 It's just a match rope. It's real nice. Mumble, mumble, mumble, mutiny, mutiny, mutiny. These are the mother rings of the twins. This is Twis, this week in science episode number 562, recorded on Wednesday, April 13th, 2016. Spaceship bouncy house. Hey everyone, I am Dr. Kiki. And tonight on this week in science, we are going to fill your head with a star shot, LSD, and peepee popcorn. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The following flow of information will pass through your ear holes and nestle into your brain, where it may or may not set up a permanent residence. While there is considerable risk of information retention, that risk is not limited to what you are about to hear, but may spread to other sources of information you seek out as a result of a condition simply referred to by experts as curiosity. What is more frightening and cause for alarm is that this same nestling of information and result in curiosity condition can occur with any form of information you allow to pass through your ear holes. In light of the comparable damage you could be doing to yourself by instead listening to political pontificating or athletic event color commentary, or economic reverse forecast mortgage stock tips, or anything with jingles, sales scams, or useless product pitches, catching curiosity in any of these traps leads to certain and irrevocable doom. So we think you have made the best possible choice and that only limited harm could come to you by tuning into this week in science. Coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I want to learn everything. I want to fill it all 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 want to know what's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in science. What's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in science. Science to Kiki and Blair. And good science to you, Justin, Blair, and everyone out there, welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are here with so much science because this week was off the hook. Not going to say a curse word there. Nope. Yeah, this show was off this week. It was incredible. There was one thing after another of science, science, science, science, boom, boom, boom. I don't even know. I don't know how I picked stories for tonight, but I did. And so I have stories about the Earth's Whipple Wobble because we got a little wobble and also about perfect 10 landings. They happen every once in a while and LSD because why not? Why not indeed? That's right, kids. LSD. Why not? Why not? Oh, goodness. I have more worse climidia news. Two, count them two, two new Neander news items, and Vikings in America. What? Take a liking to a Viking. That's what I like to say. Blair, what do you have, Animal Corner Round? Oh, my goodness. I have animals that smell like popcorn. I have city moths and country moths, and I have our good friend, White Nose Syndrome. Not again. That was last week. It was not last week. Just got a quick mention last week, another quick mention this week, developments, you know. This week in White Nose Syndrome. That makes me not happy. That's important. We need to know. Bats are so important. So we will get to the bats. Sometimes you think you're bats. Other times you really are. Everybody, let's get to the news. All right, this week, press release time. It was pretty amazing. I don't know if the two of you paid any attention this week to the Breakthrough Initiative and their particular press conference that happened yesterday. All that got out of it is that we needed to find a way to shrink people, to fit them on a tiny, tiny, tiny spacecraft. Is that what I heard? Oh, like in Willy Wonka. Yeah, no. Is that what I heard it wrong? No. So you might have heard of the Breakthrough Star Shot. This isn't a moonshot. We're not curing cancer. We're not trying to figure out about the brain. We're not. This is. How do we get to another star? Right, exactly. How do we get to our closest neighboring star, Alpha Centauri? And so the idea is that we can use the power of lasers. Lasers to propel a little object that has little sails around. It's like a kite, really. And that this kite would be propelled by the energy of lasers. And actually, NASA is starting to test this idea currently. One of the most interesting things about it is that historically, this has been around for decades. This idea is nothing new. It's been around for decades. This idea that we could put something into the stars, putting something into the space, and then use lasers to laser light to propel it, the photons pushing each photon of light infinitesimally, pushing, adding that much more momentum and force to these little sails. It's been around for a while. Yeah, nothing that caused resistance. You're in space. There's no resistance. You accelerate. And so the original idea was let's put lasers in space. And lasers in space will shoot a little kite object somewhere. But that's expensive and prohibitive. And also, we have to be here to keep shooting that laser, like the whole time. Yeah, we do have to be around. Well, we're going to have to be around for this also. But the interesting thing about now, we have Yuri Milner, who is a Russian billionaire, who has said he's going to put $100 million toward this project. So that's $100 million plus some other money. And they're going to be taking this original idea. But the lasers are going to come from the ground. And the problem with going from the ground is that they still don't really know how they're going to have to figure out how to get the laser light to shoot very cleanly through Earth's atmosphere. And we know anyone who's looked through a telescope, you know how objects look hazy. You know how you look up at the night sky and stars twinkle? It's because of our atmosphere. It kind of messes with light, right? So we somehow have to tell lasers, go straight, and shoot this tiny object in space and push it to a distant star. We've got to fix that. That has to happen somehow. And then there's also the miniaturization aspect. And people have said, Nadia Drake on National Geographic, she's even said, Silicon Valley, it's the home of miniaturization. So if you need to take things and make them real tiny, Silicon Valley will do that. So we've got the tech industry behind it as well. And it was pretty amazing this entire announcement that was made. It was an hour long, more than an hour long press conference that had huge names. Stephen Hawking was there sitting there answering questions after a very slight delay. But he was there answering questions and trying to inspire people to go forward. I had a conversation on Twitter with one of the former heads of Apple's marketing. And it was a fascinating conversation with this guy, Michael Gartenberg. There we go, Michael Gartenberg. And he was like, $100 million. We should just give that to hospitals and to education. And so my response is, well, if you had $100 million to do that, you would be putting it toward hospitals and education. Some people think of what we're doing for the future and how we're going to plan for the future. And some people are helping us right now. And that's why it's fantastic. We have a lot of people on this planet. And luckily, there are a lot of people with a lot of money on the planet. And some of them want to plan for that star shot to help us go from living in apartment earth in solar system soul. I mean, really, we're just like in our little apartment shut-ins, peering out the window drapes right now. And a project like this is going to let us go knock on our neighbor's door and be like, hi. Do you have any butter? You know, like, it's a great explanation. And this is like a little robot, a little bot, who know. I mean, maybe technology will advance enough for them to put AI in this little bot, but it'll have cameras. We don't know how to take cameras when we are flying at this sub-light speed speed. I mean, by the time it gets to Alpha Centauri, it's got to be going really fast, little tiny object, pushed at laser light speed, very fast moving object. No cameras work that fast. So any pictures they take are going to be like blurry. It's going to be like you or your grandmother decided to take a picture with their little Kodak Kodafone camera out the moving car window. Nothing pretty. And then the other problem is, hey, we're going to be moving really fast. What if we run into something? There's lots of stuff out there to run into. There's a lot of empty space, too. So they're going to, in this project timeline, be trying to come up with the technology to make it work. And also the flight path to make it work. Yes, luckily, we have math. And we have people that, this is their entire job, is to chart trajectories and figure out exactly what the path would be. I think that we get into silly arguments all the time on the show about what should take our science money. But in reality, we shouldn't have to pick all elements of science and all elements of exploration are really important. And I think that trying to get yourself to pick or to get society to pick is kind of like saying, OK, you can have clean water or you can have your gourmet $20 cheese, but you can't have both. And we should be taking water as an absolute as something that we can always have. Everybody should have clean water. And if you have the ability to have some amazing, delicious, very, very, very expensive cheese, you should be able to treat yourself to that cheese. So all this basic level stuff, education, all these other things that we're talking about funding, that should be a given. We shouldn't have to campaign for that money. We should have this other money to do exploration. It shouldn't be a one or the other or an either or. Exactly. I mean, it's not an either or. I mean, some people are going to give their money to one thing. Other people are going to give their money to another. And it's great. I mean, some people want to explore the oceans. Some people want to explore space and help us get off the planet. Other people want to make here and now better. And this is right. That's not the science. That's the social politics of it. But I mean, every time you come up with an idea related to, hey, let's explore the universe, you have to field these questions of, OK, but our population is growing, the planet, climate change, blah, blah, blah. Let's deal with this stuff now, but let's also look at the future of humanity. And also, space is something that will inspire the next generation of scientists. That's exactly what's going to cause our general population to be better educated in future generations so that they can then make the right decisions for the Earth, is for us to be able to cue into what gets people excited and thirsty to learn and explore. And some people are super excited by this stuff. Others not so much. Everyone finds what they like. Yeah. And I'm also going to try to hold my tongue as much as possible and say, hey, let me say one thing to you. Let me say one thing to you. These are not people going to the next star. This is just a little robot, Justin. Which is what we've talked about before, robots. My point comes is this we directed the conversation towards money. I think there is a lot more interest in enthusiasm. And I think it's great that a multi-billionaire from a dictatorship is interested in throwing some coin towards science. I think that's wonderful. I think there's also a lot of mega-billionaires whose interests lie in preventing science. And so when we're talking about the money part of it, it is a socioeconomic issue of things on Earth. And I think that would solve this whole deep underfunding of science thing quicker would be better economic policies here on Earth. And now the distribution of wealth is managed. And let NASA do it. Right. So the breakthrough star shot, which is a fascinating idea. There's still another mega-billionaire who can have it. We also have Andrea from who was Carl Sagan's wife behind this project. We have many people who are interested in not just looking for alien life. I mean, a lot of people think, oh, we're going to try and go to this place to search for, go to the next star over to search for alien life. Well, the likelihood of life there is pretty slim anyway. So what we're really looking for are things like building blocks for life. Are there chemical signatures around the planets that are around the stars in this binary system? Additionally, we have the question of can we make this a proof of concept for exploration? We could get to Mars in something like 20 or 30 minutes using this technology. We could be able to search our own solar system using this technology if it is a successful run. So $100 million thrown into this, you look at it only as we're sending a kite to the star next door. And you go, eh, but it could happen within our lifetimes. So by the time we're old and gray, we could be sitting down and going, hey, there's some results from this. Much bigger, I mean, Voyager missions, and now the star shot may be possibly. And it could open up a lot of technologies because camera advances that they'll need, technology advances they're going to need to be able to make this possible in the next few years. It's going to be stuff that we're going to be using here on Earth as well. As soon as it's made available for this project, it's going to be transferred into technology that we can use. So it's going to be, I mean, can you imagine the high-speed photography that's going to come out of this? It's going to be brilliant. Our drones are going to be so good at taking pictures. Right, yeah. All right, so breakthrough star shot, very exciting. A lot of big names behind it, some money behind it. Controversy, if you look at it from the money perspective, possibly. But for technology initiative, it is something that will potentially get us, move us along the road toward leaving our solar system and even living better here on Earth potentially. So that's the upside of all of it. In other, more close to home stuff, SpaceX just last week launched its Dragon capsule very successfully on a resupply mission to the International Space Station. Among the items in this resupply mission is a bouncy house. I mean, that's the colloquial term for it. But it's a fascinating idea. It's an inflatable module for the International Space Station. So they bring it up, they click it together, inflate it with air, and then they can use it for living or for experiments or whatever. And so the question is whether or not this type of technology, not a hard body space living solution, might be the next step in how we put people in space. Because it's lighter weight, takes up a lot less storage room when you're actually putting things on a rocket to throw them up into space. And then when you get it up into air, up into space, you just inflate it. It goes to whatever size it is, and then you can use it for whatever purposes. So the efficiency and application of this kind of inflatable technology is potentially going to be super innovative. It is innovative, but it's a really interesting idea. And maybe in an inflatable, it'd be easier to put things like water in some of the walls and not have components get destroyed by them if you're dealing with flexible skins, airtight skins, So I'm picturing being weightless in a six-sided bounce house right now. Right? That's all I can think about. Would you ever get any science done? Because I wouldn't. Well, we're going to find out really soon because on the 16th, they're going to inflate it very soon. So we'll get some videos. There will be videos. I can't wait. International Space Station is going to be sharing all this stuff very, very soon. And you can watch it be installed if you are so inclined. And then finally, of course, Dragon X capsule goes up, and then something's got to come back down. And SpaceX has been working on this retrievable booster rocket system. This by far is my favorite billionaire created contribution to mankind right here, this. This is pretty amazing. So SpaceX successfully, finally, was able to land its rocket on its water landing pad. So we know many times previously we've reported that the rocket has failed. It lands and explodes. But this time, landing stuck. Perfect 10 landing. No blowing up. I mean, there were a few tweets, because I didn't actually watch it happen. There were a few tweets from people like John Ratnaswamy and others who said, oh my gosh, I could be crying right now, and I hadn't seen what happened. So I was like, oh, third try. They didn't make it. They messed up. And then I went and looked, and I'm like, oh no, they made it. This is amazing. And so to all the people at SpaceX who have been working towards it, it's pretty amazing. And I don't have the picture of it available at this moment in time, but there is a wonderful gif that composites a science fiction movie against this rocket landing. And they are exactly the same. Some 70 years apart-ish, give or take a few. Yet, science fiction movie predicted this reverse landing, this perfect landing. It's amazing. So the engineering and science involved in this, congratulations. I hope this is something that is not just a one-time deal, but something that is again and again and again. And they finally got the bugs figured out. And here's the thing, too. If it works half of the time, I mean, you're recovering a booster rocket that you get to reuse. Even if this thing misses on the next attempt, you just saved yourself having to build an entire booster rocket. This is one of those things that can cut down the cost of sending the big payloads into space. Significantly, in half, if it works half the time, even better if it works a larger than 50% of the time-ness. But yeah, this is a huge breakthrough. And this is going to make it much, much easier. Get payloads up, or much cheaper to get payloads up. Much cheaper, yeah, to have that reusable aspect is going to, I don't know, we all have those reusable razors. Supposedly makes it cheaper, right? All right, this is This Week in Science. Justin, what do you have for us? I have This Week in the End of the World. Oh, no. I want to end forever. As if the bad news about global warming wasn't that it was. Oh, yeah, that's over. We fixed it. Wait, what? Hey, wait, let me start over. As if the news that the bad news about global warming was that it wasn't bad enough, wasn't bad enough, it just got even more worser, with yet another new study pointing out how conservative original estimates have been and how many new data points are pointing to even higher Fahrenheit's that we will be achieving in the future. One more than the current centuries. By the end of the current century is the estimate of this current round of bad news. And we're getting to this extra one. This is one more or more than one more degree above the estimate that currently exists, just by counting clouds into the equation. Heat trapping clouds, the kind you don't take home to Mother Earth, according to the computer model simulations that predict the trends in global warming. There is more ice and less liquid water in clouds predicted, and that prediction period includes now, than what we actually have seen over the last decade of satellite data. And since the more water and less ice in clouds means that there's heat being trapped, more of it, and as well, less light being reflected back out into space, our predictions are off. And as it keeps happening, they are off in favor of a quicker warming. Warming and a greater degree of global warming by the end of century. Study co-author Trude Storling Mow, a Yale atmospheric scientist, explains that even though it is below freezing still, the clouds still have lots of liquid because they don't have enough particles that help turn the water into the ice crystals. They need to fixate on some sort of little bit of something in order to coalesce and turn into ice crystals. So as the climate changes, there's more clouds. There's more, far more liquid in there, where sort of evaporating the ice caps, a lot of this moisture goes into the atmosphere. But it's not forming more ice. It's not maintaining the ratio of ice. It's just putting more water into the atmosphere, which means according to Storling Mow, that the global warming will be higher than previous thought. None of this is good news, she says is an understatement. No, understatement, yes. I always hope that the climate isn't as sensitive to carbon dioxide as we fear, same with the ice sheets, but we're calling it as we see it. Several studies have come out and show that we've been too conservative up till now. Uncertainties in mainstream client science are more and more on the bad side than on the side of Lesharm. This is a different climate scientist saying this Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University wasn't part of this study, but says climate science thus is probably more open to criticism of being too conservative than being too alarmist. I'd agree with that. For all of those who say, ah, they're just trying to scare people. Actually, that was the everything's going to be bad, but, and the reality is, ah. So how much warming is predicted in the next 80 years or so depends a lot on whether society cuts back on carbon dioxide emissions. Worst case scenarios, with no carbon reduction, that's not quite the worst case scenario, though we could actually increase, but no reduction. United Nations in the government panel on climate change sees temperatures rising about 6.7 degrees per night. That's 3.7 in the Celsius. By the end of the century, and according to this study, the liquid cloud factor could add another degree or more, putting it at the 7.7, maybe 8 degrees. 6 degrees were already way over where we're supposed to be. The warm clouds also bring extreme weather, which is another thing. You can look at warming, but then that's only part of the equation. The other part of it is the extreme weather and weather being different, and that's disrupting systems. So extreme weather disrupting systems because of warm clouds full of water instead of ice, that's also not a great thing. And also, the thing to keep in mind here is this isn't necessarily has to be even warmer. It can still be freezing up there. But if that water isn't forming ice, it also becomes available for those storms. So it can also downpour and rain when it might have remained frozen. So we have a lot of factors here. And again, this is one of the factors that the IPCC hasn't got into the equation. One of these factors, and it's more than a 10% increase in the elbow. Hey. Well, to quote my favorite comic from the comic strip non sequitur, what if we're all wrong and we make the Earth better for no reason? It's always possible. It's always possible that we improve the world by accident without knowing what we're doing. That would be pretty awesome. I mean, it's like, OK, we put a whole bunch of money and effort into fixing things. And because climate change is causing issues, and OK, we fix it. We fix it and everything. Maybe it was us. It is us. Maybe it is. And yeah, no, this is the argument. It's like, you look at it from a logical perspective and you go, maybe it is us. Maybe we are really doing it. But I don't really know. So I'm going to hedge my bets. And I'm going to put my money and my efforts toward fixing things. And because I'm going to win either way. Because fixing things either fixes things or it just It stops things from being ruined. Or just makes things better. So it's like, OK, we have a win-win here. I don't understand why people don't get this argument. Because if we're going to allow it to be couched in a win-win on the if, what is going to be taken from that and sold by billionaires to people is that they only say if. They only think if, maybe. They're not even sure. See, this is the problem. We're all sure. I was just, I was illustrating on it. It's the argument. It's the illustration of the argument. Is it 6.7 degrees? Is it one degree? Either way, it'd be better to just not. Right. Just let's just not. I think that can be. I can appreciate this. I can retitle the show. Let's just not. Let's just not, you guys. All right. Is it time to move into the next segment of the show? Remind me, what is the next segment of the show? Oh, it's Blair's Animal Corn. What you got, Blair? Well, I just, I cooked up some popcorn. I wish I had brought it in here with me. But there's, do that. There's an animal, you guys, that zookeepers the world over are very aware of. It's the elusive bear cat. That's the slang name for a binturong. Dun, dun, dun. The word has a slang name. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Because it looks like a bear cat. It's not a bear. It's not a cat. It's a binturong. Yes, which is a member of the civet family, which the civet I like to call the cat dog, which is just these animals, they're all these carnivores that don't quite fit in a perfect category, visually speaking, which is why they all have these kind of funny names. So the binturong is called the bear cat because it's this fluffy, cat-sized thing that acts kind of more like a bear and regardless, they have this phenomenon of smelling exactly like hot, buttered popcorn. Really? Yeah. So this is something that confuses people for as long as binturongs have been kept in captivity because that's the only way to describe it. And I would guess in humans' scent tests, people would not be able to tell the difference between binturong tea and hot, buttered popcorn. Here's the fascinating thing about it. Is that the thing that makes hot, buttered popcorn smell so delicious is the cooking process. And it's a similar process that makes the smells in cooked rice or other really comforting cooked smells. And it turns out, it all comes down to the exact same molecule, this compound that's found in both binturong pee and hot, buttered popcorn. It's called 2-acetyl-1-pyriline, or 2-AP, P. It's right there. So 2-AP was in every single urine sample they collected from a binturong. It was in every single one. And it was also the thing identified as making hot, buttered popcorn smells so delicious. Binturongs, in general, have a really funny way of spreading the smell in their pee, in that they pee in a squatting position, which gets the urine all over their feet and bushy tails. Then as they walk around, that sounds like it would be uncomfortable, but as they walk around, that means that everywhere they step and everywhere they drag their tails, they are leaving a very clear scent trail. And binturongs don't have very heavily overlapping territory. So in order for them to communicate, they can't do gestures at each other. They're not waving at each other. They're not communicating directly. They communicate with their chemical signals, with the smell of their pee. But males and females had this. And the males did more than the females, but everybody had 2-AP. And the interesting thing to me about this is that the process of cooking the popcorn creates chemical reaction. Yeah, it's the Maillard reaction. I was blanking on the name earlier, but it's the Maillard reaction. I did a video all about the Maillard reaction when I did my food science videos years ago. And this is this amino acid sugar reaction that only takes place when there's heat. So it's the toasting of bread. It's the browning of onions. It's like all these things that have sugars, and you add heat, and this gets released. So how is it happening inside of a binturong that doesn't get hot enough to cook things? Have an internal combustion engine? Obviously, they're stinking out from the zoo nights and taking in movies and taking copious amounts of popcorn. Obviously. No, it turns out that it most likely has to do with bacteria. So bacteria, either on their skin, or in their fur, or possibly in their gut, when urine exits the binturong, then the bacteria get to work, which the scientist studying the binturong urine had this idea because they found that the longer the urine was out, the stronger the scent came. And they actually found that out by accidentally leaving freeze-dried binturong urine on a hot tarmac. For a little too long. I left the sample by the plane. It's just heating up. And the scent got stronger and stronger and stronger. But essentially, this bacteria, as far as they can tell, is causing this chemical reaction. They're creating this compound that otherwise would not exist. Yeah, they're breaking it down. They're taking that metabolic step that we use heat to create. Exactly, yeah. So they likened it to sweat in our armpits, which the sweat itself isn't what smells. It's the bacteria