WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.940 Welcome in. Get comfortable, grab a coffee, or 00:00:02.940 --> 00:00:05.360 just, you know, settle into your commute. Because 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:08.080 today we are embarking on a custom -tailored 00:00:08.080 --> 00:00:10.859 deep dive designed entirely for you. Absolutely. 00:00:10.980 --> 00:00:14.650 And usually we take... the raw materials of information 00:00:14.650 --> 00:00:17.890 right articles research papers data sets your 00:00:17.890 --> 00:00:20.850 personal notes and we sift through them to find 00:00:20.850 --> 00:00:23.570 the absolute most compelling nuggets of insight 00:00:23.570 --> 00:00:25.609 yeah we really want to give you that shortcut 00:00:25.609 --> 00:00:28.190 to being truly well informed exactly without 00:00:28.190 --> 00:00:31.250 any of the uh heavy lifting or information overload 00:00:31.250 --> 00:00:34.630 that usually comes with it but today today the 00:00:34.630 --> 00:00:36.609 source material we are looking at is frankly 00:00:37.270 --> 00:00:40.369 highly unusual. It really is. It is not a sprawling 00:00:40.369 --> 00:00:42.950 historical biography. It's not an investigative 00:00:42.950 --> 00:00:46.990 journalism piece. It is a single, solitary Wikipedia 00:00:46.990 --> 00:00:50.149 disambiguation page. Which is such a brilliant 00:00:50.149 --> 00:00:52.509 starting point, honestly. I mean, a disambiguation 00:00:52.509 --> 00:00:55.590 page is usually the place you land when you're 00:00:55.590 --> 00:00:57.469 kind of lost on the internet. Right. It's a mistake 00:00:57.469 --> 00:00:59.289 page. Yeah. It's the digital equivalent of a 00:00:59.289 --> 00:01:01.929 crossroads or a signpost that basically says, 00:01:02.030 --> 00:01:05.090 did you mean this? Or did you mean that? Most 00:01:05.090 --> 00:01:07.439 of us just scan it for half a second. Exactly. 00:01:07.439 --> 00:01:09.099 You click the link you actually wanted in the 00:01:09.099 --> 00:01:11.219 first place and you move on with your day without 00:01:11.219 --> 00:01:13.319 giving the page itself a second thought. But 00:01:13.319 --> 00:01:15.840 when you stop and actually look at the architecture 00:01:15.840 --> 00:01:18.379 of one of these pages, you realize it's a complete 00:01:18.379 --> 00:01:21.700 snapshot of human categorization. It is. And 00:01:21.700 --> 00:01:24.480 the word we are looking at on this specific crossroads 00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:29.480 is rollin, spelled R -O -L -L -I -N, or sometimes 00:01:29.480 --> 00:01:32.299 with the apostrophe at the end, rollin. Just 00:01:32.299 --> 00:01:35.400 that one simple slang word. Just that word. Our 00:01:35.400 --> 00:01:37.700 mission for this deep dive is to explore how 00:01:37.700 --> 00:01:40.819 this single, seemingly simple word fractures 00:01:40.819 --> 00:01:43.640 and ripples across pop culture, across geography, 00:01:43.900 --> 00:01:46.060 through the history of American industry, and 00:01:46.060 --> 00:01:48.280 even... That's the crazy part? Yeah, even all 00:01:48.280 --> 00:01:50.640 the way into quantum physics. It's amazing. What 00:01:50.640 --> 00:01:53.840 looks at first glance like a dry, boring list 00:01:53.840 --> 00:01:56.620 of blue hyperlinks is actually this really fascinating 00:01:56.620 --> 00:01:59.819 map of human culture and how we architect our 00:01:59.819 --> 00:02:02.799 information. Okay, let's unpack this. It really 00:02:02.799 --> 00:02:04.900 is a map. Yeah. And when you look at the... geography 00:02:04.900 --> 00:02:07.340 of this particular map, the vast majority of 00:02:07.340 --> 00:02:10.319 the real estate on this disambiguation page is 00:02:10.319 --> 00:02:13.800 dominated by one specific category. Music, exactly. 