Drinking vomit and talking to dolphins all in the name of science. Let’s talk about that. ♪ (theme music) ♪ Good Mythical Morning. Aristotle said, “There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.” – Aristotle said that? – Yeah, he did. – He was talking to me. – (Rhett laughs) – Did you hear it? You were listening then? – You said Aristotle said that. Hearing my conversations with the ‘Stotle. (laughing) But here’s the thing– sometimes that mixture of madness overflows the cup of genius and goes all over the table. You gotta get a chamois out and get that stuff up and the chamois says, “Hey, if you were such a genius, why couldn’t you clean up after yourself?” Oh, the chamois speaks? Well, I want one of those, $19.95. – Well, science might prove that it does. – Me and the ‘Stotle, hanging out with a chamois. We have some crazy, crazy people who are really good at science – and we’re gonna talk about those people. – (Rhett laughs) – (Rhett groans) – What? – I love it. I love the setup. – (crew laughs) I love everything about it. All right, so I got a couple, you got a couple. (Link) Nikola Tesla, this dude, you know? – (Rhett) Heard of him. – (Link) He invented the coil. He invented alternating current. He invented wireless electricity, which is a little bit dangerous but completely awesome. But turns out he was also OCD before it was called OCD. That’s just kind of putting together his habits in such a way. It’s like, “Ooh, that is what he had.” Case in point, he did not like anything round. He’d freak out if there was a woman who had a pearl necklace. – He didn’t like to touch hair. – (in disgust) Oh, yeah. Which, with hair like he has, I guess he got someone to do it, – like a stylist? – How do you avoid that moustache though? – That’s the question. – I don’t know. It was probably other people’s hair that he wouldn’t touch. And he was obsessed with the number three. Get this, he would walk around buildings, before he went inside, three times. Go three times around the whole building. Checking the perimeter. I mean, how big of a building– I guess he didn’t go – in really large buildings. – Like the Louvre. – He never went in the Louvre. – Got too winded or something. – He used 18 napkins at every single meal. – He sounds like my kids. – Three stacks of six. – That’s excessive. I know, it’s like think about the trees, Tesla. – You gotta save the woods, man. – It didn’t matter back then. There were so many trees back then. I think that’s why he was going around the perimeter, – he was looking for napkins. – (Rhett laughs) 17, 18– now I can go inside! Before I go into this restaurant. He was squish his toes 100 times every night before he went to bed. Oh, now I do that. He said that it stimulated his brain cells. It stimulates the brain cells. Right. (laughs) Squishing with his fingers, like this little piggie went to the market? – No, just doing his toes like this. – Oh, like doing claw toes. Claw toes. He was doing that. Stimulating his brain cells. You know. Speaking of stimulated brain cells, how about Jack Parsons? (Rhett) He was a self-taught rocket scientist, but he wasn’t just some dude doing rocket science in a shed. I mean, this guy contributed significantly to rocket science and he also founded JPL– – (both) The Jet Propulsion Laboratory! – (Rhett) Over in Pasadena. I could’ve said the whole thing in unison. – I can still be speaking– – But I don’t want you to. Okay. But things got a little bit weird when Jack got involved with an occult religion called Thelema, which I originally read as “Thelma”– and then I realized there was an extra E in there and it’s Thelema. I’ve never heard of it. Well, apparently it was pretty easy to work your way up to the top because he became the leader of Thelema and he led the occult from his mansion in Pasadena. We could visit. One thing you need to know about Thelema is that the law of Thelema is, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will.” What if you don’t wanna love? Well, I think that just means do what you want. I don’t think it means anything. I think it just means – do whatever you want. – What did he do? Well, what he did is he got with his friend L. Ron Hubbard. (Rhett) Ever heard that name? Yeah, maybe the guy that started Scientology. He was his good friend at the time… Definitely the guy who started Scientology. … and do rituals where they were trying to, “Manifest an incarnation of the archetypal divine feminine called Babylon.” That just means get a woman named Babylon to show up. – Any woman named Babylon? – No. – Could put a Craigslist ad out. – And then when Babylon shows up, Jack wanted to bear a child with her, which is just a really interesting way to meet little ladies, you know? – To manifest them out of the spirit world – That’s a convenient way to do it. – And make a bear child? – (Rhett snickers) – No, he was trying to bear a child. – Oh. He wanted her to bear a child. If you can manifest a woman, you can also make a bear-child. (crew laughs) Again, if they hadn’t gotten together I could totally imagine them like, “How’d you guys meet?” “Well, I manifested her in a ritual with my friend L. Ron.” Well, while he was trying to manifest Babylon L. Ron decided he was gonna run off with Jack’s wife. He took Jack’s wife and Jack’s life savings! Ooh! And went off and took that money and wrote the book Dianetics. So you can thank– John Travolta and Tom Cruise have Jack, ultimately, to thank for the life-changing message of Scientology that they’re experiencing on a day-to-day basis. And the Mars rover. Let’s not forget that. – Yes, right. – Let’s balance it out. I mean, you take the weird with the great. With this guy, it’s just mostly weird. (Link) Stubbins Ffirth, he spells his name with two Fs, so I’m just gonna call him Mr. Fuh-Firth. How about Ffffffirth? – No, Fuh– – Just hold it longer. Fuh-Firth, we talked about