Two people claim to know everything about something, but only one knows anything.
President Roosevelt wore an anti-gravity belt.
Dinosaurs had two brains.
Lucky kids live on Mars and go to school in flying cars.
Or at least they will one day.
Believe me, I'm a historian.
An astronaut or driver, DeLorean.
Would I lie?
It's hard to say.
From St.
Cloud, Minnesota, this is The Big Stitch.
And now, here's your host, Debra Gold!
Wow.
Welcome to The Big Fib, the game show where kids choose between the dewy and soft sunlit puffs of truth and the ominously dense and threatening storm of lies.
I'm your host, Deborah Goldstein, and in the studio today is our sound effects robot Lisa, whose name stands for live in studio audience.
Ah, we got today.
Oh, yeah.
Yesterday.
Tomorrow.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
The day after that.
Oh, sure.
Oh, and next week.
Yeah.
Okay.
Pardon me?
What are you saying?
Oh, sorry.
Was I speaking out loud?
Yeah, and it kind of sounded like you were just going through all the days sort of unhappy to be here in the studio.
What's going on?
No, no.
I'm happy to be here, Debra.
I was just saying that it's no surprise that I'm here today because I'm here every day.
Sun up to sundown and all the suns in between.
Okay, that's not really true, is it?
You always dart out of here after every show because you've got plans with other robots or some sort of activities, not to mention the vacations you take almost every other week.
Oh!
Oh, I see.
Someone is keeping score.
I'm not keeping score.
You are free to go and do wherever and whenever you want.
So let's not try to complain about the special time we all have together now, when you are in fact in the studio.
Point taken.
I get it.
It's all good.
I'm here in the studio today, and who knows where I'll be tomorrow.
I mean, except for me, I know.
I'll be in the studio again for more podcasts, Debra.
But you know what would help me?
I'd just like to listen to a listener question.
Can I do that?
Yes, absolutely.
Definitely.
Okay.
Play it, me.
Do robots have ears?
Wait, what'd you say?
I can't hear you because I don't have ears.
See what I did there?
Just kidding.
Just pulling the old leg.
I have ears.
Or I mean they look like ears to you, but instead of gross earwax and hair and creepy crawly bugs like all you humans have in your ears.
No.
I've got super powerful receivers that allow me to process all the sounds in the world.
Even the sounds that humans can't hear.
You hear that?
It was the sound of a belted kingfisher bird in Tennessee calling for its babies to come home for dinner.
And, oh, hold on.
They're home now.
So sweet.
Wow, you heard a mama bird call for her baby birds all the way in Tennessee?
Oh, she was pretty loud.
Those little baby birds of hers were miles away.
Okay, but if you can hear all the sounds from all over the place all the time, how can you focus on any one particular singular?
Whoa whoa, did you hear that?
I love the sound of a shovel-snouted lizard shifting its feet on the burning deserts of southern Africa.
See what I mean?
You can't possibly be able to pay attention to what's going on right in front of you when Ooh, a steel drum band playing calypso music in Trinidad.
Gotta move my feet to the beat.
Okay, it's going to be impossible to get anything done here if your robot ears are picking up all the sounds all over the Hmm.
I think I found the dial that controls the reception distances so that you can only hear what's happening here in the studio.
Wait a minute.
Okay.
There we are.
Oh, okay.
What were we saying?
Oh, something about robot ears.
Anyway, the answer is yeah, I got them, and I'm not afraid to use them.
Okay.
And maybe you can use your robot mouth to remind everyone how our game works.
Uh, here we go.
What do we do we got?
Uh, oh yeah, we bring on two grown-ups.
One is an expert, the other is a liar.
Uh, the other one is a grocery store owner.
No, it's wait.
No, that's too many okay, and it's the job of a human child to help us figure out who is who, because no one gets about a liar better than a kid, at least we hope.
Uh, what are we lying about today deborah, the gold standard?
We are lying about the clouds, large collections of water or ice crystals.
And we are going to learn all about clouds along with our contestant today.
Who might that be, Lisa?
Our human child.
Contestant is an eight-year-old who practices the martial art of jujitsu Sebastian Gonzalez.
Welcome, Sebastian.
How are you?
Good.
How are you?
Oh, very well.
Thank you.
I'm doing well.
Thank you.
I feel healthy.
Good.
I'm glad to hear that too.
Jiu-jitsu.
So that's a martial art.
And do you have belts for that?