00:02:14.120 --> 00:02:16.680 The page is heavily weighted toward the arts, 00:02:16.819 --> 00:02:20.039 specifically split into two neat little subcategories, 00:02:20.180 --> 00:02:23.500 albums and songs. Let's start with the albums, 00:02:23.620 --> 00:02:25.960 because when you track just the albums named 00:02:25.960 --> 00:02:28.939 Rollin, you go on this bizarre chronological 00:02:28.939 --> 00:02:31.509 journey. You really do. We start way back in 00:02:31.509 --> 00:02:34.810 1974 with an album by the pop rock band the Bay 00:02:34.810 --> 00:02:38.590 City Rollers. Very upbeat. Very. Then the word 00:02:38.590 --> 00:02:40.689 goes dormant for a bit before popping back up 00:02:40.689 --> 00:02:43.969 in 1982, this time as the title of a jazz album 00:02:43.969 --> 00:02:46.590 by Freddie Hubbard. What's fascinating here is 00:02:46.590 --> 00:02:49.389 how a single word transcends completely different, 00:02:49.449 --> 00:02:52.530 seemingly incompatible musical eras and genres. 00:02:52.689 --> 00:02:55.189 Yeah. But there's a very specific linguistic 00:02:55.189 --> 00:02:57.629 reason for that. Yeah. Think about what happens 00:02:57.629 --> 00:03:00.000 when you drop the G from the word rolling. It 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:01.919 changes the whole vibe. It does. It's not just 00:03:01.919 --> 00:03:04.539 an abbreviation. It is an active branding choice. 00:03:05.120 --> 00:03:07.699 Dropping that G acts as a universal shorthand 00:03:07.699 --> 00:03:10.219 for casualness. Right. For momentum and for a 00:03:10.219 --> 00:03:12.719 slight edge of rebellion. You aren't rolling 00:03:12.719 --> 00:03:14.460 a boulder up a hill, you know. You're rolling 00:03:14.460 --> 00:03:17.030 with your friends. You are in motion. That makes 00:03:17.030 --> 00:03:19.469 total sense. It's a sonic shortcut to sounding 00:03:19.469 --> 00:03:22.789 approachable, but cool. Exactly. And you see 00:03:22.789 --> 00:03:24.949 that vibe applied to wildly different sounds. 00:03:25.090 --> 00:03:27.689 You have the upbeat tartan wearing pop of the 00:03:27.689 --> 00:03:30.349 Bay City Rollers in the 70s. And then just eight 00:03:30.349 --> 00:03:34.650 years later, that same casual momentum is recontextualized 00:03:34.650 --> 00:03:37.969 by a legendary jazz trumpeter like Freddie Hubbard. 00:03:38.129 --> 00:03:40.509 Right. The emotional frequency the word carries 00:03:40.509 --> 00:03:42.909 in those two contexts couldn't be more different. 00:03:43.280 --> 00:03:45.620 But the linguistic branding works for both. And 00:03:45.620 --> 00:03:48.000 it continues to work as the decades go on. It's 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:50.180 almost like a linguistic meme that keeps mutating. 00:03:50.259 --> 00:03:52.439 It really does, because we fast forward to the 00:03:52.439 --> 00:03:55.319 year 2010 and we get an album released by the 00:03:55.319 --> 00:03:57.479 Texas Hippie Coalition. So now we are in the 00:03:57.479 --> 00:03:59.629 realm of Southern metal. Complete genre shift. 00:03:59.909 --> 00:04:03.810 Then we jump to 2017 and suddenly the word has 00:04:03.810 --> 00:04:06.310 crossed the Pacific Ocean. This part is wild. 00:04:06.550 --> 00:04:09.370 We have not one but two different K -pop EPs 00:04:09.370 --> 00:04:11.750 released in the exact same year with that title. 00:04:11.830 --> 00:04:14.930 One by the group B1A4 and another by the Brave 00:04:14.930 --> 00:04:17.329 Girls. Which goes right back to that idea of 00:04:17.329 --> 00:04:19.980 a universal shorthand. A southern metal band 00:04:19.980 --> 00:04:22.759 in Texas and a highly polished K -pop production 00:04:22.759 --> 00:04:25.779 team in Seoul are looking for the exact same 00:04:25.779 --> 00:04:29.079 energy. Action and grit. Yes. They both want 00:04:29.079 --> 00:04:32.139 to convey action, grit, and lack of pretense. 00:04:32.259 --> 00:04:35.079 So they both grabbed this exact same modified 00:04:35.079 --> 00:04:38.759 English word. I love that. And nestled in among 00:04:38.759 --> 00:04:42.000 all of these massive global releases, there is 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:45.439 this incredible little curiosity. Oh, the Ava 00:04:45.439 --> 00:04:48.410 Lee album. Yes. The page lists an album titled 00:04:48.410 --> 00:04:51.290 Rollin' by an artist named Ava Lee from 2008. 