Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, the production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 1: It's time for our behind the scenes many So time
Speaker 1: and an accidental science week that we're having this week.
Speaker 1: We didn't plan for it to be science week, but
Speaker 1: it is. It happens that way. It's always funny to
Speaker 1: me because often, um, Tracy and I don't always consult
Speaker 1: each other on what we're working on. At this point,
Speaker 1: we've both done so many that we don't really you know,
Speaker 1: need to check in all that much. But every once
Speaker 1: in a while this happens where we both seem to
Speaker 1: be on the same wavelengs and we do slightly related episodes.
Speaker 1: Yeah science time. Yeah. Usually at most they're sort of
Speaker 1: an f y I check in stop of what the
Speaker 1: topic is, or if it's something that one of us
Speaker 1: knows is sort of more difficult subject territory for the other,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll be sort of a hey, just as it are,
Speaker 1: we are we okay to talk about this this week? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh So. In my life, I have always struggled and
Speaker 1: continued to struggle with basic arithmetic. But then when I
Speaker 1: got into like more complicated mathematics and then like into
Speaker 1: more mathematically involved physics and chemistry and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: In school, I actually did pretty well and all of that.
Speaker 1: But the work that Shian Chung Wu was doing and experimental,
Speaker 1: you know, subatanic physics, I don't understand. I watched so
Speaker 1: many explanatory videos on uh beta decay. Basically I get
Speaker 1: on a basic level, but I watched so many videos
Speaker 1: that were about her experiment and about what parody is,
Speaker 1: and about a lot of the more general state of
Speaker 1: the field of experimental physics at the time, and I'd
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, I don't don't feel like I understand
Speaker 1: what this means. It's it's weird. I felt like I
Speaker 1: was pretty good and as a physics student until I
Speaker 1: got to this episode. Um, the thought in my head
Speaker 1: is so weird. I'm reluctant to say it, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna uh, I feel like I'm gonna sound like a
Speaker 1: crazy person. Come with me. I feel like this is
Speaker 1: one of those places we're having studied Samuel Beckett really
Speaker 1: helps me. Huh. Here's why, because there is a level
Speaker 1: of just acceptance with Beckett like you have to understand
Speaker 1: that you don't always grasp all of what it is,
Speaker 1: and you just accept it, and then you're in the
Speaker 1: material and it sort of starts to make its own
Speaker 1: weird logical sense. And I feel like that same thing.
Speaker 1: I am a little bit better now at applying to
Speaker 1: things like physics that are difficult concepts and it kind
Speaker 1: of makes a weird sense to me. Does that make sense? Yes,
Speaker 1: where I'm like, oh, yes, of course the mirror image
Speaker 1: of parody makes absolutely of course that makes sense. But
Speaker 1: if anybody ever had to really get a scientific explanation,
Speaker 1: I would be like, let's consult the book. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there there was a whole lot of physics. Headshaking. I
Speaker 1: also really appreciated the fact that there is a biography
Speaker 1: of San Chung Wu and it was actually written in
Speaker 1: China in Chinese and translated into English. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that folks who read a lot of literature
Speaker 1: that is outside of where they grew up in the
Speaker 1: language they speak, one of the things that people notice
Speaker 1: is the way different cultures address language and address the
Speaker 1: craft of how you put a story together, Like there
Speaker 1: can be differences, um, and it was really interesting to
Speaker 1: me to read this biography which was written in Chinese
Speaker 1: translated into English, that like the structure of it was
Speaker 1: a little different from what I am used to. There
Speaker 1: was like more repeating of previous material at the beginning
Speaker 1: of a chapter, which I just found to be fascinating
Speaker 1: and was like it was it led me down a
Speaker 1: whole rabbit hole of like, is this more a more
Speaker 1: common way of structuring a story in China and in
Speaker 1: Chinese or is that this like this one particular writer's style,
Speaker 1: And so now I'm very curious. I wonder too. I
Speaker 1: do not speak Chinese, but my understanding is that there
Speaker 1: are not conjugations of verb tense in Chinese, so it's
Speaker 1: not like a verb conveys future or past. It's all
Speaker 1: sort of now. So I suspect in translation that might
Speaker 1: lead to some of that repetition um where it seems
Speaker 1: like it's the same thing coming up again and again,
Speaker 1: but in fact it probably through nuance, was conveyed as
Speaker 1: being framed in different ways on the timeline would be
Speaker 1: my guests. Yeah, okay, that's fascinating too. Uh. That kind
Speaker 1: of reminds me of how occasionally when I will need
Speaker 1: to run some like French through Google Translate that gets
Speaker 1: really confused about the gender of anything because you know
Speaker 1: all the all the nouns. There's law and the law,
Speaker 1: and when you when you speak French, you will understand
Speaker 1: that you were talking about her dog. But suddenly Google
Speaker 1: Translate will be like his dog, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: you're just confused to Google Translate anyway. Neither of us,
Speaker 1: as Chinese speakers is very amazing and pronouncing Chinese words, No,
Speaker 1: they're very, very difficult for me. And as I said loud,
Speaker 1: last week's casual Friday or not last week's, but several back,
Speaker 1: I think I tend to speak everything with a French accent,
Speaker 1: which is a garbage way to do it, and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to cure myself of that very very bad habit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: our our, our pronunciations on this one did come from
Speaker 1: Mandarin Chinese speakers, and then we did our best to
Speaker 1: try to render that accurately. So fingers crossed that we did, okay,
Speaker 1: and apologies if we did not. So So, Tracy, I
Speaker 1: have to confess that in recent years I have felt
Speaker 1: a large degree of guilt over every time that I
Speaker 1: ever inhaled helium to make my voice sound silly now
Speaker 1: knowing that it is a finite resource that we kind
Speaker 1: of live on a precipice of running out of all
Speaker 1: the time. I don't think I've come to that point.
