What Happens Inside Earth's Forbidden Zones? - The Rest Is Science

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[00:01]
A
Welcome to the rest of Science. I'm Hannah Fry.
[00:03]
B
And I'm Michael Stevens.
[00:05]
A
And got a little treat for you today because we've got a field notes episode, as usual, this part of the week. A little bit later on, we're going to come to your questions, your big ideas, your interjections that you wanted to send us@restedsciencegoalhanger.com but right now, I've got a little object for you, Michael.
[00:23]
B
I love the field notes where you bring the object because I get to just be an audience member for a while.
[00:28]
A
You know, you genuinely don't know what's coming up.
[00:30]
B
I thrive when I don't know what's going on.
[00:33]
A
Okay, should I give you an audio clue first?
[00:35]
B
Yes, please do.
[00:36]
A
I'll be honest with you. If you get this from the audio clue, I think there's a zero percent chance. I think there's a zero percent chance that you're going to get this from the audio clue.
[00:46]
B
Okay, now you've got me really, really interested. I'm going to see if I can crack this with just the audio.
[00:50]
A
Okay, ready?
[00:54]
B
It sounds like a baby's rattle type toy. Like keys on a plastic keychain. I want to say a plasticky sound. It wasn't like metal unless it was hollow metal.
[01:05]
A
I think it's more like metal on glass.
[01:08]
B
Well, you know what it is, though?
[01:09]
A
What the heck? Sorry.
[01:12]
B
It's like something rolling around in something hollow. Like a ball in a ball.
[01:18]
A
You're okay. Look, obviously that's the absolute closest you're going to get because what it actually is is a bit of barbed wire in a glass jar. Oh, why do I have a bit of barbed wire in a glass jar?
[01:29]
B
I don't know. It looks strange, doesn't it?
[01:33]
A
Looks very strange indeed. This is a bit of barbed wire from the demilitarized zone between north and South Korea.
[01:41]
B
If you're only listening, Hannah is holding a glass jar that's kind of a little taller than a film canister, but about as wide, if you're old enough to remember what those are. And it's got, like, a cork at the top, but inside there's a little snipping, A little piece of barbed wire and, like, some rocks.
[01:57]
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There is a gift shop at the dmz.
[02:00]
B
I didn't know that.
[02:01]
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Is that not the craziest thing you've ever heard? And I'm not talking about, like, oh, you're away from the demilitarized zone. No, no, no, no, no. I mean literally in the demilitarized zone. There is a fun fair.
[02:12]
B
Oh, that makes so much sense though, because so many tourists to South Korea would be like, I want to go up there and see see North Korea with my eyes and I've got money to spend.
[02:25]
A
Uhhuh.
[02:26]
B
I bet they're just putting up new barbed wire every day and then clipping
[02:29]
A
it up just to take the old stuff down. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk.
[02:41]
B
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But incredibly, Cancer Research UK scientists can spot these errors. And by finding them, They've helped double UK cancer survival over the last 50 years and are driving even more discoveries that could tackle over 200 types of cancer.
[03:37]
A
For for more information about Cancer Research uk, their research and breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org restiscience
[03:48]
B
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 set up required compatibility and availability various 18/.
[04:21]
A
The other things that you could buy. By the way, at the dmz. I sort of feel a bit funny playing Z, but it also doesn't sound right to say dmz. The other things that you could buy at the DMZ gift shop are wallets that are shaped like hand grenades and then all kinds of like little figurines of North Korean leaders that I think possibly the North Korean leaders would not enjoy.
[04:47]
B
But you know the people who own those gift shops, they're lobbying both countries very hard to keep this demilitarized zone going because their business depends upon the political situation.
[05:00]
A
You are absolutely right. And they're not the only ones who are desperate to keep this war going because Actually, what I want to talk to you about today is not the gift shop at the dmz. It is the animals that have flourished.
[05:17]
B
Oh, yeah.
[05:18]
A
In the no go zone that has been created by human intervention. And there's a few of these places around the world. Right. The DMZ is one of them, which has basically been completely unoccupied by humans since the 1950s. And in the decades that have passed since, there is this complete flourishing of nature within that zone in this crazy way. So nobody can step foot in this zone. Yeah, certainly not. You certainly wouldn't be authorized to do so.
[05:49]
B
Right. I mean, you can, but you may not.
[05:52]
A
You may not. You may not. And also, it would be extremely ill advised because the entire place is totally covered in landmines. Yeah. So also, you would not and should not. Okay, good.
[06:03]
B
You may not, you should not, and you could not. Well, pieces of you might make it over.
[06:10]
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So even conservationists are not able to go into this zone in order to do proper surveys of the animals that are there.
[06:19]
B
So then what flourishes?
[06:21]
A
So there's all kinds of bird species. There are. There are rumors that there are leopards and tigers that have found a home within this region. No tiger. There's no sort of really good evidence of any tiger having been spotted. So I think that one might be a myth. But there are boars, there are deer, There are vampire deer, in fact, which don't grow horns. They grow sort of like funny teeth.
[06:50]
B
Oh, wow.
[06:51]
A
But the other thing is all of these paddy fields that were abandoned.
[06:54]
B
Wait, paddy fields? Like, I know. How about how long the demilitarized zone is, but how thick is it? How wide across?
[07:04]
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Only about four kilometers.
[07:05]
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Okay, so you've got a four kilometer band separating north and South Korea where people may, should, and could not enter. Nature is healing there in its own
[07:16]
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way, and it's healing really well. By the way, there's some estimates that say 38% of the critically endangered species in Korea live in that tiny little area.
[07:29]
B
Whoa.
[07:30]
A
So it's not just the gift shop owners who are desperate for this place, not for the war to never end. You know, if. If suddenly there was a peace treaty and everybody there was reunited Korea, or however it ended up being sold. It would just be devastating for. For the ecosystem that has been created in this. In this abandoned land. Right. It would be completely devastating. The paddy fields, by the way, that were abandoned in the 1950s, they turned over very quickly into grassland, and then they very quickly from then started growing willow. And now all of these paddy fields have turned into these elder dominated forests. So you get these little pockets. And it's just this amazing study that you can make in what happens when humans completely vacate an area. It's like really extraordinary just how much nature thrives.
[08:25]
B
And it's different than what's going on in Chernobyl because there you have the added variable of radiation.
[08:33]
A
Exactly. We've talked about the black frogs that you see in Chernobyl, how the radiation has ended up impacting the evolutionary path of different creatures that are there. That frogs with darker skin were able to survive the radiation better than those that didn't. Those that didn't would die out. And so the closer you get to the original site in Chernobyl, the darker the frogs get. There are places that are sort of in the middle. So I was incredibly lucky to get to go to the DMZ when I was filming a documentary. I've also been inside the exclusion zone of Fukushima, which is somewhere between the two. So it has the radiation element that Chernobyl has, but nowhere near the same sort of scale. Right. And it's. Chernobyl is like, there's certain parts of Chernobyl that will never be inhabitable by humans. Right. There's no going there, ever. But in Fukushima, the idea is that slowly, slowly they are trying to decrease the radius of how far people are not allowed in. So it's sort of like a. It's not never. How did we say it for the dmz? You can't, you shouldn't, you won't, or something. Yeah.
[09:47]
B
You may not, you should not and you cannot.
[09:50]
A
Right. So from Fukushima, it's more like you may not, you probably should not. And you've got. Can maybe in future, essentially.
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B
All right, it's a little more hopeful.
[10:01]
A
A little more hopeful.
[10:02]
B
Tell me about Fukushima.
[10:03]
A
All right, so here's the thing, okay. Going inside Fukushima is. It's wild. It's really wild.
[10:12]
B
So describe it for me, because I've never been there. It is an area of land.
[10:17]
A
So you are just inside of the coast in Japan, where the tsunami basically overwhelmed the sea wall of a power plant.
[10:27]
B
A nuclear power plant.
[10:28]
A
A nuclear power plant. Important, important distinction. Flooded the reactor and caused radiation to spill out essentially in the surrounding area. So it remains very radioactive. Nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl, but really dangerous still. And when you go in there. So we didn't get to go right up to the reactor, but we got to go in the sort of the controlled zone. And when you go in there are human settlements within that region that were abandoned on the day and have been returned to. Not only has the forest and, you know, nature essentially reclaimed these buildings and sort of swallowed them up from the ground and around the roof is caving in, there's rubble everywhere. Just the elements have had their way essentially with these buildings. But you also, where they are closed off and locked away, you look inside the windows and you get this sense of the panic people felt when they left on that day.
[11:27]
B
And for Context, this was 15 years ago.
[11:30]
A
It was 15 years ago. Right, exactly.
[11:32]
B
So that's how long humans have left it abandoned to nature.
[11:37]
A
Or the other way around is to say that's how quickly it gets swallowed by nature, how quickly nature returns to dominance. You look in the window and you see the slippers of people sort of rushed as they were leaving and they were putting their shoes back on to get out of the building. There's like teddy bears kind of strewn on the side. There's like, there was one place where I looked in the window and there was like a crate of half empty beers that they must have been aiming to take to the recycling, but then never had the opportunity to do so. And when we got to go inside this exclusion zone, we were going for this story about rewilding. And we spoke to some researchers and they told us that there were some radioactive bears within the exclusion zone. We were going to go and film these radioactive bears, and then when we got there, we realized there'd been a slight mistranslation because it wasn't radioactive bears, it was boars.
[12:30]
B
Oh, okay. Still fun.
[12:32]
A
Still fun. But also, it wasn't boars so much as boar, singular. And actually it'd only ever been caught on capital once. So instead we filmed some radioactive dragonflies, which was, you know, a close second.
[12:47]
B
So they're radioactive in that they are themselves radioactive. If they land on you, you're exposed to ionizing radiation from the body of the dragonfly.
[12:58]
A
I don't think within Fukushima it's quite that extreme.
[13:01]
B
Okay, so it's more like dragonflies that live in an exclusion zone.
[13:07]
A
Exactly right. But what I sort of started thinking was how many of these different exclusion zones there are around the world, how many different places are now completely untouchable because of human. Human decisions, human moments. So you've got Chernobyl, of course, Fukushima. There's also a place called Lake Karachay in Russia. And this is a place that the lake shore sort of this, you know, around this little lake. It read around 600 Rontgen in 1990, which is basically, you stay there for an hour and you're dead. Okay. That's kind of the level that we're talking.
[13:49]
B
That's a lot.
[13:49]
A
This is where the Russians were testing their nuclear weapons, essentially. There's also the Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, where 23 different bombs between 1946 and 1958 were detonated. Still totally uninhabitable. And the problem there, it's not so much the ground, it's more about the food chain. Because all in the coconut palms and the breadfruit, anything that's grown there will also carry a dose. So when you were saying about radioactive dragonflies. It's radioactive coconuts.
[14:23]
B
Yes. And the people who used to live there still don't.
[14:27]
A
Still don't.
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Right.
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A
I mean, astonishing.
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I mean, at the time, the US government really did think it was gonna be temporary. They were like, oh, yeah, you guys gotta leave for a bit. We'll do our tests and you can come back. And now I think a lot of them are, and their descendants are in like Arkansas.
