Max a day. Wow,
just spread out before you. That's that's something they divided
into six meals. The shrew factoid reminds me of I
(15:43):
imagine you've seen this because it was on MSTY three
K back in the day. They did Attack of the
Killer Shrews. Terrible black and white movie. But I think
it was like dogs with carpet draped over them. Yeah,
but fun in a way because I think they tried so. Basically,
the situation was, hey, shrews are these ravenous creek tres,
but thankfully they're small. If they ever got big, they
would be the most dangerous predator on the planet. And
(16:05):
then love and behold that's what happens in this movie. Oh,
that's a great premise, except it it didn't work. It
doesn't work because if they got bigger, they wouldn't have
the same surface to volume problem. Yeah but but yeah,
that that reminded me of of that. I think they
end up like building a tank out of like stuff
in their cabin too, then survive the trees. It's it's
(16:27):
a terrible movie, but way better than it should be.
One of the things I remember about it is the
way that like the dogs that they've got dressed up
to be the shrews really act like dogs, and you
just see them kind of like trotting around at people
like dogs do, and it's cute. They're supposed to be
these menacing monsters, but like they're clearly happy to see
the people on set. And it's not just that like
(16:48):
this one species, the pygmy shure of Britain, is is like,
you know, freakish, Like even the common trew needs to
eat every two to three hours and has to consume
an average of like of its body weight ere days.
This is fairly common among very small organisms. They need
to eat a lot of food relative to their body size,
and again that's just the base metabolic rate. That's not
(17:10):
to mention other necessary expenditures for say, creatures that engage
in very energy intensive activities. One great example here is hummingbirds.
So they're very small, they have big thermoregulation requirements, but
they also have huge caloric requirements from physical activity. They've
got to stay in the air. I mean, think about
how much energy it takes to keep vehicles in the air.
(17:33):
Uh So, they use these rapid wing beats that require
their heart to beat about twelve hundred times a minute,
maybe like twenty beats per second. Sometimes that's that's a lot. Yeah, yeah,
so they do. They are just constantly having to feed,
and then if they can't, if you have it's like
I imagine most if you have seen the various documentaries
that show how the like. In some cases they'll just
(17:53):
have to shut their bodies down. They have to go
in a kind of suspended animation at times. But on
an average day, a hummingbird will often have to eat
roughly twice its body weight and nectar. Uh So, I
was trying to think would hobbits have any such requirements
based on activity? You can see why having smaller bodies
that have a higher surface area of volume ratio. Okay,
(18:15):
but I can't really think of any activities that are
along the lines of the hummingbirds. I'm not sure how
much energy it takes to smoke pipeweed or to like
eat tea cakes and gossip about other families. But maybe
there's something going on there. I wonder if blowing rings
of pipe weed smoke might actually be a highly energy
intensive activity. Well, some of them are farmers, you do
remember farmer maggot. Okay, so that's a lot of work.
(18:37):
A lot of work goes into that. And then there
there are at least tales of of warring Hobbits in
the past. Which one it was that is said to
have actually ridden a horse and battle to Goblin and
in a pass skirmish. So there are exceptions, but for
the most part, the typical hobbit life that when visions
does entail a lot of sitting around and reflecting. I
(18:58):
guess another option is, what if there's something going on
in the hobbit brain that makes their their nervous system
very energy intensive. Yeah, so maybe they're like secret ment
ats like the hobbit. The fact that they can you know,
remember so much gossip about the other families in the shire.
Or maybe it takes a huge amount of mental energy
to constantly resist the call to adventure. Yeah, or they
(19:23):
they do worry a lot, like what what if they're
they're high energy cognitive powers are used exclusively to worrying
about where their next meal is going to come from?
And and uh and and how tiresome the journey is. Alright,
we're gonna take a break, but when we come back,
we're going to continue this discussion and we're gonna start
talking about some some elven bread. Than alright, we're back.
