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It's our first ever LIVE SHOW!!! We return to the threequel of eyevolution to look at... eyelids? How interesting could that be? And Caroline teaches us about the competition, the science, and the adorable bears of fat bear week!Images we talk about:(Also available at https://www.letslearneverything.com/115/)Tom's Topic Reveal SlideSpecial GuestSealBear 480: Otis 1Bear 480: Otis 2Bear 480: Otis ComparisonBear 132 Cub 1Bear 132 Cub 2Bear BracketBear 89 Backpack 1Bear 89 Backpack 2Bear 89 Backpack 3Bear 747 Bear Force One 1Bear 747 Bear Force One 2Timestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:06:51) Eyevolution III(00:28:06) Fat Bear Week(00:52:01) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!We also learn about:Sources:The origin of blinking in both mudskippers and tetrapodsSouthwest Eye Institue Blinking and Eye HealthReview of Opthamology on Blinking and TearsReview of Lacrimal Gland from Journal of OpthamologyAdvances in Clinical Chemistry: Chapter on Tear FilmAlaska Department of Fish and Game on Seal Tear Ducts---Four Paws: Torpor vs HibernationNorth American Bear Centre: Bear Activity and HibernationFour Paws: The Brown Bear: Way of Life & OffspringExplore: Bear of Fat Bear WeekDOI: Everything You Want to Know About Katmai National Park’s Fat BearsExplore: FBW 2026BBC: 'Backpack' declared Alaska's Fat Bear Week winnerWiki: Fat Bear WeekNational Park Service: Bears of KatmaiExplore: FBW Hall of ChampionsGuardian: Backpack Wins Fat Bear WeekPBS: Gentle Giant Backpack Declared Winner of Alaska's Fat Bear WeekFriends of Bridger Teton: When You Have to Eat All Day – HyperphagiaFWS: Fat Bear Diet PlanNational Park Service: FBW Past and PresentWiki: Hibernation Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

How many bones are in the La Brea tar pits? And what can that teach us about life, death, and oil? And what's the point of growing giant vegetables? Well, the pure whimsy of it all, as well as some fascinating techniques and tales.Images we talk about:(Also available at https://www.letslearneverything.com/114/)Tom's Picture from La Brea2nd Picture from La BreaGiant TomatoesGiant CarrotGiant ZucchiniGiant PumpkinEating PumpkinPumpkin RaceTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:05:37) La Brea's Bone Count(00:49:35) Giant Pumpkins(01:36:04) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!We also learn about:Good to be back in the bone zone, how many corners does LLE have? wolf skull wall, untangling all the oil words, life uh dies, Coal Oil & Gas, crude oil has over 350 different hydrocarbons, refining oil is just separating different hydrocarbons, the official stance of the podcast is that fossil fuels are cool, hey kids - see what it was like to be in the asphalt’s deathly grip! Kids Yearn for the Tar Pits, La Brea has the bones of Tigers and Lions and Camels, I’m actually an epoch girlie, um actually it’s the La Brea Woman, it’s 10,000 years ago - women can be fossils too, predator traps and carcass domination, the oily stains on bones, fingers crossed the new museum invents new ways to confront my mortality, Summer’s Jumpret response to Michael, what’s y’alls familiarity with vegetables? I have to tell an asparagus story, perhaps Thoreau’s biggest impact was on the large vegetable world, fuck Leaves of Grass - One Big Pumpkin, big pumpkin at the Chicago World’s Fair, we’re going to need a bigger pub, it’s like very slow horse racing, it’s like a drug dealing community, the LLE ruler goes from Big to Fuck Me, seed auctions, the horror that is giant tomatoes, sorry what the fuck is the giant pumpkin common wealth, I love when a number is so preposterous it makes us angry, Ella is disappointed by carrots, pumpkins are an indeterminate plant, pumpkins are nature’s dyson sphere, auxiliary plants are so creepy, the theoretical pumpkin limit is 20,000 pounds, cheating and skullduggery, put me in a giant pumpkin and throw me in the tar pit, pumpkin regatta, I know you meant - no I meant punkin