Test Ep 2: Bugs on Drugs, How Much Pi do we Need, and the Blackest Black

Episode notes

What happens when you gives bugs drugs? How many digits of pi do we actually need? And what is the drama behind the blackest black?

Images we talk about:

– Spider Webs on Various Drugs

– Graph of Pi Approximations Across History

– The Redemption of Vanity, MIT’s Blackest Black

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We also learn about: how do you give a bee cocaine? cocaine is a natural insecticide, the waggle dance, actually im not going to dance it’s embaressing, “I want to be a bee so badly”, bees get withdrawl, some caterpillars are insensitive to cocaine, weaponizing caterpillars, giving spiders drugs because you’re lazy, charlotte’s web blood spider drug tests, caffeine isn’t really that bad for us, “morals will not stop humans from doing stupid things”, maybe giving elephants 3,000x LSD is bad science, cheap date flies, some animals want to get high, my favorite drug is math, what is pi? ancient pi estimates, 62.8 trillion digits of pi, how many digits of pi do nasa use? we could work at nasa as a package deal, by the 1400s we had enough pi to get us to space, and by the 1600s enough for the universe, selfish of pi to have so many numbers, why do we keep counting, tom gets an existential crisis, we all get an existential crisis, the bean, vantablack, how can you have a color?, the pinkest pink, paying someone to flip them off, the new blackest black, 99.995% light absorption, the power of productive spite, um thaaanks.

Sources:

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Bees on Cocaine

Caterpillar Cocaine

Weaponizing Caterpillars

The Spider Web Drug Study

Giving an Elephant Too Much LSD

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How Much PI Nasa Uses

Approximations of Pi over Time

How Much PI Nasa Uses

Record Number of Pi Digits

NPR on Record Pi Count

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Vantablack’s Copyright Controversy

The Pinkest Pink

Anish Kapoor’s Middle Finger

The NEW Blackest Black from MIT