00:04:51.509 --> 00:04:54.250 But in parentheses, it notes that the album is 00:04:54.250 --> 00:04:57.149 unreleased. That detail highlights how comprehensive 00:04:57.149 --> 00:05:00.170 and democratic this database really is and how 00:05:00.170 --> 00:05:02.110 our definition of a record has changed. Because 00:05:02.110 --> 00:05:04.610 it never actually came out. Right. In the past, 00:05:04.689 --> 00:05:07.050 an unreleased album was just a rumor. It didn't 00:05:07.050 --> 00:05:09.050 exist as a historical record alongside platinum 00:05:09.050 --> 00:05:11.189 selling hits. It was just lost to time. Exactly. 00:05:11.509 --> 00:05:14.050 But here you have albums that sold millions of 00:05:14.050 --> 00:05:16.209 copies sitting right next to an album that technically 00:05:16.209 --> 00:05:18.350 never saw the light of day in a commercial sense. 00:05:18.470 --> 00:05:20.750 Just because it has a digital footprint. Yes. 00:05:21.149 --> 00:05:23.490 Because the digital footprint of that unreleased 00:05:23.490 --> 00:05:25.930 project is out there, it gets its own terminate 00:05:25.930 --> 00:05:29.370 spot on the list. For you, as the listener, tracking 00:05:29.370 --> 00:05:32.879 this word through the album section is... Watching 00:05:32.879 --> 00:05:35.620 a word belong to everyone and no one simultaneously. 00:05:35.720 --> 00:05:38.779 It is the ultimate shared vocabulary. But if 00:05:38.779 --> 00:05:41.160 you think the album section is wild, wait until 00:05:41.160 --> 00:05:43.259 we look at the individual songs. Oh yeah, the 00:05:43.259 --> 00:05:45.230 songs are a trip. Here's where it gets really 00:05:45.230 --> 00:05:47.589 interesting because the song list reveals this 00:05:47.589 --> 00:05:50.449 incredibly bizarre anomaly in the data. I was 00:05:50.449 --> 00:05:52.149 looking through the timeline of these song releases 00:05:52.149 --> 00:05:54.250 and I had to do a double take when I hit the 00:05:54.250 --> 00:05:56.750 year 2017. Did you notice this cluster? I did. 00:05:56.870 --> 00:05:58.910 If you are looking at this data purely from an 00:05:58.910 --> 00:06:01.670 analytical standpoint, 2017 is the moment where 00:06:01.670 --> 00:06:04.069 the graph suddenly spikes completely out of nowhere. 00:06:04.290 --> 00:06:07.529 In that one single year, the title Rollin or 00:06:07.529 --> 00:06:10.750 Rollin was used for entirely separate newly released 00:06:10.750 --> 00:06:13.689 songs by Calvin Harris, by Little Big Town. by 00:06:13.689 --> 00:06:16.089 the K -pop group Twice. And by the Brave Girls. 00:06:16.310 --> 00:06:18.290 Right, who, as we mentioned, had both the EP 00:06:18.290 --> 00:06:21.170 and a title song with the name. Oh, and the B1A4 00:06:21.170 --> 00:06:23.930 EP was that same year, too. It's massive. Five 00:06:23.930 --> 00:06:25.829 totally different artists spanning electronic 00:06:25.829 --> 00:06:29.410 dance music, American country, and two different 00:06:29.410 --> 00:06:32.970 massive K -pop acts, all independently deciding 00:06:32.970 --> 00:06:35.870 to name a piece of art Roland at the exact same 00:06:35.870 --> 00:06:37.930 time. It really makes you wonder what was in 00:06:37.930 --> 00:06:40.629 the water in 2017. Like, what was happening in 00:06:40.629 --> 00:06:42.899 pop culture that made everyone from Calvin Harris 00:06:42.899 --> 00:06:46.379 to K -pop producers independently say, yes, let's 00:06:46.379 --> 00:06:49.279 call it Roland. Right. Was there a shared feeling 00:06:49.279 --> 00:06:52.500 of momentum? Or a collective desire to keep moving 00:06:52.500 --> 00:06:54.920 forward after a tumultuous few years? See, I 00:06:54.920 --> 00:06:56.879 look at that and part of me wonders, is it really 00:06:56.879 --> 00:06:59.819 a cultural zeitgeist or is