 I thought we were going live, Justin. What's going on there? Welcome to the show, everybody. This is the This Week in Science podcast. And we are here to talk about science this evening. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of fun things. And this is the podcast broadcast, which is live, unedited, unfiltered, all of the above. The podcast itself gets edited so that the big flubs get taken out, maybe, we hope. It's all up to our wonderful editor, Rachel, which she actually leaves in. So things she finds amusing, make it to the final cut, which is always real. All hail, Rachel. Don't make her mad, ever. All right, what do we have? We have a show to do for you. Is everyone ready? Are you ready for this? I'm ready. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, Justin, you're ready. You're not going to get up and walk away. I might. That's guaranteed. Well, there's a lighting thing going on over here. It's like the Leaning Tower of Pisa on this lamp. And I don't know if I should get up and fix it. I'm going to get up and fix it. You keep going on with the show. I'll be right here. You'll be right there because you only are like the second voice in the show. You're still right there. Just for off-screen. Just for off-screen. I still don't understand what is happening. It doesn't matter. This is all behind the scenes. Tweet a photo. Tweet a photo. All right, let's do this thing. Hopefully my mic will actually stay where it's supposed to tonight. But yes, we are here. Welcome, welcome, welcome. And we are going to start this show in 3, 2, this is TWIS. This Week in Science, episode number 891, recorded on September 7, 2022. What is the rain shadow effect? We'll find out about that today on the show. I'm Dr. Kiki. We are going to fill your heads with patience, cannabis, and thick skulls, but first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The future isn't here yet. We can't know for certain what it will look like or what it will sound, smell, or taste like. While we can almost touch it, the future is always just out of reach. Still, one of the things humans are famously good at is planning for the future. Stocking up for winter, planting seeds in spring, investing for the future. It's what separates us from fish, apes, and fruit flies, who famously are terrible at farming. Those stock selections by captive chimpanzees typically beat Wall Street financial speculators. The future, despite all of it's not existing yet, is the one thing we all rely on when making decisions. When we fail to consider the future, when we attempt to ignore it, it has a strange way of happening anyway. Often with unforeseen consequences. More often with super foreseeable consequences. Because while the future is a mystery, the past and present are not. And at present, we are setting up the future for some very challenging consequences. And at present, science is working hard to overcome the problems of the present. Problems that, if science is successful, won't follow us into the future. What new problems will we have? What old problems will we forget we're a thing? Future spoiler alert, this week in Science, coming up next. Out of here we go. I've got the kind of mime I can't get enough. I wanna learn everything up. With new discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I wanna know. Good science to you, Kiki and Blair. And a good science to you too, Justin Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We're back again, ta-ta-ta. As we are every Wednesday at 8 p.m. Pacific time. Back again to talk about all the science that we enjoyed from the past week and we do hope you are ready for a great show because we've got a lot of stuff to talk about as usual, so much good science. I have some stories about pollution from you. Yeah. You making pollution, concussions and brain regeneration because that's what we all need, futures. Yeah, Justin, what do you have? I've got galling wasp behavior, the downside of cannabis, whose trash is in the ocean and why fatty foods aren't actually delicious? Why aren't they? What? I would like to know. And who is throwing trash in the ocean? Justin, these are really good questions. I have the answers to everything. Yes. Good. Okay, super excited. Yeah, all right, Blair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, I have albatross blobs, I have drumming chimps and I have big wet mice. Big wet mice. Yeah. Parties at your house are always so much fun. Yeah. This is the big wet mouse party. We're all gonna have a great time tonight on the show. Okay, before we jump in, just wanna remind everyone that if you are not yet subscribed and this is your first time joining us here, wherever you're joining us, you can subscribe because that's something you do. Hit that big subscribe button, do that. Hit the for the notifications. Make sure you're getting notified every week when we have a new show, Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Pacific Time, where we stream live on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch. And additionally, you can find us on the social medias. We are Twist Science on Twitter, Instagram and also on the Twitch. You can find our website, twist.org for all sorts of other information or if all this information is just too much for your head right now and you want to go find it someplace else later. Our website's a good place for that. Okay, are we ready? Into the science. Okay, let's jump into the pool, everyone. Okay, let's have a little patience. Yeah, we gotta have a little patience with NASA right now with the Artemis One. This is, in case you hadn't heard, they scrubbed their launch again on Saturday and they have decided to put it off indefinitely. At least it probably will not make it through the end of this launch window and they might have to remove it from the launch platform. However, they are going to try and repair what they think is a loose connector in their liquid hydrogen fuel system where the liquid hydrogen gets into. Hate it when that happens. Yeah, we all hate it when stuff like that happens but engineers are working hard, they're gonna try and make the system go and you don't launch if you think you're gonna have, your rocket explode on you. You just don't want to do that. This is something we want. There's a lot of money there. Yeah. There's a lot of money, yes, lots of money and it's also that proof of concept of, hey, we can go to the moon, we can do it and we can do it safely. So next time we can put people in it. We can tell when it's gonna explode and we won't let people go in. Yeah. I feel like this is what happens, like I feel very akin to NASA right now because I feel like this is what happens whenever I leave the house in like, I'm leaving at the right time so I have enough time to go where I wanna go. I'm on schedule. And then there is, oh, I'm not wearing a belt. Where did I put my belt? And I gotta go later on for the belt. And then I passed the mirror on the way to finding the belt and I'm like, oh, I didn't shave. Oh, that's terrible. I should go do that. How did I forget that? How did it suddenly? And then you're in there and you're brushing your teeth and there you are. And there's no way this contest is ever happening. You're taking a shower and you can use the restroom. And by the, you know, one thing leads to another and then eventually though, you get where you're going and then you say, oh, there was traffic. Did you say there was traffic? Exactly. There's traffic on the launch pad. Yeah, there's traffic on the launch pad. That's all there is. And after this, you know, they're working on it. We are still gonna, it's not like, oh, we're never gonna do it again. There are plenty more launch windows for the Artemis One mission this fall. And so hopefully we will be seeing the launch happen this fall, which fingers are crossed it does. And hopefully sooner rather than later. But the big thing is hopefully it happens safely. And it's all great. And then hopefully they get everything fixed. But in the meantime, we can keep ourselves patient by basking in the glory of the images that the James Webb space. So much cool. The juist, if you would like to not have it named after the dude. Yeah, so much cool stuff. And this time around, NASA has announced their views of the tarantula. Nick tarantula, it's the tarantula nebula. It's a nickname for the appearance of its dusty filaments in previous telescope images. But now with this image that have never been seen were clouded by the dust and the gas that got in the way of the light that our previous telescopes depended on. And so now because we're looking at everything in infrared we're able to see the heat of these hot young stars and be able to see actually what's in there. What's going on in that cosmic nursery? And so there's a whole bunch of stuff happening. They're able to take a look at using the near infrared spectrograph, be able to see. Well, yeah, it looks like Kiki's having some connectivity issues. And I can never tell, you know, when you're doing one of these on the line conference type things, is she kind of like blurry? Is she breaking up or is it just me? Because nobody else has mentioned it. I thought it was me for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like, wow, this roll with it's probably my internet. I'm 6,000 miles away. Maybe it's just my internet connection or something. It's a little wonky. What's happening to my internet right now? So it looks way better now. We were just talking and I was saying like how, I couldn't tell because you looked like the camera resolution wasn't right and the sound was clipping, but I'm 6,000 miles away from you guys. And I thought it was me. I just assumed it's my internet because you guys seem nobody else mentioned it. But now, now with this reset, you look crisp and clear and real timey. Perfect. Just know that I'm like NASA. I'm gonna keep attempting to launch. Good. Yeah, we'll get that. So show me that Dustbunny nebula again. But the Limp Trap Nebula. The beautiful fold of the Dustbunny's area. This is one of those things where this is not an art. Like we're almost used to this image because artists are awesome and artists have been doing artists renditions of what a nebula would look like if we could see it up close and then high resolution. This is not that. This is the thing. This is where it's infrared transferred to the color spectrum. But this is an actual thing, not an artist's interpretation of what a nebula would look like. And that's what's so amazing. It's one, how awesome that photo you got up there is. And two, how really good the artists were at presenting what it would look like because it looks like a painting. It does look like a painting and it's 161,000 light years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy. It's the largest and brightest star-forming region in the local group. And this is the group of galaxies that are near us to our Milky Way. So anyway, they viewed it with the near cam, the near infrared camera. And the region resembles, as the name says, a burrowing tarantula's home lined with its silk. I'm not really seeing that, but it's still a party. I like where's dust, money, nebula. Yeah, no, it looks like a lint trap to me when you did your load of reds, right? That's what it looks like. But I get it, you don't wanna call it the lint trap nebula. The tarantula nebula sounds a lot better. Sure it does. One of the reasons that this is interesting is it has a similar chemical composition, according to NASA, to the gigantic star-forming regions observed at the universe's cosmic noon, which is when our universe was only a few billion years old, but star formation was really getting going and at its peak. We weren't really there yet, but yes, it's very exciting. We can look at these beautiful images all day long, and I invite you all to go to search NASA's J-Wist Gallery of Images, the full resolution images that have been worked on by the web production team and other artists to help allow us to really see this infrared data in its full color, glory, and light. They're very beautiful images. Justin, what do you wanna talk about next? I got some breaking science news from two years ago. An eight-year-old- That's not this week. Well, the study was published this week. Okay, all right, go ahead, proceed. It started two years ago when an eight-year-old named Hugo turned over a log while playing in his backyard and discovered an ant's nest while the scenario is often followed by an adolescent experimenting in playing Almighty Decider of Fates for Ant Minions. Hugo took a more insightful approach, observing small spears he thought might be seeds, thinking it odd that ants were collecting seeds, behavior he had not encountered before. He brought the observation to the attention of his father who happened to be a professor of entomology at Penn State. Hugo's father immediately identified the objects as oak galls. These are growths that are triggered by wasps on oak trees to create little baby wasp houses. And there's some wasps species induce oak trees to produce these productive growths around their larvae for safekeeping. But what were the ants doing with them? There are some plants that are known to produce edible appendages to their seeds. And these little edible appendages attract ants, which then the ants take those seeds and they bring them back to the nest, thus dispersing the seeds further away from the plant than the plant could have gotten them on its own. Eating the appendages and then just leaving the seeds to grow in that new location. But galls contain wasp larvae, not the seeds. So what was going on? Galls normally do have a little fleshy pink cap, the galls near the ant nest did not have these caps suggesting that maybe they were eaten by the ants. According to Hugo's father, ultimately this led us to discover that gall wasps are manipulating oaks to produce galls and then taking another step and manipulating ants to retrieve the galls into their nests where the wasp larva may be even more protected from predators who will eat the galls themselves. And then when they hatch, then they might even have a couple of ant snacks lying around. Yeah, according to Hugo's dad, this multilayer interaction is mind blowing. It's almost hard to wrap your mind around it and it did not been observed. So we've known about the gall and the plant behaviors for centuries, you've known this, but this ant's collecting galls has never been seen before. Little Hugo, eight-year-old Hugo discovered it. I really appreciate your calling it Hugo's study and then you talked about Hugo's dad who's probably actually the person who published it, but that's