[14:44]
A
Right. And. And the thing is, I mean, there's some of these places may eventually be reinhabitable. So, you know, Bikini Atoll, for instance, that researchers can go there. It's not that you. The sort of like passing dose isn't if you're very careful and very, you know, take the correct precautions that it is possible to visit. But there are other places in Marshall Islands. The Tomb, for example, where there is a concrete dome of 120,000 tons of plutonium contaminated debris and also sort of cracking, which is. I was so bad. But that place is indefinitely. There's no going there ever. You know, it's just too much.
[15:27]
B
And where is that?
[15:27]
A
That's also Marshall Islands as well. Runit island it's called.
[15:31]
B
And it's called the Tomb. Oh, the Tomb. What's the island called?
[15:34]
A
Runit Island.
[15:35]
B
Runit Island.
[15:37]
A
There are other places that are not just because of nuclear testing. So there is in Zone Rouge, it's called in France, which is. It's still legally after World War I. This is a place near Verdun. And 99% of the plants that grow there will die due to arsenic in the soil. I mean, we're talking crazy. It's about 17% by weight in the soil. Right. This is like, it's horrendous.
[16:07]
B
So human wandering around is excluded for good reason. Have they tried to do anything to fix this or are they just kind of leaving it?
[16:19]
A
Just leaving it? I think, yeah. Someone in the comments may correct Me. But my understanding is they're leaving it. In 1919, they were like, look, it's impossible to clean. Human life's impossible there. Don't even go there.
[16:29]
B
That was used in World War I, and now it's just polluted this area of land so much that even the plants aren't. They're not flourishing there.
[16:38]
A
No, exactly.
[16:39]
B
Maybe for their short lifetimes they are, because there's no human development happening.
[16:45]
A
And that's one of the things that makes the DMZ so interesting, because, I mean, they did spray with Agent Orange when the line was drawn in the map, essentially when this separation of north and south happened, which was when Japan evacuated Korea during the Second World War. And there were a couple of American generals who'd never been to Korea and needed to work out which bit the Soviets should take and which bits the Americans should take. And they just chose a line of latitude on the map. It didn't take into account that there were railway lines going through there, there were rivers cutting across. It's just like. Just kind of very bluntly and brutally. There was a bit of fighting for a few years, instantly, until 1953, when they signed this peace treaty. Sorry, forgive me, it's not a peace treaty, crucially, it's a ceasefire. So actually they are still technically at war. But that was what really set the boundaries of these two. But that's sort of what makes it interesting, is that it is a byproduct of war. But there aren't these things like anthrax radiation, you know, all of these incredibly horrible arsenic or anything like that. There's none of these sort of incredible weapons of war that make it mean that their wildlife can't flourish.
[18:01]
B
It's not polluted with a substance. There are landmines there. Those wouldn't affect a dragonfly or a plant, but a tiger. A tiger, maybe, Maybe, but we're not sure if there are tigers there or not.
[18:16]
A
We're not sure. So, anyway, I guess the point about all of this stuff, the thing that makes me. It kind of gives me a little bit of hope in a weird way, is that in a sort of depressing way, maybe. But I think that we spend a lot of time talking about how, oh, the world might be over. We talk in sort of apocalyptic terms about climate change, about. About nuclear war, about. About all of the potential things that we could destroy ourselves with. But I think the thing is, is that actually we are talking about ourselves. Right? Nature is going to be fine. The world is going to be fine. Like, it's really only us. And I think that we have this real habit of imagining that it's like human made and nature, as though there's a separation and a distinction between us. But actually we are of this Earth. Right. And it's like we're just one little element of it. And if we leave, they're gonna be fine. They're gonna be absolutely fine.
[19:18]
B
Yeah. Humans are just one of the many kinds of animals on Earth. There are ways in which we have a responsibility that I don't think. I don't hear discussed too often. Like, we, for example, if an asteroid was hurtling towards Earth, it's not going to be the cows that save the planet.
[19:38]
A
No.
[19:38]
B
That's on us.
[19:40]
A
Yeah. Yeah. And that could be genuinely apocalyptic.
[19:43]
B
Yeah. For everything. Yeah. That could genuinely end all life. It will come down to us and not the tree frogs.
[19:49]
A
There is one place. When I was looking for areas that are closed off to humans that you cannot go to, I did find one place that I think sounds really interesting.
[19:58]
B
Okay, what is it?
[19:59]
A
This is one of the few examples that has not been created as a result of war or fighting between humans. This is a place called Ilha de Cuyamada Grande, otherwise known as Snake island in Brazil. This is a place that has got so many snakes on it that it was closed off to civilians in the 1920s and has never been reopened. It's a 43 hectare island holding around 4,000 vipers.
[20:31]
B
Whoa.
[20:32]
A
Each one of which has venom that is strong enough to kill you within an hour.
[20:37]
B
Yeah. And so they get to live their own lives free from human intervention. Because we've just decided that that's how it's gonna be.
[20:46]
A
No, thanks. I think they're also endangered. I think that's another point. This is like a particular place where they thrive. And everyone's like, okay, let's just. Should we just leave them? We'll just leave them alone. We'll just let them be. Let's just not go there.
[20:58]
B
Yeah. All right. The snakes can have that.
[21:00]
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So maybe that's what life will be like after. After we wipe ourselves out. You know, the houses will be reclaimed by the forest within 15 years, swallowed by vines, and then eventually it will just be a snake planet.
[21:14]
B
Yeah.
[21:15]
A
Do you know what? I think I'm still a bit depressed about the mirrors from last episode. I think maybe I'm being a bit pessimistic.
[21:22]
B
No, that's fair enough. How excluded does a place have to be? Like, there are mountains that have still not been climbed because they are sacred to the Native people. And in some cases, there are laws against anyone climbing those mountains. So they're places where nature can be untouched?
[21:43]
A
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, there's plenty of places like, you know, the middle of the Sahara is. It may as well be untouched.
[21:51]
B
It may as well be. But it's also. I mean, there's life there, but in that life is, you know, it's flourishing. I mean, is it flourishing or is it kind of struggling? It's there. But it made me think of places like the Trinity site where the United States did its first atomic testing. That's open to the public once a year. Otherwise, nature there gets to have its own way. But, you know, the amount of nature things that can be done in the desert where the sand's been turned to glass, trinitite is limited. There are places too where humans are excluded. Like Sentinel island off the coast of India.
[22:35]
A
Absolutely. Well, not all humans.
[22:38]
B
Not all humans. Just the Sentinelese. They are a culture, a tribe of people who live on this island and have made very limited contact with the outside world. I think that they were given some coconuts maybe in the 80s or 90s by some visitors, but we don't know their language. And to what extent they are aware of the outside world as unknown. What do they think about the airplanes they see way up in the sky? Or how big do they think the world is? These are things that we don't try to answer because it's been decided that they should be allowed to live their way without interference.
[23:19]
A
They also, a couple of times they have killed intruders. Right. So people have gone there. There was a fisherman, there was a missionary who ended up the tribe were like, no, thank you very much, done. So, yeah, the Indian government patrols it is really careful about making sure that nobody goes there.
[23:36]
B
They are, yeah. That missionary, that was a pretty recent story. He thought, you know, bringing the word of God to these people is my mission. And he didn't come back. His body was buried. And they did try to maybe recover it, but they want to leave the Sentinelese to them, to themselves, to be themselves. And There was a YouTuber who tried to go there. Have you seen this story? No, this was very recent. A YouTuber tried to sneak onto Sentinel island to make contact with these essentially uncontacted people. And it was very, very controversial. He got arrested and finally posted his videos just a few weeks ago. And to be honest, it's not entirely clear to me that he actually went to Sentinel Island. The videos are. They're very unprofessional and unserious it's kind of like, oh, guys, I'm doing this for you. Whoa. Do it for the vine. And then it's not obvious to me that he's actually there. He just kind of appears at an island. His boat's on the coast and he's like a few feet away from it and he's like, I'm here. Okay. I don't see anything. I'm going to go back. And then on his way back, he throws a can of Diet Coke into the water and says it'll get washed up there. I wonder what they'll think this is. I wasn't convinced he actually did it. I'm wondering how much of this was a hoax. Anyway. I'm heartened to see how controversial that whole stunt was.
[25:14]
A
Me too. You don't get to make decisions for humanity on your own. Okay. No, don't do that. That's right. But there you go. Anyway, that's. I've been to two of them, two exclusion zones. I'd really love to go to Trinity. To the. To the Trinity site.
[25:29]
B
Yeah. My uncle has been at least once. I think he tries to go like every year. It's.
[25:34]
A
Is that safe?
[25:36]
B
Well, yeah, I think for the brief time that you're there, it's, I guess, safe enough.
[25:42]
A
Imagine if you had a necklace made of Trinity glass.
[25:46]
B
Did you show that in a field notes in the past?
[25:49]
A
No, I've told you privately about how.
[25:51]
B
You told me privately about it. You showed. You showed the glass that was made with lightning.
[25:55]
A
I'm saving it until it's. Saving it until it's ready. But one day, one day I will have something like that for you. Yeah.
[26:00]
B
You've shown us two kinds of natural glass. You've shown us the glass made by lightning strikes, and you've also shown us obsidian.
[26:07]
A
Look, these are my private obsessions.
[26:09]
B
Michael, did you know that I gave my wife a giant chunk of obsidian for her birthday this year because of you in that episode. Yeah, I always skipped by the obsidian. My wife loves rocks as well. You guys should talk soon. But I always skipped past obsidian because I didn't know what it was. I would actually. I didn't even look into it. I'm afraid to admit that I was a bit incurious, which I hate. But then you taught me so much about it that I'm like, whoa. So I got her this beautiful piece and then we had to travel with it back from New Zealand. And she was like, don't get me heavy rocks for my birthday. When we've got Bags to pack for an airplane.
[26:47]
A
Look, that's fair. That's absolutely fair. Did you get the one with the little dying florets in it?
[26:51]
B
No, I didn't. I went with no florets forming yet. They had a piece like that and I was like, ugh, I don't know. I went with just the pure jet black piece of nice, fresh, geologically fresh piece. And I told her, hey, it's going to become a new gift. Just give it 100 million years or more. And it's the gift that keeps on giving.
[27:13]
A
Absolutely. Yeah. Too right. Too right. Look, I just. I just think the stones that everyone gets excited about are really boring. I think things like volcanic glass is much more exciting. All right, thus ends my. My little foray into no go zones. We're gonna go to a go go zone after the break, which is gonna be your questions. How was that for a link?
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B
It's a lovely link. We'll see.
[27:52]
A
This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk. What if your immune system could learn to recognize cancer cells?
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B
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[28:47]
B
For more information about Cancer Research uk, their research breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org REST ISScience.
[29:08]
A
Okay, we're back. Michael, first one for you. What is the most cosmic horror science fact that you know?
[29:15]
B
