The Fluid Dynamics of Fountain Pens

8:26Hannah Fry:So what is going on here is capillary action. So it's the same reason why redwood trees are able to soak up water from underground, despite being unbelievably tall in the sky. As you touch the fountain pen to the page, the page itself is drinking in the ink. That is what is causing the ink to...

8:49Michael Stevens:So there is ink already at the tip. It's just thin and it's waiting to be sucked in, absorbed into paper.

8:57Hannah Fry:Exactly right. And the reason why there is ink at the tip is because the nib has got a little ridge down it sort of split down the middle do you see the line down yeah yeah so that is what is allowing the ink to flow from the chamber you can go to some writing i got you some nice paper

9:13Michael Stevens:as well that's got and i need to press the nib like flat side down like if the nib is is like this i don't write on the edge of the nib i like push i mean you kind of can it depends on the

9:23Hannah Fry:design of the nib some of them some of them work better with angles um okay but what i also want you to notice with this he's written an a do another a it'll never be the same again i'm gonna write the whole alphabet okay go on all right so the other thing that's worth noticing with this very no frills fountain pen i just wrote the alphabet wrong shoot it's because you're it's

9:45Michael Stevens:because you're over you're so enamored i was just so into the the flow the action i liked i liked my e so much i'm like i'm gonna do another e you can wait g okay so the other thing that you'll

9:57Hannah Fry:with this no frills pen is that not only do you have the channel that allows the ink to come down the front but there's also a little hole that's been drilled at the top of that line. What is up with that hole? They all have it. Okay so they all have it. Basically what is happening here is that that hole is like a structural fix to stop that line from cracking further. So this is what you do also on aircraft if you have like a little crack or something you go and you drill a hole at the top of the crack um and it just spreads out the forces a little bit better so that it doesn't end up cracking further so it's like it's it makes the it makes the split physically stronger counterintuitively to have that little hole there at the top here's the thing though if you just had that line that kind of capillary line down the top of the nib and the hole then uh the ink would just splay out all over the place yeah so old school pens like really old-fashioned pens would have that that would be um it would just be like the metal front the kind of things that you would put on a quill metal front split down the middle to allow the ink to flow down and then you'd often end up with like splodges all over the place so legend has it that in like the 1880s or so lewis waterman right of waterman pen fame was signing a contract and he just had a normal nib like the metal nib with this kind of capillary tube and the hole at the top.

11:23Hannah Fry:And then he was signing this contract and ink went everywhere because there's no control of that flow. Also, if you press the nib too hard and that capillary channel splits, you just get like this dump of ink that comes down. In fact, it's almost like it can be like a bellows where you're lowering and raising the pressure as you, if you repeatedly touch the nib down on the paper, which opens and closes this capillary channel, which draws loads and loads of ink down. So he was like, this is not working. This is not good. So what he did, supposedly, as legend has it, is he got a pen knife out and started cutting this shape that you see on the underside.

12:07Hannah Fry:This black part. The black part. What is that called? The feet. Okay, so here is the 1920s Waterman. So that's his design. and it's slightly changed. So the one, the pink Lamy is like, I bought it about two months ago. You can kind of see the differences. And some of them have like, here's the fancy pants Mont Blanc. You see how it's almost like a fin? Yeah, like a heat sink. Like a heat sink, exactly. So what happens with this feed is that if you get too much ink coming down, it will end up filling into all of those channels. it will end up sitting behind the metal front of the nib and stopping it from just flooding onto

12:52Michael Stevens:the page so do you need to periodically empty that no or it'll just eventually makes its way

12:58Hannah Fry:makes its way through but this is this is where the unbelievably delicate balance of these pens comes into play and it's where you get the complete difference between a pen that costs 20 although to be honest this one is pretty good um but a pen that costs 20 quid and a pen like this

13:14Michael Stevens:one which is more like a grand right whoa what about this one this mont blanc that one that one yeah anyway okay can i first of all can i can i write with these as well please go ahead i'll

13:25Hannah Fry:start with the waterman okay so what you're gonna like about the waterman here so should i notice this is because it's a gold nib it's flexible so it's from the 1920s i mean imagine what people were writing in the 1920s so it's flexible so the width of your line changes the harder you press so you can get really fine lines with it but if you press a bit harder you get like i can i can

13:48Michael Stevens:get very fine lines and this ink is like a purple ink and so the very fine lines are very purple but the thicker ones are like a black almost much darker yeah so this is this hydrodynamics balance

14:00Hannah Fry:that is going on with these pens because you know you're you're having the ink that's coming down you don't want it to dry too quickly because otherwise it will dry on the nib itself um you You don't want it to come down too fast because otherwise it will flood the feed and then you'll end up with a really blobby pen. But you also want it to like, you don't want it to choke up. You don't want the pen to choke up and then not to be enough of the fluid coming out. And so this is the thing is that these pen designers end up designing the ink absolutely perfectly in balance with the shape and structure of their nibs.

14:40Hannah Fry:So if you've got a Montblanc pen, you need to put Montblanc ink in it. If you've got a Waterman pen, you need to put Waterman ink in it. Because especially some of the Japanese ones, like Pilot, I don't have one. I'm really like, or Sailor. Oh my gosh, what I would do. They're so expensive. But you can't just like whack another ink in there because the whole design of it is very specific to the chemistry of the ink that you're putting through it. I've already got ink on my hair. I think it's because I washed them all yesterday because they're in a drawer and I don't use all of them every day. So I rinsed them all through and I think I didn't dry them properly.

15:18Hannah Fry:What's your favorite so far? Do you notice how much stiffer this nib is? Yeah.

15:22Michael Stevens:I noticed the Waterman one with the gold nib was very soft. It felt soft. And the lettering that it put down could be so thick, so wet.