chunkin, you have to completely lack whimsy to not enjoy these guys.Sources:La Brea's HistoryUC Berkley La Brea HistorySmithsonian Fossil Fuel BreakdownNHM Tar Pit TravelogueSmithsonianMag: Animals Trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits Would Take Months to SinkUC Berkley La Brea HistoryIUGS on La BreaLa Brea CamelThe carnivoran fauna of Rancho La Brea: Average or aberrant?La Brea Carnivore AnalysisPlayback Carcass Domination StudyPhys.org La BreaNew York Botanical Garden: Origin of the Giant PumpkinYoutube: Giant Veg Wiki: Giant PumpkinBBC: Pumpkin seed bought online for £168Thompson and Morgan: Pumpkin PayoutGiant Pumpkin CommonwealthGPC: Newsletter Archive Thompson and Morgan Blog: How to Grow a Giant PumpkinNPR: Why Vegetables Get Freakish In The Land Of The Midnight SunBBC: How I grow my giant vegetables to break recordsScience News: Here’s how giant pumpkins get so bigLiveScience: Why Pumpkins Can Grow So Large2016 Paper: The making of giant pumpkins: how selective breeding changed the phloem of Cucurbita maxima from source to sinkShropshire Star: Pumpkin Controversy Blog: Beyond the Pond: Growing Giant PumpkinsBBC: What do giant veg growers eat on Christmas Day?CTV News: Henry the Polar BearSciShowThe Guardian: Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

Wait, how are we rediscovering organs in 2026?? Or... are we? Well let's learn about the history and fads of the insides of our bodies! And what is bird watching, why do we all love it, and how casual and competitive can you get with it?Images we talk about:(Also available at https://www.letslearneverything.com/113/)Clay LiverOnline Terminologia AnatomicaSalivary GlandsBird Study SkinsA Field guide to Birds Example PageTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:04:56) Rediscovered Organs(01:05:15) Bird Watching(01:50:12) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!We also learn about:Huh?? Mesopotamian organ divination, sheep liver phrenology models, everyone needs to talk about this, Al-Razi’s “Doubts about Galen”, the great ignorance time skip, hmm this dead body must be wrong, the dissection fad, the murder act, you don’t know Burke and Hare?? body snatching and anatomy murder, the vestigial craze, Wiedersheim’s minimal viable person, the problem of naming organs, 20 synonyms of organs, Ella goes feral over the online Federative International Programme for Anatomical Terminology, our 3-4, hi Dad and Ella’s mom - hope you enjoyed that clitoris joke, our 4th pair of handlebar moustache salivary glands, the interstitium getting reverse pluto’d, labelling an organ is useful but also not the full picture, gen Z loves birding, FUCK YOU JONO WE’RE DOING THE HISTORY, is paleontology birding if you’re looking at sauricia, ornithomancy, where there have been birds - we have watched birds, study skins, hey what if we looked at them alive? in 1901 Edmund Selous discovers bird empathy, “lay down the gun and take up the glasses”, POWs from WWII publishing their findings, slovenly non scientific bird watchers, it’s a hobby with no proper definition, Merline and ObsIdentify and Birder and Ebird and Rare Bird Alert and Birder’s Interface, it’s pokemon! WHO’S THAT bird, “oh my god I actually cannot do this any more”, apps aren’t perfect, twitchers, the New Jersey World Series of Birding, Big Year, the first book specifically for birding, the first big year was just some guy who wrote how many birds he saw one year and told people about it, a big year is a physical and mental trial for glory, it’s for the birds, has their love curdled or have they unlocked a true kind of love? why do we do anything at all? I do love birds but man do I love humans.Sources:NIH: Organ Definition2024 Paper: The Most Ancient Sources of Anatomic Knowledge2025 Paper: Galen’s Typology of Organs2013 Paper: The Air of History (Part IV): Great Muslim Physicians Al RhazesBBC Bitesize: Medieval MedicineWellcome Collection: Getting Under the Skin2011 Paper: The Study of Anatomy in England From 1700 to the Early 20th