totally great, I love that. Yeah, well, you know, you go with the person who made the discoveries, that's fine. The team's findings published in the journal American Naturalist, link on our website for to better find it. So to better understand the interaction, Hugo's dad and other researchers conducted a series of field laboratory experiments that observed ant's transporting galls. Nests, within the nests, all the edible caps were removed then and eaten. The galls themselves, the little containers that were made of oak tree growth with the baby wasp larvae in them, those remained intact. And they even did a bunch of tests. They set up to see if it was just the galls that would be taken. They would transport galls without the caps, but they did definitely had a stronger preference for the ones that had the little edible cap. And they also used some of those plants that have the little edible appendage to them, and they found no preference difference between the galls and the plant seeds. Further delving in, they've discovered that there were fatty acids on both, which they knew were on the seeds, but the same type of fatty acids were found on the gall caps. And when the plant creates it, they think it's to mimic the scent of a dead insect, which then induces the ants to take them back to their nest and eat them. And the same thing is going on with the wasp gall caps. They also are mimicking the sort of scent of a dead insect or the chemical makeup of a dead insect. So you have this amazing convergent sort of evolution thing going on where both a plant and a wasp are using a very similar strategy to get ants to do work for them. So then, which came first, the gall or the seed and just because of the sheer abundance, especially in the past of oak galls throughout the, also we probably have a better archeological record of them or what do you call it, floral cardiology record. And because there's a lot more of it and they can go back thousands of years, they think galls may have the wasp activity, may have come first, and then the plants might have lucked into or selected into getting this behavior, but they don't really know at this point. But anyway, super interesting, great observation Hugo and yeah, and like Blair is saying, props to Hugo's dad too for doing the follow-up study. Yeah, for like publishing and all of it, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. The fun, I mean, the fun aspect of this is it's kind of chicken or the egg, which came first, evolutionary, and how can we... Egg, wait, you're talking about evolution, the egg. I know, always egg, you always go, I know, I know. I know, I know. Now it's just idiomatic speech, okay, but anyway, kind of the, which came first? What did you call me? Which came first, the caudal vertebrate or the egg? Which came first, the multicellular organism or the egg? And in this case, which was it the was it the wasps? Was it the galls? Was it, which made it happen first? But ants really like doing the work, so it doesn't really matter, they're just happy. They love doing work. I got some work, and I'm gonna take it back to the nest and then there we go, there we go. Yeah, and in a sense, you could actually say it's the ants that are doing all the selecting in this. Wasps may have lucked into a thing, plants may have lucked into a thing or happened into a thing, and ants turned it into their survival strategy. Turned it into a survival strategy for plants and for wasps to continue these behaviors because of ant farming, ants are good farmers. They've been cultivating this planet a long time. Moving on from farmers, we're gonna go to citizen scientists, Blair. Yes. Yeah. I wanna talk about the British Antarctic Survey and that they are now looking and recruiting for citizen scientists to count albatrosses. Yes, and so I just wanted to talk about this citizen science project because it's pretty cool. It's about wandering again? Yes. No. Yes and no, but you can do it right from your own chair. So here we go. So the albatrosses are, yes. So they're searching for wandering albatrosses via satellite imagery taken from space. They wanna see what current population levels are. They want to see potential impacts from climate change, fishing, invasive species. Albatrosses are an important species to follow for a bunch of reasons. They are pretty heavily impacted, but they're also really important to various ecosystems. The albatrosses from space project, which is what this is called, is focusing on wandering albatrosses in South Georgia, which is in the South Atlantic Ocean. Normally, albatrosses will nest in grassy, flat terrain, but these islands have sheer rocky cliffs and outcrops, so they're extremely dangerous for people to explore on foot. So by using satellite imagery, they can count the birds safer, there's no disturbance to the birds or their habitat, saves time, saves funding, and it opens up completely inaccessible areas for surveillance. They're currently only looking at one of the islands, but there are over 20 breeding sites in that area. Sorry, they're actually, they're looking at three sites of the 20, but so this could help them cover the other 17. They've been using satellite images to detect albatrosses for many years, but it's never been at this scale. That's because they figured out that the wing, because the wingspan of a wandering albatross is over three meters, it's the largest of any moving bird, they can be picked up on satellite images. They appear as creamy white dots. And so you can go through these high resolution satellite images and count albatrosses for them. You don't need to be an expert, they walk you through exactly how to do it, and they hope to complete the first worldwide albatross census through the albatross, what was it called, the albatross from space project. And so Kiki is sharing the site right now, but if you go to the British Antarctic Survey, you could even Google like British Antarctic Survey, albatross space project, you can go right there, click a couple of links, log into a site, and you can start counting albatrosses. So I encourage anyone who has some time to go help count some albatrosses. But I just want to bring this up, we talk about citizen silence fairly, citizen silence, it's the opposite of that. Citizen silence. Don't be silent, do the science. Removing the silence from the scientific field. But anyway, I love talking about citizen silence. We do it a lot on the show, but in particular, I really think it's important to recognize that all of these at the tips of your fingers, but previously remote monitoring that is out there for us to participate in means we, in the next couple of decades, I think you're gonna see some really amazing findings come across our desk. So I look forward to the next 20 years of twists, because we'll be able to see some of the benefits from these wide scale citizen science projects where all you need is internet. So yeah, go count some albatrosses and help give to this worldwide census project. And we can help protect albatrosses, see trends as they develop, and save their ecosystems as well. I think it, yeah, that's so neat. Especially, I mean, looking at these images, you're gonna have to learn how to identify these albatrosses because like you said, they look like little dots. Yep. Three meters from space, but they're a large animal, but it's still, you gotta learn what that's mature. Can you expand? Yes. That's amazing. That's way bigger than I thought they were. I've obviously never seen one in person. I went to an albatross soiree by Noah. It was being held by Noah and some other people. And the national Pharrellons Marine Sanctuary. I'm missing words. But anyway, I went to the albatross soiree and they had a sample albatross wingspan and you got to go up to it and put your arms out. And you can go find it on my Instagram at BlairBeth. There's a picture of Brian in front of it. And it's huge. It's so cool. And it's wild. Yeah. These birds are amazing. They leave their chicks and they go wandering, wandering out over the oceans for days, weeks. They've thousands, hundreds of thousands of miles of just soaring. They're made to soar. They're long haulers for sure. Yep. Amazing birds. Amazing sense of smell as well. And speaking of the air and soaring through the air, we, well, your skin is a problem. We lost you. Start over. Breaking up again. My internet, I really, I apologize this evening everyone. I don't know what's happening. My connection is not doing well. And I don't know why. So yeah, I'm back for a moment. I can talk about it now. The minute I start doing the science story, it's gonna go back again. Anyway, speaking of the air, humans were bad for the air. And not just because we pollutant, we throw lots of pollutants from our smokestacks and tailpipes into the air, but our skin is actually. Oh, she's making us anticipate the next thing. Our skin is actually. Our skin, that's what we heard. Our skin creates toxic airborne chemicals. It actually reacts with ozone to produce reactive molecules in the air that are bad for us and actually increase indoor air pollution. So air pollution is a global threat. Indoor air pollution is one of the biggest threats and this international collaboration between atmospheric chemists and engineers showed that the oil in our skin reacts with ozone to create free radicals. And those free radicals then can react with organic compounds and turn into pollutants that are bad. It was published in Science this last week and it is part of a suite of experiments that are on the way to determine how humans impact the environments we inhabit just by being in them. Yeah, and it's an interesting story too because that wasn't supposed to be a problem. It wasn't supposed to be a thing, but one of the, I guess, the thing that sunlight does that's good, you get a little sunlight on something and it cleans it. Part of the problem is in these indoor environments too is that we have isolated ourselves away from sunlight even having the tinted windows or infrared windows or wherever they are that kind of don't allow as much sunlight into a room, prevents sunlight from breaking down ozone and creating, you know, so indoor ozone, you gotta open up the windows, let the sunlight in. And that's exactly what they recommend. Yeah, that is exactly part of the recommendations is getting air exchange and that indoor air exchange and management should be something that is more, is a bigger focus. And we're looking now at like 20 years of indoor air and since the World Health Organization put out a big statement saying, we need to worry about indoor air and take care of it. And it was like a declaration of clean indoor air for people in indoor environments that nobody's paid attention to whatsoever. So here we are beginning this out right now. Especially in a post, you know, aerosolized pandemic time, that airflow indoors also seems like a really good idea. Now, my hometown has gone through, I think a week or two of triple digit heat. Yeah, the West Coast is just boiling, burning. And so nobody there cares about the quality of the air right now. They want it isolated from the world and they want it cooled down dramatically. But for the rest of the year, having that good air exchange with the outside, I think it's something that it's amazing that we haven't spent more time focused on. The fun thing about this study is how they actually did the work. They got individuals to actually just sit in a chamber with three others. So if there were four individuals and they sat in a chamber that was climate controlled, stainless steel on separate days for as long as about five hours. And the researchers measured the changes in the amount of organic compounds and hydroxyl radicals. And they looked at the compass and they had everybody breathe into special masks. So they look like they're scuba divers, but they're just sitting in this stainless steel isolation chamber. So it's a very, it's a very like, I guess, future punk kind of great new world kind of image. That's great. We're gonna need your help for this study. You can play on your phone the whole time. You don't have to do anything really. Just sit in this room and wear this weird mask. Yep, yep. But they, so because they knew that the mask was working and they were able to check what was going on with the chemist know that the breath had nothing to do with what was happening in the chamber. And so everything else in the chamber was likely coming from the skin. Where was this possibility for where it could be coming from, but I don't know if they looked at that as well. What did you wanna know? Oh, where is this study from again? Sorry. This study was from the, let's see, they collaborated with researchers at the University of California, Irvine, Penn State University. This is also, yeah, let's see, yeah. Cypress Institute and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany. Okay. So a bunch of different research organizations, institutions working. Yeah, a former guest, Jonathan Eisen, from UC Davis has also been, he's a biological evolution and ecology professor there, but he's also been starting to focus on in-home environmental issues as well. So this is, I think this is one of those, okay, scientists, you look under your nose and you may find undiscovered territory, which is what's so amazing about this is that we're out there in the field studying biomes and nature and then outdoors in the cities and figuring everything. Then we'd go home and think, all that is out there that I've studied. And then at some point, let me realize, actually this is an environment that I'm sitting in right now different from all of those other places that I've studied. Yeah, about time we started working on it. Well, if that's the case, you know, we don't want things too different. We got to get, we just got to chill. So maybe you could bring the cannabis into the show right now, Justin. As, so this is not, this is not a story about necessarily positive though. With all the legalization of cannabis and the related products these days, there's renewed interest in researching potential medical uses, but there's a major downside to all this increased cannabis use and availability that has been tragically overlooked. It seems now that we are starting to, to based on this study, find that all of this cannabis is reducing our dependency on conventional pharmaceutical drugs. And it's hurting the pharmaceutical industry. Oh, shucks. All right, some people wouldn't say that's a bad thing. Well, but then people don't work for the pharmaceutical industry. They've always taken such good care of us and never taken advantage. No, not once. I'm