15:31Hannah Fry:So sloshy. A wet noodle is what they call it. I mean, this one's not quite a wet noodle. It's a flex nib. But yeah, you can get up to like where you're almost painting. Okay, let me try the Lammy again. You want to try the Lammy?

15:44Michael Stevens:I want to try a$20. The$20 guy. Because this one felt to me the most like just writing with a regular pen.

15:51Hannah Fry:Yeah, right. Which is what it's supposed to be. It's a workhorse, this one.

15:54Michael Stevens:Yeah.

15:55Hannah Fry:You can do good speed on that one as well.

15:57Michael Stevens:You can do good speed. Yes. whereas I felt like with the other two, I could not go too quickly. I went too quickly with my autograph with the Waterman and it just became like a scratch. Sploshy, it is.

16:11Hannah Fry:Not even splotchy, but I just didn't even push hard enough. Right, yeah. Yeah, incredibly fine balance you've got going on. So you have to find the pen that also matches your handwriting style and what you want it to do. So the other thing about this Waterman that I think is really interesting is the way that they fill the chamber. so you know in this design of the 1920s you know previously you would have an ink well and you would dip into the ink well and then and then you know right and then dip and then right when you dipped

16:38Michael Stevens:an old style pen like a quill into an ink well the ink through just surface tension gets like stuck on it like you've wet the pen yeah which is what's going on behind the scenes here right

16:50Hannah Fry:this is like surface tension that keeps it in the in the feed and all those fins that you get back um yes but you would be incredibly difficult to get to get the right line right you would start off and it'd be very splashy and then as you go on it would get more scratchy and scratchy until you can't see anymore you need to dip again um so one of the big innovations of fountain pens uh which is really nice in this waterman from the 1920s is uh they create a little chamber inside that's like uh it's it's essentially like a little rubber bag right that you can compress and I don't want to squirt ink everywhere, but you can compress.

17:25Hannah Fry:Okay. So what you do is this has got this lever here. If you flick it up, what you can do is you can, do you see that? Yeah. Do you see that? Like a little bubble up here? Yeah. So you compress the little bag inside. Yeah. And so that is how, which causes the ink to flood out. So what you can do, this is how you fill up this pen. This pen doesn't unscrew. It's not like the modern ones. You dunk it into a pot of ink. And it sucks it up. Exactly. You create a vacuum, compress the bag inside and then open up the bag and then all of the ink floods in. So that was a really big innovation of a way to fill these pens with ink.

18:06Hannah Fry:The only problem with it is that the rubber inside can perish. I was going to say. Yeah. I mean, it worked really well though. So this is the really nice, beautiful, kind of innovative design. This one here, this is the Parker. This is the Parker duo fold. I like how that one looks. Do you? Yeah. I thought you might, you know. So this is like the loud American cousin. Okay. So this pen, also from the 1920s. Can you imagine all of the things that this has written in the last hundred years? I just love that idea. Yeah. Can I write with it? Absolutely, you can. I think you might like this one more because it's much thinner.

18:39Michael Stevens:It's also very short and it's just kind of like a burnt orange color.

18:45Hannah Fry:It is a burnt orange color. Okay. So this pen, Parker created it. Do you like that one? This is much thinner. It's way thinner. It's too scratchy for me. I like it. I like them sploshier.

18:55Michael Stevens:I think I could write smaller with this, which I like to do.

18:59Hannah Fry:Okay. So this pen, it's like, it's a similar idea to the Waterman. It's got a little bag inside, but this one, you unscrew the end. And then there's a little button that you can pull and push. So it's the same idea. Be careful not to get in carry wear. But if you pull that button out should i you can i mean you can probably i've got ink all over my hands this one is inking me a lot inking you i'm sorry this is actually unfortunately an occupational hazard just that um you can tell how hard i've been working by how much ink i've got on my hands yeah right um okay so this one is the same idea pull this all the way out i wouldn't okay you get ink everywhere but it's the same idea same idea that you are you are physically creating a space that is larger and smaller in order to backfill it with ink.

19:45Hannah Fry:I see. Okay. So this pen, the thing that's nice about this pen is that they released this pen 1920s and they charged$7 for it when normally good pens cost about$3. But they wanted to make this pen super famous. So they literally made it this like burnt orange color, sort of like really sort of, it reads alarm. And then they did a stunt where they took them into airplanes, chucked them out of airplanes, and then collected them on the ground and be like, look, it survived. So this pen isn't so much solving a sort of a physical challenge. It's not like the mechanism of this pen that's so special.

20:22Hannah Fry:It's more that this pen was solving the problem of like, how do you make a pen really famous? How do you make a pen break through and have loads of people want to buy it? The other ones, hang on, let me just show you what else I've got here. So you know how I said that thing about how the ink drying really can be an issue. You want your ink to not dry too much. You want it to be thin enough that it can find its way down to the paper, but you don't want it to dry really quickly. So this is one innovation that Montblanc came up with. This is from, I think, the 1960s, where they cover the front of the nib in order to reduce how quickly the ink would dry.

21:00Hannah Fry:You might like this one as well. This one's also really thin.

21:02Michael Stevens:I like this one a lot. It's the most like a normal pen.