it just algorithmic 00:06:59.819 --> 00:07:02.079 optimization? That's a great point. By 2017, 00:07:02.279 --> 00:07:05.399 streaming was completely dominant. Spotify and 00:07:05.399 --> 00:07:08.139 Apple Music were the ultimate kingmakers. If 00:07:08.139 --> 00:07:10.360 you are an artist, you know that short, punchy, 00:07:10.360 --> 00:07:12.860 action -oriented titles are highly searched and 00:07:12.860 --> 00:07:15.379 easily categorized by the algorithm they game 00:07:15.379 --> 00:07:17.800 the system exactly were these artists tapping 00:07:17.800 --> 00:07:20.139 into a cultural mood or were they just utilizing 00:07:20.139 --> 00:07:22.939 a very catchy high traffic keyword that is a 00:07:22.939 --> 00:07:25.720 very fair pushback when the distribution mechanism 00:07:25.720 --> 00:07:28.319 changes to a search bar the naming conventions 00:07:28.319 --> 00:07:30.899 of the art itself are going to change It has 00:07:30.899 --> 00:07:34.139 to. It is entirely possible that Rollin just 00:07:34.139 --> 00:07:36.100 hit the sweet spot of being familiar enough to 00:07:36.100 --> 00:07:38.939 search, but vague enough to fit a Calvin Harris 00:07:38.939 --> 00:07:41.639 summer anthem just as easily as a Little Big 00:07:41.639 --> 00:07:43.959 Town country ballad. And the page doesn't tell 00:07:43.959 --> 00:07:46.379 us why it happened. No, it just impartially reports 00:07:46.379 --> 00:07:49.490 the data. And the 2017 cluster is just one piece 00:07:49.490 --> 00:07:51.230 of the puzzle. When you zoom out and look the 00:07:51.230 --> 00:07:53.610 entire timeline of songs listed on this page, 00:07:53.790 --> 00:07:57.129 the genre whiplash is intense. Whiplash is the 00:07:57.129 --> 00:07:59.670 perfect word for it. You've got Randy Newman 00:07:59.670 --> 00:08:02.050 in 74, which makes sense. It's a very singer 00:08:02.050 --> 00:08:04.310 -songwriter storytelling kind of word. Then you 00:08:04.310 --> 00:08:07.149 have Garth Brooks in 95. Classic country. But 00:08:07.149 --> 00:08:09.350 then you fast forward to the year 2000 and Limp 00:08:09.350 --> 00:08:12.829 Bizkit. completely hijacks the word for the new 00:08:12.829 --> 00:08:16.209 metal era. I mean, they defined an entire aggressive 00:08:16.209 --> 00:08:18.589 backward cap wearing generation with that one 00:08:18.589 --> 00:08:20.750 track. Oh, absolutely. And then later we get 00:08:20.750 --> 00:08:24.449 Big and Rich, Lil Wayne in 2011, Kylie Minogue 00:08:24.449 --> 00:08:27.670 in 2018, all the way up to the rapper Yeet in 00:08:27.670 --> 00:08:30.790 2022. Hearing those names back to back really 00:08:30.790 --> 00:08:33.710 underscores how a Wikipedia disambiguation page 00:08:33.710 --> 00:08:36.889 acts as the ultimate digital equalizer. Equalizer, 00:08:36.970 --> 00:08:39.269 yeah. It is a completely flattened hierarchy. 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:43.600 Limp Bizkit's early 2000s aggression, Randy Newman's 00:08:43.600 --> 00:08:46.759 piano ballads, and highly polished modern K -pop 00:08:46.759 --> 00:08:49.259 groups are stripped of their genre packaging. 00:08:49.500 --> 00:08:51.279 They lose their context. They are stripped of 00:08:51.279 --> 00:08:53.159 their marketing budgets and their specific fan 00:08:53.159 --> 00:08:56.259 bases. They are reduced down to this one shared 00:08:56.259 --> 00:08:59.200 linguistic denominator, forced to share the exact 00:08:59.200 --> 00:09:01.730 same digital real estate. It makes you wonder 00:09:01.730 --> 00:09:06.210 how a fan of the 2022 Yeats song would feel realizing 00:09:06.210 --> 00:09:09.809 their track shares its DNA with a 1974 Randy 00:09:09.809 --> 00:09:12.169 Newman tune. Probably pretty confused. Probably. 00:09:12.409 --> 00:09:15.230 But Rollin isn't just a metaphor for momentum 00:09:15.230 --> 00:09:18.110 in music. We have to look at the other uses section 00:09:18.110 --> 00:09:20.289 of the page. This is where it gets grounded. 