 Harry Potter books to my son, I'm braiding the Harry Potter books to my son and as a result I'm using all sorts of British-ish accents. Hagrid, hey Ari, how are you doing Ari? And there's Ron, I can't believe you're going to do that, Harry! And Hermione says, oh Harry, my cat Crookshanks is going to eat your rat scabbers, Ron! Harry, Harry Potter. Harry, Harry. But that's not what we're doing right now, you know what we're doing right now. It looks like Kiki is directing an episode of This Week in Science. That's right. This Week in Science, episode 655, roll one, scene one, take one, this is Twis. This Week in Science, episode number 655, recorded on Wednesday, January 24th, 2017. Science Monkeys! I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we are going to fill your head with baby monkeys, supplements, and shrinking birds. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. There's a way of looking at the world in which you can ignore the details, a vision of everything based on how you assume it to be. Just read the headlines, you'll get the drift, think something you know nothing about works a certain way, that's exactly how it works. The label on the bottle claims to do this or that, good enough reason to end all further inquiry. This is a brand new opportunity to know what the whole wide world is doing without even giving it a first look. And while this way of existing in a world bereft of thought is exactly how I imagine most of the people on the earth are going about things, I haven't really looked into it because I've been far too busy getting excited to hear what's next on This Week in Science. Coming up next, maybe Kiki assumed I was going to have a much longer disclaimer at the beginning of the show. It's like, oh here we go. I've got the kind of mind I can't get enough I want to learn everything I want to fill it all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week there's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know what's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in science. What's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in science. Good science, Kiki and Blair. And a good science to you too, Justin, Blair, and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back yet again to talk about all the science stories that are fit to fill this show with. Last week we had a wonderful show at Cal Academy of Sciences with SF SketchFest. So much fun. Don't you guys agree? Oh yeah, that was great. I got to have a lifelong dream come true. And you'll find out more when the show is available online. I mean, I think it's available on YouTube at this point in time, that part of the show. But I had fun. I don't know if Justin did or not. I too had fun. I enjoyed it. I'm glad. I'm very glad. It was very nice to finally have a lot of my San Francisco native friends get to see the silliness that is that twist thing I'm always talking about. That was really fun as well. Yeah, absolutely. So everyone, I know we tried to broadcast live. We had some internet failings and so there are the three or four videos up on our YouTube channel at this point. I have a beautiful clean audio recording of the show. So that at least will be out in the podcast soon. I wish there's more we could have done for the quality of the live broadcast. But you know what? We do what we can and we move forward. So right now we're going to move forward into tonight's show. I have news about brains, contact lenses and baby monkeys. Baby monkeys. What do you have for us, Justin? I have ingester beware, arctic archaeology and an everyday item that may be toxic to your house. I don't like toxic things. Oh, right. And Blair. What's in the animal corner? I have the aforementioned shrinking birds and I also have a fun story about buzzing bees. Buzzing bees. We do like the bees here, especially when I hope it's a good story about how we're helping them. It's fun. Fun story. I hope so. I want to save all the bees. I love the bees. The shrinking bird story, not a fun story. The bee story, very fun. All right. We've got to balance it out there a little bit. We have the fun, the reality, all of it mixed into the thing that is twist. Yeah, but it's all science. So we've got to bring it all to you. That's true. That's true. But as we jump into the show, I want to remind everyone that you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, the Apple podcast portal, the Google Play podcast portal, Stitcher, Spreaker and tune in. You can also find us on YouTube and Facebook. Just look for this week in science. You can also visit twist.org for our show notes and links to the podcast episodes. But now it's time to get into the science. I do love the science. You guys ready for the fun, the fun, the fun. That is the world of baby monkeys. Yes. So Blair, tell me, have you worked with the primates? Yes, I have. Have you ever worked with the Reese's macaques? I have not worked with Reese's macaques. I worked with lion-tailed macaques. And they were interesting creatures. All right. Well, macaque, macaque, these macaques are actually not Reese's macaques. I'm sorry. I misspoke. Long-tailed macaques. Long-tailed macaques. How many macaques are there? There's a lot of macaques. Several species of macaques. These macaques are primate species. And as primate species, you know, they're closely-ish related to humans. They we branched off at some point and we've diverged in the years that have intervened between that point. But, you know, we're kind of cousins on the evolutionary family tree. Well, researchers in China have the first to report successful cloning of these long-tailed macaques. Two little babies named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, which I know I'm probably not pronouncing correctly. You know, you have, there's the nuances that my Americanized ear cannot bring forward. But these little monkeys are, yeah, they are active, healthy, happy baby monkeys who are the only two of somewhere near 120, 130 odd attempts at creating these clones. They came from one surrogate. And they were the only surrogate to successfully create clones when 60 surrogate mothers were implanted with clone embryos. They were born eight and six weeks ago and they're the first primates to be cloned from a non-embryonic cell. So what did they do? They used the same procedure that was used to create dolly, so somatic cell nuclear transfer, which means they took the nucleus out of an egg taken from an adult female and then they took the nucleus from a skin cell of another individual and put it into that egg and allowed it to start growing. And they used particular factors after that point to induce it to work successfully. And they've been working on this for a really long time. I mean, I don't remember exactly what year dolly was reported, but dolly is like a dead, and there are generations of sheep that have come after her. There's sheep geriatric studies that are ongoing as a result of the cloning of sheep like dolly. Dolly was 20 years ago, 21 years ago, 1996. Yeah, long time ago. Yeah. Long, long time ago. So these clones are not exact copies of each other. They're not, they're similar to each other, but they are not exactly 100% identical to each other because you've got the mitochondrial DNA from the donor egg that the nucleus goes into. So although they are very similar genetically, they are not exact clones of one another. But very, very close. They're kind of clones. Not exact clones, but kind of clones. But the thing that's very interesting about this is that now that this has happened in a primate species, this opens the door to the technical achieving the technical aspects of further primate cloning. And these researchers in China are suggesting that their work will eventually lead to a line of monkeys, of primates that can be used in laboratory research. In China, there are not the same kinds of ethical restrictions on animal research and primate research that we have in the United States here. And here in the United States and in other countries as well, there's less primate research going on than there was in the past. So it's a question as to exactly how much of a need there is, how much of a market there is for cloned monkeys, and whether there really is a market for this technology as they are discussing it and saying they want it to be used. The researchers say the reason we broke this barrier is to produce animal models that are useful for medicine, for human health. There is no intention to apply this method to humans. Yeah, I was going to say that the best application of cloning that I can see besides just like, because we can, is to reduce a variable in medical testing. Because every time you have a different genome, a different genome could react to something differently or be predisposed to something different that can confound your study. If you have a study sample that is all genetically identical, that knocks out a whole host of potential problematic variables. So that totally makes sense. Definitely makes sense when making mice, lab rats and lab mice makes a lot of sense, especially because the reduced lifespan of cloned animals wouldn't really matter because lab rats and lab mice are often euthanized after a lab trial anyway. So you don't have to worry so much about that. So I'm totally on board with it for that. I'm sure there's a lot of people that are going to feel really itchy about the fact that it's monkeys and monkeys are cute and monkeys are close to humans and it's a step too far. Why would they make them itchy? Because people see it as adjacent to human cloning. Yeah. And I think that is definitely where some people will get uneasy. But I think good work, folks. I'm excited. Better medical testing here we come. Yeah, I think it is a very exciting advancement. And even to understand the barriers that have held back primate cloning and even human cloning moving forward. I mean, it's not to say we will do human cloning in the future, but understanding how it works and how to do it successfully. We'll also answer many questions related to reproduction and development in the early embryos and could potentially lead to future treatments for infertility. And on a sci-fi standpoint, this might be how I get to live forever. Because you can just clone me, new body, download my consciousness. I'm good to go. Well, I think it's worth, it may be worth starting over too, right? We're starting over? Oh, yeah. Download the framework for your consciousness. I don't want to be labeled my consciousness. New you a fresh start. Don't force a brain onto somebody. I'm really proud of what I have. I have some ethical ramifications forcing that other you to have these thoughts. No, it's just me. It's just a new shell. That's all I'm saying. I just want to go into a brain, a functioning brain. You want to take over another human brain. Wow. Wow. I'm sorry. Kiki, go on. No mad scientist stuff here. But I think this is something that we do need to keep an eye on. I think that American restrictions are going to hold us back in research fields related to this. Although there are some things that we're doing now related to genetic editing that the Chinese started many years ago and that we are doing now that our restrictions have become more lax and enabling certain research. There was a report this last week that China has outpaced the United States in scientific publications for the first time ever. Now that doesn't mean quantity is better than quality. And there are a lot of studies that where Chinese scientists are replicating and reproducing studies that were previously published in Western journals. And so there's a kind of like yay, they're reproducing things. So if things were wrong, now at least Chinese researchers are double checking. But this is something that politically we've been warned against for years with the reduction in scientific funding for the NIH, for the NSF, for NASA, for all of the governmental bodies that produce science and fund science across the United States. That if we do not prioritize science, then science will begin to fade in the United States. And yeah, China is a much bigger country than the United States is. And so yeah, quantity will be bigger than the United States once they really get going. But China is on pace to not be so much of a third world nation for long or much longer. And you know, United States, we need to be looking at the things that China is doing. So what I mean, if we want to be competitive in the STEM fields, we want to keep looking at them. So cloning, maybe it's not something that we want to do specifically here or that is or, you