Cosmic horror. I love this question. This one came from our subreddit, R thereestis Science. It was asked by Petros Anastasia. Dis. I believe that's how you pronounce it. They ask, yeah, what is the most cosmic horror science fact? I know. I guess the most scared I've been by a scientific thing was probably I was reading Greg Egan's Diaspora, and in that story, there's a robot like an Android thing that Lives on the moon by itself. And its job is to, like, check readings from different astronomical objects. And one of them are these black holes that are going to be colliding. And the readings aren't matching the theory. They realize that actually this is going to cause a very different effect than they predicted. And it's going to create a gamma ray burst that will destroy Earth. And I was like, what don't we know about the universe? That could just happen, you know, like, we all feel kind of safe, like, oh, there's nothing too dangerous very close by. Gamma ray bursts don't happen that often. But we don't know every possible gamma ray burst source near us. And when it will go. And if it goes, that could just be the end, game over. And it would just happen. And we would be fried. Some of us might be able to live for a few agonizing days afterwards, but this is a phenomenon where an enormous amount of gamma rays, which is the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation, just gets shot into space and it's gonna cause immense damage.
[31:05]
A
I mean, talking of nuclear bombs, that is essentially like a giant, giant, giant nuke going on.
[31:11]
B
Giant, giant, giant. It is the brightest thing in the universe, right? It's getting hit directly with a pulsar's pulse. It's bad. And. And I started to think, man, that could happen in my lifetime. I mean, is that horror enough? That's kind of just more like.
[31:32]
A
I mean, it doesn't get much worse than that.
[31:34]
B
It doesn't get much worse.
[31:36]
A
The thing is, is that. Okay, I mean, you wouldn't see it coming. Cause it travels at the speed of light, right? So it's with. So it's with you before you know. It would almost certainly kill everybody instantly, wouldn't it?
[31:47]
B
Yeah, I mean, it all depends on the strength of the burst. But yeah, I think that's where the horror comes in. That it's not just violent, it sneaks up on you. You don't know it's coming. And once it's there, you don't know it happened because you're already gone.
[32:02]
A
There's something about everything you've ever known and loved disappearing immediately. That. I mean, I wouldn't say it doesn't bother me, but I think that I could handle that. I could handle that, actually, because you just wouldn't know. You wouldn't know what hit you. Whereas I think if it was beta radiation in some way, then everyone's gonna die. It's just. It's gonna be much more agonizing and you're Gonna see people you love decay in front of you and know that that is coming for you and there's nothing you can do about it, right?
[32:43]
B
At least a gamma ray burst would be sudden. Well, the point is, this whole book, Diaspora, it's very hard sci fi by Greg Egan and it scared me. I read it mainly on an airplane. I'm already kind of a scared flyer. We've talked about this before and I couldn't really handle it. It really amped up. One of the other terrifying things it discusses is what it's like to travel near the speed of light, such that when you get to your destination, you know it's been a few nights, but yet a thousand years has passed on Earth. And everyone that you knew there is now gone, long gone. And you live in a different universe, basically. And it deals with that in ways that just boggle the mind. We start talking because the characters are immortal, artificial intelligences and so they can live through a trillion years easily and they just don't even recognize this. They eventually escape into a four dimensional universe. And he describes exactly how planets would orbit in such a universe, how life would forms could eat in four dimensions. And it just makes you feel so alien that it scared me. I would call that cosmic horror. I highly recommend it.
[33:59]
A
Okay, that sounds. You know, you've mentioned the Egan book a couple of times. Maybe not that one, but a few of them. I need to get on it. I need to up my sci fi game, I think. Okay, next question. That came in from Liam Brain. Liam, Is that your real name?
[34:18]
B
Liam Brain? That's who listens to this podcast, everyone. Mr. Brain himself.
[34:24]
A
You know what though, that's a bit like. I met someone in Greece once who was called Adonis and I thought that was a lot of pressure from his
[34:30]
B
parents, you know, that's a lot of pressure. Anyway, Liam, you have a great name and you asked. I'm quite interested in the tectonic plate movement of the Earth. If plates move and therefore land shifts, wouldn't the Earth decrease and increase in size? Where do the plates go when crashing?
[34:47]
A
Great question, Mr. Brain. Really, honestly, this is like a really good instinct. This is. There was this whole theory that was built on exactly this idea, by the way, which is called Expanding Earth theory. And some people who sort of championed it, they. They believe that, okay, well, the continents are drifting apart, and the reason they're drifting apart is because the planet must be quietly inflating beneath them. It turns out that just doesn't hold. You should really think of the Earth as More like. I mean, it's a sphere, sure, but it's more like you've got corks that are floating on the top of water underneath. They're sort of bobbing around, which is what the plates are like. If they crash into each other, especially if it's two land masses that crash into each other, then they don't really have anywhere to go, but they're too kind of. They sort of end up floating upwards, and that's how you end up getting mountain ranges. The Himalayas is a perfect example of that. Where these two tectonic plates met and the Himalayas pushed upwards. And we know this for sure because you can see fossils at the top of the Himalayas. Right? Like, and they're sort of in the mountains of the Himalayas that are definitely things that used to live by the side of the sea, right, that were definitely on the edge of the coast in the past. For example, Pakicetus, one of my favorite historical creatures, which is basically a dog that is the ancestor of the whale. Right. There was like a dog that was living on land and would dip into the sea to go and eat some fish that is found in the Himalayas. And we know that it used to live near the ocean. On the other hand, if you have sort of two tectonic plates crashing into each other and they're under the sea, sort of everything's much heavier, and one of them will sink downwards and end up getting kind of destroyed and melted into the mantle below. On the other hand, if you have things that are ripping apart, which is what's happening actively in Iceland at the moment. Iceland has the two plates, the Eurasian plate and the. The Americas plate, and they are ever so slowly being ripped apart. And what happens is you get effectively the magma coming up from underneath. This is why it's an active volcano region. This is the reason why you're still getting all of these kind of bursting up as these cracks appear between the two plates. There's a football field, which I went to go and see in Iceland, where people were literally playing football. And then an earthquake started, and then a massive, gigantic crater appeared in the ground over the course of, like, 24 hours. It's phenomenal.
[37:26]
B
But then what? Where did the rest of the plates go when they separate? Their other ends aren't just filling in empty space. The Earth is a finite sphere. So are they crunching on the other side?
[37:38]
A
So they're either going up or going down, Right? Yeah.
[37:41]
B
So the Earth is not getting larger or smaller, it's just moving around.
[37:45]
A
And actually satellite images that have Looked into exactly this, the expanding Earth theory. They measure that the Earth's radius overall stays incredibly steady. We're talking about a fraction of a millimeter a year. And this really is a question of scale. You know, when you're standing on the surface of the Earth, sort of this crater that appears that's, you know, a few meters wide feels absolutely enormous. But compared to the radius of the Earth, I mean, we are, they call it a crust for a reason. You know, we are Right, right, right on the surface of this thing.
[38:17]
B
Yeah, it is thin. And I mean, the Earth is getting like, like more massive as space dust falls down to it. That's offset by mass. The Earth loses like really light gases, hydrogen and helium. They get up to the top and they get picked away by solar wind. And the Earth also is like radiating heat out into space, which means it does lose a little bit of mass. But overall, the falling space dust is making Earth more massive. But as Hannah said, it's like not actually growing in any noticeable way. Yeah, it's just microscopic compared to the size of the whole planet.
[38:56]
A
Okay, last question from Oscar. Oscar says, if you had to live as either one of the first humans or one of the last humans to ever exist, which would you choose and why?
[39:06]
B
I love this question. I want to hear your answer first, Hannah.
[39:09]
A
Oh, I think I'd choose one of the first, basically for the same reason as your cosmic horror story earlier. I think the idea of knowing that it was coming to an end and knowing that the end was inevitable. I think it's about seeing those that you love die around you and struggle. I think I just, I'd rather. No thanks.
[39:28]
B
Well, it really depends on when and why you're the last human. If it's because you get to sit there and watch a black hole approach and take over our solar system, that would be terrifying. But if you, if the last human is going to be alive in the year 12 trillion as a digital consciousness or in Google years or more, and it's just the heat death of the universe you have to contend with, then, I don't know, you might not even have to feel things because we've evolved to some cognitive state so far and beyond. If you mean being a first person, you mean being like a very early Homo sapiens. Well, then I don't get to enjoy my favorite movies and snacks.
[40:17]
A
That's true. You also don't have to get up when your alarm clock goes. Yeah, you don't have the hell of being like, God, have I really been doom scrolling for Three hours.
[40:28]
B
Yeah, you're saved from doom scrolling.
[40:31]
A
Never hungover.
[40:32]
B
Yeah, you're never hungover.
[40:34]
A
You're never late. You're never ever late.
[40:37]
B
So your answer is that you would like to be one of the first humans?
[40:40]
A
Yeah, I think so.
[40:41]
B
Okay, well, I'm gonna choose one of the last. Cause I'd like to be there on the complete mountain of history so that I can kind of be like, okay, I wanna see how the story ends. You know, I don't wanna feel like I'm missing out. I just feel like those early prehistoric Homo sapiens, they must have fomo. They must be like, guys, can you imagine? There's gonna be a world cup one of these days and we won't be around for it.
[41:06]
A
You know what they can never say, they can never say in my day, they can never say back in the good old days because this is the only days.
[41:17]
B
Oh yeah, well, back in my day, oh, we did things the same because my parents were Homo erectus. No, I love, I love that. Obviously to be scientifically correct, clearly we're joking because human evolution was not this like suddenly a bunch of babies were, were born one year and they were all like, oh yes, I'm a cognitive social being. Yeah, there was no like first human. There's just this smear of ever changing organisms. But I do love jokes like that. I love thinking of, you know, five, 6,000 years ago. You know, the, the grandparents are like, well, back in my day we didn't have these fences. We had to go and, and find our food. You kids today with your agriculture. Agriculture?
[42:06]
A
Making you all fangled pottery.
[42:10]
B
Yeah, we just carry things in our hands.
[42:12]
A
What do you mean you've invented a bucket?
[42:15]
B
Back in my day, we didn't have all these words. We just grunted and looked exactly. I want that.
[42:23]
A
That's what I want. That's what I want.
[42:25]
B
I think we've talked about this before. Like I'm obsessed with this. I just, I spend so much time reading through people's concept of deep human history in antiquity. Like when in the most ancient literature we have, did people say anything about the way things used to be? And of course there are no written records of like, you know, my great, great, great grandma, like lived in a tree, you know, does it happen too slowly? But the ancient Greeks did have this idea that they used to be like the nomadic tribes. They were aware of that. They used to not have their infrastructure and their society. They were only guessing. They didn't remember this. This wasn't in living memory or oral history, but it was an idea that they believed in, or at least one author believed in. So, okay, yeah, basically, I'd like to be the last human, and Hannah would like to be the first.
[43:25]
A
There you go. Between us, we sandwich everyone else. It's everyone else.
[43:30]
B
All of you out there.
[43:31]
A
Yes. Our favorite way to be the Hannah
[43:34]
B
Michael Sandwich of history.
[43:36]
A
Well, we're the bread, though, aren't we?
[43:38]
B
Oh, yeah, we're the bread. And I guess sandwiches are named after what's inside, not what's on the outside.
[43:45]
A
The human sandwich. Yeah, we're the brioche buns of humanity. Okay, well, thank you for that. What a great image to finish on as am. You can send us your questions. The rest is science.
[43:57]
B
Com and you can check us out on our subreddit. R thereest ISS good questions there, including that one about cosmic horror. I've got more cosmic horrors I'll be sharing in the future, so stay tuned.
[44:09]
A
Absolutely. We'll see you next week. Thank you very much.
[44:13]
B
Bye. Bye.

