Selects: Nuclear Semiotics: How to Talk to Future Humans

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SPEAKER_07: If your glucose alerts and readings from the G7 do not match symptoms or expectations, use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions. For a list of compatible devices, visit Dexcom.com slash compatibility. SPEAKER_09: Hey everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's Select, I've chosen one of my favorite episodes in honor of the birthday of my favorite person, my dear sweet wife Yumi, whose birthday is today. Since this episode is so cool and Yumi is too, I figure it was just logical. And logical stuff really floats my boat. Plus, what better way to send off a not too bad year considering everything, especially the last couple years, than with a real head scratcher, fascinating, interesting episode. I hope you enjoy it. Happy birthday to Yumi and happy new year to everybody. SPEAKER_04: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. SPEAKER_09: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. You're about to say that's the blank edition. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, I was, but I couldn't think of anything. SPEAKER_08: It was literally the blank edition. SPEAKER_09: Was it? I mean, you couldn't think of anything. You were blank. SPEAKER_09: No, no, that's right. It was the blank edition. Oh, gosh, that's a terrible start, Chuck. SPEAKER_08: So how about this, just to divert ourselves from that disaster. What was not a disaster were our live shows we just did. SPEAKER_09: Oh, yeah. SPEAKER_08: We finally got up on stage, everyone, since first time since January. Yeah. Kick the rust off. Sure. In Chicago and Toronto. SPEAKER_09: And both of them were, we just killed. They were great. Yeah, everyone. The audiences were great. Everyone had a really great time. Yeah. They told us so. Uh-huh. SPEAKER_09: They seemed to be legitimately meaning what they were saying. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, it was really, really great to get back on stage with you, my friend. And also, also, also hats off to Chicago for showing up. SPEAKER_09: They showed up. Like we called you guys out and you responded. Yeah. SPEAKER_09: Thank you very much. That's right. And thank you, Toronto, for not making us call you out. SPEAKER_08: But there are still tickets remaining for August 29th in Boston at the Wilbur. In Portland, Maine, you know, we're venturing up into the hinterlands of America. SPEAKER_09: Right. To go see you. What's next after that but Canada? SPEAKER_08: August 30th, there are still plenty of great tickets left there. And then the same can be said in October in Orlando. SPEAKER_07: Mm-hmm. SPEAKER_08: And October 10th, I think I said October 9th, right, in Orlando, October 10th in New Orleans. Yep, that's right. Brooklyn, I'm not worried about. It's already all sold out. SPEAKER_09: The whole thing? SPEAKER_09: All three nights. SPEAKER_09: Oh, man. SPEAKER_08: Should we add a fourth? SPEAKER_09: Geez. I don't know. We'll talk about it. SPEAKER_08: Anyway, thanks to everyone who came out. It was a lot of fun and this is a good one. So you don't want to miss it. SPEAKER_09: Yeah. So come on out, especially you, Portland, Maine. Let's get with it. SPEAKER_08: All right. Now, nuclear semiotics, which I didn't know I loved but I do. SPEAKER_09: Really? Do you remember 99% Invisible did a very famous episode on this very topic? Oh, I didn't hear that. I specifically avoided going back and listening to it because I don't want to be stunk upon by its taint. Does that make sense? You don't want Roman Mars's taint stinking on you. It's more like, it's just such a classic episode that I don't want it to like leak in. I don't want to accidentally rip it off. Yeah. Well, we certainly can't 99 Invisible this thing because that is a show that exists at the top echelon of this industry. SPEAKER_08: Sure. SPEAKER_09: So, so do we. Sure. We're up there. All right. But if you like this one, if this stuff like floats your boat and you're like, I want to know more, go listen to the 99% Invisible episode. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, this thing really triggered a lot of like synapses firing for me. And I think like, I think I really enjoy this kind of thought experiment problem solving stuff. Oh, yeah. SPEAKER_08: I think I would really dig like that part of the zombie apocalypse is figuring this stuff out as a team. SPEAKER_08: Right. SPEAKER_08: Because the whole time I was reading this, I was thinking, great idea, terrible idea. They should do this. They shouldn't do that. SPEAKER_09: Go sit down. Yeah. SPEAKER_08: You, I like the cut of your jib. It was really cool. I dug this. I'd never heard of it. So thank you. SPEAKER_09: Oh, you're very welcome. I actually heard of it before Roman Mars made the episode. So I can't really thank him, but well, not before you heard of it because I think it's well known that Roman's first words were nuclear semiotics. SPEAKER_09: It's true. Yeah, even before mama. That's right. I could totally believe that actually. Yeah. SPEAKER_09: So what we're talking about is Chuck said a couple times for those of you who don't know is nuclear semiotics. And that is a very specialized branch interdisciplinary branch of I guess science that involves all basically any field of research that you can throw at the wall would probably have some function to play in the field of nuclear semiotics and to make a long story short to do the too long. Didn't read version of this TL semicolon dr is nuclear semiotics seeks to figure out how to warn the future humans to come or whatever is here. SPEAKER_08: Sure. Let's be honest. Good point. SPEAKER_09: I mean, why discriminate right to warn the future humans or the future super intelligent jellyfish whatever to come. SPEAKER_09: Hey, this is a very dangerous radioactive dump site that we've put here. Right. Stay away. Yeah, it's that easy. It sounds easy. The problem is is if you presume that it's easy, you're making a lot of assumptions that aren't necessarily going to hold up. SPEAKER_08: Oh, yeah, like a lot of times are like they should just do and I would even stop halfway through my thought because like now that that wouldn't work. It's true because our languages might be gone by then. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, our symbols don't necessarily make sense outside of the context that we understand them in civilization might be ridiculously advanced by them. SPEAKER_09: Civilization might be in a state of collapse by then. We have no idea but the point of nuclear semiotics is to figure out how to come up with a message that is understandable to everybody in any situation in the future and the current state of the yard is let's figure out how to speak as far as 10,000 years into the future. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I mean and that's like being generous. It needs to go beyond that. SPEAKER_09: It does because the whole point of nuclear semiotics. The whole point of warning the future is this stuff this nuclear waste that we're putting into the ground now is going to be dangerous for tens and tens of thousands of years. Yeah, plutonium 239 has a half-life of 24,000 years. SPEAKER_09: There's something called technetium 99 has a half-life of 211,000 years. SPEAKER_09: So another one is like 1.7 million year half-life. This is the nuclear waste that we're creating now and are putting in the ground. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, and Julia Layton who is one of our writers who does great work for us. She made a lot of great points, which is like the history of human evolution is 200,000 years. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, and like we've only been like reading and writing for how long about 5,000 less than 6,000 years. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, so it's it sounds like like you said it sounds simple and so many times I thought I had. I thought I had it cracked right only to think like I was like why don't they just do something purely visual and and stage a play of people at that site digging in and then dying. SPEAKER_08: Then I was like well, what do you do with it? So I'll just put it on a DVD sure that just plays on a loop, right? It's like well, how you gonna power that thing right? Well, you know what happens when everybody's converted to blu-ray. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, exactly or you know thought well then solar put a solar panel up. Oh, yes, that'll last forever. But what have it done? What if there's like a forever nuclear storm or whatever if the sun never shines again on Earth? Yeah in 8,000 years. SPEAKER_09: That's good happen. That's the cool thing about thinking into the deep future is all the things that will go wrong. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, it makes you realize like how specific everything you think and know and understand really is to your current time. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, it's very cool. She brings up the point about an apple like when you see the word Apple, you don't see the word Apple, right? SPEAKER_09: You see visualize the symbol of that is an apple, right? SPEAKER_08: So it's like it's almost like the words. I don't know very much the words will just not have meaning anymore at some point, right? SPEAKER_09: Man, let's dig in love this stuff. SPEAKER_08: You ready? SPEAKER_08: Let's do it. SPEAKER_09: So to start we should talk about where this all came from. It came from a new type of nuclear storage solution nuclear waste storage solution called long-term geological repositories. And it is basically digging into the earth couple of miles into the earth putting our nuclear waste there again waste that's going to be harmful to health for tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of years and sealing it up and then covering over the site and then putting a warning on there and right now the general consensus is that salt beds are the best place to put that nuclear waste and there's actually some pretty good reasons why. SPEAKER_08: Yeah. We could do a an episode on nuclear storage. I think I really want to in and of itself. Yeah. I don't know if that's a shorty or a longy. SPEAKER_09: It's probably a longy. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, but just briefly the reason salt beds are preferable is because the fact that they're even there suggests that there's no water if they if there was water they would have been dissolved long ago. SPEAKER_09: Sure. It's really relatively easy to mine into them. And then what's awesome about salt is that when you mine a shaft into a salt bed and you put your deposit there then you pull back out. Yeah, the salt bed actually heals itself over like just a few decades seals itself back up, right? Yes. So you put a container that's been engineered to hold the nuclear waste inside for 10,000 years. Yeah, it's also in a container right should point that out right? SPEAKER_08: SPEAKER_09: You're putting it into a borehole in the salt. This is the salt is going to grow back around it and entomb it perhaps permanently. Yeah. SPEAKER_09: In this salt. SPEAKER_08: It's very strong too, right? SPEAKER_09: It yeah, it is fairly strong. I mean like if you're mining using modern mining equipment, it's it's really easy to mine into right. But if you just have like a pickaxe or something is rock to salt rock is what it's called, right? Yeah. So there's a lot of reasons why people have figured out like this is not a bad idea to entomb nuclear waste. But but here's the thing. We can't just entomb it and walk away like we have a responsibility for those of us generating this waste today to warn the future. Sure. And it's on the future if they listen to us or not. That's on them. SPEAKER_08: Right, but we have to make them able to listen to us. Exactly. SPEAKER_09: Like we have a responsibility to do that because some people have proposed like hey, let's just bury it and forget about it. The chances of somebody actually finding it are pretty slim. Just bury it and forget about it and that's probably the best the best way to go and people said it's not a bad idea, but it's actually a pretty bad idea. See actually I thought that one wasn't the worst idea. SPEAKER_08: It's not. That was the behavioral psychologist. He was like and he wasn't like just forget about it. He was like maybe the smartest thing to do is to leave it unmarked. SPEAKER_09: Right because as we'll see attracting attention to something like that. Exactly. Attracts attention to it. I know it's interesting thought experiment, right? SPEAKER_09: That psychologist by the way was Dr. Percy Tenenbaum. Oh really? SPEAKER_08: No wonder I liked it. SPEAKER_09: Of the East Hampton Tenenbaums. So we should point out that there's a couple of a couple of big times that these that this has been commissioned like hey, we need to think of something. SPEAKER_08: One for a site that never happened and one for a site that has happened. The one that has happened. It's the only one in the United States right now. SPEAKER_09: Only one in the world as far as I know. SPEAKER_08: No, it's number three. Oh really? It's the third largest. Okay. I didn't see what the other two were. It must have been the first in the world then. Yeah, probably the first in the world. Okay. Yeah, which makes sense because the other two are bigger. SPEAKER_08: But this is in New Mexico. It's called the WIP, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. And this one they are they're actively guarding for they've committed the Department of Energy is committed to guarding it with people for a hundred years. SPEAKER_09: They have hired Barney Fife into a hundred year contract to look over this nuclear waste. SPEAKER_08: For at least a hundred years. It's not like at the end of the hundred years they're going to just like put a padlock on it and walk away. I imagine they will keep guarding it as long as they feel like it needs guarding. SPEAKER_09: I don't know if that's true. I don't know man. I mean we're talking about a government run program here. SPEAKER_08: No, at least a hundred years. We can at least say that. SPEAKER_09: Yes, they agreed to that. SPEAKER_08: So, you know, the whole idea arose before that though. What was the other one in Nevada? SPEAKER_09: That's the Yucca Mountain one. That was the first one. Right. SPEAKER_08: That's the first one that never happened. Right. SPEAKER_08: But that's when you know in the 70s is when this idea sort of came about and I think it was in 1982 when it was sort of codified as an official, I guess science or? SPEAKER_09: Yeah, it is. It's a branch. It's an interdisciplinary branch of science, nuclear semiotics. And it is it's because the EPA came up with a rule in 1982, a law really that said... 81, I got that wrong by the way. SPEAKER_09: So it's 81 that they came up with the law? SPEAKER_08: Well, it became a discipline in 1981. Okay. With that Yucca Mountain repository project. And I think from that Yucca Mountain repository project, because we were starting to figure out how to deposit this stuff for a long time, the EPA came up with a rule, I think it was 1982, that said if you're going to create these kind of repositories for nuclear waste, you also have to figure out how to come up with a permanent warning sign. SPEAKER_09: And everybody was like, that's no problem, of course. And then the EPA said, think about it. It's harder than you think. They said just slap that nuclear waste logo that everyone knows. SPEAKER_08: Sure. And everyone was like, everyone doesn't know that. But it's been around forever. SPEAKER_08: Everyone doesn't know that now. Right. Much less in 200,000 years. Yeah. SPEAKER_09: Did you see how that was created? SPEAKER_08: Yeah, it was a group doodle. I don't know how that happens. I think that means they can't ascribe it to one person. No, there was like five people in one of those giant like silver spoons, pencils, or Crayola SPEAKER_09: crayon. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, this is in 1946, was it at Berkeley? Yeah. And it was a group doodle in the science class. And is that an album name or a band name? SPEAKER_09: Group doodle. SPEAKER_09: It's like the Wiggles or something? SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I think it's an album title for sure. So the Wiggles, group doodle. SPEAKER_09: Absolutely. Okay, good. That's probably a real thing. That's our gift to you, Wiggles. SPEAKER_08: But I saw this was interesting. In 1948, the symbol came under consideration for wider use because at first it was just a group doodle. And then the Brookhaven National Laboratory requested a standardized symbol of standardized colors for their radiation safety program. SPEAKER_08: And there was more argument about the colors than the actual symbol because at first they SPEAKER_08: were like, you can't use yellow because we use yellow for a lot of stuff. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, they wanted to make sure that it didn't get overused so people would just become kind of blind to it because they saw it so much. And they were like, have you heard of striper? SPEAKER_09: You can't use yellow and black. They were like, no, I haven't heard of them. And they're like, give us 40 years. You'll have heard of them, believe me. SPEAKER_08: And then in 42 years, no one will have heard of them. So I think the original design was, I saw them in concert. We won't even talk about that. Oh, I believe it. It was magenta blades on a blue background was the original design. Yeah. And it was chosen because it was uncommon. But then in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they went with the yellow background in 1948, later on in 1948. And I guess it stuck. SPEAKER_09: That's where the Oak Ridge boys were all scientists. SPEAKER_08: That's right. SPEAKER_09: So it was originally magenta on blue, right? Yes. And the logo we're talking about, for those of you who don't know, it's called the nuclear trefoil. You know, it's a circle and then three partial circles around it. Blades. Yeah. SPEAKER_09: And from what I saw, one of the original group doodlers explained it as it's supposed to be an atom with activity around it. Yeah. That's it. Which I never saw it before. But now that I've read that, I can't unsee it. And that is really what it looks like. It's a pretty great little doodle. But it's like you said, that is not a universally accepted symbol, which is a big problem. Yeah. And it doesn't evoke like, oh, an atom, of course. I know what an atom looks like. I just saw one go down the street a second ago. And this looks like an atom. Yeah. It's a symbolic representation of an atom, which means that after people stop thinking about what atoms look like, maybe a thousand years or five thousand years down the road, if something happens, no one's going to look at that and be like, oh, it's an atom. Activity around an atom. That must mean there's radiation here. Hence, this is a danger sign. That's not going to happen. SPEAKER_08: Right. The other thing you would think is just put up in a bunch of languages. Done. Yep. Here's the thing. Languages are disappearing. I'm going to ask you actually, what is your best guess? A language dies out every blank. SPEAKER_09: Nine million seconds. SPEAKER_08: Is that right? SPEAKER_08: Did I nail it? You jerk. I got to get out a calculator. A language dies out every 14 days. SPEAKER_09: I'm pretty sure that's nine million seconds. Isn't that staggering? SPEAKER_08: God, what if it was? Are you about to do that? SPEAKER_09: Yeah, you keep talking. SPEAKER_08: So that's about 25 languages per year that die out. And that's really sad. SPEAKER_08: It is. And it is very sad. And granted, these aren't, you know, major languages, but they're important to the people who speak them. Sure. But that's just sort of to get across the point that throwing it up in a bunch of languages, there's no guarantee. And in fact, in all likelihood, in 50,000 years, there won't be English or German or French. There may not even be humans. SPEAKER_09: That's a really good point. We may be... SPEAKER_08: What's the calculation? SPEAKER_09: 446 days. That was a little off. Oh, okay. There may be, we may all be like post-biological humans, you know, uploaded our consciousness onto like the internet or something, at which point that really won't matter to tell you the truth where the nuclear waste is buried. But who knows? It could be an intelligent species. It could be humans who don't know how to read or write. The fact is, is the stuff that we take for granted changes a lot faster than you think. And even if it doesn't necessarily die out, the changes that come along are pretty alarming. I found a, I've been watching a lot of Silicon Valley lately, I told you. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, great show. SPEAKER_08: I, my vocal delivery sounds a lot like Jared's. SPEAKER_09: It's occurred to me. Oh, you think? A lot. SPEAKER_09: I never really put those two together. Well, keep an ear out for it now and see what you think. I mean, tell me I'm wrong. SPEAKER_08: I don't know. Prove me wrong. I mean, I would have to disassociate so much because I like you and Jared is like such a pedantic bureaucrat. Oh, I love him. SPEAKER_09: SPEAKER_08: I mean, he's fun to watch, but I wouldn't say that he's like the most likable character. Maybe he is. I don't know. SPEAKER_09: I would say pedantic bureaucrat is not entirely off for me. No, Jared needs a girlfriend. That's his deal. Okay. So I do not because I have a fine wife. That's right. So let me give you an example of how English has changed. This is a quote from Sir Gawain in the Green Knight. It was written in 1375. SPEAKER_08: Oh boy. That's 650 years ago. SPEAKER_09: All right. This is in English. The steel of a stiff staff, the stern hit be gripped that was wound in with iron into the wands end and I'll be graven with green and gravious works. SPEAKER_08: And you should see it spelled. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was an English major. We had to go through this stuff. It was a slog. SPEAKER_09: Do you have a guess at what I just said? SPEAKER_08: Yeah, you said that he the Green Knight sat down and watch some Silicon Valley. That's right. SPEAKER_09: It's that the grim man gripped it by its strong handle, which was wound with iron all the way to the end and graven and green with graceful designs. So like that's English 650 years ago. English is still around. 