In this episode titled "77: Light Pollution & Mistakes", the hosts dive deep into two fascinating yet often overlooked topics: light pollution and the role of mistakes in art. By blending scientific insights with anecdotal storytelling, the hosts seek to illuminate these subjects and their impacts on both our environment and creative expressions.
Understanding Light Pollution
What is Light Pollution?
Light pollution is defined as unwanted or excessive artificial light that negatively affects our natural environment, impacts human health, and obscures the beauty of the night sky. It is a relatively modern concept, officially recognized since the 1960s, and significantly differs from historical forms of pollution that focus on chemicals and waste.
The Origins and Impacts of Light Pollution
- Historical Context: Light pollution is a recent development when compared to other types of pollution, with significant increases noted since the advent of gas and electric street lighting.
- Current Trends: Research highlights that the global night sky brightens by nearly 10% each year, with about 80% of North Americans unable to see the Milky Way due to excessive artificial lighting.
- Environmental Effects: Artificial light disrupts ecosystems, affecting the behavior and biology of various species, including moths, birds, and sea turtles, which navigate using moonlight.
Community Solutions
The podcast encourages listeners to actively reduce light pollution within their communities through simple solutions:
- Turn off unnecessary lights at home.
- Install downward-facing light fixtures.
- Use warm-toned LED lights to minimize the impact on wildlife.
Embracing Mistakes in Art
The Beauty of Imperfection
The second half of the episode explores how mistakes in art can lead to innovative creations and discussions about what constitutes quality and beauty in artistic expression. This segment showcases some notable historical art mishaps alongside contemporary perspectives on imperfections in creative works.
Noteworthy Examples of Art Mistakes
- Kintsugi: The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, highlighting cracks rather than hiding them, promotes the idea that an object's history is as meaningful as its aesthetic.
- Eche Homo Restoration: A notorious restoration incident in Spain where an elderly woman attempted to restore a fresco of Jesus, resulting in a botched artwork that gained viral fame for its unconventional appearance, humorously dubbed "Behold the Monkey".
- The Lincoln Memorial: The engraving of Abraham Lincoln's speeches on the memorial contains a minor mistake where an 'E' was miscarved as an 'F', which few people recognize unless pointed out—emphasizing how errors can fade from memory in the grand narrative of art.
Insights on Learning from Mistakes
- Purposeful Flaws: The podcast posits that mistakes often serve as catalysts for creativity and learning. The hosts share a sentiment that embraces imperfection as part of the human journey rather than something to conceal.
- Cultural Perspectives: Perspectives from various cultures reveal that many artistic traditions celebrate flaws as intrinsic elements, reinforcing the notion that no creation is without its missteps.
Key Takeaways
- Awareness of Light Pollution: Understanding light pollution is crucial not just for astronomy enthusiasts but for preserving the natural world around us.
- Celebrating Imperfection: Mistakes in art and life can lead to transformative experiences and innovation, encouraging a mindset that values growth over perfection.
- Community Engagement: Small changes at the community level can significantly mitigate light pollution and promote a more sustainable environment.
In conclusion, this episode of "Let's Learn Everything" expertly intertwines scientific exploration with deep cultural insights, reminding us that light pollution and the beauty of mistakes provide valuable lessons in growth, awareness, and the human experience.
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I guess that's all that's left to do is rock and roll. You are taking us off, Ella. I appreciate you telling me because I always forget. It's easier because you go and being like, I'm the student. I don't know. I have to introduce. That's not what a student does. I don't have to get up and introduce the class. Here's why. Yeah. Here are my teachers.
Hi guys, welcome to Biology 102. I'm Ella. I love that we've been doing this for so long, but we're still only on Biology of 102. And not any further than that. That's going to take a long time. Wait, we keep switching topics. Why do we take this class?
Hello and welcome to Let's Learn Everything The Show where we learned everything and anything interesting. That was the wrong way round. Also, I realize the way we started, I feel like I'm at an auction, like doing an auction announcement. It goes so fast, you know?
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My name is Caroline and this episode science topic is light pollution. Oh, it's a very it's a very Caroline okay, it's a very kind of topic. I feel like I haven't done a little environment topic for a while so I'm dipping my toes in.
But also aside from being an environmental thing, right? If we're talking about light pollution, we're talking about light and some of those properties. And so I'm very curious. Some of the other things that are that are going to come from this as we dive deep. We will talk about it. You know what? We'll talk about this in a second. I won't go into it too much. Yeah. My name is Tom. And today's miscellaneous topic is mistakes and imperfections.
Oh, that's so broad. Wow. Yeah. Specifically, specifically in the arts. Okay. But I thought this would be a good topic to start off the end of the start of the new year as we head into February and our resolutions are confronted with reality. I thought it'd be fun to talk about some like famous historic mistakes in art and throughout throughout
Are you saying that anybody who did a New Year's resolution and has already failed shouldn't feel too bad about it because it's okay because art sometimes is wrong sometimes. Is that what that sentence basically? Something like that. It's going to be a little amazing. Okay, cool. Lovely. We don't have any mistakes or corrections or any of those things, do we? Nope, no corrections corners this episode. But if we did, that'd be okay.
So Tom recently did a topic where he talks about where we are in the universe. Yes. And there was this one section. What? And you're talking about origins of the Milky Way's name and about like breast milk being sprayed and things like that. Yup, that is the Greek myth that the Milky Way was formed from Hera's breast milk and that's how we got the name Milky Way.
And that section just got me like wondering, would I call the Milky Way in the sky like similar to looking like breast milk? Have I ever actually seen like the Milky Way in the sky? Have I ever actually seen breast milk? Have I seen breast milk?
So I want to talk about light pollution. It's something that like I kind of knew a little bit about, but I didn't know like, especially compared to climate change, chemical pollution, all of these other things that we are hearing about. So often these days light pollution is one that we do talk about a little bit less.
There's no light pollution threshold. Yeah, exactly. Light pollution offsets, right? Yeah. But so first off, is light pollution a term that you guys are both familiar with? Is there something that you hear regularly these days? Yeah, yeah. Live in New York City, baby.
Yeah, absolutely. I've heard it mostly in regards to like being able to see the night sky. Yeah. If you look at a city, can you see the stars? How many stars can you see? That's like pollution. Yeah. Yeah. You're absolutely spot on. So like at its simplest point, light pollution is just unwanted or excessive artificial light.
That's it, basically. And it is a somewhat recent term when it comes to all of the pollutions that we talk about. Pollution was first used in the context of chemicals polluting the environment in the 1700s. Yeah, I knew you'd enjoy that.
I'm sorry, wait. So pollution as a term that was used in the context of chemical pollution or polluting the environment was first used in the late 1700s. The word itself is older than that, but specifically talking about chemical pollution of the environment, the current 1700s.
Because it is sort of like light pollution. Yeah, it's like a it's obviously feels different. Yeah, I'm glad it's become a commonplace phrase, but it definitely feels a little different than, yeah, you know, chemical waste. Yeah, no, for sure. I didn't know it was that early, though. That's nice. Yeah, pollution. Well, so the concept of pollution as something that could like it, it could be detrimental to human health does come from around 400 BC. So it's like,
Super old as a concept. But just like the terminology that we used obviously is a little bit more recent. So that's pollution. Yeah. And air pollution and water pollution start being used in the 1800s. But light pollution as a term doesn't come around until like the 1960s or 70s around the same sort of time as sound pollution as well. That I have not heard.
I mean, it makes sense because, you know, how common were street lights and big tall buildings with loads of lights and mud lights and stadium. I don't think having a bunch of candles in the Roman Colosseums was contributing a ton to light balloons.
Yeah, totally. And you guys have hit on my next few points so perfectly there. But, you know, for things like water pollution, for example, obviously that's an older term. We have been polluting water for hundreds of years. For example, we had to pollute the Thames exactly to cause like the big stink in the Thames that had to be addressed by Parliament in the 1800s. We had been doing that for hundreds and hundreds of years. Sorry, as an American, you got a linger on. I don't know. Is it called the big stink?
It was called The Big Stink. There is a Wikipedia article called The Great Stink. Sorry, not The Big Stink. That makes a bit more sense. That's even better. Yeah. And that was where the Thames became such a bad smelling water body, such a bad smelling river because we were polluting it so much from activity in London that there's like a horrible histories bit as well that I'm sure other Brits will remember. But like, yeah, it became something that Parliament had to address basically because of how bad it smelled. Wow.
So yeah, human activity and will land, water, air pollution, been going on for a really long time. Humans and polluting stuff, you know, we're besties. Light pollution though. As Ella just mentioned, really succinctly there, that's really, really recent. Ella talked about street lighting, so a little history on street lighting specifically.
I like this topic already in the sense that you've gone light pollution and then you've gone, okay, every single thing that we mention here, I'm just gonna do a little bit of history on. The word pollution, streetlights. Let's learn a little bit about it. No, I never thought, yeah. Well, yeah, this is, and I think this is something that will come up again and again and again in this topic is like,
Yeah, it is really recent and I never thought about it in that way. Yeah. And it does have a really big impact still, like its recentness doesn't detract from it. It's also an interesting one in like, there are really easy interventions that we can do to reduce its impact, but I will talk about all of that in a little bit. So streetlights, I found this fascinating, but it's only a short little section. Also, should we say, I mean, the biggest light polluter is the sun. So clearly, we just need to shut it down.
And then we'll be good. Just turn it off. Just like go in there, suck out all of the fuel for it. The sun be allowed to make so much light when we... No. To be clear, it is about artificial lighting specifically. So if you want to go and turn the sun off, that's fine. But I think you might be giving flat Earth a little bit of fuel there to their theories. That's the main thing about turning the sun off would be you would make flat Earth Earth happen. Absolutely. That's the real issue.
So for street lighting in particular, throughout history, we used oil lamps, candles, burning torches, et cetera, to light our way. But the first public widespread system for street lighting, at least in the UK, was with gas. It was first demonstrated in 1807. Wait, really?