know, the, maybe it is fine. But these are things that we need to look at and we need to have these conversations. And we need to move forward. And to brains. Let's move on to brains. My next story is all about brains. So let's talk about the evolving brain, a new study that was published this week in Science Advances from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Researchers were looking at our brains and they said old homo sapien or homo erectus brains and Neanderthal brains were not globular like they are now. I mean, I really love this study for the fact that the researchers were looking at globularity of the human brain, the brain globules. But really what they found is that the brain, the human brain became globular, more rounded over evolutionary time. And with these changes, this is what allowed the neurological changes to take place that led to cognitive changes and behavioral changes that give us who and what we are today. So Simon Newbauer told Inverse that the brain is an organ that's really important for what makes us human. Yeah, we would not be doing anything without the brain. Our findings add to the accumulating archeological and paleo anthropological evidence demonstrating that homo sapiens is an evolving species with deep African roots and long lasting gradual changes in behavioral modernity, brain organization and potentially brain function. So they looked at various brains going back until about 300,000 years ago and they took scans of the interior of the brains and in the past we've looked at brain size. And we're like, okay, well the brain's gotten bigger, but especially in homo sapiens over the last 300,000 years, homo sapiens have slowly evolved and the globular features they found by looking at fossil homo sapiens skulls, the features that are modern, the globular aspect, the roundedness of the human brain, emerged only about 40,000 years ago. Yeah, so the modern shape. So they're looking at the specificity of the shape as opposed to the size. So the modern brain size was 300,000 years ago, same size, but the shape that is potentially what is allowing the connectivity and the way that we are currently connected, that's what they're really diving into here. And so they, an interesting thing that comes from this is that they analyzed these endocrineal, they're the inside of the skull, shape variations and found that present day human shapes overlapped with specimens from the upper paleolithic era. And so the brains became rounded, so I say 40,000, but they became rounded somewhere between 100,000 to 35,000 years ago. And this is again much later than the size evolution. And it's something, when you go to any biology class, as you start learning about evolution and biology, there's this statement that comes up again and again, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. And ontogeny is the actual development of an organism during its life. Phylogeny is the evolutionary history of the organism. So we've got the story of humans being in utero and having gill slits and then the gill slits close. And we go on to have our lung-based respiratory system that uses air that we breathe through our mouth and our trachea and all those things as opposed to through gills like fish, which is a remnant of our phylogeny. So they looked also, they've been looking at present-day humans and they say that brain globularity, I really like saying this, brain word globularity, emerges developmentally during a few months right around the time of birth. And so as the baby is developing, it's right around the nine months, eight, seven, eight, nine months, late in the development of the baby as it's being born, nine, 10 months, that's when the globularity starts. So maybe the globularity really is a later addition and something very important for neural wiring and cognitive development. That timeline is hanky as can be though. I don't know that I... Yeah? It's like when you move into a new apartment, right? You move into a new apartment and you have stuff in boxes everywhere. It's all the same stuff, but when you move in, it feels very neat. You feel at home, everything has a place. It all works. But before then you walk in, it looks like a horrible mess. It's just like that. The raw material was there. Just needed to be organized. Organized. I don't know what you're talking about at all. Look. Are you still living out of boxes, Justin? Yeah, yeah, pretty much. My point is though, the timeline, even going back 100,000 years, and they're saying that it sort of sprung up then. Yeah. Everywhere at once because humans were already pretty far flung at 100,000 years ago. Yeah. So they looked at 20 different homo sapien fossils and they divided them into three groups. They had an old group from north and east Africa and these were the, this is right after the split with Neanderthals. Another group was east Africa, eastern Mediterranean. The split with Neanderthals. And that's about 130 to 100,000 years. No, that's much further back. That's all wrong. No, I'm sorry. Wait, Neanderthals have been in Europe for like 400,000 years. Yes. Like these numbers are ridiculously up. But when we actually split from humans. I don't get it. Is a different question. I mean, split from Neanderthals. Oh, when we split from Neanderthals. When we split from Neanderthals. Very far. Was more than 100,000 years ago. Yes. So they went back 300,000 years, but they had different groups. They went back 300,000 years. That's the old group. Yeah. And then they, but they had fossils that represented this older time period. 100,000 years ago all the way up to about 35,000 years ago, or actually 10,000 years ago, much more recent. Okay. Yes. And they, and looking at this, they just found that these, that the, the craniofacial morphology appeared model modern, the size of the brain looked modern. And, but it was this globularity that how it, how the brain sits inside the skull case that they realized there's, there was a change. Probably it's really affecting homo sapiens around 40,000 years ago, but maybe getting it start sometime around 100,000 years ago. And it was that particular change that led to modern, modern human capabilities. This, yeah, even 40,000 sounds like an odd number cause that's post out of Africa. So then is it all the way through Africa and, and through eight parts of Asia, if we're talking 40,000 years ago, is it like everywhere at once this change was already in development that seems too recent for these changes take place on the one hand on the other hand, it's just the brain fossils that the fossils, they looked at, you know, they had 20 fossils. So we're not from them. I didn't do this study. I get it. Yeah. This is like only bugging me now. I'm going to have to read this. Kiki's defending her thesis even though she. No, I do not believe. Yeah, I don't know. I do not believe they looked at brains from Asia, but I'm not sure all I have seen in the, in the fossil list is northeast Africa, north and east Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Okay. And these are also all groups that could have interbred with Neanderthal or the flow. Yes. Flow back for their senate. So like, so then it, and it, and that correlates to which modern human, like I have issues with this story. When you talk about humans, you know what? Something happened 40,000 years ago when we are spread out all over the planet. It's hard to believe. Period. End. Like. Yeah. Evolution and human brains everywhere at once. Come on. Okay. So you're saying that the change must have started, but whatever led to that globularity must have started much earlier. Much, much earlier. Much, much earlier. I mean, even the 130,000 mark is a little, is raising some skepticality capsules. Interesting. All right. So, although, and less, and less, and here's the one big thing I'll say with the unless on this, unless that internal morphology can be. Modified by a human behavior, like language sprouts up, which is creating morphologies on the, on the brain or globular, globular shaping on the brain. And then because if there's, if there's a widespread technology, like this is one of those weird things, like people who play violin have a little node towards the back of their brain that people who don't play the violin might be much less likely to have. And if that could be expressed within the skull casing invisible there, then I get it. People who play violins, brains, casings should all look slightly different. And if language or some type of art or communication or some other activity that humans were engaging in became widespread and spread like wildfire, and then we were all doing this new thing with our brains. And that could be trapped within that morphology of the brain casing. Then maybe I would get it. But then it's, then it's the brain is already doing that evolution. And it's not because of the globularism, but it's leading to globularism. Yeah. So, yeah. So I get what you're saying there. And yeah, and I don't, I don't know. I mean, it's a, either something that the behavior fed back to change the brain and that it was, there was something inherent to the way that the human brain works that allowed globularization to take place among all examples of Homo sapiens at that time or whether it was something different. But they, so they go on to say the human revolution when humans started to have behavioral modernity just marks the point in time when gradual changes reach full modern behavior. And morphology does not represent a rapid evolutionary event related to only one important genetic change that leads to a rapid emergence of modern human brain morphology and behavioral modernity. So in essence, they're saying that their, their data suggests that this was not a really quick change, that this was something that gradually took place and under, underlaid over many tens of thousands of years the emergence of modern human behavior. But anyway. Me stale skeptical. Link will be in the show notes and you can read it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. This is this week in science. And Justin, what did you bring? Oh, I got a story here. Right over that. Yes. Global warming. Climate change. Climate. Yeah. Whatever you choose to call it, it's happening now. Yes. It's going to have some negative consequences. It may lead to crop failures, wildfire or wildlife devastation, wildfires, sea level rise that will displace millions of people and could lead to wars over dwindling resources. But it does have a silver lining in the form of melting ice. Which can be awful to live near, but if you died a long time ago and we're hoping that someday your remains or at least your stuff would be rediscovered. Now. So it's great. The melting of glacial ice patches and Scandinavia, the Alps in North America will reveal ancient archaeological records of past human activity and then promptly destroy them. So what do we need? We need glacial archaeologists, specialists who go out there and find, rescue and identify these artifacts. In Norway, which is best known for its award-winning fjords, the story is about a mountain area, not a fjord area, but a mountain area of Opland, which also includes Norway's highest mountains. An international team of researchers have conducted a systematic survey at the edges of the contracting ice, recovering artifacts like wood, textiles, hides, that would otherwise be probably lost pretty quickly if they didn't rush out there and grab it. To date, they found more than 2,000 artifacts. Some of the finds date as far back as 4,000 BC, over 6,000 years ago, iron age, bronze age, clothing items, remains from skis, pack horses, statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates on these finds were done and patterns began to emerge. Patterns showing that they did not spread out evenly over time. Some periods have many finds. Well, other periods of time have none. So what was the reason for this? Populating and depopulating and depopulating and depopulating these alpine areas. Well, what they've come up with, this is Dr. James H. Barrett, environmental archaeologist at McDonald's Duke for Archaeological Research University of Cambridge, senior author of the paper. He says, one such pattern which really surprised us was the possible increase in activity in the period known as the late antique little ice age. That's 536 to 660 AD. This was a time of cooling. There were harvests that may have failed, so you got to regular farming rotations and everything, but you got this 100-year cold snap. And people died. Well, but not so much. It's not so much that the people died, it's that they couldn't farm. So they headed to the hills in search of prey. They went from farming back to hunter-gathering. And it wasn't all of them, but it was very likely that there was groups of hunters that sort of migrated out there and became mountain hunters going after mostly reindeer. And so they would go out there and hunt, and then they would bring furs and antlers and stuff down to create a trading routes through these hills. And this is where they were leaving all this stuff that we're just now finding. And then, so those numbers kind of cut the, with the climate, they see particular high numbers of vines dating the 8th to 10th century, reflecting perhaps increased population and mobility in the area, lots of trade before and during the Viking Age. And when outward expansion was also characteristic, I like for the outward expansion was being, became characteristic of Scandinavia. Yeah, vikings were out pillaging. And then it sort of, the finds start to drop off. And part of why they think is because the hunting techniques really became pretty advanced. They started doing, instead of shooting that reindeer with a bow, they started doing mass harvesting techniques. They did these funnel shaped and pitfall trapping systems. And so this intensive hunting probably reduced the number of wild reindeer and therefore less reason to wander around in the Alps looking for them. Right. Trap them, bring them in. Get them in there. I have to say though, being an archaeologist on the coast of Norway looks miserable. Are you kidding me? Cold and wet. I'm digging in the rocks. All of these guys, all of these guys on this picture you're showing there, standing on a rock surrounded by ice. You know, I keep thinking to myself, I just clicked a box for tropical archaeology. Be on a sandy beach somewhere right now. This would be easier somehow. Yeah, but I have to imagine also, I mean, tropical archaeology is going to be a little bit more difficult because you have more vegetation and more activity in the soil. So things will break down and the signs of things disappear more quickly. Got erosion. Oh, the mosquitoes. And the toughest one actually of all, which is I think there's going to be an increasingly amazing field as our technology gets better, is underwater archaeology. As we know, many of the sites that humanity today likes to inhabit is coastal. And that's kind of always been true of humans. We like to be near the ocean. And sea levels are higher now than they once were. So a lot of human history is going to be underwater. Probably not that far off coasts, but still underwater and then under whatever's under the water. Sand, I don't know what's, I've never been to the bottom of the ocean. Thankfully, but whatever's down there, getting under that to find the places to dig. There's an interesting story of the hurricanes that hit the east coast. Hurricane Sandy, I guess, a while back, they sent dredges out and the dredges kind of go off the coast. And there's these long pipes and they just push sand back onto the beaches to sort of replenish the beaches. And skim kid walking along found a Clovis Point, an Indian arrowhead, a large Indian arrow spearhead on the beach. And there's no reason this should be on the beach. They don't float, they don't wash up. And then the best thing they could think is because this was freshly newly dredged beach, was that somewhere out to sea, one of those dredges was churning up artifacts and throwing them up onto the beach with the sand. That's great. So everything we know, we're probably looking at the thinnest sliver of a lot of human history in our artifact record, which we obviously always are. But what is of what's actually available to us might be a considerable amount to stop shore. Underwater. The underwater markets of the past. But you know what? It's time to move into the future. Keep moving forward. We do, we do, we do. You guys know what time it is? I hope I do. I think I know what time it is. It's time for Blair's Animal Corner. Blair's Animal Corner with Blair. What you got, Blair? Are we skipping it, Kiki? Yeah, just skip it, just skip it. Buy a pet, build a pet. Don't pet at all. Wanna hear about a animal? She's your girl. Except for giant pandas. Let's go. Put your cap, Blair! I have shrinking burns! Oh my goodness. So do you guys remember? I think it was almost two years ago already. I reported on shrinking goats. Do you remember this? Yes, there were goats. They were living up in the mountains. I think it was in Europe. And they were following the temperature they were used to, which on a mountain is going to be up in elevation. And as they followed that higher elevation, generation after generation was shrinking. And after some scientific study, the theory was that it was a reduction in oxygen in the atmosphere that was not allowing them to grow as large. Well, now in a new study from Australia and New Zealand, they are looking at birds. And birds, the European house bearer, which was actually introduced to Australia and New Zealand in the 19th century, have shown that they too are shrinking. So Macquarie University, Samuel Andrew and colleagues captured and measured 40 adult house sparrows. So again, this is a preliminary study, not a huge sample size, but 40 sparrows at 30 locations across Australia and New Zealand. And they found that the maximum temperatures during the summer when the birds breed were a better predictor of adult body size than winter minimum temperatures. So it was the hot heat that had more of an effect than the reduced lows in the winter. So the new expectation is that excessive heat during development can affect growth, which makes sense. And they now have found this is only in a handful of studies looking at endotherms at warm-blooded animals and effects on them in climate. Most people think about ectotherms about cold-blooded animals in climate because they're a much more obvious poster child for it because their internal body temperature is directly related to the outside temperatures. And so they have much more extreme and immediate responses to subtle changes in the climate. But these guys, it might not be enough of an impact for them to move yet these sparrows, but it is enough that it appears to be affecting their body size. Hmm. Yeah. So previously, before they started this study, they actually expected that there was a chance that the size would actually be a regional thing that it would have something to do with their family tree in different kind of regional varieties of the sparrows. But they found that the region wasn't really the predictor. It was, in fact, the summer high temperature. So this is important because the more we understand how animals will respond to climate, the better we can prepare for the negative impacts. Of course, this is an introduced species. So we don't care so much about what happens to them because they're not even supposed to be there. But for other birds that are local... They're basically endemic now. The sparrows are all over the world at this point. Yeah, that's a fair point. But for protected species, species that cannot withstand small stressors like a reduction in body size, reduction of body size can change a lot of things about an animal, a reduction in muscle mass, which reduces the flight range that they can... that they can reach. It reduces their ability to fight off predators or competitors for resources. So there's a lot of things that can happen when you shrink the body size of an animal too quickly. So that's kind of the bummer news about the birds. Well, hopefully it doesn't have terrible effects on their reproduction. And I mean, I'm just thinking, you know, you're smaller. You don't have to eat as much to get energy. So maybe it's helping with energy conservation in individuals. And that if you help with energy conservation, then you have more energy for things like reproducing. But the... It could also be it's hot, you know, in the summer, high temperatures, the birds are laying low and maybe they're not eating. Right. The really dangerous thing, though, is that animals that live in colder climates have larger bodies to reduce heat loss. And if a hotter summer is coupled with a colder winter because of extreme weather from climate change, that can have a huge negative impact on those animals. Right. So you've got... You might be able to make it through the summer, but then you'll be too cold in the winter and die of hypothermia. Yeah. Great. So, you know, the shape and size of an animal is part of a very delicate balance of trial and error in evolution where they found the right size and shape for what they need. And so when you make a tweak as a result of a changed environment in just a few generations, it's really hard to predict what's going to happen, but... Yeah. Total aside from this, there was an article in Wired this last week talking about, and I think in another publication as well, but talking about the idea of engineering the climate on Earth, you know, like putting iron particles in the ocean or sulfur in the atmosphere, various things to increase cooling of our atmosphere as opposed to actually tackling our problems with carbon dioxide emissions. But basically they said, hey, if we go about starting this path, if we suddenly go, hey, we don't want to do this anymore, we will have shifted things so much that things will crash. Things will come crashing down and ecosystems will be just destroyed. And it is this balance that you're talking about where animals are adapted to particular situations and it takes time to learn out new, to figure out the new balance for survival. And if you shift it too quickly in one direction or another. It sounds like somebody's watching the coming attractions a little too closely. Isn't there a, oh God, who's in it? There's a movie coming out about that, about the government altering the weather and it going bad. I don't have any concerns about that. I had a cat who controlled the weather at one point in time. She was great. Every time she was mad at me, she'd go walk behind the heater and change the weather. Let's see. Short makes as much sense as the movie trailer. All right, moving on. Moving on, let's get some buzz. Adorable bees. Oh my goodness. I love talking about bees and how they are adorable. Do you remember how we learned how they do the little waggle dance to say pollen's over there? Buzz, buzz, buzz. And then last year, my favorite animal story of the year was that bees run into each other and go, whoops. I love that story. Whoops. Well, the latest from honey bees is that they are actually very quiet neighbors. So when you take a bunch of humans, maybe five humans, you put them in a room and they're all talking. It's going to get loud-ish. If you then put a hundred humans in a room and they're all talking, very loud. Put a thousand humans in a room, have them all talking. You can't hear yourself think. So you would expect that the bigger the bee colony, the louder it would be. Well, a recent study published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology reports that bigger honey bee colonies are actually quieter than smaller ones. As bees. Yes. Bigger colonies have different heating needs. They've got more bees to be air conditioners and they've got to fan their wings and there's buzzing. I can't wait to tell you more about this. It gets so much more exciting. So bees, as we said, they communicate with vibrations, little waggle dances in the comb, and that waggle dance actually follows, it vibrates the comb to spread that message across the colony. In order to get that message through, you have to eliminate background noise because if everybody was vibrating different messages at the same time, you wouldn't be able to hear any of the messages that they're trying to get across. Oh, yeah. If everybody is all at once saying, go left, go right, go left, go right, go straight, go left, go right, then it's like, I heard every direct, I've got every direction going at once. So it all started with Michael Smith, a doctoral student in neurobiology and behavior. He's the lead author on this paper. He wanted to see why this was. And then he enlisted the help of Po Chang Chen, who's a former doctoral student in the field of electrical and computer engineering. Chen made a chip that contains an accelerometer for measuring vibrations in three dimensions. It takes 800 samples in one eighth of a second and does that for as long as you need it to. And so they attach these chips, the outside of honeycombs in a lab. They varied the number of bees on the combs by taking measurements with half of a colony than an entire colony. In another experiment, they took measurements of an active colony at different times of the day since the numbers of bees in the colony fluctuate throughout the day. And then, after they took a measurement, they counted the number of bees in each comb. What they found was that, indeed, the more bees, the quieter the comb, they suspect that the way they do that is by their posture, is that they are actually straddling the comb cells like little staples, they say, connecting different cells together, dampening the sound. Another hypothesis is that sailors on a teetering boat, they lean in to compensate for vibrations. The original expectation was that it was the sheer mass or weight of the bees. And so they took dead bees, they put them in comb cells, and then they took accelerometer measurements with more and more and more dead bees on the comb, and the bees had, the dead bees had no effect on comb vibrations. So it was all about how many live bees were in the comb, which means the live bees are doing something actively while they are communicating to dampen the sound. They are natural vibration dampers, okay? It's getting a little bit too loud in here, simmer down now, just simmer down, that's what the bees say, they say simmer down and they just hold on and they say, we're going to shut this down a little, how on earth do they do that? So stay tuned, hopefully we'll find out more as this research continues, but I love this because it's an excellent pairing of someone who's an engineer and someone who's in biology, and they took an electrical engineering piece of research and used it to complete biological research in like a practical experiment in a lab, and that after all that they didn't get the result they expected, and ultimately they have a couple guesses, but it just raised more questions they're going to have to keep going, but bees somehow, they have figured out how to whisper their communications to each other essentially in an enormous colony. This is something that bobs and all those headphone companies where they want to make noise cancelling headphones, they need to be looking into bees. Well it sounds like I should just fill my headphones with bees. Bees. I like in our chat room, Bleak says maybe the live bees were just whispering about where all the dead bees came from. They're just whispering about it. Yeah, all this is fun, I can't wait to hear more about bees. Bees, quieting it down. Let's zoom it down now, the one that's getting a little loud in here. Bees know how to use an inside voice. They definitely do. This is the first half of this week in science, we're going to take a quick break in return with more science news in the second half of the show. I've got some smart contact lenses for you and a god helmet. You ready for that? I don't even know what that means. There's so much fun coming. No idea. Stay tuned for more everyone. This is this week in science. Hey everyone, thank you so much for joining us for another episode of this week in science. I would love to let you know about a few things that you can do to help twist out, to help twist keep going week after week after week. So first off, I hope you know about our website, our website is twist.org and if you visit twist.org, you will be able to find all things related. 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but the obvious technology medicine everything science surrounding me and most of your audience at home and then today as I was going through my morning ritual it hit me I have a long running career in IT and for the past seven years I've had a great job at a worldwide tech company I'm not rich but I have a pretty comfortable life around four years ago I decided to study drawing and painting as a hobby this year I started selling art as a side thing and I'm planning on expanding it in 2018 overall things are doing just fine and I believe I can be considered a successful person here's the plot twist though I suffer from type 2 bipolar disorder when I was diagnosed in my early 20s it had been crippling me for years I wasn't able to do anything for longer than a couple of months relationships jobs plans college anything I started went down the drain after a short period and when the depression part of the cycle hit it hit hard I didn't know I had a diagnosis I just thought I was a failure and I was on the edge of becoming an alcoholic more than once just trying to cope with not being able to function all the things I mentioned above having a long running career studying even planning for the future were unthinkable back then this was 16 years ago then I got diagnosed and treated and once the medication was adjusted and started to kick in things started to get better it was a long process but I've been free and free of episodes for the past 10 years and that because of my morning ritual wake up have breakfast and take an affordable little pill that keeps my brain working properly I've been doing it for so long that I don't even notice it anymore and take it for granted I shouldn't though so what has science done for me lately well I have neuroscientists doctors therapists scary big pharma and a small pill to thank for pretty much my entire adult life science kept me going lately it kept me going in the past 16 years and it will keep me going in the future it's kind of a big deal have a great new year our Wow thank you for sharing that was truly awesome you'll also have to teach me how to sell art Oh also me great you're not supposed to put you do the art and then sell it you're not supposed to just give it away all the time that's all I've done is I either give it away or just make more of it and collect it in my own private art gallery that works also but our our thank you so much for writing in with your tail I mean seriously your entire love adult life and the fact that you can consider yourself a success you are a success and you're doing things that are so exciting thank you for sharing with us and everyone out there if you would like to share if you have something inspiring that is inspired by science how is science a part of your life every day what has science done for you lately let me know you can email me at kirsten at thisweekandscience.com or you can send me a message on facebook so facebook.com slash thisweekandscience that's our account send me a message there if you're on facebook if not kirsten at thisweekandscience.com what has science done for you lately Justin tell me a story so it is a new year many people have made New Year's resolutions and if you're like more than two thirds of Americans you are overweight and perhaps made your New Year's resolution to lose some of that weight and that resolution may have led you to contribute towards the two billion dollars we spend on dietary supplements promoted for weight loss but do they really work of course they do why it says so right there on the packaging it will make you faster stronger, thinner, better able to leap tall buildings in a single bound they couldn't make those claims without evidence right no well according to Ann L. Thurn PhD director of the office of dietary supplements communications program at the NIH when it comes to weight loss supplements there's little evidence they actually work in many manufacturers of weight loss supplements don't conduct studies on humans to find out whether their products work or are even safe some dietary supplements aren't actually meant to help you lose weight they may actually be designed to help you gain weight or athletic performance of some type they might have a value for certain types of activity according to Paul M. Coates PhD director of the office of dietary supplements while others don't seem to work and might even be harmful so they created a pesky sheet of information at the office of dietary supplements for the public to better judge the supplement ingredients by a fact sheet if you will covering more than 20 to 40 ingredients to such formulas both for weight loss and for exercise so let's see this one was including for the physical athletic performance some of the ingredients included antioxidants beet root tart cherry branched chain amino acids caffeine creatine and dear antler velvet what they point out creatine as an example might help with short bursts of high intensity activity like sprinting or weightlifting but is not for endurance efforts like distance running or swimming antioxidants such as vitamin c and e don't seem to improve any type of physical activity whatsoever they're just needed in very small amounts for overall health and dear antler velvet are you serious how do they get that some of you have to chase after an adolescent deer who antlers haven't turned a bone yet yeah there's no scientific evidence that ingesting this is anything other than weird the weight loss list must be good for something why else are they highlighting it on the ingredient label include african mango beta-glucans chromium carcinia green tea hoody raspberry ketones chromium might help you lose a very small amount of weight and body fat and is safe but raspberry ketones haven't been studied enough to know whether they're safe or effective drinking green tea they consider safe taking green tea extract pills though has been linked to liver damage in some people oh yes so this is just like the word of generalized word of caution if you go to their website it's on the NIH National Institute of Health website this is the ODS office of dietary supplements you can Google that you can find these lists one of the things that's pointed out unlike drugs there are no provisions in the law for FDA to approve dietary supplements for safety or effectiveness before they reach the consumer none once a dietary supplement is marketed FDA has to prove that the product is not safe in order to restrict its use or remove it from the market so even the supplement infocyte on the NIH that was browsing around looking at it can be a little bit suspect I happen to like hey because I got these calcium supplements that I was taking because somebody said yeah calcium helps you sleep sometimes I'm a little insomniatic take some of these under calcium they say over the long term intakes of calcium below recommended levels have health consequences such as causing low bone mass osteopenia yes osteopenia the fraudulently fabricated not a condition condition created by Merck osteoporosis meds to people who don't have osteoporosis is listed on this site as a possible outcome of having not enough calcium so it is truly ingester beware out there but as long as you have a few billion dollars to spare America spend it on something that will definitely work just as not a real doctor poo pills results are unsubstantiated I'd say you'd be better off paying for a gym membership you're not going to use than for a weight loss pill right some of the and we've known some of the stuff that's in there we don't exactly know how it works I mean historically things have gone wrong people have had heart attacks they've been on treadmills and then suddenly it's like oh maybe we shouldn't put a Fedra in these diet pills anymore and that's usually the way it works additionally like you said Justin there's nobody regulating and testing to make sure that the concentration of something that is printed on the label is actually the concentration of things that are in the bottle and then beyond that what is the concentration that you should be taking for your weight, your size and or should you even be taking it and yeah what's in it and what's in what concentration is a whole thing because they even though there have been claims by some of these that they have a standardized production method that they often that is interpreted by the companies as having followed a recipe of some sort and is not a FDA standardized anything and actually one of the intriguing things in all of this too is a completely different story but the NFL Players Union pays for this pretty large laboratory which does nothing but test supplements and the reason that they test supplements is because the athletes want the edge they want maybe I want some deer antler okay give me the deer antler velvet thing but what they end up getting I want to grow antlers do you really want to eat skin bro what the but what often happens is that there is some growth hormone that isn't in antlers but has been added to the formula that the NFL players are not allowed to take less they lose their job for four to six weeks and maybe a million dollars of income along with it which is why this thing is being why this lab is funded because even the even what's said to be in there often isn't what's in there so it's this huge thing because there is no oversight and it's your own problem and we'll be talking about it forever until the lot changes yeah and in addition to supplements I'm going to say probiotics I'm going to put those in there we talk a lot about bacteria on this show and how important the microbiome is but as of now even though there is research linking the microbiome of humans with health and the immune system and the brain and all sorts of stuff we don't know how it all works together and so when you take probiotics you are actually potentially potentially throwing things off balance and off kilter and at this point in time really the only reason that probiotics are suggested is if you're taking an antibiotic to kill the bacteria that you help things get back to normal but really the probiotics they are dropping the bucket of the trillions of bacteria that are in your belly and yeah they're not regulated they're not regulated and again this is I think of the 150-200 stories whatever that I personally brought to the show last year maybe 50 of them were about the microbiome and something we just learned and there have been probiotics on the shelves on the market for years making claims so well and if I can of course make it about animals for a second shocking going back to the antler velvet whenever you put animal parts in a medicine or a dietary supplement or anything like that and you make a claim of what that does that can be so problematic because ultimately most of the things from animals that you're putting in medicine bile horn whisker velvet these things have the same building blocks that are in our own body you're not really doing anything new for your body by ingesting a bunch of keratin you have plenty although I think by licking my cat I have reduced my allergies well there you go so there are ways to do it without killing endangered species and I would say the same thing for plants too there's lots of endangered protected plants plants that are disappearing that people want to think have this mysterious impact on your body when there's no scientific evidence of that and so harvesting it in huge amounts to solve a problem that may or may not exist can be really detrimental to your health in other ways when you destroy ecosystems another bit of news along this front potential for creating synthetic elephant and rhinoceros horns so the question now is being raised well we're getting the stuff together to be able to create synthetic horns or synthetic ivory should we or should we keep putting a kibosh on the on the market so I'm just putting that out there I don't really want to discuss it I just want to throw it out there we're going to keep moving right now we can talk about it in the after show I'm going to keep moving into smart contact lenses things that we've been wanting to build forever we've got researchers at Brigham Young University making holograms they call it a hologram because it's actually better than a hologram they're creating these things three-dimensional you can see tiny things, fluid in space images they did a two-dimensional princess Leia thing anyway holograms but these other researchers have fully created smart contact lenses and why on earth would you want smart contact lenses so you can see your phone screen in your eye well there's that kind of thing that we could do or we could have smart contact lenses with sensors in them for a non-invasive way of monitoring blood glucose yes because diabetics for years have been forced to prick their fingers to take injections to go through all sorts of hoops to measure their blood glucose but what if they were a way that were easier for diabetics to instantly know whether or not their blood glucose levels had reached a certain level and so researchers who just published in Science Advances have developed a soft not a hard contact lens a soft flexible contact lens that doesn't impair vision in any way so the sensor itself is so small that it doesn't get in the way of vision and people would be able to see through it now the sensor is embedded into this contact lens surface and is basically bathed in the tears that are produced by the eye and the tears that are produced by the eye have glucose in them and so can be used as an indirect measure of the amount of glucose that's in the blood what they what they created is a sensor that can tell how much glucose is in a solution and it's connected to a small circuit that is connected to an LED very little LED but when you're talking about something that's in the field of view or just off the side as a wearer you would see a light turned on if your glucose level is fine or if your glucose levels raised too much then the light would potentially turn off and so you would see a pixel of light turn on or turn off in your field of view and when that pixel of light changed its activation then you would know I need to up my insulin I need to do something to protect my health and Ben Rothig in the chat room is saying can I test this I'm type 2 yeah so they have gotten to the point where they are starting to test this in vivo they have tested it in vitro they have tested it on mice and it has worked fabulously on the eyes of mice they were able to from an external source be able to trigger the LED on and off it did not irritate the eye of these mice that they tested it on and when they used the lens material on a camera lens there really wasn't any disruption and vision so this is the kind of thing that really will probably if there's nothing that gets in the way this is something that is almost ready to make it to market this is getting there this is so cool nice I mean I don't know how much this will cost but it's so cool this is one of those things that I feel like is sci-fi come true yeah is an in-eye display to keep you healthy and it's just one pixel it's just a little light in the eye will keep you healthy but this is also you know this is the direction of contact lens technology to be able to create a soft wearable contact lens that has these smart features to it not just I mean this if it can monitor glucose what else can it monitor in the tears additionally what else can they put into it can they put other things into it what other heads-up displays can we put into our contact lenses oh we could do something like they have in snapchat and then like through facial recognition it can make your friends or co-workers into cartoon characters well that would be funny when your boss is chewing you out you just turn him into a hot dog and then you're just getting yelled at by a hot dog you're like go ahead you still look delicious you look delicious you just chew me out you got another story Justin yeah this is a bisphenol A story we haven't really talked about a bunch lately it's a chemical that is so similar to estrogen in its construction that when it gets into the human body the human body thinks it's estrogen and uses it as such so bisphenol A also goes by the name BPAs which if you're a parent you probably notice because every kid product out there says it's BPA free on the packaging and the reason so many children's products tout the fact that they are BPA free is because these products used to be full of bisphenol A they were very handy in making things like like binkies like the tips for bottles for bottle feeding and it's nice to making malleable type plastics and when kids chew toys and all sorts of things they were also in water bottles regular you go jogging you take a nice swig from your water bottle that's been in the sun and heated up and the bisphenol A is transferred into the water yeah that'll be bisphenol A free no need to inspect it's been removed from pretty much everything I have one of these that's very old that's maybe 15 years old and it is not BPA free oh it probably still is even 15 years ago I think they went after the water bottles first I want to say and the lining of cans because even though you think you're just getting a metal can there's plastic inside of those cans still in the lining of a lot of cans this is true it is the US restricted the use of bisphenol A because of environmental health concerns there's bad things that happen when you introduce a lot of estrogen into a male or female body that wasn't looking for a lot of extra estrogen or a child who's getting induced with this basically human hormone at a very young age um consequences so it is still however used widely on one everyday product pretty much on one everyday product everywhere that you are likely handling with some frequency Blair what is it? I think I know what it is too you gotta just tell me it's receipts isn't it not on receipts yes thermal papers that are used in cash registers tickets labels because they are cheap easy and reliable for thermal paper to work properly in printing it is impregnated with two molecules a dye and a color developer the color developer they use is bisphenol A that makes the paper react to the dye and change colors when heated something that has lots of health effects why would we still have this in here and the reason is can you guess you're not sucking on receipts you're touching them though I don't know am I the only person that wants to wash my hands after I've been touching a receipt because they feel yucky I don't take them anymore I'm like no I don't need it there's no tax right off the reason they don't have it the reason they're still using it though is because they don't have a better product there's nothing better exactly correct Kiki now that's what the story is there's a new product available manufacturer turned to polymeric materials as a potential substitute because they have a large they are large and cannot easily move through membranes so some of these polymers tested thus far have similar properties to BPA but the developers results had been mediocre researchers have found an alternative developer that would perform as well as BPA phenolic resin polymers because they're easy to make inexpensive will react with the dyes and thermal paper they were stable in their high temperatures and reacted with the dye just as well as BPA not on the market yet but coming but my little aside here it's not going to kill you I mean but if you're saving those receipts if you got receipts in your back pocket if you're throwing them into your wallet because you don't know where else what else to do with them when they hand them to you you can tell them no thanks you're probably not writing off your groceries your taxes at the gas station that's soda and the couple gallons of gas you're not writing that off you know what though the question there is what about the cashiers because they're handling receipts all day all day that's really the problem yeah because you say no thanks they have to throw that receipt away for you young jimmy at the express at the supermarket seems to be a little extra developed a young man or any man that could be he's been exposed to high doses of estrogen and didn't even know it well if anybody has been exposed to high doses of estrogen maybe they can use the god helmet to have a religious experience about it what is what is this last one you talked about god helmet what is so researchers have been developing a helmet of sorts it's more a suggestive helmet for psychological religious experiences and this power there is there have been previous studies where the god helmet it's a helmet it's like a skating a skaters helmet that has a bunch of wires in it but doesn't actually do anything and the suggestion is that the there's sensory deprivation that it happens but the participants are instructed that the helmet stimulates their brain electromagnetically to elicit various types of extraordinary experiences now we know that transcranial brain stimulation two particular areas of the brain can result in spiritual feelings and effects so researchers in psychology they're like well what if we didn't actually do any stimulation and just got at the part of it that's kind of placebo effect and people helmet with wires there's nothing happening at all and so this study I love so much these researchers went to a dutch music festival and they recruited people at a dutch music festival to come and wear the god helmet and let them know you know for a certain period of time and to let them know how what kind of extraordinary experiences they had and the they were given this suggestion that if they have the helmet and they have the sensory deprivation they're going to have some kind of mystical spiritual experience they did a test on the people who were who volunteered for the study to find out kind of what their predisposition was for spiritualism so were they self identified as spiritual or religious and then they did a test of their alcohol intoxication that was what I was just going to ask about is if they had to do an alcohol or drug test they did not do any other drug screening which I think is a downfall in this study the music festival what were they thinking I mean I would I don't know how you do an easy drug test at a music festival for people volunteering but I think that if they could have that would have been optimal but they did an alcohol intoxication test what they found however is that alcohol intoxication had absolutely nothing to do with the spiritual experiences that people had and the entire experience was completely predicted by their self identification with certain levels of spirituality people who were not spiritual at all put on the helmet sensory deprivation and were like nothing's happening this thing doesn't work and they would take off the helmet and walk away or they would end it and say that wasn't anything nothing happened people who self identified as very spiritual had very extreme experiences and so the placebo effect was psychologically produced by people with no influence based on intoxication at least from alcohol I also wonder how much of this is the placebo effect and how much of it is an emperors new clothes situation did these people watch other people with the helmet on beforehand possibly yeah I don't know how I don't know what the setup looked like you know at a music festival you probably have open booths right that people are walking past it maybe it was near a stage or something so yeah and it could very well be that someone took it off and went oh my god let me tell you what I experienced and then the next person that put it on they felt this pressure to indicate that something happened you know this is probably going too far from this but I think a lot of religion is just what you describe there Blair when you see for instance as is common practice in specific type of religion where people will speak in tongues during the sermon that doesn't happen like if unless you are already prescribing yourself with this religion as people see that right like you've already you've already decided okay this is my religion this is and now what goes along with that is people tend to speak in tongues that's a real thing to these people and then they speak in tongues whereas you don't see that happening like you know on the on the muni you know on the part you know you know walk down the street oh obviously this person writing on the ground is speaking in tongues yeah I'll catch up with you later you're busy I can see like a lot of these spiritual experiences seem to be very specific to the religion that the people belong to I do think it's interesting that they chose a concert yeah it was an easy way probably to get a wide variety of individuals I mean you got people who are wandering past and if you can talk them into joining the study hey take 20 minutes join our study you know they were able and it's an interesting interesting question at a music festival you know you're going to be getting a different sub-population of people than you would at the usual university so I think they probably got a broader spectrum of people and psychological types I love some of it from the from the study itself some of the responses that people had and so they as a participant A they have the experience and participant A said it felt as if I was floating as if I was no longer on the chair participant B I had the feeling that the helmet was taking control over me my head started turning around and my eyes were spinning participant C but I went into a dialogue with a dark circle it sounded like my own voice yet also different it was something higher the voice told me I was ready to get children even though the circumstances were suboptimal deep down I already knew this and I became very emotional and starting crying but I was never afraid I've never had such an experience it was truly amazing okay I just want to talk you through this biological life form on the planet earth which is controlled by gravity you will not float away you've ingested a little bit of MDMA or LSD and it's going to be okay you just have to try to just roll with the thoughts as they come through with this let them go again let them go again there'll be new ones that come after it'll be a new experience in just a few seconds just allow this process to play out yeah I find it interesting so maybe it does have to do with the particular spirituality of each of these individuals maybe drugs that they didn't report taking when they were a part of this study but different categories that they had of the experiences that were reported by participants were things like ego dissolution so that people felt as if their soul or spirit was dissolving and that they themselves were no longer present or they had moving surroundings and so that's objects in the environment moving around them shaking desks or chairs they felt forces that some participants reported they noticed influence of things like being pushed or pulled or the change in gravity or presence of energy or electricity and then a feeling of oneness and that participants reported feeling one with the universe or with other beings now I would love to know the subset of individuals that these that these descriptions these categories occurred in and did they have another drug in their system are they people who take mushrooms on a regular basis there has been research that suggests there are psychological effects of taking hallucinogens over long periods of time on the way that you perceive yourself in relation to the world so I don't know there's and just this whole thing is so fascinating because it's all these things being one with the universe and being one with your fellow human being are very different things being one with the universe which is mostly inhospitable to life hates life destroys life life can exist in almost all of it versus being very one with these other life forms that happen to be existing on this one rock orbiting a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away there's a very different onenesses you can't say it's both those are completely diametrically opposed onenesses that you're describing yeah so anyway if you ever are at a music festival and someone asks if you want to try a god helmet it's a psychological trick which is too bad like there is like part of me too that wishes that I wasn't as skeptical perhaps or as you or didn't know this story and that we just encountered this and somehow believed with the people who were offering for us to put this helmet on had some really neurologically sciencey sort of sounding reasons why it could actually work and then we and then try it you know like part of me is like really disappointed whenever I hear something like this and I already know it's like the placebo thing I wish I could just walk through and do it first and then learn about it just to see if it works because now it can never work it'll never work I ruined it for you brains are so so interesting because I would argue that if they had a helmet that did manipulate you into having some sort of vision and to some people you called it a god helmet and to some people you told them we're manipulating your neurons to make you see different things and then you took those different named helmets that were actually the same and tested them on spiritual people versus not spiritual people you'd see very different things you would see the skeptics the non-spiritual people wearing a quote unquote god helmet they'd say I didn't see anything but if you put them in the one that says where they tell you we're manipulating your neurons they probably say I saw these amazing colors right so so your creativity will be unlocked yes that's that in itself the priming of it and just the fact that you're calling it a god helmet is going to make some people not want to feel anything yeah that's very good insight thank you for that so you got to have multiple helmets the science helmet the god helmet yeah the creativity helmet yes yeah you can try them all and see if any of them work something else whatever costuming you want to you want it to be that's what it is exactly something else that you can try them down to the short quick stories at the end of the show I love curry curry is fantastic and for years there's been kind of this evidence coming and going about Perkumen a compound in curry and whether or not it is good for the brain and good for your health and wonderful well a new study of use out of UCLA gave Perkumen supplements to 40 50 to 90 year olds who complained of minor memory issues I don't know where I put my keys that kind of stuff but did not have dementia of any kind and then over the course of 18 months they tested their memory on several measures and then also did scan brain scans to look at tau tangles and plaques related to dementia and Alzheimer's they found that over that 18 months memory improved across the board and individuals who were taking the Perkumen supplements versus a placebo control as did these tau's and the tangles and plaques which are indicative of dementia and Alzheimer's even though these people hadn't been diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer's there were tangles and plaques in people's brains that decreased over time with the ingestion of the Perkumen so get that curry because at first it sounded like their memory improved but they also had more tangles and plaques so they were progressing with the disease. No no no fewer tangles and plaques and better memory I'll take that teacup masala now that's right curry three times a day and I love this story oh my goodness a New Zealand space company put a disco ball in space they called it Humanity Star Humanity Star and it really it looks like a big shiny disco ball and they put it into orbit around the earth they launched regular payload missions out of New Zealand and they're like hey we're a space company we can put things in space we're just gonna put this disco ball in space and so they put this Humanity Star in space it is gonna last tell me it has a function it has no function other than to be something people can look up at as it orbits the planet over the next nine months and is a star that is man-made and a sign of the progress of humanity and what we are capable of so if you go to Humanity Star dot com you can find out more about the Humanity Star how we all are members of the human race here on one planet earth under one sky we all look at the same stars well you know northern southern hemisphere kind of stuff but you can track the path of the Humanity Star to see you might be able to see it now I put Portland, Oregon and it told me that it's gonna be like 925 hours for I'm gonna get to see it it's a little that's only the beginning of March so there may be many opportunities over the next nine months yeah why nine months that's just how long it's gonna take before it's orbit decays and it burns up as it reenters so I love this project because they created a shiny object they put it in space and they said hey go look at it so if you haven't been tracking objects as they go into orbit like the space station or something like this here's something you could go and look for in your night sky and say oh wow it's really there but their statement of this is what humanity is capable of as you know lobbing stuff into space a little late oh also I would like to add a ceramic vessel which can hold liquids and it's capable kind of been in space for a while it's not really a thing but I do like this project that's pretty awesome and I'm glad and welcome New Zealand to the brotherhood of space that sisterhood of space yeah and you know maybe this is very important like always I want to say important important it's important Fata sent a link to me this evening related to proposal to reduce or remove funding for the international space station by 2025 and while that is not in itself a crazy idea because the 2020 NASA itself is talking about decommissioning the ISS around 2024 and that's when our partnerships with other countries run out 2024 is kind of a threshold for the international space station and but if we don't have anything up there if we don't have things that we're looking at up in space if we don't have something driving us to keep people in space there's going to be a huge gap if we don't continue funding the international space station until commercial space entities like this New Zealand company a rocket lab until companies like them like SpaceX and others are able to pick up the mantle of putting people in space so