46: Lawn Loathing, Spelling Psammophile, and Guinness World Records

Why are lawns so bad, and what could we grow instead?  How much can we learn from an esoteric word like Psammophile? And why is the Guinness Book of World Records wonderful and terrible at the same time?How complicated is trying to scientifically study gender? Why does it feel like water get discovered on Mars every other month? And what's so great about these pigeons I see everywhere?Images/Videos we talk about:<br />Snakes in Sand<br />The Jerboa/Kangaroo Rat/Kangaroo MouseSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!Timestamps:<br />(00:00:00) Intro<br />(00:05:44) Lawn Loathing<br />(00:45:55) Spelling Psammophile<br />(01:19:26) Guinness World Records<br />(01:50:38) OutroWe also learn about:  lawn enjoyer (derogatory), there are 6x more lawn than corn in the US, how we developed our lawn fetish in the 17th century, the pesticide and fertilizer boom after WWII, the more money and knowledge you have the worse lawns get for the environment,  runoff powered sargassum seaweed, 30% of drinking water used for lawns, lawns aren’t even the best greenery for your mental health, “your granny cant push the lawnmower around” okay I don’t want her too! astroturf is even worse, when the sun engulfs the earth all that will remain is our plastic lawns, the no-mow-movement, the alternative lawn movement, make an animal crossing lawn! Ella and Caroline fail the spelling bee, what makes a word tricky, 3 letter words are the trickiest, Ella steals the word, ventifacts, sand actually holds water better, granular physics in a scorpion paper, sidewinder snakes drifting while doing the worm, snake scale fingerprint, ecomorphological convergence, the adorable Jerboa or Kangaroo Rat are in Dune unchanged, Jerboas can kick sand onto traps, foot drumming, “the rats would rather drum than fight”, sandy fungi, our childhood obsessions with Guinness records, people are weird! the origin of the Guinness World Records, I’ll prove to them who’s the fastest bird! the eccentric fact finding twin brothers, may we hope to turn heat into light”, the 4 types of Guinness world record, marketing records, the analog to digital downfall, over half of the top 100 brands have records, Guinness is a native advertising company, brands really need empowering, laundering governments apolitcally, most lightning strikes to a person, a good record makes you wonder Sources:Lawn Sources Coming Soon!<br />---<br />538 Article on Spelling Bee Data<br />Joseph White on Word Selection Process<br />The Wikipedia Page for Psammophile<br />Amazing Paper on Psammophile Ecology and Scorpions<br />Energy Cost of Walking/Running on Sand<br />NYTimes on Sidewinder Snakes<br />Sidewinder Ecology<br />Sidewinder Microscopic Scale Differences<br />Jerboa Evasiveness<br />Jerboa Foot Drumming<br />Kangaroo Rat Ecology<br />Psammophile Fungi<br />---<br />