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SciShow Quiz Show is back, with familiar faces Hank Green and Lindsey Doe matching wits about ancient science, puppies, and all kinds of words that have “sex” in them!

Hosted by: Michael Aranda

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 Intro (00:00)

Michael: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to SciShow Quiz Show, the only show where all your wildest dreams come true, if you just believe. Today we have sesame seed enthusiast, Hank Green—

Hank: Oh, god, this is a lie! How do you— Does everyone know about my sesame seed thing? 

Lindsey: I do!

H: Is that like a thing about me now?

M: Yup!

H: I can't eat sesame seeds because of a disease I have, and now it's a funny joke.

L: I can't eat them because of braces.

H: Oh, those get stuck in there?

L: mhm.

H: Well you could just get 'em out.

L: They discourage it.

H: Ok.

M: And we have host of Sexplanations and sexologist, Dr. Lindsey Doe

All: Yaaaay!

M: As a special thank you to our supporters on Patreon, we've selected two at random to win prizes that Hank and Lindsey will win for you today. Hank will be competing on behalf of Nate Parsons—

H: Hi Nate.

M: Lindsey will be playing for Jason A. Saslow.

H: If you guys know those people make sure that they see this episode.

M: I think we've contacted them.

L: Wait, this is random?

H: Yeah. Just a lucky winner. Yeah, and now one of them is gonna lose.

L: Well then one of them is gonna be a lucky loser.

H: Yeah.

M: Stefan, show the viewers at home what our contestants will win if they don't lose!

Stefan: Today, both Nate and Jason will receive a Quiz Show question card autographed by Hank, Lindsey, and Michael, and the winner will receive a signed copy of the script, as well as the "I won SciShow Quiz Show" button. And the loser will get a button that says "I lost at SciShow Quiz Show," but you shouldn't feel too bad about it, we're all winners here. Back to you, Michael.

M: Now, both of you start off with 1,000 points. Each time you answer a question correctly, you will win somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 points, and if you don't answer a question correctly you will lose just as much.

H: So basically, always answer "SciShow Quiz Show, the game with the worst rules." 

 Round 1: The Golden Age of Arabic Science (02:05)

M: Yes. Round one is about the golden age of Arabic science. The year 2015 marks a number of auspicious anniversaries in the history of science; it's the 100th anniversary of Einstein's general theory of relativity, it's the 200th anniversary of William Pratt's hypothesis that the atomic weights of all elements were essentially multiples of the weight of hydrogen, but it is the 1000th anniversary of one of the most important texts of medieval science, "The Book of Optics" written by Arab scholar Ibn Al-Haytham, whose seven volume treatise changed the way we look at light.

H: Wow, a thousand years ago.

M: What revolutionary concept did Al-Haytham prove in the Book of Optics?

H: Oh boy. I already have no idea.

M: Was it: that light can be focused by passing it through a lens, white light consists of separate colors, vision is made possible by light entering the eye, or light is a form of energy?

H: Imma say, B! The one that is second.

M: Incorrect!

H: Ah! Which one was it?

L: Wait!  Do I get a--whoa! 

H: Oh, no, I mean, which one was B? I'd forgotten.

M: Oh, the white light consists of separate colors. 

H: Oh. Oh yeah. That sounded right to me. 

L: Can you read the answers again?

M: Light can be focused by passing it through a lens, vision is made possible by light entering the eye, or light is a form of energy.

L: I like all of them. 

M: They are all great.

L: They are great.

M: Yes.

L: Let's go with C.

H: The third one. The third thing.

M: You are correct!

H: Ohh. Really?

M: The answer is C, that we see by light entering our eyes. Before his time, it was widely believed that vision was caused by invisible beams that were emitted from the eyes and whatever those beams fell upon was what we say. In the Book of Light, Al-Haytham documented his experiments showing that light could be either emitted or reflected, and that it made vision possible by passing into the eye at a perpendicular angle. He even built a room-sized model to demonstrate this concept, which came to be known in Latin as the camera obscura. To commemorate the thousandth anniversary of The Book of Light, the United Nations has declared 2015 to be the International Year of Light. 

 Round two: The Science of Puppies(04:18)

Round two is three questions about the science of puppies. 

H: Oh. Excellent.

M: Here's a scenario. You're sitting on the floor, snuggling with a puppy. You're watching TV and eating a piece of veggie lover's pizza.  You put your plate on the floor and go into the kitchen and when you come back, the pizza is gone.

H: What did you do?

M: Now, you have to take your dog to the vet, but why? Something she ate is poisonous. Is it basil, tomato, mushrooms, or onion?

L: I have three dogs and I don't know.

H: I--yeah. Uh-huh. I was just cuddling with a puppy today. It was like a fuzzy potato. 

M: Fuzzy potato is not an answer.

L: Potato's not in there.

H: Basil!

M: Incorrect.

H: It doesn't matter because I'm gonna lose points anyway. And Lindsey's playing the smart game, letting me eliminate one before she goes.

L: Grapes! Grapes are poisonous. Um, I'm gonna go with tomatoes.

M: Incorrect!

H&L: Heeeey!

M: The correct answer is onion.

The answer is D, onion. Dogs don't possess the enzymes that break down one of the key compounds found in onions that gives them their strong flavor, the compound called thiosulfate. When it's released into a dog's bloodstream, thiosulfate damages red blood cells and ultimately causes them to burst, creating a condition known as hemolytic anemia. Garlic contains thiosulfate, too, but gram for gram, onions can contain up to 10 times more. By some estimates, onion can become toxic for a dog if she eats as little as 0.5% of her body weight, so puppies are at the greatest risk for hemolytic anemia. So, unfortunately, no Bloomin' Onions for puppies.