00:09:20.529 --> 00:09:23.570 Because for a guy named Rollin White in the 1920s, 00:09:23.570 --> 00:09:26.230 this word was quite literally about putting America 00:09:26.230 --> 00:09:28.629 on wheels. That transition from the conceptual 00:09:28.629 --> 00:09:31.549 to the physical is a sharp turn. We go from the 00:09:31.549 --> 00:09:33.929 ethereal nature of pop music to the grounded 00:09:33.929 --> 00:09:36.830 reality of dirt, roads, and metal. For starters, 00:09:36.970 --> 00:09:39.269 the page lists a literal place on the map called 00:09:39.269 --> 00:09:42.269 Rollin. It's Rollin Township, located in the 00:09:42.269 --> 00:09:44.769 state of Michigan in the United States. Just 00:09:44.769 --> 00:09:47.049 an actual municipality sitting out there in the 00:09:47.049 --> 00:09:49.090 Midwest. It's just a town. And right beneath 00:09:49.090 --> 00:09:52.629 that entry, the page lists Rollin Motors. Rollin 00:09:52.629 --> 00:09:54.750 Motors is a perfect example of how deep these 00:09:54.750 --> 00:09:57.669 historical roots go. If we connect this to the 00:09:57.669 --> 00:10:00.440 bigger picture. The page tells us that Rollin 00:10:00.440 --> 00:10:04.440 Motors was a 1920s American car brand founded 00:10:04.440 --> 00:10:07.840 by Rollin White. Okay. And to understand the 00:10:07.840 --> 00:10:09.620 weight of that, we have to look at the link the 00:10:09.620 --> 00:10:13.269 page provides to the White Motor Company. The 00:10:13.269 --> 00:10:15.649 White family was instrumental in early American 00:10:15.649 --> 00:10:17.370 manufacturing. They made a bit of everything. 00:10:17.710 --> 00:10:19.409 They did. They started making sewing machines, 00:10:19.610 --> 00:10:22.269 then bicycles, and eventually they were pioneers 00:10:22.269 --> 00:10:25.129 in steam -powered automobiles. Which were massive, 00:10:25.230 --> 00:10:28.450 heavy, complicated machines. Exactly. But in 00:10:28.450 --> 00:10:30.590 the early 1920s, the landscape of America was 00:10:30.590 --> 00:10:33.149 changing. The Roaring Twenties. The Roaring Twenties 00:10:33.149 --> 00:10:34.710 were happening, the middle class was expanding, 00:10:35.029 --> 00:10:37.809 and there was a demand for smaller, more affordable, 00:10:37.929 --> 00:10:41.169 gas -powered passenger cars. So Roland White 00:10:41.169 --> 00:10:43.649 struck out and founded Roland Motors to meet 00:10:43.649 --> 00:10:46.669 that specific need. So suddenly this word that 00:10:46.669 --> 00:10:48.629 we associate with turn of the century, new metal 00:10:48.629 --> 00:10:52.629 or modern K -pop is inextricably linked to a 00:10:52.629 --> 00:10:55.250 pivotal moment in the birth of the American automotive 00:10:55.250 --> 00:10:58.570 industry. Wow. It represents the shift from heavy 00:10:58.570 --> 00:11:02.490 steam powered industrial machinery to accessible 00:11:02.490 --> 00:11:05.190 consumer level freedom. It's the evolution of 00:11:05.190 --> 00:11:07.809 a word. It moves from the early 20th century 00:11:07.809 --> 00:11:10.769 physical industry, building literal cars from 00:11:10.769 --> 00:11:13.169 steel and glass to the lightweight, invisible 00:11:13.169 --> 00:11:15.950 digital entertainment of the 21st century. That's 00:11:15.950 --> 00:11:17.870 a great way to put it. And speaking of the digital 00:11:17.870 --> 00:11:19.990 realm, there is another amazing oddity tucked 00:11:19.990 --> 00:11:22.929 into this section. Rollin is also the title of 00:11:22.929 --> 00:11:26.110 a 1995 video game for MS -DOS created by a company 00:11:26.110 --> 00:11:29.389 called Ticksoft. That lead from 1920s automotive 00:11:29.389 --> 00:11:32.750 steel to 1995 computer code is fascinating. It 00:11:32.750 --> 00:11:35.580 really is. By the mid -90s, MS -DOS was the dominant 00:11:35.580 --> 00:11:37.919 operating system for personal computers, and 00:11:37.919 --> 00:11:39.919 the market was absolutely flooded with these 00:11:39.919 --> 00:11:42.259 small independent puzzle and arcade games. The 00:11:42.259 --> 00:11:45.419 shareware era. Yes, the shareware era. Tiksoff 00:11:45.419 --> 00:11:47.919 was one of those developers, and they created 00:11:47.919 --> 00:11:51.100 a game where, quite literally, the entire premise 00:11:51.100 --> 00:11:53.639 was about a ball rolling around solving puzzles. 