that live in our armpits that eat the sweat that create a chemical reaction that makes smell. And I think it was flying out in the chat room. He says he only eats popcorn unbuttered. What peas that? And so it is unbuttered. It's just popcorn. It's the heat of the heat. As a popcorn kernel is popping, that the sugars and amino acids in that popcorn kernel start interacting because of the heat that is applied. And so the smell of popcorn. I mean, you have buttered popcorn, but just popcorn in general has this scent. Right, so I think the hot buttered popcorn, I don't know if it has to do with the cooking process. If it makes more of this compound because there's oil involved, so the heat is getting raised potentially in the cooking process. I don't know the chemistry behind it. But ultimately, all of the stuff is there in the popcorn without the butter. But people do say that the bentron smells like buttered popcorn. Which maybe it's just being in America. We don't ever eat our popcorn without butter. I don't know. Go Bearcat with your popcorn movie scent. There you go. Now we know where to put the concession stand in the zoo, too. Right next to the Binterone gauge. I really don't even have to fan out the smell to get people hungry. People already come looking for it. Who wants popcorn now, everybody? I personally haven't worked with Binterones. I don't know if doing that, if you tend to lose your affinity for popcorn because you start associating it with pee. I don't know. This is a question that, you know what? If there are any Binterone keepers listening or watching tonight, I would love it if you wrote in to me or tweeted at me and let me know about this because I'd be fascinated to hear. You could probably also ask, I would assume it's sort of similar to somebody who works at a movie theater. Probably over time doesn't like the scent of buttered popcorn. Perhaps I feel like it's a little bit different. Because bodily fluids are involved. Speaking of mother nature. Yeah, let's move forward. So what is a classic example of an animal drawn to something kind of like I might be drawn to the smell of buttered popcorn? A moth would be drawn to a flame or light. Exactly. Or just pheromones. Sure. But thinking about in particular light or flame, moths are insects awake at night. So they have this extra affinity for light because they live otherwise in darkness. And so they actually find their way by how relative the brightest light is, which would usually be the moon. So they work off of vectors, which is why when you light a flame or you have artificial light, moths get confused and end up going further and further close to it because they're actually trying to calibrate the vector and they can't figure it out because your light is not the moon. So this is the way it works. The problem is that then when you live, if you're a moth and you live in an urban environment, you're in trouble. There's not a great chance that you're going to live to adulthood and have a lot of babies, which is the whole name of the game being alive as an animal in the world. So it turns out that moths in Switzerland have actually started to figure out, the city moths have started to figure out what fake light is. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So looking at over 1,000 moths in Basel City in Switzerland, they were able to test these moths, their reaction to light pollution. And they found that overall the moths from populations that were exposed to heavy light pollution had lower propensity to move towards light sources than individuals from areas with low light pollution. So city moth versus country moth, city moth knows what a fake version of the moon is. They're not going to fly towards the light and get electrocuted. Or they're less likely. They're less likely. They still have a lot, but they were less likely. Absolutely. So this has been a short turnover period, but it looks like they're starting to adjust. So is it also just be that these are like would have been naturally bad navigators to begin with? And that the good navigators have all found the flame. So that is not just much, and we didn't weed it out. Well, that's kind of how evolution works, right? So I think the question you're raising is totally valid, which is, is there going to be a negative fallback from an animal that would otherwise have been more fit, now all of a sudden being the least fit in a new environment? Is there going to be some negative genetic traits associated with something that used to be negative and is now positive that we'll see in the population? I think that's a great question. Yeah. And so if there is variability, if those alleles are present to actually influence navigation ability, then that is a selectable factor. And that seems to be what's going on. Yeah. And the authors of the paper also posits the question, is this in any way related to pollination? And is this actually going to make them worse at pollinating plants? Oh, that's an interesting question. So why would light necessarily just reflectance from plants? It certainly could be. Yeah, I was doing some poking around about that, and I couldn't really find any definitive explanation of that. But I would guess that certain plants definitely would have an advantage in being more visible at night. So if they're more visible, does that mean that they glow with the light of the moon? Does that mean they reflect the light? There's all sorts of ways that they could kind of attract a moth that, as you were saying, Justin, is more fit in talking about historically what would make a moth more fit, is that also going to attract them to the right flowers, because the flowers are playing off of that, and where now there's going to be a negative. I also just love that I now know, because I had no idea that they were looking for the moon to navigate by, why they were so attracted to the light. Because I always felt like if they would just stop being nocturnal, there's plenty of light. You don't have to get drawn in any one direction. You can bathe in this stuff, but. Yeah, it's all about navigation. But yeah, I suppose that's the other thing, being really attracted to light sources and being good at doing that, and landing on certain flowers because of the reflectivity. That does make an engineering of that. If the others aren't as good at it and to begin with, then maybe they don't pollinate so much. Or maybe they're just a little nearsight, and they'll still be able to. You hope. We hope that the pollination still occurs in the way that we need. What we need is teeny, tiny sunglasses. That's right. Here, mods. Here's two little sunglasses to put those on. They make them for chickens. It's just a little bit smaller than that. Yeah, my son today, we were talking about bees, and he was asking me why we can't do it ourselves. He was like, well, so what if the bees go away? I mean, he didn't say it exactly that way, but that was his question. He's like, OK, if the bees go away or they want to go someplace else, why can't we do it? Why can't we pollinate everything? Now, there's a job creation bill right there. So bring kind of one of the labs where they take a dead bee abdomen, and they actually pollinate plants intentionally. Have them do that for all of five minutes. They'll get pretty sick of it. And this is what we don't want to have to do. Please, please. You know what we want to do, though? Take a break? Yeah, we want to take a break, and we want to have a second half of the show, because we've got some more great, great, great news stories coming up. We've got brains. We've got Neanderthals, and also, and the white nose. I don't really want to talk about that. We're going to have to talk about it. 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I'm gonna try to turn to you because it gets a little bit longer to share. Researchers reporting the American Journal of Human Genetics published by Cell Press have completed the first in-depth genetic analysis of Neanderthal Y chromosome. Which has been pretty tough to do because pretty much all the Neanderthals we've been finding are female. So they got a sample. This is a Spanish Neanderthal with the right chromosome. They say the findings offer new insights into how the relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans and some of the genetic factors that might have kept the two lineages apart. The Y chromosome is the main component remaining to be analyzed until now. Characterizing the Neanderthal Y chromosome helps us better understand the population divergence that led to Neanderthals and modern humans. It also enables us to explore possible genetic interactions between the archaic and modern gene variants within the hybrid offspring. What this is all getting at is that the analyzed Y chromosome Neanderthal found in El Sidrón, Spain, and it suggested what they expected that Neanderthals and modern humans diverged about 590,000 years ago. So this is right where we expected this number to be. Perfect consistent evidence relating to other information that we have gathered. They also say the Neanderthal Y chromosome they sequenced is distinct from any Y chromosome observed in modern humans. Suggesting that the lineage in question is extinct. They also found... It makes sense, right? Neanderthal lineage extinct. Well yes, but I mean that the Y chromosome itself is extinct within the human lineage because we of course have or at least that particular lineage but there was enough differences in the Y chromosome that they're saying, hey, we don't see this in modern man. They found some intriguing protein coding differences between the genes in the Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes. They're saying three of those changes are mutations in genes known in humans to produce male specific, minor histocompatibility antigens. Antigens derived from one of those genes is known as KDM5D and are thought to elicit an immune response in some pregnant mothers against the male fetus and lead to miscarriages. So then the speculation becomes, aha, maybe in the interbreeding that took place the males were rejected and so this is why we don't have any evidence of this. So finding the most functional differences associated with these genes rather than with genes involved in sperm production came as a surprise as Mendez who's one of the researchers in this. Because that was one of those theories. It's like, well, maybe there was low sperm production in male Neanderthals. Maybe this was part of why interbreeding wasn't actually more common than it was. So, or maybe this is why their groups were so small is that they also didn't breed as often as we does. So, maybe it wasn't the low sperm count but rather a possible rejection factor. Researchers say additional research is required to confirm the role of those Y chromosome mutations in discouraging the formation of hybrid Neanderthal human species and they're planning those experiments now. But here's the issue I have with this. It's how the Neander human hookup likely took place to begin with. It was probably not some sort of Romeo and Juliet coupling or eloping, you know, followed by putting down a few stone flints on a nice cave in the suburbs with all the other Neander human hybrids and then taking that wheel sales job in the city. However, the hookups actually took place. Whatever the courtship looked like, it was likely very short-lived and the ensuing pregnancy and childbirth would probably have taken place amongst the pregnant mother's kin. Right. So, this is why I think we would see evidence of, this is why we see evidence of humans with Neanderthals DNA, but not the other way around in this region. So the Y chromosome would have to have been very lucky to survive. It would have been 50-50 if it's male or female and then it's in a population pool of modern human Ys, which are only gonna be passed down through the men so as soon as one of those fathers only has daughters, boom, it's gone. Right, and additionally, if there is this immune-related gene that leads to miscarriages, then suddenly mothers pregnant with males are having miscarriages. Which is what they're suggesting. However, I think that's probably the stretch. I think it's just, even if that's not there, you would still... There's still cultural aspects of what you're arguing. Yeah, the gene pool. Well, the gene pool itself would be one of where, it's just the mothers bringing it back in and it would have to be fathers all the way back to really keep this. So that's part of it. And I think there's a piece of information that we can confirm that, which is in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, we see Neanderthals who have human genes from 100,000 years ago pairing. The only DNA we have currently is from a female finger so we can't currently shed light on this issue, but I would expect that there would be little chance of finding a male Neanderthal who has human genes in its ancestry but also maintains that white chromosome in their population because again, I would predict that it was very likely that the mother and then human Neanderthal coupling actually went back to the kin and stayed within that gene pool. And that's how that gene pool maintains a human ancestry. All right. So just my bid on that. The other, oh gosh, now I gotta find, where's my other? Oh no, let's see. Your other Neanderthal story that you've been teasing. Yeah, the other. Let me go away. No, no, I heard it. So the second one, new studies suggest that Neanderthals across Europe may well have been infected with diseases carried out of Africa by waves of modern humans carrying tropical viruses and interacting with them. But not just human to Neanderthal infections. Apparently we were the number one vector for a whole host of other species as well. Researchers from the University of Cambridge, Oxford, Brooks have reviewed the latest evidence gleaned from pathogen genomes and DNA from ancient bones include that some infectious diseases are likely to be many thousands of years older than previously believed. So for a long time, we sort of put this upswell of communicable diseases into the hands of our earliest farming communities because small groups of hunters that lived in populations of 15 to 30 when they moved around, they caught a disease. Even if it did wipe them all out, it didn't affect everybody. It didn't stay around and these diseases just sort of affected that group. But once we started farming and living together and getting these larger populations, the diseases persisted. But yeah, so there's evidence that viruses moved into humans from other hominins while still in Africa. So the researchers argue it makes sense that humans couldn't turn past diseases to Neanderthals. Short list of possible ailments include tapeworm, tuberculosis, stomach ulcers, and a type of herpes that are caused. Oh, herpes has been with us for so long. Yeah, there's more on that. There's a little bit more on the herpes too. Maybe with you. No. Oh, no, oh, what was that? That was harsh. How was that? Out of left heel. What? With humans. Getting lots of animals. Herpes, simplex, there are many, many, many variations of this virus, but it's been. So I'm gonna skip ahead. I'm gonna skip ahead to that real quick. I'm gonna skip ahead to that real quick, and we'll get back to where I was. One of the candidates is herpes simplex too, the virus that causes the genital herpes. There is evidence preserving the genome of this disease that suggests it was transmitted to humans in Africa 1.6 million years ago from another currently unidentified hominin species that in turn acquired it from chimpanzees. At least that's the story our ancestors are telling, right? Yeah. Oh, no, it wasn't directly, there was this other hominin that was not as chimpish at the time, but 1.6 million years ago. Yeah, it's kind of hard to tell. Chimp, not chimp, it's all vague. It's all very vague back in those days. You don't understand, you weren't there. Oh, dear. But apparently this intermediate hominin that bridged the virus between chimps and humans shows the diseases could have left between different hominin species. Herpes vices transmitted sexually and through saliva and since we know that humans bred with Neanderthals, we all carry that two to 5% Neanderthal DNA, makes sense to assume that along with bodily fluids, humans and Neanderthals transferred diseases. So some of the other things in this though that were interesting, because we thought it was this close living together and close quarters with livestock, we've blamed a lot of our diseases coming from livestock. But there's evidence that tuberculosis was actually not transferred to humans from livestock as we long believed, but that likely the livestock got it from us. Oh, wow. Who ratted us out? Was it the sheeps? That's an interesting twist. Isn't it? There's also some talk about this where it's whether Neanderthals, because they were the hunter-gatherers too that lived in small groups, that the wipe out of them by our diseases wouldn't have been as immediately catastrophic as what took place in the Americas with syphilis and the other diseases brought to the Americas and the poxes and everything, because they were hunter-gatherers. They lived in those 15 to 30 person unit groups. And so even as one or two populations got knocked down, it wouldn't likely have spread like wildfire through Neanderthal populations, but still could have definitely been a big factor. And it's also interesting, because again as we've talked about this with the Y chromosome, that's a population that doesn't show human ancestry. We have this Siberian Neanderthal community that shows 100,000 years ago some unknown group of modern humans made it up there and made it, but the population stayed, kept those genes, and so they wouldn't have been as affected by the disease. So it may be also sort of interesting then tracing back as we sort of do this back engineering of history, maybe that group that left Africa 100,000 years ago or earlier wasn't as, those that hotbed of tropical diseases wasn't as widespread. Although it sounds like the herpes has been with humanity. A long time. 1.6 million years ago, so maybe that is what did them in up north too. It's a good thing we have a vaccine now for some of them. Possibly. A little late for Neanderthals, but not so late for us. Here we go. All right, I got some brain studies. Brain studies, right? I felt like a zombie on Monday, but I'm not really a zombie, really. But there are researchers who are looking at how hallucinogens affect our brains. And it's been a long, hard road because they were made illegal. And so once drugs are illegal, it's like, oh, let's do research. Oh, I can't get approval. I can't even get my hands on them. How am I going to study? How do they really affect the drug? So there was a lot of great research late, in the 50s, early 60s. Great research going on on LSD, some EEG studies where they're looking at brain activity and able to determine that there were changes in the brain and communication at various levels, like hippocampus to other areas. And they were able to say, okay, the electrical waves that we're seeing are changing, right? We've got differences in communication. But it was like, when you look at a fuzzy TV picture and it just gets very slightly less fuzzy, but there's a study that's out this last week. Researcher David Nutt and his colleagues were able to use, get the permits finally, to use LSD, acid, lysergic acid diethylamide, to be able to study how it affects the brain. Previously, they've done studies on psilocybin, which is the compound for mushrooms. In this particular study, though, it's great because acid lasts longer than mushrooms, so they were able to get more done. It's like this great benefit of a hallucinogenic drug for research. Anyway, they stuck people in MRI machines and they did tests to see placebo versus people who actually took LSD, what happened to activation of the brain. They've also done a lot of other manipulations, which papers are set to come out related to cognitive abilities on placebo or on LSD and other brain imaging technologies, and those are set to come out later. But this first study, it's out on PNAS, and what it shows, like the basic take home is that there is a disconnection between an area of the brain called the parahippocampus, which is kind of right outside the hippocampus of your brain. Your hippocampus is involved in memory storage and a few other emotional things. And then another area called the retrosplenial cortex. This connection that's disconnected is thought to be important because these areas are hypothesized to be part of creating your ego or yourself. So the hallucinogen loss of self is thus explained by this disconnection between two brain areas or its correlation. The second thing though, which is really fascinating is the amount that brain stimulation in other areas changes. So we have normal brain activity. There is segregation between the different cortices of the brain. So different areas of the brain don't talk to each other. You have your visual area and it doesn't really talk to the auditory area. It doesn't really talk to the olfactory area. It doesn't really talk to your sensory areas, right? I mean, you have a little bit of coordination because it has to be coordinated to keep us moving in space and time. But it's very limited and segregated. So the placebo's show this limitation, the segregation of activation of brain areas, of communication between brain areas. However, the LSD patients showed an up-regulation of activity in all areas of the brain as if all areas of the brain were communicating with each other. So it's basically the areas of brain involved in self-disconnected and stopped talking to each other. And the areas of the brain that are just involved in sensation in general were like, hey, let me get to know you. Oh, this is why it feels like I'm looking out of my hand. I know what green feels like. Like all of a sudden, you can become an aesthetically able to comprehend multiple modalities in multiple ways because really those modalities are actually exchanging information. So it's a really interesting study. This is the first time that we've actually been able to look at this level of resolution to what is happening to the brain on this particular hallucinogen. As we move forward, the question is can we use this drug as a drug for therapy? Can we use it to understand consciousness itself? This study, it's like, what's it like when you're on drugs or not on drugs? What's the difference between the brain? But when you dig deeper, the big question is how does this inform us about how the brain creates consciousness? Right. Can't you also use this to know when someone is hallucinating, when they're not on drugs? Possibly, right? So. To an extent, to an extent, but when you're talking about a hallucination while on something like LSD, it's not typically a fully delusional experience, right? No, no, it's not delusional. You're still, you have surroundings you're aware of. You have your, you're aware of your surroundings, but it's, and this is also from research that you can get a very heightened sense of your surroundings, not a decreased sense. It's not sort of like alcohol where you're going to be less aware of what's going on in the room around you, but you'll actually be hyper aware of things. And one of the things our brain has is a very focused system for taking up social cues, for taking in and understanding social relationships between people and that sort of thing. And one of the things research has noted about this is that you can become hyper aware of very subtle relationship things going on in the social framework of the people around you. You'll notice people's eye glances or how they talk different or suddenly the body language changes when this person walks in the room or when they're around that person over there. So they're, you know, I get that whole hyper awareness and all the realms of the brain sort of being connected and communicating to each other and attempting to see if this, this is useful. Is this useful? Is that something interesting? Is that something interesting? Why is these two things this way? Is that also interesting? Why is that interesting? And the ego, yeah. And the ego portion of it I think is possibly sort of that uncontainment. It's not sort of like your ego has been removed and that you don't exist anymore but that you're not sort of stuck in it. You're sort of not just stuck in those things that your ego thought was just important to itself and the observations come in, even if they weren't something that you thought was particularly interesting before. So I guess the point that I was trying to make is someone who is very uneducated in this realm. Hasn't read the research, right? Yeah, I haven't read the research on this. I am woefully ignorant. I will say, my question was more about that this is an easy way to manipulate the way the brain functions into something that is not the normal operating method for your brain. And so you can see what it looks like and then that means if you see similar things happening in a brain of somebody who's not well, that's something you can see and address. Yes, yes. And so there is that aspect of potentially from this being able to understand how to treat various illnesses. So we do know that LSD in particular works on the serotonin to a receptor and it causes serotonergic neurons to as opposed to firing together and wiring together to start doing stuff all on their own. They don't talk to each other well anymore. And so if that is a hallmark of some type of brain disorder, then maybe LSD can help us get to the fact of, oh, we need to be treating this serotonin to a receptor. This could take us down to the receptor level. Right now this particular study is a brain imaging study. It's just a big look at the picture of the brain. They're not looking at the receptors. They're not looking at individual neurons and how they're acting. Hopefully they've done those studies, but they haven't said that yet. But that's the question. How does this translate from the big picture of the brain to the very individual particular neurons that are involved? And how can we use this moving forward? That's a really big question. Yeah. And then from that jumping off from the lysergic acid, we've also got an amazing advance this week in treating paralysis. So a few years ago, a couple years ago, actually a paralyzed gentleman in Ohio became a subject for a study. And I think we reported on this where he had a chip implanted into his brain that allowed him to be able to bypass his damaged spinal cord. And in just a couple months time, he was able to open his hand and start doing some basic movements. And it was a very basic advance. Chip in brain to a computer interface that then you can put something on a sleeve and stimulate the muscles out from the outside to be able to get the arm working. So two years ago, that happened, this week they reported that he has transformed and he has been able to get to the point where he's playing video games, he's swiping credit cards, he has been working on this and working with them so they've improved their algorithm. He has improved the muscle strength. So of course, after spinal injury, if you don't use the muscles, they atrophy. So he had to increase the muscle strength back up. So just using it and doing very basic movements for a long time through physical therapy, using this device. But now he's gotten to a point where he has very fine motor control, which is a fascinating advance because from this chip to a little sleeve on his arm that just triggers those muscles to work, he's able to do some very, very exciting things. Any advancement that we are able to make technologically to be able to bring people out of their paralysis is amazing. You know, the prison of paralysis holds, it holds people and so if we can break that open, it's just fantastic and this is a step in that direction. They have identified, he's the first subject in their work, in their clinical studies and they have identified a second person, they're going to be involved soon. So we'll see if this is something that's generalizable, hopefully as they increase their sample size. Okay, so this is also, I mean, aside from the whole cybernetic human aspect of it, it is really a ginormous breakthrough. I mean, they've been looking at so many different sorts of things from complete exoskeletons to a mind computer direct connection, but to have this ability to create that wire across over troubled waters in the brain, that bridge between parts of the brain that function well and other parts that function well, bypassing, it's a huge step. It's massive. Let's move forward, Justin, do you have any more stories? I've got one more, this is actually a little, I meant to bring this last time, but I lost it, but there's a team of archeologists that are using space and basically kind of like Google Maps, but a little bit more advanced, have tracked down a second Viking location, possible Viking location in the United States. This is Sarah Parak who is described as the space archeologist. She's used a lot of satellite technology to uncover Egyptian ruins that could be detected from space, but had as of yet been undiscovered. And they turned their attention to the North America, Newfoundland, it looks like here. And she came up with a site that looked promising. It's 100 miles away from a site that we know to exist already that is the only, is up till now is the only known landing site of Vikings in the Americas. And this one's about 100 miles away, some distance. It's on the same island, but this island is also sort of like, Newfoundland is sort of like an inlet into the inner waterways of the Northeast Americas. And so they said, ah, this looks interesting. They went down, they did some investigating and they found what looks like an ironworking hearth with 28 pounds of slag in it and what appeared to be the remains of a turf wall. So pretty solid hit. At first they found something. They actually expected it was likely going to be either an early Inuit or Native American, Native Nation site. But the ironworking hearth and the turf walls are saying this is pretty much, this is probably gonna be Vikings, right? Which is gonna put it in the 1800, or 800 to 1300 AD timeframe, which aside from one landing spot and one little village that collapsed, now we have a second, so maybe they sustained a little bit longer and actually did settle somewhat in North America hundreds of years before Columbus arrived. But again, this would still be 18,000 years after my ancestors got here. This is good times. Yeah, and I found the site on Google Maps and just using Google Maps, you can't really see a whole lot of anything there, but some of the satellites they're using are actually being able to look a little bit deeper than just visuals. Right, so they're giving a lot more information in depth than the density of the ground and various information that you wouldn't just get from Google Maps. But still, this is definitely needle in a haystack type searching that's going on. But imagine all the other sites we may be uncovering via satellite as this sort of archeology, high-tech archeology takes on more and more popularity and more use. I love the idea of high-tech archeology. Because it's studying human past but using more modern technology. I love the juxtaposition of the two is fascinating. There's one thing I really wanna clarify too. For all those who think that there were Vikings in Minnesota at any point, every archeological Viking artifact that they've recovered was typically sold in the early 20th century as some sort of novelty gift. There's a high number of people of Scandinavian descent in like Minnesota, okay? But there was also, as a lot of Scandinavians were immigrating to the Americas, there was a land giveaway for farm land. There was kind of a giveaway, but you had to pay to get there and you had to buy supplies and you had to go through this channel of people who made money off of you to go and farm in Minnesota. So they kind of got swindled is what happened. But that's why there's a lot of Scandinavian ancestry in Minnesota. It's not because Vikings settled there and you're their offspring. It was a land scam for farming in the most inhospitable farming lands you could possibly imagine. And the suckers of the day happened to be Scandinavian immigrants. Can you still hear me? Yep. Great because my computer is giving me this spinning rainbow of death right now. And I appear to be frozen on my end completely. Oh no. Yeah, so frozen. So interesting study, no land grab, but it has to do with land and the way the earth wobbles. Some, yeah, some pretty interesting stuff has been coming out of the grace satellites. These were launched back in the early, this was launched back in the early 2000s as a NASA initiative. And the idea is to look at groundwater. So how much water is in the ground in different places? And so like 2005 or so, there was a story related to El Nino and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which is a, these are two different climatic changes that occur in an oscillatory fashion and affect weather and water distribution. And so the, back in 2005, they were looking at how water, as a result of El Nino and this Decadal Oscillation, how the redistribution of it affected the mass of the earth in various places and thus gravity. And so they were able to determine then that changes in water, so say we're in an El Nino right now, we've had a lot of water brought into the Western United States, a lot of that has run off, but a lot of it has ended up in the groundwater. So it's redistributing it. So here in the Western United States, we have gotten more mass that has affected earth's gravitational pull in various places because of the mass that's in North America right now. Australia, very dry because of the El Nino. So Australia doesn't have as much groundwater, they're in a drought right now. And so, go ahead. Well, and just to be clear too, the mass of the planet is huge mungus and the atmospheric level that we're living on where this water's moving around is very minuscule, minuscule, outer, outer layer. However. This is a tiny difference in distribution. However, distribution is on the outer limit of the planet, which is why it can have such an effect. It's sort of like, you know, you see the skater when they're doing their really super fast spin, they're all tucked in. And as soon as they start to bring the arms out, things start to slow down. So when you're moving mass on the outer edge of that centrifugal force, it makes a bigger change than you might expect. And this wobble, this tilt, this, are we gonna, we're not flying off into the sun or out into the space because of this, right? No, no, no, no, no. We're gonna be okay. We're gonna be okay, but there's a really interesting effect that was just published this last week. So we all know that the Earth wobbles around its axis. So we have this, you know, our axis of spin so that seasons occur because of the axis that the Earth is tilted on. Sometimes the southern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun and it's summer there. And then we go around and then the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun and it's summer in the north. And so that's just the way that it works. But there's wobble. There's a little flex in the system. And so researchers have been following this and they're like, what is going on? And so like around 2000 or so, the Earth's wobble was headed toward Biscombe Bay, like in Canada. Like it's like, we're going to Canada and the Earth's like, whoa, we're going that way. And it was a pretty significant amount. But then all of a sudden around like 2003, 2004, boom, changed direction. It decides it's gonna go a completely different direction and like doubled its speed. So it's like this massive amount of change. Like the Earth is really wobbling around its axis. And the researchers like, what is going on? And so they looked at all this data and they started being able to correlate changes in water distribution with this wobble. And so they looked at like the ice caps because that was like the first place they looked. And they're like, okay, ice caps are changing, things, water's melting, so let's look there. But most of the glaciers and ice caps are like at the poles. And so the poles, when it comes to spin, have very little influence on the rotational sphere that is the Earth, right? This oblate spheroid that we are. Things that are around the 45 to like 95 kind of area have a huge influence. So India, drought in India, taking away the groundwater because there's drought, it's a very small difference, a subtle difference in water distribution of the whole planet. And much smaller than what's leaving the poles. But because of where it's located, like you were saying, Justin, has a much higher influence. And so what they've been able to put together from all this data is they think they can actually, they haven't done it yet, but they think that they can go back in time, hundreds of years to be able to correlate these drought conditions and changes in water distribution, changes in climatic patterns to the wobble in the Earth's rotation. So fascinating. And it's all because the Earth is a sphere and it's not a flat thing. Is that what that was about earlier today? Boom. Yeah. Oh, well, that changes everything I thought. There were some tweets from Kiki earlier today talking about the Earth being round. No, I spent like two hours today reading about, reading flat Earth theories. It made me feel dirty. So there are actual flat Earth theories around today. That's not a joke. That actually exists. Yes. Because I thought you were using flat Earth, there's quote unquote, as a nickname for other science denialism. But you're saying there's actually people that think the Earth is flat. Yes. That's a bummer because you can, in real time, actually go around the Earth now. We have planes and things. But you can actually experience the roundness of the Earth for your very self. But I don't think this is, I don't think this is, and I haven't watched any of this. But if I may ask Kiki, this is probably not just a skeptical society of people who don't believe that the Earth is round. There's probably another component to it that is assisting this belief. Right, they say that they are skeptical. But the vast majority, and from things I've read, not that I've read everything, but from things I've read, it seems as though those people who accept the flat Earth theory come from a young Earth creationist background. So it's a certain point. When you have ascribed to an ideological viewpoint of philosophy and anything else, a worldview, that is based on stuff that is, to be kind, make it e-up. Then there is no limit to the thing you are willing to do. You guys, have you looked at these things? The flat Earth, it's a flat Earth that doesn't rotate, and it's because it's in the ether, that it's like, that's what moves light around, and the moon and the sun are both stars, and Antarctica is really a giant wall of mountains that goes all around the edge of the Earth. And we live on the back of a turtle, right? Nope, nope, nope, they don't even go there. Oh no, that's Native American. No, but if you looked under, there are a number of pillars that are holding up. No, they don't, the flat Earths do not have any ideas about pillars, they do think that we are, no, we are being shot upwards, we are being shot upwards through the ether, and there's really not much agreement on when we're gonna stop, or whether we're just gonna keep going, but we're shooting through the ether. Oh, this honestly makes me wanna cry. Right, no, I'm bringing you into my world right now. And how do we tell whether we're moving up through the ether, or the ether's moving down around us, man? Well, you know, it has to be. Once you take a little of the experiment from earlier, you might be like, yeah, it's kind of hard to tell. No, it has to do, it has to do with its high and low concentrations of ether, you know? It has to do with once you buy into a make it up world view, and anything at all that counters it has to challenge all of it, and you've dedicated yourself to this belief, you have to accept it, and you move forward, and you recreate the world around it. And this is just, it's gone on and on and on since the beginning of, what's that word, religion. Oh no. Hold on, hold on, here's something that is an underfuted fact, bats exist. Bats, let's talk about bats. I don't have bats in my world view, so I think your story's gonna make sense. Bats in the Belfry, let's continue. Bats, bats are so important for so many reasons. They control pests. The main one, they pollinate, right? We were just talking about pollinators a little while ago. Pollinator's so important. The main scourge on bats in North America right now, white nose syndrome. And I've reported about it a lot on this show, but one of the things that white nose syndrome causes bats to do, besides just die, is that they wake up early from hibernation, go out into the sun, into the light, and use all their fat reserves and dive starvation a lot as a result of white nose syndrome. Before the disease actually gets them, that's what does it. So the recent study from Vermont's Department of Fish and Wildlife found that actually about 10% of the little brown bats are surviving in the east side of the United States. So that is their species named the Little Brown Bat. And they're not being completely wiped out. 10% pretty consistently, 10% out of each population that they find is surviving. Now, this is not great because a 90% die-off is still pretty terrible. And also, females only have about one pup per year, so that means that they can't really make up for this very fast. But if 10% is surviving, that means even if we can't lick this thing right away, it's not going to completely wipe these guys out. And just board of advice, you don't want to lick a bat with white nose syndrome. Okay, yep, also true. Yeah, so a couple of things came to mind with this. So first of all, we still want to keep experimenting with bacteria, how to kill the white nose fungus, all this kind of stuff. It would be great if we could cure it and introduce it into these hibernating colonies before they wake up, before they starve, before they succumb to illness. But even if we don't make it to every single population, 10% survive. As long as they have a decent set of genes, it's not the end of the world for the bat yet. There's a little bit of hope here. Then the example that I kept thinking of was elephant seals. Elephant seals were an animal. Of course, we hunted them, but this is also something that we probably brought. We brought something on a foot of a shoe or something like that from China or Europe that brought white nose to the United States. But ultimately, we almost destroyed the elephant seal. We thought they were all gone. And then there was this huge genetic bottleneck where luckily, there's still enough of a functioning genome that these guys have exploded. One really bad disease could still wipe out all the elephant seals. But it looks like as long as knock on wood, they don't get some disease that wipes out this one genotype, they'll be okay. So bats might be okay, but they will still really need our protection because if they do have this massive bottleneck when only 10% of some colonies survive, that means we'll have to still keep a very close watch over them because they'll be pretty susceptible. But it's not over yet. It's not. We're still working on it. It's gonna happen. We're gonna fix it. It's gonna be good. Do you think scientists are moral or immoral? I think we're mostly ethical. Mostly ethical. Yes. Yeah, so this is a whole thing because what is morality? Okay, okay, I take your point. I take your point, but some researchers published a study in plus one this week entitled The Immoral Landscape. Scientists are associated with violations of morality. They did 10 experiments and they investigated morality judgments of scientists, like how people judged the morality judgments of scientists compared with control groups, including atheists. So, you know, cause a lot of times, like, ah, atheists, scientists, blah, blah, blah, liberal atheists, scientists, blah, blah, blah, and like people prescribe people to a group, but it doesn't mean that they are part of that particular group. So anyway, they did a bunch of surveys and they determined that this is, ah, like, ah, oh my gosh, from the abstract. A persistent intuitive association between scientists and disturbing immoral conduct emerged for violations of the binding moral foundations, particularly when pertained to violations of purity. However, there was no association in the context of individualizing moral foundations related to fairness and care. Other evidence found that scientists were perceived as similar to others in their concerns with the individualizing moral foundations of fairness and care, yet as departing for all of the binding foundations of loyalty, authority, and purity. Furthermore, participants stereotyped scientists, particularly as robot-like and lacking emotions, as well as valuing knowledge over morality and being potentially dangerous. The observed intuitive immorality associations are partially due to these explicit stereotypes, but do not correlate with any perceived atheism. We conclude that scientists are perceived as not inherently immoral, but as capable of immoral conduct. I could talk about this for hours. I know, but this is the end of the show, so. The short version that I see is the perfect scientist is objective in research, therefore does not favor individuals or certain priorities, but then in synthesis of that data and application of that data has a greater good in mind, right? And so it depends how you consider morality versus fairness, because also those two things sometimes directly contradict each other, being fair and being moral. Yes. Those aren't always the same thing either. Right, which is part of the questioning here. So how are, as scientists, one of the most trustworthy professions that we know of, but inherently viewed as capable of being immoral and doing immoral things? So it's an interesting conundrum here. Right, so weapons of mass destruction do not design and develop themselves. This is absolutely true, but the vast majority of the wars that mankind has fought, the soldiers were going with God on both sides. So there's, you know, when you boil it down, we can all be ailed to the same morality failures as a human. Right, but it's just equally run out everywhere. Yeah, but particularly scientists because of their, because of scientists, search for an empirical truth and the use of rational, trying to use, I mean, of course, scientists are human, but because of the use of rational, empirical, supposedly unbiased methods that could make them particularly susceptible to what is perceived as immoral actions. So I just find it a very interesting perception, public perception of who scientists are and what they're about. So I think this is something that science communicators, people who are working to help people understand what scientists are doing and the science that is being achieved and worked at that we can all take this as an understanding and kind of try and get rid of that stereotype. I mean, a limitation of this particular study was that all of the scientists and their stereotypes and the questions that they asked were male. So maybe with females, it would be totally different. We don't know. Well, that might buy us time to continue, I mean, to have the research dollars continue to come in while we buy enough time to kill all humans who aren't scientists, which is the goal that science is working towards and one day we'll achieve. No, no. The National Center for Science Education, which we've had people from there on the show many times at this point, they actually have a program where they bring scientists into classrooms and at the beginning of the program, they have kids draw a scientist and they're all exactly the same. They're older men, they're wearing lab coats and they're holding a beaker and they look crazy. And then at the end of the duck bills and then at the end of this series of scientists coming into their classrooms and speaking to these kids, they draw a scientist as someone watching birds in the field, someone doing all these different things and they're all different looks and a lot of the time they draw someone that looks like themselves, these kids. So it comes to... Stereotype, the stereotype is the problem. It comes to this whole question of what is a scientist? Which we've all dealt with in this show too, saying what is a scientist, what isn't a scientist, having these very clear lines in between science and not science. And if you're not in a laboratory in a lab coat, some people don't see you as a scientist. And so that's kind of why we're here, right? Exactly. That's kind of why we're here. I think we've done it. Do you think we've done it? Anyone have any more stories? I'm good. I'm a little dismayed that there's a story I was looking forward to seeing come up here. I know Kepler, Kepler was, ah, it was gonna be a big story. Kepler's dangerous and Kepler's okay. So I guess that's not gonna be a story anymore. Yeah, Kepler, it was going to be a big story. Kepler had some issues, got shunted into emergency route mode, nobody knows why, was not responsive. But then they fixed it, and it's all better now. But I really wanted to hear about Words for Snow. Oh, okay, you wanted to hear about it. I really did, I love the words, I love the linguistic stories, I love these. Okay, so there's this idea, there's a story that goes way back. We've all maybe heard it that Eskimos have more words for snow than anyone else. So some researchers decided to go about this, and complete about studying it in a different way than just looking at Eskimos, that they decided UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University, they took databases from Google Translate, from multiple dictionaries, linguistic and meteorological data, and Twitter, to be able to correlate linguistic trends to where people lived. And for the most part, what they found is that quote from Alexander Karsten Sin, she's a doctoral student and co-author of the study, published in plus one, we found that languages from warm parts of the world are more likely to use the same word for snow and ice. So it is true that if you are in a climate where you don't have to worry about different kinds of snow and ice, and that's not the majority of your experience, but rather the minority, your language reflects that. And so this trend supports this claim going back to 1911, that the snow in Arctic languages reflects the chief interests of the people. That's one of the first times that it's been looked at in this particular way, and it is published in plus one, so it's a publicly available article if you are interested. Also interesting is up until recently, Inuits had no word for moca latte. Now Starbucks. Now that's changed, yes. The question is, if you go to England and you ask for a latte, are they still gonna laugh at you? Is that gonna happen? I think so. Yeah, so in the interest of this, it's broadening the investigation past just the Eskimo languages and looking at all over the world, cold areas, warmer areas, can, is this a trend that is representative of people? And it is. Jim Docter, great point. Snowboarders have a very, very vocabulary. Dude, snow. Tubular. What were those? Those are surfing voices that are also probably out of date and possibly current. And possibly snowboarder voices, dude. I'm sorry, I am a child of a while ago, so. I'm a child of a while ago. Northern Californians massively underrepresenting Southern California lingo have no idea what surfers or snowboarders talk about. We shouldn't at least know, snowboarders are coastal. So am I, of course, I'm not. Are we coastal or from the valley? Oh, you are. Well, then you don't even have a word for snow or water. No. No, I'm a child of ground. That's a strong word. That's right. Snow or water at nothing. There's no word for that. Ever. Just what is? Just prime dust. What is this? Prime. I bet I can. I'd love to try that. That's a good question. All right, you guys, we have done it. We've finished another show. I would like to take this time to thank our Patreon sponsors. 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Usually put up my little thingy, but I had kind of shut down weird and had to re-come, come back in. And so I lost my whole Hangout Toolbox full of stuff. OK. That's OK. We forgive you. OK, so we're back. It's the after show, everybody. Now's the after show. It's 10 o'clock, 9 PM Pacific Time, and I have now had a little bit of vodka. But do you know if it's vodka or homeopathic vodka? How can you tell? What's Blair drinking? It's probably what? Cucumber flavored water with lemon and cucumber. Perhaps it's LSD flavored water. Doubtful. I'm going to have my first ever psychedelic experience on the shelf. Liar. You're such a liar. You would never. You would never. That's like the worst idea ever. Not only is it on the internet forever, but you'd probably destroy all of the equipment. I probably would. I'd knock this whole thing over. Color over everything. You'd be like, I had to color out everything. That'd be terrible. I would do that. That's definitely something I would do. Have I been terribly slurry tonight? No. No. OK, that's good. No, absolutely not. Good identity four. My cheeks are pink, but I put on blush. Or if you guessed me. If you asked me. See, and I've had nothing. If you asked me, I never would have guessed. Boom shaka. Good. It's good. Thank you. That's why you're a good co-host. You mean when I'm not implicating that you have herpes? What? I know. Like, what? I don't know. I don't know. It just came out. Oh, shit. You know. I felt like you were implicating that we all had herpes, and I wanted to make it clear that I didn't. But you picked a shuffling of the blame to somebody immediately in your vicinity Now I'm furious. That's a perfect thing to put on clamor. You guys. Take a little defensive, if you ask me. I'm not seeing. I know. Oh, my goodness. All right, what did I find? I know. This was a chatty episode. At any force, as it was 116 minutes, almost two hours. This is not going to be fun to edit. I would like you to know that I get back to editing twist to one hour a week again. OK, so are we going to do February like we planned? But instead, it'll be May? May? May. Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do February and May. We all know what that means, right? Yes. February and May. We will do it and work on the hour. And then we can, like, you know, I think we'll do the hour and make sure we're, like, strong on an hour. And then we can, like, save some things for the after show if we want to, like, talk about stuff in the after show. I think that'll be the key. Yeah, I think that sounds great. OK, boom. We can always do a, we can do, like, Bill Maher does. He has the normal show, and then he has overtime. We could actually post the after show as a separate iTunes posting if we want. I think we should. Right. And like I said, we'll see whether or not editing works out with this person I've been talking to. That should be a text to you, Kiki. Just received. That's my contact at the Jackson Library. Oh, cool. Well, I would like you to know that I am already in contact with the press person at the Jackson Laboratory and have potentially set up an interview. But thank you for that, yeah. It's a couple of weeks late, but you know. Yeah, no, I was working on it. I'm working on it this week. Oh, Ed, you read about Inky. Inky was an octopus that escaped in New Zealand. Right? And people are like, why did the octopus, they're anthropomorphizing all over the place. Out of a drainage. The octopus wanted to be free. Yeah, no, octopuses go where they can go. They're very curious, and they explore anything they can fit into, which is pretty much anything. The funny part that I like to anthropomorphize out of it, knowing it's nonsense, is that poor Blotchy got left behind. Oh, god. Inky and Blotchy lived together, and Inky flew the coop, and Blotchy was stuck. Inky's like, I'm out of here. Inky did not take Blotchy with him. Maybe Inky and Blotchy got in a fight. And Inky's like, I'm moving out. So funny, Dave Friedel's like, the very first one-hour show attempt was like three and a half hours. Probably true. We tried to go short, and then we go long, go really long. Yeah, octopuses, they try to escape. That's a thing. They are escaped, aren't they? What can I do there? Yes, like, I'm out of food. Nobody's fed me in a while. There might be food over there. Strengths will always have February. That is cracking me up. Right, longer shows are more science. There's also, see, we could just do two one-hour shows and have twice the science every week. There is that as well. Two one-hour shows back to back, right? So we would still do it Wednesday night. But then we could release the normal episode, and then like two days later, release the after-show. And then there's less lag in between things we release. I like it. And then what? I was in, a bonus mouse. I swear I remember when I'm in things or not. I don't know, but I must have a doppelganger out there. Season three, episode two. Of what is this called? We live in what? Well, I don't know what. To get a long-winded Justin show, Google meaningless words. Oh yeah, I was supposed to be on that show when I was in Israel, and it never happened. The latest version was also assisted by the fact that co-host Anna is Pamela. Right. And she had, Chelsea was awake and making a whole lot of commentary on the show, too. So she stayed muted most of the time to prevent it just being the Chelsea show. And so there was nobody to interrupt me. I just kept talking. That's pretty funny. OK, IMDB is not giving any for me. But the last one was kind of fun. It was reading WikiLeaks' Hillary Clinton emails from 2010 about WikiLeaks. So it was the Hillary emails about WikiLeaks at the time it was pretty interesting. There's a baby giraffe at the zoo. I know, I heard that cute little giraffe. And it's already walking out in the barn, like out first. You posted a picture on Facebook, its first trip out. Yes, its first day out was today. And baby giraffes are born at six feet. Yeah, we were at the zoo today. We were out there. San Francisco Zoo? Oh no, we have a baby giraffe. What were you talking about? Wait, I think we have the baby giraffe at the Sacramento Zoo. No, maybe you have another one. But San Francisco Zoo has one. Born when, though? Quote, baby? Born like a couple days ago. What? Yeah, I think so. We had a pregnant giraffe. And then somebody was like, oh, it had babies. And so everybody's looking for the baby. Oh, it's a Masai giraffe. Oh, what's that mean? It's a different kind of giraffe. We have reticulated giraffes. Oh, we have those too, but we have two kinds. But you had a Masai giraffe born two days ago. Yeah. Oh, so did you. Oh, look at that, they're like birthday twins. They are California, Northern California giraffe birthday twins. Dave, two giraffes from another mother. I want to watch this show to see this person. How do I get that? OK, now I need to find the giraffe. Giraffe species. OK, so you can tell by looking at their coat. Here, giraffeworlds.com slash types of giraffes. Let's see if this isn't what I want. OK, so according to this website, there's four. I thought there were more than that. Giraffe species by pattern. Let's see. Ah, here we go. OK, I'm on a screen, sure. OK, so bonus mouse has put out. It was at the Sam and April Lawrence residents in San Francisco. Those are friends of mine, so I was probably at their house. I don't remember going for a television show. That's fascinating. They have a beautiful place, though. Gorgeous place in San Francisco. No, it's me, it's me. I mean, that's the link right there. You found the key. That is the link. But I have to see this. I never saw it. What? We've also got some Red River hoglets running about. They're so stupid. They're so stupid, too. Hoglets. OK, I'm trying to find the, there's a very specific chart that I'm looking for. Oh, is this it? Giraffeconservation.org. Here we go. That's who to trust. OK, so the screen chair is not going to be great. I'm going to preface that. OK, so here we go. So here's reticulated. That's what I've worked with in the past. And then at the Jerusalem Zoo, I worked with, I think, they were Masai, but I'm not sure. I think they were Masai. Rothschild drafts are also found in zoos a lot, but those are the three that are most commonly found in zoos. Reticulated Rothschild Masai. And I think the reticulated is the least common in the wild. So interesting to look at their different markings and to try and tell them apart based on that. It's like a fingerprint, isn't it? Yes. Oh, here we go. So Masai giraffe has the most. So Masai giraffe, there's estimated 40,000. Reticulated, there's 5,000 left in the wild. Oh, and Rothschild, there's only about 670 left in the wild. Oh, wow. Yeah, not many. Yeah, so Masai is the most common one that you see in zoos. But you'll see, I want to, here we go. Is this? Yeah, so I'm going to screen share again. This is what happens in chat room when you ask a question about this kind of stuff. I just go up. So the reticulated, again, is the one that I know the most about. And it kind of just looks like it's a brown animal that you laid a white net on top of, if that makes sense. So it's mostly black, or mostly brown, with white lines all over it. A Masai giraffe kind of looks like it's splotchy. It looks like it's a white giraffe that bits of brown were put on that then started to bleed in different directions. And then a Rothschild is kind of in between those two. And it's also much darker. There we go. See, there's a Rothschild. There's a reticulate. See, on this one, you can really see the reticulated looking kind of like a net over brown. And then Masai's super splotchy there. Yep. Hashtag, today I learned. Yeah, it's interesting. So I guess the question is like, these are the three that are most in zoos. But then there is a thornacroft that looks a lot like the Masai. But there's smaller groupings of pigment versus not pigment. So it's just very slight differences. And they're all subspecies. So they all are the same genus in species. So then it gets into this whole question, again, of what is the species? What is worth saving? If we just keep giraffes around, is that good enough? Or do we need to keep these distinct subspecies around? Is that important? Do they have different functions in their ecosystems? Different subspecies? So yes, the different subspecies can interbreed. Just like different subspecies of tiger can interbreed, like a Siberian tiger and a Sumatran tiger can interbreed. Most tigers that have been in a circus or an entertainment are just a tiger because they're this weird genetic mix. So again, is it worth it? I don't know. Good question. Is that what you think I sound like? That is very rude. No? Just a friend's kid, that's all. So that wasn't a giraffe is what you're telling me. Nope, but it was a kid on a kazoo. That's how I play a kazoo. Could have been a video of me. I don't know. I don't know. No, it's cool. I hadn't ever really thought about it, but I hadn't really thought about the coloration differences in the giraffes. It's interesting. Yeah, bonus mounts. Ligers are weird. So ligers. Ligers are really bad. They don't have a complete set of chromosomes because lions and tigers are not close enough to make a real functional animal, essentially. So that means that they die prematurely. They often don't have the genes that stop growth, so they grow to huge sizes until basically their heart explodes. Wow. It's really bad. That's not great at all. Yeah, it's really, really, it's animal cruelty, breeding ligers and tigers. It's terrible. Yeah, because you're breeding an animal that you know is going to be in pain for its entire life and is not going to. And it won't live long because it's hard to give out. Yeah. Yeah. Aw. XXObot wants to know about genetic compatibility between great apes and humans. Not great. Not great. Also, I think we all have talked about morality in scientists earlier. Of all the things, this is really not. It would not be a bright idea to interbreed great apes and humans. I mean, it just is not. I mean, we go 98% compatibility, but that 2% difference in terms of species difference, massive, makes such a huge difference in brain cognition, physiology. Every aspect of the animal is affected by that 2%. And it's, yeah, no. Not OK. And yes, there were studies. And I'm sure you're probably referring to the Russian researcher, who I'm not remembering his name right now, but it was carrying out experiments, trying to impregnate female volunteers in Russia to carry these hybrid fetuses. Yeah, that's not good. So the question strengths is asking, but no goes in chimps. Now, that's a much closer relation. Yeah, I don't know if that's ever been documented. They live in different places. So that's like the ecological environmental difference is big there. But possibly, if they were in the same place, they could. But the question is, would they? Because they have different cultural practices. So would they be attracted to each other? We don't know. Yeah, I would say the likelihood of it happening naturally would be very, very low. It looks like there have been Bonobo chimpanzee hybrids, but they were made. They were test-tubed, I think. Or there's a weird paper trail that isn't complete from the 70s in a circus that might have been. This is a completely unvetted site. It says hybridization between chimpanzees and Bonobos has occurred in captivity, 92, 2002, 2004. Yeah, it's macroevolution.com. So I don't know how, like, yeah, not very well vetted. So there's evidence for it in captivity. But since we don't have DNA, it's difficult to say if it's actually happened or not. But it could definitely happen. And if you know anything about Bonobos, they will probably attempt to do anything. Yeah, but if you know anything about chimps, the Bonobos may not get a chance. Might be a little bit too aggressive. So that's what I meant by cultural differences, that they are just so different in the way they approach things. Let's see, so I'm working on getting for next week. I don't know if it's going to happen. I'm working on getting an interview with someone from the Long Now Foundation. If you know the Long Now Foundation. Googling? No, it's a really cool organization that's out of San Francisco, and they work a lot. They've got the archive.org project, and they also have the millennial clock. Is that what it's called? Oh, yeah, the clock. The big clock. 10,000 year clock. The 10,000 year clock. And they're also working on not a, I sent an email. The Rosetta Project. The Rosetta Project works. I sent an email to Stewart Brand, and he said he's too busy. He emailed me back, and he said, thank you, but I'm too busy. Could you email this person instead? And so I emailed the director of the Long Now Foundation, which is Alexander Rose. So potentially, I don't know if he'll get back to me or not, but if we hear from him, then we'll have him. But I'd love to have, I know, darn, it'd be great to have Stewart Brand on the show sometime. We'll work on that. But if we don't get Alex Rose, Alexander Rose, Xander Rose on the show next week, I'd love recommendations on other people that you'd like to have us talk to for Earth Day. I thought of finding someone who was interested in kind of a long view of the Earth, as opposed to pessimistic end of the world kind of view. Because for Earth Day, there's like, we could talk about climate, and I could probably get Chris Mooney, maybe. Or there are people, but I feel like a conversation with them would not be as optimistic as we could possibly be. And I'd like to be a bit more, I can be realistic, but I would also like to be a little bit more future thinking and taking a lot more than just climate into consideration. Because the Earth is more than climate. Something that's always good to talk about, environmental movement in the future, is the kids. The kids. What are kids doing? Who's working with the kids? Oh, that's an interesting idea. That's a thought. Yeah, that is a thought. I know there are some, yeah, there's some interesting projects out there working with kids. So that's an interesting. Yeah, too bad we can't get Jane Goodall to talk about roots and shoots. I'm pretty sure her dance card for Earth Day is pretty full up. Full. Yeah, that would be cool. Hmm. Do you know what roots and shoots is? No, maybe? Yeah, it's her. It's like a movement she's doing. It's her youth thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I think I've tweeted it. Oh, you need me to tweet you? Of course I'll tweet you, Jane Goodall. Absolutely. My boy got to meet her. Yeah? He's a girl, yeah. I saw her speak at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo last year. That's great. I think anything, there's videos of her and interviews with her. I think she speaks and just inspiration comes out of her mouth. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I just don't know. I'd be so tired if in my current state I traveled as much as she did. I think she said the longest she's ever been in one place was six weeks. And, yeah. Wow, really? In her entire adult life, I think she said. She's never been anywhere was six weeks. And that, to my 30-year-old body, sounds exhausting. And somehow she's mid or late 80s and still doing this. And I'm just, what? Huh? Well, Identity Four says it in the chat room. Some people are made to be nomads and some people are just better at being nomadic. Or you start out that way and you just get used to it. If you don't get used to the subtleness, then it's just not something that you do. Or you're just that much in demand where you don't actually have to pay rent and you're booked up solid six weeks at a time, including some overhead. It's a way to roll. I've been having these kinds of thoughts recently. Like, OK, what am I doing with my career? And what am I doing with my life? Like, before I had CHI, I had all these ideas of where I was going to go and what I was going to do. And it's just me and Marshall. So of course I'd be able to run off if I needed to and go somewhere. And ever since I've had CHI, I am way more just kind of like, hello, hello. I mean, I like to travel occasionally. But then I'm like, I just kind of want to stay home and be here for my son. And it's like I have this real internal fight over who I am professionally and who I am personally because of that. Where it's like I want to be here for my son, but I also want to give myself the time to go and experience and do things and take jobs. I've turned down jobs because I'm like, no, I'm going to stay home. God, it's wrong with me. I had it much easier. When I had kids, before I had kids actually, before I had kids, my goal was to move back to the hometown and get a job at the local car dealership. That was my big goal. And then I had kids and it just became an extra convenience to not go anywhere. To not go anywhere. Excuse me. No, I've definitely, in the past year, I've had a huge shift in kind of my mode because I've finally gotten a job that I'm like, obsessed with and really committed to and I don't want to leave it. And that also, I mean, it's nothing like having a child. I'm not going to pretend that it's the same. I'm well aware that it's very different. But it is something that makes, there's a definite in my future that's very different than anything I've ever had before. Everything else I've been like, who knows where I could be in six months or a year or two years. And I'm fairly certain that I'll still be doing all of this. So it's very interesting to have kind of like that side of your life totally shift. Yeah. And not want to have the unknown. Before I would get kind of itchy. I'd be like, all right, what's next? OK, what's next? Why are you so itchy as are you? Well. Justin, it's the same kind of itchy that put you in the traveling circus and made you a carny, took you to L.A. to try things. You were itchy to do something different. And then you're like, eh. No, L.A. I knew I was going to do early on. And that's where I would probably still be to this day. And if my kids all of a sudden all were in college, that's where I would be. Really? Oh, absolutely. You'd go back. Right, immediately. Really? Yes. That's fascinating. OK. Immediately. I would find a way to buy, beg, liar, steal my way back into the movie industry again. Absolutely. That quick. That's cool. That's where the fun is. That's where you can get away with making a living making stuff up all day. That's so much less reading. You just do the writing. You talk to people on the phone. That's the whole thing. But it's only a very small percentage of that actually make a living doing that. Yeah, and I was right there. I was right there in the midst of that population that was really making a living and doing it. So I'd have to try it again. Absolutely. Yeah, I kind of wonder, you know, like, I don't know. I'd love to get into more production side of stuff, like producing science things for people. There's this other vision I have. Creating. Create the stories. I have this other vision of this future where we go on from this and become producers, producers of this show. And there's, like, a guy who's a scientist and has red hair. He's got this sidekick girl who isn't a scientist. And then there's this bigly-jewish boy and or girl who joins them shortly after. But, like, we're trying to recreate this show somehow. Like, in the future, it's like, the zoologist. But what if the science, instead of a zoologist, let's make it a microbiologist this time. They can bring a lot of, like, fish stories, right? A lot of whale stories to the thing. A microbiologist would bring fish stories? A marine biologist. Did I say, I'm a marine biologist. We can make a boat. By the way, we can make a microbiologist who's also a marine biologist. Or an ichthyologist? Bark, bark, bark. And then the scientist, we still got to keep the red hair. It's a guy or a girl. It doesn't really matter. We've got to have red hair. And then we're trying to maintain elements of the show. And like, and only people who remember this would realize that this Disney-esque cast that we've hired to recreate the charisma is completely fabricated, like a boy band. The role of Kiki will be played by Scarlett Johansson. All right, then I want to be represented. Jeff Goldblum. By either Jeff Goldblum. But actually, my stronger preference would be Benicio Del Toro. No, that would be nice. But Jeff Goldblum. Benicio Del Toro, he's already booked up. Is he doing a show? Is he doing a talk show? Is he doing a talk show? No. No, look at him then. Then he's free. He can't work on movies all the time, which is why I would love to be in the movie industry. You don't have to work all the time, too. Muppets. Oh, we could have a Muppet version. Absolutely. I don't know. I don't get the who's. I have to Google this now. Who's this A.J. and Brody? You don't look like A.J. and Brody. I've told I smile like something Olafant. I don't know what that is. I don't know what an Olafant is. An Olafant? Isn't that from a poem? And then Blair is herself. That would round itself out. Who would be Blair? Sarah Silverman. That's Breyer. I don't usually work that blue, but sure, that's fine. What would be perfect would be like a mixture. Well, what is bluer than the what's it something insemination, drastic, traumatic, and so on? If there's a bluer you can work than that, I'm not sure. I would call it other than a risk. I mean, I want a mixture of Sarah Silverman and Zoe Deschanel. I mean, I want to see Sarah Silverman deliver the P.P. popcorn stuff. Come on. Yeah. No, she's booked for a while. She's doing Burmese commercials right now, so she's going to be perfect. I think Blair did a great job. Oh, well, thanks. If anybody, I should be played by Sarah Silverman. All right. I think that would be a better fit to the show. That'd be pretty funny. That'd be awesome. Three-girl show, there we go. Who's Timothy Olyphant? An actor. An actor. It's one of those things I fail to look up, but somebody says that somebody has told me that I've Timothy Olyphant, I guess. Really? Oh, I've seen him before. Yeah, let's look at his images. OK, here is Timothy. Oh, I understand where they're coming from, I guess. They said it was your smile, right? Yeah, it was the Timothy Olyphant smiley smirk. Smirk, smiley smirk. That's just, I don't see it. They're worse people to be told you look like. Yeah. I could look at him for a while. But I was thinking, oh, I've been in a cover match. Yes, you could play all three of us. Good. I didn't even need anybody else. That would be so awesome. Oh, it was Matthew Lillard. Or we could actually, we could, what's his name? Oh, god, I'm so bad with it. I forget, I give up. Maybe I'm thinking of the Olyphant from Tolkien. That's what I'm thinking of when I think of the poem, maybe. Gwyneth Paltrow would be me. Are you kidding? No, I mean, she's pretty. She's pretty, but she is so anti-science. Is she? Oh, jeez, have you seen the wares that she's peddling? She's like, drink this. Put this on your face. Oh, she's a heliopathy. Yeah, she's like, this is all, oh, she's like the worst, the worst. But look, someone just sent me her hippo. She's pretty, though. Thank you. She's very pretty. Look at the hippo. Oh, and you have a swimming hippo. Why do you have a swimming hippo? Somebody just texted it to me. This is the great thing about being a known hippo lover is you just get surprised with hippos all day long. I can watch it forever. She was in a film about mathematicians. Yeah, there we go. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Is it time to go to bed, you guys? Of course. What? Did you know that Obama is on DNews this week doing DNews segments this week? Oh, I saw that on Facebook somewhere. That's pretty cool. That's very cool. I find it neat to be able to say somewhere I'm like, I've done videos with them. I worked for revision three that turned into DNews that now has stuff on the science channel that is like got the Obama thing, the nod. So it's like, I'm loosely associated. This is like my six degrees of Kevin Bacon to the president. There you go. President. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. I was almost a part of the DNews family. Right. Oh, yeah. That's OK. So I think I'm coming to San Francisco in the last week of May. So it's like the 22nd through whatever, 25th, 26, 27, something like that. Yeah. So a zoo shoot. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do a twist short or a couple of twist shorts, like this plan. Like we can do a day and like shoot a few. OK. So what days are you coming? Well, I should be in the Bay Area from I don't know exactly, but I should be from like Monday to Friday in the Bay Area. Like the 23rd to the 27th ish? Yes. So this is what I need to do. I need to. Oh, yeah, strengths. There's a big science fair at the White House right now. I think I don't really talk about it because I feel dist, because no whatever invites me. So OK. So OK. So I'm emailing myself to my work email. Kiki in town, twist, shoot at zoo? Question mark? Yeah, see if we can do that. And oh, last week of May. OK. So that'll remind me to look into it tomorrow. Sweet. But I was officially media trained at work, so that's going to help my case when I ask. So. Oh, cool. Yes, Dave, you're watching Blair email herself. Super welcome. Super fun television, because I know you're watching on your TV right now. It's a whole big screen for you. So unlike my co-hosts and most of the audience, I'm un-anebriated, and let's go and fix this. I'm not really inebriated anymore. I've got to go fix it again. I don't have nothing. No, I'm going. Maybe I'll bet my husband's sleeping, so I'll probably go downstairs and get another vodka and then periscope. Poor ideas. Poor ideas. That's what happens. That's right. I'm glad you finally got us on the big screen, Dave. I think everyone should watch us on the big screen. That's right. And as Ed is putting in the chat room, Minion hang out and chat tomorrow. Go to scienceisland.org, Science Island Chat. And there will be great, great science discussion, all of a whole. But if Justin shows up, then it's fine. More likely, when I don't show up, there's a good chance to see us. When I show up, it sometimes devolves. But Ed puts together a great discussion. I think there should be a second twist. He posts all sorts of stuff. There it is. So it's on Netflix. I'm going to go watch it, Bonus Mouse, because what? I forgot about this. I'm like, I don't remember. What are you talking about? This show that you live in. You live in what? Season three, episode two. You live in what? Of what? What's the show called? You live in what? Oh, that's the name of the show. That's the name of the show. I guess I was in a season of Sam and April, my friends, showing off their pad in San Francisco. That was so long ago. It's one of those things where it's so long ago, and then nobody ever told me it actually aired, that I just go, what? Forget about it. I have a big remembrance of it. And also, technically, Netflix is becoming the haven of things that may not really have originally aired so much, but were awesome. Right. Or aired and then didn't catch on, and the ratings were bad, and then the show was super awesome there. I think really part of why Pee Wee Herman's holiday, which is a Netflix original, is out. I have a feeling a lot of that came about, because when they People were watching Pee Wee Herman's big adventure on Netflix, Pee Wee's Playhouse. It's getting so many views that they're like, oh my god, Pee Wee has huge fan base. Let's make another one. I really enjoyed it. I watched it last weekend. I thought it was fantastic. Yeah. I watched it. We watched it a few times, but my two, almost three-year-old keeps wanting to see the one where his bike gets stolen. She's fascinating. I don't feel like any of those are very David-appropriate. It's because it's Davis. Yeah, because they were biking down. Like that one, Pee Wee's big adventure had a scene that gave me nightmares. Yeah, actually, but you know what? It was coming up, and I realized it, and I was like, what do I do? Do I pause it? Do I stop it? Do I skip it? And then it went down, and my daughter looked at me. She goes, that was funny. I'm like, yeah, it's funny when that happens. I know. But she was sort of missing all the little kids. It was at night just like this, and she wasn't really following the ghost story element of it or the spookiness of it. So when it happened, it was just like, ah, that was silly. Little kids don't have the same frame of reference as older kids. So yeah, it's a difference. I agree with Dave Freidel. Ed posts great stuff on Facebook all the time. The science with a twist Facebook group, fantastic. He keeps posting stuff there. It's great. He keeps it going, really. Keeps it running. Joe thinks I think he's talking about it. Ed, you do so much. You do so much. My gosh. It's amazing. Joe says, I think you should talk about how giraffes hit it off with the zebra at the zoo. So Joe has seen my pictures from today. So the baby giraffe and the zebras were nose to nose through the fencing today, which is so funny. And I guess there's a story of a baby giraffe a few babies ago that was essentially hijacked by the zebras. Like the zebras kind of took the giraffe under their own hoof. That's funny. So you saw this young giraffe with the zebras as much as, if not sometimes, more than the full-grown giraffes. Very silly. But so today was the baby's very first day in the sunlight outside of the barn because the temperature was warm enough. And everything was just right. She was old enough. And she was sturdy enough on her feet that we felt like she could run around. So it was her first day out. But that also means apparently she's been really curious in looking through windows at everybody, but this was the first time she was able to smell and touch nose to nose with the other animals in the savanna. So the zebras were so interested in her. And she kept running out of the barn and just kind of poking noses at them through the fence and then running around and going back in and coming out again. So cute. That's super cute. It's so adorable. It's really interesting. I wonder what happens on the savanna. But it's so interesting that in a zoo, when these animals are close together, they're like, hey, who are you? I'm listening to you. What are you doing? What are you doing? Well, it comes down to if you're not constantly concerned about starving to death or getting eaten, you find other things to get interested in. Yeah, yeah. Like science. So if you're not starving to death or afraid of being eaten, you too should tune into this week in science. I've got to go. I'll see you all next week. I thought I started that. And then we had to get the other conversation. OK, you guys. Thanks for watching. Thanks for being in the chat room. Thanks for drinking homeopathic vodka or real vodka with me, whichever it was that size do you choose. I hope to see you again next week. And happy Yuri's night. Yesterday was Yuri's night. Celebration of people in space. Let's keep it going, everyone. More science every week. We'll be back. Thank you so much for being with us.