Speaker 1: But when we had that conversation at the top of
Speaker 1: the episode about how I was the person that had
Speaker 1: to go get the little helium tank and balloons for
Speaker 1: my brother's wedding, like it was the smallest tank that
Speaker 1: was available at at the you know, party supply store.
Speaker 1: But I did start feeling kind of guilty by the
Speaker 1: end that what I wound up doing with it was
Speaker 1: when I moved and I was like, I still have
Speaker 1: this little helium tank. I basically brought it to the
Speaker 1: house stuff works video department, and who knows, who knows
Speaker 1: whether it made its way into some kind of video
Speaker 1: use after that point. Probably they're a resourceful group. They
Speaker 1: are very resourceful. Yeah, I also just uh, I know,
Speaker 1: I I messaged you about it while I was working
Speaker 1: on it. But I was so pleased that this had
Speaker 1: an instance in this episode of scientists who could have
Speaker 1: gotten into an argument over who should get credit for
Speaker 1: their work, but instead became best friends. To me, that's
Speaker 1: the others well, and uh like, to some extent, I
Speaker 1: get it when there are big scientific disputes, because I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes those kind of discoveries really make or break somebody's career,
Speaker 1: so I understand. But at the same time, those they
Speaker 1: can become so acrimonious. Yeah, it's uh. We talked about
Speaker 1: this a little bit in our our sul Hurts episode
Speaker 1: as well, Like, there's there's that part of me that
Speaker 1: just just sad because I'm a little bit of an
Speaker 1: idealist and I want the pursuit of knowledge to be
Speaker 1: this pure and beautiful thing in every by to work
Speaker 1: together and cheer each other. But as you said, there
Speaker 1: are high stakes in terms of people's livelihoods, and it
Speaker 1: does make sense that there would be moments of disparity
Speaker 1: between people. I don't know how to fix that. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know how to fix the human condition,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm pleased that in this one instance, related
Speaker 1: to observing the sun without the need for an eclipse
Speaker 1: and figuring out how to use a spectroscope for any
Speaker 1: time viewing it resulted in a nearly four decade close friendship. Um.
Speaker 1: I really appreciated that by total coincidence, we did this
Speaker 1: episode after our earlier episode of the week because when
Speaker 1: I was working on Chan Chung Wu, I really was
Speaker 1: like my I felt like the understanding of what she
Speaker 1: was talking about was on the other side of a
Speaker 1: wall in my mind that I was banging my head against.
Speaker 1: And then we got to come over to Helium, which
Speaker 1: included like all my favorite types of things from when
Speaker 1: I took physics and astronomy, and I was like, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: my brain, my brain can still do science. It just
Speaker 1: can't do uh some beta decay parody in subatomic physics situation. Yes,
Speaker 1: elemental signatures in the visible light spectrum is a good
Speaker 1: stuff and it it As I said in the episode,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that I still I can
Speaker 1: I can wrap my brain around what's happening, but I'm
Speaker 1: still wowed when when astronomers and astrophysicists today look at
Speaker 1: at a new thing that we've discovered out in the
Speaker 1: the vast expanse of space and they're like, oh, we
Speaker 1: think it's made of this and this, and I was
Speaker 1: like wow, um, because I love it and I love science.
Speaker 1: I always feel like a little bit, you know, my
Speaker 1: science grasp is um hit or miss I find, but
Speaker 1: I still love it so deeply, and I love that
Speaker 1: the there are people who use their incredible intellect for
Speaker 1: the betterment of our understanding of our place in the universe.
Speaker 1: To me, that's like one of the noblest pursuits for sure.
Speaker 1: And if there are folks that are like man, what
Speaker 1: is why is it so much science? I don't know
Speaker 1: what you're working on for next time, but next time
Speaker 1: what I'm working on is very far away from what
Speaker 1: we are talking about this week. Yeah, same, same, I
Speaker 1: always want to talk about science, but I know I
Speaker 1: do it a lot. I almost had a moment one
Speaker 1: of the people while I was researching this episode. There
Speaker 1: was a person that came up uh, and then it
Speaker 1: became about photographing the moon, and I was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: get away, You've done so yeah. Um. I responded to
Speaker 1: a couple of listener suggestion emails that we got over
Speaker 1: the past week with with basically, yeah, that is actually
Speaker 1: on my short list for a thing, but it has
Speaker 1: so many overlapping UH themes with stuff we've just done
Speaker 1: that I'm trying to save it for a little bit later.
Speaker 1: That doesn't always work out. We still have runs of
Speaker 1: a similar theme on the show, but you know, we try. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it happens. It happens. And then, as we said, this
Speaker 1: was completely coincidental that we both picked science this time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes that's just how it goes. Uh, we're on whatever,
Speaker 1: We're both in the science zone for whatever reason. Stuffy
Speaker 1: Missed Industry Class is a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
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