Yeah, yeah. So we had gas lighting in, especially around London. That was used really, really widespread here. And it became pretty widely available from the mid 1800s onwards. That was when you started to see a lot more gas lighting. The thing about gas lamps though, gas street lights, is that they only really light up the space a few feet around it. So it was generally really dark in between lamps basically. So you would almost use them to
as like a guide to where to go next. A little checkpoint to run between. Where to aim towards. Like breadcrumbs. It's like in tears of the kingdom when you're underground, the little bulbs you light up. They only do the bit around you, then you can see to the next one where to go. I think that's what inspired the...
Also, Caroline, I didn't realize this was gonna be a fucking like technology infrastructure topic. I'm like, oh, oh, hell yeah.
This is the stuff. As I was researching this, I was like, I love this. I want to talk about it. So yeah, so that's like gas street lights. Also, the thing about gas street lights is that they set fire really, really easily. And they are part of these. Especially like World War II, when a lot of London was being bombed, why so much of the damage was so bad was because a lot of gas street lighting was still in place there. Yeah. Yeah. Oh.
because there's gas pipes everywhere. Sorry that, of course, they were gas. They were hooked up. So for some reason, in my head, I was like, they're going on and turning it on by hand and lighting it with a little candle. Oh, they have a little propane taken side. No, it's not.
A system within water. It's a full-on system. Yeah, absolutely. There were oil lamps that some people would go around and light, but that was before the gas lighting was particularly used. So yeah, by the 1930s, half of the street lights in London were still using gas. Wow.
And the transition from gas to electric street lighting didn't finish in London until the 1960s. So it's still like really, really recent, which is when we start seeing the word light pollution, cropping on it, it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense, right?
We also know that from there, it's just going to get used more and more because lighting is getting better and better. Our technology is getting really, really good basically to the point where we are now, where we're using LEDs and energy saving light bulbs and things like that, that produce loads of light for the amount of electricity that they're using. Sorry, my time comparison that I always use is whenever anything in the 1960s, I'm like, 1969 is when we went to the moon. Yeah. And just like a few years later, we finally had like electric street lights.
So it was 1963, was electric streetlights, I think. And then, like, so that's all of the streetlights in London, all the majority of them were transitioned over. And then six years later, we went to the moment. Yeah, which is crazy when you think about it. So if we come forwards to 2023, there was a paper published in that year that looked at light pollution levels between 2011 and 2022. And this is where some of the stats like upset me on a deep level.
So this paper suggested that the night sky is getting lighter by an average of 9.6% globally each year. So each year is getting 9.6% brighter. But is this an average across the globe or an average within different areas? Because they'll be like rural areas that are lighting up at fast rate than London is. Yeah. And I also, I don't think we have to worry about, you know, in 30 years, the lights are so bright that we're blinding.
Sometimes I live in Cardiff, which is in like a particularly big city, but I look outside a window and I'll be like, it looks like it's daytime out there. Yeah. Yeah. So that is looking globally. Obviously the paper does highlight that it can't look at places like really remote parts of Africa. There are some parts of Asia that can be included in the study just because there weren't people there to go and survey it, but they did highlight that different places have different amounts of increase.
So in Europe, for example, light pollution was increasing at a rate that was below the global average, it was around 6.5% every year. Whereas in North America, it's around 10.5%, so it was above the global average. So yeah, it is different in different places. Yeah, we got a lot more places, a lot more spread out. Yeah, absolutely. So what this increase does mean is that about 30% of people around the world can no longer see the Milky Way in the night sky.
30%, that seems quite low, but I guess we're city dwellers, so. Yeah, for sure. This does rise to 80% for North America specifically. Yeah, that sounds more right. Yeah, for sure. I bet the UK is similarly high because we're such a small country with very little, with very few places that are not. Yeah, for sure.
So as Ella also highlighted, it's not just street lights that cause light pollution. Right. It is all sorts of things. Like Ella said, flood lighting, security lighting, car lights, lighting within the home. There is something called light trespass, which is a light pollution that's from outside of your property that comes into your property. There's glare, which is light pollution.
I'm sorry, trust pass is the most genius term to get like Nimby's into environmentalist. The light pollution is trespassing on your property. We need to put a stop to it. It's like genius. What's a Nimby? Yeah, what's a Nimby?
Oh, maybe that's an American term. It's like a not in my backyard. It's for people who are like, you know, don't want like affordable housing or don't want like, you know, public services near their house because they're like, this is my property. It was giving like, high-moment association vibes, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. That's a great way to trick them into being like,
Yeah, the lights trespassing. But also, this is something that legitimately is studied as people have security lights in their back garden. How much is that impacting other properties around them? Is it coming into your home? Stuff like that. So it is a legit thing. I'll be real.
I don't care about other people. I don't give a shit if it's going into your house. Get some blackout curtains, put some newspaper up in your window, I don't fucking care. What I care about is wildlife. That's what I care about. I feel like we're going to hit that house. I know you're going to talk about that. Because you're Caroline.
Maybe I can convince you that you should care about other people today, Ella. Maybe. You know what? No, I won't. Maybe I'll be able to convince you to care about yourself. Look, my new year's resolution was to care about Tom. And that is all my energy. That's all the capacity I have this year.
Oh gosh, okay. So Ella doesn't care about light trespass, that's fine. There's other types of light pollution as well. There's things like glare, which is that, we all know what glare is if you're a driver especially. That excessive brightness that causes visual discomfort. That can be caused by cars, excessive street lighting, lighting in your own home. It can cause discomfort to us, animals, all of that sort of jazz. And the other one that I want to mention is Sky Glow, which
sounds cool. What the fuck? Some of these terms. It's such a good term and it sums up perfectly because this is probably something that you're aware of if you're in it. Yeah, go on, Tom. Is it just like the reflection of city lights against like clouds and stuff making it like? Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. It's like when the sky is just like, it's just like ominously orange. Yeah. Yeah.
And this is, like Tom said, from light reflecting and bouncing off of particles in the atmosphere. So it's not just clouds. It can be like a clear sky. And you'll see this, like, if you're looking at a city from far away, sometimes you can see that weird, ominous orange glow that Ella just mentioned. When there was Northern Lights in the US or Northern Hemisphere, there was a ton of times where I was like, look, look, look at my friend was like, that is just light pollution. That direction, yes. That's New Jersey.
Could it be as well a city like London, New York, whatever, the air pollution from the cars from cars and stuff, that can cause it. Absolutely, that can make it worse as well. Oh, adds to the contribution. Yeah. I know it sucks, but part of me is like, it's a fascinating mechanism the way these things interact. Yeah, totally.
So there are other types of light pollution. I'm not going to go into them today. I think those are the ones that I found most interesting. That's a time. Yeah, it's loads. But obviously these types of light pollution impact a lot of things in a lot of different ways. The most obvious, I think to us, is probably
Shall I bring up breast milk again? No, you know what, we'll leave it there. It's obviously how we can see the night sky. So obviously, light pollution, as we know, impacts people's work in astronomy, meteorology, et cetera, all of the fields that have us looking up into the night sky. Get a better telescope, Lydia.
Well, so when you said, I don't, you may be, you'll get me to care about people. I care about scientists trying to do like science with the sky. I know that obviously, yeah, most observatories are in will be far out of cities for that reason. Yeah.
Well, yeah, so one exception to that rule is, and there are several exceptions to the rule of observatories being in rural areas. So at the Natural History Museum in London, they've got some pretty solid telescopes there. Dr. Ashley King, a future leaders fellow at the Natural History Museum, talked about how it can impact some of the work that they're doing. God say, Caroline, the places this topic is taking us, I'm so into, I'm just like,
It's like telescope exceptions. I'm like, yes, please. Let's go. Absolutely. So yeah, Dr. Ashley King says there's a camera forming part of the media network at the Natural History Museum. But because of light pollution, we don't detect all the meteors that a camera in the countryside would.
If we can't pick up these fainter meteors, then we have a gap in our data. And we're missing information about where extraterrestrial material such as dust is coming from in our solar system. So it is causing gaps in some research as data, which is frustrating for sure. I'm like so, so on that. I'm guessing the Natural History Museum Observatory is like a legacy one that was built long before
This was with this is a problem places like the Greenwich as there were trees and stuff like that like it's not that I don't think that the people doing research there are valid and shouldn't have loads of light pollution It's just like this is just part of living now, right? And maybe you'll talk as you said you'll talk about maybe ways we can avoid it But I just don't see you know the central London becoming less light polluted so that people can do astronomy as as wonderful as a concept that is
What is sort of like, I think, yeah, it's like, can you, you could imagine, I think, I, I, I agree where I'm like, you can't make New York City darker, but it's like maybe a little bit. The thing that hit me on that was I was like, it's wild to think that like, as light pollution or, you know, lights get more, more populous. It's like, oh, our telescope, this telescope just gets like objectively worse.
Yeah, yeah, more and more obsolete, basically. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's a shame. I don't want to make it seem like I don't think there's a shame that these things are happening. But like, yeah, maybe I would be interested to know how much darker it would need to be for that telescope in the Natural History Museum to be significantly better. In the middle of London. Yeah, because I reckon it would need to be quite a lot darker for quite a distance around the museum. And that would be at the, you know, the detriment to the people living there.
This is the thing with light pollution, and we will talk about this in a little bit, is this really awkward balance that it has to play between, we need light to be able to function. Yeah, light's good. I like light. Yeah, I like being able to see things when it's dark outside, and then balancing that with the other health implications it can have on us, as well as the impact it can have in the environment as well. It's an interesting one. It is interesting. I look outside my window now, it's dark.
There are street lights out, there are street lights all over my city, they're not that bright, and they do enough that I can walk around safely when it's dark. But they would all have to be gone or significantly dimmer to get rid of a good level of light pollution. Or maybe something else, or maybe they may have to be a different kind of light. That'll be interesting too, but also, let's get to the solutions before start complaining about the solutions.