Summary6 min read

Podcast Summary: "What Happens Inside Earth's Forbidden Zones?"

The Rest Is Science | July 29, 2026
Hosts: Professor Hannah Fry & Michael Stevens (Vsauce)

Episode Overview

In this engaging episode of The Rest Is Science, Hannah and Michael explore the world's "forbidden zones"—regions where human presence is outlawed, impossible, or extremely limited. With a playful yet deeply curious tone, they discuss how nature reclaims territories devoid of people—whether due to war, nuclear disaster, or even overpopulation of deadly snakes. The episode draws fascinating comparisons between these "no-go" zones, highlighting nature’s resilience and the unexpected consequences of human absence.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Field Notes Object: DMZ Barbed Wire

[00:36] Hannah presents Michael with an object: “a bit of barbed wire in a glass jar” taken from the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea.
Michael remarks, "It looks strange, doesn't it?” ([01:29])
Hannah reveals, "There is a gift shop at the DMZ…literally in the demilitarized zone. There is a fun fair." ([02:01])
Discussion covers the symbolism of souvenirs from conflict zones and the unique commercial ecosystem that springs up even in places of high tension.

2. Nature Reclaims the DMZ

[05:16] The conversation shifts from human activity to animal ‘flourishing’ in uninhabited zones like the DMZ.
- Hannah: "There is this complete flourishing of nature within that zone in this crazy way."
- Michael: "How thick is it?"
- Hannah: "Only about four kilometers…some estimates say 38% of the critically endangered species in Korea live in that tiny little area." ([07:05]-[07:28])
They discuss how abandoned paddy fields have reverted rapidly to grassland, then forests, serving as a natural experiment in rewilding.

3. Comparisons with Other Forbidden Zones

Chernobyl Exclusion Zone ([08:24]):
- Notable for black frogs with darker skin, an evolutionary effect of radiation exposure.
- “Chernobyl is like, there's certain parts…that will never be inhabitable by humans.” — Hannah ([08:41])
Fukushima Exclusion Zone ([09:47]):
- Hannah’s personal experience: “Going inside Fukushima is. It's wild. It's really wild.” ([10:02])
- Nature quickly began reclaiming abandoned buildings: “That's how quickly it gets swallowed by nature, how quickly nature returns to dominance.” ([11:36])
- Misadventures: Thought they’d find ‘radioactive bears’—turned out to be a single radioactive boar, eventually filmed radioactive dragonflies. ([12:29])
Lake Karachay, Russia & Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands ([13:06]-[14:44]):
- Lake Karachay: “You stay there for an hour and you’re dead.”
- Bikini Atoll: “Still totally uninhabitable…not so much the ground, it's more about the food chain. Because anything that's grown there will also carry a dose.”
- The Tomb (Runit Island): “There is a concrete dome of 120,000 tons of plutonium contaminated debris…that place is indefinitely [uninhabitable].”
Zone Rouge, France ([15:37]):
- Near Verdun, still contaminated by WWI arsenic; “99% of the plants…die due to arsenic in the soil.”

4. War-Byproduct vs. Nature-Byproduct

The DMZ is unique among exclusion zones because, lacking radiation or toxins, nature can thrive.
- “There aren't these…incredible weapons of war that make it mean that their wildlife can't flourish.” — Hannah ([17:46])
- Landmines mostly affect larger mammals, not birds or plants.