(19:47):
So there's an interesting follow up to this article we
were talking about with the base metabolic rate. Again, that
was from the author's Chris Show amount of Horran and
sky Rosetti. Well, they followed it up with another paper
simply walking into more door. How much limbus would the
Fellowship have needed? So Limbus, as you might remember, is
(20:08):
the special travel bread of the elves that helps sustain
our adventurers. It's wrapped in leaves. It's brown on the
outside and sweet and white on the inside, and it
and it never spoils. It's just always perfect. And I
don't know, maybe even a little bit warm. It's Galadriel
that gives them the limbus, right, I think so, And yeah,
it's it's supposed to be great stuff. I aways imagine
(20:30):
it is being like a scone, you know, like a
really good scone. Like they're just living exclusively off scones
on this journey. So it becomes one of the key
provisions that they eat a lot on these on the
journey and the Lord of the Rings, so naturally the
authors wanted to know how much of this one would
need to sustain all nine members of the Fellowship of
(20:50):
the Ring on a ninety two day quest across the continent. Well,
they concluded that a single Hobbit would require seventy six
pieces of Elvin limbus bread to march all the way
to Mount Doom. That amount, that's seventy six pieces of
limbus compared with ninety nine for a dwarf, sixty for
an elf in seventy one for humans. As such, the
(21:12):
nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring, they concluded,
would require six hundred and seventy five pieces of limbus,
with three hundred and four pieces allotted to the four
Hobbit members. Uh Gimili alone would need ninety nine pieces
of limbus. Well, now I know they didn't get that
much limbus. I think they would have said something. I
remember they talked about how you know, you eat one
(21:32):
bite of limbus in your full for you know a while. Yeah,
that's the other thing it is. It is magic, and
that that's the underlying footnote on all of these discussions. Right. Uh,
it is ultimately magical bread and so forth. Therefore it
has its own rules. But still it's it's this. It's
a neat it's a neat consideration here. Now, of course
it's probably a little bit dry. I always imagine it
(21:53):
being a little dry, So you're gonna need something to
wash it all down with. You're gonna need some some water.
And here, according to yet another paper, this time from
Catherine Barrage, the conclusion is that they wouldn't have been
able to carry all of their water with them on
the journey. She points out that there's no agreed upon
method to calculate water requirements for adult humans, but surface
(22:16):
area of the individual is typically invoked, and she concludes
that one hobbit would have would have required two point
four leaders per day. And when you extrapolate that to
all the days of the journey, you're encountering an amount
of water that would be impossible for a Hobbit to
carry for itself. Now you, aside from Sam mentioning some
concern over water on their travels, I don't remember them
(22:39):
really detailing a lot of their woes. Getting potable water
is good because I guess surely there would have been
some other ways to get drinking water on the way,
like when they visited this place or another, Occasionally there's
going to be a stream of of moving water that
they can trust. I don't recall them ever being concerned
about like getting giardia from drinking water out of the
(23:01):
stream or something. Yeah, it would have been a different
book of all the Hobbits just constantly had dysenteria the
whole way to Mortal Lord of the Diarrhea. Okay, so
here's a Here's here's another fun wrinkle in all of this.
Token rights meals didn't come quite as often as Bilbo
would have liked them, but still he began to feel
that adventures were not so bad after all. So Bilbo
(23:23):
continually complains about being hungry and tired, but he makes do,
and he digs into a wide variety of foods during
the journey. Uh. This is this is one of the
pleasures of a lot of books, really, but especially in
the Hobbit. It's like all these foods that he encountered,
they're not that diverse, but there, but every he eats
a lot of interesting things, you know, like they meet
up with a vegetarian wear bear and he serves them
(23:45):
cream and honey, you know, yeah, yeah, or um you know,
or there, or they're scavenging sorrel and berries in the
mountain wilds and then making do with that, you know.
So he may have wanted bacon and eggs and mushrooms
like any normal Hobbit, of of taste and means, but
means of course, but he was able to get by
(24:06):
on all of these various foods. So I think we
can conclude from that possibly that you know, Hobbits, like
other highly adaptive organisms, benefit from a varied omnivorous diet.