Different color belts?
Yes.
I'm a green black belt.
Wow.
And that's the fourth degree belt for kids.
For kids.
And so what comes after that?
A fifth degree or another color?
Yeah, the fifth degree is yellow white.
Oh.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
And do you actually compete in jujitsu or you take classes?
Yes, I compete and I do classes.
Wow.
And so if you compete, do you have to fight people?
You have to try to choke them out with either, like you can use a guillotine which you have your arm and you put it around their neck.
And then you try to choke them with that.
Okay, but nobody gets really hurt, right?
No.
Not Sebastian.
Yeah, are you pretty good at that?
Have you done well in your competitions?
I think I've done pretty well in my competitions.
Good, and I don't want anyone to get hurt, so please be careful.
This all sounds very dangerous, but it's not, right?
Yeah, it's not.
Okay well, we want to learn some more fun facts about you Sebastian, but we are going to do it playing our game.
Two truths and a lie.
You, Sebastian, are going to tell us three things about yourself.
Two of them will be true.
One will be a lie.
And we're going to have to try to figure out what the lie is.
So in no particular order, what are your two truths and one lie?
I have three dogs.
I like broccoli.
And I'm a published author.
Wow.
Those are all very different.
I don't know.
Sometimes the most unbelievable thing is actually the fact.
But I can't tell.
What do you think, Lisa?
Easy.
Easy.
Oh, yeah?
If we assume that Sebastian has three dogs, then we know that dogs like to eat meat, which means that any meat product in the house would be eaten by the dogs.
Yeah.
Therefore leaving Sebastian with only broccoli to eat, which would mean that Sebastian is very annoyed with eating all this broccoli all the time.
He liked it at first, but now he does not like broccoli.
Therefore, that one is the lie.
He has three dogs and he is a published author, which is why his nickname is Dr. Seuss.
Yeah. know about that sebastian which one of those things is actually a lie i have three dogs oh well no no no but but he's he just said he had three dogs no he does not now he's saying he's lying about it he was saying that as part of the game which one of the things is a lie can we do a do-over No, we cannot.
You failed.
Just this one.
So that means, though, that you do like broccoli.
Is that correct, Sebastian?
Yes, I do.
And also, let's focus on this published author situation.
Tell us about whatever it is that you've published.
During the pandemic, I published this book called The Great Doggy Holiday.
It was just showing how dogs are thinking, like it's a big holiday because their humans are going to work or the kids aren't going to school and they just have a lot of time to spend with their humans.
I love that idea.
And is that a book that we can find somewhere to read or look at?
I forgot exactly where you can find it, but I know you can find it somewhere.
So if we search for The Great Doggy Holiday, hopefully we will find it.
Authored by Sebastian Gonzalez.
Very good.
All right, let's welcome some of our experts to teach us a thing or two about clouds.
Lisa, can you play some welcome music for our clouds experts?
You're so experts, you probably think this song is about you.
Clouds in my coffee.
Let's meet our first expert, Cindy Wright.
Cindy, please introduce yourself to Sebastian.
Hi, Sebastian.
My name is Dr. Cynthia Wright, but everyone calls me Dr. Cindy, and I'm an astronomer.
Very nice.
Let's meet our second expert, Jeff Weber.
Jeff, please introduce yourself to Sebastian.
Hi, Sebastian.
My name is Jeff Weber, and I'm an atmospheric scientist.
Okay.
I see, I see, I see.
Tell us about those cumulus of chords, Lisa.
Oh, those?
Those are the cumulus chords of hot seat time.
Yes, it's hot seat time.
That's when we put our experts on the hot seat while they answer Sebastian's questions.
Lisa, whom should we put on the hot seat first?
Jeff Weber, because Spider-Man shoots webs.
So maybe Jeff is secretly Spider-Man.
And according to the big fib constitution, clause three, paragraph two, experts who are Spider-Man get to go first.
I'm not familiar with that document, but let's go with that, okay?
Very good.
It's a very important document.
I'll have to search for that.
Thank you.
Okay, Sebastian, what is your first question for Jeff?
What is a typical day at your job?
My day is very dynamic, so I do different things all the time.
But in relation to clouds, oftentimes we'll be looking at clouds through satellite imagery.
We have platforms in space that look at the earth from above.
And we also have celiometers that look at the clouds from below.
And so oftentimes we'll be looking at clouds from space and from the ground to study them and see what they might be doing to society.