5. Hopeful Reflections on Nature's Resilience

Hannah finds hope (with a tinge of existentialism):
- "Nature is going to be fine. The world is going to be fine. Like, it's really only us." ([18:16])
- Michael reflects, “If an asteroid was hurtling towards Earth, it's not going to be the cows that save the planet. That's on us.” ([19:18])

6. Human-Excluded Zones Created by Nature (and Culture)

Snake Island (Ilha da Queimada Grande, Brazil) ([19:58]):
- Closed to civilians due to ~4,000 venomous vipers: “Each one has venom…strong enough to kill you within an hour.” — Hannah
- A rare exclusion zone not caused by war or disaster.
Culturally-protected lands ([21:22]):
- Some mountains are off-limits due to religious/sacred significance.
- Other examples: Sentinel Island in India, home to an uncontacted tribe shielded from outsiders by law—sometimes violently so. ([22:35])

7. Controversies & Human Curiosity

Discussion of a YouTuber who may or may not have tried to visit Sentinel Island for views, raising ethical debates about respecting protected zones and their inhabitants. ([24:15])
- “You don't get to make decisions for humanity on your own. Okay. No, don't do that.” — Hannah ([25:13])

8. Listener Q&A Highlights

On Cosmic Horror Science Facts ([29:07])
- Michael is particularly unsettled by the idea of gamma-ray bursts:
  
  “There could be a gamma ray burst that will destroy Earth. And I was like, what don't we know about the universe? That could just happen…” ([29:51])
  - Hannah notes the existential dread of immediate, unexpected cosmic death.
On Tectonic Plates & Earth Size ([34:24])
- Addressing “Expanding Earth” theory:
  - “Earth's radius overall stays incredibly steady…a fraction of a millimeter a year.” — Hannah ([37:45])
  - Michael adds, “The Earth is getting…more massive as space dust falls down to it. That's offset by mass the Earth loses.”
First vs. Last Human ([39:06])
- Would you rather be one of the first or last humans?
  - Hannah: “I'd choose one of the first…knowing that the end was inevitable…I think I just, I'd rather. No thanks.” ([39:09])
  - Michael: “I want to see how the story ends…I'd like to be the last human.” ([40:41])
  - Playful banter about FOMO, agriculture, and “the human sandwich.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the DMZ’s gift shop & human absurdity:

"There is a gift shop at the DMZ...literally in the demilitarized zone. There is a fun fair." —Hannah Fry ([02:01])
On nature’s resurgence in forbidden zones:

"There's this amazing study that you can make in what happens when humans completely vacate an area…just how much nature thrives." —Hannah Fry ([07:28])
On hope and existential humility:

"We are of this Earth…if we leave, [nature’s] gonna be absolutely fine." —Hannah Fry ([18:16])
On the cosmic horror of gamma ray bursts:

"There could be a gamma ray burst that will destroy Earth…we would be fried." —Michael Stevens ([29:51])
On being the 'first' or 'last' humans:

“Between us, we sandwich everyone else.” —Hannah Fry ([43:24])

Timestamps for Important Segments

[00:36] — Hannah presents the DMZ barbed wire
[05:16] — Introduction to no-go zones and animal flourishing
[07:28] — Ecological importance of the DMZ
[08:24] — Comparisons with Chernobyl and Fukushima (Hannah’s personal stories)
[13:06] — Lake Karachay, Bikini Atoll, the Tomb, and other radioactive zones
[15:37] — Zone Rouge and post-war ecological scars
[17:46] — Why the DMZ's ecology is uniquely thriving
[18:16] — Reflection on nature’s resilience and human-centric perspectives
[19:58] — Snake Island: a non-anthropogenic forbidden zone
[22:35] — Sentinel Island, the ethics of exclusion and contact
[29:07] — Start of listener Q&A: cosmic horror, tectonic plates, and first/last human hypotheticals

Tone & Style

Warmly inquisitive, humorous, and empathetic, with moments of poignant existential reflection. Hannah and Michael blend accessible science with philosophical musings and playful banter, making complex topics lively and approachable.

Conclusion

This episode of The Rest Is Science offers a fascinating window into a world without us—where nature surges back, ecological balance is restored, and humans may not be so central after all. With stories spanning post-nuclear landscapes, accidental wildlife refuges, and protected cultural sites, Hannah and Michael highlight our fragile coexistence with the planet—and the profound, sometimes unsettling, adaptability of life when we step aside.

Loading summary

Transcript192 lines

[00:01]
A
Welcome to the rest of Science. I'm Hannah Fry.
[00:03]
B
And I'm Michael Stevens.
[00:05]
A
And got a little treat for you today because we've got a field notes episode, as usual, this part of the week. A little bit later on, we're going to come to your questions, your big ideas, your interjections that you wanted to send us@restedsciencegoalhanger.com but right now, I've got a little object for you, Michael.
[00:23]
B
I love the field notes where you bring the object because I get to just be an audience member for a while.
[00:28]
A
You know, you genuinely don't know what's coming up.
[00:30]
B
I thrive when I don't know what's going on.
[00:33]
A
Okay, should I give you an audio clue first?
[00:35]
B
Yes, please do.
[00:36]
A
I'll be honest with you. If you get this from the audio clue, I think there's a zero percent chance. I think there's a zero percent chance that you're going to get this from the audio clue.
[00:46]
B
Okay, now you've got me really, really interested. I'm going to see if I can crack this with just the audio.
[00:50]
A
Okay, ready?
[00:54]
B
It sounds like a baby's rattle type toy. Like keys on a plastic keychain. I want to say a plasticky sound. It wasn't like metal unless it was hollow metal.
[01:05]
A
I think it's more like metal on glass.
[01:08]
B
Well, you know what it is, though?
[01:09]
A
What the heck? Sorry.
[01:12]
B
It's like something rolling around in something hollow. Like a ball in a ball.
[01:18]
A
You're okay. Look, obviously that's the absolute closest you're going to get because what it actually is is a bit of barbed wire in a glass jar. Oh, why do I have a bit of barbed wire in a glass jar?
[01:29]
B
I don't know. It looks strange, doesn't it?
[01:33]
A
Looks very strange indeed. This is a bit of barbed wire from the demilitarized zone between north and South Korea.
[01:41]
B
If you're only listening, Hannah is holding a glass jar that's kind of a little taller than a film canister, but about as wide, if you're old enough to remember what those are. And it's got, like, a cork at the top, but inside there's a little snipping, A little piece of barbed wire and, like, some rocks.
[01:57]
A
There is a gift shop at the dmz.
[02:00]
B
I didn't know that.
[02:01]
A
Is that not the craziest thing you've ever heard? And I'm not talking about, like, oh, you're away from the demilitarized zone. No, no, no, no, no. I mean literally in the demilitarized zone. There is a fun fair.
[02:12]
B
Oh, that makes so much sense though, because so many tourists to South Korea would be like, I want to go up there and see see North Korea with my eyes and I've got money to spend.
[02:25]
A
Uhhuh.
[02:26]
B
I bet they're just putting up new barbed wire every day and then clipping
[02:29]
A
it up just to take the old stuff down. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk.
[02:41]
B
Our bodies are incredible machines, worrying away, making more and more DNA to build the proteins that keep us alive.
[02:48]
A
In fact, in the last minute, your body has made over 200 million new cells and enough DNA to stretch to the moon and back to the moon and back.
[02:58]
B
That's so much DNA that if you compared it to the size of the cell it fits into, that would be like squeezing the London Underground into a suitcase.
[03:08]
A
By the age of 50, you have copied almost 6 trillion miles of DNA. But every time that your body copies DNA, it risks making mistakes. And over time, those mistakes can accumulate and that collection of errors can lead to cancer.
[03:22]
B
But incredibly, Cancer Research UK scientists can spot these errors. And by finding them, They've helped double UK cancer survival over the last 50 years and are driving even more discoveries that could tackle over 200 types of cancer.
[03:37]
A
For for more information about Cancer Research uk, their research and breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org restiscience
[03:48]
B
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 set up required compatibility and availability various 18/.
[04:21]
A
The other things that you could buy. By the way, at the dmz. I sort of feel a bit funny playing Z, but it also doesn't sound right to say dmz. The other things that you could buy at the DMZ gift shop are wallets that are shaped like hand grenades and then all kinds of like little figurines of North Korean leaders that I think possibly the North Korean leaders would not enjoy.
[04:47]
B
But you know the people who own those gift shops, they're lobbying both countries very hard to keep this demilitarized zone going because their business depends upon the political situation.
[05:00]
A
You are absolutely right. And they're not the only ones who are desperate to keep this war going because Actually, what I want to talk to you about today is not the gift shop at the dmz. It is the animals that have flourished.
[05:17]
B
Oh, yeah.
[05:18]
A
In the no go zone that has been created by human intervention. And there's a few of these places around the world. Right. The DMZ is one of them, which has basically been completely unoccupied by humans since the 1950s. And in the decades that have passed since, there is this complete flourishing of nature within that zone in this crazy way. So nobody can step foot in this zone. Yeah, certainly not. You certainly wouldn't be authorized to do so.
[05:49]
B
Right. I mean, you can, but you may not.
[05:52]
A
You may not. You may not. And also, it would be extremely ill advised because the entire place is totally covered in landmines. Yeah. So also, you would not and should not. Okay, good.
[06:03]
B
You may not, you should not, and you could not. Well, pieces of you might make it over.
[06:10]
A
So even conservationists are not able to go into this zone in order to do proper surveys of the animals that are there.
[06:19]
B
So then what flourishes?
[06:21]
A
So there's all kinds of bird species. There are. There are rumors that there are leopards and tigers that have found a home within this region. No tiger. There's no sort of really good evidence of any tiger having been spotted. So I think that one might be a myth. But there are boars, there are deer, There are vampire deer, in fact, which don't grow horns. They grow sort of like funny teeth.
[06:50]
B
Oh, wow.
[06:51]
A
But the other thing is all of these paddy fields that were abandoned.
[06:54]
B
Wait, paddy fields? Like, I know. How about how long the demilitarized zone is, but how thick is it? How wide across?
[07:04]
A
Only about four kilometers.
[07:05]
B
Okay, so you've got a four kilometer band separating north and South Korea where people may, should, and could not enter. Nature is healing there in its own
[07:16]
A
way, and it's healing really well. By the way, there's some estimates that say 38% of the critically endangered species in Korea live in that tiny little area.
[07:29]
B
Whoa.
[07:30]
A
So it's not just the gift shop owners who are desperate for this place, not for the war to never end. You know, if. If suddenly there was a peace treaty and everybody there was reunited Korea, or however it ended up being sold. It would just be devastating for. For the ecosystem that has been created in this. In this abandoned land. Right. It would be completely devastating. The paddy fields, by the way, that were abandoned in the 1950s, they turned over very quickly into grassland, and then they very quickly from then started growing willow. And now all of these paddy fields have turned into these elder dominated forests. So you get these little pockets. And it's just this amazing study that you can make in what happens when humans completely vacate an area. It's like really extraordinary just how much nature thrives.
[08:25]
B
And it's different than what's going on in Chernobyl because there you have the added variable of radiation.
[08:33]
A
Exactly. We've talked about the black frogs that you see in Chernobyl, how the radiation has ended up impacting the evolutionary path of different creatures that are there. That frogs with darker skin were able to survive the radiation better than those that didn't. Those that didn't would die out. And so the closer you get to the original site in Chernobyl, the darker the frogs get. There are places that are sort of in the middle. So I was incredibly lucky to get to go to the DMZ when I was filming a documentary. I've also been inside the exclusion zone of Fukushima, which is somewhere between the two. So it has the radiation element that Chernobyl has, but nowhere near the same sort of scale. Right. And it's. Chernobyl is like, there's certain parts of Chernobyl that will never be inhabitable by humans. Right. There's no going there, ever. But in Fukushima, the idea is that slowly, slowly they are trying to decrease the radius of how far people are not allowed in. So it's sort of like a. It's not never. How did we say it for the dmz? You can't, you shouldn't, you won't, or something. Yeah.
[09:47]
B
You may not, you should not and you cannot.
[09:50]
A
Right. So from Fukushima, it's more like you may not, you probably should not. And you've got. Can maybe in future, essentially.
[09:59]
B
All right, it's a little more hopeful.
[10:01]
A
A little more hopeful.
[10:02]
B
Tell me about Fukushima.
[10:03]
A
All right, so here's the thing, okay. Going inside Fukushima is. It's wild. It's really wild.
[10:12]
B
So describe it for me, because I've never been there. It is an area of land.
[10:17]
A
So you are just inside of the coast in Japan, where the tsunami basically overwhelmed the sea wall of a power plant.
[10:27]
B
A nuclear power plant.
[10:28]
A
A nuclear power plant. Important, important distinction. Flooded the reactor and caused radiation to spill out essentially in the surrounding area. So it remains very radioactive. Nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl, but really dangerous still. And when you go in there. So we didn't get to go right up to the reactor, but we got to go in the sort of the controlled zone. And when you go in there are human settlements within that region that were abandoned on the day and have been returned to. Not only has the forest and, you know, nature essentially reclaimed these buildings and sort of swallowed them up from the ground and around the roof is caving in, there's rubble everywhere. Just the elements have had their way essentially with these buildings. But you also, where they are closed off and locked away, you look inside the windows and you get this sense of the panic people felt when they left on that day.
[11:27]
B
And for Context, this was 15 years ago.
[11:30]
A
It was 15 years ago. Right, exactly.
[11:32]
B
So that's how long humans have left it abandoned to nature.
[11:37]
A
Or the other way around is to say that's how quickly it gets swallowed by nature, how quickly nature returns to dominance. You look in the window and you see the slippers of people sort of rushed as they were leaving and they were putting their shoes back on to get out of the building. There's like teddy bears kind of strewn on the side. There's like, there was one place where I looked in the window and there was like a crate of half empty beers that they must have been aiming to take to the recycling, but then never had the opportunity to do so. And when we got to go inside this exclusion zone, we were going for this story about rewilding. And we spoke to some researchers and they told us that there were some radioactive bears within the exclusion zone. We were going to go and film these radioactive bears, and then when we got there, we realized there'd been a slight mistranslation because it wasn't radioactive bears, it was boars.
[12:30]
B
Oh, okay. Still fun.
[12:32]
A
Still fun. But also, it wasn't boars so much as boar, singular. And actually it'd only ever been caught on capital once. So instead we filmed some radioactive dragonflies, which was, you know, a close second.
[12:47]
B
So they're radioactive in that they are themselves radioactive. If they land on you, you're exposed to ionizing radiation from the body of the dragonfly.
[12:58]
A
I don't think within Fukushima it's quite that extreme.
[13:01]
B
Okay, so it's more like dragonflies that live in an exclusion zone.
[13:07]
A
Exactly right. But what I sort of started thinking was how many of these different exclusion zones there are around the world, how many different places are now completely untouchable because of human. Human decisions, human moments. So you've got Chernobyl, of course, Fukushima. There's also a place called Lake Karachay in Russia. And this is a place that the lake shore sort of this, you know, around this little lake. It read around 600 Rontgen in 1990, which is basically, you stay there for an hour and you're dead. Okay. That's kind of the level that we're talking.
[13:49]
B
That's a lot.
[13:49]
A
This is where the Russians were testing their nuclear weapons, essentially. There's also the Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, where 23 different bombs between 1946 and 1958 were detonated. Still totally uninhabitable. And the problem there, it's not so much the ground, it's more about the food chain. Because all in the coconut palms and the breadfruit, anything that's grown there will also carry a dose. So when you were saying about radioactive dragonflies. It's radioactive coconuts.
[14:23]
B
Yes. And the people who used to live there still don't.
[14:27]
A
Still don't.
[14:28]
B
Right.
[14:29]
A
I mean, astonishing.
[14:30]
B
I mean, at the time, the US government really did think it was gonna be temporary. They were like, oh, yeah, you guys gotta leave for a bit. We'll do our tests and you can come back. And now I think a lot of them are, and their descendants are in like Arkansas.
[14:44]
A