21:08Hannah Fry:This one, by the way, also was aimed at, this is a Mont Blanc that was aimed at school teachers, which I think tells you everything about how this industry of fountain pens has changed. Because it used to be really just like, oh yeah, of course you would own a fountain pen. It's sort of a thing that everybody needs to have. And now Mont Blanc has gone like high-end luxury, luxury luxury it's not sort of you know it is it's writing instruments as jewelry okay two two last ones to show you these are the ones that i use the most okay ones that i write with the most so this is a classic mont blanc right it's they are expensive but i think that they are worth the investment because this is the the foolproof pen this one doesn't leak this one doesn't you don't get ink everywhere it's just like it's just a really good pen it's a design it's got a gold nib on the end go ahead very classic look very classic right uh designed in the 1920s i think and basically has kept the same design ever since it's just like a really good amazing pen um but you'll also see these these are the ones that you'll see when you get like presidents or ceos signing documents they'll sort of whip out one of these yeah they'll sign like their first

22:19Michael Stevens:letter and then they'll donate it to someone who helped right but these ones the other innovation

22:25Hannah Fry:that these ones had is that they made it so it had a removable piston. So as opposed to these ones from, so all of these earlier ones from the 1920s up to the 1960s, where you were filling a barrel inside of the pen, this one has a piston. So if you open it up on the bottom bit where you would normally expect it when you're at school. Your hands are so covered in ink, I'm really sorry. What, where do I open it? I do it. Here we go. Okay, so this one, it has a piston, but the piston is like, sorry, you can see where I've washed it. The piston you can remove, so it's sort of like halfway between a cartridge and a...

23:04Michael Stevens:Okay, okay.

23:05Hannah Fry:So it's still a valve that you're filling. Right. But it's one that you can take away and switch.

23:11Michael Stevens:So you dip the tip into ink and draw it up. Exactly, right. You still do that.

23:14Hannah Fry:Yeah, exactly. And then finally, my favorite one. Okay. My Pelican. right this is this has been through been with me in so many good ways you're not going to like it at all though let me try it's um i like it because it's really wide it's big this one you have to be

23:30Michael Stevens:very slow with huh yes it's very big it's big uh it's it's a big device and the letters it writes are very thick you cannot write little tiny things tiny things you've got to mean it you've got to mean it. You're committed. You're putting on a show when you write with this.

23:50Hannah Fry:It's halfway between writing and painting.

23:52Michael Stevens:It does put down ink really well. It's very smooth. I can actually go pretty quick with it. And it still has putting down ink. Some of them, when I go fast, I get like a dotted line.

24:05Hannah Fry:Right. Yes. Rally instability. Yes. Is that what it is? Yeah. But because the other thing about this is especially the older ones where they had a chamber what can end up happening is you you sort of as you as you draw down ink you end up creating a bit of a vacuum in the well in the chamber so that it can choke the ink flow so what happens with these what ends up happening is the pens have to breathe basically right so uh within the fins at the back in the feed they'll have like little ways that air can soak in or even, I mean, the other thing that I really like about some of these is in the hole that's right at the top of the capillary line, they can end up, air can get in through that way, but they can be really decorative.

24:56Hannah Fry:Like look at this little waterman, it's got a heart instead of a hole, which I think is really sweet.

25:00Michael Stevens:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

25:01Hannah Fry:But yes, what can end up happening if you go too fast is that rally instability is the thing that when you turn on your tap and it sprays off into little splashes, sprays off into little droplets, you end up with the same thing as air goes back into the, into the main chamber, but sort of in reverse. But yeah, you can end up with the pen kind of choking if you're going too far, especially the older ones where they've got these like vacuum chambers. Yeah. Which one's your fave? Well,

25:29Michael Stevens:I'm not sure what, what should I be looking for in a fountain pen? It's about your style. How is this different? why would you choose a fountain pen and not a felt tip pen for example because i love those i love how much ink they put down but also i can i can rotate them in my hand without um causing a problem whereas here i i have to always keep the nib in a certain orientation to the page yeah but

25:55Hannah Fry:that's why i like them it's the discipline that they require i do think actually um that is genuinely one of the reasons why I like them so much is because they're really hard. Like, they're such a pain in the ass. And I think that, um, that adds to the joy of them.

26:11Michael Stevens:Yeah. This is, this is my favorite. Is it? Yeah.

26:13Hannah Fry:You know what? It's the Solitaire Montblanc. You've got the, this is, uh, from the 1970s. Uh, it has a solid silver, um, lid. You've basically gone for the fanciest one. Have I? You've gone for the fanciest one.

26:27Michael Stevens:I like it because it's small. I just feel like I really am in control of it.

26:32Hannah Fry:You've got expensive tastes, basically. I guess so. See, I think this one is the least interesting.

26:37Michael Stevens:I thought the lamby was good too. Let me try that one again. It's just a little, it feels less dense. Like there's a lot more emptiness inside of it because it's larger. Plastic. And it's plastic. The plastic I don't like so much because if it's in my pocket or if I sit on it, it's going to break. yeah no i still i think i prefer what was this one let me try the um what kind of ink this one it's got black ink oh i think it was this one this one you've gone for the two vintage montblancs well and honestly i think it's because they have the thinnest lines that's it the closest to being a pencil the closest to to not being a fountain pen so my least favorite would be the gold-tipped waterman oh really yeah this guy and then you're actually no i disliked your favorite the most that was ridiculous that was basically a marker i don't even my hand can't even move large enough but your dream is a japanese fountain pen oh yeah

27:44Hannah Fry:There's a particular one. My dream is a sailor Naginata Togi. Because he is probably the best nib maker of all time. He basically approached fountain pens as though they were samurai swords. Okay. So unimaginable craftsmanship. Incredibly, perfectly finely balanced in terms of the way you're fighting the gravity and the surface tension and the capillary action. Really, really carefully designed ink beautifully balanced pen you know like when you hold it just it feels the correct weight in your hand honestly they're gorgeous but they don't they are so hard to get even if you are willing to spend a lot of money they are really really hard to come by they are samurai swords but you know what christmas is coming up so so you guys all know what's on her list gosh i was looking expectantly at you i'm writing i'm writing with a mechanical pencil and i'm just enjoying this so much more i mean look you haven't converted me but you have

28:48Michael Stevens:enlightened me okay i've learned about you but i've also learned about myself and that's really

28:55Hannah Fry:what friends are for certainly is and um i mean we're recording four episodes today so we're gonna

29:00Michael Stevens:have we're gonna have inky hands all day well i do love that you can change up the ink because there's different kinds of ink different uh colors different um permanency yeah but you need to match the ink to the pen design yeah right okay well thank thank you um i hope that was worth i hope that was worth the wait it was definitely worth it i i also realize i have a lot more to learn because i don't know they don't feel different enough that i'm like oh i'm noticing this I'm still just falling back on my old, like, how heavy is it? How big is it in my hand? How quickly can I control it? Which isn't necessarily the rubric I should be using for fountain pens.