CenturyBook: Dissecting the Criminal Corpse: Staging Post-Execution Punishment in Early Modern England by Hurren ET, Chapter 7.Wiki: VestigialityBritannica: AnatomyTerminologia Anatomica 2019 (TA2) OfficialBearBoat Terminologia Anatomica 2019 (TA2)Cleveland Clinic: OrgansWiki: List of Organs2021 Paper: The tubarial salivary glands: A potential new organ at risk for radiotherapyArticle: The tubarial salivary glands: A newly recognized organ with dental significanceCORDIS: Did scientists just discover a secret organ in your head?Netherland Cancer Institute: Cancer researchers discover new salivary gland2021 Paper: The tubarial salivary glands: A potential new organ at risk for radiotherapyCleveland Clinic: InterstitiumSciAm: Meet Your Interstitium, a Newfound "Organ"2024 Paper: A comprehensive analysis of the tubarial glands2018 Paper: Another new organ! is this a golden age of discovery in anatomy?BBC: Scientists just discovered the largest ever human organ – and we all have itIndependant: Human brain is actually two separate organs, scientists find2026 Paper: Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain2005 Paper: Gastrulation Movements: the Logic and the Nuts and BoltsNeuroscience News: The Brain Is Two Separate Organs Joined by EvolutionLiveScience: 'Useless' female organ discovered over a century ago may actually support ovaries, study findsUni of Colorado: Rediscovering the Rete Ovarii: The “Antennae” of the Ovary2024 Paper: Rediscovering the Rete Ovarii: the Development, Role, and Function of a Secreting Auxiliary Structure to the Ovary---BBC: Why Gen Z Birdwatchers Are Flocking to ReservesCNN: Why Gen Z is going bonkers for birdingWikipedia: OrnithomancySmithsonian Magazine: How Bird Collecting Evolved Into Bird-WatchingMy Bird Buddy: History of Bird WatchingHaikubox: Evolution of BirdwatchingPitville History: Edmund SelousBritish Birds: Best Bird Watching Apps10000 Birds: Can I rely on MerlinScience Base: Bird ID AppsSussex Wildlife Trust: The Good the Bad and the Middling ID AppsReddit: Pokemon Go is Basically BirdingReddit: Ever Wanted to Catch Em All IRL?Reddit: Why is Gen Z Suddenly Obsessed with BirdwatchingYoutube: ListersNew Jersey Audubon Society: World Series of BirdingWikipedia: Big YearSmithsonian Library and Archive: A Field Guide to BirdsAmerican Bird Association: Big Year RulesAudubon: The Big Year According to BirdersBirding (American Birding Association): The Next Big ThingSurfbirds (Wayback Machine): Alaska, The Last Frontier Attu IslandNPR: The Real Birdwatchers Behind Hollywood's 'Big Year' Help support this show and unlock bonus content! 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What happens to life inside exclusion zones like Chernobyl? Is it good? Bad? Or something much more interesting? And what happens when you try to codify every single character from human language? Well, it definitely leads to some fascinating linguistic rabbit holes!Images we talk about:Przewalski’s horse (yes that’s how it’s spelled)FrogsCharacter U+FDFDArabic TextDecorative U+FDFD'sTom's Favorite Use of KashidaTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:03:12) Life in Exclusion Zones(01:01:48) Every Single Character(01:52:06) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!We also learn about: Actually defining it made it creepier, the zone rouge, we an area of Earth uninhabitable from war, chernobyl release over 100 radioactive elements, they really need to name the zone of alienation the zone of doing taxes, the liquidators actually did a good job of stopping the spread, is this a rewilding experiment? Ella deleted emails to poach this topic, Przewalski’s horse (yes that’s how it’s spelled), technically feral vs wild horses, I’ve reached the nuance center of my nuance pop, why isn’t it my job so sample chernobyl frogs, nearly all pine trees near chernobyl were wiped out, “the selective pressures of radiation”, bright birds used up their carotenoids for color, we’re doing nuclear ecological biochemistry, god that was an ugly laugh, maybe its