Listener Questions #49

24:48It all happens on my show, Therapy Gecko, where we have real conversations just like this. Sometimes I'll have my girlfriend pre-chew spicy food and kind of baby bird it into my mouth. Is that weird? This week is Human Connection Week. We're taking a peek into the lives of various strangers who found my phone number online. We'll hear their funny moments, their difficult ones, and their unexpectedly profound ones. These are real conversations with real people figuring out life one call at a time. So if you're trying to get out of your own head and into someone else's, this is the podcast for you.

25:25Listen to Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The US Open is back. That's right. Two weeks of incredible, exciting tennis. Some outrageous overreactions from players and some hot takes from people who have, let's face it, no idea what they're talking about. But it's okay because I'm here for them and you. I'm Renee Stubbs, and on the Renee Stubbs Tennis Podcast, I'll be breaking down everything that happens after big matches, who's playing the best tennis, who looks like they could possibly win this tournament, the surprise runs, the heartbreaking exits, and all the drama that only the US Open can deliver.

26:03Coco looking real good. Her serve looks so much smoother than it has in the past. I was really happy to see Iga back to what she looked like a couple of years ago when she was winning dominantly. Listen, I'm going to let Venus decide when she wants to retire. I'm going to let the tournaments decide when they don't want to give her a wild card because she still puts bums in seats. She still sells and people love to see her play. You always say on this show that this is the best predictor of who will do well at the US Open. If this is a preview, then we are in for a treat. Listen to the Renee Stubbs Tennis Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

26:40I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Like how the story of Marilyn Monroe isn't just the story of a Hollywood icon. Marilyn Monroe has become so iconic that her death can only be explained through conspiracy theories. And for some fans who can't let go, these stories have metastasized from conjecture to accepted fact. So on August 4th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now, we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died the third way.

27:28Learn more about what happens when fame, media obsession, and conspiracy collide. Listen to Hollywoodland on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

28:03forgotten interviews that change how we see these giants of our culture. Well, if changing the system from the ground up is revolutionary, then I'm revolutionary. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I mean, when I go on stage, I like to dress as slutty as possible because it makes me dance better for some reason. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Wright. And this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts.

28:45All right, we're back and we're answering questions from listeners. And this question is going to hit a special chord in my household. Oh, well, maybe that is the motivation for the question, because actually you might see that I did not include the name of the question asker. Do you know who asked this question? I do not. Was it somebody in my household? It was you. What?

29:10Two years ago, when we started podcasting, I guess it's a little short of two years. Our pod-iversary is in October. But you wrote me and you were like, oh, I would love to hear about diseases that it turns out are really easy to fix. And the diseases I could come up with were nutritional deficiencies that are easy to fix by just getting the right thing in your diet. And it took me two years. But as I was reading about scurvy and pellagra recently, I was like, I can cross Daniel's questions off my list. So anyway, I've kept this on a checklist for a long time. So, Daniel. That's amazing. This one's for you.

29:47It's amazing that this is my question because scurvy is something we talk about in my household all the time. It's Katrina's go-to joke. when we are struggling to get our kids to eat vegetables or fresh foods, she's like, oh my God, it'd be the biggest parenting fail of all time if you guys died of scurvy. Because she's always worried that if they just eat bread and cheese or peanut butter and crackers, they're not getting enough whatever nutrients they need. Ascorbic acid. And it would be pretty embarrassing to have your kids die of scurvy in 2026. It would be super embarrassing. The good news is they probably have about a three-month supply stored up, so you've got about three months to get them to eat vitamin C after they've had a long stretch of just, like, bread and whatnot.

30:32But, yeah, that would be pretty embarrassing. But thankfully, scurvy is pretty rare these days. I read this book called Scurvy, well-named, by Stephen Bowne. And he was saying that there's an estimate that about two million sailors died from scurvy during what's called the Age of Sail. And so this is like in between Columbus, sailing for America, and when we start getting steam-powered ships. So that's a lot of people dying from scurvy. That is a lot of people dying. Yeah. But tell me, like, what causes scurvy? What is scurvy anyway? So let's start with the symptoms of scurvy. So what is scurvy?