So even though they require quite a few calories, they're
able to get them in a variety of ways. I'm
reminded of the primal state to which we see the
(24:27):
Hobbit Snegel reduced in Lord of the Rings sneegel like
a gollum. You know, he's the sneaky, opportunistic creature that
hunts that scavenge scavenges. He'll eat anything he can get
his hands on, even though he prefers meat. Yeah, he'll well,
he likes fish. He in the movies at least I
don't recall the scene in the books, but he uh
(24:48):
you know what's taters precious. He does not seem to
be a fan of the carbs. He could be what
happens to a hobbit on the paleo diet. Yeah, of course,
of course. One thing we have to remember about about
Sneckel is that he's been living underground for a long
time and he's basically evolved into this more subterranean form,
and he's eating he has the sort of diet you
(25:09):
would expect from like a mostly subterranean creature, Like he's
having to eat just a bunch of fish, uh, you know,
ioas fish whatever you can find, the occasional goblin that
he can murder in a passageway. But he does have
that beach bod is very skinny relative to the other hobbits.
It's true, he's in some ways, he's in better shape um,
and of course he has this one fitness secret that
(25:31):
drives people crazy. And then of course it's the One Ring, right, Yeah,
nutritionists hate him. Click here to find his one secret. Yeah,
it's It's often overlooked the fitness advantages of the of
the One Ring and the various rings of power, because
the Nascal we're all in pretty good shape as well,
you know, regardless of their they're possibly you know, incorporeal
(25:52):
form and unliving status and soulless nature. Now to speak
more about the biological effects of the One Ring, that
reminds me I was thinking about how the Hobbit fits
into theories about basal metabolic rate versus lifespan, because we
know the Ring does something to lifespan. Hobbits live a
long time, Bilbo Baggins live to the old age of
(26:12):
a hundred and thirty one, but that is apparently due
to the unnatural life extending powers of the One Ring. Right,
That's one of the things the Ring supposedly does. It
helps you live a long time or maybe even indefinitely.
If you never lose it, though that your life becomes
reduced to a hollow echo of what it once was. Right,
And as we mentioned in the last episode about the Ring,
(26:33):
the ring will lose you if it no longer needs you,
So basically it just has the option of keeping its
host alive for an extended period of time if it
if it aids the ring right. But even without the Ring,
Hobbits seem to live for a long time. The ringless
Hobbit old Took live to the ripe old age of
a hundred and thirty, just one year less than Bilbo,
without any kind of special magic that we know of.
(26:56):
Apparently it's normal for Hobbits to live to about hundred
uh if if the Hobbit were a real species on Earth,
that would be towards the longest end of the lifespan spectrum.
I think it said at some point in Lord of
the Rings that Hobbits tend to come of age in
their thirties. So you might say that, I don't know
what that that's like puberty or something for Hobbits. So
(27:17):
so not just like actually get their life together in
their theorties, it actually like go through puberty at that point. Well,
I I don't know. I mean, he doesn't say puberty,
that's when they come of age. I assume that's what
that means there's something like the tweens of the Hobbit
world are in their twenties probably, But the long lifespan
of Hobbits is another place where you might look at
the Hobbit and say, Okay, this seems to conflict with
(27:40):
stuff we know about Earth biology, because when you look
at the animals on Earth, especially you look at the mammals,
it can certainly seem like the longest lived animals tend
to be large and the small ones tend to have
short lives. Like you know, mice and rats can live
for just a couple of years, Whales can live for
(28:00):
a very very long time. If you expand that to
vertebrates more generally, you know, I think the longest lived
vertebrate that I know of is the greenland shark, which
can live hundreds of years. Four hundred years I think
was an estimate on on one recently. Yeah, but it
tends to be a little bit larger. In the twentieth century, actually,
there was a popular theory in biology that made this connection.
