24: Self Experimentation, Amputation Archaeology, and Learning to Love PowerPoint

Episode notes

What are the pros and perils of self experimentation? What archaeological clues do we have to the first human amputation? And why should we actually learn to love PowerPoint?

See Tom Perform PowerPoint Comedy on October 4th at Caveat NYC! (or stream it!)

Go to Ella’s Women in Science Photography Exhibition in London October 25th!

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We also learn about: Santorio Santorio, sitting in a chair for 30 years, two pieces of toast, 1500s diet culture, insensible perspiration, basal metabolism, the origin of sleep studies, cave dwellers and time perception, he likes caves a little too much, sleep cycle, stomach ulcers, rats in straight jackets taking ice baths like david blaine, drinking bacteria broth and winning a nobel prize, scientists will literally drink rotten milk to get a paragraph in a paper, reaching 631mph in a rocket chair, shout out to David Hunter, setting research back several decades, venereal disease, tropical hookworm, giving yourself worms for science, do not try this at home, Caroline always starts with Egypt, ancient prosthetics, Egyptian healthcare, what is a human, 1.8 million year old tooth, Georgia is a state not a country, tackling misinformation, human remain hotspot, the earliest surgery, trepanation, ancient community care, “7 days ago, that was the end of my script”, modern humans, medical knowledge is older than we realise, we’re still figuring anthropology out, Ella loves powerpoint, sweating bullets, God named powerpoint, overhead transparencies, Caroline doesn’t know what an overhead projector is, Tom and Ella are getting old, Edward Tufty is evil, Tom Lumperson is coming for Edward Tufty, everyone is a presenter, accessibility, an unfeasible culture of productivity, David Burn, Tufty vs Burn, Powerpoint Art, Powerpoint theatre, Powerpoint comedy, Tiktok is actually Powerpoint, Powerpoint as a programming language, POWERPOINT SUPREMACY, beautiful things in the wildest places.

Sources:

Santorio Santorio
Insensible persirpiation
Weighing chair replica
Mammoth Cave Study
Michel Siffre Cave Experimenter
Michel Siffre Cabinet Interview
H. Pylori Stomach Ulcer Timeline
Barry Marshall Discover Magazine Interview
Infective dose of Campylobacter jejuni in milk
John Paul Stapp
Stewart Adams
Pritchard and Hookworms
Jasper Lawrence
Jimmy Bernot Twitter
Whipworm Clinical trials
Hookworms for multiple sclerosis

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Limb Amputation in Ancient Egyptians (2010 Paper)
The Guardian – Archeologists unearth 1.8 million Year Old Human Tooth
A Short History of Surgery by K. M. Begelman
The Oldest Amputation on a Human Skeleton in France (2007 Paper)
Upper Palaeolithic Hand Images with Missing Phalanges (2018 Paper)
Surgical amputation of a limb 31,000 years ago in Borneo (2022 Paper)

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Robert Gaskins on Naming PowerPoint
NYTimes Reporting on Microsoft Buying PowerPoint
Tufte’s Article “PowerPoint is Evil”
NYTimes Teacher Interview on PowerPoint
David Byrne’s Learning to Love PowerPoint
David Byrne’s UC Berkley Presentation
David Byrne’s Blog about the Presentation
Vulture’s “Why is PowerPoint Having a Comedy Moment?”
Neil Cicierega’s SlideShare Gems
The Lorde and Jack Antonoff PowerPoint
Tom Wildenhain’s Paper “On the Turing Completeness of MS PowerPoint”
Tom Wildenhain’s Presentation “On the Turing Completeness of MS PowerPoint”