00:11:53.899 --> 00:11:56.759 So simple. So nestled right there next to the 00:11:56.759 --> 00:12:00.840 massive legacy of a 1920s car company and a Michigan 00:12:00.840 --> 00:12:04.509 township is a piece of mid -90s shareware. It 00:12:04.509 --> 00:12:07.250 is a profound reminder of the varying scales 00:12:07.250 --> 00:12:10.049 of human legacy. You have a township that people 00:12:10.049 --> 00:12:12.429 have called home for generations. Right. You 00:12:12.429 --> 00:12:14.309 have an automotive brand that helped define American 00:12:14.309 --> 00:12:16.409 mobility. And you have a piece of code written 00:12:16.409 --> 00:12:19.450 by a few developers in 1995 to entertain people 00:12:19.450 --> 00:12:21.590 on early home computers. It all counts as history. 00:12:21.830 --> 00:12:24.029 It all counts. And to round it all out, the page 00:12:24.029 --> 00:12:26.509 simply notes that Rollin is used as a given name. 00:12:26.929 --> 00:12:29.110 Rollin. just as a name someone writes on a birth 00:12:29.110 --> 00:12:31.309 certificate. They all exist under this one umbrella. 00:12:31.490 --> 00:12:33.590 It is wild to see them stacked on top of each 00:12:33.590 --> 00:12:35.610 other. But I have to say, my absolute favorite 00:12:35.610 --> 00:12:38.289 part of this entire source document is the very 00:12:38.289 --> 00:12:41.470 end. The see also section. The see also section. 00:12:42.129 --> 00:12:44.970 This is the safety net where Wikipedia catches 00:12:44.970 --> 00:12:47.590 related terms that don't quite fit the exact 00:12:47.590 --> 00:12:50.549 spelling or capitalization, but are close enough 00:12:50.549 --> 00:12:52.730 that a confused user might be looking for them. 00:12:52.850 --> 00:12:55.570 The see also section is where the algorithm's 00:12:55.570 --> 00:12:59.450 logic. often produces the most jarring juxtapositions. 00:12:59.450 --> 00:13:02.289 Because right there, underneath the K -pop and 00:13:02.289 --> 00:13:04.929 the country music, underneath the Michigan Township 00:13:04.929 --> 00:13:07.950 and the MS -DOS video game, we find an entry 00:13:07.950 --> 00:13:10.350 for the Rollin film. And this is not a movie. 00:13:10.529 --> 00:13:13.370 It is not an indie documentary. The text explicitly 00:13:13.370 --> 00:13:16.029 tells us that the Rollin film is a film of liquid 00:13:16.029 --> 00:13:18.730 helium. A film of liquid helium. Yeah. We have 00:13:18.730 --> 00:13:21.129 officially left the realm of human culture, art, 00:13:21.269 --> 00:13:23.899 and industry. And we have entered the realm of 00:13:23.899 --> 00:13:26.340 quantum physics and the properties of chemical 00:13:26.340 --> 00:13:28.519 elements. So what does this all mean? It's a 00:13:28.519 --> 00:13:31.039 huge leap. How do we even process a leap like 00:13:31.039 --> 00:13:33.000 that? I mean, what actually is a Rollin film? 00:13:33.220 --> 00:13:35.460 This raises an important question about how we 00:13:35.460 --> 00:13:37.480 fundamentally organize human knowledge. But first, 00:13:37.539 --> 00:13:39.200 we have to unpack the science here because it 00:13:39.200 --> 00:13:41.870 is mind bending. Please do. The Rowland in Rowling 00:13:41.870 --> 00:13:44.669 film refers to a British physicist named Bernard 00:13:44.669 --> 00:13:47.870 Rowland. Back in the late 1930s at Oxford University, 00:13:48.289 --> 00:13:50.529 he was studying the properties of liquid helium 00:13:50.529 --> 00:13:53.269 at temperatures incredibly close to absolute 00:13:53.269 --> 00:13:56.090 zero. So as cold as the universe can possibly 00:13:56.090 --> 00:13:59.009 get. Precisely. And at those extreme temperatures, 00:13:59.230 --> 00:14:02.090 liquid helium undergoes a phase change and becomes 00:14:02.090 --> 00:14:04.629 something called a superfluid. A superfluid. 00:14:04.629 --> 00:14:07.039 Specifically known as helium the second. What 00:14:07.039 --> 00:14:09.200 Bernard Rolland discovered, and what is now named 00:14:09.200 --> 00:14:11.879 after him, is that this superfluid has absolutely 00:14:11.879 --> 00:14:14.759 zero viscosity. Wait, zero viscosity? It has 00:14:14.759 --> 00:14:16.679 zero internal friction. What does that actually 00:14:16.679 --> 00:14:19.200 look like in practice? Imagine pouring water 00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:22.220 into a glass. The water sits there at the bottom 00:14:22.220 --> 00:14:24.360 of the glass because of gravity and surface tension. 00:14:24.600 --> 00:14:27.200 Sure. But if you poured superfluid liquid helium 00:14:27.200 --> 00:14:30.620 into that same glass, because it has zero friction, 00:14:31.120 --> 00:14:33.980 Its own kinetic energy allows it to defy our 00:14:33.980 --> 00:14:36.340 normal expectations of gravity. Defy gravity. 00:14:36.740 --> 00:14:39.179 It will literally start climbing up the inside 00:14:39.179 --> 00:14:42.960 walls of the glass in a microscopic layer, which 00:14:42.960 --> 00:14:45.299 is the Roland film. And it will creep over the 00:14:45.299 --> 00:14:48.039 rim and spill down the outside until the glass 00:14:48.039 --> 00:14:50.600 is completely empty. That is genuinely incredible. 00:14:50.779 --> 00:14:52.860 It just crawls out of its own container. It seeks 00:14:52.860 --> 00:14:55.279 the lowest possible gravitational point. And 00:14:55.279 --> 00:14:58.000 without friction to stop it, walls and containers 00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:01.549 mean nothing. Wow. It is a visible manifestation 00:15:01.549 --> 00:15:03.870 of quantum mechanics happening right in front 00:15:03.870 --> 00:15:06.929 of your eyes. Bernard Rowland documented this 00:15:06.929 --> 00:15:11.929 phenomenon. And so this bizarre anti -gravity 00:15:11.929 --> 00:15:15.110 creep of liquid helium bears his name forever. 00:15:15.500 --> 00:15:17.740 And now, that groundbreaking quantum physics 00:15:17.740 --> 00:15:20.120 discovery shares a digital waiting room with 00:15:20.120 --> 00:15:23.279 an old Wayne mixtape track and a K -pop EP. Which 00:15:23.279 --> 00:15:25.279 goes back to the absurdity and the beauty of 00:15:25.279 --> 00:15:27.980 how we organize information today. Historically, 00:15:28.059 --> 00:15:30.759 knowledge was siloed. Very separated. If you 00:15:30.759 --> 00:15:32.340 wanted to learn about the superfluity of liquid 00:15:32.340 --> 00:15:34.379 helium, you went to the physics section of the 00:15:34.379 --> 00:15:36.379 university library. If you wanted to learn about 00:15:36.379 --> 00:15:38.980 Roland White and the 1920s motor industry, you 00:15:38.980 --> 00:15:41.039 went to the history or commerce section. And 00:15:41.039 --> 00:15:43.600 if you wanted to find the new... Limp Bizkit 00:15:43.600 --> 00:15:47.000 album, you went to a record store. The physical 00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:49.679 world kept these concepts completely separated 00:15:49.679 --> 00:15:52.159 by walls and city blocks. But in the digital 00:15:52.159 --> 00:15:54.620 space, those walls are gone. Completely gone. 00:15:55.039 --> 00:15:57.720 The digital architecture of a disambiguation 00:15:57.720 --> 00:16:00.820 page removes all context except for the alphabetical 00:16:00.820 --> 00:16:03.480 characters themselves. It relies purely on the 00:16:03.480 --> 00:16:07.080 string of letters, R -O -L -L -I -N. It's so 00:16:07.080 --> 00:16:09.580 literal. There is a comedy to it, certainly, 00:16:09.639 --> 00:16:12.899 that a highly specific, complex physics phenomenon 00:16:12.899 --> 00:16:16.419 is just a few pixels away from a 1995 computer 00:16:16.419 --> 00:16:19.860 game from Ticksoft. Yeah. But it shows the incredible 00:16:19.860 --> 00:16:22.809 breadth of human endeavor. We make pop songs 00:16:22.809 --> 00:16:25.429 to capture a cultural mood. We build cars to 00:16:25.429 --> 00:16:27.730 move our families. We code games for entertainment. 