I'm sorry, Caroline, that I've decided to be the naysayer of this. I love it. No, it's great. Yeah. Wait, but it's right now, outside, it's dark, but it's still light for you, out your window. It's dark. I can see outside, because there are street lights. For me, it looks like it's daylight outside. That's the time difference. Sorry, continue.
Don't laugh, Caroline. That didn't deserve a laugh. I was so invested in it. I was like, where's Tom going with it? I knew I knew where it was going, and I wish I hadn't engaged. Anyway, I will talk a little bit about the impact it can have on amateur astronomers as well, or, like, animation star gazers, because Dr. Christopher Kyber, who was the lead author on the 2023 paper I talked about earlier, he said, the rate at which stars are becoming invisible to people in urban environments is dramatic.
If the brightening of the night sky continues at its current rate, a child born in a place where 250 stars are visible will only be able to see 100 stars on their 18th birthday, which is a significant decrease. And of course, if the sky looks different, over time people forget how incredible the night sky is to look at to the point where
If something were to change about how this guy looks, say there was a power cut, maybe the night sky could become quite scary for people to see if they don't know what they're looking at. Come on. Yeah.
Thank you, in 1994, when the Northridge earthquake knocked out the power in Los Angeles. No, you're just going to say this actually happened. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? What are all these tiny specks of light in the sky? What is this giant silvery cloud in the sky is exactly what happened in 1994, basically.
Really? I'm also, I'm visiting my folks right now as I'm recording this, and I've never been more glad that they listened to the podcast and know what it is because the thought of them hearing me scream, why is there breast milk?
So yeah, this was a real thing that happened in 1994. There was an earthquake in LA, which knocked out the power, which meant that street lights all went out, lighting in homes went out, it went dark. And emergency services, as well as people at the Griffith Observatory, got a lot of calls from people. Some of them were quite distressed. Some of them were curious. Some of them were trying to report something as if they'd never seen it before. Maybe it was a new astronomical thing. People were calling. I'm sorry.
I mean, it's sweet in a way, like the wonder of the sky, but it also reminds me of, I don't know if you've seen any of these videos of people like, they're taking videos of commercial planes flying over and being like, is this a drone? Yeah, that makes me sad. Come on, come on. I don't want to bring up the drones, but it's very reminiscent of the drones.
So yeah, for anybody who hasn't pieced it together, people were seeing the Milky Way for the first time in the night sky. I've never seen it. I've never seen it either. As much as we're laughing, right? We're laughing. And you can't help, like if you don't know something, you don't know something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and I admire the people who called an observatory and when I think I've discovered something that takes a level of confidence that I've never had before. There's something very sweet about that. Yeah.
being like calling them so to be like, what is that? Like, that's chosen another level of being coisitiveness. Always have your observatory on dial, I guess. Yeah. Do you know your local observatory? Yeah. Also, it's 1994. They've got the yellow pages out to like find them.
Yeah, there's no, there's no, you can't check Twitter to ask what's happening. Yeah, you can't Google it. Yeah, there's no easy internet access. You call your local observatory something very nice about that. That's lovely. But I think it does highlight something that I think we've all talked about this before on different episodes as well how
different people at different stages of like learning about astronomy or learning about the sky and things like that. People who are amateurs have had huge impacts on what we know about the universe. And actually, you know, that curiosity can be impacted by light pollution. And that does make me really sad.
I want to give a big shout out to amateur astronomers, because there are so many amateur telescopes looking at specific places in the sky everywhere around the world all the time. The last supernova that happened last year was first spotted by amateurs.
Oh, wow. And then that was then found out people saw that information, then it got to like a professional observatories. So that's, you know, that's the kind of thing that they make possible by, because there are only so many professional telescopes in the world. Yeah. They can't be looking at every area of the sky all the time. So amateur's really filled that role in a very impressive way.
dedication, which is negatively impacted by light pollution. And if I can get out of care about the scientific route through that, then I'll take that. I feel like that's all win. So this is good. Okay, so that's how it can impact this guy.
What about if I made this about your beloved moths? I am, of course, segueing into the animal side of things. Ella, would you? I have a question written into my script, which is, shall we get some of the obvious animal impacts out of the way? Would you like to talk about moths very quickly? I don't know what this is. Is this a is this? Oh, I guess the fact that they are attracted to artificial light. Is that the issue?
They are often attracted to artificial light and often can find themselves getting trapped in artificial light sources because they view it as they navigate by the moonlight. They're not trying to fly to the moon. Like I used to think when I was young, but they use it as like a compass. Yeah. Essentially hadn't considered.
And for some moth species, it can, like I said, it can become a bit of a barrier to them because of how light scatters through like air pollution and things like that as well. It can look like it's maybe the edge of water and stuff like that, which makes a moth think I can't fly into that. It's water. On the flip side, it can make some insects think that a surface is water and then lay eggs on it, even though it's not water, which is crazy. Yeah. Oh, even worse.
Even worse. And bats are also impacted a lot of doctrinal animals. And actually, so a lot of migrating birds are really impacted by light pollution for a few different reasons. And actually, one of the first attempts of trying to describe light pollution before it was something that we were like properly aware of was in 1917. There was a paper done looking at bird migration and how they're impacted by lighthouses.
Yeah, it's really cool. And it was really, it was a really sweet one reading this paper because what they did to research this, they were concerned that birds were dying around lighthouses, basically was what was happening. So these researchers wrote to Lighthouse Keepers and Lighthouse Wardens and people like that. And just were like, hey, we have a survey about birds.
Will you fill it in and send it back to us? We'll just believe whatever you've said, basically, which is really sweet. But they did find that there were some quite significant impacts on birds where one lighthouse had 40 birds a night being killed around the lighthouse because they were being blinded by the light or they were being drawn in by the light, distracted from their root and then passing away, basically what was happening a lot of the time. And then some of them were like, nah.
We ain't seen any birds around here. Don't know what you're talking about. There's nothing to do with us. Because they were taking the birds, they were eating them and they didn't want them to know. Having a little snack. Yeah. But there was a study done on blackbirds in Germany and they found it was combined with traffic noise but with artificial lighting as well. They found that birds that lived in cities were active much earlier than birds in natural areas. Because they don't have black algorithms.
They don't have the... They can't put their iPhone down at the end of the day, you know? They can't have their sleep help. So they found that birds were waking and singing up to five hours earlier in the day. Which is really considerable, yeah. And this can impact feeding behaviour, but also mating. If birds are active at different times of day, it can become a bit of a temporal barrier.
temporal barrier. So good. That is one of the methods of speciation is actually a species getting the animals getting different timing. Oh, yeah. So it can be really impactful. Any other ones that you know that are like classics, I feel like you've not hit on one that I was maybe expecting you to hit on. This is a night animal. Not necessarily, but it's one that... Oh, werewolves, obviously. Huge, hugely impactful.
What about turtles? Do you know much about turtles? Yes, when turtles are migrating from where the eggs have been laid on the beach or like per the pack on the beach, and they have to crawl back out to sea, they use the moonlight on the surface of the water to navigate towards the sea.
Whoa. But if there's, you know, if they're, if the parents have laid the eggs on the side of a road or something, they get turned around. They'll go towards the street lights instead of towards the ocean. I didn't know so many animals used moonlight navigation. That's so interesting. It's a big thing. Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's one of those things where it's like, again, for 99.999% of the Earth's history, it's like, that works pretty damn well. Yeah, absolutely. There's another big white at night.
Yeah, and because the light pollution has become an issue so quickly, there's no time to even like accidentally mutate something that then can't go against it that can pass. So evolution is happening too slowly to combat this issue, which is the same for things like global warming. And it's evolution's fault.
Yes, it's evolution's fault. We can blame them. It's not humans at all. No, no, no, no, no. Move your telescope. Evolve your species. Blackout curtains. Move your telescope and blackout curtains are perfectly reasonable. Evolve your species obviously isn't.
The list does go on forever about how animals can be impacted by light pollution, but I'll go through two more. I'll do one animal and one plant one. Oh, plants. Yeah, I, this one surprised me and then I was like, I don't know why this surprised me. We've talked about this recently, but the first one is glow worms. What?
I know, it's yeah. Sorry, what? So, glow worms populations are generally declining across the globe. And there are a lot of reasons for this insect populations as a whole are decreasing. In general, yeah. But one of the reasons why they think that they might be declining specifically in glow worms is because they glow. Yeah, why do they glow? So, glow worms use glowing, especially females to attract mates. Oh, it's all to attract their mates, baby.
Like Edward, I guess he shines, sorry. He glistens. He glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and glisters and gl
Yeah, that's like the biggest hottest sexiest one I've ever seen. That's fucking money. Is that what you're saying, Caroline? Yeah, basically, yeah, they're like, have a hover. Let's go to the city. Oh, my God.
But it's so sad cuz it's like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow you can't ever find it you won't you'll get that the light will just keep moving away from you For our brother glow worms Sky glow just gives such unrealistic expectations for young male glow words
But obviously, as is the case with a lot of light pollution, this causes confusion and leads to less successful breeding opportunities, shall we say, the hubber hubber of the city light. Never would have guessed that.
This is the thing. Yeah, with so much light pollution, it's like, man, we never thought of that because we are so benefited by light being there. That actually a lot of other animals do find it really in the opposite way of like eclipses don't happen for long enough to throw off animals. Light pollution is happening long enough to really throw off animals. That's a really interesting comparison. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah.
I would like to say, though I have been annoyingly, you know, against, not against, but questioning things, this, this, I believe in fully in my whole heart, turn off every single light now if it means I can save the moths.
You know? Just the moths. And all the other animals. I love moths, though, man. If it means the glow worms can have normal, normal health and relationships. Yeah, thanks to the glow worms. And of course, to round off wildlife that's impacted by light pollution, plants are another one that can be really, really badly impacted. I say really, really badly like I'm bigging it up. It can be impacted. I don't
Understand what I guess I understand like they obviously depend on the sun from the sun growing the sun is the sun, but light pollution is registered by plants as a form of life that they could use to photosynthesize basically.
Is this the trick that it's sort of like it's like sugar light or it's like it superficially looks like light but doesn't give them the same like health resources as sunlight? So what it does is that it can trigger plants to try and continue photosynthesizing, but it's not necessarily a successful because the useful light that they're getting isn't as much. So it is somewhat useful to plants.
But by increasing the amount of photosynthesis that's happening, it does cause a lot of stress to the plant as well. They're photosynthesizing when they maybe shouldn't have been. They need a sleeve. Yeah, they need a little breaky break. But also, as we learned in the Autumn Leaves episode, plants do rely to some extent on light to determine when they should shed their leaves as well.
So that can, if they are holding on to leaves for a longer period of time, then that can also cause some stress to the plant. It can also do the same thing for when plants blossom as well. So it can impact when plants are meant to blossom, which can impact if pollinators get to them in time, which can then impact if the plant can reproduce successfully.
Yeah, exactly. So I don't think any of this is too surprising when we think about it, really, right? Like, as I just said earlier, eclipses a short period of time, sure, whatever animals aren't going to be too impacted by it. But these prolonged changes absolutely do.
The thing that we have all been talking about, though, is that we need light to be able to exist. We would not be producing this podcast right now if we didn't have artificial lights in our homes. I can do it in the dark. Sure. OK. Yeah. Yeah. And now I'm just being everything you say. I'm going to say no.
So to wrap it up very, very quickly, what can me, you, the general public do, as well as the lighting designers to reduce our impact on light pollution? It's all the stuff that we've already talked about, basically. So turning off your lights in your home, if you're driving a car with LED lights, turn that shit down. I am so bored of getting glare from other drivers in roads because your lights are on too high. And of course, that can impact wildlife as well.
On a bigger scale, though, for things like street lighting, if you put a cone around the light to make sure it's targeted downwards, that can really, really help as well. And that is a relatively easy thing for lighting designers to implement when they are putting street lighting into development plans and things like that. Is that not going to make the Victorian lamp light issue the same thing where light's just become like a spot light on an area without if it's not throwing light out?
Well, no, I mean, like, if most there are some lights, it's like, why do you need to light upwards? Yeah. Yeah. What are you lighting up there? You're only supposed to. So if you can, you know, angle it down, I've seen a lot of like infographics about this where it's like, yeah, totally. I mean, it seems like a very, very easy solution.
really easy solution. Other things can be if you're using LED lights that do use less electricity to produce the same amount of light, just making sure that they have a warm toned light bulb can reduce the impact of blue light on us and on wildlife as well. So there are loads of things that we can do.
But because of this sort of, you know, we don't view it as as bad as climate change and other types of pollution, I think people are maybe sometimes a little bit less willing to go above and beyond for lighting. And actually, this sentiment is sort of reflected by Phil Plait, who wrote for Scientific America. In some ways, this is reminiscent of the climate crisis, global in nature, difficult to notice day by day, and hard for individuals to grasp and mitigate on their own.
I suspect, however, that if global warming increased by some 10% a year, we would have long ago tackled the issue head-on, which I think is a really important sentiment to share. Yeah, I think probably slightly. No, I'm going to do it. No, I'm not going to do it.
And global warming should be put hand in hand like that, even though they are still natural issues. And I do. And I know I've been so contrarian, but I do think like pollution is important. No, unless I agree. I think it's completely agree. I have as a second like final note on my script. I put is the world going to end because of like pollution.
The impact of it is talked about a lot less, and I'd say maybe rightly so, but if it is potentially an easy win, then maybe it's something that we should go for. That's also a very valid thing to do. We can care about multiple things. Exactly.
I would hesitate being like, we should care about this as much as we should care about global warming or climate change. But if a solution is as easy as putting cones around a lump, then let's do it. Yeah, absolutely.
You know, especially so many office buildings, if it's as easy as just like programming the system to be like just turn the lights off at night. Yeah. Yeah. Especially when so many things are electrically controlled. Yeah. And we totally. And to reflect what you've been saying, like I've been working on the biodiversity policy for the town council that I'm working at.
And it's a whole load of policies that's about planting trees and putting ponds in and making sure that verges are left uncut. There's like hundreds of implementations for ecology. And I think there's one on light. Like they are weighted differently. That I will say that is.
The most interesting thing is the fact that this is like, and also very ironically, an invisible consequence given how it is literally about light. That is the interesting thing to me is that like, it's almost like also hard to talk about because it's like, yeah, yeah, because it's so, you just do it. It's so ephemeral.
And at your level, Caroline, as well, you're talking about a council, like a town council or city council, where that is something that is the level at which you implement that. That's the place. It's not a global issue, which has to be implemented at an international level. Totally, absolutely.
And the other thing that I would like to maybe leave on is that there's also things like there is an organisation called Dark Skies, which does work with towns and cities to have like a day of turning all the lights off so that you can ghost like Stargames and things like that. You can get accredited for towns and parks and stuff like that for how you treat light pollution.
So there are some really lovely things that you can do as a community as well. And I think that is really valuable at the moment when it comes to tackling all of the issues of the planet coming together and doing this really lovely thing of going and counting the stars. Could be a really nice starting place for stuff like that. So yeah, I know we've been a bit like critical of it, but don't dismiss it from that perspective as well. Take advantage of that community building side of things too. You're right. You're right. I can seed.
Well done. You won't talk about that. Do do do do. Happy birthday, Ella. It's not my birthday. Sure it is. Of course it is. Why would it not be your birthday since I bought you all of these gifts? Oh, okay. Hey. Yeah. Look at that. It is my birthday. Great. Again. Here you go. Thank you.
Oh, great! A half-finished jar of pasta sauce! And the next one? Oh, three stale pieces of bread and an avocado! Thanks! You're so welcome, don't mention it. Seriously, don't bring it up again. This wasn't for my birthday or was it? You're just trying to get rid of the old food you haven't used.
No. You mentioned you didn't like going to the shop to buy ingredients for dinner, so here you go. What can I make with this, Caroline? Well, you can... Oh my god, this is my chance. Uh, uh, happy birthday, Ella. I got you a little something.
Oh, thank you, Tom. Oh, a coop of the Hello Fresh. Nice. Thanks, Tom. Yeah, I overheard, I mean, I knew that you didn't like going to the store to buy ingredients for dinner. You can skip all that with Hello Fresh's pre-portioned ingredients for a huge range of recipes.
minimal fuss and minimal mess. Now that's how you do a present caroline. Hey, I put a lot of effort into those loose unwrapped stock cubes. Okay, okay. Are there any recipes you'd recommend Tom? Well recently I added the hot honey Brussels and ricotta flatbreads to my box because I had never tried making something like that and it was amazing. But I also love to put in classics that I know I love like the cranberry glazed meatballs with mashed potatoes and roasted carrots.
And if you're ever really in a pinch, you can also add to your box meals that you can put entirely together in under 20 minutes. That sounds so great. What a wonderful present, Tom, and not Caroline. I could give you another avocado.
Caroline, do you want to know a secret? Giving the HelloFresh coupon was just as easy as collecting my trash. And in fact, everyone can get to it and experience this. Get up to 10 free meals and a free high-protein item for life at hellofresh.com slash learn10FM. One item per box with active subscription. Free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. That's up to 10 free HelloFresh meals. Just go to hellofresh.com slash learn10FM.
Wow, Tom. Thoughtful and generous. It's not her birthday, Tom. I know, I just want to show you up.
Hey everybody, I'm Jeremy. I'm Oscar. I'm Demetri. And we are the Eurovangelists. For a weekly podcast spreading the word of the Eurovision song contest, the most important music competition in the world. Maybe you already heard Glen Weldon of NPR's pop culture happy hour talk up our coverage of this year's contest. But what do we talk about in the off season? The rest of Eurovision, duh. They're nearly seven decades of pop music history to cover.
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Today's miscellaneous topic is mistakes and imperfections. And so obviously, I want to ask, are there any mistakes that y'all spend the night thinking about constantly?
Oh, so many, but can I pinpoint one right now? I can go off with one having thought about. For me, in middle school, we had a class jeopardy thing, and I didn't wager enough on the final jeopardy. As I'm saying this out loud, I realized how stupid and insignificant it is, but I want you to know how anytime I have a fever, that's one of the thoughts I go to, and I'm like, why did I do that?
Another funny one that Caroline knows about and Ella, possibly two is there was a video, a post, a TikTok I posted that I spent months working on that was about buoyancy at Caroline, not against my life. And after I posted the video, I realized I spelled buoyancy wrong in the captions every single time. Every single time.
And then there's another mistake because this is the fun cherry on top is that then I posted a friend's only video that Caroline saw where I went like you know what I'm not gonna care about this I'm not gonna care about this I'm just gonna go roller skating I'm gonna ignore this and then when I was roller skating I broke my hand
Oh, yeah, of course. I remember that. Yeah, I didn't know it was related to the buoyancy. It was a chain mistake. It was a one two mistake there. I mean, every time I've got a fact wrong and a TikTok.
will haunt me forever, but I do just, if I think that a TikTok's not good enough to stay on my page now, I'm just like, I'm getting rid of that. That's not staying there anymore, you know? I think things like spelling mistakes in TikTok, so like online, I just kind of like eat, eat it, you know? I mean, that's the right way.
Or sometimes, you know, you just make a, you make a joke of it in the comment below. You just say, this was a mistake. Sorry. Like, yeah, I get it. I would say in my professional life in work, when I send an email, sometimes if I spell something else, I send an email.
But yet today, and I felt parliament wrong, and I don't think that's the end of the world, and you might even notice that, but all I could think was how unprofessional that makes me look. I think I've grown up a lot since the days when I would stay awake at night thinking about mistakes I made. I really just don't do that anymore. If you can think of not doing something that could have changed the course of your entire life as a mistake, I think about those things at times. That's interesting. I'm the opposite.
I think of the dumb ones more, I guess. But I try not to think about those as mistakes and more as just ponderings. What ifs? Yeah. If I won that middle school, Japanese things, life would have been so much different. Did you lose because you didn't do enough? Oh, Tom, you should think about that at night.
It was an eighth grade versus seventh grade, like it was like a grade. Oh, Tom. You ruined all of those people's lives. Which grade are you in? I was in the eighth grade. You were in the eighth grade. No, I was in the opposite. The seventh graders won. Oh my god. That's embarrassing. And you should think about that at night. Wow. Thanks. Thanks for the validation. Yeah.
I think that's probably more like related to your anxieties, you know, I don't think that's a big deal, but it comes up and it comes up when you're, you know, you're feeling on well because it's something you put so much meaning on at that time, that now it's something that, yeah, it's interesting though, that it will come to your head.
I think, as I was saying it out loud, I was like, this is the first time I've said it out loud to other people as adults, and it sounds dumb. That probably helps. It's funny, it's funny, because I think one of the reasons I don't get embarrassed as much about mistakes anymore is that I tell people when I make mistakes all the time.
Like all the time. And it's really started. You don't keep it in you. Yeah. To be like, I did a stupid thing here. And what you find is the most people will go, that's not that bad. Yeah. Well, you know, I made the seventh graders happy, so. And also, of course, most people don't care.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or most people will just, like, if there's a resolution to be found, we'll just go, let's figure this out. You know, like, it's often not the end of the world. I'm curious about where this is going, though, Tom. Yeah. Well, I wanted to go through, we're going to go over a bunch of examples. Every single mistake you've ever made in your life ever. I'm so excited. Let's go. Sorry, I got my topic mixed up with whisper therapy. Sorry, that happens by the way.
I got a therapist. I'm like, okay, so can we finally talk about how telescopes worked? Oh, fuck, sorry, sorry, sorry. So we're going to go over a bunch of examples of mistakes, some classics. There's going to be some I bet you can guess and some new finds that I found. But the thing that inspired me to note this down as a potential topic is a very specific example and a very odd one because it's another one of those like good old fashioned websites that we love on the pod with the URL.
w g o dot signal eleven dot org dot u k slash w g o dot h t m what and w g o stands for what goes on it is better known as the Beatles anomalies list.
And very kindly the website describes its own origins saying quote, in 1992 in a used net news group, Michael Weiss posted, quite some time ago, I started to compile a list of any anomalies that people find on Beatles recordings. For the most part, they can be categorized in the following manner, flubbed lyrics slash notes slash beats, sounds other than the instrument's vocals, such as squeaks or clicks,
Vocal directions such as counting or some other means of vocal tagging mixing errors such as places where track was brought up at the wrong time vocal comments jokes etc that was not intended for direction i've seen this yeah i might have seen i don't know if i saw it on tik tok or blue sky or something like that but i'm sure i feel like this comes up on reddit sometimes yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
But yeah, it's a website completely dedicated to just cataloging every single mistake that the Beatles made in their exalted discography. I love it. I love the dedication. Yeah. But the reason I keep remembering it, I almost hold it like a little talisman in my heart to remember, is it's just so nice to remember that even the musicians who are more famous than Jesus made so many mistakes.
For example, there are some debated details before here comes the sun, like, quote, I think the tapping comes from a metronome, which can be barely heard during the intro. This gets louder at the end of the solo when the compressor on the guitar mic starts to increase its gain as the last few notes played are fading away. And also notes for the song Let It Be, which is one of my favorites that include on the right channel here, John or George placed three wrong notes as they head into the solo, then stop altogether.
What are the chances that they probably heard some of these things and just kind of went, yeah, who cares? No, don't. I mean, especially because they're like under the radar, they probably just didn't care. Oh, I believe to slip under the radar, given the fact that the it's all analog the way they're recording, right? And so like it's a lot harder to catch some of these things for sure. But also to your point, like it's both, right? It's that also like, Oh, yeah, fine. Right? Like it is sort of just like who cares if it's like a little flub here. It doesn't have to be perfect. But at the same time, I think a lot of people do think these are like perfect songs, right?
Yeah, that's true. I think it's really fun to poke at what we think as perfect. And it actually reminds me of another famous story behind the creation of a great piece of art. It's not exactly a mistake, but it's just one of my favorites. So I had to include this quote. It's so funny. This is a letter someone wrote while they were working on this big piece of art. And they say, quote,
My haunches are grinding into my guts. My poor ass strains to work as a counterweight. Every gesture I make is blind and aimless. My skin hangs loose below me. My spines all knotted from folding over itself. I'm bent taught as a Syrian bow. Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts are crazy, perfidious, tripe. Anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe. My painting is dead. Defend it for me, Giovanni. Protect my honor. I am not in the right place. I am not a painter.
I feel like we've all felt like this on like a Monday morning. Can't pick Caroline's thinking about painting their frogs. I'm just like, like, existing in an office on like a Tuesday. Like, am I dying? You know? Do you have any guesses to who this, who this might be or what this painting might be? Giovanni, this is Da Vinci. Yeah, is it like Mona Lisa or something? This is a letter written by Michelangelo painting the fucking Sistine Chapel. Oh gosh.
One of the most like physically and literally exalted pieces of art ever, right? And he fucking hated it. For a number of reasons, one of course, you know, you're a gay sculptor contracted to paint for the Catholic church. There's a lot going on there.
oh yeah i mean it makes so much sense i don't know why i'm so surprised obviously to us mere mortals you know someone being unhappy with the sistine chapel is insane but if you when you are that close to a piece of art and
This is it, isn't it? You are your own worst critic and be that like us day to day, like the mistakes we make or, you know, artists day to day in their lives. Like when you think about it from that perspective, like it's not unreasonable to expect somebody to criticize their own work in that way, you know? That was an amazing quote though. I'm going to use that. That's when you're like, that's my new copy pastor.
Ella. It's one of truly one of my favorites. I had to include one of my favorite parts about the detail about this quote is it's such a banger that so this was a letter written to Giovanni. It is listed under the poetry foundation website as a poem. These are these are bars. This is yeah.
And so that's how you can send the link literally as a poem because it is so scathing. I love it. It's one of my favorite quotes ever. But you know, the other Michael, Michael Wise, who made that Beatles anomaly site, I think has a more positive perspective about imperfect art.
Um, because it is important to note that for Michael and the contributors to that site, that site is not meant to be beetle bashing, right? As he wrote, quote, for those who interpret the existence of this project as an anti beetle statement, you've missed the point spending so long listening to and analyzing every last moment of the Beatles over a period of 12 years is something you only do if you were a fan. Yeah. As he says, so don't think of this as a list of mistakes. Just to be clear, it is a list of anomalies.
It almost feels like people hunting for Easter eggs, doesn't it? Yeah, it's an Easter egg. It's funny you say that you bring this up, because when you settle a list of normalies, I did not even think that it could possibly be about critiquing the Beatles. I only think that you would do that because you want to find something new and exciting in something you love. But this is the only reason I could think you would do that.
Like I was sat here whilst you're talking about it. I was like, I don't know how much I care about a list of mistakes from Beatles songs. But like if it was an artist that I love and somebody turned around and went, Hey, you know, you can you can hear that bit. I would totally go back and listen and look for it, you know? Yeah.
Yeah, totally, totally. And I think I think this framing of it as anomalies puts a really positive spin on it, you know, like, it's like, yeah, you know, remember that time during the ASMR episode where I edited the episode wrong and so that the ASMR sounds played 20 minutes before we talk about it? I love that.
And everyone was like, what the fuck is happening? What am I hearing? That's just an anomaly. I don't, that's not a mistake. I really like that at the end. I really like, this is weird. This is like, it's avant-garde. Well, it was, it was also, I mean, just because of all sounds to just like play suddenly this like woman's voice ASMR was like, what is happening?
No, it's it's it's an avant-garde podcasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a novel. It's not a mistake. I feel like I see what's happening now. We're not going through every mistake Tom's ever made in his life. We're going through every mistake. We as a podcast have ever made. This is good. I like it's a little bit of both. It's there's some personal.
But of course, you know, joking aside, this philosophy of like appreciating and loving mistakes that we obviously have is not new. And it actually seems to span across the world, these like traditions of imperfections, which I think are really cool.
I know what you're going to say. A classic example is the Japanese art of kinsugi. Is this where it's like mending cups that have been broken and then like with gold leaf and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I think it's beautiful. It's so great. It can means gold in Japanese. Wow. I love those Japanese lessons are really paying off. Can you tell Elle had a lesson right before this? That is actually not a joke. That is actually where Elle was before.
Yeah, so this dates to around the 1600s in Japan, and it's where, like Carolyn said, a broken pottery is repaired not to try to be seamless, but in fact, very seemed full with often like gold lacquer to highlight where the pieces were separated. As a professor at the Harvard School of Design put it, as a philosophy, it treats breakage as a part of the object's history rather than as an error or a failure to be covered up or discarded.
I love a broken ceramic piece becomes an opportunity for innovation and new insight within this tradition. I really love that as a concept. I mean, it reminds me in a much more mundane way of things that you own in your day to day life. Say like a pair of boots you have that are worn in and that they look better like that because that's like they've been loved in and they've been like any clothing or any like furniture you have that has wear in it.
But you actually think it looks better like that. So you get like a pair of brand new white shoes. Some people love to keep it like that. I don't like I like like character and things. The history of the object. Yeah. Kinsugi is much more beautiful version of that. But yeah, what's the Japanese word for like mud tracks? Yeah.
On my boots. This also makes me think of the value that we do put on mundane things that have mistakes on them. When coins are printed wrong, they're often physically worth more. When books have a misprint or something like that. That we value that so highly that people, there's a whole industry around selling stuff like that. That's a great point.
But I will say perhaps the most popular trope of imperfections in art that I myself have actually referenced before many times is when religious artists would add imperfections to their art because only God can make perfect art. First of all, they think very highly of themselves if they thought that the original piece was going to be perfect.
But, uh, yeah. Have you heard this? I, I, I, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I felt like I didn't love it and therefore I didn't learn anymore about it. Well, actually I'm going to, um, reinforce that Caroline because I have found this. I'll tell you, I, I found this attributed to cultures from across the world, this idea that like, oh, only God can make perfect art. And oh, there's a story about how these people used to do this in this because only God can make perfect art.
However, only God must be able to make perfect fun facts because there seem to be some flaws here. I couldn't find many sources supporting this theory, even though I hear this fun fact so often. So it seems that for the ancient Romans doing a donation read, this doesn't seem to be true for Amish woodworking, which I've heard people say it for.
doesn't seem to be true. This may be true for Persian rugs. And in fact, there's a phrase, a Persian flaw is what this is described as. It's like a Persian rug working, making a tiny flaw because it's only God can make perfect cards. But even then, I still haven't found great sources for it that I was hoping for, like a real silver bullet at the source. I'm more than welcome to be wrong if someone does. But I think this specific philosophy of mistakes
may not be as prevalent as we think. I think it might be an old wives tale. I just thought that was interesting, because for me, that's such a classic. But I did find a tremendous source for a tradition of imperfection that I had actually never heard of before. And one that I now really, really love. So I came across a tremendous paper by Jill Albergio, that is all about something called Jeonity. And I will send you a picture of that right now.
Jihonity. This is a woven Navajo rug or blanket. I mean, this is a lovely, really beautiful rug. You might have to zoom in to see the, the, the, the, the quantum quote flaw in it. I can see there's like one single line of thread that looks like it's been pulled ever so slightly out of, where, where is that? So if you look in the top right, is that where you're looking? Yeah, the top right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is, you do, you do fiber work. That's one. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. For some, this might be like a where's Waldo, but in the top right of this image of this rug, it's like, if you follow, there's like the black border around it, and then there's the black border around the middle. And if you follow the top border to the right onwards, there is a line just there, basically. There's a single line that runs from the inside to the outside. And it does, to your point, it does look like someone's just like pulled one. Yeah.
It fully does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But only on one side, which is why I was like, that's unusual, because you should be, if that was a mistake like that, you'd see that running all the way along the piece of art. That's another great point that it's, it not only looks like a mistake, it looks like a purposeful mistake. Yeah, it looks like it's been cut deliberately in the middle somewhere, like that.
So yeah, so this is a Navajo tradition. The Navajo are from the Southwest United States. That's where they're located. This line, this thin line from the inside of the textile to the viviary edge of it is known as Chihonati, or it's called a spirit line. Or my favorite way to describe it is the weavers pathway.
Oh, that's lovely. So the first thing to know about this tradition is as your writes, of course, quote, the pathway is now filled with a range of social meanings, making it a dynamic and vital part of contemporary Navajo weaving deserving careful ethnographic study. So one meeting behind this line is because, quote, in Navajo terms, weavers pathways are designed to materialize and then release weavers from the objects they create.
And so she elaborates that like, there is like a culturally strong feeling of like attachments to objects that's like a thing in the Navajo tradition. And so as she elaborates quote, all the thoughts that go into making the rug can be said to reside within the object itself.
As a result, therefore, part of the maker and their thoughts can reside within the object they create. The pathway provides an exit for a weaver's thinking. What weavers call a way out that allows weavers the chance to actively disconnect from their woven work that is intended to be sold, thus avoiding any potential negative or harmful effects that may occur as the weaving circulates more widely.
Oh, wow, that's lovely. That's a lovely sentiment. Yeah, I love this philosophy of working on something but then being ready to let it go. Yeah, absolutely. I know this is the wildest comparison to making YouTube videos and podcasts, but I do think there's actually something similar here of working on a craft and then being okay with releasing it into the greater world and having it belong to other people, right?
Um, and yeah, it's even though what we do is silly on TikTok and stuff like that. It is a craft and many of these lessons apply, which is, you know, um, yeah, I'm surprisingly resonated with that. I didn't think I was going to find a connection to Navajo weaving, but as paper goes on, this is super interesting. Sandy, a weaver and educator in her early 30s, points to some of these positive qualities.
It is good for your thinking. You know, it helps your thinking. You know with these borders, you have to have that spirit line for your thinking. It's good for stress. You know, you do a lot of thinking when you weave, and it can really clear your mind. And as we heard from Michelangelo, you do indeed do a lot of thinking when working on art. And a lot of that thinking can turn into crazy, perfidious tripe, if you're not careful.
Yeah, I don't know if this resonates with you Caroline doing crocheting. It always feels... Oh my god, yeah, absolutely. And like...
For me, there's a level of like mindfulness that comes with crafting, you know, of being able to sit and just experience all of the emotions that you're experiencing without like taking in, like stuff from the internet and things like that, being like able to just switch off and just exist as you are, which I know is why a lot of people enjoy craft is because of that sort of that space and that time for you to just be. And yeah, like I get so attached to the stuff that I make. I don't think I've given away like one
fibre arts piece that I've ever made. Everything else I hoard, like a little, like a little gremlin, like, no, this is mine. Um, so it's almost like teaching you to, to let go of your, like, let go of the emotions you're feeling. And also the piece of art itself, which I do think like that's so valuable, a lesson to teach. I think that's lovely. Yeah.
And as someone who doesn't make any textiles or art pieces, I'll just say that when I do buy handmade things, maybe it's just a symptom of that current age we're working in, but I love seeing the affections in them. It makes me feel connected to the human that made that a real person at this. Yeah, good God compared to so many other ways that clothes are made these days. Yeah.
Oh my goodness. Do I have it? I spoke about this. Gosh, ages and ages ago on TikTok. It must have been years ago. I have this striped jumper that I got for free from a clothes swap when I was like broke uni student and I picked it up and somebody had danced the sleeves on it and that made me go.
This is my favorite thing and I wore it for like weeks and weeks and weeks just because it's like when people sew like holes and stuff like that but they like crisscross the stitches to make a fresh fabric. And I spoke about it and then that resonated with another artist.
And she then sent me a watercolor piece of me. It was in my real frog era, like holding onto this frog, wearing this jumper, like with the darning and stuff like that. And it was just like, one of those touching moments of like this grotty old jumper that I'd gotten for free. And like the story of it. Yeah, resonating with so many people. So yeah, no, I so get that sentiment. Yeah. Oh, we're getting all soppy. Oh my God.
And of course, lastly, as Yo notes, quote, others within the community conceptualize the trachonati as being a purposeful mistake, though, instead of relating to the perfections of gods and mortals, instead, Yo recounts this conversation had by two elder community members saying,
I remember one big thing is they have a mistake, a small mistake in every rug they make. And that I used to wonder, now, why do they do that? But then my grandmother told us that that's to keep the weaving art going. You don't stop with that one rug, but with the opening, you go from one generation to the next. And you know, that means a lot when you think about it. They have to keep that in mind or else they just weave to which her sister replied, quote, well, too, I heard that it also showed a sign that people aren't perfect.
So nothing is really perfect. So a rug has an imperfection because, because not one of us are really perfect, we'd like to think, but we're not. And then because she's doing this recordings interview, it says that in brackets all laugh, which I think is sweet. Yeah. And so as soppy as we are being, I thought it would be fun to join them in laughing about imperfections with some of my favorite mistakes. That would be a lot less sappy. And in my mind, I think a lot more fun.
So this one might be my favorite. I found this through historian Amanda Foreman. It's also one of the oldest mistakes I could find. So this dates back to around 1200 BCE in Egypt. It's an old one. And it is a statue of the Pharaoh Ramses II that is presently in the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. And I will send you a picture. And I'm curious if you could guess what the mistake could be, how what kind of mistake it could be.
Oh my goodness, I'm so excited. Because it's a fun little mystery of sorts almost.
It's a pharaoh, I suppose, sitting on a plinth of sorts, hands in lap. I mean, is it a mistake that you would need to have some historical understanding to see? Yes. I know. I will say this is sort of an interesting thought that I have. And I'm glad I found this one, because I think it would be hard to search otherwise. It's sort of a question is like, how could we know it's a mistake?
This was, when you said 1200 BC, I was like, yeah, how, because obviously things have been damaged as well between now. Right. And it was like, what's the damage and what's the mistake? Well, I mean, we can know it's a mistake if we have others like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah against. So if it is, if it's the way they're wearing their headdress or something that we, we have loads of examples of how that would be. Yeah, that's true.
I think it would be, you know, there could be interpretations like, or maybe like the statue was made in slights of the pharaoh, maybe or something like that, right? You're not, you haven't mentioned something on this that where the mistake lies. Actually, it's not in the pharaoh himself. So there's hieroglyphics around. Is it in the text, Anthony? Sure is. Oh, so, okay. It's like a misspelled word. Did they spell the pharaoh's name wrong or something like that?
Basically, but somehow even worse and you'll see why, but it is a type. I almost don't want to even call a typo. You'll see, but the mistake in the type is a hilarious way to describe it.
Or it's like, like, control on, control on. So, yeah, but yeah, to Collins, but it is so funny because it's like, with an old thing, how can you know it's a mistake? But with this, we know with that beyond the reasonable that this is a mistake, and that's part of why I love this so much. So as the museum describes, quote, deep cut inscriptions on the throne and base bear the names and titles of Ramses II. And one section of text on the throne is backwards.
Yeah, because I was just looking at, like, there's some panels on the front, which are the same as, so, like, right on the very front along the base. There's, like, these two. Yeah, it's mirrored. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it is. Oh! But here's the reason that it's written backwards is because, and maybe you can guess this, and you'll realize as soon as I say it, as historian John Baines notes, at the time, quote, very few people were illiterate. All of them were officials of state.
Okay. And so the people carving were often carving with either templates or someone else's guidance as to they're tracing, they're drawing more than they are writing, right? And so it's very easy to do something backwards like that. But that's not why this is my favorite because, and here's the riddle, when the statue came to Philadelphia, it did not have a mistake on it. What? What?
So what could have happened? How is this possible? In restoration? Indeed. Oh, boy. As the Penn Museum describes the statue, quote, the throne bears traces of ancient carving error. The carver puts signs the wrong way round on the left side of the throne and covered his mistake with plaster filling. He cut two new signs over at facing in the correct direction.
But quote, faster was mistakenly picked out once it was on display at the museum, exposing the error. Oh, that's that's so cool. So not only was there a mistake, they revealed the mistake by mistake. Wow. So is the is it the two boxes on the left and right at the very front? Yes. The mirror thing. Could that not be stylistic? Because they are literally symmetrical to one another.
Well, no, but Ella, he filled in the mistake. Oh, that's OK. Yes, I know it is. Again, the clearest example of a mistake, right? Oh, that's so good. Yeah. Isn't that so great? But also, maybe it was a stylistic choice. And then someone said, no, we don't like that. I don't know.
Otherwise, yeah, you could just argue that it was for exactly exactly this is such clear evidence of like such an early mistake, but also I fucking love a match. The other reason I love this is the person like carving this and being like.
Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh, shit, shit. And then like his friend being like, just cover it up. What do you think is going to happen? Colonial power is 3000 years from now. We're going to take this and then undo your mistake and show everyone. Philadelphia isn't real. It can't hurt you.
Yeah, the idea of like, literally like, dude, no one's going to notice your mistake and then 3000 years later, someone does your fix. It's so funny. My mistake as well. Not really that it was a cover up. They didn't realize. Yeah, it's so funny. Mistakes on mistakes. Yeah.
But of course, Ella touched on mistakes and restoration. And of course, there was maybe the most infamous mistake in art, a very recent one. Oh, is it going to be this one? I guess that this is something both of you know, and I, I just said you guys are a fan of this. It would be my guess.
Caroline, you must have seen this. Is this the one where they paint over? Yeah, they've painted over Jesus. So it was like an old, it was in Spain, an old Spanish woman. It was, yeah. And this woman just walked up to it and painted over it. I believe in my heart she improved this. She made it relevant. We will dig it all into that finally at last. This is, of course, the painting originally by Elias Garcia Martinez,
augmented to borrow the Beatles. It is of course the painting. Are you going to send us a photo of it? Because I do just want to stare at it again. Oh, thank goodness. So I was going to say, what do you all know about this masterpiece slash mistake?
that it's beautiful, obviously. And you're right, I am obsessed with it. I remember when this happened. I would have this as a painting on my wall. Yeah. I knew you guys love this thing. I was so excited. I was like these guys. Are you sending a picture? I'd love to describe it to people. I mean, you also look it up.
I can see it clearly in my mind also, it's so iconic. I mean, look, if you haven't seen this, check it out in the show notes, but to describe it, it's kind of like if Jesus had lost all of the texture in his face.
Which I think the Romans did to him as one of the before he was crucified. And then also like his crown, like the thorn crown in his hair, and his beard, if he had a beard all merged into one amorphous blob. And also his mouth is kind of open in a, oh, shape. And there's eyes like little shiny rocks or beetles. It's really perfect. It's perfect.
It's like if you saw this in a modern art gallery, you'd be like, yeah, this belongs. Oh my god, it does. It looks like modern art. It looks like modern art. I love it. It's like one of those like Francis Bacon paintings where like someone's like tormented by like fear. So I had a delight researching this because I, of course, knew of this image. It's so it's so famous and memeable. But I really only ever learned it through memes and like memes of memes. And I realized I didn't actually know the story.
So let's get into it. In 1930, artist Elias Garcia Martinez painted Echejomo directly onto the walls of the Sanctuary of Mercy Church in Boja, Spain, a town with a population of about 5,000 people. OK. So let me show you the original painting. Oh, yeah, that'd be nice. Oh, yeah. Because I have a rough idea of what it looks like. But I mean, you can tell from the redo exactly what it looked like. What are you talking about? Here we go.
Shit mate. It's a good painting. It's a talented artist clearly. It does look like any other Jesus, whereas the augmented Jesus, I think, is one of a kind.
But also, like, this photo of it, because, like, the story that I have in my head is that this lady was like, oh, it needed redoing, it needed restoring, so I came along and restored it. And, like, actually, it doesn't even look that bad, you know? Well...
And so in 2012, an 80-year-old Cecilia Jimenez, who was not a professional artist, let alone art restoration professional, took it upon herself to attempt to restore the painting, and in turn created what many refer to now as H.A. Mono, or Behold the Monkey.
And there are, of course, any number of slams on this restoration that writers and tweeters across the world fervently concocted. But one, according to the BBC, read quote, the once dignified portrait now resembles a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic.
And the reason this extra hurts is because this comes from the Borja City Councilor in charge of cultural affairs, Juan Maria O'Hara, who went on to say, quote, if we can't fix it, we will probably cover the wall with a photo of the painting.
I think it is, I think the craziest part about this is when I, I remember seeing this news story when it happened. Um, I thought, I guess I didn't remember properly. I thought that it was like a piece of war, like a painted, like a bit of wall that broken off or an actual painting that she had taken away. Yeah. Yeah. She's gone into somewhere and painted the wall. And that stopped her. You know? Yeah. I will say, and you guys have had some hints of it.
What I have said so far has only been part of the narrative, but there are some things that people often leave out. Is this like the McDonald's burnt lady story of like we've done something? This is the most important lap of of Jesus art.
a classic burnt Jesus lab. How online do you have to be for that sentence to make sense? So firstly, in defense of this restoration, is that while this painting was beloved by the community of the church, the fact remains that the original artist, Elias Garcia Martinez, was not well known at all. He has a Wikipedia page, but it was only created two months after the incident. Yeah. Yeah.
And this page also includes a wonderful self-portrait of the artist that many would otherwise probably have not ever seen. Yeah, never heard of. And I assume he has other art out there. It's not like she's taken his only piece of art ever painted. No, no, no. Right, right. Now to your other point, Ella, about how it's, you know, it's just a painting of Jesus, really.
Some critics have taken this even further saying, as art critic Jonathan Jones wrote for The Guardian, quote, his painting, H.J. Homo, is not a masterpiece. It is a minor painting in the dregs of an academic tradition. Well, I think that's a little bit harsh. It's harsh. It is important to know. You see where it's coming from though, yeah. Well, the name H.J. Homo is a biblical theme in art. It's not meant to be an original unique name. It's much like Madonna and Child, right? It's like there's a classic theme.
When was it done, sorry, in 1930s? Yes. It's not even that, like, when you go and look at other paintings of Jesus, you're talking like they're like 500, 600 years old. This wasn't even 100 years old. I'm not saying that that means it should have been painted over. I'm saying, of all the great works of art to lose, it's not the end of the world. Yeah.
Just because it's a painting of Jesus doesn't... Well, how was this such a huge story when actually like... Because it looks fucking incredible Caroline. And that's the only reason isn't it really? It was nothing to do with the artist or the church or the community.
Yeah. I think the community was a little bit upset. That remains true. If it's a particularly religious place or town. And there's only 5,000 people. It's not many people. That new spreads and that outrage is felt. You can see the spread of the starts with a local Spanish news coverage that then gets spread to the internet, that then gets spread to the...
So, but yeah, some background on this. Yeah, the phrase H.I. Homo is what Pontius Pilate said of Jesus before his crucifixion. Translates to behold the man. And there are like many H.I. Homo's in art. There's in the same way that there are many of Jesus and Mary, right? Yeah. Now, another often forgotten detail that you were spot on Caroline is that because this was a fresco, it's a painting done on the wall of the church. Originally, it was greatly deteriorated.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And people often show a photo of the painting as I showed you, but they don't often show what it looked like before restoration. And I'll send you a picture of that right now. Here we go. Again, restoration in quotes. Restoration quotes, anomaly. Not the anomaly. Before the anomaly occurred. Oh, wow. Yeah, you see, that is... Let's be real, this never would have been restored by anyone. It was a small town, a piece of art in a small town, in a small church.
I think there were some family members of the original artists that were trying to get it. That makes me feel like a bit more sympathetic to the course. But to Caroline's point, it was in need of work because it was deteriorated over the years. It wasn't encased in glass and she broke through. And actually, to that point, Cecilia Jimenez worked with the church to do the restoration. She did not sneak in.
Oh my goodness, I'm here like how did nobody spoke this? And she and they so basically the church brought it or she worked with the church. It then didn't go as well as the church wanted it to go. Well, they, she told the church she could restore it and they just, and they didn't check. And they didn't like look at anything else you'd done before.
Yes, but it's not as if, I feel like some versions of the story you could easily believe are like, she's just like a tourist that tries to fix it in the moment. And it's not that. She is a member of the community. She worked with the church. Which feels like such a portrayal to her now, you know, because I've been sat here thinking like, wow, if I was her, I would feel so bad. I would feel so embarrassed about going out into this, this relatively small community. And now I'm like, the portrayal to her, like that feels so,
harsh for them to then. And obviously nobody meant for the story to go as viral as it did. But so much of the framing of it has been reshifted. But in some ways, it going viral wasn't that bad because the very last thing often forgotten is that all of these reactions and quotes that I've mentioned all come from the month that it happened. And the tune of the town changed quite a bit a year out from the event.
Oh, when tourists started going to see it. Oh, my goodness. Of course. I would go and see it. Yeah. As the Associated Press wrote on the anniversary of the event in 2013, quote, this, the disfigured fresco has drawn more than 40,000 visitors and raised more than 50,000 euros for a local colony in the town of Boja, some skating worldwide tension. It spurred the town to put the likeness on merchandise for herself for years to come.
And this is great. Quote, and Jimenez has even had her own art exhibit with two dozens of other words showing. Amazing. That is such a nice end to that story. It can be a matter. Quote, Jimenez and a local council are to sign a deal next week to share the profits from the merchandise from the image with the artist getting 49% and the council. Oh my god. I'm actually so pleased. I knew I was right to like it.
Yeah. I feel like I've just gone as such an emotional roller coaster. Oh my goodness. Speaking of a shift, that quote was said by Councillor Juan Maria's O'Hara. Oh, the one who called it. Which I feel like I remember that name, attached to a quote. Huh, interesting.
Oh, wow. And most fascinating, but I think it's really cool is that after some deliberation, the piece on Wikipedia is presently referred to as etchihomo parentheses, Garcia Martinez and Jimenez. Oh, that's so great. I went into this thinking it was going to be a bummer, but it ended up very working out. That's such a good thing.
Great story, thank you, Tom. And I feel like that's what art is, you know, this story, this emotional roller coaster, this community-driven thing. This is what it should all be. Wow, don't take Tom's summary, Caroline. Sorry. Let me calm down.
Yeah, the last quote, which is great comes from Cecilia herself, who's interviewed by paper and said quote, now it seems like everyone's happy. And it says local paper, Geraldo de Aragon quoted the once media shy humanities as saying in Sunday's edition. I'm grateful that things have quieted down.
And that last note of just things quieting down is I think actually how most mistakes truly end up in the world, you know, not in embarrassment or infamy or or niceness in that case, but instead very much like this final mistake made by one Ernest C. Berstow. And for this, I'd like to quote the National Park Service page called Lincoln Memorial Myths.
For those who don't know, the Lincoln Memorial is a building in Washington DC surrounded by these huge columns, and Inside is a giant statue of Abraham Lincoln sitting in the chair, and the myths listed in the article include, quote, Abraham Lincoln is buried under the Lincoln Memorial statue. Fun. Yeah, classic. Uh-huh. Status false. The number of steps on the Lincoln Memorial is significant. Status false.
Nice. A face is carved in the back of Abraham Lincoln's head. Status false. A word is misspelled in the Lincoln Memorial status. Partially true.
Okay. Now, a team of artists worked on this building and statue, including Daniel Chest French, Jules Garin, Evelyn Longman, the six Picharelli brothers. But according to the National Park Service, the memorial interior features Barristo's handiwork in the lettering for the Gettysburg Address, the second inaugural address, and the royal Corso's epithet above the Lincoln statue. So there are these speeches of his that are written into the stones surrounding him. They're huge. Uh-huh.
And as the National Park Service explains, an engraver inadvertently carved a letter E where he meant to carve an F. This error was corrected by filling in a portion of the carving to revert it to an F. Basically filled in the bottom of the E to be like, that meant an F there. Okay. Wait, so do you think like in a thousand years time someone's going to find it? Caroline, did you think I wasn't going to write this joke into the script? Yeah.
I was like, now knowing how we know how folks like to dig out engraving fillers, maybe keep an eye out. I feel like 2,000 years, someone in the museum in neo-e-ship is going to scrape down and go like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, wait, shit. But I will also say, the fix is not very good. You can really clearly see the flub. It is much more noticeable than I thought it was going to be. Given what it is, I'll show you guys right now. Oh, fab. It has a, it's circled there.
Oh, that's terribly done. That's so terribly done. From a distance, it looks like an E still. Yeah, it still looks like a letter. Yeah, it's fine. I guess it's fine. I mean, it's not like when you get that far in, you're not going back to the start, are you? That's too much. But also, guys, I know a great art restoration expert from Spain, if you need a recommendation.
But of course, the reason I'm bringing this mistake up is because, of course, this is not what the Lincoln Memorial is known for. Unlike Eche Homo, right? This isn't even notable enough to make it to the Wikipedia page for the Lincoln Memorial. But yeah, people don't go to the Lincoln Memorial to see this. In fact, most people who go don't notice it. No one was watching Martin Luther King's speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I was like, God, I cannot focus on the speech. Like, what is that type of...
The background is so glaring. I mean, I know you're about to make a point here, but if I ever go and see the link memorial, I am. I am going to be going to be looking for this. Yeah, I'm glad. But yes, all of us to say.
Mistakes have always been happening from even the greatest and oldest works. Sometimes with Kinsugi and Trehonati, they're the point of the art is the mistake. And sometimes like with Echehomo, they can accidentally bring new life to art. But most often, like with the Lincoln Memorial, mistakes will just be forgotten, which is great. That's great news to know that even what feels like, God, I can't imagine making that mistake on the Lincoln Memorial and going home and being like, Oh my fucking God.
Oh my God, most will be forgotten. But as we go into the new year, sometimes it is important to remember that they are a part of life. So we don't get hung up on perfection and we can keep that thread of creation going on into the next thing.
Aww. Out of all of the mistakes made there, I think the idea of a mistake bringing new light to something is like something I can personally take away. It's like a practical thing I can see using in my life, like a thought of, well this mistake, it's a mistake but it's actually made, it's like the idea of mistakes you need mistakes to learn kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, like when you agreed to do this podcast with two big dogs. And I've just enjoyed that so much. And now the mistakes of the podcasts that I have listed are all permanently there as a reminder. Now everyone knows some of the mistakes.
Like that time, a few months ago, when I accidentally uploaded the audio for the previous episode for the newest episode, and it was up for like an hour. Was that mistake or was that art? Was that art? Was it an art to hear Gretchen's episode twice? And now, over to Kivu Rauner.
Wait, I think you made a mistake. Wow. No, it's just, you know, highlighting, highlighting something beautiful we already have. Wow. What a beautiful craftsmanship on that Kinsugi. Yes. Verbal Kinsugi. This review, this curview, curview, curview, rorner, curview, this curview.
I just want to say I have to write that down to make sure I said it finally. This feels right. Yeah. So you did it. You had to write that. So you didn't mistakenly not mistake. Yeah. This curve you comes from Sam the wizard who says.
Best podcast ever. Yes. Review corner. This this this reviews in all caps. Bring it. Always a great time learning about everything with these lovely folks. I recommend it to everyone. I can't wait for the next episodes. Thank you for reading my review. I love you so much. Keep being amazing. I like the Tom's at his parents house right now and it's just shouting. I'm trying to prove to them that the show is good. Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you for the review. Thanks. I love the enthusiasm. I love the enthusiasm. If you want to make Tom shout in the next episode. Oh boy. Or whisper. Or, or, or, yeah. Leave an all caps or review on unfortunately just Apple podcast still, right? That's the only place we can get reviews. Yeah.
You can give us star ratings on Spotify now, I think. We'll see. But the podcast that reviews help us. You can also comment under episodes of Spotify, which I've only just started recently looking up and people do that on our episodes. But also, you can come and speak to us more directly on our Discord server. We're working to make fun of that, Caroline. Let's learn everything.com along with all of our socials if you want to follow us individually or as a podcast. We're on Blue Sky now. We are.
And we're like, and I like it. It's nice. I like it too. My algorithm is slowly catching up with what I like. At first, it was just like, it was just generic cat photos and photos of space. But now it's getting there. I'm getting more memes. I will definitely post the photo of anomalous Jesus.
Yeah, this is new name. Yeah, that I want to see. But not all the photos will be on social media, but you can get them in the show notes. Yes. And in the Discord, let us know any light pollution facts, any fun facts. I want to know your favorite art mistakes, because those are going to be great. Yes. That's going to be way more fun. Well, I was going to say, here's what I'll say. Send us any amateur astronomy photos you might have from the last guy to convince people to how great that is. That's a really good idea.
That's a really good idea. But yeah, there are many art mistakes, many I had to cut for time, but there are plenty and please share your favourites. I would have happily just sat there and listened to a list of your favourite mistakes. For like four hours actually. Today. That's how I start, right? Today? That's the day. Today we have learnt about light pollution. For example, about the history of street lights. We've learnt about how light affects the sky and astronomy and
how it affects moths and bird migration and plants, and sometimes there's a temporal barrier. We've learned about the big... It makes hot glow worms in the sky. We've learned about the big sexy glow worms in the sky. If that's all you took away, I'm so happy.
and we've learned about some simple solutions you can enact in your life to help with light pollution for yourself, for the planet, for animals, do it, if you can. And we've learned that Ella is a contrarian. Hey, Ella, we knew that. We didn't do this episode for that. We love you.
We've also learnt about mistakes in art, such as the Beatles' Anomalies List, Michelangelo's Pain. We've learnt about purposeful art, like Kinsugi and Persian. Purposeful art or purposeful mistakes?
Did I say purposeful art? Let me try that again. We've learned about purposeful flaws in art, like kintsugi and Persian flaws. We've learned that not only God can make perfect art, but we often sometimes mistake that. We've learned about Navajo weaving, the spirit line, or jeonity. We have also learned about one of my favorite things now, anomalous or augmented Jesus, also known as etchimono.
And we've learned about the spelling mistake in the Lincoln Memorial, which most people won't ever notice, but I will now join us next time where we will learn about everything. Let's learn everything is a maximum fun podcast hosted and produced by Ella Hader, Tom Lumb, Caroline Roper, with editing and music by the wonderful and talented Tom Lumb.
Oh, I should have made a mistake in the everything that would have been. Never mind. It's too late. And my mistake was not making a mistake. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, makes me think. Oh, it's good to be back, guys. Let's go to be back. Yeah. What are we up to? 77. This 176, I think.
I have 76 saved in my laptop already. Oh, that might was not the best though. Let me check. Oh, no, you're right. This is. Yes.
Oh, wait. Hold on. Is the Holly episode numbered? Oh, I looked at this recently. So for the first two Q and A's, we did. We numbered them. And then for the most recent. No, did we? You and A's. We didn't number them. And now too late to go back. And that's too late because episode 69 has to stay as it is. That's so true. That's funny. I don't think they should be numbered.
I agree, but you know you have to leave to ignore to number. Yeah. Hey, a mistake of the mistake that we will leave in the. A purposeful fall letters to 69 only got to make perfect podcasts.
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