29:42Michael Stevens:Well. Because, like, what I write, when I write, I'm writing because I want to put down an idea. And sometimes I have to go pretty quickly. These feel like the pens where you've got the final draft and you're like, aha, and now I'm going to put it in ink. That's interesting.

29:59Hannah Fry:Yes, I think that they are.

30:02Michael Stevens:Like, let me ask you this. If you're watching a movie and something in the movie makes you go, oh, that would be a really good idea for a video. Oh, I wouldn't do that. You can't just pull out a fountain pen and be like, okay.

30:13Hannah Fry:No, but at the same time, if I was starting a day of work and I was like, okay, what is it that I want to achieve today? I want to think about that. You know, I think the world is so fast and so many things are coming at you all over the place. You know, you go on your computer and then your WhatsApp's going and then your Instagram's going and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There is nothing, I think, more centering. It's almost like meditation of like sitting down with my favorite notebook, my favorite fountain pen, and just alone with my thoughts and deciding what it is that I want to achieve or what the idea is that I want to get out.

30:51Michael Stevens:Okay, I completely agree with that for sure. but I feel like I can accomplish that with pencils as well because if I want to really sit down and make this like making tea yeah then I'll be like ah yes I'm gonna grab my right in the rain 1.3 millimeter I gotta switch it to the 2b lead and I gotta sharpen it and there's all these processes and then it writes with this like thicker slower quality i think they're writing

31:24Hannah Fry:in pencil it's like you're showing some self-doubt there you know it could be undone whereas in pen

31:29Michael Stevens:it's in pen yeah you know there's room for both i think doubt it rains is doubt is one of the best kinds of skeletons to be built with and i doubt everything and so the pencil is for me the pen is like laughing at god and don't get me wrong my father was a pen man he taught me to always solve the crosswords in pen as we've discussed because to use a pencil shows a lack

31:56Hannah Fry:of confidence you're going to let the puzzle beat you you don't you don't bring you don't bring a um a knife to the crossword fight you bring a gun maybe in america you do here we yeah but you bring

32:10Michael Stevens:a two bead pencil and a sharpener i have one more question so which one do you travel with

32:15Hannah Fry:a fountain pen at all times yeah okay so one or more usually these two this one that one and this one and and remind me what they are again uh the mont blanc meister stroke slightly smaller size and the pelican suveran this is the m1000 but i also have an m800 which i like a lot

32:35Michael Stevens:is that smaller i might like that one more you won't is it still all gushy it's still all not gushy but just like bam look at me yes right right with the brightest ink i can find oh hannah thank you you're welcome as i said yeah i would i i i yeah i learned about you and and myself so uh next up we're going to learn about you guys we're going to visit some of your questions after the break

33:10Michael Stevens:On that flight, with 350 passengers on. We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

33:22Hannah Fry:They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. You've got to ask yourself, you want to play? or not. You're the prime minister. You've done

33:34Michael Stevens:nothing. We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today.

33:44Hannah Fry:Kill the president of Russia. Yes. Who

33:49Michael Stevens:is going to be able to pull this off? Sergeant Tom McDuff. Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller. Where Britain plays its strongest hand against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now in full wherever you get your podcasts.

34:20Michael Stevens:The Great Game. Strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess Prime Minister with high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

34:37Hannah Fry:They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. You've got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!

34:53Michael Stevens:We would need to understand the policy context.

34:55Hannah Fry:All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, and disseminated into an operation order, or frago. A frago that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes. New from Goalhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

35:15Michael Stevens:You're my soldier, are you?

35:17Hannah Fry:Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy!

35:19Michael Stevens:An audio drama journey like no other.

35:21Hannah Fry:Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

35:25Michael Stevens:Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller. Where Britain plays its strongest hand against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

35:58Hannah Fry:Okay, we're back. I brought my laptop out. It means business.

36:02Michael Stevens:It means business, yeah.

36:03Hannah Fry:And by business, I mean your questions. Okay, here we go. One for you, Michael, first. This is from Rock Hard Maple Syrup. Rock Hard Maple Syrup. I've had some of that before. What are your favorite bad words? Not cuss words, but words that are bad at their job. That could be a lot of different things, so I will leave the interpretation up to you. part of me wants to say something like inflammable because it means the exact same as flammable. But at the end of the day, it's a valuable word because it still at least describes something.

36:33Michael Stevens:Yeah. Oh, I love this idea. Like a bad word rather than some weird cultural taboo that makes it bad. What's a word that's bad at its job? For example, the first one I think of is noisome. Go on. What do you think noisome means? You probably know. I don't. Okay. So what do you think it means no i said if i said ah yeah he actually just lives underneath the freeway it's a really noisome gross place like so some you know like awesome is full of awe

37:06Hannah Fry:um so i would assume that it was full of noise yeah you would guess is noise and that's not

37:12Michael Stevens:what it means. Go on. Noisome. Noisome means stinky, smelly. Does it? Yeah. The word noise comes from actually the word annoy.

37:25Hannah Fry:Right.