00:16:27.970 --> 00:16:30.570 We map towns to build communities. And we study 00:16:30.570 --> 00:16:32.629 the behavior of subatomic fluids to understand 00:16:32.629 --> 00:16:34.929 the universe. And sometimes, by pure linguistic 00:16:34.929 --> 00:16:37.090 coincidence, we give them all the exact same 00:16:37.090 --> 00:16:39.370 name. Exactly. It is like looking at a cross 00:16:39.370 --> 00:16:41.789 -section of the entire human brain on one single 00:16:41.789 --> 00:16:44.070 web page. You are scrolling through our need 00:16:44.070 --> 00:16:46.309 to be entertained, our need to build, and our 00:16:46.309 --> 00:16:48.590 need to understand the fundamental laws of nature. 00:16:48.830 --> 00:16:50.840 It's all there. And that brings us to the end 00:16:50.840 --> 00:16:52.700 of our journey through this singular strange 00:16:52.700 --> 00:16:56.159 document. We've gone from the pop rock sounds 00:16:56.159 --> 00:16:59.580 of 1974 and the linguistic branding of dropping 00:16:59.580 --> 00:17:03.320 a G to the automotive assembly lines of the 1920s. 00:17:03.320 --> 00:17:05.220 We really covered some ground. We've debated 00:17:05.220 --> 00:17:07.980 the simultaneous pop culture explosion of 2017, 00:17:08.299 --> 00:17:11.420 explored the coding of early MS -DOS gaming, 00:17:11.559 --> 00:17:14.119 and finally stared at the frictionless reality 00:17:14.119 --> 00:17:16.759 of liquid helium crawling up the side of a glass. 00:17:17.039 --> 00:17:19.519 It is a remarkable distance to travel on a page 00:17:19.519 --> 00:17:22.759 that is fewer than 500 words long. And for you 00:17:22.759 --> 00:17:25.359 listening right now, this is the true joy of 00:17:25.359 --> 00:17:27.779 deep diving into raw, unfiltered information. 00:17:28.160 --> 00:17:30.740 You never really know what adjacent realities 00:17:30.740 --> 00:17:32.480 you're going to stumble into when you start pulling 00:17:32.480 --> 00:17:34.980 on a thread. That's the best part. A simple search 00:17:34.980 --> 00:17:36.740 for a song you heard on the radio can accidentally 00:17:36.740 --> 00:17:39.240 teach you about a forgotten era of American car 00:17:39.240 --> 00:17:41.799 manufacturing or introduce you to a physicist 00:17:41.799 --> 00:17:44.579 from the 1930s who watched liquids defy gravity. 00:17:44.759 --> 00:17:47.380 The world is infinitely interconnected, even 00:17:47.380 --> 00:17:49.259 if the connections start out as mere accidents 00:17:49.259 --> 00:17:52.230 of language. So. We want to leave you with a 00:17:52.230 --> 00:17:54.650 final provocative thought to mull over today 00:17:54.650 --> 00:17:57.089 as you go about the rest of your week. Think 00:17:57.089 --> 00:18:00.789 about your own first name. Or think about a seemingly 00:18:00.789 --> 00:18:03.349 common slang word that you use every single day 00:18:03.349 --> 00:18:05.970 with your friends. Just a normal word. If you 00:18:05.970 --> 00:18:08.200 were to take that word... And search it in a 00:18:08.200 --> 00:18:10.920 massive comprehensive database like Wikipedia, 00:18:11.400 --> 00:18:14.319 what completely unrelated scientific phenomenon, 00:18:14.680 --> 00:18:18.420 what forgotten piece of 1990s software, or what 00:18:18.420 --> 00:18:21.059 distant quiet town in the Midwest might you find 00:18:21.059 --> 00:18:23.259 sharing your exact same linguistic footprint. 00:18:23.559 --> 00:18:25.619 It is out there right now. Sitting on a server 00:18:25.619 --> 00:18:27.519 waiting for you to find it. Thank you so much 00:18:27.519 --> 00:18:29.759 for joining us on this exploration of the unexpected 00:18:29.759 --> 00:18:32.240 connections hidden right in plain sight. Keep 00:18:32.240 --> 00:18:34.640 diving deep, stay curious, and we will catch 00:18:34.640 --> 00:18:35.279 you next time.