I wouldn't want to be the one who has to be on that space platform.
That would make me so dizzy.
You stay right here where you belong.
Okay, go ahead, Sebastian.
This one is for both of you.
Do you use any special technology or instruments for your job?
So because I'm an astronomer, I spend a lot of time looking through telescopes.
Whenever possible, I go up to the four-meter telescope at Kitt Peak Observatory near where I live.
But on a day-to-day basis, I mostly use a portable telescope.
My favorite is the Celestron Nexstar, because not only does it allow me to look at the sky, it does HD photography.
So we're able to then go look at those photographs later and analyze them.
The other tool I use a lot is the Aquasitor.
And what that does is it helps us measure the exact volume a cloud would have if we were able to condense it and put it in a container.
You guys are selling canned clouds over there?
We use all sorts of fantastic equipment.
Computers play a large part in the work that I do, because a lot of the imagery that we get from these satellites have to be processed and transferred over the network so that we can visualize them wherever we want to be.
We send this information to colleges and universities and research centers all across the country in real time using the internet.
And so all of those technologies are really important for us to be able to study the clouds and not only study the clouds, but be able to analyze them and figure out what they mean and give warnings to people if there's any kind of situations that might make them need to take cover.
Okay, thank you.
This one is also for both of you.
What is your favorite cloud formation?
I actually have a strong opinion about this.
Everyone loves the cumulus clouds because they're all fluffy and cute, but I happen to prefer the cirrus clouds because those are the ones that reflect the light at sunrise and sunset, and that's what makes the sky so beautiful.
So I definitely prefer the cirrus clouds.
How about you, Jeff?
Okay.
Well, yeah, Cindy, I like the cirrus clouds too.
But if you really want a cool sunset, look for the lenticular clouds, or as we call them for short lens clouds.
Some of the public call them mothership or UFO clouds.
They look like flying saucers.
And they're the only clouds that allow transport through the clouds while the cloud is staying in place.
They're a standing wave cloud.
And they look really cool.
They look like spaceships.
And at sunset, they glow a spectacular orange.
I like clouds that look like dolphins that are thinking, hey, I should get some sandwiches.
I've not seen those clouds, but they sound cool.
They're good.
Okay, good.
Sebastian?
For both of you, what is the weirdest thing you've seen clouds do?
In the town that I live in, the power plant puts all of their water into a lake to help it cool it down.
And in the wintertime, when the cold air blows across, that warm water clouds magically appear right in front of you.
It's spectacular.
You have no clouds and the cold air comes in and off this warm lake that they use to cool down the power plant.
Clouds just instantly develop right in front of you.
It's a spectacular thing to see.
Okay, I think this counts.
It wasn't on this planet, but it was a cloud.
So the weirdest thing I have ever seen is there was a sunspot that was so big it actually set fire to the ammonia clouds around Venus.
It was so trippy.
I've never seen anything like it before or since.
Wow.
I once saw a cloud flossing.
Oh, really?
Yeah, that was crazy.
It was a dolphin-shaped cloud.
Wow.
Clouds are so complex.
Yeah.
I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned this.
Right?
So am I. Okay.
Very good.
Well done.
Great questions, Sebastian.
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Okay, it's time for the shorts on fire round when our experts have to answer as many questions as they can before time runs out.
Lisa will set a timer for the first expert, and then Sebastian will ask questions until Lisa's timer sounds.
Then Lisa resets the timer for the next expert to do the very same thing.
Experts, get ready for a macro burst of questions.
Sebastian, let's start with Dr. Cindy.
You can ask your shorts-on-fire questions now.
Factor fib.
Fog is a type of cloud.
Facts.
How old is the oldest cloud formation found in space?
About 200 million years old.
What is the meaning of the Old English word for cloud?
Climbing water.
How do clouds stay in the sky?
Rising air?
Cloud glue.
What is the name of the most recent cloud named in 2017?
Pherostrata.
Why are some clouds gray?
They're really dense.
How much do clouds weigh?
About six to ten tons.
Who sings about looking at clouds from both sides now?
Oh, it's that one lady everyone likes.
Pass.
Where does lightning come from?
Friction between water molecules.
Name two visual effects that ice crystals and water droplets create.
Sky mirages and rainbows.
And that is time.
That's time.
Very good.
Okay, Lisa, please reset the timer.
Resetting the timer.
Thank you.
All right, Sebastian, you ready?
