113: Rediscovered Organs & Bird Watching

Episode notes

Wait, how are we rediscovering organs in 2026?? Or… are we? Well let’s learn about the history and fads of the insides of our bodies! And what is bird watching, why do we all love it, and how casual and competitive can you get with it?

Images we talk about:
(Also available at https://www.letslearneverything.com/113/)
Clay Liver
Online Terminologia Anatomica
Salivary Glands
Bird Study Skins
A Field guide to Birds Example Page

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:56) Rediscovered Organs
(01:05:15) Bird Watching
(01:50:12) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

The Name Website
Study skins,

We also learn about:
Huh?? Mesopotamian organ divination, sheep liver phrenology models, everyone needs to talk about this, Al-Razi’s “Doubts about Galen”, the great ignorance time skip, hmm this dead body must be wrong, the dissection fad, the murder act, you don’t know Burke and Hare?? body snatching and anatomy murder, the vestigial craze, Wiedersheim’s minimal viable person, the problem of naming organs, 20 synonyms of organs, Ella goes feral over the online Federative International Programme for Anatomical Terminology, our 3-4, hi Dad and Ella’s mom – hope you enjoyed that clitoris joke, our 4th pair of handlebar moustache salivary glands, the interstitium getting reverse pluto’d, labelling an organ is useful but also not the full picture, gen Z loves birding, FUCK YOU JONO WE’RE DOING THE HISTORY, is paleontology birding if you’re looking at sauricia, ornithomancy, where there have been birds – we have watched birds, study skins, hey what if we looked at them alive? in 1901 Edmund Selous discovers bird empathy, “lay down the gun and take up the glasses”, POWs from WWII publishing their findings, slovenly non scientific bird watchers, it’s a hobby with no proper definition, Merline and ObsIdentify and Birder and Ebird and Rare Bird Alert and Birder’s Interface, it’s pokemon! WHO’S THAT bird, “oh my god I actually cannot do this any more”, apps aren’t perfect, twitchers, the New Jersey World Series of Birding, Big Year, the first book specifically for birding, the first big year was just some guy who wrote how many birds he saw one year and told people about it, a big year is a physical and mental trial for glory, it’s for the birds, has their love curdled or have they unlocked a true kind of love? why do we do anything at all? I do love birds but man do I love humans.

Sources:

Organ sources coming soon!
—
BBC: Why Gen Z Birdwatchers Are Flocking to Reserves
CNN: Why Gen Z is going bonkers for birding
Wikipedia: Ornithomancy
Smithsonian Magazine: How Bird Collecting Evolved Into Bird-Watching
My Bird Buddy: History of Bird Watching
Haikubox: Evolution of Birdwatching
Pitville History: Edmund Selous
British Birds: Best Bird Watching Apps
10000 Birds: Can I rely on Merlin
Science Base: Bird ID Apps
Sussex Wildlife Trust: The Good the Bad and the Middling ID Apps
Reddit: Pokemon Go is Basically Birding
Reddit: Ever Wanted to Catch Em All IRL?
Reddit: Why is Gen Z Suddenly Obsessed with Birdwatching
Youtube: Listers
New Jersey Audubon Society: World Series of Birding
Wikipedia: Big Year
Smithsonian Library and Archive: A Field Guide to Birds
American Bird Association: Big Year Rules
Audubon: The Big Year According to Birders
Birding (American Birding Association): The Next Big Thing
Surfbirds (Wayback Machine): Alaska, The Last Frontier Attu Island
NPR: The Real Birdwatchers Behind Hollywood’s ‘Big Year’