counterintuitive for the small things - no this one sucks, the slow horror of a lack of decomposition, the ecosystem is not rewilded it’s entirely new, the Korean DMZ is like an ecological semi permeable membrane, DMZ ecology research institute, the DMZ has 40% of Korea’s endangered species, it’s a pitstop along the east asian australasian flyway, endangered cranes have bounced back in the DMZ, the DMZ crane watch, the cranes and natterjack toad require human farming to thrive, synonyms of nuance and thrive, Baarter economy standing ovation, conflictful chicken, Unicode is the ISO standard for text on computers, ASCII’s 128 characters is surely enough right? why do you have a period accurate phone? it turns out other cultures want to use the computer, there are 159,801 characters in unicode, the basic multilingual plane sounds like startrek shit and it kind of is, I mean it’s not like it has cuneiform except it does, braille unicode exists for a reason, braille doesn’t just map one to one with letters it also has contractions, contracted braille is a stenography, tweeting more in japanese, 101,996 CJK characters, Max Woolf’s Big List of Naughty Strings, after Mamdani was elected I had to learn how to pronounce the bismillah, “Bismillah is the Przewalski’s Horse of this topic”, I said we shouldn’t dive into the history of a language halfway through a topic but fuck it, LR0’s terrific Arabic typography essay, arabic script can be perfectly justified, “the justification lives inside the words”, Kashidas stretching across a map made it click for Tom, maing the bismillah beautiful, we all just want to make text look cool, the ottoman printing press ban myth, the cursed lost printed quran, oh my god is this the unifying thing, weirdly internet explorer had kashida justification for 1 year? Inshallah you find on the internet what you’re exploring for.Sources:Chernobyl Frogs ImageWikipedia: Exclusion ZonesWorld Nuclear AssociationWikipedia: Zone RougeExplorers Web: Montserrat and its Exclusion ZoneGuardian: UN Buffer Zone in CyprusInternational Atomic Energy Agency: ChernobylUnited Nations Development Programme: Chernobyl Recovery DevelopmentBBC Future: Chernobyl’s WildlifeRoyal Society Proceedings B: The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as a Wildlife RefugeWikipedia: Red ForestCurrent Biology: Long-term Census Data Reveal Abundant Wildlife Populations at ChernobylScience: Chernobyl Hits Birds HardMicroorganisms: Soil Microbes and Plant-Associated Microbes in Response to Radioactive PollutionThe Conversation: The Mystery of Chernobyl’s Wild HorsesSan Diego Zoo: The Last Wild HorseAnimals: Endangered Przewalski’s Horse, Equus przewalskii, Cloned from Historically Cryopreserved CellsSan Diego Zoo: Birth of Cloned Przewalski’s FoalKorean Konsult: DMZ - Demilitarized ZoneDMZ: The Civilian Control Line (CCL) towns of the Korean PeninsulaReuters: South Korea to Shift Civilian Restricted LineSouth China Morning Post: The Korean DMZGuardian: How Wildlife is Thriving in the Korean DMZRoyal Society Notes and Records: From Warzone to BioreserveZooniverse: DMZ Crane WatchBiological Conservation: Winter Foraging of Threatened Cranes in the Demilitarized Zone of KoreaCultural Anthropology: Toward an Anthropology of LandminesKNews: Nature Thrives in Cyprus’ Forgotten Buffer ZoneUFZ EuMon conference: Monitoring Biodiversity of the Buffer Zone in CyprusSatoyama Initiative: The Cyprus Buffer Zone as a Socio-Ecological Landscape---UC Berkley Unicode OverviewUnicode's HistoryUnicode on BrailleRNIB Contracted BrailleBuzzfeed on Japanese TweetsLR0's Incredible Arabic Type EssayDesign Principles of Kashida Justification: A Unique Technique in Arabic and Persian MappingThe Lost Quran's DiscoveryKathryn Schwartz's "Did Ottoman Sultans Ban Print?" 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Due to some house woes, we're recasting Ella's excellent appearance on That's Absurd, Please Elaborate, where they actually solve a meme and invent Pee Day. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn