What Are The Odds You'll Become A Fossil?

Summary

The Rest Is Science

Episode Title: What Are The Odds You'll Become A Fossil?
Date: June 17, 2026
Hosts: Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens (Vsauce)

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens dive deep—sometimes literally—into the science, improbability, and wonder behind fossilization. Using Hannah’s own “boring rock” (which may be an Ice Age reindeer fossil) as a springboard, the episode explores what it takes for remains to survive millions of years, why fossils are so rare, the stories rocks can tell, and the intersection of paleontology, myth, and human history. The second half features listener questions on sun vanishment, the evolutionary roots of gossip, and what we should do with radioactive waste, all delivered with the hosts’ trademark humor and curiosity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Hannah’s “Boring Rock” – Unpacking a Fossil Find

• [00:04] Hannah introduces her segment “Hannah’s Boring Rocks,” revealing a favorite fossilized find from a French river beach.
• [05:20] She believes it’s likely a piece of reindeer shoulder bone, possibly discarded by prehistoric humans during the last Ice Age.
• [06:55] The fossil demonstrates mineralization, showing clear patterns where bone marrow once was.

  “What you’re holding in your hand is no longer the bone of an animal…fossils are actually rocks. They’re sort of the rock shape of the bone that once was.” – Hannah Fry [06:24]

• Michael observes: “It’s like…not even a ghost of the old animal. It’s a copy. It’s like a pretender." [06:55]

2. The Astounding Odds and Process of Fossilization

• [07:01] Hannah explains that only around 1 in a billion bones ever fossilize.

  “It’s phenomenally rare for this to happen, for there to be a fossil.” – Hannah Fry [07:32]

• [08:04] The circumstances needed:
  • Rapid burial in sediment post-death
  • Protection from scavengers & decay
  • Mineralization over millions of years via groundwater
  • Burial under layers for compression
  • Exposure and discovery before erosion destroys it
• Hannah’s fossil is likely “prehistoric trash”—discarded by humans and preserved by chance.

3. Fossils as Prehistoric Trash and Human History

• [10:11] The Dordogne region’s famous caves held both reindeer and Ice Age humans, leading to fossil-rich “bone piles” from human meals.
• [11:17] “You’re saying that some of these early human artists could have eaten that reindeer?” – Michael Stevens [11:18]

4. The Surreal Rarity and Commonality of Fossils

• [13:28] Michael recalls growing up in Kansas, where fossilized shells were so common they lost their novelty.
• [13:44] The paradox: while becoming a fossil is nearly impossible, in the rare places where conditions were right, fossils are abundant.

5. Mary Anning and the Unearthing of Deep Time

• [14:09] Discussion of Mary Anning, the pioneering fossil hunter of England's Jurassic Coast—subject of the “She Sells Seashells” rhyme.

  “Major discoveries…this is in the early 1800s…people like George Washington didn’t know that dinosaurs ever existed.” – Michael Stevens [15:04]

6. Fossils, Ancient Myths, and Changing Human Perspective

• [15:14] Before paleontology, fossils were interpreted as evidence for dragons, cyclops, or gods—a “forgotten past” that colors our myths.
• [19:02] Hannah introduces Doggerland, a submerged land once connecting England to Europe, possibly the inspiration for Atlantis/flood myths.
• [20:28] The role of oral tradition: “Maybe these same stories…end up being passed down more than a thousand years.” – Hannah Fry [20:28]

7. Listener Q&A – Outlandish Science Questions

If the Sun Vanished for 72 Hours

• [25:30]
  • For 8 minutes, nothing would change (light & gravity take that long to reach Earth).
  • “In some ways not a whole lot. In other ways, an enormous amount.” – Michael Stevens [25:40]
  • Earth would coast in a straight line; after 3 days, the sun’s return would create climate chaos and a radically altered orbit.
  • Life wouldn’t end, especially deep at geothermal vents, but surface life would be devastated.

Why Did Humans Evolve to Love Gossip?

• [32:00]
  • Gossip may have been a “vocal grooming” replacement (Dunbar’s theory): large groups can’t physically socialize, so talk bonds us.

    “It was like a form of vocal grooming.” – Hannah Fry [32:05]

  • Etymology: “Gossip” comes from “godsip,” meaning a close relative [33:53].
  • “The vast majority of news we consume, even respectable news, is just gossip.” – Michael Stevens [35:55]
  • Science storytelling thrives when it feels gossipy.

Why Not Throw Radioactive Waste Into a Volcano?

• [37:45]
  • That would only spread radioactive material; volcanoes don’t neutralize radioactivity.
  • Sending nuclear waste to the sun could work—if we could do it safely and affordably. (Cue “build the space elevator!” jokes.)
  • “The more mass the sun has, the hotter it burns, the quicker it burns through its fuel...Hey, we’ve got billions of years. Don’t worry about that.” – Hannah Fry [39:31]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Fossilization:

  “The estimates are that in a billion bones will ever make it into being a fossil.” – Hannah Fry [07:07]
  “Even moving it changes what we know about its story.” – Michael Stevens, on why you should leave fossils for scientists [22:25]

• On Prehistoric Human Life:

  “I’m saying this is like prehistoric trash.” – Hannah Fry [11:17]

• On Fossil Hunting in Kansas:

  “There were so many of them, it didn’t seem very special.” – Michael Stevens [12:59]

• On Human Myth-Making:

  “People like George Washington didn’t know that dinosaurs ever existed.” – Michael Stevens [15:04] “The story of Atlantis...maybe these same stories, in some form or another, end up being passed down more than a thousand years.” – Hannah Fry [20:28]

• On Gossip:

  “We are social creatures in terms of judgment. We come up with completely arbitrary…reasons to judge people’s behavior.” – Michael Stevens [34:54] “The number one thing that I think in my head when I’m like, right, how am I gonna script this, is how do I make it sound as much like gossip as possible?” – Hannah Fry [36:50]

• On Space Disposal:

  “Let’s just do it. Let’s just do it.” (re: sending nuclear waste to the Sun) – Both hosts, humorously [39:43]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:04] – “Hannah’s Boring Rocks” begins
• [05:20] – How Hannah identified her fossil and why it’s special
• [07:01] – The vanishingly small odds of fossilization
• [10:13] – Dordogne cave bones and Ice Age “cafeteria waste”
• [13:28] – Michael shares his fossil-rich Kansas childhood
• [14:09] – Mary Anning, Jurassic Coast, and dinosaur discovery in society
• [19:02] – Myths, Doggerland, and the possible basis for Atlantis
• [25:30] – What if the Sun vanished for 72 hours?
• [32:00] – Evolutionary roots of gossip in humans
• [37:45] – Why not toss radioactive waste into a volcano?

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Episode Tone & Style

The hosts’ tone is witty, conversational, and intellectually playful—effortlessly blending layperson accessibility with scholarly curiosity. Their banter and tongue-in-cheek commentary keep the complex subject matter light, and their candid admissions (“this is prehistoric trash!”) make the science approachable and relatable.

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Useful For...

This summary is for anyone intrigued by fossils, prehistory, and the wild intersection between deep time, probability, and culture. It’s also a must for fans who came for the fossil science but stayed for the philosophical musings and ready-to-share scientific gossip.

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For further listener questions or to join the fossil gossip yourself, the hosts encourage engagement via YouTube or email.

Transcript

[Hannah Fry]

Welcome to the rest of science. I'm Hannah Fry.

[Michael Stevens]

And I'm Michael Stevens.

[Hannah Fry]

And it's field notes today, which means one of us brought an object. And I'm calling this series Hannah's Boring Rocks.

[Michael Stevens]

Ooh, another episode of Hannah's Boring Rocks.

[Hannah Fry]

You would not believe how heavy my bag was this morning with all these rocks.

[Michael Stevens]

Ooh, there are big heavy ones I've got.

[Hannah Fry]

I think this might be my favorite rock from just looking at it from afar. Do you want to guess why it's my favourite rock?

[Michael Stevens]

Oh, wow. It looks like a. Like a tuber. Some kind of like potato relative. But it's a rock.

[Hannah Fry]

It's a rock. It's definitely a rock. For those of you who are watching, is it fossilized? It is fossilized.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah, it is.

[Hannah Fry]

Well spotted.

[Michael Stevens]

Did it used to be a tree?

[Hannah Fry]

It did not used to be a tree. Well, I don't have a confirmation of this, by the way, because this is a rock.

[Michael Stevens]

Well, it's quite dense. So it looks like. It looks like a very knotted kind of knee. Like a. Can you imagine an alien, like a gray cloud, Classic alien. And you ripped its knee off an inch above and below. It's got little thin legs coming out of this weird knotted joint. But its real color is. Oh, well, it's. Interestingly, it's kind of a groundish bray.

[Hannah Fry]

A groundish bray.

[Michael Stevens]

I just did a spoonerism in real life that is amazing.

[Hannah Fry]

You almost never see them.

[Michael Stevens]

You almost never see them in the wild. That was one. It's a brownish gray, but there's flecks of like purplish pink on it.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah, I'm not sure what that is, actually. I'm not sure what that is.

[Michael Stevens]

And then there's places where it's been chipped and you can see a dark, almost like a blackish, milky black kind of color inside. And again. Should I lick it?

[Hannah Fry]

I think you can lick this one safely. Oh, no, wait, I'm joking.

[Michael Stevens]

Okay, so this one is a lot denser, way dense than your little pendant. One less powdery. It does. Not as spongy, not as pumicey. I don't understand what it is, though. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk.

[Hannah Fry]

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[Michael Stevens]

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[Hannah Fry]

Now, understanding how Greenland sharks, cellular repair and immune systems seem to have managed to keep them cancer free for centuries that could open up exciting research pathways.

[Michael Stevens]

Essentially over millions of years. Evolution has been running the world's most successful cancer prevention trial and sometimes breakthroughs can be found in unusual places.

[Hannah Fry]

So by exploring the unexpected, Cancer Research UK scientists are uncovering new ways to tackle over 200 types of canC. Their work has helped to double survival in the UK over the last 50 years and continues to save and improve lives around the world.

[Michael Stevens]

For more information about Cancer Research uk, their research and breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org TheresTestisscience for

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[Michael Stevens]

No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So what's the problem? That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothing. I'm waiting for the catch.

[Hannah Fry]

Maybe there's no catch.

[Michael Stevens]

That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.

[Ad Voice / Guest]

Wow.

[Hannah Fry]

You need to relax.

[Michael Stevens]

I need to knock on wood.

[Ad Voice / Guest]

Do we have. What is this? Table wood?

[Michael Stevens]

I think it's laminate.

[Ad Voice / Guest]

Okay.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah, that's good.

[Michael Stevens]

That's close enough. Car selling without a catch Sell your car today on Carvana.

[Hannah Fry]

Pick up fees may apply. Foreign. This is a rock that I found on holiday many, many moons ago when I was in the Dordogne in France and we were at this river beach and there was, you know, all of these like normal little rocks and this one was poking out. It was like, that is a weird. That's a weird rock, isn't It. And as I picked it up, it's like the things that you. That I notice about it. Okay, so it's very knobbly. It does look like a knee or maybe a shoulder.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah.

[Hannah Fry]

But the thing that really marks this out, as I'm. I'm. I haven't had this confirmed, by the way, but like, I'm 99% sure that this is a fossil. Specifically, I think this is fossilized reindeer from partly because of where I found it, but also the shape of it, I think is like part of a shoulder bone. But the thing that really demonstrates, I think, that this was once a bone is that when you look at the edge of it, you can see these. This very regular pattern. So it's very dense around the outside, and then there's almost a circular ring on the inside which has this pitting that looks like it was once bone marrow. And it's not just at one edge. You see it actually every time that the. The stone is kind of cut at these different, different junctions of where the bone might have been. You can see essentially where the bone marrow once was. It's kind of most clear right at the very end.

[Michael Stevens]

Wow. So it, it used to be a bone, but it's just been like, mineralized.

[Hannah Fry]

Been mineralized.

[Michael Stevens]

And now it's a rock. And now it's a rock that tells us something about the shape of this very ancient animal.

[Hannah Fry]

Okay. So I think I have a. I have a few more clues about what this animal, you know, was doing and why it turned up in this riverbed in the Dordogne. But the first thing I want to say was about how fossils are even made. Because what you're holding in your hand is no longer the bone of an animal that' no biological material or very little biological material in there at all. Because fossils are actually rocks, Right. They're sort of the rock shape of the bone that once was.

[Michael Stevens]

That's right. It's like a. Not even a ghost of the old animal. It's a copy. It's like a pretender.

[Hannah Fry]

A pretender of the old bone. So the way do you get a fossil? Okay. I mean, you need a very, very, very special set of circumstances. You have to be unbelievably lucky. The estimates are that in a billion bones will ever make it into being a fossil.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah.

[Hannah Fry]

Which is phenomenal.

[Michael Stevens]

It's phenomenal. It's so weird. It's like out of everyone alive today, not even a full skeleton will be fossilized in the future completely.

[Hannah Fry]

If you take one in a billion

[Michael Stevens]

bones, they're not going to be able to make a whole skeleton of a person who was alive in 2026.

[Hannah Fry]

No. It's phenomenally rare for this to happen, for there to be a fossil, the way that they happen. First off, you need a sort of lucky accident. You need, you need. When an animal to die, it needs to be buried almost instantly by soft soil sediment, by mud, something like that, silt, salt, whatever it might be, volcanic ash. And the reason why you need that, that rapid burial is so that you don't get scavengers coming along and eating

[Michael Stevens]

all the flesh immediately and ripping the bones apart so that they're not even found together. Yeah.

[Hannah Fry]

Or even chewing on the bones.

[Michael Stevens]

Chewing on the bones.

[Hannah Fry]

You know, if you, if a creature dies just in a kind of open grassy plain, it's, it's game over. No, no fossils there. But what happens when it is buried is that over time, all of the fleshy stuff will decay and you'll be left with just the hardest biological material, the bones. But inside the bones you have these like, cavities, these porous spaces where, you know, bone marrow, where blood vessels and so on once were. So then the next step. So once you've had that lucky accident, you've just got these bones that are buried. The next step is something called the per. Mineralization. Essentially what happens here is that you get really mineral rich groundwater that passes through wherever this thing is buried, seeps through, and then as the water filters through these microscopic little pores, I mean, we're talking millions of years here. Okay. Like really, really, really long time. You get all the minerals that are dissolved in the water that end up slowly, slowly, slowly, molecule by molecule, replacing the organic matter inside until the original bone ends up becoming this, this solid stone. You also then need loads of new sediment to kind of pressurize it down, to solidify that into, into, into rock. And then the most unusual bit is it then needs to be pushed up to the surface and actually found by somebody before it ends up decaying into, into nothingness.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah.

[Hannah Fry]

So here's the thing about this particular one. I mean, it's unbelievably unlikely, unbelievably unlikely that any bones ever made into a fossil. And incredibly, incredibly unlikely that you might just chance bombers. I feel extremely lucky to have found this one. This one though, where it was in France, this particular area in sort of the middle of France, they have these very famous caves there. This is where the oldest cave paintings have been found.

[Michael Stevens]

That's where we're talking.

[Hannah Fry]

That's where we're talking all around there. So in the last Ice age, which is about 15,000 years ago or so, there were human settlers. We know that there were human settlers that were living inside of those caves, but also there were an enormous number of reindeer wandering around.

[Michael Stevens]

Well, yeah. And they wound up in the cave paintings.

[Hannah Fry]

They wound up in the cave paintings, absolutely. But they were also this really great source of meat. Okay. The humans were eating. They were having, like, reindeer buffets left, right and center, Monday through Sunday. And what would happen when the humans would eat these reindeer is they would discard the bones inside the caves in this, like, pile of bones that would then very easily get covered over by kind of silt on the floor, you know, sediment from. From the top falling down. And so there is an increased number of bones of reindeers that were eaten by Ice age humans. Now, I said this is only 15,000 years ago. Right. So this is actually probably what's known as like a pre fossil. It hasn't gone through the full fossilization process, but at some point then the cave shifted, the geology of things shifted. The river kind of washed in, eroded some of it away, brought this bone. This is what I'm saying, right. I'm saying that this. I'm. This is like prehistoric trash.

[Michael Stevens]

Right?

[Hannah Fry]

That's. That's what I think this is.

[Michael Stevens]

So you're saying that some of these early human artists could have eaten that reindeer, right?

[Hannah Fry]

I think so. I think that's what we're looking at. Yeah.

[Michael Stevens]

It could have been the muse that inspired one of their cave paintings, which is very cool.

[Hannah Fry]

Or fueled it indeed. Now, if there's definitely been fossils that have been found that have signs of being cut by humans. Right. I don't know. I'm not an expert. So I've looked quite closely and can't see anything that. That looks really distinctively like a cut mark as opposed to something that's just been, like, slightly smashed along the riverbed. Yeah. But nonetheless, that's what I'm going for. I think this is. I think this is an Ice age snack.

[Michael Stevens]

That's really cool, isn't it? That's really, really cool. Such an important part of not just animal history on Earth, but human history and art history.

[Hannah Fry]

Exactly. The red stuff on it. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is.

[Michael Stevens]

It looks like paint.

[Hannah Fry]

It does look like paint.

[Michael Stevens]

It looks like it got some paint splashed on it a long, long time ago.

[Hannah Fry]

It could also be that that's been in my house for quite a long time. And it could be that my daughter's decided to paint it. I'll be honest, that is also a possibility.

[Michael Stevens]

That's very much a possibility.

[Hannah Fry]

But yeah, that's my artifact for the day. I love that.

[Michael Stevens]

Thank you for showing that to me. You are welcome.

[Hannah Fry]

Have you ever found a fossil? Uh, yeah.

[Michael Stevens]

I mean, I found like fossils in some rocks in my grandparents yard. Like little shells and stuff. Yeah, I guess I don't. I'm making it sound like it wasn't cool, but there was just. There were so many of them, it didn't seem very special.

[Hannah Fry]

Wait, where's this? In Kansas?

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah.

[Hannah Fry]

That's incredible. What? You open up the rocks and found shells inside?

[Michael Stevens]

Oh yeah. Like so many.

[Hannah Fry]

That's. I've never had that experience.

[Michael Stevens]

Oh really? It was like, oh, there's another fossil. And it was like you wouldn't even keep them. Cause it was just like, wow.

[Hannah Fry]

No.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Hannah Fry]

How did you know what rocks they were going to be in?

[Michael Stevens]

Because it was a rock. I mean it was all of them. It was a certain kind of rock that was used as like a retaining wall. And it was very much like a striated kind of thing and sheets would break off and you'd be like, oh, there's fossils here. There's all these fossil shelled animals. Yeah.

[Hannah Fry]

Because I guess in a way you turn the sort of probability on its head. Right. The chance of any of us becoming fossils is almost zero. But at the same time, if you're in a particular part of the world which did have the conditions in which to create fossils, then your chances of finding them are really high.

[Michael Stevens]

Well, right. And sure, we're also looking at like a billion years of history in that one rock. Like it's, it's not just all the little shelled prehistoric creatures that were living at a certain time, it's like billions and billions and billions of them over millions and millions of years all had like a little bit of a chance of being a fossil. So you eventually find like a dozen fossils just in this, this one rock.

[Hannah Fry]

I've been down to the Jurassic Coast. This is where Mary Anning made her name. Right. Who sort of collected the fossils. You know that she sells seashells.

[Michael Stevens]

Was it about her?

[Hannah Fry]

It's about Mary Anning.

[Michael Stevens]

No kidding. So Mary Anning, she was like a girl, she was young, right, when she found like the first dinosaur fossils?

[Hannah Fry]

Absolutely. I've been down there because, you know, there really was at one point this plethora of these things down there on the Jurassic coast in the south of England. I've been down there. Didn't find anything. I mean, did I try very hard. I'd already had my find. I'd already had my. My reindeer, you know, snack find, sort of ice age kfc.

[Michael Stevens]

I'm looking up when Mary Anning found this stuff.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah.

[Michael Stevens]

Because I just think it's very cool that major discoveries. Okay, so this is in the early 1800s.

[Hannah Fry]

Right.

[Michael Stevens]

Which I just find so cool because it means people like George Washington didn't know that dinosaurs ever existed.

[Hannah Fry]

Oh, that's such a fun idea.

[Michael Stevens]

Isn't that funny?

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah, that's really nice. But the thing is, is that presumably people had found these. I remember hearing a story about some British academics who were. This is like 1950s or so, who are visiting China, went to a Chinese medicine center shop. And I don't know if you've ever been to one of these, but they are the most amazing places. They have like all. It feels like you're in a kind of ancient apothecary, which you sort of are in a way, you know, like mushrooms and like snakes and like fried lizards and everything you can imagine on the war. And these academics were in there and they were like, what's. What's that giant bone that you've got? Oh, yeah, yeah. That's dragon thigh. Okay, Dragon thigh. Let's have a look at it. Anyway, it's from an iguanodon. Wow.

[Michael Stevens]

Well, yeah, of course. Because before Marianning, people had found things.

[Gary Lineker]

Yeah.

[Hannah Fry]

They just didn't know what they were.

[Michael Stevens]

Know what they were. They would think, hey, this must be a cyclops. It's proof of. Of these mythological creatures. Even artifacts from early humans, the, like, sharpened stones, they were found all the time back in the day. And people called them thunderstones and thought that they were maybe something from the gods or from the sky. But it really was like one of the first axes ever made, you know?

[Ad Voice / Guest]

Yeah.

[Michael Stevens]

Not cool. Like, it's. It's. It blows my mind how quickly we kind of forget our own past. I'm obsessed with the understanding of prehistory in antiquity. To what extent did people in ancient Greece conceive of a time before agriculture, for example, and in human history? And it's hard to know because we only have so much from them. But there was someone, and I forget who it was, who wrote about how? The Greeks, meaning him. Ancient Greeks, like us, used to be nomadic, pre agriculture people. And I think the idea came from the fact that there were nomadic people that they could witness who, like, didn't have language in the Same way. And they'd be like, I think we were like them before, too. And that there's some story here. There's also, I think Eridatus believed it could have been him. It could have been some other historian believed that he could trace his genealogy back to the gods. He'd go back, like, I don't know, 14 generations. And I come from, you know, the gods who created the world. But then he went to Egypt and he talked with pharaohs there, and they were like, oh, you like history? You like old things. Look here. And they showed him this hall, and there was a statue of, like, every pharaoh. And it went back, like, 50 pharaohs. And all of them are these, like, humans that they have records of. And he's like, oh, my gosh. Humanity is so much older than I thought because they've tracked the years of the reign for all these pharaohs going back further than I even thought humans existed. And this was this, like, major moment for. For Western thought to go, wow, humans, like, where did we really come from?

[Hannah Fry]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Ad Voice / Guest]

Yeah.

[Hannah Fry]

I think you sometimes get traces of what our ancestors thought through stories. You know, I always think, look, this is something. It becomes impossible to prove. You can't. This is not falsifiable. But things like the story of Atlantis, where there was, you know, a really great city that was one day flooded by this. This great wave that kind of came and took everything away. And. Okay, there's been people who've looked quite seriously for where this might be. We do know that there were some human civilizations that were genuinely washed away by, you know, sort of in one day.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah.

[Hannah Fry]

I think one of the really great candidates for this is. I think it's called Doggerland. Do you know about Doggerland?

[Michael Stevens]

Oh, that used to be part of England.

[Hannah Fry]

Exactly. Used to connect England over to Denmark and France, the continent, essentially. And one day there was this shift in the tectonic plates up by, you know, off the coast of Norway, this unbelievable tsunami that you. I mean, inconceivable of how big this thing was and came in and just completely washed away all of these settlements. I mean, you find sediment sitting on top of human settlements inland in Scotland, you know, sort of 50, 100 miles inland, where this tsunami kind of came in and covered over everything. So. And I sort of wonder, like, how much of those stories that we still have around are actually based on real things that really happened.

[Michael Stevens]

And they were shared, like, orally only. And so they became what very much feel like myths today.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah.

[Michael Stevens]

And yet, yeah, the flood Myths that we see in the Bible, that we see in Gilgamesh could have been a story from thousands of years before where maybe the Mediterranean suddenly filled up and just. It felt like the entire world was flooded. And these things may have happened and then they wound up getting written down as stories of like, yeah, this happened, but again, it's a game of telephone that's gone through a hundred generations. Maybe not a hundred, but dozens of generations.

[Hannah Fry]

Well, I think maybe. Maybe a hundred. Right. Maybe these same stories, in some form or another, end up being passed down more than a thousand years.

[Michael Stevens]

I want to hear those stories. I want to know if someone in, say, ancient Mesopotamia has a great, great grandfather who was. There was a time before writing, you know, when your ancestors were kids, they had just had to talk to each other. They didn't have any of this written word, this modern stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had to find things to eat. We didn't have fences. Yeah. And the problem is that human civilization and, like, technological change was so slow that there wasn't like a. Just a generational gap. Like, you know, we didn't have a concept of interior consciousness. When I was a kid, we were all just spirits, you know, but like, that. At some point that changed. And I'm fascinated by when people realized, oh, man, like, we didn't. We didn't used to have opposable thumbs. You know, unfortunately, that happened so slowly. We don't have that story of like, oh, we were living in trees when I was a kid, and now you all got homes and containers.

[Hannah Fry]

But look at you with the invention of the bucket.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Kids are all about wheels nowadays. They're not living in the moment.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah. But here's a nice thing to imagine. Literally all of that time, while all of that stuff was going on, you know, Doggerland and stories of Atlantis and. And all of these different Greek philosophers, this was hiding in a trash pile in a cave in France.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah. Waiting to become what you would find so many years later.

[Hannah Fry]

Now, I should tell you, if you do find fossil. This is many years ago that I found this one. If you do find a fossil, you are supposed to leave it there or take it to a museum.

[Michael Stevens]

That's a very good point. Yeah. Tell someone, because even. Even moving, it changes what we know about its story and what we can learn from it.

[Hannah Fry]

Don't do what I did many, many years ago.

[Michael Stevens]

Good lesson.

[Hannah Fry]

Still, it's quite cool to own it, though, isn't it?

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

[Hannah Fry]

All right, we're going to come back after the break with some of your questions.

[Gary Lineker]

Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goal Hangers. The rest is football. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies, most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid market exchange rate like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, Get Wise T's and C's Apply.

[Hannah Fry]

This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk. In the uk, nearly one in two people will face cancer in their lifetime. The question is, could science stop cancer before it begins?

[Michael Stevens]

And over the past 50 years, Cancer Research UK has helped double cancer survival in the UK. And that's proof of what research can achieve. Like take cervical cancer. Almost every case is caused by hpv, the human papillomavirus. And when scientists uncovered that link, prevention became possible.

[Hannah Fry]

Indeed it did, by vaccine and it's protection that works way before the cancer itself can actually grow. After the vaccine was introduced, cervical cancer rates in England were nearly 90% lower than expected in women in their 20s. I mean we're now genuinely at a point where this is a disease that is disappearing in younger women in the uk. This is something that I really hope my daughters will never have to deal with.

[Michael Stevens]

For more information about Cancer Research uk, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org restiscience this episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses Setup required compatibility and availability various 18/.

[Hannah Fry]

All right, first question for you Michael. This is from Matt who asks what would happen to Earth if the sun Simply vanished for 72 hours.

[Michael Stevens]

Oh geez. In some ways not a whole lot. In other ways an enormous amount. Like if the sun, sun disappears just magically it's like gone, you know, there's nothing caught. It didn't get sucked in by a black hole or anything else. All we need to worry about is the sun's gone. It would take eight minutes for us to find out, right? Not just the light from the sun, meaning its entire shape. It would continue to be in the sky for us. As we receive its last, you know, light, its gravity too would still act on us. We would continue to orbit this non existent now star, but then we wouldn't. And Earth would, would still move, but it would just start moving tangentially out in a straight line out of its orbit.

[Hannah Fry]

Like being flung off of a little roundabout.

[Michael Stevens]

It would be, yeah, but you know, I don't think we would even feel it. Yeah, because our orbit is so big that the difference between curving such that after 365 days you're back to where you were is not much different than just going in a straight line. So I don't think we would feel much, honestly. And then here's the thing, for the first three days it would be dark, right? And it would get colder, but not that quickly. Earth holds in heat pretty well. And so for just three days I think we would all be, I don't

[Hannah Fry]

know, we'll be fine.

[Michael Stevens]

I think there definitely parts of the world would be fine. Surprisingly, if you, if you wait too long, it gets very cold and the only place you can live is going to be around places where there's immense geothermal heat available. So Yellowstone would be good, Iceland would be good. You could, people could still live there.

[Hannah Fry]

Or you could dig down, you could

[Michael Stevens]

dig down, down at the bottom of the ocean where you've got geothermal vents and a lot of heat. The creatures, the little microorganisms that live there, they wouldn't know the sun was gone. They don't even know there is a sun. They live in complete darkness. But they get all the nutrients and heat that they need from the Earth itself. Like they're literally independent of the sun. They only need the sun in the fact that it helps. Well, no, they don't even need it. I wonder.

[Hannah Fry]

But then at the same time you do get some decomposing matter, right, that falls down to the bottom of the ocean. That, that, I mean, I'm just thinking here about that, that rule that people say, oh, all energy comes from the sun, everything comes from the sun, yes.

[Michael Stevens]

That's what I'm talking about.

[Hannah Fry]

But actually, if you get decomposing biological matter. That falls to the bottom of the ocean. And that's what they're feeding on. That's where they're sort of indirectly getting energy from the sun.

[Michael Stevens]

Definitely. I think there are, though, extremophiles that do not rely on decaying matter. That can live off of the minerals and the gases that come out of these geothermal vents.

[Hannah Fry]

Wow.

[Michael Stevens]

And they almost never needed a sun. Because if the sun hadn't formed. But Earth had out of this protoplanetary disk. Or if Earth had formed and then gotten flung out into interstellar space. There still would have been enough heat. Well, I mean, I don't know if life would have evolved. But, like, let's assume that that still happens. They could have just been fine on this completely dark planet. Where it's always night. Now, Matt's question says that the sun comes back after 72 hours. And that's where things get a bit spicy. A bit spicy because so Earth is going in this orbit. Normally the sun disappears and it just flies out tangentially. But three days later, boom, bunch of gravity's back. Is it gonna get pulled back into a now very different orbit? I would assume so. In which case, yeah, then things are bad. Because you've got a sun back. And you've got night and day again. But you're now much further away from the sun. Too far, I think, for liquid water to exist. So I don't know how far the Earth would go in three days. How far away from the sun. It wouldn't be good. I'm just wondering again, around geothermal areas, There could still be liquid water. I don't think it would mean the end of life. I think it would definitely be a major change.

[Hannah Fry]

Well, because, I mean, even if you had a situation where night and day, Summer and winter were messed up. Even if you were still allowed to have liquid water, let's say. But actually, the plants that we have, I mean, many of them would just die. Because they are so perfectly tuned to the rhythm of the planet. That they just would not be able to survive. And it's one of the reasons why we bring plants inside. And they're just like, what? Can't deal with the difference in light.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah. So I don't think it'd be the end of life, though. I think there are plants that would be like, oh, we are, you know, thousands and thousands of miles further from the sun than we used to be. I mean, tens of thousands I don't know. How fast does the Earth orbit the Sun? I'm going to guess. Look it up. But I'm going to. I'm going to put in a guess. I'm going to guess that it's like 100,000 miles a day.

[Hannah Fry]

67,000 miles per hour.

[Michael Stevens]

Okay. About 66,000 miles per hour. So after three days, the Earth would be, you know, like 300,000 kilometers further away, which is kind of. Where is the Moon?

[Hannah Fry]

Well, that's what I was thinking. I think it's about 10 times the distance between here in the moon.

[Michael Stevens]

The moon is about 400,000km away, but the Earth only orbits a hundred thousand kilometers. Oh, per hour.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah.

[Michael Stevens]

Oh, goodness.

[Gary Lineker]

Yeah.

[Michael Stevens]

So you're right. The Earth would be much further away from its current position than the Moon is from us.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah.

[Michael Stevens]

So, yeah, that would drastically change the climate.

[Ad Voice / Guest]

It would be.

[Michael Stevens]

I don't think it would be the end of life.

[Hannah Fry]

Okay, well then it's fine. Let's just.

[Michael Stevens]

Fine. I mean, let's do it.

[Hannah Fry]

Look, it's still a scientific experiment. It's still going to gain knowledge. Overall, I think. Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, next question. This is from Anna, Hannah. Michael. I have some gossip. Oh, actually, there's no gossip. But why do we love it so much? How did it evolve? Is it true that humans evolved language because they wanted to gossip? Okay, I unashamedly adore gossip.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah.

[Hannah Fry]

I think anyone who says they don't is lying. I like nice gossip, by the way. I don't like mean gossip. Avoid mean gossip. But this is absolutely something that we are evolved to adore. This is some work by Dunbar that she's referencing in her question here, who argues. Again, this is something that's quite difficult to falsify. It's really difficult to sort of say this is the definitive answer. But Dunbar anyway argued that human language didn't evolve to coordinate hunting or, like, attack dangerous predators or whatever, but that instead it was like a form of vocal grooming. So when you look at monkeys, they're all happily grooming each other. It's really delightful. It feels really nice. Same as someone stroking your hair, you know, it's like, it's a lovely, lovely thing. But because we have these larger social groups, you can't. You can't physically do that. You can't sort of physically go around and massage each other. But instead, if you're chatting about social relationships, you're kind of doing the same thing, but just in a wordy way instead, you know, you're building a fire. You're like gossiping about the group over there. You're connecting all together at the same time without needing to necessarily physically touch one another.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that the type of communication that would be needed to organize a hunt or, you know, assign roles in helping tend a fire is one thing, but what happens to a language when what's pushing its development is gossip, it's just. That's just so much bigger and faster.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah, totally.

[Michael Stevens]

Let me look up the etymology of gossip, because it's actually pretty cool. It comes from God. God sip.

[Hannah Fry]

No.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah, let me.

[Hannah Fry]

As in God absolutely loves a drink from that delicious cup.

[Michael Stevens]

As in like God child.

[Hannah Fry]

Oh.

[Michael Stevens]

Meaning a relative. Yeah. So, yeah, the word gossip comes from the word godsip, meaning a relative, a sibling. And so gossip was a. Was talk about the people that you knew closely. And I think that we know them closely in the way that we do uniquely as humans. Because we talk about them. We don't just see them in their behavior, but we have versions of them in our own heads. And we are this social animal that's. That's social in a way that's different than an aunt or a bee, which are also hyper social.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah, yeah, but we, we're cognitive social.

[Michael Stevens]

We, we're cognitive, we're judgmentally social.

[Hannah Fry]

Which also makes sense, though, because if you think that our societies are built on mutual cooperation, you know, it kind of does make sense that you need a mechanism to. To identify who's being a bit selfish. Who. To identify who's, like, happy to eat meat but refuses to go on the hunt. You know that's right.

[Michael Stevens]

I think that some of that is even like just the surface. I think we are social creatures in terms of judgment. We come up with completely arbitrary, unrelated to cooperation and survival reasons to judge people's behavior. We come up with rituals, which is defined as a thing that literally doesn't cause anything specific. You just do it. Why? Because it doesn't need to be done. And yet it does.

[Hannah Fry]

Give me an example.

[Michael Stevens]

An example would be things like burial practices, rain dances, the various ways ceremonial statues are treated. These things have no obvious causal connection. And yet participating in these rituals, the way you paint your body, the way you act and don't act, they don't have any real, like, scientific, obvious reason to be done the way that they do, except that doing them means you're part of this group, this, this group of relatives, this small community, this godsip. The gossip is what enforces that. And Keeps us together.

[Hannah Fry]

The silly little outfits the academics wear.

[Michael Stevens]

Exactly. And to this day, we often think of gossip as, like, a thing that is very feminine or a thing that is very. Like, it's trashy. People think of it as trashy and narrow, but yet, no, no, no. The vast majority of news we consume, even respectable news, is just gossip. It's. Did you know what these anonymous members of the administration said about this? And we go, oh, well, this isn't really gossip. This is important national security news. And it's both.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah, I totally agree. I also, I have definitely discovered over the years that it depends what format you're delivering science stories in. But if you want to grab people's attention, you know, if you're doing a reel or a YouTube short or whatever. Absolutely. The number one thing that I think in my head when I'm like, right, how am I gonna script this? Is how do I make it sound as much like gossip as possible?

[Michael Stevens]

Right?

[Hannah Fry]

Because that is the thing that makes everybody's ears prick up and everybody want to pay attention immediately because we just can't help it. We are so wired that way.

[Michael Stevens]

We're wired that way. We want to hear those stories, and we want to be part of those stories. I also think that what motivates me when I come up with, how do I tell this story? Is how do I make this a thing that the viewers can then share so that they feel more interesting? And they feel like when people talk about them behind their back and gossip about them, they'll say, wow, did you hear? Michael had a really good point about this question? And da, da, da. That's what people want. They want fuel to make themselves more interesting in gossip about themselves.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah, you're right. I mean, everyone talks about, like, oh, make it shareable, make it gossipable. Gossipable. That's essentially what we're talking about. Okay, last question. This one's from John. Why don't we just chuck all radioactive waste into a volcano?

[Michael Stevens]

Well, because we don't want to destroy our species. I mean, is this a joke question? Like, okay, no, it would not be good. It wouldn't get rid of it. In fact, it would only make it hotter. And a volcano, it doesn't get rid of the radioactiveness. Well, it doesn't, because volcanoes are actively, like, giving their molten contents onto the surface. The only thing that we can do with radioactive waste that I think really would make a difference is put it in the sun, get it really far away, throw it into the sun, and then it's not coming back. And, like, the sun's gravity will tear it apart. It'll get destroyed. The atoms will still exist, but the sun's far away, and Earth's atmosphere will protect us. And there's already a bunch of radiation coming from the sun. I think that's where we should be putting a lot of stuff that we want to get rid of that microorganisms can't get rid of. Like Styrofoam. Just put it in the sun.

[Hannah Fry]

One tiny problem with that. Just a slight objection. To get it to the sun, I mean, you've got to put it in a rocket ship and blast it off the surface of the Earth, which essentially means attaching a bomb to it. You know, I think. I think. No, I think let's just bury it.

[Michael Stevens]

I think this is why we have to build the space elevator.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah.

[Michael Stevens]

So then we can just put it in a little cart that gets carted up into an orbital height, and then we can just let it drift into the sun. And now it's not our problem anymore.

[Hannah Fry]

Yeah, wouldn't that be nice?

[Michael Stevens]

And when it falls into the sun, all it'll do is make the sun a little tiny bit brighter. It'll also make the sun live less long. Oh, that's. That's what we're losing. Because the. The. The more mass the sun has, the hotter it burns, the quicker it burns through its fuel.

[Hannah Fry]

Hey, we've got billions of years. Don't worry about that.

[Michael Stevens]

We've got billions of years. What's another couple, you know, literally, like, a big chunk of radioactive waste would probably take literally a nanosecond off the sun's light. Let's do it.

[Hannah Fry]

Let's just do it. Let's just do it. Okay, so in this episode, we have. We've decided that we're going to get rid of the sun, but not before we chuck all of our radioactive waste in there. I mean, this is the kind of gossip that you came for. If you enjoyed this episode, then please do like and subscribe on YouTube or leave us a comment. We read all of them. You can leave us a question underneath wherever you have found this podcast or send us an email. The rest is science.

[Michael Stevens]

Can you believe what Michael said about the sun? It was disgusting. He's just. People today don't respect the sun. That's what we're talking about. Send us more gossip. We'll see you next time.