H: Oh. Don't let your dogs eat onion.

M: Do not do that.

L: For lots of reasons.

M: What are the other ones, aside from--

L: Stink breath.

H: Stink br--(laughs)

M: Dogs are famously social and intelligent animals, and there are many behaviors that dog babies exhibit before human babies do, but what is one thing that puppies cannot do that human children can? Recognize themselves in a mirror, yawn when others yawn, follow the direction of another animal's gaze, or follow the direction of a person's gestures.

L: Yawn.

M: Incorrect.

H: The gaze one.

M: Incorrect.

H: Yeaaah!

L: Yay!

M: The correct answer is recognize themselves in a mirror.

The answer is A. Dogs in general seem unable to recognize their own reflection. Some biologists think this has less to do with self awareness than the fact that dogs get their cues from other animals by smell, not vision. So if your dog sees a dog in the mirror but can't smell a dog, it just gets confused. Puppies have also demonstrated the ability to follow other cues, like the direction of someone's gaze or pointing or other gestures, even when they're just a few months old, and in one of the cutest experiments ever, Danish biologists found that puppies as young as 7 months yawned when their human handlers yawned, and half the puppies that yawned got so tired that they fell asleep before the experiment was over. Okay, you may now say 'aw'. Researchers say that contagious yawning is a sign that puppies begin to experience empathy at a young age, meaning they can read the emotional states of other animals. Human puppies, also known as children, typically reach this development state at four years of age, and they can recognize themselves in a mirror at between 18 and 24 months old.

Our last dog question is about dog sex.

H: Aw man.

L: Excellent!

M: Dogs are considered adults after their first year, but in dogs, adulthood isn't the same thing as sexual maturity. What is the earliest that a domesticated dog has been known to become fertile and reproduce? Is it eight weeks, five months, nine months, or eighteen months?

H: Five months.

M: You are correct.

L: What?!

H: I just--I did that. 

L: Ouch.

H: Ouch. Not okay.

M: The answer is B, five months. Different breeds reach sexual maturity at different times, the smaller breeds maturing more quickly. So small breeds, such as Yorkshire Terriers, have been known to get pregnant when they're as young as five months old. Larger breeds might not become fertile until they're a year and a half or even two years old.

 Final Round: All About Sex (08:16)

For our final round, we wanted to honor the presence of sexologist Dr. Lindsey Doe with a special round of double or nothing that is all about sex.

L: Cool.

M: We call it 'What's the word?". So I'm gonna give you guys four definitions and then four words, and you have to match the words with the definitions. You each have 800 points right now, so you get to decide how much you want to wager on this question and while you do that, we will go to commercial break.

Welcome back.  Here are your definitions. 

H: I feel like I've been manipulated.

M: A numeral system with 60 as its base. A unit of measuring volume in ancient Rome. An adjective used to describe leap years. And the name of a constellation in the shape of a sextant, an old triangular sighting device. 

L: None of these have to do with sex.

H: Agreed.

L: This is--

H: Yup. Manipulation. They threw us the curve ball.

M: Okay, your words are Sextans, sexagesimal, sextarius, and bisextile.

H: So, I don't understand how we know who's gonna win.

M: Well, one of two things is gonna happen. A, someone is gonna get more right than the other person, in which case that person wins. 

H: Okay.

M: B, you both get the same number of things correct, and then it comes down to how much each of you bet.

H: Okay, just normal, okay, I se--I got it. 

M: Normal mode.

M: Sextans is the name of a constellation found near the equator that observers once thought looked like an astronomical sextant. It contains the dwarf galaxy Sextans B. Sexagesimal is a numeral system that uses 60 as its base. It originated with the ancient Sumerians 5000 years ago, but today we use a decimal system with a base of 10. However, time, angles, and map coordinates are still measured using versions of sexagesimal systems. A sextarius is an ancient Roman unit of measure, used to measure both liquid and dry volume. It was defined as one-sixth of a larger unit called a congius, and it equaled about 550 mL. Bisextile refers to a year with an extra day, aka a "Leap Year," years in which February has 29 days are called bisextile, because the Julian calendar just repeated a day in February known as sextus, bi-sextus. Get it?

The numeral system with 60 as its base is B, sexagesimal. 

H: I got that one right.

L: Good job, not me.

H: Uh-ohhh.

L: (laughs) No, we're gonna tie on everything else.

M: Unit of measuring volume in a blahblahblah, the unit of measuring volume in Ancient Rome is the sextarius.

H: Sextar--oh, no!

M: How are you doing?

L: Great.

H: You get that one right?

L: No, what?

H: You're not gonna tell us.

L: I can't get it right because I put B for--

H: Well, I am not paying attention.

L: See, the system is all--

M: The adjective used to describe leap years is bisextal.

H: Yay.

M: Yay, must be the money.

L: Yay, Hank won!

M: And then the constellation the shape of a sextant is the Sextans.  Congratulations, Hank. 

L: What is this?

H: It's a sextant. I think.

M: Yay! Okay.

L: That's so creative.

M: Awesome.

H: It's not creative. 

L: Okay.

M: Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Quiz Show, don't forget to check out Lindsay Doe on Sexplanations, that's, and of course, you can find us at

H: Where we're very creative!