You can ask Jeff your shorts on fire questions now.
Go.
What is the largest type of single cloud called?
The largest type of a single cloud is the noctilucent cloud.
Which clouds do we see during thunderstorms that hang down in the sky?
Well, during thunderstorms are made by cumulonimbus, but the ones that hang down are mammatus.
What does a picture of a cloud symbolize in flow charts and diagrams?
I'm not sure, maybe stuff coming together.
Water vapor condenses around what tiny particles to form a cloud?
All water droplets have to form around a cloud condensation nuclei.
That's either a salt or a dust particle.
Factor fib.
You can predict the weather by looking at clouds.
Fact.
What part of a cloud is named after a metal working tool?
The anvil.
Who wrote the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs?
Bill Murray.
Why are some clouds white?
Because water droplets reflect all spectrums of the light equally, creating white light.
Which clouds make up the most of hurricanes?
Those are stratus clouds.
And time.
That's all the time.
Very well done, experts, and well read, Sebastian.
Good job.
Okay, it's decision time.
Sebastian must get Cirrus and pick a fibber.
Sebastian, who is our big cloud fibber?
I think it's Jeff.
Why do you think Jeff is our fibber?
I'm just going with my gut here.
I don't, I'm just trying to go.
Okay, it's very important to listen to your gut.
Can the actual expert say, I am the cloud expert?
I am the cloud expert.
That is true.
Jeff Weber is a cloud expert and atmospheric scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Oh my gosh, I feel like we have to get to the bottom of some of these facts, right?
Especially for Sebastian here.
Okay, let's do some fact checking.
Jeff, how did Cindy try to precipitate misinformation?
Well, one of the sensors that's used to measure the volume of the water, the aqua leader, aqua seeder, that doesn't exist.
Oh, dear.
That one was a dead giveaway.
All right, let's bring it to Cindy.
Cindy, tell us all the ways in which you clouded the truth.
I am embarrassed to say I clouded the truth kind of a lot.
Oh, no.
I don't know if Venus actually has clouds or not.
I know some planets do, but I don't know if that's one of them.
All planets, but Mercury and Pluto, if we want to call Pluto a planet, have clouds.
And the ones in the outer part of the solar system have methane and ammonia clouds.
Oh, just different kinds.
Got it.
Okay, back to you, Cindy.
Clouds in space are super old, and I said they're only 200 million years old.
Jeff, do you know how old they really are?
Parts of the universe have clouds that are 12 billion years old.
Whoa, that's older than Debra.
So it's dramatically old.
Yeah, it's older than Debra.
Just by hair.
Yep.
All right.
What else?
The old English word for cloud.
I said it meant climbing water.
So the old English word for cloud is clud or clod, meaning lump, as in lump of water in the sky, which is kind of crazy.
And what else?
Let's see.
Ah, yes.
What is the weight of clouds?
I said it's six to ten tons, but I saw that it can be as much as a thousand tons.
That is heavy.
They look so light and fluffy.
You would never think they weighed so much, but I guess it's all about water, I suppose, right?
Let's see, the name of the most recent cloud named in 2017.
Jeff, do you know what that is?
It's the Asperitus cloud, the Asperitus undulatus.
Oh, okay.
We also have the person who sings about looking at clouds from both sides now.
That would be Joni Mitchell.
Lightning comes from the shedding of water or ice electrons in a cloud, not from friction, right?
And also two visual effects that ice crystals and water droplets create.
I said rainbows, which is true, but sky mirages was a complete lie.
Oh, no.
No, but they also create solar pillars, sun dogs, and sun halos.
Okay, very good.
A picture of a cloud in flow charts and diagrams.
That symbolizes the internet, which is why we talk about storing things in the cloud.
And the author of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Judy Barrett.
All right.
We've looked at clouds from both sides now, and it's time to say goodbye.
Thanks to our contestant, Sebastian.
You made us feel like we were on cloud nine.
Thank you to our experts and liar, Jeff and Cindy.
And thanks to Lisa, the metallic silver lining of sounds.
And, of course, many thanks to our listeners tuning into The Big Fib, where we have to get our heads out of the clouds because the funnel end if there are too many lies.
The Big Fib is a production of Gen Z Media.
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While you're there, you can find out how you can become a contestant on The Big Fib or send questions for me to answer on the show.
And follow us on social media at The Big Fib Podcast for behind-the-scenes photos and more true facts.
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