37:26Michael Stevens:So does ennui, by the way, which is a whole other discussion, which people don't understand where this comes from. But yeah, noisome means really, really smelly in a bad way, even though it has the word noise in it. And it just causes a lot of confusion all the time. I think there's also confusion with nauseous. What do you think nauseous means?

37:48Hannah Fry:Where you are overcome by a feeling of needing to vomit.

37:53Michael Stevens:That's what I thought too. But actually, nauseous means producing the feeling of nausea. Like, ah, his shirt is nauseous.

38:03Hannah Fry:Oh, but what about nauseating?

38:05Michael Stevens:That means the same thing. Right. Nauseous and nauseating people often use nauseous to mean the feeling itself. Like, oh, I'm feeling nauseous. That means, oh, so you're feeling like you're going to be creating nausea in other people. And the thing is, I'm getting obsessed with this because I bought this kind of dictionary. It's called a usage dictionary. And it's not about what words mean. It's about how they can be used best. Because David Foster Wallace said that all you need is a dictionary and a usage dictionary. and it really is helpful. You read through and you go, oh, that's the difference between these words.

38:43Michael Stevens:So I think nauseous does its job. People don't let it do its job. They use it to mean like the feeling itself of like almost puking. Like, oh, I'm nauseous. If you're nauseous, that means that you are nauseating. In others. Or maybe yourself. Or maybe in yourself as well. You're causing, you cause yourself. What are some other words that don't do their job?

39:07Hannah Fry:The one that I always think about is how emasculate or emasculating and effeminate mean the same thing. Which, I mean, look, there's a flammable, inflammable, they mean the same thing. But what bothers me about it is that there's no version for the female version.

39:25Michael Stevens:That's right. Right? You can be masculine and you can be emasculated. Right. But a woman can't be effeminated. Right. Right. Because effeminate means... You're already at the bottom. Yeah. I mean, that is what the language is causing. It causes us to go, well, look, you're either feminine and you have no lower to go or you become, you can't go up. There is no up. Masculinated? Masculinated. Yeah, I guess.

39:57Hannah Fry:Because emasculate, you're right. It's like masculine is there. You go down to be emasculated. Right. And then effeminate is like there. and then feminine is at the bottom.

40:10Michael Stevens:I mean, we can turn this 90 degrees and just make it a spectrum, but you're right. There's no word for a woman losing her femininity. That's what we're getting at. To be, right, it's not like, ooh, you were infeminated. It's just masculinized. The dominant word is the male, the maleness. Right. You're either becoming more or less male.

40:35Hannah Fry:More or less male. That's it.

40:37Michael Stevens:Yeah, that's it. Because the focus is on the male side.

40:39Hannah Fry:Yeah. Yeah, you're right. The other one that bothers me a bit, but I can't ever remember the real definition, is the phrase begs the question. Yeah. Because people always use it to say, well, this is strange, and that begs the question, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right?

40:57Michael Stevens:It causes us to ask another question. Exactly. That's not what it means.

41:00Hannah Fry:It's not what it means. But I can never remember the actual definition.

41:03Michael Stevens:It means to assume the answer in the question itself. Right. So, for example, if you were to say, well, look, that medicine causes you to feel sleepy because it contains a sleep-inducing drug. That's begging the question.

41:21Hannah Fry:Okay. As in, like, you've answered the question already. Let me think of a better example. Okay, here's one. So, I looked it up as we were going. Okay. Okay. this fabric is the best because it's superior to all other fabrics.

41:34Michael Stevens:Exactly. See, you're just kind of not actually providing an answer. You're causing the question to just be stated as a statement.

41:43Hannah Fry:Here's what it says. It says, putting forward an argument where the premise secretly assumes the conclusion is already true.

41:50Michael Stevens:Yeah, right, right. That's begging the question. Same with question begging is the exception that proves the rule. That one took me a long time to understand because I thought, well, if there's an exception, then it's disproving the rule. But here's, do you know what it really means?

42:08Hannah Fry:No, I don't know if I do.

42:09Michael Stevens:What it really means is two things. One is that you thought of that exception because it is so exceptional. It proves that it's exceptional because it's just not the norm at all. Like if someone said, oh, it's so quiet in the country. And someone said, well, no, because two years ago, there was a concert one night and it was so loud. And you're like, that's the exception that proves the rule. And it's because it's an exception. Yes. Because two years ago, you're able to still remember that loud night in the country. That's because the country is as a rule, like, oh, it's so quiet. The other thing, and this is what, this is, I think, actually very useful, is when you are notified of an exception to a rule.

42:53Michael Stevens:So you can immediately assume that the rule exists. For example, in a shop, if you see a sign that says, all refrigerator orders must prepay for delivery. That's an exception to the rule, which probably exists, which is you don't have to prepay for delivery for anything else. Okay, that is the exception proving the rule. It's showing that the rule exists because an exception must have been made against some rule that actually exists. So yeah, you can assume that a rule exists and it's not even been spoken. It's been proved by its exception. Okay.

43:29Hannah Fry:I just like the idea of going shopping with you and you sort of walking past a sign like that

43:33Michael Stevens:and being like, aha, aha, exceptions are proving rules today. Yeah, that's me.

43:39Hannah Fry:This is about bad sentences, right? Bad phrases. Well, bad words. Bad words. I think it's bad if no one knows what it means. I'm putting Begs the Question in there because no one knows what it means. Exactly. And even though we've just sat and explained it and I've read out the definition. I'm still not sure what it means.

43:54Michael Stevens:Oh yeah, exactly. Are people going to start using it correctly now?

43:56Hannah Fry:Nope, nope. So, okay, that's going in. There's also words that mean the opposite thing, right? So I'm thinking here, dust is the classic one, right? Of like, to dust something means that you get rid of the dust and then to dust something can also mean that you have. The other one that I always think about is the American definition for quite versus the British definition for quite. Because in America, am I correct in saying that quite means very? And here it means not very.

