104: The Anthropocene Argument & Sound Effects episode artwork

EPISODE · Apr 23, 2026 · 2H 26M

104: The Anthropocene Argument & Sound Effects

from Let's Learn Everything! · host Tom Lum

What is the Anthropocene? No really, who came up with it, when does it start, and why does that matter? Well it involves nuance, scientific beef, and a surprising amount of freaky little guys. And we all know of some sound effects we love, but what is their history, where are the weird places they've shown up, and what can they teach us about art? Images we Talk About:The International Chronostratigraphic ChartOpabiniaGraptoliteSound Effect RoomsPicture 1Picture 2Picture 3Picture 4Picture 5Picture 6 Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:05:37) The Anthropocene (01:21:57) Sound Effects (02:16:15) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: The human dominated geological time frame, this is actually a geology topic, let’s get our rocks off, the geological timescale, clues in the rock layers, the geologic calendar, the international chronostraographic chart, Eons Eras Periods Epochs Ages, GSSPs are physical places, a long cambrian tangent, the burgess shale was a rare cambrian preserver, trilobites are the alpha male body plan, opabinia had 5 eyes and one claw, hallucigenia actually makes Tom recoil, index fossils, Ella just loves these little freaks, Ella literally has a graptolite fossil, the SPICE extinction, title drop halfway through the topic, wait nvm we have to talk about the holocene, in 2024 they declined the anthropocene proposal, are we covering the anthropocene or the 24 years of its proposal? Jan Zalasiewicz ignobel lick, heavily acronymized science beef, a person dabbing is the anthropocene GSSP (or fossilized air bubbles in ice), Jan vs Jan, maybe the anthropocene is just an Event, insects are the canary in the mass extinction coal mine but they’re also not in the record, humans make up a third of the mass of large vertebrates - and the rest are mostly things we eat, a t-rex wishes to be the most abundant species and a monkeys paw curls, chicken bones in the fossil record, we’ve pushed back the next ice age 50,000 years, don’t clip me dabbing at nuclear weapons, when does the anthropocene start? 1952 with the plutonium shift, there was a most popular album at the start of the anthropocene, era dates are changed all the time, a spicy retirement letter, did you ask him about the email - I mean I did, rocks are political, we’re not in the anthropocene but let’s see what happens, make this design juicier please, sound effects can be realistic or symbolic, the siren whistle slip sound, the real sound of bald eagles, sound effects are treated more like a commodity than an art and a history, we don’t know if ancient mesopotamians beatboxed, Ella shredded so hard on the thundersheet she bled, sound effect started in plays, shakespeare and kabuki pioneered realistic and symbolic sound effects, tsuke, the first radio sound effects from the 1921 world series broadcast from Jersey, the walking surfaces at the BBC, 1920s sound effect rooms, sound effect records, who would buy this? ME!! what do you mean you survived the great depression traveling america for sound effects, 2 headed turntables designed for vinyl sound effect DJs, Jack Foley, the Bristol Old Vic thunder machine’s audio tricks, stealing John Dennis’ thunder, canning laughter from the Red Skelton show, this isn’t a real game, fine it was a good game and I win, recreating pacman with waves, pacman’s noise is so icon it created an onomatopoeia, Ben Burtt also loved the lightsaber, that was a great buzz, sound effects are both the truth and a lie, freesound.org, male_thijs_loud_scream.aiff Sources: Folks, we have so many show notes and sources that we literally hit the character limit, which is a first! So please find the sources at https://www.letslearneverything.com/104-sources Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

What is the Anthropocene? No really, who came up with it, when does it start, and why does that matter? Well it involves nuance, scientific beef, and a surprising amount of freaky little guys. And we all know of some sound effects we love, but what is their history, where are the weird places they've shown up, and what can they teach us about art?

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104: The Anthropocene Argument & Sound Effects

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This episode was published on April 23, 2026.

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What is the Anthropocene? No really, who came up with it, when does it start, and why does that matter? Well it involves nuance, scientific beef, and a surprising amount of freaky little guys. And we all know of some sound effects we love, but what...

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