Science or Fiction Obscure Inventors

You're listening to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Your esc ape to real ity . Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Monday, May 25th, 202 6, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella, hey everybody, Kara Santa Maria, howdy, Jay Novella, hey guys, and Evan Bernstein. Happy Monday. Yeah, . rare Monday Monday recording. What the hell? Monday? What are we doing here on Monday? On YouTube . Well, we're going to Wisconsin this weekend. This is the only night we could record early enough to get the show done before the weekend. Correct. Wisconsin Here we are. Oh, we're here. We're actually here already. If you're listening. If you're listening to it, yeah. Time travel. Yeah, so have any of you guys been specifically been to Wisconsin before? No, but have had their cheese. I don't think so. I've been only when it was winter , so it was cool. Oh gosh, that had to be freezing. I've never seen summer in Wisconsin. I don't you know how I remember sometimes where I've been is I go to my photo app in my phone and I search for the place. Uh-huh. And I see how many pictures I took there. Yep, there's some. Yeah, I've been to Milwaukee, Chicago, Minneapolis. Well, I've been to Madison. Well, Chicago's in Illinois. Yeah. Well, I'm I'm just saying in the region, yeah. In the midwest. But I've never been on any of the lakes. I've never been on them. I've only flown over the lake. Yeah, I haven't either. I don't even remember flying over any . When would you even go when would you go over one of the lakes? Like who travels the lakes? Who travels them? Yeah, by the boat. Why? Commerce, man. Commerce. Yeah. I mean, you gotta go all the way around Lake Michigan and just cut right across it. Oh, that's true. Yeah, but if you're sending anything over there, you might as well be a lot cheaper, just pure expense of of just shipping it instead of trucking it all around. Yeah, but aren't there Bob, I'm looking at the map too. Aren't there just like bridges? I don't know. Oh, very narrow points. Really? It's too big for bridges? The the the the main girth, the main width, sure, but I'm sure there's smaller there's smaller areas with plenty of bridges. But I'm talking more about the girth. I don't know if it goes over or under, but do you guys know why there are lakes and not seas? Because they're freshwater. That's one they're inland. Because they're surrounded by land. Well, so so can sea. They're freshwater. They have a natural outflow to the ocean and one that's not really intuitive. They sit significantly above sea level. Oh interesting. I thought it was all about size. I guess it isn't it's not just about size. So Michigan is kind of like a little well, it's not really an island, it's like a peninsula. I live from it. It looks like a hand. You ever met somebody from Michigan and they go, Where are you from? and they point to their hand. Right. That's like how they know. There's a island there's an island in um Lake Michigan and it's called Beaver Island. It's pretty big. I wonder if people live there. Probably, because that that looks huge. Well gosh, I mean, you know, beavers were one of the main reasons why people settled the area initially to for the beaver. trade For the fur trade. Huge beaver trade, yeah. It was enormous There's an airport on Beaver Island. What? Yeah. Beaver International Airport. And I'm like literally zooming in and I'm like, okay, there's like houses that go uh you along the coast, but there it doesn't seem to be like it just doesn't seem to be like a lot of people here. Wait, is Beaver Island part of Michig an or is it part of Wisconsin? Oh, interesting. Probably Michigan. I don't know. I don't know it's in between them. I need to zoom in on this. I think like the st the state line goes down the middle of Lake Michigan. Yep, it's not a part of it. That's what those lines are. It does? Interesting. So Beaver Island is Michigan. Yeah, I see that. Maps. We're not going to Michigan. We're going to Wisconsin. Yeah, that's right. Yes, but Wisconsin is surrounded by the Great Lakes. Yeah, I didn't know Wisconsin had to had a little border with uh Lake Superior guys. Oh it does? Up north, huh? I re I read about Lake Superior not too long ago and I actually got a little scared . It is . It's more it's more of a beast than than I ever imagined. Right here, I'm looking at at an overview here. It's like Lake Superior is exceptionally dangerous. Yes. Why is it dangerous? Well they're describing it as a as it behaves like an inland ocean. Let's see, temperamental weather, hurricane. Yeah, don't have waves. Unpredictable and massive waves. Wow. Edmund Fitzgerald, you know, that in the seven eighteen seventy five. You know, Titanic size almost . uh the year aver the annual average is forty degrees Fahrenheit. You fall in there, it won't take long before you are done. Just a c you know, you it says here you after a few minutes you lose fine motor control. I think that's underselling it. I think it forty degrees is some nasty. That will suck the heat out of you. Yeah , Bob, you know you you wanna know something about Lake Superior? Yeah, what is that, Jim? It's very far away from Connecticut, so you should not be scared. No, but we're going to Wisconsin and it's Lake Superior is gonna crawl across the land and suck us into its death. I would like to I would like to I would like to go on it. I want to go on it and I want to see it. Bob likes being scared though. He does, yes. Bob, you do have a fear minus death equals fun. Yeah, this could be death. There's a whole group of people who surf Lake Superior. Oh w ow. Yeah. This is so cool. They're freshwater surfaces. They must wear yeah, they must wear dry suits for that. I could do that because there's no sharks. Yeah. Are you sharks? Oh no sharks in Lake Superior. Okay. But still some death.. Oh yeah You know, if a creature like the Lech Lochness monster were to exist, it would i i it would be in a lake more like this rather than Lochness. So tiny compared to like the cryptic in Lake Superi That's a great question. Let's find out. See great lake cryptids. There have got to be. I bet. Jay, are there are there any freshwater sharks? There better not be. That's what I'm saying. There are river river sharks. There are river sharks. How are we not hunting these bastards down right now? Mainly they're rare, mainly in Australia and Southeast Asia. Of course they're in Austral ia. Evan Lake Superior's monster is called Pressy. Pressy. Yeah. How great is that? So Lake Erie has South Bay Bessie. Lake Superior has Pressy. Superior and Huron have an underwater panther. An underwater panther. Yeah, these are like these are like indigenous legendary, you know, creatures. And then Ontario has a plesiosaur like creature. Yeah. So we've got our own versions here, and we never even talk about them. Oh my god. Why? Guys, river sharks specifically. Listen, listen. Can't get over the sharks. I'm going to get them back. Of course I am. River sharks, specifically bull sharks, are highly dangerous and are widely considered one of the three most dangerous shark species to humans. So swimming in freshwater is more dangerous. Is there a non-dangerous shark? Yeah, but river sharks live in ages. Most of them are absolutely fine. Absolutely fine. But Kara, follow the movie the movie plot here. Someone from Australia brings them to Lake Superior. Bob goes Bob goes out on a boat ride , the captain got drunk, the boat hits a rock, Bob's tipped overboard, and a river shark comes and eats his left leg. Yeah, he was keeping them in their tank and they they got tired of him, flushed him down the toilet. They went into the lake Where they grew unlimited size because of the how big the lake is. Yeah, like goldfish, right? They've they grow to the size of the bowl. Yeah. Whoa, a bull shark was found in Alton, Illinois, Jay Yeah, I'm telling you, look, man. You can't go in any body of water. It's like sewer alligators. Jay, here's one that evolved into a walking shark. It walks over land. Land shark. Come on. This is this is I don't know, this is a little silly and it's kinda small, but I I just something I didn't fully wrap my head around until recently. So I'm gonna ask you, Cara, uh to start. Explain to me exactly how toilets flush. Exactly how? Well, I have to replace the thingy in the back of my toilet recently. Very technical. So there's a tank in the back of the toilet. Right. And it holds water. And when you f hit the little flipper thing, a stopper comes up and the water goes out of that tent. That's right, stopper. That's right, stopper. And somehow that also makes the water disappear out of the toilet bowl. And then when the water and then when when the water level is low, the stopper closes on itself. Yeah. Because gravity. And then it refills slowly and that also refills the uh toilet bowl. The bowl. Right. Yeah. But Steve, I know what you're getting at. Yeah, you do you? Well then hold on to it. I wanna know if everyone has anything to to add that. Wouldn't it be when you add water okay, so you start with water in the bowl, and then when you're flushing it, you're adding more water to it. Now that doesn't that cause the the the the water to then force downward through the pipe out off the s curve or whatever they call that piece and um so so it's so it's the addition of the tank water to the bowl w ater is the