44:30Michael Stevens:Oh, right. If I say, oh, that's quite good. I mean, it's really good. Yeah. And if I say that's quite good, it means it's not very good.

44:37Hannah Fry:Really? Yeah. Okay. I mean, okay. If you were doing like posh old English and you were like, that was quite lovely, then yes, it means very good. Okay.

44:45Michael Stevens:So we're doing it the old fashioned way.

44:46Hannah Fry:I think you are doing it the old-fashioned way because if you said to me now, did you have a nice weekend? And I said, it was quite good. It means it wasn't very good at all.

44:55Michael Stevens:What does chuffed mean? Happy. Happy. Okay. It doesn't sound like it means happy. What does it sound like? My wife would be like, oh, she's so chuffed. I'm like, oh, does she need like some ointment? It sounded like the worst thing to be. Oh, guys, I'm chuffed. Like I've, my skin's coming off and it's all red. but no chuffed means happy and i was like how you had so many sounds to choose from and you chose

45:22Hannah Fry:chuffed you americans are missing out some great words though you don't have the word faff uh yeah faff about you honestly i think that is that is america as a country would be doing much better if they only had the word lollygag we've got dilly dally lollygag sounds like an x-rated channel frankly it does actually whoa okay we've got dilly dally i use that one a lot okay dilly dally but dilly dally is old school english is it yeah shoot just copying stuff from us when we were in

45:52Michael Stevens:charge of you okay let's move on to another question all right let's go for it okay this

45:56Hannah Fry:is from quest for neon also from reddit i work at an aerospace company one of the basic principles we rely on is the lift generated by the aerofoils the shape of the wing while talking to a group of engineers, it came up that the old explanation of what causes low pressure above the wing and high pressure below, that the longer part of an air molecule over the wing causes it to travel faster, is not valid due to the false assumption of continuity between the two particles. However, none of us knew the proper explanation that succeeded it. Can you help update this mental model for a curious engineer?

46:30Michael Stevens:Can you?

46:31Hannah Fry:Yeah. Can I tell you my favorite thing about this question? This is an engineer at an aerospace company. He's asking about how aerofoils work. And you know what? I once was on a flight, a BA flight, a transatlantic BA flight. And it was one of those situations where the captain, because I think they get a list of the names of the passengers. And the captain recognized my name on the list and then came over for a chat and I got to go in the cockpit and so on. Oh my gosh. But when I was in the cockpit, while we were over the Atlantic, okay i was like guys do any of you know how planes fly do any of you know how aerofoils work and the three pilots got into this massive argument with each other and none of them

47:11Michael Stevens:could actually agree as to what it is that makes planes yeah i believe it right it's it's not as simple as most of the explanations were given are i mean it also sort of doesn't matter because we

47:24Hannah Fry:know that they do they work they work and they work reliably and we know how to tune the design in order to make them work extremely well. So it sort of doesn't matter. But what is going on? Okay, so the traditional explanation that Quest for Neon is describing here is that you have this shape of the wing, sort of like a teardrop shape almost.

47:42Michael Stevens:Yeah, it's curved on top, flat on the bottom. Exactly.

47:45Hannah Fry:And the idea is that you have two air particles. You can kind of change your frame of reference so you can imagine that you've got the wing passing through the air, or you can imagine that the wing stays still and the air moves around it. Okay, so if you go for the first version where the wing cuts through the air. Let's say you've got two little air particles here that are just minding their own business, having a lovely time. And then all of a sudden, this wing slices through them. Okay, one of them is going to go up. It's going to be pushed up. The other one's going to be slightly pushed down.

48:12Hannah Fry:And then they meet again at the end. This is the old school explanation. If you then change that frame of reference that you keep the wing steady, essentially what these particles are doing is one's going up and over the long way around, around this curve. And the other one is just going straight to the back. So when they meet again, one of them has traveled further than the other. Therefore, it's moved faster. Therefore, the pressure must be lower because faster air has lower pressure.

48:40Michael Stevens:That's what I was told as a kid.

48:42Hannah Fry:Right. And then in addition to that, then if there is lower pressure, the wing moves up in order to match it. Okay. The problem with this explanation is there is no rule that says that these two particles have to meet up at the back. Right. It's just doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah.

48:56Michael Stevens:While they're halfway across the wing, why was the guy on the top going, I got to go faster? Right. It doesn't make any sense.

49:03Hannah Fry:Yeah. Okay. That doesn't mean that the shape of the wing being curved doesn't change the pressure because it almost certainly does. But here is the thing. Okay. If it is only because the curve of the wing makes the pressure lower on the top, how can planes fly upside down? Exactly. How is that possible? I don't know. You tell me. Okay. I will. um okay lower pressure makes things move up yep so if it is all to do with the shape of the wing means you get lower pressure on the tops and that's the reason why the wing moves up sure fine happy but then how come planes can fly upside down right it doesn't make any sense so the alternative explanation the first explanation is called benui he's the guy who says fast air is lower pressure the second explanation is newton so newton says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

49:52Hannah Fry:So the Newton explanation says that if you've got air that's coming along like this and your wing is sort of angled like this, your wing is angled ever so slightly upwards, you've got air that's coming in this direction, that air is then going to be deflected downwards and so the equal and opposite reaction is that - You go up. Yeah. So the Newton explanation basically says that it's about the angle of attack, which is the angle that you set your wings at. And thus you can fly upside down if you fly at an angle where you have the same angle of attack. So that's fine. The only problem with that being the only explanation is that when you run smoke particles in advance of an airplane wing, in advance of an aerofoil, the air particles start moving upwards way before they get to the wing.

50:42Hannah Fry:So this is what these pilots were saying on this BA flight. They were like, sometimes the toilets will let out. If you're like following another plane, you can see another plane out the window. The toilets let out some sort of, I don't know, like chemicals, hopefully it's not wee. Do they? I don't know. I can't remember what they actually said. Just kind of out there. There's some stuff that comes out. During the flight. During the flight. And you can see the trail of it and it departs and goes over the wing, but well in advance of the wing, right? Like it's not just waiting to the wing and then hitting the wing and going downwards.

51:15Hannah Fry:There's been so much debate about this, by the way. There's been so many arguments about which of the two is it actually. And I think that the ultimate conclusion is it's sort of both. It's sort of both. You can't have Newton irrespective of Bernoulli, right? The two things are together. When you have fast air, you do have lower pressure and you can't have Bernoulli and ignore Newton. The two of them are both in there.

51:39Michael Stevens:Working together to hold the plane up. And that's why they need two wings, a Newtonian wing and a Bernoullian wing. Exactly.

51:46Hannah Fry:The thing is, Bernoulli and Newton, they're sort of, they're like explanations as to what's going on that kind of compete with one another, that can kind of exist side by side. I mean, when you're actually trying to do this, when you're actually trying to design an aerofoil, you don't sort of like sit down and write down Bernoulli and Newton and work out which one. It's like way more complicated than that. Um, but they're sort of, they're just, they're shorthand explanations as to why you actually generate lift over an aerofoil.

52:20Michael Stevens:I still don't understand planes though. I mean, I, I literally flew here on one and I left the plane in, in London, looked out the window at the plane I just flew in. And I'm like, there's no way that stays up in the air.

52:34Hannah Fry:I completely agree with you.

52:35Michael Stevens:It's still so magic to me. And I did an entire live show where half of the show was about how things fly. right and i'm still like uh how are we up here is this just luck because i don't get it it's

52:48Hannah Fry:the thing it's like whenever i'm getting on a plane especially a big one if you're on like an a380 or something um also by the way you think i'm obsessed about fountain pens you should see how obsessed i am about planes um we get on a nice a380 and airbus one of the classics of the genre not the best one but one of the classics uh and uh the number of people that are waiting by the gate, it's like, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. But it is because air, when it's fast moving, just had different properties than air when you're almost stationary.

53:23Michael Stevens:I mean, planes can be small. But if you were to tell me, I had never heard of an airplane before and you were like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can build a machine that flies. It can be like the heaviest thing ever. Like people use its size and weight to describe big stuff. It'd be like, no, no, no. A plane has to be made of gossamer whispers. How else is it going to stay up? But they've just got powerful engines that hit that air so fast. Whack it through. They whack it through.

53:50Hannah Fry:Whack it through. Yeah. Oh man, do you know the design of jet engines? Oh, and the one for another day. They're amazing. They're amazing. Ask me a question about how jet engines are made so I can have an excuse to talk about them. Okay. Last question. This one is from Ren, who sent in an email. Ren asks, if you could be there to experience any event in history or prehistory, what event would that be?

54:12Michael Stevens:I'd like to see language being invented. I don't think that it happened fast enough that you could just show up in, I don't know, how long ago? Say 100 ,000 years ago, and there'd be some prehistoric human being like, oh, oh, rock? and they're all like wait what was that that sound was different and he's like rock i'm only gonna say rock for that one thing and they're like whoa one sound for one object dude that could be so useful and he's like yes and and like boom language is born on like that day and then you've got the old people walking around being like back in my day we only had grunts and now you've got

54:55Hannah Fry:all these there must have been a first word well that's the thing first you'd have to define words

55:01Michael Stevens:so precisely that you really could say, and now that sound is being used as a word, as opposed to something else, a proto-word. But if I could go back in time and witness the emergence of language over a period of millennia, that would be incredible.

55:19Hannah Fry:Wouldn't it? It would almost certainly be a name for another individual.

55:24Michael Stevens:Well, we already know that non-human animals have different sounds for different predators and for different problems. Is that a language? Like what point does it tip over into being like, oh no, this is a whole creative tool set that can even describe things that don't exist.

55:41Hannah Fry:Yeah. You know, I did a documentary on this, right? Of like, it was about whether technology can help translate non-human language. Oh yeah. It was amazing. Anyway, went to go and see all these different animals, elephants, dogs, dolphins, whatever. and look at the structure of their vocalizations towards one another. Anyway, my favorite thing about this whole documentary is I went to go and see some elephant seals in California, which are called that because the males have this very long nose. It looks like a trunk. Anyway, the thing I learned from elephant seals is that even if you are generous and say that these creatures have language, some of them have much more to say than others because male elephant seals only have one word that they repeat throughout their entire lives.

56:28Hannah Fry:And they just repeatedly say their own names.

56:34Michael Stevens:Really? So we know that it's their name? Yes.

56:38Hannah Fry:Right. Yes. That they just say over and over again, their own personal. And what I like about this, the way it works is you have like an alpha male and then you have like a harem of women, of women, of females. What are the women doing here? but what happens is the sneakers the beta males they'll circle around the harem and then they will uh when the alpha's not looking they'll tuck their nose in pretend that they're a female to get in amongst the females and then they'll just slide up to one of the females sort of put their flipper out and then be like in the ear steve their own name yeah and the women are like whoa there's a

57:18Michael Stevens:Steve here. I came for Jonathan, but hello, Tyler. I heard years ago, and I'll have to look up whether this is true or not, but they used a neural network to study whale sounds. And it was able to piece together whale language and would know how to respond. But of course, we just didn't figure out what any of it meant. But we knew that it had the structure of a language enough that a neural network could deal with it. Exactly right.

57:47Hannah Fry:Exactly right. There's also this amazing stuff about whales where certain whales in Australia will share vocalizations. There's so much recorded audio of this. They will start with particular vocalizations. And then over the course of two years, those same signature vocalizations will make their way up to like Northern Canada and completely different whales will be singing essentially the same tunes that existed prior. So you have - It's almost like a whale culture. Right, completely. And this is the thing, you know, humans are what, 300 ,000 years old maximum? Whales, like way, way, way, way, way, way older.

58:28Hannah Fry:Way older. There's all sorts of stuff going on that we have no idea about.

58:31Michael Stevens:So could I even go back and see language emerge? It was probably already there in some form. We just created a different, not in kind, but in complexity. Perhaps, yeah. Yeah, perhaps. This is a dark answer, but I'd like to go back. There might have been a time when suicide was discovered. Because we don't see it in the animal kingdom in the same way.

59:00Hannah Fry:You're right.

59:01Michael Stevens:Yeah, Nicholas Humphrey wrote an essay in, I want to say it's the Oxford Handbook to Cognitive Archaeology. Okay, studying how people thought in the past by finding evidence for it. And he brought up this idea that like the concept of ending your own life must have occurred to a first person who would have thought, hey, I could do that. And he developed that into an entire theory that our awareness of our own selves was actually an evolved process that makes us love life. And he's like, if you look at higher organisms, which I don't like that term, but if you look at birds or if you look at chimpanzees, they do stuff seemingly just because they enjoy it.

59:51Michael Stevens:They will fly. They will play with water. simply because they enjoy existing. They enjoy those sensations. And he thinks that a lot of qualia and experiences came about so that we would love to be alive because we'd become complicated enough mentally to understand that we could solve a problem by leaving and that that wasn't actually a solution. And so instead, those of us that were fit and survived fell in love with tomorrow.

1:00:19Hannah Fry:Gosh, that's so fascinating. That's so fascinating. doing because I sort of, as you say, you don't see the same thing in the animal kingdom. And I sort of wonder whether the flip side of that is that are we uniquely able to suffer from our mental health because we are such complex beings in a way that you don't see in others? I mean, this is a question, right? This is not making this as a statement. And then maybe what you need is you need the enjoyment of life, right? The sort of thirst for existing, the falling in love with tomorrow in order to counter that.

1:00:59Michael Stevens:You would seemingly need an understanding of time and the future so that you could be afraid of something that wouldn't end. But then from that, the solution evolves, which is hope and other people that you just don't need if you're a cockroach.

1:01:19Hannah Fry:hey also if you're a crock wreck you're going to survive nuclear wind it doesn't matter yeah you'll be like i'm here forever no matter what cut my head off no big deal no big deal i just become two cockroaches i don't know how it works um wow that's such a beautiful idea what was that

1:01:33Michael Stevens:book called again i want to go and find out okay so the well the book is the a handbook of cognitive archaeology amazing and it's full of just wonderful essays about trying to understand how people used to think. I like that so much. And it's very serious. It's not a bunch of those like just so stories where you're like, yes, obviously. It's more like, look, we've studied like all the ancient stone tools that we found and we can see that they were often made in ways that didn't make them sharper, but made them look like each other. Like people wanted to fit in. Some of the earliest evidence we have of, oh no, I learned from this group.

1:02:10Michael Stevens:And that's why I make it this way, even though it's more work. He wrote an entire book about it called Soul Dust, which sounds a little woo-woo, but the guy's not like a little woo-inator. He's...

1:02:23Hannah Fry:Wait, wasn't that what the guitar thing was called?

1:02:27Michael Stevens:The whammy bar? No, but he went to Trinity College and he's a neuropsychologist. All right, got you. Amazing.

1:02:35Hannah Fry:I've got a slightly silly i want to finish on good i would have liked to be there the first day that somebody worked out

1:02:42Michael Stevens:that you could put salt on meat as you cook it oh yeah seasoning that's the birth of seasoning

1:02:49Hannah Fry:would be so cool everyone would be like you would not believe what just happened why yeah why is this

1:02:55Michael Stevens:so good guys i put i put those white rocks on it and they'd be like whoa what you would not believe

1:03:03Hannah Fry:how good a cook this guy is.

1:03:05Michael Stevens:And then like two weeks later, they're like, the meat you put the rocks on isn't covered in mold. You made it last longer. And the guy's like, I meant to do that. Hey, I'm a magician. Jeez. Yeah. I love to see their faces when they tried seasoned food for the first time. And they're like, well, gosh, how come the animal doesn't already come this way?

1:03:26Hannah Fry:We're never going back.

1:03:27Michael Stevens:We're changing the world. Yeah. We are no longer nature. We are now humans.

1:03:32Hannah Fry:yeah too right and we're changing the world with you you guys i was out for a segue uh with your questions every week every week keep them coming in we've got our subreddit the rest is science

1:03:43Michael Stevens:you can also email us at the rest is science at goal hanger.com or leave us comments wherever you

1:03:49Hannah Fry:are watching this listening to this uh we try and get through all of them this is my favorite part of the week by the way when we get to your questions um but yeah we will see you we will see you next time later bye

1:04:12Hi, everybody.

1:04:13Michael Stevens:It's Dominic Sandbrook here from The Rest is History, and we are here to tell you about a thrilling new series on the blood-soaked climax of the French Revolution, the reign of terror. So the French Revolution is one of the most significant episodes in the whole of world history. It essentially lays the foundations for contemporary politics as we know it, but it is also unbelievably dramatic. We'll be discussing the murder of the firebrand Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub. We will be going to the guillotine with Marie Antoinette. And in our final episode, we will be telling the story of the extraordinary and grotesque downfall of one of the chief architects of the terror, one of the most evil men in history, some would say, Maximilien Crobespierre.

1:05:05Michael Stevens:So if you want to hear this epic series, search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts.