 It's not dream time anymore if you're in the morning. It's coffee time if you're in the evening It's beverage time, but most of all it's science time You the music All right, okay from now on we've got to share the drugs before the show We can't just go taking them all As soon as we get our hands on them. Oh science. It's the only drug I need It is the reason for this show that we're gonna do the podcast that we are recording tonight And we are going to be starting in just a moment. I Do have a title I do have a list of things for you I'm not going to hit the red end the broadcast button No, I'm not gonna do that yet that comes later Some things like this will be cut out of the podcast, but other things will be all Included you are here for the whole shebang of the science this week in science brings starting in three two This is Twist this week in science episode an episode episode i'm having a day of a soad This is Twist this week in science episode number 824 recorded on wednesday may 12 2021 Stop shouting and listen to the science Welcome to the show everyone tonight I am dr. Kiki and we will bring you Science to fill your head. We're gonna do that. We're gonna fill your head with giant lizards magneto sharks and poop, but first This glamour disclaimer disclaimer the best part of being a human is Having a human brain one that is good at understanding how things work Yes, there are many other aspects of being human that are full of merit and noteworthy of praise art and science agriculture and cooking architecture and engineering woodworking and ceramics medicine and midwifery pantomime and puppeteering all the things we are proud of as humans originate from the seemingly basic ability we have to Understand how things work. Thanks to our big human brains Being a human with the ability to learn and understand how things work is such a magnificent superpower That it is constantly amazing as with new wonders of innovation and ingenuity We have such capacity to think and do to learn and create to imagine to build With a brain like that. There's nothing humans can't do There is of course that rest of our brain The ape brain let's call it and while it has its uses Understanding how things work is not high on its list of things it cares about Which is why most politicians are successful. Why many television shows get watched and how economic systems work But with so much attention being paid to entertain the ape brain You might think the amazing human brain would get bored And you would be right because you have an amazing human brain that knows how things work Which is why we offer you this mostly ape brain free episode of This week in science coming up next And a good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there Welcome to another episode of this week in science We're back with more science another week another seven days of fantastic exploration of the world and yeah, my monkey brain Enjoys this and all the science And I have a lot of great stories for you today. I have stories about poop But not just any poop really old poop. I also have a fossil turducan And I yeah yum yum except it's like an aquatic variety. Yeah, so very old And I've also got magneto sharks Justin, what did you bring? Uh, I have a recap of a review of where humans come from A uh a record for the slowest something ever Something and I don't know what it was really Yeah, that's the part that's a mystery as the catch is the the teaser is it's gonna be the slowest something But you won't know what it what it is until until the strike uh A update on giant lizards giant marine lizards I should specify and uh One of those negative I guess it's a covid story. It's a negative outcome of the being locked down type story A few negative outcomes out there Hopefully blare has some positivity in the animal corner. I do have some pretty lightweight fun today I have uh the birds that are best at instagram yawns and I have smells Of course you brought more yawns. Yeah, my goodness Blair's yawn corner I made sure to eat a lot of chocolate before the show tonight, so I'll be set No, so you'll be crashing just in time for the animal corner No, no, that's not the plan Well as we jump into the show right now I want to remind you that if you have not yet subscribed to this weekend science You can find us on youtube on facebook on twitch Follow us Subscribe Hit the like button if you haven't done that yet get the notifications You can do all that so you know when we go live We are also on most if not all of the podcast directories that are out there Look for this weekend science and our website is twis.org All right, ready for some science All right Okay, first story is a pretty big one Researchers have been working on genetic modification gene therapy cures for A whole bunch of a single nucleotide mutation disorders And there is a particular Immunodeficiency that researchers have been working on for quite a while trying to use gene therapy to To fix an add adenosine Diamondase deficiency. It's ADA. This is also known as ADA skid Which is immunodeficiency. It is also known as bubble baby disorder Used to be bubble boy, but it also is found in girls. So instead of worrying about that issue It's bubble babies because and it's also Noticed very very early soon after birth very often While a baby is still a baby. Anyway, it results in Children not being able to exist in Normal society because their immune systems really do not function the way that they should they get all sorts of Uh of infections and any infection can be life-threatening because they have this adenosine Diamondase deficiency that leaves them Unprotected their immune system doesn't work. Well these researchers Researchers have been working for years trying to create viral vectors that could introduce The the fix into the immune cells the white blood cells of Of children with this disorder. However, there have been side effects because of the viral Vector that they've been using previously. So several years back A group of researchers got together and they changed their tact And they started using what's known as a lentivirus and you may have seen this in the news already with headlines like AIDS virus being used to save bubble babies It's not the AIDS virus However, it is in the same family of viruses. It's a retro virus and it uses Line one retro transposons to get themselves into The cells and anyway these This lentivirus they did a clinical trial. It just published in new england journal of medicine a study with 50 children who have been followed for several years. They had a 95 success rate And when it went bad It didn't go bad. It just didn't work. And so the two kids that didn't respond to this immune therapy this gene therapy They were able to use other treatments Like bone marrow transplants or medications to be able to continue to live just it didn't work the same However, the kids in which it has worked For they've been following them for about three years And these kids Are living like normal kids. They don't have to take They don't have to take antibiotics. They don't have to take drugs to help their immune systems. They don't have to go in for Shots weekly to stimulate their immune system to produce cells. They have They're normal And it's working and it's lasting and what this what they do is they do They go in and they get stem cells from the kids. They harvest cd8 cd 38 Stem cells and then they transfect them using the lentivirus with the the genetic modification and then they They put the cells back in and the cells get back into the body. The cells don't get rejected and they're working Wow Yeah, so Yeah It's a I mean it's we're going to see more and more of this kind of gene therapy Um to to help it's not a cure necessarily. We don't know how long it's gonna last They they but they haven't seen any problems so far Um, you know, maybe this is the kind of thing that kids need to have a booster shot Maybe at some point as they grow but uh for now everything is going well Small group of kids, but then again, this is generally a small population in the first place Awesome. So we have we're gonna have a future without bubble children Right They were they were movies that are made an incredibly bad taste aren't aren't not going to have any cultural connection anymore Yeah, they were they were all They were all over pop culture for a hot minute in the late 90s. Yeah, they were Yeah, they were that remember there was a one young it was a young boy who they were trying to get Get coverage for the plight of kids that have this disease And so they were pushing the story in the news and they were pushing the angle and you know, maybe part of that You know the the pr aspect of getting the disease into the public consciousness pushed researchers to to really work harder to find a cure for it, but um, regardless Maybe there will be a day when it there are no bubble babies It's gonna be great Yeah, Justin, what do you got? What do you what do you bring? I can't speak tonight What'd you bring, uh, okay, uh, I have to start off with the the slowest something We we live in a world that is very fascinated with speed how fast the thing can be It's the very definition of some sports like a car race a bike race boat race We do this on sled ski speed skate in horse racing dog racing human racing All of it, uh, heart racing don't fall behind got to keep pace life is after all one big rat race But some things are meant to be slow Sloths they they're meant to be slow. That's just sometimes That's just how they roll Uh, yeah sometimes, but I think there's not a lot of quick snails either. Yeah tortoises, I think generally speaking are are moving their own pace as well and then, uh, there's also, uh, uh, runner shizu kana curry who finished the 1912 olympic marathon in 1967 Having stopped briefly to get married raise six children 10 grandchildren before crossing the finish line 54 years eight months six days five hours and 32 minutes After he began the race wait what? Didn't they they didn't say the race is over? That doesn't count. He has to spend the whole time on the track That didn't count so what's funny is he spent quite a bit of time he competed in other olympics after that, uh, and he'd already been a record holder of at least one olympic race or at least one marathon race previous to this but apparently, uh, the 1912 olympics had an unseasonally hot spell. I think it's in sweden Uh had this hot snap one runner died only half of the people that started the race even finished it But there was a thing where if you didn't finish it and you didn't die apparently Uh, you reported that you hadn't finished it uh shizu apparently got uh stopped in the middle of the run got taken in by some farmers because he was so dehydrated from the heat Uh recovered and then just went back home and never reported anything So sweden had him listed as a missing runner They just didn't know what happened And so some years later they find out. Oh There's this, uh, 70 something year old man Uh, who was in is the one that was listed as missing He can technically still finish the race so But he finished in 1967 so that's not what your story is about because that didn't happen this week. Yeah, exactly There's nothing to do with this story. That's absolutely nothing to do with this Because you asked I gave you The rest of the story of that story. Anyway, but the story I was talking about when it was totally different Uh, and that is the engano island earthquake Which lasted for 32 years Which is a very long earthquake. You might think That's actually the slowest ever recorded earthquake It culminated in the 1861 Sumatra earthquake, which was apparently a very devastating Earthquake and it's time. This is according to researchers at Nanyang Technological University Singapore NTU The NTU research team says their study highlights potential missing factors or Mismodeling in global earthquake risk assessment because this wasn't supposed to be a thing To have a 32 year long earthquake where Things just keep sliding and keep sliding and keep sliding So these things these do exist. They are thought to these Slow-moving earthquakes where you don't get a like a big hit on a rector scale. You don't see Field the tremors and all that sort of thing Yeah, because this is my question is what's between a long earthquake and a slow earthquake As you said it's 32 years long. That's a long earthquake, but what makes it slow? That's what makes it slow Is it so this is just a this this slip sliding event where the it's it's moving along One plate is moving along another plate just slip sliding. It's just like slip I'm gonna wait a little a little more of a slip It's like if you're trying if you're trying to balance on a hill and your shoes are slipping down like eventually reach the bottom Well, every time you have one of those slips you have a release of energy And then you would have a recording of that release of energy what they're saying here is this 32 years Just kept moving. There was no tension build up and catch it was just kept sliding So are they constantly recording? Some No What they used interestingly was coral formations At the bottom of the sea that coral just happened to be in the right location For them to see coral where it shouldn't be Uh, and they could see that it was this coral formation that it was crossing This this plate line was crossing moved at a steady rate of formation From the coral away from it. So basically What this it's a sense too is because they didn't know that this was supposed to be a thing It means that we may have completely Misunderestimated uh, some of the tension build ups and other faults because these silent slippages known to be taking place Guess they had been known to be taking place But uh over short periods of time, you know, maybe several hours maybe a month of this activity But not prolonged decades Of moving at paces of a centimeter a month or a centimeter a year whatever the ranges are uh, so slowest earthquake ever recorded 32 years in the making 32 years I don't know. I feel like we need a new word for that. That's not a It's not an earthquake, right? Or it's a it is a slow motion Is fairly you know some way recordable aspect of it It sounds like just geological shift of some sort. I you know an earthquake, but taking a long time Honestly, honestly, it's more about the the marathon runner that finished 54 Oh, and you really come because that's a bigger record Then a lot A slower record than the 32 year earthquake. It is absolutely Blair, what's your first story? Oh my goodness Well, I had to bring this story because it studies the most Instagramable bird on the internet and the winner is uh, definitely one of my favorites So I I agree with instagram in this case This is a pair of researchers from the University of Constance and the University of jenna And they found the most instagramable bird. How did they do that? They set up an a measurement index They call this the image aesthetic appeal So basically just counting likes isn't good enough because some birds are posted more than others So how do you decide which bird is objectively the most engaging in instagram? So they index norm normalized numbers of likes across time and reach They looked at 27,621 pictures of birds that had been posted on instagram and after applying their index they found that the Tony frog mouth is the most instagramable bird on the internet really a darkest strigoides, so Here's their thing. So previous research has shown that Bird likes big mouths. Yes. Yes. So um, that would be my interpretation of this story But that's not how they interpret it. So that is why I like frog mouths. However previous researchers Looking just at likes on social media found colorful birds to be Extremely engaging But when you kind of normalize it partially because most people don't even know what a tony frog mouth is Then you start to see that they far and away are the winner and they think that's because of where their eyes are So their eyes are in the front of their face like an owl But the rest of their head doesn't look like an owl So it looks like a bird that's like a cartoon that's looking straight at you and they said that also It doesn't hurt that they often look very mad and that is a Human expression so you can relate to it and it's very engaging if you think about social media and getting interactions and things like that, but so So what we need to know now is whether the tony frog mouth really is Angry or just misunderstood They're they're not angry. They're just does it have resting frog mouth face. Yes They either look mad or Just so discombobulated And but anyway, is it just me do they or do they look british? They just look british. No, they are australian. So maybe they're Related they were sent off to the the prison island, but anyway, um I think this kind of stuff is just it was fun. So I threw it in the in the quick stories But it also is important for knowing Okay, if tony frog mouths are extremely engaging and we need to talk about Australian wildlife and conservation Maybe I'll pick a tony frog mouth for the front or something like that, right? So it is important to know What animals are the most engaging and how to leverage that to create meaningful engagement So that's kind of this the serious side of these things But also just the frog mouth one I had to I had to report out How can we use one species to lead to engagement with other species? Indeed. I like it I like it a lot. All right. So moving away from The tony frog mouth. I would now like to take us away from the land of instagram and Instagrammable moments to the world of poop Who says that's not instagrammable World I'm sure there's a hashtag for that, but I am not looking it up. Um anyway Researchers publishing in nature this week have analyzed dna from fossilized poop Coprolites preserved feces however you want to say it They took these These human created rocks That were found in human rock shelters in utah and mexico That date back about a thousand years Or actually a thousand a thousand years before Yeah, about a thousand years. They were excavated almost a hundred years ago and stored in a museum So they've been around for a while. Nobody's done anything with them and A bunch of researchers said hey, I wonder if we can try and Do dna analysis. They're they're not so old that the dna in bacteria That's fossilized would necessarily have completely degraded. So perhaps there's a chance that we can compare Ancient human digestive systems with modern human digestive systems and take a look at see which bacteria Were in our guts back then compared to which good bacteria are in our guts now The coprolites Yielded 181 genomes according to an article in science magazine on their news site. They uh Were ancient and they were different notably because of the fact that they lacked Can you guess what they lacked? antibiotic resistance Oh, I was gonna say like Lactose Lactase is what I meant to say, but um, that's not a bacteria, but um That's interesting. Of course they would Yeah, they they it was pre antibiotic biotic use by medicine and so Uh people hadn't figured that out yet And so it there were no markers for antibiotic resistance in the bacteria in these guts in eight samples from a relatively confined Geography and time period they found 38 percent novel species So species that they have never found in human guts before a trepanema bacteria It's uh not known in industrial in in the industrialized gut microbiome Um, but they're present in every single one of these old poos So they think it's not just diet that was shaping things So if you want to go on the paleo diet, it's not necessarily going to get you back to the gut that our ancestors had Okay, can we jump in uh, dr. Justin's not a real doctor paleo microbiotics That's right. Um, so the bacteria were different. It wasn't just because of the food. There were other things at play They don't necessarily know What the dynamics were, uh, but according to this research, um Everybody Everybody's microbiomes have changed. We have evolved and so have our microbiomes Over the last thousand years. We've lost a lot of species of bacteria potentially but We don't know whether or not our bodies have had time to adapt to The loss of some of these species that were not that we don't see anymore these novel species that were discovered Well, and we also gained I'm sure quite a few and some of the ones we gained might be Use serving the same purpose as some some that we lost and maybe Better reflects our current diet and there's there's lots of things that could be going on there, but I also see They're being really bad consequences of this like thawing and accidentally getting in someone's lunch Causing all sorts of problems So first of all, they're fossilized. They're not frozen. They're fossilized. Yes. Yeah. Yeah But this does be when some, you know, this is this is not totally beyond the realm of sign This does lead some credence to my theory of aliens Of what aliens are Because I've I've long predicted because aliens whenever somebody has described the little gray men They look too human to be from anywhere but the earth And their technology is too advanced to be anywhere but from the future And what do they do when they get here? They probe people's colons Why they get microbiotic samples that they can take back to the future Because there are certain things that just went extinct and they need a good current sample So all those alien objections all those things flying over the water It's just microbiologists from the future. Please give them the space to do their jobs And one interesting note from this This paper is that at the time that they were collected these feces coprolites Were not considered human remains. However conversations with tribes in the southwest Led them to understand that those tribes felt that they're That they were a link to their ancestors and they were upset But there had been no previous consultation. And so this is the first paleo feces paper that contains includes an ethics statement So it's just something to think about as we're looking back in time, especially For those of us who are in the united states in north america south america As we're dealing with human history and human remains of of any kind it's it's human history And it's a link of some sort. These are conversations that are ongoing and you can't just Take coprolites from a camping site. That's wild, but also makes sense But yeah That's that's really it puts an extra layer on On the relevance and the uh, the kind of The implications of that kind of study Yeah Yeah, absolutely But again, these were taken a hundred years ago So it's good that the scientists doing this study took the time to have these conversations and to uh to include the native people In the conversation and to have an ethics statement. I and I am I you know, I am so torn on this I mean, I'm so sorry because I just want like science first Find out first. Don't be afraid of the information. Let's not have bodies reinterred with no testing Uh, you know these sorts of things like it's it's to me. It's It's frustrating That You have to have that conversation. I understand why But it's still frustrating Very saying super Alice sort of but I don't think it is there's a fear of what's going to come I think it's a respect for history and a respect for tradition and people's cultures and Yeah But yeah, I totally agree with that part of it. It's just that there's there's remains that like Kennewick man, there was conversations about whether Kennewick man should be ever tested and that sort of thing. I'm like Yes, and then They don't need the whole thing for testing Do you have another story Justin? Oh, I should I had uh, oh, yeah, this is the this is the kind of uh, so This is uh, some important news to anybody who's trying to have babies in the midst of a pandemic Almost half of women with babies aged six months or younger uh met the threshold for postnatal depression During the just the first covet 19 lockdown And that is more than double the average rates for uh, Europeans who were studied in this before the pandemic But how was it in relation to the rest of people who didn't just have children in the midst of a pandemic? Was it higher than the background rate of depression? Yes. Yes. Uh, absolutely zero Uh, uh people men or women had postnatal depression Uh If they didn't have children That's not what I said So there's a difference Of course there is But I'm just I'm I'm snaggy about my poking a little Interesting item here. I just I'm saying I know they're separate, but also depression in general is peaking during locked Absolutely. And now here's depression and is screaming three month old baby and you can't take them out of the house Uh, or hand them off to the grandparents or hire a babysitter or see your friend. That is a huge Huge part of it. I mean the the the social connection after you've had a baby is So important and when you don't have it When that support network is gone Yes, whoo That's hard. There's a story of of uh, my mother's friend Rosie Running with arms outstretched Uh, as she got close to the windows the front of my house Or as as I was a infant infant baby newborn baby For fear that my mother might have gotten to the point where she needed to throw the baby out the window Didn't happen but it is like times when Especially for a new first time mother the stress level of this plus the Hormonal imbalances and everything else postnatal depression is a very real very common thing Uh that you need help so So, yeah, so there's a lot of this reporting. This is uh One of the one of the things I thought was sort of interesting Okay, so yeah, the more contact new mums had with people either remotely or face to face the fewer depressive symptoms They reported suggesting reduced social contact As you were just exactly as you were saying during the lockdown may have increased the risk of post-nail depression However, uh where women had maintained some face-to-face contact with uh family members outside of the household They were actually more likely to have depressive symptoms than women who saw fewer of their relatives How weird Yeah, uh interesting and then I immediately made me think that You know, maybe we give better support to friends Then we do Then we do to family to family we might give Uh advice sure sure, but we tend to be I don't I just actually thought of it in reverse. I thought I had my kids Who who halos you can actually see the glowing halo when they are with the teachers You can actually But instead of their homes like ah parents I don't have to teach Like the people interact a little different. So I think having that outside of your family contact is an important Aspect of that social interaction as well. But yeah, that was a very that was a very interesting uh aspect of this but this is yeah, the takeaway from the researchers is it really does take a A village to raise a child Especially when dealing with all these increased demands and stresses Some of the reports that were coming out of this are statements from the mothers First time mother saying it's it's like working without the the guide book Also a lot of worry that children were not getting development that they deserved or needed not getting enough stimulus that they themselves weren't doing enough And that they're just exhausted just the the exhaustion is going to be huge. Yeah So yeah, so if there's any mothers out there, if you know a new mother Let's just do mother's day again. Yeah Yeah, we need to keep we need to keep mother's day for uh the forefront throughout the this the rest of this pandemic and always Always the mother's come on They build humans So I have a story That goes back in time a bit And it's It's marine biology at its heart but It's a fossil again. I guess I really like fossils this week researchers published in the swiss journal of paleontology a fossil that had been found um, which they call a leftover fall event And this was a Crestation that looks like a lobster ancestor crustacean being eaten by a squid Uh that had just been eaten by a shark So the fossil that they found they described as a um They had they described it as a belem night the belem night, uh And the other a crustacean of the genus pro arian pro arian had a body reminiscent of a lobster with long thin claws and The Belem night was in great condition so that they could see that this squid-like creature the belem night Had had a large part of its body Torn away By a shark you could see the teeth marks from the ripping away of the body of this squid And it had the squid had died Fall into the bottom to the sediments while it was itself tearing apart The pro arian So first of all really rare to get a good fossil of a squid Yes, they had a great one The uh, which is unusual the The pro arian which they said, uh Had a body reminiscent of a lobster that one wasn't as great and what they think is that it was possibly that it had That it was just Shedding its skin or had just shredded skin. So it hadn't Completely its exoskeleton hadn't completely firmed up at that point. So it was soft and squishy It was soft and squishy as well Yeah, but they um, yeah, they found they observed how these fossils looked and how they appeared to have fallen to the bottom of the sediments and Determined that yes indeed. It's like an ancient marine turducken the crustacean eaten by the squid eaten by the shark Very rare very rare to discover such it, uh, it reminds me, uh, there's a short movie I don't know if it was test or footage or just did a short film, uh of Jurassic world uh Where at the very end during this the credits let's they have this little clip of you know that that classic, uh south african great white shark throwing a seal up into the air and Grab it. So it's that it gets flung up the shark goes up out of the water all like I'm bad shark. I'm gonna eat the seal gets the seal and then this mosasaur giant marine lizard comes out Swallows up shark while eating well, it's eating the seal Yeah, it happened. I'm sure it happened all the time While there we have evidence. Yeah while a predator is after its prey. It's not necessarily Check in its tail It's like I'm such a big bad predator. I'm gonna eat this loss. Ow It's been going on for years Yeah So the shark got a good meal in the end Blair you have another story Yeah, um speaking of uh getting bites taken out of you Decapitated flatworms can still sense light So, yeah, this is like my third week in a row of invertebrates getting chopped up into pieces. Yeah This is from the institute for stem cell science and regenerative medicine the technology and research academy university and the University of Hyderabad all in india found that flatworms are able to sense light exposure after Decapitation this is looking at planarians a type of flatworm. They have two eyes Which are connected to nerve cells in their head They don't have a lot of complex organs, but they do have them prior research showed that their eyes can sense ultraviolet light and when UV light is shown on them they wriggle away But in this new piece of research They cut off their heads and they continued to sense light and wriggle away Without any eyes So they can survive having decapitation and regrow their heads as we know so in the meantime they can avoid UV damage By sensing the light and moving away They also found that when the flatworms were in a resting state their body still reacted to light Even in the absence of other sensory information So that seems like these guys are just hardwired to avoid damage due to UV light even when sleeping or Without a head Don't hurt. Yeah So the question is who else has these Weird abilities to sense UV light even when you can't see it Yeah, that seems to be the question for the last three weeks too is like what What else can we chop up? Yes, where where are the sensory where are the sensory organs? Where is the control system? Yeah, what is the light? What is responding to the light to make that action happen if we had thought it was particularly photosynthetic spots in the head region of the flatworm But it's not Well, it turns out you don't need your eyes to see If you're a worm everything that's happening around you. Well, I think that's it's that's uh legitimate one though I mean your skin your eye the eyes probably aren't that good Uh, frankly on a worm To like see oh, there's the direction there's the type But uh having a full body sensor that can pick up the UV and be alerting it to which direction to move away from even Uh, probably a lot better system This is this week in science. Thank you all for joining us We really do appreciate that you're here with us to learn about science and talk about fun things We're gonna make you more interesting Can you help make other people more interesting too? That's right. Tell them about twists help grow our audience That would be really really wonderful Time now for the covid update It's a quick one The cdc director today wrote Today, I adopted cdc's advisory committee on immunization practices recommendation that endorse it endorse the safety and effectiveness of the fizer bio and tech covid-19 vaccine and its use in 12 through 15 year old adolescents CDC now recommends that this vaccine be used among this population and providers may begin vaccinating them right away Woo sounds like a safer school year next year at least for middle school and high school students Yeah, and although Kids tend like we've talked before there is a lower infection rate in children The group of up 10 years old and over are known to are known to get more infections than the even younger aged children 12 to 12 to 18 is a very sensitive range especially In this period of time before this group were being allowed to be vaccinated Now with the vaccine it really is going to reduce risk. I mean To have vaccine vaccines available for this population to be able to reduce disease incidents and severity of disease This is uh, it's going to be great Hope that it makes school a whole lot more normal next year Yeah, I mean and I I don't want to sound like a broken record every time we bring this up But some of the newer variants are affecting children more. Yeah, and so This is how we prevent new variants from popping up and using Children as little reservoirs So this is better for the kids and it's better for all of us Even those of us that have been vaccinated I'd rather not look at my child and go. Hey, you little reservoir. How are you doing? Cute little reservoir Yeah, no, um Other interesting news back in december a couple of researchers posted on bio archive. They're initial work suggesting that um That the sars-coby-2 virus could integrate itself into the dna of cells some similar to other retro viral diseases and the data they presented in the bio archive ended up with in a twitter fight And in a in an online fight between a whole bunch of researchers who said you don't have enough evidence That's terrible science. You haven't done a good job And it was a big hubb especially as vaccines were starting to be rolled out and people in the science community were afraid That this story would provide fodder for individuals trying to promote conspiracy theories about the mRNA vaccines Fast forward to this week and this new study that has come out in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences They have updated their data. They actually Brought in as a collaborative collaborator a couple of the biggest Critics of their original paper of their original work So they had their critics help them make their work stronger The study is called reverse transcribed sars-coby-2 RNA can integrate into the genome of cultured human cells And can be expressed in patient derived tissues So We don't know what this means Nobody knows what it means that parts of the sars-coby-2 virus not even the whole virus just parts of it end up in human DNA Nobody knows whether there are links between that and long-term health effects that we see in covid patients But it is thought that this could explain why some patients even though they don't have any system any symptoms Why they don't test positive Why they may produce viral RNA after recovery? Why on some tests they test positive for viral RNA this could explain it But other as for the other aspects of implications. Nobody has any idea yet It's not zombies though Not zombies not zombies. Um, and they say that uh, because it's only sub genomic sequences and it's Mainly they say in their abstract mainly derived from the three prime end of the viral genome Integrated in the dna of the host cell infectious virus cannot be produced from the integrated sub genomic sars-coby-2 sequences So this is because there's there are little segments. They're not the whole genome They're not gonna pop out and be ta-da surprised you're infected again And that's the part that will be lost on the majority of media when they pick up this story Yeah, no, that's it's But it is integrating it it this gets back at a bunch of stories that we've talked about over the last year Um about how sars-coby-2 has really it enters into the cells and it just wants to make the cells its own Like it formats the hard drive So it could be zombies Maybe I mean we we don't know what these bits of Retroviral dna really want to do Now that they're there Like maybe they want to give us superpowers. Maybe this is how we become superman. I don't know Yeah, use you a sonic cough I Think I saw that an android and raised by wolves terrifying Oh, yeah Or I guess some sort of superpower where you can't smell anything or maybe you're really good at smelling something. I don't know I hope yeah, I'm hopefully the opposite. Yeah, but it's interesting. It's this is just the interesting unresolved curiosity of certain aspects of this virus and Maybe other coronaviruses Other sars coronaviruses We don't know everything that this family of viruses does and so this will give us more information about What it's all about I do like the idea of of humanity loses its sense of smell, but it makes the other senses that much more intense Yes Oh, I can taste everything now Except that would probably not be cheese probably kind of loses your sense of taste. Yeah, you'd lose your sense of smell But then we can hear everything that's going on at the neighbors I don't want to hear my neighbors That's all I had for the covid corner for the the covid update for this week just a couple of quick stories and then It's time at this point To throw it on over to our favorite animal loving science loving host of the show It's Blair's animal corner with Blair And Oh, I'm so I'm just having trouble paying attention. I'm just yawning so So a recent study From utrecht university I'm clearing my throat and yawning all at once just really uh Um, it's dutch. I don't a finishing school nightmare They do what I say it but anyway Um, a new study looked at yawning once again. We've talked about yawning so much on the show It's changed over the years on what we think yawning did Yawning for so long was assumed to function as an oxygenation of blood But oh my gosh You started it All your fault. Um Recent discoveries by the lab of gallop show that yawning Actually cools the brain Which I do believe you reported on this show pretty recently So that is the the newest theory seems to be pretty accurate There's a bunch of Of uh proof to that theory now The there's an inhalation of cool air and the stretching of the muscles surrounding the oral cavities that That increases the flow of cooler blood into the brain and has thermoregulatory function So how they they measured that was for example, they tested the temperature of the brain Basic, right? Uh, the temperature of the brain dropped rapidly after yawning ambient temperature Determines how often yawning occurs if you crank up the heat they yawn more Which I just thought the the heat would make me sleepy and that's why that would make me yawn, but no It's actually the differential between What temperature your brain wants to run at and the temperature outside Just like the fan kicks on on your computer if it gets too hot in the room, right? And they also found that people rarely yawn when you have an ice pack on the back of your head or neck Or you do other things to cool the brain Also something i've done before when I was falling asleep But I assumed it worked just because it was kind of shocking to the system So it would wake you up jolt you awake, right? But no, I would think that the cold would kind of keep you alert Yeah, but this is just cooling the base of your brain like this is cooling your Spinal you're good. Yeah And so um, so anyway, so all that to say yawning cools the brain That's not what this study is about though This study is about who yawns more in the animal kingdom and what that means For their Smarts their brain if there's any connection there. There's a smarter animal yawn more for instance So we yawn about five to ten times a day Darn it Blair Troubling that quota right now. Um, and so there was a bit. Oh, there you go There was a strong indication that the The duration of yawns are linked to brain size And the number of neurons in the brain and so that's what this study is all about This is an international team of scientists All centered around one biologist yorg mason of i'm gonna say it again. You track university They don't have that it's much more similar to That's how i'm gonna say it though and andrew gall of the state university of new york polytechnic institute so They wanted to see if the length of a yawn is related to Basically how many neurons you have and they Collected more than 1,250 yawns from 55 mammals and 45 bird species And they did that by visiting zoos So they just sat around had their camera on animals and waited for yawns And it did take a long time. They probably yawned a lot themselves though. They were sitting there waiting for it but they Wanted to see if the size of the animal if the size of their brain And the type of animal they are had anything to do with how long their yawns were They linked the durations of yawns to brain and neuronal data Which was provided by previous studies by pavo nemek of the charles university in prog They allowed them to Conclude that if you take out body size The duration of yawning across species increases with the size and number of neurons in the brain in that given species So it's you're taking out individual changes because that's always the the kind of the big fallacy that we talk about When we talk about big brains. It doesn't really matter how big your brain is within a species What matters is how big your brain is on average in your species versus other species And that's really what matters to intelligence Yeah, so it just it doesn't matter if my brain is heavier than yours or yours is heavier than mine That doesn't really matter, but the fact that your brain is Bigger heavier and has more neurons than that of a dog That indicates intelligence So, okay Yes, so the the duration of yawns across species increases with the number of neurons in the brain Beyond more blood flow more yawning. Yes, it's a heavier It's a bigger fan on a bigger supercomputer. That's all it is and so mammals also appear to yawn longer than birds They think that's explained by the higher core temperature in the body of birds So the differential to it being too hot outside is less I think it might actually have more to do with the fact of the way that they heat and cool their bodies that we learned about Just a couple weeks ago that they heat their body with their blood So it's it's a it's a different system That might have a lot to do it actually. Yeah Yeah, but so I think that was an interesting uh connection that that I made by looking at the story. Um but The brain functions overall best at an optimal temperature again, just like a computer, right? and so the the the kind of piece of of uh food for thought That the lead researchers leave us with at the end of this story is That perhaps Oh god, oh you need to stop. Oh, yeah perhaps We should stop considering yawning as rude And instead appreciate that what's actually happening is the individual Is trying to stay attentive So basically this is like I want to pay attention. This is important. I want my brain at optimal temperature. Let me yawn Yeah But then we should make yawning be an acceptable thing when you're having a conversation whereas instead you're like Yep, I'm fighting the yawn trying not to yawn because you don't want somebody to think that you're bored Yep Yeah, but it this is a very good indication that it has nothing to do with boredom It actually has to do with a deep desire to stay attentive I need to be attentive. I'm not Okay, I'm not buying that at all. Okay I mean, I've never been in one of those conversations was like, yeah, and then we should do this Gosh, this is a great idea where the creative collaboration or tracking down an idea or thinking through something just everybody's start going I think you get more sleep than I do Justin Or you're used to less. I don't know but uh Does that happen? Does your brain overheat and you start yawning because it's such an exciting thing to talk about All the time when I'm in conversations. I care about all the time Oh That just doesn't happen. By the way, I apologize to anybody who happened to be listening to the show What it's making my eyes water Work or getting on a long drive or anything where you're supposed to be staying awake right now And we keep saying yawn and yawning on the show No, but we're making them yawn, which is actually keeping you awake. So it's fine waking you up We're really helping Stay awake go off Yes Moving on from yawns to smells I have a story from francis creek institute and university college loth london Can't say the word london today Found that mice can sense extremely fast and subtle changes in odors And that they can use this to guide their behavior So this is a part of a larger conversation. I think that that we have had before And that is part of a deep-seated belief that until now has been based on very little evidence And that is that I think there are subconscious decisions that we are constantly making based on smells So to that end that's why I brought the story obviously to promote my own agenda. Um, but this study We allow you to do that here. It's fine. Yes, of course. It's I'm just going to present the study I'm going to tell you what I think it means but it's up to interpretation, baby. That's what this is about so This study was looking at odor plumes an example of an odor plume is like walking by as their steam coming up Off of a hot cup of coffee. It's something complex. It's turbulent It has a meaning and meaningful information piece of information to it But it is also Brief and it is dependent on position And it's it's not a constant Um saturation of smell, right? So previously it has been assumed that million brains can't fully process Temporal changes in smell Because they're happening so rapidly Which is faster than we can sniff so then something is happening faster than I can intake breath Intentionally or unintentionally through my nose if I'm not forcing air into my skull Then how can I respond to these odor plumes that are a fraction of a second long? And so that really is what this gets to is there's some sort of passive response That's happening that is not related to the forceful movement of air into your nasal term So they use behavioral experiments where mice were exposed to incredibly short bursts of odor They use neural imaging. They used electrophysiology and computer models And they found that mice can in fact detect rapid fluctuations with odor plumes At rates that were previously assumed impossible The mice then use that information to distinguish whether odors are coming from the same or different sources So they were actually able to behaviorally test them as well Where these odor plumes were coming from and they were able to respond Even if they were close to each other And you could see how in the wild it would be extremely helpful to know where a smell is coming from and be able to respond to it But these really small 40th of a second blips of smell They're enough to influence mouse behavior They were able to correctly distinguish between odors That were at this 40th of a second. That's 40 hertz And the kind of one of the reasons they were specifically looking at this Is because of the olfactory bulb It's as we've discussed previously the part of the brain where the nose sends signals to And the olfactory bulb has a lot of computational power And so the researchers were looking at this saying Why is this olfactory bulb Such a focus. Why is it so large? Why is it prominent? Why is it so powerful? If It's being used for occasional sniffs If it's not directly related to species survival and it's not being used constantly They would expect it to not be so prominent and important I was sensing a bit of anthropomorphism And animals I mean humans We think we don't use smell that often. We do. It's a lot of unconscious responsiveness. I think But at the same time Oh my goodness I mean to imagine that mice are not using Their olfactory bulb for behavioral decisions that they're not doing massive amounts of pro Of of processing in the olfactory bulb when they have pheromones. We know they have Bomeron nasal organ. We know there is a lot of Sent stuff going on. They recognize the sense of their babies their mothers their their siblings I think I think you're totally right here that it's it part of it has to do with the fact that It's hard for us to imagine responding passively Or responding actively to passive smells that are constant and tiny and varying Even though like I said, I personally think that we do But yes to because it's something that we're not aware that we're doing let's say It's it's something that hasn't potentially been researched as closely And so that's one of the cool things that came out of this study Is that they actually were able to design new technologies like a high speed odor delivery device That could measure several odors simultaneously with extremely high precision I want them to use this on a person in an MRI. Yes, please Yes, please tell me which direction the odor is coming from tell me which source what you know, what do you smell right now? Like Yes, we use pheromones. I'm convinced we use pheromones. We um our our memories are often related to smells We have emotional responses to smells There's all sorts of stuff going on that You know, you have smell of versions Maybe you can't even tell that you can smell that thing that you have an aversion to and it's so small and so slight But oh gosh your stomach doesn't feel good all of a sudden or you're walking quicker or whatever, but I I really I I think there's so much more going on like nasal turbinates, man So our nasal turbinates are are pretty small. They're about the size of a postage stamp But when you unroll nasal turbinates from a dog, they're about the size of a hanger chip Oh, you do that same thing with a grizzly bear. It's about the size of a picnic blanket Are you really telling me all of that all those cells? And all of the nerves involved with those cells Are just there for sniffing I don't think so No, it's constantly sampling. I mean we don't have the moth uh the moth antennae or You know, the we don't have these noodley appendages like Like insects have that we just know they float on the breeze and run into the things in the air And they follow the plumes in the air because they're running into them and the chemicals are running into their antennae Um, and that's changing their behavior. There's Wouldn't that continue to be constant? That even though we're breathing things in it's not as direct But things fly up my nose all the time that I don't want Yeah, yeah, but there's also I mean, but you've seen you've seen animals do a concerted sniff Yes, we're they're they're they're like I this is This is me checking the air and there's maybe like even a little bit of a head movement there to Maybe it's a directional thing. I don't even know what's happening when an animal a dog or a bear is sniffing the air Oh, for sure. It's all of it. But it's they're really Picking up on things that I can't even imagine are are present Really picked up on and they're probably picked up on something passively that is now queuing them to actively investigate Right. Yeah, and that's exactly what what this is kind of getting at It's and think about so people who've reported on losing their sense of smell. We were just talking about this, right? Um from covid and they describe how strange it was And I'm just thinking about like if tomorrow uh, you could no longer see Any version of the color red at all Okay, so tomorrow I see like Blair, right? So this is my point is if you suddenly were missing an entire input It would be jarring, right? And so I think that's that's where I'm we there is an entire Landscape of smell that is part of our existence that we take for granted And it's part of our perception of the universe But we take it for granted because we can't see it Yeah, I have a friend who can't smell I'm going to go talk with her after this So take me around tell me about the world Yeah So this is this is uh, very largely me the very few signals Get identified coming through as a smell Uh, I can smell almost nothing. I can smell really bad things Like cinnamon the smell of cat urine and cinnamon Those things get cut through and I'm like, oh avoid stay away There's cats somewhere or there's cinnamon at christmas is an awful time of year They because they begin to fake spray. I don't even know if people notice I notice because it's one of the smells and I don't like it. No, it's aggressive one of the smells I can smell But they start senting Everything with cinnamon department stores grocery stores. They're like spraying cinnamon On things to get people in the christmas mood But it's good that your that your sense is even if you don't Aren't consciously going look at the nice yummy smells the things I love At least it's alerting you to the warning system that you don't like if your warning system works. That's good But the idea of this study is that you're not consciously aware, but you are making micro decisions Based on micro smells That you don't even realize turns out I might not Really dislike that person as much as I think I do. It's just they were chewing cinnamon gum when I met them Awful person terrible person That is the definition of a terrible person somebody who choose cinnamon gum is the definition of a terrible person Love cinnamon gum I used to eat I so this is why I think I have cinnamon aversion Is my grandmother's counter had the butter that was like soft butter that was left out It had I could use the toaster all I wanted and the bread was out too And there was a shaker of cinnamon and a little bit of sugar sugar And I was allowed to make as much cinnamon bread as I wanted It was the one thing at like I don't know age six or seven or whatever it was That I could go into the kitchen and just do myself And I had so much of it. I think that I think I overdosed on cinnamon At a very young age to the point where it's just been repulsive ever since Maybe you accidentally cinnamon challenged yourself. Yes, I think I did I really know I think that's what happened. I think if a little cinnamon is good More is obviously better and I just kept increasing and increasing and then probably yeah, I had a really bad We're sorry, we're doing a reversion therapy right now taking you back to your youth I'm sorry This is this weekend science. Thank you all for joining us again tonight And if you are interested in supporting this weekend science You can head over to twist.org and click on that patreon link Choose your level of support and help this weekend science bring science to more and more people Your support helps keep us doing the show weekend and week out and we really can't do it without you So thank you for your support And now it is the time for Science from Justin Oh, is it some time on the show again? Okay, uh, where did all the humans come from? Well, first There was a rib And then When I asked the question fish Where all the humans came from I implicitly rejected denounced discredit openly Ridicule any suggestion that the human species resulted from magic words spoken over a lump of dirt A talking fish fornicating deities of a cosmic egg Urgent or any story that doesn't have a raven in it because it's obviously ravens. That one's actually true Right, of course. No, where did we come from fish though? Just fish So the thing is right there's fish and but then there's there's a that's a big jump To billions of humans inhabiting nearly every niche biome on the planet using up every resource Because we're awesome Because well, we're aggressive. We are aggressive pretty much. I'll give us that uh So we you think that though we would have a pretty good idea Of where these billions of humans came from Uh, but we have no idea Well, we have some idea Lots of ideas actually, which is great because that means that we've been thinking about it And we've been trying to figure it out But the fact that we don't specifically know, uh, is is kind of a problem with an anthropology because Not having the specific answer means we have a lot of different answers that are co-existing currently Uh of of best hypotheses of where humans came from so And and most of them pretty much all of them don't include ravens, which means they're all wrong Uh, but in anthropology environments around the world the sequence of evillation from ape to human has Sort of different discussions going on because we're still in the midst of figuring it out. There's a interesting review Uh titled the fossil apes and human evolution, which is published in the journal science currently And it sort of just looks at where we are as far as ape ancestry is concerned And it comes to conclusion current evidence suggests that hominins originated in africa from an ape ancestor Which may have been unlike any current living species of ape About six to ten million years ago. So that six to ten million years ago is thought to be when we Diverged from our closest relative, which is chimpanzees But what this is bringing up the fact is that there's such a radiation and diversity Of ancient ape. There's a lot of apes out there today But that's nothing compared to the amount of apes that were there previous to the hominin Yeah, I mean you have something with an opposable thumb That's how evolution works, right? They're gonna try it a million ways and see what sticks And even and it's not necessarily even the opposable thumb because that's very sort of specific to the hominin Uh line, right? So that's that's our that's our direct You know going on. I mean all the great apes have thumbs Uh, but having it opposable. Yeah, that's I thought that was the thing that made it special anyway, but but the the So there's that radiation of all the different hominins that we've seen Yeah, we've talked about that quite a bit how we're this braided stream And we got the Neanderthals over here and the denisovans and the homo erectus interacting We got all the hobbit preachers and some of these other things There's a red deer cave people like all these interesting hominins that seem to Been on the planet at the same time maybe as many as eight of them At on the planet at the same time So there was a much greater diversity of ape Uh As well and and the ape ancestor category with all sorts of different body morphologies going back Through time there's sort of a gap at around the 10 to 14 million year ago range Where we have very sparse records, which is exactly the period we need to be looking at to understand where the humans come from Currently though, what's sort of interesting some of the closest fits uh are in Uh, sort of southern Europe like Greece Or some of them are in Bavaria like we have these You know sort of More human looking leg gates in one area or more human looking torsos somewhere else You have all these different elements, but but nothing that's like that's obviously Where the human lineage picked up from so we may even been a braided stream before we were hominins We may have been Uh an ape braided stream before we were even a human braided stream So it could just be like this keeps happening all the way back. And so it's an infalligration So but some of the interesting things they're saying that that our lineage ancestry may never have knuckle locked our Ape ancestry may not have been tree hangers We may have already been on there like there are so many different variations That we don't know where we came from yet and that the ape ancestor of Not just chimpanzees and man, but maybe gorilla man Had fewer traits in common with any three of us Then what we might expect that it could be that different because the radiations were so diverse Going back to the record and and and sideways Having been looking at this there was oh, I think I might have closed the thing on it. Oh, here it is Did you know there was a 10 foot doll orangutan? That weighed 600 pounds No Yeah, isn't that what uh christopher rockin played in the the newer version of the jungle book? No, i'm serious I'm pretty sure that's what he was supposed to be so see that critter It's it's sort of related to the orangutan. Uh, it looks it only died out a hundred thousand years ago Uh giganto Pythicus, uh black eye blacky Uh distant relative of the rang tanks to 10 feet tall and weighed up to 600 pounds Or 270 kilograms The picture they have of it looks like bigfoot It's look it looks like what big you would expect a bigfoot to look like exactly like harry and the henderson's type bigfoot Looking so now you're saying that's a chance I'm saying there's a chance. I'm saying there's a chance, but but that was only a hundred thousand years ago Anyway, the diversity of the ancient ape is a whole other category that we have to go back through To try to find the originate Point of the whole story is it's not going to be linear The whole human and ape history. There's not a whole lot of linear about it It's more complicated than we think we like this nice tree like easily branching structure that we can follow but It's a bush There's a lot more nuance. Yeah Yeah, it's gonna be ready to stream all the way down and then Uh, there's another radiation of creatures We're somewhat used to the idea of a creature going extinct because it's a panda. It doesn't want to breed Uh, it's a woolly mammoth and the climate Changed on the planet and out no longer suits them or they were Relentlessly hunted by humans whatever the case was There's usually some sort of a decline of a species that occurs ahead of extinction Where they're being preyed upon or the the biome changes and there's less and less of viable mates So time takes its toll and eventually the species goes extinct sometimes The extinction can hit when it life form is at its peak when a species is very top of its reproductive killing abilities The such was the case of a newly discovered Uh version of a giant marine lizard from the end of the Cretaceous period in Morocco It's reached up to eight meters long Which is pretty pretty big. That's like a small school bus That's like the size of an anaconda It's an anaconda and yeah, uh The that alone would be kind of cool But this is also the third species of this giant lizard to be described from that region And less than a year and it brings the total number of the giant marine lizards or the mosasores To 13 mosasores. That's the giant marine lizard that you have seen in the Jurassic world Pottle upfront where they were feeding sharks to in the beginning of the movie and then like just shows up to eat things whenever needed They were apparently at the height of their diversity and doing going really strong In the final million years of the Cretaceous period. That's to be going strong for a million years. That's That's tough uh anyway, with the uh Yeah, oh and then a giant asteroid hit the planet 66 million years ago and that's And that was the end of them Yeah, the newly found species named pluridin's Serpentis had long slender jaws with over a hundred sharp teeth that were fang like Uh, I used to that to grab a small prey like fish and squid Fun fact, they didn't eat humans. In fact, there's not a single case of them ever eating a human ever They had smallish eyes suggesting poor vision The snout had dozens of openings for nerves hinting at the ability to hunt by sensing water movements changing pressure that sort of thing They also had uh, they they're distant relatives of sea snakes and they're thought to use their tongues also to taste the water from molecular clues And this is one version of it some of them ate had had very different teeth for breaking up Uh crustaceans Going after crabby type things Others others went after much larger prey and probably ate other mosasaurus But uh, yeah very different diverse beasts huge lizards And they probably acted like them despite the fact that their bodies Very much resembled sort of modern-day whales and dolphins Yeah diversity of life Going backwards is very fascinating. We sort of forget the diversity of life. You go backwards. You kind of Smash species from today together. It's like Yeah, lizard dolphins. Yes, of course lizard dolphins. Of course. We had to try that crocodile pandas Very successful You joke, but we're gonna find it. I don't know could have been What Blair Do you mock me? No, no, no, no. She's just picturing a panda with a big Crocodile face. That's right. It's I mean, I think I was more look I was looking at pictures of mosasaurus because I wanted to make sure I was uh, correct before I said this but Um, they do look like dolphins in a lot of ways, but I think they look, um A lot more like crocodiles in their artist renderings But I think the the thing that's really important to like delineate whales and dolphins from These aquatic reptiles is the way that they move through the water. So The the marine mammals go kind of up down, which is why their Uh, their tail is kind of horizontal But reptiles in the water their tail is vertical and they they move more like a snake Through the water left to right. Yeah And this is this is thought to be a relative uh closer closer relative to snakes and komodo dragons Yeah, which the way that I've seen uh monitor lizard swim and iguana swim Seems like it would be pretty similar to the mechanics of how I still got that That fish like, uh Spinal motion. Yes Very fishy. There's something fishy Yep Speaking of fish, let's talk about some sharks sharks, we have shark stories I have a shark story. Oh wow this one. I love because we've been talking recently about navigation and I taught was talking about the the possibility of these The uh the picking up of these magnetic fields in the eyes last week We had a whole conversation about that and then this story popped up related to magnetic sense in sharks Now we know that sharks have the electric line System that they use the use electric magnetic electromagnetic fields for Sensing their prey for sensing communication signals in the water for all sorts of things that uh being fish living in the water they make use of all of the uh the sensory aspects that they can And we also know that several species of sharks undergo very long distance and very precise migrations Kind of similar to salmon where they they go from place to place. They don't get waylaid. They know exactly where they're going How do they do it? Do they just Look around and go hey, I recognize this spot. It looks nice. Do they follow the other sharks? What the heck are they doing? Well a group of researchers publishing in current biology this week Trapped sharks and then messed with their magnetic sense they Which of course is what you do They they trapped bonnet sharks Which are known for their migration abilities. Oops wrong window Let me make share make share make sure make sure make sure Speak with the share make share with the right pictures. Yes So they trapped sharks and then uh took them various places on the planet Away from the place that they had been trapped Understanding that by moving them away from where they had been trapped in the ocean They would be experiencing a difference in the earth's electromagnetic fields And then they placed them in a big kind of faraday cage and then exposed them to different magnetic fields To see how it changed how they moved around and which way they tried to go and though and behold the end of the story is that they Were able to show that these magnetic displacement experiments on these wild caught bonnet heads Showed that uh magnetic map cues are what elicit their homeward orientation And that it is their magnetic sense that allows them to orient in the correct direction And this is one of the ways that they are able to Get themselves around out there on their migratory routes Wow Very cool. Well with an entire structure in their face for electromagnetic fields as you point out It would make sense that they use it for more than just finding food Yeah, and these and these bonnet sharks. Yes, they they similar to kind of Hammond hammerhead sharks where they have This feature of their head That is they use it for navigation. Their head is looks like a bonnet. It's bigger It's a little more bulbous They're like baby ham. That's like they're I think they're very cute. They're cute. They are cute Look at the big head on that one So how is it like oh, we got sharks maybe the mosasaur had all those electrical sensors on the snout apparently Uh, we've got pigeons. We got all sorts of birds doing it. What what why don't we get to have GPS built in Maybe you do we do we just don't pay attention to it anymore Or you do and you don't recognize like you know how you talk about how some people have a good sense of direction Maybe they're just tuned in to their magnetic sense a little bit better Maybe they're tuned in to the earth's electromagnetic fields. Maybe though. I don't know. Maybe we Interrupt those fields too much with all of our electronics Oh Could be yeah, I don't I don't think that like do we get like a bunch of birds and sharks? Uh coming up the works in the big city just because they got You know power transformers and stuff. I don't know No, not so much. Yeah, no difference The pigeons are still able to pigeon They're still pigeoning just fine. Yes, but bonnet sharks They get home using their magnets Wow The homing magnets and then my final story for tonight Involves sticking wireless devices into the brains of mice Wait, why How is it? Oh, it's not wireless at that end. It's just wireless It's why is in the mouse end It is why researchers researchers have been trying to use optogenetics, which is a technique in which we can use genetic modification to make neurons Stimulable by light and by shining blue light on neurons you can Make animals do things you can cause different actions stop different behaviors. You can make them do all sorts of funny tricks It's something that researchers hope that we'll be able to do eventually for a human behavior but in the meantime, it's giving us a lot of insight into how brains work and When we're you when we're using this technology in mice currently It involves genetically modifying the mice so that their brain can be stimulated by blue light and then sticking a cap on their head with wires that go down and a light that shines In these optic fibers down into the brain to turn the neurons on but then because this is electrically Stimulated and and activated there are wires coming out of the top of the mouse or rat's head That are attached to a cable that goes to a computer And if you have a couple of mice that are trying to interact or even a group of mice Suddenly you have mice tripping over wires and getting tangled up in each other And so it makes real behavior very difficult to monitor Yeah, yeah, so you're not really measuring real animal behavior You're measuring this weird behavior of mice and rats with these things attached to their heads and getting Tangled in wires. So researchers wanted to figure out how they could fix that and so they have they have created a device Which is wireless technology Which can be like a little hat implanted. It's a little device that can be implanted into the Into the mouse's head and so the mouse can behave Wire free battery free or it's it's It's battery powered. It's a rechargeable and It's able to allow groups of animals So they can examine social hierarchies and the interactions that occur when different behaviors are changed And so they are investigating how social bonds form and break in animals And so in their experiment mostly just a proof of concept and they will be investigating this more further With this new technology now that they're able to get groups of animals together to do stuff They're going to turn on and off the neurons that are responsible for social bonding and behavior basically At the flip of a switch they're telling mice to play with each other To interact with each other or to be antisocial And seeing how that affects group hierarchies and social dynamics Play nice with your brother or i'm gonna flip the switch. I swear I swear I don't know what's scarier the idea of cyber mice or the idea that They're playing with the ability to switch on and off human mouse interactions Just as a model for gosh knows what Yeah, so the you know interesting part of this, you know, it's implantable And this is the kind of thing that could be implanted And if there comes a point at which We decide that optogenetics that kind of genetic modification is allowable in humans This would lead to the kind of technology that would control that kind of Behavior modifying technology in the human brain Maybe you need to have something that's not a drug but that turns neurons on or off to To calm somebody who has anger management issues or to Calm anxiety because anxiety nothing helps your anxiety And maybe you need something that can change that right now There's not much we can do except for drugs but with optogenetics and implantable devices like these that becomes more of a reality Right now. It's just studying mouse behavior. It's fine. It's fine everybody It's such a slippery Crazy thing though, which we always get into I was getting the trouble bringing it up but like between human mental health And human control fears. There's that fear. There is right because it's your brain It's a brain and and Individuality is important In western culture. It's Very important to have Your own choices, you know to be able to choose your own path Whether that we actually do is up for a debate, but you know to have that Have that feeling of choosing our own path Is important. Um Yeah, very interesting. Yeah Hmm. Yes, wireless controlled implantable devices will this lead To mind control in humans Story not at 11 because we're not even talking about that This is just looking at the way that neurons work and the way that brains work to create behaviors in mice Steven in the chat room. Yes. Uh, Is now planning to raise a mouse army. It's not a bad idea It's not about a mouse army cybernetic mouse army. I think would be Pretty pretty uh overwhelming for most Well, we aren't designed to fight mice. We just our military infrastructure our intelligence operations aren't designed to uh To handle mice. We'd have to we'd have to have this whole like what's the dog What's the dog that would hunt mice? Blair, you know dog breeds pretty well. What's the little what would you have? Like is it a rat a rat terrier some sort of rat terrier? We'd have to have like Legions of rat terriers defending the homeland From the cyber mice the future is going to be amazing or you can just be the rat king from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles either way Either way Yeah, the researcher from uh from this study. They took uh says they took pairs of mice and when the mice were near each other They wirelessly synchrony Synchronously activated a set of neurons in a brain Related to higher order executive function that increased the frequency and duration of their social interactions De-synchronizing the simulation promptly decreased social interactions in the same pair of mice We didn't think this would work Kozarev Kozo Kozo Rovitsky said to our knowledge This is the first direct evaluation of a major long-standing hypothesis hypothesis about neural synchrony and social behavior Brains that fire together socialize together That does it for me folks Have we done it? We made it to the end of another show. Thank you. We made it All the science That was fit to talk about Take it with you everyone hold it close And share it with your friends That's right. Tell people so that they know that the mouse army is coming This has been this week in science. Thank you so much for listening. I do hope that you enjoyed the show I want to say thank you to Fada for your help with social media and show notes identity four for recording the show gourd for your help with the chat room And Rachel for your amazing assistance Also, very very very very very very very very very very very Very very very that's a lot of varies. That's maybe too many very many. Thanks to oh, not enough Patreon sponsors Not enough. There aren't enough. 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We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember... It's all in your head. Got my banner unfurled, it says the science is in, I'm gonna sell my advice. Show them how to stop their robots with a simple device. I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand, and all it'll cost you is a couple of grams in your way. So everybody listen, and I'll broadcast my Afghan science. This week in science, I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news, that what I say may not represent your views, but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just yet understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. So everybody, let me say it, if you use our methods, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, I've got a laundry list of items I want to address, from stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness. I'm trying to promote more rational thought, and I'll try to answer any question you've got. So how can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop one hour to what we say? And this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science. We did it. Oh, look who came back. What? What? See after show. After show. This is the show that comes after the show. It's not before the show. How's that coffee doing, Justin? No, that's coffee. Yeah. It's good. It's not strong enough. It needs to be more stronger. It needs more of it. Both. Also, I have a bag of candy. I need to eat a bag of candy today. What? You ate a bag of candy? No, no, no, I wouldn't eat a whole bag of candy. That was yesterday. Today I'm going to eat a bag of candy. Shit, I eat a bag of candy every day. I think it's one of the... I don't need a bag of candy. One of the good groups? Well, you need candy groups. It's more than one kind of candy. You need to get some of each of the basic... You got to get some of the chocolate candy. You need a hard candy. You need a gummy type candy. You need a sour candy. A savory, you know, like a licorice, something like that. You got to get that in. Savory. Savory candy. Savory candy, you know, like beef jerky. What? No, that's a savory candy. Salty licorice. That's a savory candy. It's a little sweet. But it's... Yeah, but you can have... Sour plums. Yeah, bitter candies. Those are fine. Citrus candies, lemon zest. Bitter stuff. Hello, H&K. I don't know. It's candy. It's gonna be sweet. Don't... That's what I'm saying. There's no such thing as savory candy. It is. You just got to look harder. Try and work it. What's your candy? What's your go-to candy? Anything dark chocolate? Yeah, dark chocolate. My favorite candy in the whole wide world is a take five. Is that the mint or is that the something eight one? There's no mint in it. It is a... British? No, it's a pretzel. It's peanut butter. It's peanuts. It's caramel and it's chocolate. That's too much. That's a lot. Five things. Take five. That's a lot. But the pretzel. I love a dark chocolate covered pretzel, so that's one of my favorites in the world. Same. My holidays. I like the candy cane. That's like one of my favorites. My holidays are our dark chocolate with pretzel and candy cane. I like just the candy cane. They're hard to find, honestly, a good candy cane supply once you get away from the season, the Christmas season. But right after Christmas, that's why you got to stock up. They go on sale. You can get candy canes like, I'm just telling you people, like 70%, 80% off because they don't know what to do with them if nobody bought them. So you just buy up those right after the holidays and if you get enough, you can be good throughout the whole year. Oh, I do like candy corn. I don't understand candy corn. I don't know why anybody would eat candy corn. I like it. It's the texture. It's the texture for me. I don't like about it. But I also don't like chocolate. Identity four, I totally agree. American milk chocolate is made of barf. Yep. Yeah, I don't like chocolate at all. I do like jelly beans. Yuck, I hate jelly beans. Oh, those are so good. What, Sadie? What do you want? A good and plenty, good and plenty. Oh, I love good and plenty. I'm a fan of good and plenty. I think I like all the pill form candies. I feel like those are all candies that a dentist would hate for you to eat also. Yeah. All the candies get thick. It's stuck in your teeth. So they like really wedge in there with the sugar. Just get in. Yeah. What was the one? What was the one called? It was a hard candy, cherry candy with gum in the middle. Oh, that one was really good. It was called cherry. Go up in the middle. Yeah, it was like a brocks and you could get it in the thing, but they were, it was cherry hard. And I don't understand too. When you buy candies, you should just be able to buy the flavor you like. All the cherry candies are good and all the other ones they package with them are bad. Some of the lime ones are good too, but that's what you need to be able to buy all the cherry lifesavers. Anything with red dye, what is it? Red dye number 40? It's the good one. You can make whatever color. It's the flavor. It's like the, yeah, and it goes with the cherry flavor and it's just so good. They use it to addict you. You like it because it's addictive. I had a friend did a thing where you can taste the difference between the colors of the M&M's. But it's, yeah, so there's like five or six different ones, but whatever it is, you have, you have to have an audience where you have some people in on it who are giving a clue. Like, if it's a yellow one, you know, somebody's blindfolded and they're doing like, yeah, somebody's gonna cough or say a sound or if they don't, if nobody says anything, then it's this color. You have to have like this all system all figured out. I've seen it pulled off where people were being amazed by someone's ability to tell what the flavors were. May I help you, girl? Somebody wants to go to bed. She's like, it's early. You're, you're, you're, what? It's like, it's early now. What? She's like, you sat down. That means it's time for bed. Sitting down means something very specific. What is all so bad? I don't understand it. Although I will say, yeah, it's the little chocolate makers. The, the, the, it's like the boutique chocolate maker, chocolateeers. They make some really good dark chocolate. Milk chocolate, I'm not a fan of, but I'm sure that they make it better. But there's a Portland con, a Portland company that I just came across that's called Honey Mama. And it is the most interesting chocolate bar. Does it got honey in it? Yes. It's made with honey and cacao and it's really delicious. And I, if you get a chance to try Honey Mama, this is really good stuff. It's not a hard chocolate bar. It's kind of, because it's the honey, it's like soft. Different. It's a Portland exclusive. Yes, it's a Portland thing. It's delicious. Do you see what's happening here? She's like, hi, hey, hey, I was sitting with you. Are we going to have an interview now? She's taking to jumping on the chairs. Yeah. Is it treats time? Yeah. That's why she wants to go to bed. She gets a little, she gets like a little quarter cup of food when she goes to bed. She's like, so bedtime, right? Bedtime? Is it bedtime? Yeah. Is it bedtime? It's because she gets acid reflux. So she can't go to bed on an empty stomach or she has a bad morning. My little, my cappy, my tabby cat, she likes, her favorite thing is bed because that means cuddles. And so she, when I start going upstairs, she runs in front of me, then she plops down on the ground and she rolls over and she shows me her belly and she gets and then she runs up the stairs some more and then run after her and she goes, and she gets excited and she shows me her belly and then she runs up the stairs some more until she finally gets to the bed and she jumps in all the blankets and she gets cute. Yes, it's a, it's pretty adorable. She's your cat, huh? She's, she's my cat. Yes. You're my, she's here with me now. Aren't you here with me now? Pick her up. Let me see her. Where are you? Oh, she's showing me her belly. Yay. I can. Oh my goodness. Sadie, can you hear the cat here? She's like, I don't want headphones. I don't want them. Okay. That is beautiful. This beautiful creature has given me, has given me all the toxoplasma, made me crazy and I love her. She's an indoor cat, right? She's an indoor cat. Yeah, she's never been outside. She can give you toxo. Stephen from the chat room has pointed out that you can buy a five pound gummy bear on Amazon and I looked it up just because I'm like, no. You can. Yes. Yes, you can. You can. Why would you? Should you? No. Somebody, I think, no. Can you guess? Yeah, Marshall bought one for Kai a couple of years ago for Easter. It was like a gummy bunny and it was huge. It did weigh several pounds. I don't know if it was five pounds, but it was this massive thing and Kai's like, I'm going to eat the whole thing and I was like, no, I'm throwing it out. I'm like, no. Yeah, that sounds like a barf waiting to happen. Five pounds of gelatin and sugar. Your nails and hair and skin would be fantastic. Any candy sounds like trouble. Yeah, well, it's like, I mean, I'm sure you guys have read the Amazon reviews for the giant bag of Haribo gummy bears, right? What? No, this is the thing that like, I love Haribo gummy bears. It's circulated around the internet probably five years ago, but basically, I'm going to find it. Wait, what is it? I'm going to find it. It's the Amazon reviews. Why would you read the back of a candy package? It doesn't make sense. See you in hell, Haribo sugar-free gummy bears. So it's the sugar-free gummy bears and there's a million reviews and they're all somehow related to how it makes you poop. And so there's also a number of five-star reviews, specifically for how good they are at making you poop. So here I'm going to put that in the chat room. Digestive overload five stars. Well, I bought these fully well-knowing the consequences of my actions. However, the unforeseen events that followed include but are not limited to. Yeah, I'm not going to read these out loud, but... You're like, nope, nope. Will I read them out loud? No, I will not. Justin, you should read them in your voice. How else would I read them? How would other voice... Did I put on a different voice? Do you want mine? You can use mine. Just borrow it. That'll be good. Oh my goodness. Are you talking about a disclaimery voice or are we talking the quotey voice? I can't. I don't see them. Did you see it in the chat room? Here's a five-star review that is titled, Tell My Mother I Love Her. It's like pulling the pin on a hand grenade and swallowing it. Only it decides when to go off. Oh no. The voice you do. That voice you do. That thing you do. Maybe quotey voice. Yes. I like this one. It's called Don't Make Plans. No, can it really be this explosive diarrhea? I mean, this says, surprise. Bought these to give to a new group of scientists coming down to our station in Antarctica. They had the desired effect. Oh my goodness. Perfect treat for co-workers who can't be nice. Oh god. That was great. So there is an effect of some sugar substitutes because of the sugar alcohols that are used that they can cause stomach upset, that they can cause gastric distress. And sometimes it results in constipation and other times it results in the opposite. Well, isn't that a thing with, oh gosh, what's it called, the fake chocolate? Is it laxative? Yeah. What's it called? It's not Stevia. That's obviously, that's something else, but You can call it take five. Okay. How dare. See yourself out. No, no, no, no, no, no. Fake chocolate. What is fake chocolate called? Not carob. No, Web 21. No, not carob. Not carob. Fake chocolate is carob, but this isn't what she's talking about. No, what's it? I thought it was right with an S. It's like xylohol. Well, no, for the stuff I'm thinking of, these sugar alcohols that are sugar alternatives, it's like xylohol or something like that, but it's, yeah. Too close to colonoscopy prep. No. Yeah, I don't know. I can't figure out what it's called that I'm thinking of. But, but carob chocolate also, I think, is that. Did you copy from the website or did you write that? Yeah. Yes. The stuff that can kill dogs. Yes. Oh, no. Anyway, that was a whole thing. Well, let's see. A lot of these, I guess it was only two years ago. Oh, it feels like a million years ago because it was pre-COVID, I guess. Right. Sugar-free Haribo. See what happens. Although I just like Haribo for what they are. I like them with the sugar. I like it, but I understand you made that up. Of course you did. Well done. Well done, identity four. 10 out of 10 would read it again. Gosh. Oh, no. That's great. Yes. So what should we plan for? Is there anything? We did the show. We've been doing the show. We get interviews. We did the DTNS twist crossover, which is a fun extra thing to add excitement. What is the next thing that we should aim for other than summer vacation? Well, I guess pretty soon live events are going to be possible again. So there's that. Yeah. I don't know if we should think about that this year, but I mean for next year, I think we should start considering stuff like that again, if possible. Definitely. I mean, as long as Justin's not living in Denmark. Well, he'll just have to plan his extraditions accordingly. Where do you want to do something? Where do you want to go? Maybe we should go to Denmark. Yes. Yeah, come on. Let's do a live show in Denmark. This is a great idea. Yes. I would like to be invited to Denmark and then I'll just hop over to Norway, go visit family, go see some fjords. Where'd Blair go? She's like, I'm out of here. What are you doing there? Turn it off the camera. Hello. You know, things. Stuff and things. Just stuff and things. Bye, drive safe. Bye, Brian. She's looking out the door at him or she jumps up on the window sill. Watch as you leave. What are we going to do? Wait, I missed the thread. I was reading a thing. We're going on a, we're going to, there's going to be a big thing that we're doing. I don't know. He was just asking like, what are we going to do next? I'm trying to think of things that we can do to get off the desk. Things because it's always good to have things to look forward to. Is there something that as a twist we can plan or start thinking about looking forward to? Well, is there like a fun, like watch along? I feel like the, so the rover thing was a great example of something that we could have really orchestrated into something bigger. Hey, we were there. I don't know where you were. I was there for part of it. I was there for part of it. Yeah. Yeah, I think it would be fun because then you could like, I don't know, especially if it was at the right time zone for some of us, we could have like a theme drink. We could all mix up a drink together. We could bake something. We could, I just said, bake. Okay, not, okay, anyway. Drinking or getting baked. That's not what I, okay, but anyway. Other things. We could definitely, we could definitely, I mean, the James Webb Space Telescope, which I mean, if it actually is going to launch, we could try to do a thing on October 31st. We could all dress up like the telescope. Where is it launching from? It's so far is. It's okay. I don't want to go. It's going to be Florida, Texas. It's probably going to be someplace awful like that. I don't want to go. I also think it would be fun to do like a watch along. Sorry, Florida and Texas, but you're both on. A watch along. We could do a watch along. Of other things too, like a movie. I don't know how that would work. We'd have to like get the rights or something or. No, we could do something like we could easily do that. People on Twitch do it all the time where we all, we sit and react and watch and people are in the chat and then we all hit the start button, hit the hit go at the same time. Yeah, I think that would be super fun. Or yeah, people do it. Like a Star Trek movie or Contagion? I don't know. What's her out of this, perhaps? Or I don't know. There's always science fiction movies. I feel like I'm always yelling at the screen about the pseudo science and making funny predictions about what's going to, I don't know. I think it might be fun to do some sort of watch along or something like that. Just low key, like something people can participate in. It's a great idea. Okay. We can pick some movies, try and do a watch along. We could have a vote. We could do. Buckaroo Banzai. Oh, I love Buckaroo Banzai. That's a great one. We've talked about that before and I still have never seen it. You shouldn't save it until the actual show. Yeah. Oh, you haven't seen it? No. Okay. Great. Well, that's it. What is it available on? What is this movie? Ooh, we can hate watch Armageddon. Of course. This is the eighth dimension. This is the greatest movie in the history of movie making. Watch parties. John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd. Got all of the most important people. Oh my God. It's got all of the most important people of the movies in it. Okay. I don't want to read the plot section. I just want like the teaser, like one sentence version of what it's about. It's fine. There's not enough words to contain the movie without seeing the movie. That's how good that movie is. It does have very few women. It's very, very few women. But it's great. It's a great movie. It looks like maybe it's on Netflix? Yeah, it is maybe. It moves around. Buckaroo Banzai doesn't like to sit in one place too long. It's not going on. Amazon maybe? Sometimes it's on the Amazon. Sometimes it's on the Netflix. Sometimes it's, you know, it could be anywhere. Oh, it's $4 on Amazon, but that'd be fine. It could be anywhere. Yeah, we could all just rent it. We could rent it and watch it, or we could figure something out. Yeah. A watch party would be so much fun. There's another greatest movie ever too, but I don't know if that's the one I can never find. Which one is that? Let me see if I've even got the name right. I think it's called... No title hint too. Howdy. Greatest movies ever made. Leave your votes. Is this it? Yes. I wonder if there's anywhere to see this. There's a movie called Complex World that was made in 1991. It's the second greatest movie of all time that nobody's ever heard of. Oh, this is the one that's not available anywhere that you were talking about before that, like, you worked on? No, this is not one you worked on. This is not one I worked on. Actually, it's weird that it's 1991. I thought this was an older movie than that. That's curious. So it looks like there's a show maybe that's older. No, this is Complex World. It has a cameo by Captain Lou Albano. That means anything to anybody who's listening. It is, I don't know that any of the actors were allowed to act again after that movie, but it is still one of the greatest movies of all time ever. It's not up there with Bukker Banzai. That is the greatest movie of all time ever, but it is, you know, it's up there. Casablanca, Eric and AK. That's a good one. Yeah, it is, except it's going to be annoying because all I'm going to be doing the whole movie is pointing out how all the set dressing is shadows. It's just lighting and shadows. Look at this scene. Look at the lighting. Look at the lighting. It's just shadows. See, and you feel like you're in a club and there's lots of plants everywhere. There's none. It's just shadows. I just want to watch Black Mirror. I saw the episode that was like Star Trekky and it was great, but it was definitely, it gave me nightmares. Black Mirror gave you nightmares? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I haven't seen all the episodes. I've only seen a couple where check your IRC messages. I don't have any. I don't have any. Oh, so I do. Oh, I'm not doing a bit torrent. Thanks outright. I am all good on that. No, no. No, no, no. I don't have what you need to do that correctly. The last, the last time I tried to bit torrent. Yeah, exactly. I would have to do all that, which I don't currently do. That's fine. Yeah. No, no, I'm good. I don't need to get in trouble with the fuzz. So much shedding. The digital fuzz. Hi. May I help you? I get too, I get too irritated watching sci-fi though. Most sci-fi stuff. Depends on the sci-fi. I feel like we should watch Planet 9 from outer space. I feel like we should watch something very old so that it's understood that it's going to be terrible, but they're probably going to have some stuff that's weirdly prescient. There's always one or two things where you're like, but then they're still using Ken and Pencil in space. Watching a 1940s sci-fi, it's like, because of global warming, we've needed to move our entire planet's population to Mars. Wait, what? That's what we're doing now. How did you know? Because it's not new. My mom's been watching, oh gosh, if she was- Elon got his ideas from a movie. Elon got his ideas from the people who came up with the ideas and then he bought them. Yeah, of course. That's what happened. Yeah. Yeah, my mom's been watching some old sci-fi show on YouTube. I can't remember what it's called, but they keep getting on their space-a-phones. Nice. And then they're just out in space like doing this. Where are you in space? Yeah, how'd you know? Both of you are in space, man. It sucks being tied down by gravity like this. How are you in space and I'm not? I'm on a space moon right now. There's a piece of space now. They're in space. That's amazing. My son's favorite movie until just recently was The Cat from Outer Space. I'm not familiar. Movie from the late 60s, I believe. We could do it. There's like a whole bunch of episodes of The Outer Limits, which are fun, which was like the, I think, earlier type of version of Twilight Zone with usually side effects that included somebody with a flashlight, I think, putting a light on the wall. Like, oh, there's a dot of light on the wall moving around. We're in space. It was a little bit of that in the early episodes, but some of them are very well, very, very well written. 1953 version of War of the Worlds, huh? Yeah, that would be good. We could also watch Independence Day. I feel like that's been long enough now that some of it would be good and some of it would be cringy. Yeah. I think the fascinating part of that one is going to be, here's the common threat to all humanity. Let's rally together and take it on compared to like what's been going on in the pandemic where some people are like, I don't even believe there's aliens blowing up cities. Like, okay, we can't. Oh, see, that's what we should watch. Mars Attacks. I love Mars Attacks. I've been saying I wanted to rewatch that recently. That's a great movie. That one's fun. That would be very fun to watch. Very fun to watch. All right, so there's a bunch of ideas out there. I think it, this means that we do need to have a watch party, that we need to have like a regular watch party or we need to make a few dates to watch some movies together. Well, we can always watch Futurama. It's pretty, it's pretty appropriate. Very appropriate. Oh, whatever, Blayla. Yeah. Watch Bender's Big Score. It's the best one of the movies. Wait, wait, are you meaning Futurama, the Futurama movie or just? I said Bender's Big Score is the best of their movies. So we could watch the movie. What are you looking at? Hot Rod says you can find all the movies. Yes, The Avengers, the British TV series. There's great, there's so many great things. We can find something. We could have fun watch movies. Yeah, on Twitch, watch parties. That's it. On our Twitch channel, I think that would be good. Yeah. Turtle Hunt, I was just having this conversation with my loved one about whether you could put your head in a stasis or in a tank and if you would do it. And yes, I mean, you could right now, but the tank would be full of formaldehyde. Right. And I wouldn't be alive. That's not exactly what you want. If you could stay alive and like aware, I would 100% do it. No. Yeah. Why? Why? Like later, like when I'm going to die anyway. And then you'd just be ahead in a tank. Yeah. Yeah. You learn every language, like spend all day on the Internet learning new things. But would you though? I mean, it's not going to change human laziness. You're still just going to be like, I'm going to watch Netflix. Sure. On your channel. Why not? Give me more time to consume content. Listen to podcasts all day. I'm ahead in a tank. I can listen to all the podcasts in the world. Yes. Especially if like my jar would be near my loved ones who also would be dead if they weren't in a jar. Be great. You know, I feel like we should be a little bit more self provided. This is romance. This is romance. I don't want to die. I want to be suspended. My head in a tank next to your head in a tank. This is the exact conversation that we have. I love you so much. I want to be right next to you forever. We have so much fun just talking to each other. Why don't we just do this for all eternity? It'd be great. It's a long time. It's older than you. HN EK. Okay. So HN EK is in the YouTube chat room is saying after quarantine I realized I have no ability to learn or better myself. Now let me address this really quickly. Not bettering yourself during quarantine does not mean you're lazy and it does not mean you don't have the ability. We were in the middle of a dramatic experience. Yes. You were in a joint trauma. You didn't use the time to have a pandemic hobby. That doesn't mean anything. No. It actually it does. It doesn't mean anything at all. So there's this whole thing about pandemic guilt for people who decided they were going to pick up things or finally clean out that closet or whatever and they were like, I didn't take the time now. I'm clearly never going to know. You were in trauma. You were in fight or flight and you were trying to move through this forever unknowing questionable state. So psychologists have weighed in and said that's not what this means to expect yourself to like take advantage of this opportunity. Some people didn't. That's great. But it is totally unrealistic. And like I just want to give you all the permission to not have done anything productive with your quarantine. Have compassion for yourself. If your house is not cleaner than it was before pandemic started, that's fine. Yeah. It is okay. We were in limbo. It's been a hard it's been a hard time. Yeah. It just yeah well and especially like for me I was like I'm going to clean out my wardrobe. I'm going to like really get rid of stuff. But part of the problem is I don't want to get rid of any clothes because I don't know what my life will look like on the other side of this and what I actually need to wear. So like that whole idea of getting rid of things that you haven't worn in a year. If I did that I wouldn't have any pants anymore. It's not relevant to say like I haven't worn this in a long time. I haven't worn a dress in a year either. But that doesn't mean I'm never going to wear a dress again. It might dresses are the worst but still it's yeah it's really tough. It's tough to play in for the future when it's so unclear but the future will hold. I think pants will still be a thing in the future. Yes but that's the other thing is will pants fit the same at the end of this pandemic. I know I understand the nuance to what you said. Yes yes that's why I only own stretchy pants. Oh man stretchy pants TM to help you plan for the future. Yes I've never been more tempted by that Instagram ad for dress pants that are yoga pants. My fingers really hovered over that button quite a bit but I've not bit. What do you mean hovered? Mine was like bye bye bye. We will get those. Yes comfy yoga pants with pockets. Yes dang it. Gord says that pants are extinct. Mm-hmm. I do I do I'm sponsored by a pants company there would be a problem. On an average day I will say I wear three different kinds of pants. So I wear my workout pants to go for a run in the morning. I wear some version of sweat or yoga or pajama pants to work in from home. And I put on and I yeah and I put on real like jeans with pockets to take the dog for a walk because I need pockets to take the dog for a walk. And then I come back home workout pants and then sweat pants. The sweat pants go on immediately when I return from the walk for sure. It's like one comfy pair of pants after another. I'm like go back to normal business. I am comfortable. Yeah yeah. I will tell you yeah the in-person conferences they better be yoga conferences that's all I'm saying. The other thing that I'll never be the same about ever again is uh is underwires. I oof I think I can count the number of times I've worn one of those since this all started on one hand. Oh I should have just gotten like full body flight suit kind of things. Yes. That would have jumpsuits. Oh I love that. Yeah there was a jumpsuit I was looking at. I missed that opportunity. The other day and it was like $150. Like that's not the point of this. No thank you. Oh this was just one idea. Justin's a robot. What are you doing? Tell everyone but it's really amazing. Children. Justin's a robot. You're back. Uh yeah I'm trying to suggest uh the movie City of Lost Children but apparently the robots have gotten a hold of me. The robots. The lost children have come for you. That's a good movie. I haven't seen that one in a very long time. Yeah I forgot about that movie that's a pretty uh visually awesome looking movie. You're right Thunderbeaver I think Justin's torrenting right now that's why. Yeah he's downloading. All right nice. Well go start the day Justin. We will end our night and we will all say goodbye at this point I think it's time. Yeah say good morning Justin. Good night Blair. Good night Blair. Good night. Good night Peaky. Good night everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode. We will try and figure out some kind of movie thing. Do a movie watch party. I think that could be a lot of fun and I look forward to seeing you all next week. Have a wonderful week. Stay healthy and be happy as much as you can. Let's make it through to next week with more science. We'll see you there. Please come back. Bye.