(28:24):
It connected aging and lifespan to metabolism. Uh. It was
known as the rate of living theory, and essentially it
said that animals with a slower metabolism that burn energy
more slowly will tend to live longer because expending energy
literally ages you. Uh, So animals with higher dietary requirements,
(28:46):
faster heart rates, faster metabolism, etcetera, will have shorter lives
under this hypothesis. There are even some humans who who
seem to at least intuitively believe some version of this theory. Yes,
I've I have seen them quoted on this indeed. But
but a side effect of this, of course would be
(29:06):
the animals with smaller bodies, because they tend to have
faster metabolisms like we were talking about earlier, will also
on average have shorter lives, and so at a glance,
that does seem to line up with the animal world. Right. So,
this theory, first proposed in the early nineteen twenties, is
often associated primarily with early work done by an American
biologist named Raymond Pearl, and it really did seem plausible
(29:30):
for a while, but eventually it was undercut by evidence.
So you had early studies of animal lifespans that sort
of seemed to support it, but then later studies with
more detailed data sets and better analysis didn't actually find
a broad correlation between metabolism and lifespan. For example, birds
tend to have higher metabolisms than than mammals of about
(29:52):
the same size, yet on average, the birds tend to
live longer. So even though we can find a lot
of examples of smaller animals that have short lives and
larger animals that have long lives, it turns out the
correlation doesn't hold up. The better your analysis is, I
was reading about another study that undercut the rate of
living hypothesis by looking at metabolic manipulations within the same species.
(30:16):
So the very short version is you have rats in
two different conditions. One set of rats lives in a
world of twenty two degrees celsius or seventy one degrees fahrenheit,
the nice warm world, and then there's another group of
rats that lives at ten degrees celsius or fifty degrees fahrenheit.
So obviously the group living in colder conditions has to
(30:37):
burn more energy to maintain body temperature, so by rate
of living logic, you would expect them to die younger,
but they didn't. The study found that the the rodents
and the two conditions lived the same average lifespan, so
the rate of living hypothesis is no longer thought to
be correct, and it represents no threat whatsoever to the
plausibility of Hobbits. Excellent. All right, On that note, we're
(31:01):
going to take one more break and hopefully they'll be
an ad for Limbus in here. We've been trying to
get Limbus as a sponsor for a while, but we'll
see how it goes. Anyway, one more break and then
we'll be right back. Alright, we're back. You know what's
great is dipping your limbus in a nice bowl of
brown Yeah. I don't know. I always figured it was
(31:24):
it's just dessert, Like it's dessert all the time. Maybe
they just well that I read it originally as a kid,
so at the time, I'm like, yeah, it's like this,
it's like short bread all day, every day. Ever been
into short bread? I don't even like it as dessert. Uh, well,
you know, you're not a Hobbit. They maybe they're more
into it, or elves. Maybe the elves themselves have, you know,
(31:45):
different tolerance for sweets. What's the Middle Earth species that
really likes like pickles? That's that's I think it's probably Hobbits. Again,
I feel like Hobbits can be totally into pickles. I
don't remember specifically if if there was ever mentioned of
hobbit seating pickles, but I bet they like pickles. Dude,
you should try dwarf and century eggs, all right. So,
(32:08):
if we're to entertain the idea that Hobbits as a
species factor so heavily into the struggle for Middle Earth,
based in part on their biology, it raises this question
how suited are the various other species or or races
as they're sometimes called, especially due to you know, this
is another fantasy as well, Like in Dungeons and Dragons,
you talk about the different races even though you're essentially
(32:30):
talking about different species. Um So, so you know, how
do these other various species stack up in the struggle
for global dominance just based on their biology? And it's
interesting to think about this because while Homo sapiens came
into contact with the likes of the Neanderthals, Middle Earth
is an entirely different situation because you have multiple species
(32:51):
of similar cognitive and technological abilities coming into contact with
each other, warring against each other, forming factions, and and
granted some of the players involved, our magical beings others
are artificial creations, and others still or essentially demigods. But
we're we're talking a world full of humans, elves, dwarfs, hobbits, goblins, orcs, trolls, giants, dragons,
(33:14):
and then various animals with human level intelligence such as
the eagles, just to name a few. The deciding factor, however,
might just come down to sunlight, what which which? Isn't
that surprising, right, because sunlight is good, darkness bad. This
is the basic dichotomy of of our of our fantasy
and our myth make But but, but let's think back
(33:37):
to the hobbits omnivorous diet and its subterranean tendencies, because
I want to talk about briefly about a fun little
paper that you can find in full in PDF form
on online if you want to read it for yourself,
by Dr Joseph A. Hopkinson and and his son Nicholas S.