31:11Scurvy is when essentially anything in your body that requires collagen starts failing. What is collagen exactly? Good point. So women always hear about, oh, you need more collagen because it gives your facial skin its firmness or whatnot. So you need to rub collagen all over your face. And I guess those ads are not sent to everybody. Your face looks disturbed. What are you looking at right now? I'm imagining rubbing collagen in my face, but I have no idea what collagen looks like. So like, what am I rubbing on my face right now? Okay. Yeah, I guess I don't exactly know what it looks like, but it's a protein in your body that's used for like structural stuff.

31:48Okay. So when you don't have that, a bunch of structural stuff falls apart. So like your teeth don't stay in place anymore. They fall out. You start feeling weak physically. Old wounds that were held together, the collagen sort of is no longer there to hold it together and they start opening up again. Other things that happen is you become really like exhausted and lethargic. your gums start bleeding, all of your connective tissues start to fall apart. And there's just stories about sailors who essentially can't get themselves out of bed anymore and just die in their beds. So these things need a constant supply of collagen.

32:22I imagined you build some bit of your body, you've used that resource, you've built it. You don't need to constantly come by and resupply it with collagen. So why do you need new collagen all the time? Yeah, so there are some things that you do need to keep replenishing. And so like I guess you need to keep replenishing like the connections between your teeth and the rest of your face. And you need to keep working on like places where there have been wounds because those seem to be some of the first things that fall apart when you get sick. And I guess I had not realized that you need to keep putting more and more collagen into stuff.

32:55But, you know, most of the cells in your body turn over. It's not too surprising that the structural stuff in your body needs to be replenished from time to time. Okay. I guess you need a constant supply of calcium to keep your bones strong, this kind of stuff. Yeah, they're constantly being built up and broken down. So yeah, you also need calcium for your bones at all times. All right. So if you don't have enough collagen, then stuff breaks down and your teeth fall out and you turn into a big rubber band. Exactly. Right. And so the problem is that you need ascorbic acid, which is also known as vitamin C, to create an enzyme that is used to make collagen.

33:31Oh, I see. So if you don't get vitamin C or ascorbic acid, you don't get collagen and everything just kind of starts falling apart. But it took us a really long time to figure this out. And the reason it took us so long is that, like, yes, you can get so, you know, Katrina is worried about the kids not eating enough fresh stuff. But, like, if you look at fresh stuff, ascorbic acid or vitamin C is not, like, evenly distributed amongst fruits and vegetables. So, for example, oranges and lemons have like 10 times as much ascorbic acid as a lime does. And while cucumbers have like no ascorbic acid, broccoli seems to have loads of it.

34:09And there's no really easy way to predict by looking at something like, oh, that should have a lot of ascorbic acid and that shouldn't. But another thing that complicated the story is that then you look at people like the Inuits who don't get to eat a lot of fresh food, right? They live in an area where they don't have access to loads of fruits and vegetables. And so you'd think, OK, well, it can't be fresh fruits and vegetables because the Inuits aren't eating loads of fresh food, but they're fine. But it turns out that there's a lot of vitamin C in kidneys and livers. And so when they capture animals, those are parts of the animal that they tend to eat that, for example, British sailors weren't tending to eat.

34:50additionally if you bruise a fruit the ascorbic acid starts to go away if you cook the fruit in like a copper pan that makes it so that the ascorbic acid like goes away so there's chemistry chemistry right and so there's so many different ways that like even if you're on the right track you could do something that you weren't expecting like if you're preparing a bunch of lemon juice for a really long voyage but you happen to like boil it first in a copper pot maybe you're going to get scurvy because you've lost a bunch of it on the way. And so there were times throughout history where we actually like kind of were on the right track.