so sad. It's somebody who's hoping that we get a sponsor at some point and we're gonna be very careful in saying the pharmaceutical company only has our best interest at heart all of the time. But that aside, that shilling aside and a study published in plus one and available via link on our website, researchers from California Polytechnic State University and the University of New Mexico studied how the stock market returns of publicly traded pharmaceutical firms respond to medical and recreational cannabis legalization events. They found stock markets returns were one and a half to 2% lower, 10 days following the cannabis legalization events and that the implications of the annual sales from this reduction were in the billions. So they're using the stock market because there are studies already that have determined that cannabis access reduces consumption of specific types of medications such as opioids, which has been a thing. It also, and it's also, there's reduces pharmaceutical use and certain types of medical patients, specifically Medicaid patients they found reduce their pharmaceutical use when they had access to cannabis. But this study looked at analyze the overall effective cannabis on pharmaceutical firms across all products and all types of patients. Most drugs, which are designed to target and are first approved for specific conditions and then only then later are there attempts to expand the specific target to more off-label uses to get a wider audience for the drug. Cannabis is a very surprising drug in that it's already used to treat an astonishing range of conditions from physical symptoms. People get like migraines will use it, people who have muscle spasms, back problems, that sort of thing will use it as a pain relief. Also it is used for mental conditions, depression, anxiety. People have are using it for all sorts of things that there are already specific drugs from the pharmaceutical companies on the market that they're supposed to be handling. While the cost of pharmaceutical drugs is never exploitative and it can be somehow according to this study a significant financial burden to individual states and the federal government. I don't understand how that's possible, but cannabis in contrast is exceedingly cheap, easy to manufacture by comparison. Current study concludes that cannabis acts as a new competitor across drug markets, extrapoling the results to full federal legalization. The authors estimate a reduction in conventional pharmaceutical sales across industry of almost 11%. That's substantial. I mean, it's huge. Right, that's huge for one drug that we've already had. Like- But that was illegal for a very long time and it's only recently been made medically legal. I mean, it's really only recent. And it doesn't make you think that there was any, war on drug related to marijuana that had any sort of pharmaceutical company backing because that was- Oh no, that never happened. That never happened. That never happened. That's gross. I mean, that is, see that, you know, your 19, early 1990s pot dealer who was dealing marijuana, you know, out of a fanny pack, eventually moved to drop the pharmaceutical industry by 11%. That product was that, no wonder he's, you know, stayed in business. So they say substitution away from conventional drugs towards cannabis appears to be here occurring, even though we don't have standardization of dosing or health insurance coverage or clear doctors recommendations at this point. And they also point out that it might be difficult to get to that stage because there's this idea that, okay, okay, okay, what we need to do is isolate all the components of cannabis from TSE to CBD and then figure out what specific targets to put them through and then isolate it and quantify it. Oh, and then suddenly it's the pharmaceutical industry again. Well, there's that, and there's also they're saying like, part of the thing with this plant is that it's, you know, we are familiar with THC and CBD because those are talked about a lot, but they're part of a big host of these reactive chemicals in there, cannabinoids that are, and it's such a broad swath of interactions and there's plant diversity and other things involved too that they're like, by the time we get to isolation, you know, people will already be probably comfortable with how they're approaching it. It's gonna be, that's gonna be a whole thing into itself. So anyway, in addition to their overall findings that cannabis legalization decreases the stock market value of publicly traded pharmaceutical firms, the authors found that recreational legalization had more than twice the impact of medical legalization. And they think that's because more people are having access to it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they seem to think that there was a high bar for getting one of those medical cards. I don't know how true that was. No, but I think there was still a lot of stigma that would prevent people from partaking before there was full legalization because if you felt like it could be scrutinized, your reasoning for having the medical card or anything like that, it could put your employment into question. There's lots of things that can happen from that before you go full legalization. And it kind of makes it feel more okay culturally, I think, too, for you to try and go, okay, yes, this works for me. I'm going to use this habitually for this one thing or whatever. And it's one less step. You don't need to go to the doctor and get a doctor's permission before you go to the dispensary to find what you need. You can go figure it out. And so the recreational side, I think people have been for a very long time taking care of their pain, taking care of their migraines. Like you said, taking care of nausea. There have been lots of uses. Anxiety. Anxiety. And that's the thing too. There's something out there that we were talking about a few weeks back that it was an Australian study, but they were talking about how it was approximately a third of teenagers are dealing with some form of an anxiety disorder. And it's sort of like, that's sort of when marijuana becomes a very interesting thing. Except that marijuana is not recommended for teenagers because it actually, yeah, it changes the way that the brain. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, just say no, kids. Just say no. Yeah, don't do drugs. They're mental issues. Yeah, well, it's not great for teenagers. But anyway. The thing I was going to say is when you said a third, when you said a third, I actually think that's low for teenagers and anxiety. Right? There's so much to be anxious about. There's so much happening in your body. Like all this kind of thing. It might have been two thirds. I don't remember. So what I was going to say is the other thing about marijuana use with teens is that like this is a formative time when you have to teach yourself how to deal with stress and anxiety and all these other things. And if you end up using something like this, just like you might use an over-the-counter medication to just kind of like, you know, I think if you, that's the big difference with using recreational marijuana to treat medical problems versus in theory, if you're going, if you're going the medical route for marijuana, then you're talking to a doctor about how to use it and when to use it and how to get other ways of taking care of these things you need in addition. But if you go full recreational, then you don't kind of have that holistic conversation as often. So what we're talking about though, is it in the perfect world? What I'm just mentioning, what I'm just throwing out is undiagnosed, ignored, just grow up kid and deal with life. Life is hard. You're a teenager now. Deal with it. For generations, teenagers have been figuring out like, hey, this makes me feel better. Yeah. And so it's self-medication. Everyone can take it. Self-medicating is as opposed to, right. Anyway, I'm just saying the undiagnosed anxiety and then the tendency for teenagers to get interested in this thing might not be a coincidence. That's all. Not a recommendation. I don't even, I actually personally don't like it, but I also have anti-anxiety problems. So, but this is also... Can't even, can't even. I'm like, you want to make me anxious? Yeah, no. I need a more anxious drug is what I need. I need something that actually makes me give it. Oh, no. What was it first? I heard that. Rachel, we need to edit out. We need to believe that. Okay. All right, one last study before we go to our first break. Hang on, hang on. No, we'll be talking about this forever. I think it's in the end part of it. The last finding was that they found that branded drug manufacturers were more affected than generic manufacturers. And they think it's because there's a greater competitive impact on cannabis, on drugs that don't have existing competitors. That they're actually, they actually compete hardest, really hard against new drugs. They're just coming out by pharmaceutical companies, which I think is hilarious for a 12,000 year old plant that's been with it. Yeah. All I hope is that it will replace things like the opiates that have. Yes, that would be ideal. Thanks to the pharmaceutical industry. That's also where it's having the hardest time getting legalized. I wonder why. Yep. Sometimes, you know, you feel maybe like your brain's not working. We talk a lot about brain fog these days, but when it is caused by actual physical damage, a concussion, you know, that damage can really be longterm. We've been talking a lot about how concussions can affect people and lead to traumatic brain injury over long periods of time, which can lead to all sorts of health issues and mental health issues as people age, especially if there are multiple concussions. But one thing that people have not really looked at with regard to concussions is the skull itself. So we've talked before about new football helmets and how they try and make the football helmets, you know, able to spread, force around, make the brain slosh around inside the skull a little bit less upon impact. But what really happens? What you really need to do is you need to line the inside of the skull with something squishy. Right? Well, researchers at Monash University have published in scientific reports this week their study of the skull and repeated concussions. And they have reported that when you get more concussions, your skull gets thicker. So the skull responds to impacts by thickening itself. Now the question is- How bones work, right? It is, right. Repairing damage, right? Trying to strengthen itself for future impacts. Which way does it get thicker on the outside or on the inside? So the bones structurally reinforce themselves on the inside for these impacts. The wrong side, dang it. But they're not sure whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing. Because what does it really mean? Is it really gonna help your brain if your skull is thicker? Does it help? On the inside, it's taking up more space. What if it's- Yeah, so if your brain is swelling then there's less space for your brain. Oh, geez. Right, so there are more, they've got more bone cells they find that, and of course this was not in humans, this was a mouse, a rat study where they impacted rat heads and then look to see what the rat skulls were doing. But they found, yeah, they're these intervals, they grew, they were thicker. The bones were growing from the inside and pushing outward. So that would mean less room necessarily on the inside for the brain tissue, for the swelling brain tissue. But what does that mean for the next time around? We don't know. Does this mean that it's like a, like if your brain's getting more like a football helmet? Isn't that what, was that what your skull is anyway? No, we don't know this. So, yeah, but anyway. That's all interesting, but I really wanted, now what I wanted was how they taught those rats to play football. You need to get all the tiny helmets. Yeah. Go rats, go. Do they have to wear four sets of shoulder pads? How does that work? Two sets? I got two sets. I don't think that's exactly how it works. No. But anyway. That's probably more fun than what they actually did. So keep thinking about it. Got it, but that's why. Keep thinking about little rats playing football. Yeah, this is why I don't have anxiety. Instead of scientists can cussing rats over and over in some other way. Yeah, this is why I entirely lack anxiety is because my brain feels in a happier solution. All the problems in the world. I don't know, let's picture it different. Yeah. You know, potentially with the, if the bone, if we're thickening the bone and there's less room for bone marrow, that means there are fewer cavities. There's more structural integrity possibly. Yeah, it's a, it's very interesting question. Is the skull thickening important? Is it good? Is it bad? It is what happens. So now we have more questions to ask. Yeah. And this is important work and I am excited to hear more about it, but also I'm just gonna throw out there one more cry to maybe stop intentionally concussing ourselves when it is not required. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we could stop throwing our heads at each other or throwing our heads at immovable objects, maybe. Yeah, I totally agree with all of that. Although football isn't going away. I don't know if anybody's noticed. No, it's not going away. No, it's not going away. This is important, but I'm just saying it's. It's just a shame. Well, there's one of those things too, is like some cannabis products are being researched for concussion recovery, for brain, from everything from brain parameter to inflammation reduction. And it's one of those things that has been illegal in sports, which doesn't seem like a competitive edge to like an athlete anyway, if they're having a cannabis product, gummy thing on their weekend. But it's another reason why we should not have made something illegal without researching it first. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. So anyway, these researchers are going to be looking at whether or not a thickened skull that comes from repeated concussions is going to alter transmission of force through the skull and to the brain. And so, you know, we may one day know, but yeah, we know repeated concussions are bad, but maybe they become less bad. I think that's exactly what CTE is. The C in that is chronic. And I think so far our understanding is that it's bad. It's bad, so far it's just bad. I don't think there's anything it would be a pretty, pretty surprising reversal if we were like actually more concussions is good. Hi and everyone. That would change school a lot. Yeah. It's great. All right everybody, we're gonna start off the day by banging our heads against the desk. Ready? No, don't do that. This is twist, put on your helmets, everyone. I mean, the learning helmets, the ones with the electrodes that stimulate your brain. Oh wait, you don't need the electrodes because you have us. We hope that we are stimulating your brain just a little bit. And if we are, please take a little time to head over to twist.org and click on the Patreon link because that is how we fund this show. So if you are able and willing and you love this show, become a supporter of this Week in Science head over to twist.org, click the Patreon link and choose your level of support $10 and more and we will thank you by name at the end of the show. I really do love that part of the show reading everyone's names off for everyone out there. We can't do the show without you. Thank you for your support. Now we're gonna come back to a lovely portion of the show filled with I guess drum beats this week, lots of percussioning. Sh, bo, bo, sh, bo, bo, sh, bo, sh, bo, sh, bo, sh, bo, sh, bo, sh, bo, sh, bo, sh, bo, sh, bo, sh. Yes. Very nice. Animal, animal, it's Blair's Animal Corner. It's Blair. Dance hall. Buy pet, milliped, no pet at all. If you are here about animals, change your room. Except for giant pandas and squirrels. Up, Blair. There it is. I have some drumming chimpanzees. Bump, bump. Yes, so this is in the Ugandan Rainforest. And while chimpanzees drumming on roots in the rainforest has actually been known about for a while. I don't know. Well, I guess they've known about it at least since 2011. But maybe since before that. I don't know. Maybe. We've known that chimpanzees drum. OK, so what's new about this research is that not only do chimpanzees have their own styles of drumming on these roots, but also they can hide their signature sound at will to not reveal the location. So they'll still drum. But they'll drum not like themselves if they don't want people want other chimps to know where they are. Wait, wait, wait, wait, so hold on. Are you telling me that these chimpanzees are drumming like other chimpanzees that? Yeah, so we're going to drum like Ringo today. This is the kind of the extrapolation of the story that is told from this finding. So let's talk about what actually they saw. So this was the Ybira Chibanzi group in Western Uganda's Boudongo Forest. Researchers recorded the drum sessions of seven male chimps and analyzed the intervals between beats. Mostly they use their feet, but also they will use their hands sometimes to make the sound. It's so loud it goes about a kilometer away. So it's really helpful for communicating with each other. They use it as a social communication. They wrote the kind of social media, but I feel like that is very widely used now when we talk about animals really. It's just communication, right? They're communicating. They're saying, I'm over here. And that allows traveling chimps to communicate with each other. After just a few weeks in the rainforest, PhD student Vesta Eluteri, who's the lead author of the study, said that she started being able to recognize who was drumming after just a few weeks following this troop. So on one side, there would be one chimp, Tristan, who she said his hard-hitting drumming was akin to the drummer of Led Zeppelin. It was so fast that you could barely see his hands. But other chimps like Alf or Ila would make a more syncopated rhythm. So they would do something in which both their feet hit the root at almost the exact same time. And it almost sounded more jazzy. And so it wasn't until this study that they understood that they're using signature styles while they're looking for other individuals. While they're traveling, they're kind of going through and saying like Marco Polo basically with their drumming beats to kind of tell other chimps in the area where they are. Sometimes the chimps would choose to not drum in their signature beat and the researchers believe it was to avoid revealing their location or their identity. Of course, a lot more research needs to be done on this because just for that last bit, I think that is a huge, huge thing to attest in this moment that they are intentionally drumming differently. So you need to look at more than seven individuals for sure. But on top of that, you need to look at the social situation in which they do that and see consistency over a bigger study over a longer period of time. I'm not saying it's not possible. Totally sounds like something a chimp can do but I will believe it when there is a little bit more data behind it in this case. I think it's a good hypothesis. I will put it that way. But I do absolutely believe that individual chimps have individual styles in the way that they drum and I love it. I wonder though, I mean, another hypothesis would be, they have their signature style but maybe every once in a while they like to try something new. Maybe they are trying just experimenting. Maybe they're playing. Maybe they, you know, maybe there are, you know, we have so much more to look into because these are highly intelligent primates. Yeah. Yeah. And I wanna know if they do it. I wanna know if they are like riffing off each other, you know? And so I bring this up also because music is a form of art. Yep. And so I wanted to bring this up in that other conversation that we have so often about art being something that is uniquely human and that if chimpanzees are making music for fun or for communication, that is something to be looked at as a form of creativity and a form of art in an animal species. And also usually with the apes we find things that animals are doing. And then when you start looking, you broaden where you're looking in the animal kingdom, you can see more of it the further you look. I would not be surprised if there are other drummers out there that have their own style in different species. And even if it is a form of communication, hey, here I am, you know, we know in birds, there are birds that can have unique songs. And so then maybe it is a bit of creativity. Maybe there is a bit of nuance and a bit of extra in there. But yeah, for chimps, I love the idea that there's jazzy chimps and there's like rockstar chimps. Yeah. Yeah, and so that's the next step for this research for this group of researchers. They plan to investigate how neighboring and far off communities of chimps drum in differing styles because if this is in fact a piece of what they want to call chimp culture, then there can be cultural differences based on geographical location, which would be so cool to see that chimps in Uganda and this rainforest do it this way. And then elsewhere, just like different, is it different countries? Is it different rainforests? Or is it different, just like a kilometer away? Is it different? Like how much space creates new cultural differences in musical styling? And is there any, depending on the amount of base notes, how deep are the notes they're able to get off of the trees and does that allow them to have more long distance if it is communication? All about that base. Yeah. About that base, about that base. So what I would actually be interested in finding is if we did find one chimp colony that's doing the drumming and then it's creating like getting worms or something to come out of the ground or getting insects to leave their habitat. And then you see, oh, here's how this started. This is the thing where they would drum on the tree root thing and then now they're getting food out of it. Oh, interesting. And then it became a cultural thing that, oh, chimps are doing just because it's fun without getting a reward. Because then you've got that transition from survival strategy into a thing you just do because it's fun. Yeah. That's kind of an exciting, that's like a birth of recreational art. Yeah. That's awesome. Let's look into this more. More chimp drumming. Yes. Well, from drumming, I bring you to big wet mice. Oh. Oh, it's the big wet mouse. Yay. Oh, okay. Is the big wet mouse on the west side of the mountain or the east? That's what this story is really about. In fact, this is about a new rule that we can add to the rain shadow effect, which is why I was so excited to talk about this today because it was something that I loved studying in zoology, specifically in ecology classes in college. So. West side. This is. Can I pick one? Can I guess? I'm saying it's the west side mouse is the wetter one. Well, it depends also where you are. There's a lot going on, right? So this is specifically the Andes Mountains in Patagonia. So does that change your answer, Justin, or is it the same? Oh, well, yeah. Cause then everything's upside down. You had it right the first time. So this was, this is a study looking at mice from the western side of the mountains versus the east side of the mountains. So this is specifically the shaggy, soft-haired mice at Brothricks, Hirtah. And this is from a researcher working on his doctoral thesis, Pablo Teta of the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales. Bernardito Riv, well, I'm not done. Bernardito Riv Davia in Buenos Aires. I just did a breath in between. That was a very long college day. It's in Buenos Aires. It's fine. But Pablo began studying this shaggy, soft-haired mice as part of his thesis. And he saw that some individuals of the species were big. Some of them were really small. He assumed- They're all very cute. They are very cute. He assumed they were all different species because the size difference was drastic. So he did a mitochondrial DNA study. What did he find? They're the same species. So one's just male and one's female, right? No. No. No, in fact, one is on the west side and one is on the east side of this mountain. That is the only difference. So there was a drastic size difference between the west and the east sides of this mountain. So first, they made a lot of ideas. They had a lot of ideas why this might be. Does it have to do with latitude? Does it have to do with longitude? Does it have to do with like a million other things? In fact, they tested nine biochlamatic temperature or precipitation variables. They used statistical analysis to compare the measurements of 450 skulls of mice. And then they tried to map them onto these 19 different biological rules to see if they fit known ecological rules for how, for example, the further you go towards the poles, a lot of the animals or mammals are larger because as you go closer to the poles, it is colder and the larger animals fare better in the cold. Similarly, if you move up in elevation, animals get smaller because oxygen is less available. So looking at rules like this that are known proven ecological rules, they wanted to see what the variable was to cause this huge difference in these two populations of mice. None of them worked. The only thing that they saw was that how far east or far west they lived was a very clear definition. So this suggested to them that it had to do with the rain shadow effect. The rain shadow effect is a result of the way water vapor travels over mountain ranges. So you don't think about it, you have this huge difference in altitude and one side of the mountain is near a coast and the other side is not. The water from the coastline from the ocean, it gets pulled into the air, it evaporates. And as you're going up and up to the mountains, right? So it evaporates over the ocean. The ocean water evaporates into the water vapor, into the clouds. The clouds move towards the land and as they do that, they are pushed up in elevation and as it goes high enough, it gets colder, which causes precipitation. And if a mountain is tall enough, the clouds run out before you get to the other side. And so you can have- Prime example of that in our native territory there is California. Lush green forests right up to the, forests right up to the peak of the Sierras. And then the east side is the Nevada, Utah, there's a desert. Desert, desert, desert, desert. It's just desert, all the water drops in California and we don't leave anything for our neighboring states because we got that Sierra mountainry, which is why I picked west. Which is why I picked west for the big mountain. Right, but it depends which side of the country you are on. If you were looking at a mountain range that was closer to the east coast, then it would be the east side, right? So it depends, it also depends on your currents, it depends on many things. But the thing about this is what you're describing is hundreds of miles, right? And so sometimes when you have a mountain range that is very close to the water and that mountain range is extremely steep, you have an extremely drastic difference. You have a lush, productive area on the wet side. Yeah, and then on the dry side, it is dry. It is still usually very cold because you're looking at a mountain still, but it is a dry, dry desert, even though it's cold. Deserts can be cold. So this is the rain shadow effect. What these researchers are suggesting is that there is a new rule that could be added to ecological textbooks some day after further study. This is just one species, right? You have to really see this is across the animal kingdom or at least across mammals. If this is consistent, then this could be a new addition to the rain shadow effect that it could impact animal size. So their findings were that shaggy, soft-haired mice and potentially other fellow mammals have larger body size on the kind of, the more productive side. On the rain side. Yes, on the rain side because of essentially resources. So the rule that they pointed to for this is the resource rule. That suggests that where there are more resources, individuals from the same species can be larger than when there are fewer resources. So this rule, when they looked at the rain shadow effect and they mapped their statistics on that, it worked perfectly. So this is the first time as far as they know that anyone has demonstrated the effects of rain shadow on mammal size. This is a very specific thing. And so they hope that they have found a more overall truth that could help also with predicting impacts of climate change and determining future resource availability for animals and for us. This could impact our own resource availabilities based on recognizing how the rain shadow effect works and how that can impact resource availability. It's gonna lead to even smaller mice. No, they'll be so tiny. Now, but the other thing that it, besides resources that it makes me think is that if it's cooler, because it's more humid and you have more rain, you have more cold, you have more snow possibly, being larger is better for heat form potentially that you can have more body fat if you have those resources to maintain it. Whereas like on the other side of being small, if it's hotter, you can just be like, I get rid of that heat and it's no problem. You have small surface area and being smaller might actually be better in that situation as well. Yeah, no, absolutely. And of course, this also is a reminder that if an animal is a mountain species, then as climate change happens, they have to move further in elevation. And so they actually end up with less space, which means if they are used to being very nutrient and resource rich, moving into more competition for space and resources is always gonna be a huge problem. And so on the other side of the mountain, they might actually do better because they're used to scarcity and they have different tactics to get around scarcity, but the ones on the side that are used to, being fat and happy might have more challenges. Or they'll be the big bullies, we don't know. There's so much to see how this plays out. I would really also love because we know that there are subspecies and different populations of birds like white crown sparrows that travel up and down mountain ranges for different times of the year. But if the top, like the Andes, this is 10,000, 15,000 feet, this is going to be a barrier to something like a sparrow traveling potentially. So would this even persist as a rule for birds who maybe are a little bit more mobile, but still stay within these kinds of ecosystems? So I would love to see if that is true as well there. Yeah, and if we're talking specifically about body size, birds are, you have to look at a lot smaller measurements too because there's so much less room for error with bird size and still being able to fly. So it's like very specific body plans that allow for very specific flights. So that's true, but you just measure those little thingies. You just get, yeah, what's your wingspan? How much you weigh? We'll start with the mammals. We'll see if it's a thing with mammals. And then from there, I'm sure researchers will move on to other critters, but... I'm gonna call my bird friends. It's like, this is something you need to look at. I know you took these measurements last time you were in the field for that last study. Get it done. Yes. I love it. Chat room, YouTube chat room, tiny humans, OTW, which I think means on the way. Yeah. Yeah, tiny humans. So this is, I don't know how long does that take? I don't know, but yeah. If we're gonna be in a less water, less resource rich future, we might be seeing smaller humans. And that would be a good thing just for the real estate market alone. If we could just be half our size, we'd have twice as much space. There you go. You gotta rewrite the Cat Stevens song. Yeah. I think there's a Dead Kennedy song that I think addresses. It's got a bit. Yeah, it's got a bit. Oh, sure, sure. Oh, for sure. Oh, and this is this week in science. Thank you so much for joining us. If you have not headed over to our website before, click over to twist.org at some point and head to our Zazzle store where we have many items that are wonderful for you to wear, for you to put on your couch, for you to, I don't think, do we have cat and dog clothes for twist yet? I'm not sure. I hope not. Not yet. I should really look into that. We should go. Animal. No, we don't have that yet. There's doormats. You could use that to put your dog or cat bowls on top of. Twist doormats. We've got mouse pads. Speaking of mice, we've got mouse pads. Yes, our Zazzle store is full of the week in science. Merchandise. It does help the support of the show. We hope that you will take a look at our store today. Oh, yeah, and subscribe to Twist because that's always a good thing to do as well. Click. Hey, do you like the show? Click the like button right now. Okay, we're coming on back and Justin, it's your turn. What do you have in store? I gotta check. What am I supposed to be talking about now? I forgot what I was, forgot what my show was today. Let's see, what are they? Oh, yeah, so this is talking about pollution as we were segway two ago. Team of researchers with Ocean Cleanup Project as well as folks from Wageningen University, both in the Netherlands, sampled over 6,000 hard plastic floating debris items pulled from the North Pacific garbage patch, which to be clear, it is called a garbage patch, but it covers millions of square kilometers of the ocean surface. So it's much more of a territory or an island than it is a patch. A patch sounds a little small, but that's what they call it. So this floating plastic garbage territory in the ocean has accumulated, due in part because of how surface currents in the ocean swirl and they direct things, and then you've got sort of almost like a range point in space, a branch point in space where all of this debris, floating debris collects in this one area, and also because somebody has dumped enough floating plastic in the ocean to cover millions of square kilometers. So those two different things working together created this, the sampling was conducted to determine whose plastic is this? Where did this come from? They found that 90% of the identifiable trash swirling around the North Pacific garbage patch comes from just six countries. They have published their research in scientific reports, links on our website available. They looked for words printed on debris as a means for identifying, looking for language, other identifying symbols, including logos. Researchers found that approximately a third of their trash pieces were unidentifiable. They just couldn't, there was no markings whatsoever. They could not even make out what sort of purpose they might have served or where they would have come, let alone where they would have come from. And then, so then there was a bunch of stuff that they could identify what it was, but there were no markings. They did find that 26% of their haul was fishing equipment based, which is actually a lot higher than I thought it would be. This is, so all this plastic that we're finding in the ocean was used in the ocean at some point intentionally. Now this isn't just trash falling off, blowing off a trash barge or something like that. This is, they found plastic buoys and floats were 3% of the objects that they found, but made up 21% of the mass of the material that they collected, buoys and floats. Researchers were able to identify the country of origin for 232 of the 6,000 objects, which isn't a whole lot, but that's what had identifiable markings on it. The largest percentage being from, what do you think, what do you guess? Anybody got a guess? United States. Blair, you wanna throw in? That's what I was gonna say. You're both gonna play in the USA. Well guess what? Not it. Really? Not it. Well, maybe a slight disclaimer here on my saying that here in a minute. It was actually Japan, 33.6% of those objects that they could identify as having an origin were Japan. China was next. Because that makes sense because Japan has a really active fishing industry. I would imagine, but it's small compared to China, but then I would also think maybe Norway or Sweden or some of the Scandinavian countries might be. Well, this is the North Pacific though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know how often they even allowed to fish over here. So this is gonna be all the Pacific Rim job countries. China was next at 32.3%. And third place was South Korea at 9.9%. US came in and was at fourth place, 6.5%. And then Taiwan and Canada, 5.6 and 4.7%, respectively. Together, those six countries accounted for over 92% of the identifiable trash found in the North Pacific garbage island. And they think it all comes from fishing jobs. These are like you were pointing out, these are countries that have huge industries of mass fishing that they do out in the Pacific Ocean. And when they're working these jobs, they are apparently losing or abandoning a lot of plastics into the ocean. I would imagine there would be lots of bumpers, things that get untied and fall overboard or lines or netting, yeah, all sorts of, there are all sorts of ways things can end up still floating on the surface. And this is the thing though, this is the thing. A lot of what they found by mass, they think it's gonna be 20 something percent of the entire garbage patch is gonna be these buoys and floatation devices, this is stuff that floats. There's probably a lot of stuff that's getting dumped that's not floating, so it's not accumulating in this location. The one thing I had, the one disclaimer I had on this is, not everything can be a shipping container full of floating rubber ducks. But anyway, sorry, Justin. Well, the thing that occurred to me on seeing, oh, China's got 32% of the waste and the United States has only got 6.5. Gosh, we're much better about not putting plastic in. I'm like trying to picture like, how much US language-based identifying marks would, like I have this weird feeling that if you went and looked at an American fishing ship and looked at all the buoys and plastics on there that most of it would have a Chinese or perhaps Japanese marking anyway, as these are our major trading partners who are probably making a very specific type of product far from the United States shores anyway. So just because the way that they did the identification through language may not necessarily be the, but I mean, I like the idea that the US is much better about not losing buoys in the ocean and doesn't fish as much, but I don't know if I think that. Well, it was gonna say that for sure. But the other thing I was thinking about is, seafood's probably not the worst contributor to this kind of thing as other food types, but food fished in one country is not always for that country. Like sometimes it's exported, right? So, yeah. Yes and no, yes and no. And this is just a very specific one fish. I only track one fish. I only track one fish in terms of where you can eat, where it's fished, where you can access it, how it's, and that's tuna. And you can't get specific tuna in Europe. Right. It means you can't get good tuna in Europe, which is why it's so different. Well, how are you eating good? Like delicious or sustainably sourced? I'm talking about eating. Yeah, so that's the other thing too, is that different markets have different rules for the types of fish that are allowed in their marketplaces and the United States does not have the most strict seafood rules, unfortunately, but that's also something to keep, but I'm just saying when you're talking about food, but I think that it does move around. So even if one area is responsible for doing the fishing, that does not mean those are the individuals doing the consuming. And yes, fish is, I would say, transported around the globe probably less, but it still is frozen and moved. I will say, I will say from personal experience this summer in Paris, France, the Spanish waiter at a restaurant, I went to said, no, no, it's no good. When we said, how is the fish? How is the salmon? He said, I would not get it. So the Spanish in Paris say no to the salmon. Yeah, sure. But actually, I think with it, so I'm that bluefin tuna is the North Pacific. It's a very cool- And it is endangered, actually. It's very controlled. And I think it is probably US policy that they don't get sold to Europe. Europe ends up with some skipjack nonsense, some Mediterranean- Sustainable. Sustainable maybe, but it's not. You're like, why even bother? Just leave them there. Then don't eat an endangered species. But they're so good. They are so good. The more endangered they are, the more delicious they are. So some people think. And then speaking about what's the- Yeah, go ahead. I was gonna say, not to talk about the morals or the ethics of sustainable fishing at this point. Yeah, that's a whole show. That's a whole other thing. Sorry, I said the S-word. I'm all for everything that's the right thing to do, except when it comes to the bluefin tuna then I don't care. Okay, all right. Because that's the thing I want to keep having there. Make everybody else an idea. I should have like a carve out that I can- All right, okay. Cravings. Speaking of food cravings, cravings for fatty foods are often thought to be taste-related. You know, you go, you eat the fatty food thing of your favorite choice and the buds on your tongue rejoice in celebration. The more butter, the more better it tastes. But research investigating the source of our appetites has uncovered an entirely new connection, an entirely new pathway between gut and brain driving our desire for fatty foods. Columbia's Zuckerman Institute scientists studying mice found that fat entering the intestines triggers a signal conducted along nerves to the brain and that the signal drives a desire for fatty foods. Excuse me. Hey, I got to take a minute or two to break. The, wow, this is really fascinating discovery here. Because basically what they did is they took mice and they made it so that the mice couldn't taste what they were eating and even when they could taste what they were eating, they would go after, they would go after the fatty foods. The Studies Published Nature link available on our website. It raises the possibility of interfering with gut-brain connection to help prevent unhealthy choices and address global health crisis caused by overeating of fatty type foods. According to Dr. Zucker, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and Neuroscience could not stop studying and getting degrees in Columbia. Our research is showing that the tongue tells our brain what we like, such as things that taste sweet, saltier fat. The gut, however, tells our brain what we want, what we need. I don't know if you said it that way, but that's how I would get it. I would say it that way. Locking the ability to taste the mice. So mice were offered bottles of water with dissolved fats including a component of soybean oil and bottles of water containing sweet substances known to affect the taste buds, the yummy sugary stuff. The rodents developed a strong preference over a couple of days for the fatty water. They formed this preference again when scientists genetically modified mice used genetically modified mice to remove the animal's ability to taste fat using their tongues. So even when they couldn't taste that there was fat in that bottle of water, they still switched their preference away from the sugary tasting water to this fat water over time. Even though the animals could not taste fat, they were nevertheless driven to consume it, said Dr. Zucker, who again probably doesn't talk that way. The researchers reason that fat must be activating specific brain circuits, driving the animal's behavioral response to these fats. The search for that circuit, first author Meng Tong Li measured brain activity in mice while giving the animal's fat. Neurons in one particular region of the brainstem, the caudal nucleus of the solitary tract, but you didn't even know that existed. Well, I've heard of it before, yeah. Yeah, she said he's brains. The caudal nucleus of the solitary tract perked up when there was fat involved. This is intriguing because this has also been in the system implicated in previous discoveries as the neuro-bases for sugar preference. Dr. Li then found the communication lines that carried the messages to the caudal nucleus of the solitary tract. Neurons in the vagus nerve, but you didn't know you had one of those. Well, definitely. I think a lot of people have heard of the vagus nerve. So the vagus nerve, which is linking the gut to the brain, also, it says here at least, Twittered with activity when mice had fat in their intestines. Having identified the biological machinery underlying the mouse's preference for fat, Dr. Li next took a close look at the gut itself, specifically the endothelial cells lining the intestines. You found two groups of cells that were sending signals to the vagal neurons in response to fat. And this is quoting her here, Minkangui. One group of cells functions as a general sensor of essential nutrients responding not only to fat, but also to sugars and amino acids. The other group responds only to fat, potentially helping the brain distinguish fats from other substances in the gut. And Dr. Li, she goes one step further, blocking the activity of these cells using a drug, shutting down signaling from either group, prevented vagal neurons from responding to fat in the intestines. And guess what? Mice lost their appetite and preference for fats. So after all this research, what it turns out is, it seems to be like there's a bit of a feedback loop that is taking place here also, but that it's not your tongue that's so attracted to this. Which is great because that means potentially, this is not in the study at all. This is Justin alone. If diabetes occurs through sugar consumption, you should be able to satiate your obesity with fatty foods that don't have sugar in them. You should be able to have a high fat, low sugar, no sugar diet and still maintain those cravings. Now it doesn't solve obesity, that's a whole other thing, but again, this is a short term where we have the future, the idealized, and then you got the what you can do right now out of your kitchen kind of a scenario. Yeah, I mean, I think that understanding how the gut and the brain communicate, I think the tongue is involved for those kind of instant reactions to what is in your food and the tastes before you get it into your gut, kind of helping you choose the foods that you're eating to know for sure, but then once it gets in the gut, then there's really that conversation going on of the, we are getting the nutrients, we need, no, we're not, are we really? Yes, no, we need more fat, get us more fat, and the gut talks to the brain and the brain talks to the gut and there's this big conversation going back and forth and it's, if it were simple, we would have figured it all out a long time ago, but it's a very complex conversation, a little handshake that's happening right there, but yeah, hopefully one day we can use this information to be able to treat things like metabolic disease, like diabetes to help, if we have targets for receptors, if we have, if we know how to talk to, if we know how to intercept that communication, maybe we can make them, maybe we can send coded messages to the brain from the gut. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, like if you just hid fat in a diet without the sugar, you might be able to avoid eating too much sugar that way. But you kind of broke up there, but you were saying something about the long time we were looking at it, got brain connection in terms of scientific history, is relatively new, right? This is like just the thing that's just sort of come up onto the radar that's getting a lot of study. We've known that the Vegas, we have been involved for a while, but yeah, I mean, we've known that there has been this big conversation happening, that I mean, the gut and the brain communicate, but we haven't known exactly where these cells are. We don't know what the cells are that are involved. We don't know the exact mechanisms, but we do know that there are these pathways that deal with our satiety and our appetites. Yeah, and that was also the sort of the interesting thing in the study is the way they were able to shut down specific nerve circuits. That's cool. To isolate, you know, doing gene knockout stuff with the mice to get them to only be able to have this sort of binary approach to their choices, their selections, to being able to narrow down the cell circuits that they could also shut down to then test again after, like the amount of resolution on this study that was available was, I think it's just amazing what they're able to accomplish right now. Kiki, you're muted. Oh, is that, I, what is that? I have some stories related to the brain. Yeah. If we wanna stay on the brain for a little bit longer. Yes, please. Yeah. Well, let's talk first about a study published in Science about the axolotls. Yes, axolotls. We love the axolotls and Blair, you have talked about how amazing axolotls are because they're regenerative. And we study the axolotls because maybe they could be this wonderful model for human regeneration. Maybe we can learn how to regenerate our limbs and all these things and maybe even our brains. Yes, please. Whoa. Yeah, this study published in Science called entitled Single Cell Analysis of Axolotl Telencephalon Organization Neurogenesis and Regeneration. Regeneration being the key phrase here in that the axolotl, I am still in my Mexicanum, is able to regenerate parts of its telencephalon. And so hopefully these researchers are gonna discover how the axolotl brain does. It's amazing feat of regeneration and that'll help us with brain regeneration of our own. And question repair, right? Yeah. Now we're going full circle with the whole show that we did. Yeah, that's right. This could be used for all those people suffering from traumatic brain injury. Right, from the concussions, maybe one day we will be able to regenerate a little bit of our brains. And so they were able to conclude that the post embryonic axolotl telencephalon neurogenesis progresses through diverse neuroblast progenitors, blah, blah. They're associated with specific neuron types and dependent on shared as well as specific regulatory programs and implementation of these same programs were involved in regenerative neurogenesis indicating brain injury activates the birth of new cells in the axolotl brain through these pathways that are already there. So injury stimulates recovery, but not just fixing the problem but actually regenerating cells that have been lost. And these regenerated neurons in the axolotls reestablish their previous connections to distant brain regions, which is one of the big things. So we always wonder, okay, we've got all these cells and they're connected to all the other cells in the brain and what happens if you get rid of a few? Like what happens to those connections? Well, apparently there are the programs in place in the axolotl brain to allow functional recovery, which is, it's mind boggling to a degree. That's amazing. It's amazing. So then we have so many ailments that includes just parts of our brain going, I don't think it would be great to be able to just kind of give it a tune up. Yeah, and you know, that's what you're saying there too, is that I even, it's such a complex system. It's like, what do you, what can you do? If you could just cut out a section of brain and regenerate it, just start over. Not, none of this repair. Let's, oh, let's see if we can make this connection better or get rid of this garbage that's building up or whatever, just, you know what? Let's start over. We'll get rid of this whole swath of brain over here and just regrow it and you can have like a fresh new bit of brain to work with. That sounds, that sounds very appealing. Fresh bit of brain. Until eventually you replace the whole thing and then even are you the same person anymore? Who cares? I wanna live forever now too. You see the connections and everything's working right? Sure, it's great. I wanna live forever now too. Yeah. Wait, wait, I have a question now, I have a question. Now that this client is getting better, right? What's the question? I have a question about axolotls. Yeah. Are they like an intermediate form of something? They're not like, they're only. So, okay, so they are salamanders that essentially continued to look like young salamanders look. Okay. So they're not running around. This isn't like an XYZ salamander in a transition state and we call them axolotls and pay attention to them. No, no, no. They're one that is evolutionarily. There are species that stopped growing. So it's like, if there was, if there was a type of bird that never got their nice feathers and they were covered in down for their entire lives. They were fluffy little chicks. Humans never got bigger than a three-year-old. Right. Okay. Okay, that makes- It's our nymph. Yeah, but- And that's what the future is. The difference is that salamanders go through metamorphosis. So it's more similar to a frog that stays as a tadpole for their whole life. Okay. Or a frog, I guess it would be more specifically like a frog that gets its legs, but keeps the tail. Would be more similar, I think, to what this situation is. Because young salamanders have gills, exposed gills. And so these exposed gills just don't go away when they kind of, they just stop there. Yeah, but that makes- Whereas some salamanders, like the tiger salamanders and others are able to, they are amphibious where they're able to live in the water. And then on the land, the axolotls are, because of their gills, they're stuck to the water. So it's a different life choice, but- So other salamanders can have a stage where they look like axolotls? Yes. I know. Okay. That makes better sense than that. Yeah, but axolotls, they're amazing. And now we find out that they not only can regrow their tails and their arms and their legs, but they can also regrow their brain cells. And we need to know more. Super awesome. Super awesome. Yes, so now, since it is getting into fall and blares, I know how much you love stories related to seasonal daylight changes. Yes. I just wanted to throw in a story here at the end about how we're learning more about how day length changes your brain and then your behavior. Every animal who is exposed to daylight and nighttime, we are affected by light. Our circadian rhythms rule our metabolism. Our circadian rhythms rule so much about how we live and how healthily we can live. And researchers at UCSD decided to take a look at, and they published in Science Advances, a mouse model to figure out exactly what neurons switch up the expression of neurotransmitters when day length changes. So when they're stuck with shorter days, what happened to the mouse brain and what exactly changed in there? And what they discovered is that there's, we know that there's an area in the brain that is connected to the optic nerves. It's called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. The suprachiasmatic nucleus we've talked about before. It's very important in the sensing of the light, production of melatonin. It's the body's time keeper and it keeps those circadian, it's the body's clock. It makes those circadian rhythms go. It's the captain time keeper on top of everything else. And so when it receives less light from the environment, there are neurons within the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which then change their behavior. And so they determined that there is another nucleus called the paraventricular nucleus, which is also involved in stress, metabolism, growth, reproduction, your immune system and how you're just everything important pretty much. And they discovered that they could manipulate these paraventricular nuclei that are in the hypothalamus by the light that was added to the suprachiasmatic nucleus. And you know what the new neurotransmitter was? Dopamine! Dopamine, the neurotransmitter that makes you want to do things. Hey, bud, dopamine. Dopamine. That's right. And so they revealed, according to the first author, Alexander Porca, a member of the Dolcus Lab at UCSD, we revealed novel molecular adaptations of the SCN-PVN network in response to day length in adjusting hypothalic function and daily behavior. And so this, for the first time, might show the anatomical functional link that mediates the seasonal changes in mood and that actually can help mediate those effects of light therapy. So when people have seasonal effective disorder and use light therapy to impact their mood and create happier, better moods, it could be through this particular pathway and that maybe it is this pathway that is dysfunctional or doesn't respond with the appropriate dopamine levels to keep your moods at a high enough level to just want to do anything when winter hits. I can't today because winter. Because winter, I'm sorry. I can't, winter is, winter is a cuminine. Yeah, so anyway, our wonderful, our brains, we are connected to, we are very connected to our environments. We like to think that we're, you know, we're humans, we can do what we want, but we learn more and more about how our environments affect us. And so there are these questions of things like how blue light is affecting us and how too much blue light at night might be impacting our circadian rhythms and how there's a study also recently that it could be affecting aging and that too much blue light could be aging us prematurely because it's affecting our circadian clocks in a negative manner. But it's not just, it's not just our metabolism, it's also, you know, can lead to, can have mental health impacts. And so if we understand how neurotransmitters are involved, hey, maybe we can start to manage that stuff a little bit better, but maybe it's gonna have to do with the cannabis that you were talking about at the time of the show, Justin. Well, I also just like the idea of recognizing that your employees, your students, your loved ones might be less productive in the winter. Yeah, and that there is actually a physical change that we are set up to have lower dopamine levels, have different changed activity levels because of the change in day length. Yeah. Well, and it's to keep you safe. Your body doesn't want you going outside in the cold. Like your body wants you to conserve energy and survive the winter. So like we're still kind of like pushing up against that realization that, you know, we once lived in the wild. Like we still have physiology that is used to living in the wild and has expectations for us based on that. And when you say we once too, we're not even really talking about like all of civilization since that has changed. We're talking about the invention of the electric light. Yes. Maybe a good, maybe a reliable source of an oil lamp, you know, something like that. We're talking about a couple of hundred years where we've been moving away from just living based on the sun. There's a reason you want to go to sleep when it's dark outside. You know, there's a reason you don't feel all active and ready to get out and go places when it's really dark outside. And this is part of it. So, yeah, understanding- So no one should be expected to work for all of December or January. Okay. I'm fine with that. Let's do it. Especially- Hey, we can still at least take off that six weeks I've been recommending to still pain now and nobody cares. No, nobody cares. Six weeks. Nobody cares. Stop getting it. Boosters are proved. Let's get those boosters, everybody. Everyone go get your booster. Get your flu shot. It's probably going to be a bad flu year. Get your COVID booster. These are things that will help you. Yeah, let's reduce severe illness. We can do that. We can do that. That'd be great. Oh. I think, actually, I do feel active when it's dark out, but especially when the full moon is out. Yeah, I think so. Well, you know, but- Well, that's a whole other- You might be a werewolf. No, the full moon actually does increase activity. That's a thing. So that totally attracts. I have a thing too. My whole life been a little bit of a night out. It's somewhere after 10 o'clock at night. No matter what my sleep pattern has been, I get like this burst of energy to go and do. That's when my dopamine kicks in and says, oh, let's go do something. That sounds like a very young child who missed their nap. You miss your sleep window, and then you're like, boo! Yeah, it's very much like that. And then a few hours later, usually it's gone. There you go. Just gone. Wait for the next cycle. Yeah. Anyway, have we done it? Is it time for us to be tired and be less motivated at this moment for the show? Time for sleep. It is time for us to end the show. I really do want to say thank you to everyone. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for a good show. Thanks for making this whole thing possible. Thank you specifically to Fada for all your help with show notes and descriptions. Show descriptions over on YouTube and for social media. Gord and Aran Lore and others who keep the chat room a happy, kind place to be. Thank you for being there and managing that as well. Identity four, thank you for recording the show. And Rachel, thank you for editing. I hope this week isn't too bad. Yeah, it's gonna be cursed. I cursed, come back and check the tape. I cursed, I don't know where. It was good. Cursed show, okay. And especially would like to give some shout outs to our Patreon sponsors. Thank you too. Teresa Smith, James Schaefer, Richard Badge, Kent Northcote, Rick Loveman, Pierre Velazar, Ralph E. Figueroa, John Ratnaswamy, Carl Kornfeld, Karen Taze, Woody M.S. Chris Wozniak, Dave Bunn, Vigored, Chef's Dad, Hal Snyder, Donathan Styles, AKA John Styler, John Lee Alley Coffin, Gaurav Sharma, Reagan, Derek Schmidt, Don Munda, Steven Albert, Andel Maishak, Stu Pollack, Andrew Swanson, Fred S.104, Sky Luke, Paul Ronevich, Kevin Reardon, Noodles Jack, Brian Carrington, David E. Youngblood, Matt Bass, Vote Beto for Texas, John McKee, Greg Reilly, Marqueson Flow, Jean Tellier, Steve Leesman, AKA Zima, Ken Hayes, Howard Tan, Christopher Rappin, Dana Pearson, Richard, Brendan Minnish, Johnny Gridley, Remy Day, Flying Out, Christopher Dreyer, Ardeam, Greg Briggs, John Atwood, Rudy Garcia, Dave Wilkinson, Rodney Lewis, Paul Rick Ramis, Phillip Shane, Kurt Larson, Craig Landon, Sue Doster, Jason Olds, Dave Neighbor, Eric Knapp, E. Oak, Anna Mishkon, Kevin Parish, Anne, Aaron Luthon, Steve DeBell, Bob Calder, Marjorie, Paul Disney, David Semerly, Patrick Peccararo, Tony Steele, and Jason Roberts. You all of you for your support on Patreon, and if anyone out there wants me to read their name in this list, well, you can head over to twist.org and click on the Patreon link. And on next week's show, we are going to be joined by a special guest we'll be speaking with, Brian Nelson, about his new book, Flush, Science of Toilets and Public Sanitation. It's gonna be awesome. That's great. Yeah, it's gonna be Wednesday, 8 p.m. Pacific time. And you can find it, we'll be broadcasting live from YouTube and Facebook channels and from twist.org slash live. If you want to listen to us as a podcast, maybe as you go on your early morning walk in the summer, cause it's light out, just search for This Week in Science with our podcasts that are found. If you enjoy the show, get your friends to subscribe as well. For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes and links to stories will be available on our website, www.twist.org. You can also contact us directly, email Kirsten at kirstenthesweekandscience.com, Justin at twistmanin at gmail.com or me Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist, T-W-I-S in that subject line or your email will be spam filtered into the deep dark winter when we will be too apathetic to even look at it. Oh gosh. Yeah, if you're just gonna be great. You can also keep up or hit us up on the Twitter where we are at twist.science at Dr. Kiki at Jackson Fly and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes to you in the night, please let us know. We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember. It's all in your head. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science is the end of the world. So I'm setting up a shop, got my banner unfurled. It says the scientist is in. I'm gonna sell my advice. Show them how to stop their robots with a simple device. I'll reverse below the warming with a wave of my hand. And all this is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. Science. I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news. That what I say may not represent your views but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just that understand. And that's the end. I did a poor fade on that one. It's hard to fade in stream yard. It's really hard. Yeah, it's hard to fade it out on this little fader thingy. You'd think it would be more responsive but at least we have a fader there. We do. Oh, I can start doing it through my computer again. I don't know. Baby steps. Yeah, baby steps. Yeah, we'll figure out what we like best. What do we like best? It's the after show everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. For Nez, your episode. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. See. Yeah, so interview next week. I have a week to read his book. It's really exciting. Yeah. Bren is a cool guy. He lives up in Seattle. Seattle? Seattle, yeah. So he's one of the people who is happy to do the show at its normal time. Yay. It's like, sure, that's fine. So I think he might be on for, he might stay on for the whole show, not just the interview. Oh my. Which could be fun, but we will have to, maybe. Off to see if I can find poop news. Yes. Yeah. Sanitation, poop, urination, all of that. That's what we get to talk about. Like, we can theme the show up. Yeah. See if there's, see if I can find the journal of public sanitation. There was a study that came out, I think today or yesterday. So it would be like, it'd be cheating a little to bring it, but it was about coprolite, which is fossilized poop. Why not fossilized poop? Those are always fun. You know, it's someday, I bet that people are going to be looking at our fossilized poops. Yeah, you have when you talk about some animals that have like their little latrines. Yeah. Mittens. Mittens, yeah. Not mittens. Don't put it on your hands. Don't put the mittens on your hands. Mittens. Yeah, mittens. Mittens. I used to have to clean a rhino mittens. Oh. That was the joy. That was a great workout. How heavy is rhino poop? I mean, it's the same weight as any other poop. There's just more of it. Is it, it's got to be like as big as a baby rhino. It's like, it's that same question. What weighs more, 100 pounds of feathers or 100 pounds of bowling balls? Well, they weigh the same. Oh, I know that. I know that one. No. So for the one rhino I would pick up after, his midden was probably a little below waist height, was probably like a four or five foot diameter pile close to waist height. It was two full large wheelbarrows. Per day. Per day. Yeah. It was a fun workout because I had to, I had to wheel one wheelbarrow in front of me and one behind me through sand, usually in rubber galoshes, real good for your arches and your back and everything. So then you go through that, then you fill them both up and then you roll them back, one by one behind you. Lift it and walk through sand. Like just. That was a 20 somethings job for sure. I don't know how people still do that stuff. I can't. What, what do you do with it? It's for 20 year olds. Well, so when I was a zookeeper, I don't know what the current situation is, but when I was a zookeeper, there was a person who their entire job was to drive the poop truck. And so they went through every day, they had their route, they picked up the poop, it went in this giant like dump dump truck in both meanings of the word. Did it go in a poop loop? Yes, it went in a poop loop. They drove the poop truck, they picked up poop all over the zoo and then it went to various places. So carnivore poop had to be bagged and that went to landfill because carnivore poop is essentially can be dangerous. You can carry a lot of bacteria, it can't be used as compost. But all of the herbivore poop would be taken to, I don't remember where it went. I think maybe it went to the local waste management first, but I think a lot of it ended up being used in Golden Gate Park as fertilizer. Okay, because that was like, what a great opportunity. Yeah, yeah. Especially in the city, you probably don't have easy access to that kind of utility. No, no. Yeah, so yeah, so it was like free fertilizer that other people would use. So that was the situation when I was there. Obviously that was like over a decade ago. So I don't know what the situation is. It would be great to find out that the Central Park there or whatever is lush and green thanks to hippo poo. Yes, yes, certainly. And rhino poo. Well, the hippo poop, I gotta tell you, there's not a lot of scooping of the hippo poop because it's the male hippo poop especially. Don't they spray it? Just everywhere. Yeah. The males do. The females, they'll let it drop, but the males do, and then they'll poop in the water. And then, so I would have to, I helped clean the hippo barn a few times and it's on the ceiling. You have a specialized extended thing that you're like, you're scrubbing the ceiling, and then you put on these like gloves that are like scrubby gloves that I think are like shower gloves, but you put them on over your latex gloves, and then you have to scrub the poles of all of the areas inside because it's just caked every day. Then they're horrible creatures. So how dare you? But rhinos on the other hand, very much like how a cat will go back to the same spot over and over again. Yeah, middens. That's what we've been talking about this whole time. No, I don't. You're calling it middens. Middens is like a archeological team for trash heap, but is it also- No, it is a rhino midden. That is an actual thing. But then they barred it maybe from, anyway, it doesn't matter. Archeologists probably barred it from animal staining. We can slug it out later. But they will go to the same spot and they're very civilized rhinos. And you know, whenever you see a rhino depicted in a cartoon or something, they're always like angry, they're the most playful, fun-loving creature that I have ever encountered on this planet. They spend their day playing. And they snuggle with each other at night. They snuggle up and they sleep next to each other and they rub up against each other. I think you described them as like giant puppies. That's what rhinos live like. Rhinos live like- It's because they don't have to worry about anything. They got like tuna courage, their skin. Yeah. They got that. They got the reputation. They look really tough. They don't have to act with each other. Really good ears, really good nose. They know what's coming. May we all have the personality of a rhino? Yeah. I feel like I need personality for a rhino. When you really cross a line. It takes a lot. But is this true? And then this is gonna ask more rhino questions. Is it true that to run away from a rhino, don't run away from it, run sideways? Because they don't- I've seen rhinos run though. They seem to turn on the time. I have never heard that. They don't really seem to have a problem. I heard this like- The one rhino tip I will give you for all of you planning to go places where there are rhinos is to stay downwind of a rhino. Downwind? They want to stay downwind. That is not true. Does it smell you? Correct. So a lot of times rhinos will charge because they smell an unusual smell. But they can't see. They charge. Yeah, they have terrible vision. So they smell something weird, they charge. So you are supposed to stay downwind of a rhino. And from the rhino's perspective, they're just being curious. They're like, whoa, what's that? Oh, is this something like- No, no, they're trying to kill because they're trying to protect themselves. Don't even try. Okay, okay, fine. They're still trying to stab and trample. Apparently back in 2017- What are you saying? Papi would do the same thing. I'm sure you must have talked about this, Blair, but there was a story about rhinos using poop piles like a social network. Yes, I do believe we talked about it. That sounds familiar. Chemicals lead to- Oh, 2017, so long ago. We were so naive, so young. It's five years ago. That's insane that 2017 was five years ago. Hey, before we wrap up here- Before I just cry myself to sleep, okay, yes. We have nine shows until show 900. What are we gonna do about that? Or we have 19? I thought it was nine. I wasn't paying attention. Oh, no, it's nine shows. It's nine. So that means, you know, it's before the end of the year. So that's gonna be- Do we want to do, should we do something? I don't know. 900's kind of a big deal. It's our last big celebration before a thousand. Which is like two years away. And then a night, which is like two years from now. That one's two years from now. Okay, so this was 91, 293, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99. So it'll be November 9th. Okay, well, we should all still be alive by then. November 9th. Yeah, no, that's fine. I could definitely, I could hang with that. I'm just curious if we're trying to do anything. We should do, I think we should do a show. Where- For sure. We'll do a show. We'll get in and talk about science the whole time. Yeah. All right, that is an eye. Yeah. That's wild. I'm gonna write it in my calendar, twist 900. I'm gonna put a question mark in case I miscount it. I don't know if you did. I don't think you did, but we'll see, yeah. It's late, I'm not gonna trust my book. 