650 years. SPEAKER_08: We're talking about thousands tens of thousands of years. Exactly. SPEAKER_09: So that's a problem. Languages evolve. Languages die. Symbols don't quite make sense out of context. So there's a lot of challenges that face the people who to try to explain this stuff or figure out how to explain it to future people. I think is a better way to put it. SPEAKER_08: That's right. They have looked and Simio semioticians for people who really wonk on this stuff. Sure. I think I'm a amateur semiotician after reading this. SPEAKER_09: That's great. SPEAKER_08: But one thing that they're looking for because what you want is ideally is instant recognition and not something. I mean, yeah, maybe if you have to figure it out, but what you want is something that conveys danger. Yeah, right when you look at it, like just steer clear of this place, not come closer SPEAKER_09: and start poking around. Just go away. SPEAKER_08: That's right. So she makes a great point though that like it's a double-edged sword like you were talking about earlier. If you, you know, human beings, if you show a extreme skier a sign, this is danger. Don't ski this way. Sure. He's going to say bra. Let's do it. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, you know, give me some homicide. SPEAKER_09: Power drink. SPEAKER_08: So there's a very fine line between warning people and enticing people. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, even inadvertently. SPEAKER_08: Exactly. You know, I mean, there's she points out haunted houses because I'm like, yeah, not SPEAKER_09: everybody's like a Red Bull extreme sports person, but people do like haunted houses too. So what? Oh, that abandoned like scary place is so creepy. Let's go there for Halloween. Right. Because maybe Halloween survived, but the English language didn't. Who knows? So yeah, you, you, you really walk a fine line here between warning people away and saying, I dare you. Right? SPEAKER_08: Yeah, my whole jam is I think they need to, what will survive if there are humans at all is emotion. SPEAKER_08: So I think they need to appeal to human emotions like fear more than words and symbols. Okay. SPEAKER_09: Well, let's take a break and we'll get back into this. All right, because this is fun. SPEAKER_08: Yes. SPEAKER_09: Yeah. SPEAKER_08: Educate others about these severe conditions and let those living with them know that they are not alone. 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SPEAKER_01: Joshua and Charles stuff you should know SPEAKER_09: All right, Chuck. So we've kind of talked about how things go away languages fall away symbols don't make sense. Any any more ephemera it is it really is right. So what what will last what have nuclear semioticians come up with and should we explain SPEAKER_09: what semiotics is in general? SPEAKER_08: What is it? I don't even know. Oh just kind of in shorthand semiotics is basically the study of how and why signs have SPEAKER_09: meaning. Okay, right. SPEAKER_09: Like you were saying earlier how the word Apple doesn't evoke thoughts of the word Apple it evokes thoughts of the round shiny tasty fruit that grows on a tree. That's a sign right in semiotics. That's right specifically a cursive sign because it uses language. SPEAKER_08: So what they've done and in many cases is and this is a great idea for stuff like this is to have a competition. They had one at UCLA I think in 2001 calls it called the Desert Space competition and SPEAKER_08: what won that year was a cactus a yucca cacti glowing blue. SPEAKER_08: And then the idea was plant a field of these regular green cacti and then over the place where you know the waste is the repository and then if you see the sign of a glowing blue one. I mean, I don't think I didn't see the rest of them, but I didn't think this one was that great. SPEAKER_09: I'm sorry to the person who came up with it though. SPEAKER_08: I know I think something they should do is go even further back to younger children SPEAKER_08: because sometimes like go to like an elementary school and ask kids or a high school. SPEAKER_09: Right or you just take each kid out rub their face in the sand and be like you see this you stay out of here. SPEAKER_08: No, I mean have the kids like throw out ideas because I think oh, I see. Yeah, I think the I liked my idea. SPEAKER_09: SPEAKER_08: I think a lot of times children can cut through the to the simplicity of something much better than adults can easily. So that's my idea throw it out as a science fair project. SPEAKER_09: Well, I think that's one of the cool things about nuclear semiotics is it's so inviting to like anybody can get up with a great idea. It's just so confounding, but it's also so accessible. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, we'll get ideas. In fact, we want to hear from you if you think you have a cool idea good idea like I guarantee you we're going to get some good ones. Yep. SPEAKER_09: SPEAKER_08: We're not going to pass them along or anything. SPEAKER_09: So rather than just like poo-pooing the glowing yucca one. There's a here's the problem with the glowing yucca idea. It requires explanation right somebody so part of the glowing yucca is to say these SPEAKER_09: things have been genetically engineered so that when there's radiation present they glow. So if you see this yucca glowing it means that there's radiation here stay away, right? SPEAKER_09: If you lose that that additional story that has to go along with the glowing yucca, then you just have glowing yucca and I can't think of a more attractive thing is going to draw people to a site than the legendary glowing yucca that only glows in this one spot on earth. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, that's kind of the problem with it. SPEAKER_09: You know, I like to other idea from that same year a little better that did not win SPEAKER_08: fields of asphodel, which is a Eurasian lily. They said let's just cover the site with metal blades that screech when the wind blows. It makes a horrible noise, right? SPEAKER_09: Not bad. Here's the problem with that. SPEAKER_08: Okay moving parts. SPEAKER_08: Okay. Sure. It's been pretty well established that if you're trying to convey something to the people SPEAKER_09: into the distant future, you need to have something that's monolithic and made of one piece because if you have multiple parts, that's opportunity for weathering to occur through the the place where the two parts meet or three parts or five parts. And if it's a moving part just kiss the movement goodbye. SPEAKER_08: What about this? Okay. SPEAKER_08: I've had the thought earlier today about just a mountain of razor wire. SPEAKER_09: Okay, here's the problem with that. Okay. And this is the same problem also with the what is the problem the steel the steel stuff that move and everything this doesn't want to use you I know but you want to use stuff that has no value whatsoever. Not just financially but usefulness. SPEAKER_08: Why because someone will say I can harvest that razor wire. Yeah, I can go use that to keep the cows in in my house next door. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, but if you have so much of it over time over 10,000 years people like take and take and take and take. I mean, that's why the pyramids are stripped of like their more attractive outer. They used to have like a white I think limestone shell encasement. It's gone because the locals were like, oh I can use that to build a fine little house for myself. A pizza hut. SPEAKER_08: That's exactly that's what people will do if you place something of any kind of usefulness SPEAKER_09: of iron. That's true. Like that is the beauty of this. Every idea is wrong. SPEAKER_08: As a whole. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, it's so great. SPEAKER_08: It's pretty great. I love it. So the one of the most often cited bodies of work is from 1982-83. And this was a call for ideas from the German Journal of Semiotics that basically said the same thing. It's like, you know, what are your ideas? This one got a little goofy to say the least. Someone suggested an artificial moon as a storage vessel. SPEAKER_09: There's just a huge flaw in that one. If you ask me. I mean, I don't even get that. Well, it was like, how do you make sure that the information about this site stays protected? Put it into an artificial moon in orbit around Earth, but it's like, how do you get to the artificial moon? I didn't get that's what they meant. SPEAKER_08: That doesn't make any sense. SPEAKER_09: That's what I think. SPEAKER_08: I guess they were, I mean, it said, oh, were they beaming it down to a TV that won't play? That's a different one. SPEAKER_09: Yeah. SPEAKER_09: And then I just don't understand this at all. SPEAKER_08: I don't understand the radioactive cats either, even though that's a decent band name. SPEAKER_09: So that was a big part of the 99% invisible episode on nuclear semiotics. They talked about the Ray Cats. SPEAKER_09: And I think they actually hired a musician to create a song because just like with the glowing yucca, you have to explain what's going on when the cats glow, you need to stay away. So they had somebody come up with a Ray Cat song, I believe, for the episode. SPEAKER_08: Was it Hootie and the Blowfish? Yes, it was. SPEAKER_09: That was a good guess. Now, this one I thought was had a little, I thought it was interesting at least. SPEAKER_08: This semiotician named Thomas Sebiak, he said this, what has survived more than anything SPEAKER_08: else? Religion. SPEAKER_09: Right. SPEAKER_08: Religious texts that date back, you know, a couple thousand years in the Catholic Church. Not a bad start. Yeah, the ideas that you hear at Catholic Mass today are a couple thousand years old in SPEAKER_09: some instances. And if you go back to the original text, which we can still read, fortunately, you can say, yep, this is what they're talking about. Like those ideas have survived that long because of the practices they use. So interesting idea, but it gets a little goofy. SPEAKER_08: Yeah. Because he thought, why don't we almost create a fake religion around this thing? SPEAKER_08: A fearful myth that you can generate, appointing an atomic priesthood to tell people and tell them to tell future generations. But I mean, I guess the idea is that it's all false and it's just a big made up story. Yeah, this, the atomic priesthood would know the truth and they would indoctrinate people, SPEAKER_09: but out in society around them, it would be a closely guarded secret because everybody else thinks that whatever this fake myth about why you have to stay away from this haunted evil area is true when really the atomic priests are the ones who know, no, actually, there's radioactive stuff right here. They just came up with this 3,000 years ago to scare everybody away. SPEAKER_08: But initially a decent idea as far as trying to make it or incorporate like what religion does, but it just definitely strange. SPEAKER_09: It is. To me, though, it is at its base despicable. It's a despicable idea because it is purposefully introducing fearful false superstition into the future. Like we're going to purposefully introduce fearful false superstition into the future just to scare people off from radioactivity. Like what kind of sweeping side effects, what kind of wars might start over this? How many people will die to defend this fake thing that they don't realize is fake because Thomas Seabeyock came up with this idea to keep people away from a single site in New Mexico. Right. That's crazy. SPEAKER_08: It didn't fare too well either among his colleagues. No, and rightfully so because again, it's a despicable idea. SPEAKER_09: So he was on the Human Interference Task Force. SPEAKER_08: We mentioned the Nevada site. That was what was launched for that Yucca Mountain site back in 81 from 81 to 83. SPEAKER_09: So whatever Seabeyock's original idea was, he had like some other closely related ideas that were great though. Yeah. Like he's not like it's a total nut job hat. No, no, no, no. He was like, I think it was just a misfire for in an otherwise illustrious career. I think. I don't know that much about him. But one of his other ideas was, okay, well, let's take the atomic priesthood away. Let's take the religion and all that stuff away and let's just give them like the facts, but let's figure out a way to make sure that those facts get passed down. And what he came up with was called the meta message where it's a message that says this is this place has nuclear radiation. It can kill you. You need to stay away from it. SPEAKER_09: And we invite you to take this message and translate it into whatever languages you guys have on earth at the time. SPEAKER_08: Assuming you can read this. SPEAKER_09: Right. But if you do that often enough, right, there will always be somebody who can translate it. Oh, sure. And then that way you form a bridge between now and as far into the future as people are around to read and add their own interpretation or their own translation of it. But then you want to leave the original so that if there's ever like a disagreement about what some what word meant, hopefully somebody can go back language to language to language and connect them so that they can see the original version. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, but like what if a society develops an isolation that knows none of these languages? SPEAKER_09: You're just totally toast. Yeah. SPEAKER_09: That's when the symbols come in. SPEAKER_08: Right. So what they settled on as a panel though in 81 from 81 to 83 was what's called long-term communication was going to be the most effective thing like kind of what you were just talking about. Right. SPEAKER_08: And they said a system that combines physical markers and archives that cover the two major forms of this long-term communique direct and successive. Direct utilizes markers and successive is humans like you were talking about, I guess with this meta message. I guess you could write it down, but it's still humans carrying a message through time. SPEAKER_09: Well, it's more like a direct one is that like you can write an inscription on a monument and that monument is going to deliver that message directly to people 10,000 years from now. SPEAKER_08: Yeah. I mean, it's a physical thing. Right. SPEAKER_09: Yeah. Whereas with successive, it's kind of passed along like a game of telephone. SPEAKER_08: Exactly. And you know how that goes. Right. It can get a little hinky. That's right. But it's always fun at a slumber party. Sure. SPEAKER_09: So they came up with multiple ones like you were saying that they settled on a monument that had massive stone structures. Remember you want monoliths. They're engraved with warnings in all currently known languages. It's a lot of languages. You want a buried vault that has all the info you need about radioactivity about the site all that stuff. Sure. You want a bunch of barriers around the site not necessarily to definitely keep people out but enough to basically say, hey, hey, we're trying to impede progress here. SPEAKER_08: Yeah. I mean to me that's one of the most obvious ones. If like you see a huge wall again, it might entice you but it for sure indicates to any SPEAKER_08: culture that you're not meant to come beyond this. Right. SPEAKER_09: And then the last one is a network of archives. Basically the same information you would have in that buried vault. SPEAKER_08: Right. But elsewhere scattered around the world. SPEAKER_09: So if something happens to the buried vault, somebody can come across the archives somewhere and be like, oh, wait, wait, we want to stay out of there. SPEAKER_08: Right. And along with that they said while we're at it, can we at least like all agree around the world on a nuclear warning symbol? Right. If it's the trafoil or whatever. Let's just all codify that as the thing which is not the case right now. SPEAKER_09: No, theirs was a triangle with an arrow pointing down and then in the head of the arrow was the biohazard symbol. Which is not great because you want something that's going to be so simple that even as people... That confused me. I need to see it, I guess. Yeah. It's even when you see it, you're like, wait, what? But you want something simple enough so that as people kind of create a shorthand version of it, it still retains its meaning. Right. Or visually. SPEAKER_08: All right. So that stuff was the Yucca Project in the early 80s. They decided not to do that. They just packed it up, put it away, and then it all came back again with this New Mexico plant. SPEAKER_09: Right. SPEAKER_08: When the Department of Energy said once again, hey, we need to think of a sign and a symbol or whatever you can come up with and we need the best and the brightest thinking of this. So call up Carl Sagan. Get me Sagan. Get me Sagan. Give me Percy Tenenbaum, stat. SPEAKER_08: And this guy named John Lomborg, who's a science writer and space illustrator, and he had worked in semiotics before for NASA on their mission to Mars. Sagan was in ill health, so he declined to come. Yeah. But he sent a message from the president, I guess, that said, skull and crossbones. SPEAKER_08: Dude. Done. Yeah. SPEAKER_08: Universal. Everyone knows it. SPEAKER_09: He gave a really good example. He said it has, it's marked the lentils of cannibal dwellings, the flags of pirates, the insignia of SS divisions and motorcycle gangs. Like he makes a pretty good point. A lot of people out there see a skull and crossbones and know it means like danger. Sure. Problems. Yeah. It means this will be you. SPEAKER_08: Yes. You know, you'll be a skull. SPEAKER_09: And so the working group for the WIPP project, they said, no, that doesn't work. It's a Jungian archetype. It doesn't really exist outside of the West. SPEAKER_08: Yeah. SPEAKER_09: To me, I'm like, no, Sagan was definitely on to something. SPEAKER_08: I think so. I mean, tell me if you go to China and hold up a sign with a skull and crossbones. There you go. SPEAKER_08: I would think so. Wouldn't they? I mean, that's a dire warning, isn't it? Or not? I think their point is, is that the skull used to be like a memento mori. SPEAKER_09: Oh, right. Where it meant like rebirth and prepared for death. SPEAKER_08: So they could be like, oh, wonderful, a skull and crossbones. Sure. SPEAKER_09: But to me, that is the one enduring symbol that's always going to be around as long as there are humans. Yeah. Because what happens when you die and rot? What's left? Your skull. Yeah. Every human knows that. Even humans in the future are going to know that. Even ones that are in like a post-collapse tribes. Right. Who are running around like and have lost all of the languages that are around today. They're going to know what a skull looks like or what a skull means. Or at least one of them is going to be like, wait, I don't think this is saying that the rainbow is coming. I think it means like death or danger. SPEAKER_08: All right. Let's take another break. Yeah. Sure. We'll come back and talk about the approach that the W.I.P. panel took and what they came up with right after this. SPEAKER_09: Every person living with a rare autoimmune condition navigates their own unique journey. That's why in season two of Untold Stories, life with a severe autoimmune condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenix, they are sharing even more empowering stories. SPEAKER_08: That's right. 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Car started. Temperature set. Lost car found. Maintenance scheduled. Get complimentary class-leading Blue Link Plus. Just another way we make owning a Hyundai Tucson Limited more convenient than ever. Learn more about the new Tucson and Blue Link Plus at HyundaiUSA.com. Call 562-314-4603 for complete details. SPEAKER_09: Now your ideas don't have to wait. Now they have everything they need to come to life. Dell Technologies and Intel are creating technology that loves ideas, loves expanding your business, evolving your passions. They push what technology can do so great ideas can happen right now. Find out how to bring your ideas to life at Dell.com slash welcome to now. SPEAKER_01: Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know. SPEAKER_09: You know I gotta defend Sagan. That's my boy. Sure. SPEAKER_08: Love that guy. SPEAKER_09: Someone should ask Neil deGrasse Tyson. SPEAKER_09: Sure. SPEAKER_08: Why not? I bet he's got a good idea or two. I'll bet they have asked. He's coming to Atlanta for a show. Oh yeah, where? SPEAKER_08: Fox? I think Cobb Energy Center. SPEAKER_09: Oh yeah, I think that's even more seats than the Fox. No, it's less. SPEAKER_09: Oh, sorry Neil. I think it's like 3,000 people, which is nothing to, you know, put up a stink about. SPEAKER_08: That's a lot of folks. SPEAKER_09: We have not hit that. No, we're not. No, we haven't. Did you hear the star talk I was on? Oh no, was it good? It was pretty good. Yeah. If I do say so myself. So if it was supposed to be like rapid, fast responses. Uh-huh. SPEAKER_09: We got through like four questions in an hour. You're like rapid, fast responses, not my specialty, Neil. SPEAKER_08: Let me just do a little distracting here. SPEAKER_08: I'm more deliberate. SPEAKER_08: All right, so speaking of deliberate, the WIT panel was very deliberate and methodical. They divided it into teams and approached it from the two things we were talking about, direct and successive forms of communication, debated a lot, deliberated a lot. SPEAKER_08: The recommendations, they had two proposals, and they did overlap a little bit. What I thought was pretty smart is they both had a multi-leveled approach from the surface down. Yeah. SPEAKER_08: That got more specific and intense as you went down. Yeah, the first one was basically like you, ding-dong, this is dangerous, go away. SPEAKER_09: Exactly. That's like level one. And then level two is like, okay, ding-dong and you're kind of smart friend, explain to ding-dong that the reason this is dangerous is because there's something buried here and it's going to hurt you. All right, should we talk about the real things? SPEAKER_08: Oh, sure. I thought I was. SPEAKER_08: So, group A, this was theirs. They studded the surface of the site with what they called menacing earthworks. So, a field of spikes and then a big massive disk painted to look like a black hole. I didn't quite get that part. That is so dumb. SPEAKER_09: I get the spikes. I think it's the, yeah, of course. But the black hole, I think it's supposed to just mean like a void or chaos. I don't know. I'm not sure. I could see how you would think that that was kind of universal, like nobody wants to fall into a hole or something and maybe it evokes that kind of like stay away. All right. SPEAKER_08: Then they have large markers all around the site, which like you said, are the really basic messages and the warnings, including, and I thought this is so interesting, faces that invoke Edvard Munch's The Scream. SPEAKER_09: The ones I saw were The Scream. Yeah. Like it was a line drawing of the guy from The Scream. SPEAKER_08: People, yeah, like in great agony and pain. SPEAKER_09: That to me is- Not bad. It isn't bad. I don't know though, is that more universally understood than a skull and crossbones? SPEAKER_08: I don't know or if art survives or people like, oh, I wonder if that painting's down there. Well, I think what they're saying is, and semioticians kind of feel this way, SPEAKER_09: is that Edvard Munch so perfectly nailed The Scream that even without the art, like if you see that, you understand that that person you're seeing is in agony. Did I say Munch? SPEAKER_08: No, I think you said Munch. Did I? Did I say Munch? You said Munch. I might have said Munch. No, you said, I think you said Munch. Is it Munch? I think it's probably Munch. SPEAKER_09: There's no way his name is Munch. I'm almost positive you said Munch. Jerry, can you rewind for a second? SPEAKER_09: Munch. Oh, you did say Munch. I would have sworn you said Munch. SPEAKER_08: So, group A, below the surface, this is when they actually start talking about nuclear waste, what it does to you, the details about the structure and all that stuff. Right. Not bad. SPEAKER_08: Where they teach you a little bit about radioactivity. SPEAKER_08: So, group B, this was, they went super informative, and really what they relied on was that people had a little bit of knowledge in the future about stuff like this. But they also trusted that people didn't have to just be spooked or scared or something like that. SPEAKER_09: That it's like, here is the facts and information. Here's why you want to stay away from that. Yeah, their big above-ground work was these big earthen walls in the shape of the nuclear trifoil. SPEAKER_08: Not bad. I imagine you'd have to see it from above to even know, though, what that was. Yeah, but that's part of the, one of the requirements was that you want it to be easily visible, SPEAKER_09: not just with human cognition, but like remote sensing, too. Right. So, like magnetic surveys, they said we should put some magnets in here. Right. Not just from when you walk up to it. Right, and you also have to be able to see it from your flying saucer. SPEAKER_08: Exactly. SPEAKER_08: And then inside the walls, they have, at various depths, have these big markers, and here's where they use like symbols and pictographs, all kinds of languages, writing in different languages. And then more human faces increasingly contorted in agony as you go down. Yeah. SPEAKER_09: It looks to me like the guy's getting drunker and drunker. Yeah? SPEAKER_08: Yeah. That's what it looks like. Well, maybe that means there's a happening bar. Exactly. SPEAKER_09: That's how I would take it if I were a future human post-collapse. Gotta go. Gotta go down here. SPEAKER_09: There were also pictograms, and you're just like digging through the sand to get to it. Oh, yeah. So, the pictograms that showed like under the ground, like real easy to understand drawings of the radioactive waste, the groundwater flowing through it, taking the radioactive waste up to the plants, which are then eaten by the humans in the picture, one of whom dies. Yeah. SPEAKER_09: Which makes sense. You don't need to understand anything about radioactivity. You don't need to be able to read anything. It's a really, like it makes sense, especially if some people are sitting there thinking about it. Was the final image of skull and crossbones or a pile of bones? SPEAKER_08: No, it was like a person, three people standing, SPEAKER_09: and one of them, the last one was like dead, and I think he might even have Xs for eyes. SPEAKER_08: Well, I was about to say, though, I mean, if you think about 20,000 years from now, maybe they're like, oh, this induces a nice nap. Maybe. Like, but to your point, though, like the bones is where you need to end up. Right. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, maybe somebody would be like, oh, these veggies here give you a great buzz if you grow them on this ground. Yeah, Xs for eyes. SPEAKER_09: Right, yeah, the bones do make a lot more sense. I think Sagan was right. SPEAKER_09: That should be a T-shirt, a Stuff You Should Know T-shirt. Sagan was right. Sagan was right. Don't even need to have any context. SPEAKER_08: We're going to make an email in a few days from that guy. SPEAKER_09: From the estate of Carl Sagan saying, do not make that T-shirt. SPEAKER_08: So what did they go with in the end, though? SPEAKER_09: They went with an earthen berm, basically to provide an obstacle and to block easy access. They took some granite slabs, monoliths, that have warnings written in seven languages? SPEAKER_08: Yeah, Navajo and then the six languages of the UN. SPEAKER_09: So Arabic, Chinese, English, Spanish, French, and Russian. Correct. SPEAKER_09: Which makes a lot of sense. But then they took Thomas Sebiak up on his idea. They kind of built on the earlier people. They made fake religion. Right, exactly. And they left blank spaces, or in their plan, they leave blank spaces on these slabs for future generations to add their own translations of the inscriptions. That's a good idea. SPEAKER_08: It's a great idea. SPEAKER_09: And the faces of humans in pain and anguish. SPEAKER_08: Right. That did survive in the end. SPEAKER_09: So that was the final report on this WIT panel. It's a pretty good idea. It makes a lot of sense. So there are two groups that they're trying to, say, stay away. Not really like urban explorers or thrill seekers or whatever. Yeah, they can die. They would have virtually no chance of getting down to the actual radioactive material. Two and a half miles. The people they were worried about were technological advanced civilizations that were drilling for resources. Like an accident. SPEAKER_09: Like, God help this waste disposal site if salt becomes incredibly important in the future. And then less advanced civilizations that could accidentally change the flow of groundwater to go through this salt bed through massive irrigation projects. It covers all of it. Yeah, my whole thing is just make it inaccessible. SPEAKER_08: Why is it in New Mexico? Why isn't it out, you know? Well, that's pretty inaccessible. SPEAKER_08: It's not as inaccessible as Siberia. SPEAKER_09: So one of the recommendations for nuclear waste disposal is shooting it into space. Just send it out into outer space and forget about it. And if you believe in the Fermi Paradox that it says we're the only intelligent life in the universe, man, more power to you. SPEAKER_09: That's actually not that bad of an idea. SPEAKER_09: It's a horrific idea, but it's actually kind of a good idea. Yeah, but then I wonder about the danger and the risk involved. SPEAKER_08: I mean, we've seen rockets blow up and space shuttles blow up. That would be bad. SPEAKER_08: What if the thing that they're shooting it out there malfunctioned or something? SPEAKER_09: That would be really bad. SPEAKER_08: That would be really bad. SPEAKER_08: That's a great point. It's like all of our nuclear waste has just been released. Oh, into the atmosphere. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, no good. That's a great point, Chuck. SPEAKER_08: So here's the thing. Is all of this just wasted effort? Because I was getting so into this stuff, and then the end of this article was a real sad trombone. SPEAKER_09: Yeah. SPEAKER_08: Because it seems like nobody really even cares, the people that matter. SPEAKER_09: Well, the first group, like their whole thing will probably never be implemented because the Yucca Mountain Project got shut down. Right. SPEAKER_09: But the WIPP group may actually have their plan come to fruition because it is an EPA rule that you have to create this kind of marker, and they've got until about 2040 until they estimate the place is going to shut down. So it's entirely possible that in 2040 or sometime in the 100 years after 2040 the DOE stops protecting the site or the DOD, they may implement this earthen works and these 16 granite slabs, and we may live to see something like this. SPEAKER_08: Well, outside of the U.S., it seems like no one is super concerned. Sweden in 2011 had an application to build a repository in Forsmark, and in their literal application they basically said, you know what, we're going to worry about that later, in 70 years when this thing's finished. SPEAKER_08: They said, see this can? We just kicked it 70 years down the road. SPEAKER_09: SPEAKER_08: And the Swedish National Archives, they consulted on their application. They said, that's really insufficient. It said it gives the impression that one intends to postpone important documentation efforts until the closure of the repository in 70 years. And it's like, it doesn't give the impression. It literally said that. SPEAKER_08: Right. So... I think they're being ultra polite. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, I think, well, Sweden. SPEAKER_08: Right. Good people. Don't tell ASAP Rocky that. That, uh... I don't even know what that means. It's a singer, right? Yeah, he's a rapper. He's in prison in Sweden right now. SPEAKER_09: I did not know that. SPEAKER_09: Oh, man. SPEAKER_08: What did he do? SPEAKER_09: He got into a fight with some Swedish kids and it may or may not have been their fault. It looks on video like they definitely provoked it. SPEAKER_08: But the King of Sweden is like, sorry, rule of law, it applies to everybody, including super famous Americans. SPEAKER_09: Well, true. SPEAKER_08: Donald Trump called him to try to get the thing resolved at the behest of Kanye West. SPEAKER_09: Oh, God. And apparently it just made everything worse and now the King of Sweden is like, there's no chance he's getting released early. Wow. Man, where have I been? SPEAKER_09: This is reality. I know. What I just said is actual fact. It actually happened here in 2019, everybody. Humans of the far future, can you believe it? SPEAKER_08: Humans of the near. Uh, Jon Lomberg, that guy we were talking about earlier, who was on that original 1991 whip panel, he told Vice just a couple of years ago, a lot of us had been around the block a few times before because, you know, he was back then doing the same thing and knew this is going to be a report the government only did. And this is the US and we're putting more thought toward this than anyone. Yeah, which is really surprising. SPEAKER_08: He said they only did this because they needed to show compliance. They didn't really care what we said. And then, and from the 1981 Human Interference Task Force, during the competition, they basically said the most effective sign will be the dead bodies of those foolish enough to ignore. Which makes sense. Whatever sign. So basically, like, who cares? Someone will get in there and they'll all die and then that'll be the big warning. Right, which makes sense if humans are in communication around the globe and you've got the same warning round. SPEAKER_09: But if they're not, then it's catastrophe, catastrophe, catastrophe. SPEAKER_09: But at least we fulfilled our part of the bargain where we really tried to warn everybody. SPEAKER_08: Agreed. SPEAKER_09: You got anything else? SPEAKER_09: If you will indulge me, I would like to plug The End of the World with Josh Clark. The what? The End of the World with Josh Clark. If thinking about things in like far deep time in the future of humanity and all that stuff kind of floated your boat, I would recommend my little podcast series, The End of the World with Josh Clark. For sure. This is right up your alley. SPEAKER_09: Thank you, Chuck. And since Chuck said right up your alley, it's time for Listen Her Mail. Hey, guys, we are strangers, but we aren't. You've been with me during the most challenging times of my life. SPEAKER_08: I've listened to your show for about seven years. I'm an English teacher and my students are tired and making fun of me because I always start lessons with, so I was listening to Stuff You Should Know. I went through a huge life change recently. I was in a relationship for five years, engaged for four of them, and moved from Phoenix to Charlotte after ending that relationship, which was incredibly difficult to do. During the drive, I listened to you guys for the entire 34 hours. Wow. Can you imagine? No. I honestly can't. SPEAKER_08: No music, just you guys. My heart was so broken, I didn't think I would ever be able to recover from that trauma, but... The trauma of listening to us for 34 hours. But you didn't know that you were able to comfort me and calm me down. SPEAKER_08: My brother, who helped me move, asked me what I needed to listen to during the drive. I told him I wanted to listen to Stuff You Should Know. He had never heard of it. SPEAKER_08: But now my brother, Nick, is also a fan of the show. Whether he likes it or not. And we almost always start our conversations now with Did You Listen to the Last Stuff You Should Know. SPEAKER_08: That's cool. So I just want to give you guys kudos for being incredible. SPEAKER_08: Please give a shout out to Justin, a fan that learned about you guys from me, in case he didn't hear it the first time. Hello, Justin Potter. Wow. Thanks for giving me calm in times of adversity. SPEAKER_08: I know we are strangers, but we are not actually, because you have been with me during struggles in my life. I credit you for getting me through the hardest times. And I will be a lifelong fan of you both. That is from Kate. Thanks, Kate. I'm really glad we got to play some small part in getting you back on the road to happiness. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, I hope everything's going great for you. Yeah, for real. If you want to get in touch with us like Kate did, SPEAKER_08: SPEAKER_09: just to say hi or to say thanks or to say, you guys really screwed up, it's cool. You can go on to StuffYouShouldKnow.com and check out our social links. And you can also send us a message. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, SPEAKER_03: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. SPEAKER_09: Episode 2 of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, from Ruby Studio and Argenics, is exploring the challenges and triumphs of life within autoimmune disorder. Host Martine Hackett shares these powerful perspectives from real people living with conditions like myasthenia gravis and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy. Tune in to find strength and community on your journey on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. SPEAKER_08: Hey, friends. 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