35:27And then we'd totally throw ourselves off. So, for example, when the British East India Company started, and this was around like 1600, they actually had a pretty good sense that oranges and lemons were important for warding off scurvy. And so not only did they bring that stuff with them, but they also like set up stops along their roots where they would like, you know, stop and grab some limes or some lemons or something. And that helps them. But they did such a good job of warding off scurvy that the next generation of people were like, this scurvy thing isn't really a problem. We're like making all these extra stops for lemons and limes.

36:04But like, why are we doing that? What a waste of time. I don't need an umbrella. It's not raining under here. Yes, exactly. Right. And so that knowledge got lost. But then there was this guy named James Lind. And in 1747, he was on the HMS Salisbury. And he was like, look, we've got to figure this scurvy thing out. There were all kinds of like really bad treatments out there. And the like common denominator seemed to be that they were things that were cheap. Right. So the British Navy wouldn't have to spend a lot of money. So the cure for scurvy is drink salt water. It's infinite. it that's not great it's free and then another like there was this observation that when people get scurvy they're like they're lethargic and they slow down and so it was thought that like no this isn't a symptom of scurvy setting in this is you being lazy and the laziness gives rise to scurvy so if you're feeling you know tired and lethargic the solution is you need to work harder which was not going to solve the problem.

37:07Why didn't you just go jogging to cure your scurvy? Yeah, right. Or your depression. Right. Now this is hitting home. So this is like in the Wienersmith household. But anyway, okay. So there were all of these bad treatments, including things like mercury, which, you know, the English were like slathering on everything for every reason you could imagine. But James Lind in 1747 gets these 12 guys on a ship that are starting to get scurvy. He puts them all in the same area. So they're all in the same environment. He feeds them all the exact same food and then he splits them into six pairs. And he gives each pair one of the prominent anti-scorbutics or one of the prominent things that are used to treat scurvy at the time.

37:51So he's doing experiments on these guys. He's doing experiments on these guys. Right. And so like two of the guys got spoonfuls of vinegar. Two of the guys got seawater. Two of the guys got oranges and a lemon. Two of the guys got cider. And then two of them got like a medicinal paste or something like that. None of them had to like run laps or something? No, no, no. Well, not not in this experiment. They didn't just like get slapped and shouted at or something? I mean, I think that's what was probably happening above board where the ship's physician wasn't in charge of things. Right. Okay. So he did like a controlled experiment.

38:26Yeah, right. And the citrus treatment, those guys got totally better. And it was clear that citrus was the solution. The guys who had a quart of cider did okay because it turns out there's some ascorbic acid in cider. But there, like there was the answer, right? So did the other guys die or did they give them lemon juice and thyme? History doesn't care. I care. I'm hoping that what happened is they ended up getting oranges when the experiment was over. Yeah. Well, they gave their lives so we can understand scurvy. Let's at least respect their sacrifice. Oh, oh, oh, oh. This was not. This was not the moment where everyone was like, oh, done.

39:04Citrus. That's the solution. So he published it. But when he published this account, he also talked smack about everybody else who had bad ideas about what's caused scurvy and how to treat it. And so he ended up making a bunch of people dislike him. And then he got put in charge of like a naval hospital and his interest in doing good experiments like evaporated. And from there on out, he started just like making pronouncements about how to treat scurvy that were not backed by scientific fact. And some of them strayed from this citrus thing. And so the point is there were multiple points in history where we were like on the right track and then we lost the story there.

39:46But now we know it's ascorbic acid. You can get it from fresh fruits and vegetables. This can still be a problem. For example, refugee populations that don't have access to a lot of fresh food, they have to eat sort of whatever shelf-stable food they're given. Sometimes scurvy is a problem for those populations. But thankfully, for most of us who can go to a grocery store and can afford to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, scurvy is something we shouldn't have to encounter. Because some guy did crazy experiments and then retreated into a life of feuds. Well, that's scientist for you. That's fascinating.

40:19And the stories of figuring it out are always really compelling to me because it's never a straight line, right? It's never like we did this experiment, the results were clear, and then we knew. So it was like 100 years later, somebody looked at the data or somebody followed up or somebody finally made sense of it. It's incredible how long it takes to figure things out and how obvious things seem to be in hindsight, right? Yeah, but I feel like with scurvy in particular, it makes sense to me that it was so confusing. Yeah. If the answer was oranges, I wouldn't have realized that like, oh, cooking it in the copper pan first is going to totally inactivate the ascorbic acid.

40:53Like that, I don't know, that just doesn't even seem fair even. That just seems totally not fair. Oh, wait. And I haven't even told you the most interesting thing yet. Well, I don't know. How do you rank interesting? I don't know. But some species of primates and guinea pigs and us are some of the few animals that can't produce vitamin C on their own. So like rats that were on our ships weren't going to get scurvy even if there were no fruits and vegetables because their bodies are making their own vitamin C. Why aren't we? I don't know. No, I don't think we know. I mean, it could be that like in our evolutionary past, we quote unquote grew up in an area where there was always fresh food around.

41:33And so it just didn't come up. So we kind of lost the ability. And then we moved into environments where it turned out it was much harder to get fresh fruits. And now we're just not super well adapted. But yeah, that and guinea pigs. And some scientists who were studying it got really lucky that they were doing experiments on guinea pigs who also happened to not make ascorbic acid. Because some of the studies that we did where we really like nailed this stuff down were done in guinea pigs. And if they had picked mice instead, it might have taken us much longer to figure this stuff out. Amazing.

42:00Well, I collected stories for some other diseases, but I talked so long about scurvy. I'm just going to tell you that pellagra is caused by a deficiency of vitamin B3. You can also get goiters if you don't have enough iodine, rickets if you don't have enough vitamin D, and night blindness if you don't have enough vitamin A. But the good news is for most of these, we have fortified different foods in the United States, for example. And so if you just eat like a somewhat normal diet, a lot of the foods are fortified so that you will get enough of this. So, for example, the salt, your table salt is usually fortified with iodine.

42:35So we don't have to worry about things like goiters. I remember when Katrina was pregnant and we discovered we'd been using mostly kosher salt, which doesn't have iodine in it. And we had a moment of panic that, you know, our son was in utero without enough iodine. Of course, he's fine. What did you do? We did a bunch of research and we discovered that, oh, actually, iodine is in lots of stuff and it's very hard to avoid in modern society. Okay, good. Even if you don't specifically put iodized salt on your food at home. Now, I know that you eat one meal a day and it's dinner with your family. Does Katrina eat, like, does she ever go to restaurants or something where she would encounter table salts that happen to have iodine in it?

43:16Or does she also only eat dinner made at home? Katrina is not on the vampire diet. She eats like a normal human being. And, yes, eats out at restaurants. And exactly, anytime you eat at somebody else's house or in a restaurant or prepackaged foods or whatever, there's iodized salt in everything. So we were worried and panicked because we were new parents, but it was fine. Oh, my gosh. The number of things I worried and panicked about as a new parent. Wow. So, listener, universe clumpiness lover, did that address the question that you forgot that you had? So I went a little heavy on the history and a little light on the collagen.

43:52I'm feeling like you would want it some more collagen. But what are you going to do? Thanks for taking my question, guys. Long-time listener. Love the show. Yes, that totally answers my question. And I'm also disappointed, however, that there were no goat sounds in the answer. That's what I really was here for. Okay, thank you. I'm here to please. Let's take a break. And when we come back, we will get to our third question.

44:28That call was really pivotal for me. Hey, it's Emily Tisch-Sussman, and this season on She Pivots, the podcast where women share bold career moves and personal turning points that changed everything. I sit down with culture-shifting women who share their pivots, like Paralympian Allie Truitt. I was like, I'm a month out from a shark attack. There's no way in 11 months I'm making the Paralympics. Advocate Elizabeth Smart. I still feel that drive that I can still make a difference, so I'm going to keep going. Celebrity chef Carla Hall. Was that scary to walk away from such a stable career after just two years?

45:01No, I was more afraid of being unhappy than I was broke in a dead end job that I didn't enjoy. And feminist legend Gloria Steinem. All of us were trying to express women's real lives. We need a meeting place of our own. And if I can contribute to that, I'd like to maintain that and leave this house for that purpose. Listen to She Pivots on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I am talking to a felon right now with face tattoos, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. That was a caller from my podcast, Therapy Gecko, where I speak with anonymous callers about their problems, relationships, and anything else in the depths of their mind.

45:45It all happens on my show, Therapy Gecko, where we have real conversations just like this. Sometimes I'll have my girlfriend pre-chew spicy food and kind of baby bird it into my mouth. Is that weird? This week is Human Connection Week. We're taking a peek into the lives of various strangers who found my phone number online. We'll hear their funny moments, their difficult ones, and their unexpectedly profound ones. These are real conversations with real people figuring out life one call at a time. So if you're trying to get out of your own head and into someone else's, this is the podcast for you.

46:22Listen to Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The US Open is back. That's right. Two weeks of incredible, exciting tennis. Some outrageous overreactions from players and some hot takes from people who have, let's face it, no idea what they're talking about. But it's okay because I'm here for them and you. I'm Renee Stubbs, and on the Renee Stubbs Tennis Podcast, I'll be breaking down everything that happens after big matches, who's playing the best tennis, who looks like they could possibly win this tournament, the surprise runs, the heartbreaking exits, and all the drama that only the US Open can deliver.

46:59Coco looking real good. Her serve looks so much smoother than it has in the past. I was really happy to see Iga back to what she looked like a couple of years ago when she was winning dominantly. Listen, I'm going to let Venus decide when she wants to retire. I'm going to let the tournaments decide when they don't want to give her a wild card because she still puts bums in seats. She still sells and people love to see her play. You always say on this show that this is the best predictor of who will do well at the US Open. If this is a preview, then we are in for a treat. Listen to the Renee Stubbs Tennis Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

47:36I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Like how the story of Marilyn Monroe isn't just the story of a Hollywood icon. Marilyn Monroe has become so iconic that her death can only be explained through conspiracy theories. And for some fans who can't let go, these stories have metastasized from conjecture to accepted fact. So on August 4th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started and she died again. And now we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died the third way.

48:24Learn more about what happens when fame, media obsession and conspiracy collide. Listen to Hollywoodland on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dear honeys, this is goodbye. In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author Petra Mathers and her husband Michael mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know that they had died by suicide. By the time you get this letter, both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland. Petra and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind?

49:04I would have given a million reasons to not leave this world had I known. I keep coming back to, I truly hope that Petra was a thousand percent on board with the plan. Do you think of him as having killed her? Yes, I do. I hold Michael responsible for my mother's death. I'm Leon Nafok. And I'm Alice Gregory. Together, we set out to interview everyone who got one of Petra and Michael's letters. As one married couple trying to understand another. Listen to Death of an Artist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

49:51And we're back, and we have a question from Jude from Washington State. Hi, Danielle and Kelly. Thanks for helping us get smarter about this extraordinary universe. Given the chaotic factors that influence the formation of Earth, It seems odd that a single large landmass would develop with so much water on the rest of the surface. Why would there be such a bulge on one side of the planet? We weren't tidally locked, were we? What do we know about that process? Thanks for helping us learn. Jude from Washington State. I love this question from Jude. So much fun. I love that he's thinking about, you know, this history we've learned about the planet and wondering, like, how it all makes sense and why it happens this way and bringing in other ideas he's learned from physics.

50:39So this is exactly the kind of curiosity I'd love to encourage in people. Thank you, Jude. Yeah, this is a fantastic question. I also love thinking about, like, Pangaea and what the Earth used to look like. And so can you start – so it's so much easier when you have a picture of Pangaea. Help us picture, you know, what did our planet look like 300 million years ago? Well, like journeys into deep time are one of my favorite things. Just imagining how much time has lapsed in the universe that even really, really slow things can have huge consequences over deep time. So, for example, we know the continents are moving, but it turns out that 335 million years ago, the arrangement of the continents on the Earth was very, very different than it is today.

51:25Today, you have the massive Pacific Ocean, but you have a bunch of continents sort of spread out. But 335 million years ago, we had a single continent. All the landmasses were still there, but they were all clumped together into one supercontinent called Pangaea. And so if you took the Earth and you spun it, it would be like mostly water. And then there'd be like one slice of a bunch of continents all stuck together, strung between the North Pole and the South Pole, sort of like a big crescent. And you can see like Proto-Africa and the beginnings of Asia and stuff. And it forms like sort of a sea shape where the top of the sea is near the North Pole and the bottom of the sea is near the South Pole.

52:08So which ocean won, right? So was it the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean? Which is the one that gets to take all? So it's a constant battle between the two oceans, actually. The Atlantic Ocean doesn't exist at this time, right? So Pacific wins. Its formation is what broke up Pangaea. So it's like the rise of the Atlantic Ocean. Whoa. But back then, they didn't call it the Pacific. There was a super ocean they call Pantolassa. I don't know who gets to name all these things, but they all sound really cool and historical. They're not physicists then. Yeah. And the whole idea of super oceans comes from the origin of the continental drift theory.

52:48So this is like 100 years ago now. People are wondering about the ancient history of the planet. And there's a long tradition of being unable to grapple with the times involved. Like when we were learning about the age of the Earth, people were like, maybe it's a million years old. Oh, my God, that would be so. Maybe it's 20 million. And then, you know, actually seeing the evidence that it's almost 5 billion years old is just mind-blowing. And in the same way, the idea that the continents are moving and they're moving very slowly so that, like, you can't see anything basically over a lifetime, but that over eons, it could totally change the face of the planet.

53:25This is a very controversial idea about 100 years ago. It took a long time before it was, like, adopted by mainstream science. And for that reason, it plays an oversized role in both criticisms of science, like look how long it takes science to recognize the truth, and also defenses of science, where people are like, well, actually, it was the data that won out, and this is how science is supposed to work. But not getting into that whole culture war. Alfred Winiger was the guy who came up with this idea of continental drift in the early 1900s. and he's the one who hypothesized the existence of Pangaea, sort of tracked all the continents motion backwards in time and was able to predict like, oh, it looks like they all came from one mega continent.

54:13And it's not hard to imagine this if you just look at like the Atlantic, right? You can look at the coast of the United States and South America and see how like the coast of South America in particular matches up with the coast of Africa, right? And the Atlantic is getting wider every year. And so just reverse that back in time and boom, South America and Africa fit together very nicely into a mega continent. And there's lots of really fun evidence for this. It's not just continental drift. Like you can see the same mountain ranges that are now on two different continents, but it's very obvious geologically that they come from the same original mountain range.

54:50Like the Appalachians, right? In your area, you can see the continuation of the Appalachians in Scandinavia. Crazy! Like it's the same mountains. Yeah. Yes, I know. And you see evidence of fossils, like animals that lived on one continent, and then it split up, and now we see fossils on both sides. So it's very clear that continents are moving and they used to be merged. And if you go back in time, you can see this mega continent. Do you think Alfred was into puzzles?

55:22I think Alfred must have had a really geometrical mind to think about all this stuff. and to imagine what it must have looked like. And so this is the impetus of Jude's question. He's like, how can it be? Isn't it weird to have all the land on one side and the rest is just water? Like it feels imbalanced. And he's wondering if this came from like being tidily locked with the sun or something external. And so it's a great question. Yeah. And the answer is super cool. The answer is that there's a cycle that the earth tends to build super continents and then break up super continents and then build super continents and then break up supercontinents.

55:58This has happened like several times in the last few billion years. If you like had a movie of the earth over the last two billion years and you fast forwarded it like super duper time-lapse, you would see supercontinents forming and breaking up and forming and breaking up. Ah, that's scary. And so thankfully it happens on very long timescale. So I'm gonna be honest. I think I've only, I've mostly heard about Pangaea the supercontinent. And I don't know that I've heard about the versions before that had been broken up and then put back together. First, let's talk about why. And then let's talk about what came before.

56:36Why is that happening? Yeah. So there's two effects here, right? Why do continents come together? Why does the Earth tend to make supercontinents? And then the other part is, why does it tend to break them up? So first, why does it make supercontinents? Well, continents drift, right? What's happening is that the Earth is still hot, and inside the earth there's the mantle and it's a really dense hot rock which effectively is like a fluid, not technically a liquid, but a fluid. And so it flows and you get these convection cells where things rise and then sink and so they're spinning. And so you have these spinning cells underneath the hard crust and that's moving stuff.

57:18It's just like having a tank tread underneath the tank. It's moving the tank. And so it's sliding continental plates against each other. And where they meet, one of them gets pushed down back into the mantle, subduction zone, and it gets melted down, et cetera. And so that's how continents move, right? Because these convection cells are like pushing on things underneath. So what happens if you have a bunch of continents and they start out randomly distributed or whatever, and you just slide them around the planet is eventually they're going to bang into each other, right? And it's not like a box full of balls that are going to bang into each other and then bounce off.

57:56And so that on average, they're going to stay separate. These things stick, right? The subduction zones, things get pushed underneath. They get pushed against each other. You get mountain ranges like Mount Everest, for example. And so things stick together. And so it's like a box of sticky balls. You shake it and they all bounce around and eventually they all stick together and you get one big ball, right? Okay. But then how do you get them back out again? Yeah. Yeah, so that's what's happening. That's why you form supercontinents. You have a bunch of continents and they're wandering the planet.

58:25They're going to end up hitting each other and sticking. All right, so then why is it a cycle? Why don't we just have one supercontinent forever, one to rule them all, right? Well, the answer is that supercontinent formation creates the process that breaks them up. Because you have this heat underneath, right? But now you have a supercontinent and it's trapped all that heat. There's nowhere for it to go. So it builds up. It makes like a dome of heat underneath the supercontinent, and that creates a rift, and that tears the supercontinent apart, and it can create like a new ocean. So the Atlantic Ocean, right, there's the Mid-Atlantic Rift, which is like a tear in the Earth's crust almost, and the Atlantic Ocean is expanding.

59:04It's getting wider and wider every year. This is why South America was torn from the coast of Africa. It's because the Atlantic emerged, and it's pushing those two apart. And that's because there's a huge bubble of heat that was trapped under there last time it was a supercontinent. And so supercontinents form. They create these heat domes because there's nowhere for this heat to get released. And then it pulls them apart. And that's how the Atlantic Ocean was created. And so this has happened several times in the history of the planet and probably will continue to happen. But we won't be seeing it because we won't be living long enough.

59:41Because we're on an imminent decline to a nursing home. And apparently about two years, according to Daniel. So what are some of the cool names that obviously were not made by physicists that these super continents had before? So a lot of this is speculative because you're projecting back many collisions and it's very chaotic and we don't have clear data in some cases. But we also do have some data, right? Okay. Big geological effects like this leave markers all over the planet, and geologists are very, very clever in extracting these clues. So we think that around 2 billion years ago, there was a supercontinent called Columbia that lasted about 200 million years.

1:00:21Wow. That's a long time. Yeah. Then it got torn apart, and continents wandered the planet for about 500 million years until they formed another supercontinent called Rodinia. So this is 1.3 billion years ago. And this one lasted for half a billion years before things wandered again. Then they came together around 540 million years ago to make another supercontinent called Panotia. That one didn't last for very long. It broke apart. And then Pangaea was formed around 350 million years ago. So it's fun to think about that history and to overlay onto it the history of life on Earth, right? Because the Cambrian explosion is less than a billion years ago.

1:01:03The dinosaurs, right, overlap with this. So the configuration of the continents played a big role in where critters were, which ones were connected to which other ones. If you lived a long time ago, you saw a different planet than the one we have today. Our Earth, what you think makes it Earth, is actually just a momentary snapshot in the life of a very dynamic planet. Man, it really blows my mind that geologists were able to figure all of this out. This is really cool. And that the story is interesting, right? You could look back on the history of the planet. It could be like, oh, yeah, it was made this way.

1:01:40And it's always been this way. Yawn. But instead, it's like super chaotic and dynamic. There's all sorts of stuff happening. It's incredible. I'm really glad that geology didn't turn out to be boring. I don't know. From a biologist's perspective, at least yawn means you're like not as likely to die from something catastrophic. But I see your point. This is a more interesting story. It's funny how sometimes boring is good and sometimes it's not. Like one of my kids had an MRI one time and I always remember that the conclusion was MRI is unremarkable. That's good news, I think, from like a health point of view that there's nothing weird in your MRI.

1:02:19But I was like, actually, this kid's pretty remarkable. So, you know, I'm going to try not to be insulted. I know he is a very remarkable kid. But yes, there are some things you want to be unremarkable, and your medical results are certainly some of them. Yes, exactly. All right. Well, thank you, Jude, for this wonderful question. We're going to send this back to you to hear if we've answered your question and if you have any follow-ups. Well, that was great. First, I've been mispronouncing Pangea. Now I see it. Sticky continents that combine and split and recombine? Huh. Amazing. I thought having one supercontinent was impressive.

1:02:57Now I picture the Earth as this sloshy blob swirling its way around the sun. So much for being rock solid and terra firma. Does this suggest the Earth is mostly liquid? Well, very hot, slow-moving liquid? Thanks for helping us learn and changing our perspectives in this sloshy, messy, complicated universe. All right. Thank you so much for these amazing questions. I have a little bit of bad news, and my bad news is I need to take a little bit of an email hiatus because I have a six-month backlog on questions I haven't answered yet. Wow. You know, and Daniel took two years to get his answer. It just kind of happened to be that I was reading about scurvy today and was like, oh, I can answer Daniel's question.

1:03:35So I can't do any new research questions. I'll tell you at some point in 2027 when I'm able to take some new ones, but I need to get through the amazing questions that you all have already asked me, and I have many fun hours of research ahead. but I look forward to when I can take more questions. All right. Well, thank you very much, everyone, for sharing with us your curiosity. It's what we thrive on. Until next time.

1:04:04Thanks, everybody, for listening. Please go and do us a favor and rate the show on whatever podcast app you're using. It really helps people find us. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing Matt Kesselman. He really is a wizard. You can also find us online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and XDNKUniverse. Come engage with us. You can email us at questions at danielandkelly.org. We really do want to hear from you. And you can find our website, www.danielandkelly.org, where you'll also find an invitation to join our Discord, where everybody comes and talks about the amazing universe.

1:04:43And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is an iHeart podcast. Thanks for joining us. One last thing before you go. You know that feeling when feedback, notes, and data are coming in from every direction? ChatGPT work can make sense of it all, turning scattered inputs into ready-to-review work. With your permission, work in ChatGPT can gather context from apps and files, summarize incoming messages, rebuild decks, and help finalize high-quality documents for your team or clients. Stay in control as you move from a goal to polished work faster with ChatGPT work. Download the ChatGPT desktop app today and take on your most ambitious work.

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