Right. And. And the thing is, I mean, there's some of these places may eventually be reinhabitable. So, you know, Bikini Atoll, for instance, that researchers can go there. It's not that you. The sort of like passing dose isn't if you're very careful and very, you know, take the correct precautions that it is possible to visit. But there are other places in Marshall Islands. The Tomb, for example, where there is a concrete dome of 120,000 tons of plutonium contaminated debris and also sort of cracking, which is. I was so bad. But that place is indefinitely. There's no going there ever. You know, it's just too much.
[15:27]
B
And where is that?
[15:27]
A
That's also Marshall Islands as well. Runit island it's called.
[15:31]
B
And it's called the Tomb. Oh, the Tomb. What's the island called?
[15:34]
A
Runit Island.
[15:35]
B
Runit Island.
[15:37]
A
There are other places that are not just because of nuclear testing. So there is in Zone Rouge, it's called in France, which is. It's still legally after World War I. This is a place near Verdun. And 99% of the plants that grow there will die due to arsenic in the soil. I mean, we're talking crazy. It's about 17% by weight in the soil. Right. This is like, it's horrendous.
[16:07]
B
So human wandering around is excluded for good reason. Have they tried to do anything to fix this or are they just kind of leaving it?
[16:19]
A
Just leaving it? I think, yeah. Someone in the comments may correct Me. But my understanding is they're leaving it. In 1919, they were like, look, it's impossible to clean. Human life's impossible there. Don't even go there.
[16:29]
B
That was used in World War I, and now it's just polluted this area of land so much that even the plants aren't. They're not flourishing there.
[16:38]
A
No, exactly.
[16:39]
B
Maybe for their short lifetimes they are, because there's no human development happening.
[16:45]
A
And that's one of the things that makes the DMZ so interesting, because, I mean, they did spray with Agent Orange when the line was drawn in the map, essentially when this separation of north and south happened, which was when Japan evacuated Korea during the Second World War. And there were a couple of American generals who'd never been to Korea and needed to work out which bit the Soviets should take and which bits the Americans should take. And they just chose a line of latitude on the map. It didn't take into account that there were railway lines going through there, there were rivers cutting across. It's just like. Just kind of very bluntly and brutally. There was a bit of fighting for a few years, instantly, until 1953, when they signed this peace treaty. Sorry, forgive me, it's not a peace treaty, crucially, it's a ceasefire. So actually they are still technically at war. But that was what really set the boundaries of these two. But that's sort of what makes it interesting, is that it is a byproduct of war. But there aren't these things like anthrax radiation, you know, all of these incredibly horrible arsenic or anything like that. There's none of these sort of incredible weapons of war that make it mean that their wildlife can't flourish.
[18:01]
B
It's not polluted with a substance. There are landmines there. Those wouldn't affect a dragonfly or a plant, but a tiger. A tiger, maybe, Maybe, but we're not sure if there are tigers there or not.
[18:16]
A
We're not sure. So, anyway, I guess the point about all of this stuff, the thing that makes me. It kind of gives me a little bit of hope in a weird way, is that in a sort of depressing way, maybe. But I think that we spend a lot of time talking about how, oh, the world might be over. We talk in sort of apocalyptic terms about climate change, about. About nuclear war, about. About all of the potential things that we could destroy ourselves with. But I think the thing is, is that actually we are talking about ourselves. Right? Nature is going to be fine. The world is going to be fine. Like, it's really only us. And I think that we have this real habit of imagining that it's like human made and nature, as though there's a separation and a distinction between us. But actually we are of this Earth. Right. And it's like we're just one little element of it. And if we leave, they're gonna be fine. They're gonna be absolutely fine.
[19:18]
B
Yeah. Humans are just one of the many kinds of animals on Earth. There are ways in which we have a responsibility that I don't think. I don't hear discussed too often. Like, we, for example, if an asteroid was hurtling towards Earth, it's not going to be the cows that save the planet.
[19:38]
A
No.
[19:38]
B
That's on us.
[19:40]
A
Yeah. Yeah. And that could be genuinely apocalyptic.
[19:43]
B
Yeah. For everything. Yeah. That could genuinely end all life. It will come down to us and not the tree frogs.
[19:49]
A
There is one place. When I was looking for areas that are closed off to humans that you cannot go to, I did find one place that I think sounds really interesting.
[19:58]
B
Okay, what is it?
[19:59]
A
This is one of the few examples that has not been created as a result of war or fighting between humans. This is a place called Ilha de Cuyamada Grande, otherwise known as Snake island in Brazil. This is a place that has got so many snakes on it that it was closed off to civilians in the 1920s and has never been reopened. It's a 43 hectare island holding around 4,000 vipers.
[20:31]
B
Whoa.
[20:32]
A
Each one of which has venom that is strong enough to kill you within an hour.
[20:37]
B
Yeah. And so they get to live their own lives free from human intervention. Because we've just decided that that's how it's gonna be.
[20:46]
A
No, thanks. I think they're also endangered. I think that's another point. This is like a particular place where they thrive. And everyone's like, okay, let's just. Should we just leave them? We'll just leave them alone. We'll just let them be. Let's just not go there.
[20:58]
B
Yeah. All right. The snakes can have that.
[21:00]
A
So maybe that's what life will be like after. After we wipe ourselves out. You know, the houses will be reclaimed by the forest within 15 years, swallowed by vines, and then eventually it will just be a snake planet.
[21:14]
B
Yeah.
[21:15]
A
Do you know what? I think I'm still a bit depressed about the mirrors from last episode. I think maybe I'm being a bit pessimistic.
[21:22]
B
No, that's fair enough. How excluded does a place have to be? Like, there are mountains that have still not been climbed because they are sacred to the Native people. And in some cases, there are laws against anyone climbing those mountains. So they're places where nature can be untouched?
[21:43]
A
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, there's plenty of places like, you know, the middle of the Sahara is. It may as well be untouched.
[21:51]
B
It may as well be. But it's also. I mean, there's life there, but in that life is, you know, it's flourishing. I mean, is it flourishing or is it kind of struggling? It's there. But it made me think of places like the Trinity site where the United States did its first atomic testing. That's open to the public once a year. Otherwise, nature there gets to have its own way. But, you know, the amount of nature things that can be done in the desert where the sand's been turned to glass, trinitite is limited. There are places too where humans are excluded. Like Sentinel island off the coast of India.
[22:35]
A
Absolutely. Well, not all humans.
[22:38]
B
Not all humans. Just the Sentinelese. They are a culture, a tribe of people who live on this island and have made very limited contact with the outside world. I think that they were given some coconuts maybe in the 80s or 90s by some visitors, but we don't know their language. And to what extent they are aware of the outside world as unknown. What do they think about the airplanes they see way up in the sky? Or how big do they think the world is? These are things that we don't try to answer because it's been decided that they should be allowed to live their way without interference.
[23:19]
A
They also, a couple of times they have killed intruders. Right. So people have gone there. There was a fisherman, there was a missionary who ended up the tribe were like, no, thank you very much, done. So, yeah, the Indian government patrols it is really careful about making sure that nobody goes there.
[23:36]
B
They are, yeah. That missionary, that was a pretty recent story. He thought, you know, bringing the word of God to these people is my mission. And he didn't come back. His body was buried. And they did try to maybe recover it, but they want to leave the Sentinelese to them, to themselves, to be themselves. And There was a YouTuber who tried to go there. Have you seen this story? No, this was very recent. A YouTuber tried to sneak onto Sentinel island to make contact with these essentially uncontacted people. And it was very, very controversial. He got arrested and finally posted his videos just a few weeks ago. And to be honest, it's not entirely clear to me that he actually went to Sentinel Island. The videos are. They're very unprofessional and unserious it's kind of like, oh, guys, I'm doing this for you. Whoa. Do it for the vine. And then it's not obvious to me that he's actually there. He just kind of appears at an island. His boat's on the coast and he's like a few feet away from it and he's like, I'm here. Okay. I don't see anything. I'm going to go back. And then on his way back, he throws a can of Diet Coke into the water and says it'll get washed up there. I wonder what they'll think this is. I wasn't convinced he actually did it. I'm wondering how much of this was a hoax. Anyway. I'm heartened to see how controversial that whole stunt was.
[25:14]
A
Me too. You don't get to make decisions for humanity on your own. Okay. No, don't do that. That's right. But there you go. Anyway, that's. I've been to two of them, two exclusion zones. I'd really love to go to Trinity. To the. To the Trinity site.
[25:29]
B
Yeah. My uncle has been at least once. I think he tries to go like every year. It's.
[25:34]
A
Is that safe?
[25:36]
B
Well, yeah, I think for the brief time that you're there, it's, I guess, safe enough.
[25:42]
A
Imagine if you had a necklace made of Trinity glass.
[25:46]
B
Did you show that in a field notes in the past?
[25:49]
A
No, I've told you privately about how.
[25:51]
B
You told me privately about it. You showed. You showed the glass that was made with lightning.
[25:55]
A
I'm saving it until it's. Saving it until it's ready. But one day, one day I will have something like that for you. Yeah.
[26:00]
B
You've shown us two kinds of natural glass. You've shown us the glass made by lightning strikes, and you've also shown us obsidian.
[26:07]
A
Look, these are my private obsessions.
[26:09]
B
Michael, did you know that I gave my wife a giant chunk of obsidian for her birthday this year because of you in that episode. Yeah, I always skipped by the obsidian. My wife loves rocks as well. You guys should talk soon. But I always skipped past obsidian because I didn't know what it was. I would actually. I didn't even look into it. I'm afraid to admit that I was a bit incurious, which I hate. But then you taught me so much about it that I'm like, whoa. So I got her this beautiful piece and then we had to travel with it back from New Zealand. And she was like, don't get me heavy rocks for my birthday. When we've got Bags to pack for an airplane.
[26:47]
A
Look, that's fair. That's absolutely fair. Did you get the one with the little dying florets in it?
[26:51]
B
No, I didn't. I went with no florets forming yet. They had a piece like that and I was like, ugh, I don't know. I went with just the pure jet black piece of nice, fresh, geologically fresh piece. And I told her, hey, it's going to become a new gift. Just give it 100 million years or more. And it's the gift that keeps on giving.
[27:13]
A
Absolutely. Yeah. Too right. Too right. Look, I just. I just think the stones that everyone gets excited about are really boring. I think things like volcanic glass is much more exciting. All right, thus ends my. My little foray into no go zones. We're gonna go to a go go zone after the break, which is gonna be your questions. How was that for a link?
[27:36]
B
It's a lovely link. We'll see.
[27:52]
A
This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk. What if your immune system could learn to recognize cancer cells?
[27:59]
B
That's immunotherapy. One type is CAR T cell therapy. T cells are your body's watchmen. And doctors can now extract these and reprogram them to spot cancer.
[28:09]
A
They've started showing this real promise in treating cancers of the blood like leukemia, because unlike most cancers, blood cancer cells, they float around separately. And that makes it easier for CAR T cells to seek them out and destroy them.
[28:22]
B
And now Cancer Research UK funded scientists are designing CAR T cells that can tackle solid tumors too, making them tougher so they can survive a more crowded and hostile cancer environment.
[28:33]
A
Now, these approaches are experimental, but they do start to show where treatment might go next. And over the past 50 years, UK's pioneering work has helped to double cancer survival in the uk. I mean, this shows you how far research can take us.
[28:47]
B
For more information about Cancer Research uk, their research breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org REST ISScience.
[29:08]
A
Okay, we're back. Michael, first one for you. What is the most cosmic horror science fact that you know?
[29:15]
B
Cosmic horror. I love this question. This one came from our subreddit, R thereestis Science. It was asked by Petros Anastasia. Dis. I believe that's how you pronounce it. They ask, yeah, what is the most cosmic horror science fact? I know. I guess the most scared I've been by a scientific thing was probably I was reading Greg Egan's Diaspora, and in that story, there's a robot like an Android thing that Lives on the moon by itself. And its job is to, like, check readings from different astronomical objects. And one of them are these black holes that are going to be colliding. And the readings aren't matching the theory. They realize that actually this is going to cause a very different effect than they predicted. And it's going to create a gamma ray burst that will destroy Earth. And I was like, what don't we know about the universe? That could just happen, you know, like, we all feel kind of safe, like, oh, there's nothing too dangerous very close by. Gamma ray bursts don't happen that often. But we don't know every possible gamma ray burst source near us. And when it will go. And if it goes, that could just be the end, game over. And it would just happen. And we would be fried. Some of us might be able to live for a few agonizing days afterwards, but this is a phenomenon where an enormous amount of gamma rays, which is the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation, just gets shot into space and it's gonna cause immense damage.
[31:05]
A
I mean, talking of nuclear bombs, that is essentially like a giant, giant, giant nuke going on.
[31:11]
B
Giant, giant, giant. It is the brightest thing in the universe, right? It's getting hit directly with a pulsar's pulse. It's bad. And. And I started to think, man, that could happen in my lifetime. I mean, is that horror enough? That's kind of just more like.
[31:32]
A
I mean, it doesn't get much worse than that.
[31:34]
B
It doesn't get much worse.
[31:36]
A
The thing is, is that. Okay, I mean, you wouldn't see it coming. Cause it travels at the speed of light, right? So it's with. So it's with you before you know. It would almost certainly kill everybody instantly, wouldn't it?
[31:47]
B
Yeah, I mean, it all depends on the strength of the burst. But yeah, I think that's where the horror comes in. That it's not just violent, it sneaks up on you. You don't know it's coming. And once it's there, you don't know it happened because you're already gone.
[32:02]
A
There's something about everything you've ever known and loved disappearing immediately. That. I mean, I wouldn't say it doesn't bother me, but I think that I could handle that. I could handle that, actually, because you just wouldn't know. You wouldn't know what hit you. Whereas I think if it was beta radiation in some way, then everyone's gonna die. It's just. It's gonna be much more agonizing and you're Gonna see people you love decay in front of you and know that that is coming for you and there's nothing you can do about it, right?
[32:43]
B
At least a gamma ray burst would be sudden. Well, the point is, this whole book, Diaspora, it's very hard sci fi by Greg Egan and it scared me. I read it mainly on an airplane. I'm already kind of a scared flyer. We've talked about this before and I couldn't really handle it. It really amped up. One of the other terrifying things it discusses is what it's like to travel near the speed of light, such that when you get to your destination, you know it's been a few nights, but yet a thousand years has passed on Earth. And everyone that you knew there is now gone, long gone. And you live in a different universe, basically. And it deals with that in ways that just boggle the mind. We start talking because the characters are immortal, artificial intelligences and so they can live through a trillion years easily and they just don't even recognize this. They eventually escape into a four dimensional universe. And he describes exactly how planets would orbit in such a universe, how life would forms could eat in four dimensions. And it just makes you feel so alien that it scared me. I would call that cosmic horror. I highly recommend it.
[33:59]
A
Okay, that sounds. You know, you've mentioned the Egan book a couple of times. Maybe not that one, but a few of them. I need to get on it. I need to up my sci fi game, I think. Okay, next question. That came in from Liam Brain. Liam, Is that your real name?
[34:18]
B
Liam Brain? That's who listens to this podcast, everyone. Mr. Brain himself.
[34:24]
A
You know what though, that's a bit like. I met someone in Greece once who was called Adonis and I thought that was a lot of pressure from his
[34:30]
B
parents, you know, that's a lot of pressure. Anyway, Liam, you have a great name and you asked. I'm quite interested in the tectonic plate movement of the Earth. If plates move and therefore land shifts, wouldn't the Earth decrease and increase in size? Where do the plates go when crashing?
[34:47]
A
Great question, Mr. Brain. Really, honestly, this is like a really good instinct. This is. There was this whole theory that was built on exactly this idea, by the way, which is called Expanding Earth theory. And some people who sort of championed it, they. They believe that, okay, well, the continents are drifting apart, and the reason they're drifting apart is because the planet must be quietly inflating beneath them. It turns out that just doesn't hold. You should really think of the Earth as More like. I mean, it's a sphere, sure, but it's more like you've got corks that are floating on the top of water underneath. They're sort of bobbing around, which is what the plates are like. If they crash into each other, especially if it's two land masses that crash into each other, then they don't really have anywhere to go, but they're too kind of. They sort of end up floating upwards, and that's how you end up getting mountain ranges. The Himalayas is a perfect example of that. Where these two tectonic plates met and the Himalayas pushed upwards. And we know this for sure because you can see fossils at the top of the Himalayas. Right? Like, and they're sort of in the mountains of the Himalayas that are definitely things that used to live by the side of the sea, right, that were definitely on the edge of the coast in the past. For example, Pakicetus, one of my favorite historical creatures, which is basically a dog that is the ancestor of the whale. Right. There was like a dog that was living on land and would dip into the sea to go and eat some fish that is found in the Himalayas. And we know that it used to live near the ocean. On the other hand, if you have sort of two tectonic plates crashing into each other and they're under the sea, sort of everything's much heavier, and one of them will sink downwards and end up getting kind of destroyed and melted into the mantle below. On the other hand, if you have things that are ripping apart, which is what's happening actively in Iceland at the moment. Iceland has the two plates, the Eurasian plate and the. The Americas plate, and they are ever so slowly being ripped apart. And what happens is you get effectively the magma coming up from underneath. This is why it's an active volcano region. This is the reason why you're still getting all of these kind of bursting up as these cracks appear between the two plates. There's a football field, which I went to go and see in Iceland, where people were literally playing football. And then an earthquake started, and then a massive, gigantic crater appeared in the ground over the course of, like, 24 hours. It's phenomenal.
[37:26]
B
But then what? Where did the rest of the plates go when they separate? Their other ends aren't just filling in empty space. The Earth is a finite sphere. So are they crunching on the other side?
[37:38]
A
So they're either going up or going down, Right? Yeah.
[37:41]
B
So the Earth is not getting larger or smaller, it's just moving around.
[37:45]
A
And actually satellite images that have Looked into exactly this, the expanding Earth theory. They measure that the Earth's radius overall stays incredibly steady. We're talking about a fraction of a millimeter a year. And this really is a question of scale. You know, when you're standing on the surface of the Earth, sort of this crater that appears that's, you know, a few meters wide feels absolutely enormous. But compared to the radius of the Earth, I mean, we are, they call it a crust for a reason. You know, we are Right, right, right on the surface of this thing.
[38:17]
B
Yeah, it is thin. And I mean, the Earth is getting like, like more massive as space dust falls down to it. That's offset by mass. The Earth loses like really light gases, hydrogen and helium. They get up to the top and they get picked away by solar wind. And the Earth also is like radiating heat out into space, which means it does lose a little bit of mass. But overall, the falling space dust is making Earth more massive. But as Hannah said, it's like not actually growing in any noticeable way. Yeah, it's just microscopic compared to the size of the whole planet.
[38:56]
A
Okay, last question from Oscar. Oscar says, if you had to live as either one of the first humans or one of the last humans to ever exist, which would you choose and why?
[39:06]
B
I love this question. I want to hear your answer first, Hannah.
[39:09]
A
Oh, I think I'd choose one of the first, basically for the same reason as your cosmic horror story earlier. I think the idea of knowing that it was coming to an end and knowing that the end was inevitable. I think it's about seeing those that you love die around you and struggle. I think I just, I'd rather. No thanks.
[39:28]
B
Well, it really depends on when and why you're the last human. If it's because you get to sit there and watch a black hole approach and take over our solar system, that would be terrifying. But if you, if the last human is going to be alive in the year 12 trillion as a digital consciousness or in Google years or more, and it's just the heat death of the universe you have to contend with, then, I don't know, you might not even have to feel things because we've evolved to some cognitive state so far and beyond. If you mean being a first person, you mean being like a very early Homo sapiens. Well, then I don't get to enjoy my favorite movies and snacks.
[40:17]
A
That's true. You also don't have to get up when your alarm clock goes. Yeah, you don't have the hell of being like, God, have I really been doom scrolling for Three hours.
[40:28]
B
Yeah, you're saved from doom scrolling.
[40:31]
A
Never hungover.
[40:32]
B
Yeah, you're never hungover.
[40:34]
A
You're never late. You're never ever late.
[40:37]
B
So your answer is that you would like to be one of the first humans?
[40:40]
A
Yeah, I think so.
[40:41]
B
Okay, well, I'm gonna choose one of the last. Cause I'd like to be there on the complete mountain of history so that I can kind of be like, okay, I wanna see how the story ends. You know, I don't wanna feel like I'm missing out. I just feel like those early prehistoric Homo sapiens, they must have fomo. They must be like, guys, can you imagine? There's gonna be a world cup one of these days and we won't be around for it.
[41:06]
A
You know what they can never say, they can never say in my day, they can never say back in the good old days because this is the only days.
[41:17]
B
Oh yeah, well, back in my day, oh, we did things the same because my parents were Homo erectus. No, I love, I love that. Obviously to be scientifically correct, clearly we're joking because human evolution was not this like suddenly a bunch of babies were, were born one year and they were all like, oh yes, I'm a cognitive social being. Yeah, there was no like first human. There's just this smear of ever changing organisms. But I do love jokes like that. I love thinking of, you know, five, 6,000 years ago. You know, the, the grandparents are like, well, back in my day we didn't have these fences. We had to go and, and find our food. You kids today with your agriculture. Agriculture?
[42:06]
A
Making you all fangled pottery.
[42:10]
B
Yeah, we just carry things in our hands.
[42:12]
A
What do you mean you've invented a bucket?
[42:15]
B
Back in my day, we didn't have all these words. We just grunted and looked exactly. I want that.
[42:23]
A
That's what I want. That's what I want.
[42:25]
B
I think we've talked about this before. Like I'm obsessed with this. I just, I spend so much time reading through people's concept of deep human history in antiquity. Like when in the most ancient literature we have, did people say anything about the way things used to be? And of course there are no written records of like, you know, my great, great, great grandma, like lived in a tree, you know, does it happen too slowly? But the ancient Greeks did have this idea that they used to be like the nomadic tribes. They were aware of that. They used to not have their infrastructure and their society. They were only guessing. They didn't remember this. This wasn't in living memory or oral history, but it was an idea that they believed in, or at least one author believed in. So, okay, yeah, basically, I'd like to be the last human, and Hannah would like to be the first.
[43:25]
A
There you go. Between us, we sandwich everyone else. It's everyone else.
[43:30]
B
All of you out there.
[43:31]
A
Yes. Our favorite way to be the Hannah
[43:34]
B
Michael Sandwich of history.
[43:36]
A
Well, we're the bread, though, aren't we?
[43:38]
B
Oh, yeah, we're the bread. And I guess sandwiches are named after what's inside, not what's on the outside.
[43:45]
A
The human sandwich. Yeah, we're the brioche buns of humanity. Okay, well, thank you for that. What a great image to finish on as am. You can send us your questions. The rest is science.
[43:57]
B
Com and you can check us out on our subreddit. R thereest ISS good questions there, including that one about cosmic horror. I've got more cosmic horrors I'll be sharing in the future, so stay tuned.
[44:09]
A
Absolutely. We'll see you next week. Thank you very much.
[44:13]
B
Bye. Bye.