this guy in episode 63 of Ear Biscuits, where we talked about weird science. – That’s quite a memory you got there. – At length. – No, I noted the episode number. – Oh. (laughs) But I just couldn’t help but talk about them here because this dude, what he did was amazing. Now, back in the early 1800’s, he wanted to prove that the Yellow Fever was not contagious, but it knocked out 10% of the population of Philadelphia, so this was something they wanted to get to the bottom of, how it was being spread. He said it’s not contagious from person to person and I will prove it by doing experiments on one guinea pig: himself. (Rhett snickers) Oh-ho, okay. Here’s what he did. He took the vomit of Yellow Fever patients. Is it yellow? I don’t know. Let’s just picture it like yellow vomit. Okay, let’s think of it as yellow vomit. He started cutting his own arms and then pouring the Yellow Fever vomit, which was yellow definitely, over the wounds to see if he would contract it. Okay, science. He next poured the vomit into his eyeballs. Glug, glug, glug, glug, glug. Sounds like he’s making an episode of Good Mythical Morning. (both laugh) He’s like, “Watch what I do this week!” – Don’t plant any seeds into them. – For the views! Then he fried up the vomit in a pan, (sniffs) and just inhaled the fumes, and I guess that made him hungry because then he proceeded – to just drink straight vomit! – That would be thirsty, technically. – He didn’t get sick! – Of course not. He did not– so maybe it wasn’t the vomit. Then he proceeds to take the blood, the saliva, and the urine of Yellow Fever patients and smear it all over his body. (Rhett) How did he get this? You left that part out. You know what? I’m glad you left that part out. He has Yellow Fever patients and he gets them to, well– Pee in this or bleed on that. Yeah, that’s nasty. After smearing it all over him and going on a date with his wife, he still didn’t get the Yellow Fever. Where did the date with the wife come from? So he said, “Okay, it’s not contagious.” – Except it is contagious– – Right. It is a viral disease spread by the blood, hello. Basically, he lucked– I’m gonna start saying “hello”. (laughs) “Hello?” (laughing) He lucked out because he took the vomit and the other liquids from late-stage patients who were no longer contagious. 60 years later, they make a link between mosquito bites. And then 150 years later, they make a Link. – He’s sitting right here next to me. – (crew laughs) Sue and Charles made a Link. They manifested a bear-child (laughing) known as Link. Okay, John C. Lilly, this guy was a neurophysiologist, a biophysicist, an inventor, and a dolphin researcher. Mm, pay attention to the dolphin part. He also was the inventor of the sensory deprivation tank, – which we have a lot of experience– – Big fan of this guy then. We both had great times in there. But things got a little bit weird with John because, in the name of research, he decided he was gonna take LSD – in the company of dolphins. – (crew laughs) And, of course, while on LSD around the dolphins, he got the idea that, “Man, I wanna communicate with these dolphins, man. I wanna, like, speak to ’em, man. I wanna really, like– I wanna talk directly to the dolphins. And I don’t mean like the squeak-squeak noise. I wanna, like, really communicate.” (Link emits dolphinish squeaks) – That’s my best dolphin. – Instead of doing it himself, he gets his young female assistant, Margaret, to live in a house with a dolphin named Peter, okay? (laughing) First of all, this sounds like a Cartoon Network show – that comes on after Uncle Grandpa. – (Link laughs) Margaret and Peter the Dolphin! – But for ten weeks– – Did she live in an aquarium? She lives, and for ten weeks in 1965, he has her in a house that is partially flooded. (Rhett) The dolphin and Margaret live in a partially flooded house so the dolphin can just swim around, and then she has a bed that’s over the water. – The bottom part was flooded? – Yeah. (Link and crew laugh) – Not the left side– – Yeah. – The east wing. – The whole thing is flooded. Water seeks its own level. That’s one of the realities of life, Link. – Unless you manifest– – And the dolphin was in the water. Now, it gets kind of weird because people say that they had a relationship that could be described as romantic. She also taught Peter how to say the word “ball”. That’s quite a relationship. Again, if you ask me, getting a dolphin to say the word “ball”– which I would have loved to hear that, but I don’t have any tapes of it, Link. – “Any tapes.” – And this didn’t stop John in his quest to communicate with dolphins. – He began giving the dolphins LSD. – Hmm. It didn’t work. Nothing happened. So John, they kept saying, “Ball.” And he was like, “No, LSD.” Say something else, man. So anyway, the dolphins lived a great life after that, I’m sure and, uh… I’ve always said that the pinnacle of any romantic relationship is when your partner just says “ball” a lot. (crew laughs) (Link laughs) Thanks for liking and commenting and subscribing. You know what time it is! – I’m Cathy! – Shelly! – I’m Lonnie. (all) And we’re from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and it’s time to spin the Wheel of Mythicality! You can watch Good Mythical Morning 24 hours early by going to vessel.com/rhettandlink. Vessel.com/rhettandlink! Click through to Good Mythical More. I’ve got two more entertainingly mad scientists to talk about. “Unisong about Johnny Depp.” ♪ Have you heard of the dude ♪ ♪ Who’s growing and acting ♪ ♪ He also smells a little funny ♪ ♪ He looks like a pile of scars ♪ ♪ With a weak beard and moustache ♪ ♪ And he’s a pirate ♪ ♪ And his name is Johnny Depp ♪ (Rhett laughs) Oh my gosh. Every single time I’m holding my pee, I think to myself, “I don’t wanna be like that guy that died from holding his pee.” Now I know who it was. [Captioned by Sara: GMM Captioning Team]