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, yeah, the 9th. Okay, well, I just wanted to plant the seed. We can talk about it next week. We have nine weeks. Yeah, we're gonna talk about it six weeks. Nine weeks, plenty of time. Yeah, to do nothing. And to do a new, maybe we'll read the newsletter. Oh, yeah, we'll release the newsletter. That's a great idea. Justin, do you wanna write something? Yeah, absolutely, I'll have it two by this weekend. Okay. I believe you, wink. Yeah. Noodles is recommending 900 animal encounter tips from Blair. 900, I guess, 900. Oh, yeah, we could go down to the top 900 stories that we've... Oh, boy. That would be the stories. No, absolutely not. I don't think we're gonna do a 900 countdown or a 900 memory lane. I don't know about that. I know what I'm gonna do on this show. I'm going to show how big of a pool it is that we actually have to select from each week on the show. And I'm gonna read, not gonna do the full stories, but I'll read 900 study titles. No, no, no, no. Nope. No, no. Not hundreds of tough number to do anything 900 times. Why don't you just not do anything associated with 900? Why don't we just do something fun to celebrate? Oh, that's an idea. It's a milestone, so. I suggest that we all drink, except it's gonna be five in the morning. We don't have stuff to do the rest of the day, so that's gonna be a bad idea. Yeah. Have some sparkling apple juice. Yeah, sparkling apple cider. More explore epigenetics further. Michelle Kelly is recommending. Yeah. 900 minute long show. 900 minutes. How many hours is that? Well, it's 90. It's only 15 hours. It's 15 hours. It's not as long as the 21 hours. That's like what? That's like two or three weeks of shows? It's not that. It's two or three weeks. Oh my God. How about we have four for the 900th show? We could do a tight 90. Ten times. Like, no, just tight 90 for real. Well, so then we need to like, that would be fun. Bring on like a producer from another show and have them in the corner and be like. All right, you're done now. Your time is up. Yeah. This is some fun to talk with you guys about things though. That's true. That's what happens is we just enjoy talking about the science together. And that's what happens. Yeah. Paul Disney. Not sure I can record an audio file that long. That's a 900 minute long shows. Right. Oh my gosh. Right. A 900 word essay explaining how awesome science is. Oh boy. Without using. Without counting a while. Wait, wait, without using the words. Interesting. Or amazing. Or awesome. Awesome. I can't talk about the science anymore. What? H N E K. Just take the day off. No. No. Because then it wouldn't be the 900th episode. Do we have to do it? Yeah. Then the next one. Hey, I thought we were taking 900. For the 900. Yes. What if we for the 900th episode. Did a pre-recorded. Not live show that was like. Had like musical transitions and like. And like. Animations and stuff. Like it was like a. Actually. Like a new show. So this is actually something that. Once we get this show sort of like. We're sort of just getting the show started right now. Right. Right. That's right. Once we get a little. Little bit more. Settled in. And a little bit, maybe a little bit more. Organized. And we have like. Yeah. Orders. And support staff. The thing I would love to do is to be able to reach out. To. Scientists who have published that we think the studies are interested in. With a little. Media. Reverse media kit. Where we request. Two minutes of them. Audio recording. A summary of their of their work. You know, I think. Because. Because I we try to get the interviews and it's always tough. Because everybody's got busy life schedules. And everything else and all these things. And I, and I also. You know. Understand that a lot of people in the science. Computations and the rest of it. Are maybe reticent to be. Recorded. Because there's been some past history of. Bad use of. You know, editing and that sort of thing. Which is why you wouldn't use a big thing. But you just be like, Hey, if you could give us. A two, three, two, three minutes. Spill on your, your findings. What do you. What you like about it. What's interesting about it. What people need to know about it. And then we could present it. Along with your, you know, in, in total. In full. Along with. Our conversation about. The stories. I think that would be fun. I think we could be able to reach. Potentially more. In full. Along with. Our conversation about. The stories. I think that would be fun. I think we could be able to reach. Potentially more stories per show. If we got that kind of participation. And it wouldn't require anybody to have. A set time when they come and join us on the show. They could just, you know, here's, I mean, okay. If you want to talk about your work. Yeah. Give us two minutes recorded. You talking about this. Here's maybe a guideline. And then. Many, many Ted, Ted twist stock. Except, except this would be legitimate. I think we could be able to do that. I think we could be able to do that. I think we could be able to do that. Like a lot of the. What you see on those Ted talks, which is just. Apparently anybody. And then we could tear them apart. We could be like, can you believe they said that? Don't even know what they're talking about their own research. And they wouldn't be there to defend themselves. And it would be awesome. Well, and it's, and that's also partly why I think. A promise to like, we would, if we're using it, we're using it in total. Without doing that. It's a great way for them. Aside from the press release, aside from the paper that's published in your own words, give us two minutes on, on your piece. And maybe here's a guideline of why is it important? Like answer these three questions in there. If you can, why is it important? What's the future implications of this or what, what, what you know, what brought you to this research or what, what's the next step in your research? That sort of thing. Because I do think that they're, and sort of trying to bridge that gap between the actual scientists and the audience, it's almost an attempt to get us out of the way. And I mean, it was a little bit less work on our part, but not really, but maybe a little bit more work, but get that, get that, you know, because I've even read press releases where I can tell that the person writing the press release didn't understand the study. Yeah. And that's, you know, it's put out by the university and there's somebody in the staff that is it. Oh, usually those press releases are pretty accurate and they're just quoting stuff from the research, but sometimes they seem like a little bit of extra content in there that we're probably guilty of as well sometimes that wasn't a core to the study. So as much as we can get it into scientists in words when possible, I would love to see that as an addition to the show. Cause I'm getting all of these, I got on this, I'm one of those lists now where I'm getting all of this embargoed material that I can't, oh, I want to tell you about donkeys, but you got to wait till tomorrow before I need to knock on the donkeys. Oh, did you finally start, I think we signed you up for that ages ago. Did you finally start getting, reading those emails? I never got those emails, but I recently did some stuff with AAAS and I think I'm on a list now because I'm getting tons of people wanting me to talk about them. Oh yeah, we can't talk about the donkeys. Can't talk about the donkeys yet. Oh man. Tomorrow, we can talk about donkeys. Blair, Blair, look out for donkeys stories next week. Okay. I'm excited about the donkeys. Look out for donkeys stories as of tomorrow. Great. What time is it over there right now? It's 20 o'clock French time. Right, it's when the embargo lifts, yeah. Which is by any, I think it's like eight o'clock at night. Yeah. Essentially European time maybe, if that's where France is, I don't know. It doesn't matter. Good morning. Good morning. You'll see it come out. Yeah. But yeah, I would love to be able to solicit direct scientists working on the paper in their own words. That's always the most fun way to hear a story is, and it's best if we're doing an interview where we can ask questions. I do like doing interviews, but then it's, we just have the one researcher and then, and we don't talk about more stories. And so then it's, yeah, so it's a balance. But it's hard. And it's scheduling is an issue just because everybody's time zones and everything else. So we can even hit those people who would be sleeping during the show in their time zone or working during that time zone. So that they get on, you know, on their weekend or their day off or whatever downtime at work. Record a couple of minutes. Oh, I got to redo it. I don't like how that sounded or do it a couple of times. And then just send us a Dropbox file and we can play. You'd be fun to have like two or three of those for episode. We're just like in the words of scientists really representing their own research. We have these three stories we got submitted this week. Like, yeah, it'd be perfect. Yeah. Participation is hard to get, but, you know. The participation part would be really hard to get as much as there are many researchers out there who do want to try and write things and put their stuff out. The quality is going to be different and things. I mean, I've tried these things before and they're difficult to standardize. Not that it's impossible, but it takes time and effort and it's more things. That's what I'm saying. Everybody get your approval. I'm just signing up for the Patreon so we can hire somebody to do these things for us. Right. But so, but I am hearing that we want more interviews. You want to talk to the scientists. Oh, we always love to talk to the scientists. I always love doing that. But like you said, that's a third of a show right there. Right. I would like to revisit the idea of when we do an interview splitting it into two episodes. Oh. Yeah, there's that possibility also just doing different episodes. And I have done standalone interview episodes that are just people say they don't want to do it at night. I've started doing like a Thursday or Friday morning interview, but separate. We were talking a little while ago about doing a second bumper. Like basically for me at all at night, right? But then after the interview doing like this is twists, you know, yeah. Like episode whatever be. And then go into the science stories and then you could drop it two days in a row in iTunes and Stitcher and wherever else. So it would be two episodes and they'd be more digestible that way. Cause I do think the, I love having interviews but I do think it means a lot of the time when we have an interview, we have at least a two hour show. Yeah. For sure. I think as the way that I digest podcasts I would enjoy that if it was split up. But more bite size chunks. People like their, it's interesting. Some people like their bite size chunks. Some people like their really long episodes and it doesn't matter. And this is, this is even really bite size. It's just, it's like a meal instead of an all day buffet. That's all day buffet. You can hit pause on it, you know? Put your plate in the fridge. I just like to put it back in the microwave when you're ready. I like 45 to 90 minutes for my podcasts and I like to, I like to stack them. So I like to listen to different voices for up to 90 minutes at a time, right? Like I won't listen to three episodes of the same podcast in a row even if I have them stacked up because I, they all kind of blend together and it's less interesting. It kind of turns into white noise in the background. So like if I have those 90 minute or less episodes that I can, I can have my 30 minute news show and then I have my 90 minute comedy show and then I have my 45 minute different type of comedy show, you know, then it's like, it breaks it up and it makes it more fun. But we all like more fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. More discussion. Yes, we all like the discussion. I find out who the people are. I like your, played it and put it in the fridge for later analogy that he, something I discovered and I started doing and it's kind of weird but I will, I'll make chicken and then put it in the fridge, not eat it. Put it in the fridge and eat it like the next day. Because I like, I like cold refrigerated chicken better than I like it when it's just, and at some point I realized like after a long, I was like, yeah, make dinner and you put the leftovers in and the next day you're like, oh, I got some leftovers. And I'm like, I like that more. So why am I, why am I messing up my meals by eating them too soon? I should just start doing this and that's what I've done. Now I will cook a nice big chicken dinner and then I'll throw it in the fridge and I'll have cereal. That's just a 24 hour chicken recipes with that. It is, but this is, this could, this could be a new selling motto, everyone out there, treat your podcasts like Justin treats his chicken. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Messaging, fine-tuning. I, you don't like this messaging? I don't know about my constriction. I'm not saying it wouldn't be great. Oh boy. We're a general audience. This is too much. I gotta go to bed. Good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Justin. I can't. You say good morning, Justin. Good morning, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. Thank you for joining us once again for our wonderfully fun science show. This week in science, make sure you hit those like buttons, subscribe, all that kind of stuff. We'll see you next week. We really do hope that you come back and we really enjoy seeing you every week. Thank you for being in our chat, everyone. Great to see you. Stay safe, stay healthy and stay curious. Until next time.