Hopkinson uh and. This was published in the Medical Journal
(33:58):
of Australia paper The hobbit An Unexpected Deficiency and uh
And what they end up arguing is that their very diet,
the very diet of the hobbit um, would be key
to elevating their vitamin D levels. So vitamin D, as
I think we've discussed on the show before, is crucial
(34:19):
for skeletal health and the immune system, with deficiency symptoms
ranging from stuff like depression and weakness to increased bone fragility. Uh,
none of those are things you want while adventuring on
a great quest to save the world, right or to
conquer it. Either way, you want to want to look
at it. You don't want to be depressed and weak
(34:40):
and possibly more susceptible to bone breaks. Now a note here,
oily fish are a great place to get your vitamin
D if you're not getting it from the sun. So
advantage to sniegel here. Oh that's right, he loves them wriggling. Yeah,
but I don't know, do we see him eating oily fish?
Is he getting start to I don't know how oily
(35:02):
the subterranean fish of the Misty Mountains happened to be.
But but maybe he's getting the occasional like ten of
sardines from the goblins anyway. Uh, he loves a good
mahi mahi. So anyway, Bilbo's diverse diet and willingness to
travel long distances in the sun, according to the Hopkinson's
(35:25):
not only boost his vitamin D intake, but also makes
the Hobbit species one of Middle Earth's top vitamin D consumers.
So they assigned major Middle Earth species and individuals a
vitamin D score between zero and four. Hobbits, men, and
high elves they topped the list that they get fours
across the board. Dwarves scored to three gallum score or
(35:48):
Sniegel scored a lowly one. And then the evil species
of Middle Earth, the dragons, the goblins, and the trolls,
and I'm assuming they're they're they're putting the works in
with the goblins here since they're essentially the same species.
All of them scored zeros. Right, because these are basically
entirely indoor underground species right right, or they live in
in darkness and read I mean more door itself. Right
(36:10):
is is often depicted and described as being like clothed,
you know, shielded from the sun by the volcanic ashes
of Mount Doom. Right, it is a realm of darkness. Yeah,
I know Tolkien said that he did not write these
books as allegory, but yeah, I wonder if where was
he really just trying to get his kids to go outside.
It's like you know, you live your whole life inside
(36:31):
you become a bad goblin like me. Well yeah, I
mean it's I mean that critique has been applied to
his work before. Right. The idea that like Mordor is
industrialism and uh and modernity and and the shire is
the you know, is that the rural countryside in traditional
ways of England. Right, So anyway, moral attributes and marshall
(36:51):
prowess are also going to play a factor, they argue.
But they think that vitamin D consumption might be a
key predictor for victory in mid Earth and uh. And
it's worth noting that Dr Hopkinson uh knew what he
knows what he's talking about with vitamin D. He previously
studied the effects of vitamin D and people with lung disease.
As a result, he's not a fan of all the
(37:13):
smoking that goes on, especially with the Hobbits and the
wizarding folk like Gandalf. Uh that would not be be
good for their overall health. But still no, wait a minute,
I was reading. According to Sauron, uh, smoking has not
been definitively linked with any negative health effects. Oh yeah, yeah,
if you can trust Sauron on that one, um so anyway,
(37:35):
the lie? Why would he lie? It's a great deceiver, right,
You're forgetting his prior forms. You're only thinking about the
all seeing eye, and you think that just because he
has an all seeing eye, he's privy to all truth.
But he's still a liar. Worm Tongue said it too,
He said that this is anti pipeweed alarmism. Alright, So
taking all of this into account, we can look at
(37:56):
the Hobbit and we say the Hobbit ultimately offers us
a high metabolism creature with a very diet able to
march across Middle Earths varied ecosystems and eat whatever they
can find within, you know, reason, in order to maintain
their vitamin D levels and therefore contribute to the victory
of good over evil in Middle Earth. I buy it now, Robert.
(38:17):
I've got to ask what what got you looking for
Hobbit papers? I know somehow you must have set out
on this journey. Well this, this happens a lot where
something will enter my head and I'll think, well, let's
see if their papers about the Lord of the Rings.
Let's see if people are mentioning, you know, because sometimes
it's you'll find examples where where authors of even very
(38:39):
very serious uh scientific papers will just at least for
fun reference, say a particular myth or a particular uh
you know, the line from Shakespeare. So sometimes you have
like that level of treatment or it's a pun in
the title of that's frequently used in the title of
a scientific study. But but then you have these this
level of study as well, which which I think is great.
(38:59):
You know, again, very tongue in cheek. All of these
were written at least in part to entertain uh. And
the vitamin D paper specific especially has like a fun
little illustration in it as well, so it was very
much I think it was part of like a Christmas
uh special that they put out where they have a
lot of tongue in cheap papers. Uh. But it's it's
also I think these are all fun because, especially for
(39:20):
a show like ours, we might normally not really discuss
vitamin D deficiency on the show at length, but this
gives us a reason to get into it and and
kind of an angle that makes it more interesting than
it might otherwise be. And and it's of course it's
a it's an important topic as well, right because it
comes down to human health. Like one of the one
(39:40):
of the things that the Hopkinson's arguing in their paper
is that, you know, ultimately, if we're to draw some
sort of conclusion from all of this, it's that we
all need to consider having a more very diet and
uh getting out in the sun, um, you know, with
proper protection of course, if concerning the rays of the sun,
but you know, get your vitamin D, have a very
(40:00):
diet and stay active and it's going to benefit you.
And also stay away from that those hobbit pipes and
those wizarding pipes because it's no good for you. But
this is just one This is just one angle on
Middle Earth and science. I'm sure there are numerous other
articles out there that that that go after a different
angle of Tolkien's work and work some science on it.
So maybe we'll be able to come back in a
(40:21):
future episode and discuss some other corner of Middle Earth.
I had the idea that we could do an episode
about inns. I'm not sure what we we'd figure it out.
We have to play the episode at half speed. Unfortunately,
we could totally do an episode on it's getting into
the like the movements of plants and uh uh you know,
trees that quote unquote walk uh. I mean there are
(40:42):
examples that are that are pretty fascinating and and really
when you start, when you essentially consider that that plants
are are living at this different time frame than this
different rate than animals. You know, when you start, you know,
speeding things up, you you see some amazing movements on
the part of of trees and vines and so forth.
(41:04):
So I think there would be something to discuss with
INNS if we wanted to come back to that, or
or getting into the whole in in a way we
wouldn't wave. We wouldn't want to cover this in an
episode on NS. This really deserves its own episode. But
just the idea of plant intelligence, plant communication, there's some
pretty fascinating theories out there, especially on plant communication. That's
a that is a topic I'd like to come back to.
(41:26):
You know, I've thought before like what types of plants
would evolve intelligence if they ever did, And I think
maybe it would have to be carnivorous plants, right like
venus fly traps, because they'd have they have a movement mechanism.
The movement mechanism is something that could be exploited over
time and evolution as a manipulation mechanism, which in turn
maybe prioritizes UH strategies for manipulation of objects. Yeah. There,
(41:51):
you basically rights itself. You'll have to come back and
talk about inns sometime, all right. In the meantime, if
you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Blow your Mind, we recommend do so. Again. We did
a previous episode titled The One Ring that gets into
metallurgy and what, basically asking the question what could the
One Ring have potentially been made of if it were
(42:11):
to have the various attributes that are described in the
books and the films. UH. It's a fun, a fun
back and forth, So check that one out if you want.
If you want to find that episode, or any episode,
you can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot
com and that will shoot you over to the I
heart listing for our show. But you can find Stuff
to Blow your Mind wherever you get your podcasts, wherever
that happens to be. Just make sure you rate, review,
and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
(42:34):
producers Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
any other to suggest topic for the future, just to
say hi. You can email us at contact at Stuff
to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
(42:54):
It's production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for
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