the government has a role in that and if we if we fall back on our funding there will be no people in space there will be there won't be those things to look up to in the night sky and know that we are expanding our boundaries so more things to remind us of that as we move forward of course if you want to expand boundaries we don't have to go to outer space the other ways and this is what I'm what I'm going to start getting behind is an effort to go underground because there's plenty real estate underground untapped territories as vast as the surface of the planet and more so because we can even be under the oceans there's a lot more territory we can explore deep sea trenches that's where my vote goes I'll move underground we can go underground we can build tunnels on the moon maybe we've discovered there are volcanic tunnels on the moon let's go dig in those let's make our bases and tunnels on the moon so many things we can do oh my goodness have we made it to the end of our show we have done it we have done it hello everybody thank you for being with us through our show it is the time now where I would love to thank all of you so much for joining us thank you to Fada for helping with show notes and the YouTube descriptions thank you to identity 4 for recording the audio for us and thank you to Brandon for helping to simulcast us on Facebook we appreciate all your help and thank you to our Patreon sponsors I would like to say thank you for being a sponsor thank you Erin Luth and Alex Wilson Andy Groh, Ben Rothig Bert Latimore, Bill Cursey Bob Calder, Brendan Minnish Brian Condren Karrington, Byron Lee Charlene Henry, Christopher Dreyer Christopher Rappin, Craig Landon Deep Peck, Chopra the Woo Master, E.O. Edward Dyer, Eric Knapp, flying out Gary Swinsburg, Greg Briggs Greg Goothman, Greg Riley Jacqueline Boyster, Jason Olds, Jason Roberts Jim Drapeau, John Crocker John McKee, John Ratnaswamy Joshua Fury, Ken Hayes Kevin Parachan, Kurt Larson Lisa Slazowski Matt Sutter, Marjorie Cohen Mark Hessenflow Matthew Litwin, Patrick Cohn Paul Disney, Paul Samson Richard Hendricks, Richard Onimus Robert Aston, Robert Coburn Rudy Garcia, Sean Lamb Steve Lessman Steven DeBell, Tony Steele Thank you everyone for your support on Patreon and if you would like to support us on Patreon please go to patreon.com slash this week in Science or just twist.org and click on the Patreon link and help us out that way. On next week's show we're going to be back again it's the end of the year we are going to be broadcasting on the night of the super blue blood moon January 31st the end of the year I mean the end of the month come on 2019 Justin get with it we already went through the whole year come on have you had that God helmet on for too long what's going on here this year really went by fast they keep coming quicker quicker the older I get so we'll be broadcasting live online at 8pm next Wednesday evening on twist.org you can watch live and join us in the chat room or if you can't make it don't worry our past episodes are archived online so you can find them at twist.org or at twist.org or also at facebook.com slash this week in Science thank you for enjoying the show this is also available as a podcast just Google this week in Science in your iTunes directory or if you have a mobile type device you can search or twist the number 4 Android Marketplace this week in Science in anything Apple Market playsy for more information on anything you've heard here today show notes will be available on our website that's at www.twist.org where you can also make comments and start conversations with the host or other listeners contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinScience.com justin at twistmanina at gmail.com or Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org just be sure to put twist that's T-W-I-S somewhere in the subject line or your email will be spammed filtered into oblivion you can also hit us up on the twitter where we are at twiscience at Dr. Kiki at Jackson Fly and at Blair's Menagerie we love your feedback if there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a sonnet please let us know we'll be back right here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news and if you have learned anything from the show please remember it's all in your head this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science it's the end of the world so I'm setting up shop got my banner unfurled it says the scientist is in I'm gonna sell my advice show them how to stop the 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 grand so this week science is coming your way so everybody listen to what I say I use the scientific method and I'll broadcast my opinion all over the earth this week in science this week in science this week in science science this week in science this week in science science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what I say may not represent your views but I've done the calculations and if you listen to the science you may just better understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy we're just trying to save the world from jeopardy science is coming your way so everybody listen to everything we say and if you use our methods better roll and I die we may rid the world of toxoplasma got the eye this week in science science this week in science this week in science this week in science science the 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 whatever you said up shop this week in science science this week in science science science this week in science science this week in science this week in science yes my computer is freaking out probably because there's a swelling battery and the mouse is going crazy because I don't have an external mouse. It's just the mouse pad. It's cuckoo-doo. It's cuckoo-doo. Cuckoo-doo. It's the after show. Cuckoo Rico. Cuckoo Rico. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's time to get away from this setup that I got here. Get into my new studio. I need a new computer. Computer. I was gonna build a computer, but hey, graphics cards, you're expensive. Thanks a lot, Bitcoin miners. So now I'm trying to decide, do I get, do I buy from someone like Alienware or Origin PC or someone? Do I buy a computer from a company that'll make me a computer? I'm not going to make my own computer anymore. What do I do? You could also do what I do and buy a refurb. I could do that as well. Yeah, but I'm going to get away from the Macintosh again. I thought I wanted the Macintosh for all of the video editing and all the stuff, but then in the last few years, Macintosh is not the leader in this anymore, and especially if they're doing mostly live streaming. Yeah, Google definitely talks to PCs better. It talks to PCs better. So I'm going to add the PC. I have to figure out, do I buy a computer? Buy a computer. Got all these questions about buying computers. Icon over at YouTube. Yes, the recording will be great hopefully. I hope I'm sorry about my audio. I don't, I can't even hear it on my end. On my end, my audio is fine. So I apologize if I've been having crackling. I can't even hear it. It really sounds like a connection. It sounds like some cord or plug needs to be wiggled or something's not grounded or something. Which is very possible, but I mean this is the setup as it's been for a while. Yeah. Did it do it there? Yeah, you're crackling still, but it didn't do it when you did that. It didn't do it when I did that. Okay, well it's not the, have I been crackling the whole show really badly? I mean, it hasn't been that bad. But it's going in and out. I'm sorry, I hate bad audio. It does not make me happy. Yeah, so I will try replacing cables and see what that does. Yeah, unfortunately, you're not able to test it. I can't, I can't hear it. Yeah. Oh, that was crackly. Yeah, that's super crackly, whatever that is. Yeah. Crackly cables. No, still crackly. Bunch buckets, but why is it only when I start talking? Yeah, it's only when you talk or when the music was playing too, actually. Oh, when the music was playing too. Yes. So it's from, so it's not my mic then. No, it's not your mic. Yeah, it was, the music was playing. So it's got to be from your output from your little, your little box was, would be my assumption, right? You have a little box that has all your inputs plugged into it, right? Well, I've got a mixer and I also have an external sound card. So it could be the external sound, it could be either of those. So what I need to do is replace the cable that's between the mixer and the sound card to see if it's a cable issue. And then I somehow, I need to plug in directly to the sound card, I guess, with my mic to see if it's a sound card. Oh, identity four. Are you a magician? I know magic. But that doesn't seem possible. I don't. Are you a wizard? Is there a special editing decrackler? Only occasional. All right. That was pretty bad. Yeah, it's not my phone. Really, pain. Apologize. Could be my phone, but I've had my phone with me while broadcasting many, many, many times. So, yeah. Did you just pick it up? My phone? Yeah, did you just move it? I did. Put it back where it was. I did. I did. Okay, now it's crackling again. Pick it up again. Okay, now talk. Okay, I'm, I don't know. Is it still crackling? I don't know. It's not crackling now. Maybe I need to hold my phone to round it. Nope, you're crackling now. Did you put it back down? No, I picked it up again. Wiping my, wiping my phone screen. Okay, you're not crackling now. Yeah, it's not my phone and I'm putting it down. Hmm. The plot thickens. I hate crackles. Sorry, guys. I really, really hate that audio. This makes me upset. Well, it's cool though because identity force, a wizard. No, he says he can't because it's when I talk. Yeah. Cuckadoo. Cuckadoo. Oh, technical. Cuckadoo. All right. Well, yeah. That was fun last week. It was great seeing you guys in person. That was super fun. A lot of fun. Yeah. That's great. I love doing live shows with you guys. Aw. Yeah. Yeah. We do, but it's different. Wait, Blair, are you recorded? Do you pre-record your element of the show? This is, I always thought we were all live. Yes, Justin, I am recorded. Okay, Alienware is powerful. I don't even know what to think. What do you mean you don't like my shirt? How dare you? Well, same to you. That's enough. Do I get a chance to speak now? Whatever, Karen. Oh, Karen. I gotta find this link from the last, oh. The brick. Something about a brick. Yeah, it's after 10. It's after 10. Yikes. I am a pumpkin. You guys like the new slate? Oh, yeah. I do. Was that fun? Very fun. My friend Ford gave it to me. I went and did a video shoot on Friday, and he's like, I brought you a present. He's like, that's awesome. He goes, do you have a clapper? And I was like, my hands. He's like, yeah, you need a real one. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I'm a really, truly a video producing YouTube person. But you didn't, I know. It was hidden. The beatable purpose of the clapper. Yenning. Yeah, Ed from Connecticut, the live show is great for live audience feedback. There is definitely, there's definitely something to be said for having people there. Although when I'm doing the show live, I definitely, I mean, we usually have a shorter amount of time, or we have, you know, the set amount of time. So I'm very aware of the clock and how much time we have to talk about different stories. And I'm also very aware of people looking elsewhere and starting to look at the ceiling. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, we're going to lose them. It's time to do something else. Yeah. That's true. It can be distracting. Especially if somebody pulls out a phone, you're like, crap. I lost that to the phone. Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. Or if somebody gets up, you know, they could just be getting up to pee. You don't know. But of course, you're like, they hated it. They left. We did have though, there were a couple of women. Just real quick. Oh, I was going to say there were a couple of women who came, who were at the show last year. I remembered them from last year. So that was, yeah, they were in the front row. Kiki, I don't know if you read directly from, I'm having some weird updated thing from here, but I'm not sure if you read directly from your intro rundown. It's the beginning of the show, but I just noticed it. Did I write, did I say 2017? I don't know what you said. Oh, I did. I probably said 2017, because somebody in the chat room was like dope and corrected me and I got it wrong. Oh, did they really? I missed it completely, which is what, this is hilarious. It might as well be 2017 for me, but. Got it wrong. I got it wrong. It'll be one of those funny things about the show. Oh, my cat's meowing at me. I now have fixed the last week for father. Maybe it's the heater. Maybe there's electrical interference from the heater. Oh, maybe. So at a couple of times during the show, it sounded kind of like you had a fan on the heater. Yeah. So just a couple of times is when I was talking about the bees, because at first I thought you were playing bee noises. But it was like in the background a little bit. I want to dress my cat up like a hedgehog. Is this Stella? Is she home and healthy? Stella is home and happy. This is Cathy though. Oh, okay. Why do you want to dress her like a hedgehog? A little tabby. My little tabby and she curls up like a little ball and her belly is so soft. Oh, she lets you touch her belly. I love that. She loves having her belly rubbed and it's, you can't see it, but it's this beautiful soft underbelly. I want to put my face in it. How you do? She's like, put me down. I hate you. Put me down. I love her little belly. So I want to make her into a hedgehog. It feels spiky on the outside and then I could pet her belly. If it's one, if there's one thing I've learned from the internet, it's that cats really love wearing costumes. So she'll hate that. They hate it. Their back legs like go limp. When you put a costume on it, they're like, no, can't walk now. Yeah. So my cat, Stella, she is home and she's fine and we are very happy that she's healthy. Lily, danger averted. Everyone in the world. I want you to know lilies are toxic to cats. Good to know. But why did she, like cats don't eat a lot of plants. Oh, she does. She plays with everything. She's an exploratory cat. She just gets in everything, plays with things and lilies are great. They hang down and all these leaves and beautiful flower parts that fun to bat. And then, you know, get pollen on them and... So how did you find all this out? How did I find out? Like, how did you find out that she had eaten them? How did you find out she was sick? How did you find out that was why she was sick? Because I saw her do it. I saw her playing with it. And I saw a leaf or a petal fall and she pounced on it and crunched it up. And, um, yeah. And so I didn't think about it for a while. Didn't really, I was like, oh, she ate the lily. Okay, whatever. And then I was like, you know, I wonder, there's something itching the back of my brain here. And so I looked online and it's like, don't get lilies near your cats. They're going to kill your cats. Your cat's going to die in 18 hours if you don't get her to the vet today. And I was like, oh my god. And so, you know, I kind of put her on, on watch. I was like, is there any... And then I was like, oh, she's looking a little fluffier than usual. And she's starting to not, like, there's something a little off about her. And then Marshall came home from work and was like, yeah, let's take her to the vet. And I was like, okay, let's do that. And the vets, we got her, we got her into the emergency vet. And the vet was like, yeah, we're just going to keep her for two days and give her IV fluids to pump her system out and filter, get, just basically help her kidneys filter all of that toxin out. So basically the toxin, whatever it is from, that's in the lily plant, they don't even know how it works or how it acts on cats to be so toxic. But it, within about 24 hours, 24 to 72 hours causes kidney failure. That's a lot of the stuff that dogs aren't supposed to eat, does to them too, is complete kidney failure. Oh man, yeah, total kidney failure. They don't even know, they can't even test for it in the, they can't test for a presence of the toxin in the blood. They don't know how it works. Like it's just like this, oh, your cat got pollen on her. Lily pollen. Well, we're going to have to do 48 hours versus worth of fluids. Gosh, oh my God. Oh man. Well, good thing you looked it up and you took her in when you did. I know. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And it was only one little leaf. Like if she'd eaten the whole plant when you weren't around. Which she could have. Yeah. Easily. Yeah. So we got lucky and then we kept looking around the house, we're like, what else do we have in the house that's toxic to cats? And I was like, oh, look at these, all these poinsettias. We've got poinsettias are bad for cats too. Not totally toxic, but not great for cats. I'm like, look at that. We're poisoning our cats over there. Poison our cats over there. No. Did you just put them all high up or something? No, they went in the compost. Oh, come on. Get rid of them. It's less for me to water anyway. I do not have a green thumb, so it's better for those plants to go in the compost. Well, I'm glad she's better. My goodness. I do. Yes. And my lilies that I love that smell so yummy and are so pretty. I'm never buying them ever again. Are your kitties, they're indoor kitties, right? Indoor kitties. So you could put some in your backyard. I could do that. Yes. But then they wouldn't be wafting that odor through the house. That's the odor that I love. Yeah. Just set this as a compound. Put it in an oil infuser. Pretend you have lilies. Yeah. Fake it. Fake it till you make it. There you go. But yeah, our whole family is very happy that Stella is OK. Yeah. Oh, and then cat behavior thing, OK, that I find so fascinating bringing Stella back from the veterinarian. Cappy, who's her sister. His stutter. And you wouldn't get near her for a day. She's like, who are you? Yeah. And this is something that is, I forget what it's called. It's aggressive non-recognition is what it's called. Aggressive non-recognition. And cats, even though they see each other, they recognize each other based on odor. And so taking one cat away to go to the vet where they're being handled by lots of different people. They're being, you know, they're in this weird sterilizer smelling environment. There's medications that they're being given. Everything's different. And then you bring them back and they don't smell like themselves. And part of it also cats groom each other to put their scent on other cats. And so they smell themselves on the other cat. And so these odd smells and compounded with not smelling herself on Stella. Cappy was like, who are you? What have you done with my sister? I wonder if she smelled like stress or illness also. There's possibly that too. Yeah. Because those stress hormones or smelling like you're sick would definitely be something that most animals would say, stay away. I don't want your illness and I don't want to be near a stressed out animal because that means there's something dangerous nearby. Yeah. Well, and, you know, most cats are solitary animals, most wild cats. So you could see how any non familiar cat in their space or, you know, maybe, maybe Cappy got used to being alone. He's like, I don't want to share. You know what she's like? I really like this house on my own. I get more attention. All the snuggles and cuddles are mine. So is all the food. The litter box is cleaner. Yeah. Very possible. Very possible. Where'd Justin go? I'm still here. Oh, no, you're not. Where'd you go? Yeah. Ah, I got the camera off. Oh, okay. Getting naked off camera. And that's our cue. Good night, everybody. Oh, dear. Oh yeah, Blair. Fake ivory. It's a terrible idea. Yeah. I mean, I think so too, but I want you to talk about it. Well, it's just the problem is not that we have to kill elephants to get ivory. The problem is that people want ivory. If you saw someone now wearing Siberian tiger pelt on their coat jacket, you probably think... I've got to get me some of that. I would say in most of America, you would say, ew, that's not good. Because most people know that tigers are endangered and they don't want part of it. Right? Or you'd say, I hope that's fake fur. Right. But for a long time, if you look at old movies, movies from the 30s and 40s, people are wearing like jaguar and leopard skin items that are real. And that was part of fashion. And now it's not. It's a faux pas. And that is one of the reasons that these animals are starting to make a comeback in their numbers. The issue is not, oh, it's too bad. Ivory comes from elephants. Let's find another source for ivory. The problem is that people are okay with wearing part of an elephant. So even if it's false ivory, you're still promoting the idea that ivory is something you should want. And that's a band aid. It's not fixing the problem. It's like this whole thing about climate change. Let's just change the weather by throwing crap in the oceans and the atmosphere. You're treating the symptom not the disease. And that's exactly what this is. This is you're treating the symptom of people wanting ivory. And you don't want them to have to kill elephants to give them ivory. The issue is that people want to wear endangered animal products. And they want to own endangered animal products. Rhino horn, tiger, whiskers, sunbear bile, this stuff, pangolin scales, it's sought after because it's part of an animal. It's not that they want those things and it just happens to be sourced from an animal. So that's the problem. And that's what we need to fight. And we need to change the narrative of. I think we can do it. And it's not something anybody ever will ever in any way actually need. Right. Absolutely. Unlike I'm like rhino horn, which is necessary for what ails you. Boo. No, no, I know it's all boo. It's all stupid. Well, because rhino horn is the molecules and the rhino horn is exactly the same as what is your fingernails. So all you're doing when you when you drink rhino horn tea is you're drinking fingernail tea. It's exactly the same. I'm just going to keep my fingernail clippings and use them to brew up some tea once a month. It is as likely of solving your erectile dysfunction. Your fingernails are as rhino horn. There is no difference. But my fingernails aren't shaped like a horn. Does that have something to do with it? File them down, shape them up. It's the same. No, no, we like it's so amazing on so many levels how so many of the world's problems of these horrible things that are being done, like have no possible reason for them going on. It's just lack of education. Well, it's one could argue that at one time there was because before modern medicine people were looking for solutions to problems from nature. And to two people's credit, we have found solutions to medical problems through nature, plants, stuff like that. But now that we know better, there is no excuse. Right. And I mean, I get like why we have global warming because we're getting energy from the emission of these carbons. I get how we got into that predicament. I don't understand how you can think it's really cool to have an elephant carved from ivory on your mantle knowing that you had to kill an actual elephant to get this trinket. Yeah, that is so ridiculous to me. Yeah, brewing fingernail tea, stop it. Just stop it. That's ridiculous. However, I have, as you pointed out recently, I have blinders too. I don't want to believe that eating hamburgers is really bad for the environment. And I'll probably continue for quite some time before I actually accept what I already know. But are you going to eat hamburgers every day? Going to? Not every day. Do you eat hamburgers every day? I mean, can you reduce your meat intake so that you have red meat only two times a week? Three times a week? So I already kind of do. I eat a fair amount. Like, I don't. You don't have to give up your burgers. Just cut that red meat. Okay. Like, it's not cutting back, but I already don't prepare any meat at home. Like, any meat that I'm going to eat is going to be served having bought it from somebody else who prepared it. Like, I just don't. Like, I'm not going to filet a thing. I mean, I guess, I guess, like, definitely I eat tuna sandwiches. Like, so I open a can full of BPAs. It has tuna. Yeah, yeah. But I won't, I won't like go to the butcher shop and ask for that cut or that steak or buy the thing that's already in the wrapper and then grill it up. That's just, I don't do that. Right. So I'm probably not like a prime rib offender in this whole thing. Do you eat a lot of cheese? Yes, I do. Cheese and sour cream, if you're going to tell me cheese and sour cream are ruining the environment, I'll let it go. Sorry. I don't want to live in a world without cheese and sour cream. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Really, I am. The world has terrible cheese and sour cream. I love cheese. I love cheese. But you know what? I try to eat a little less of it. I don't. I try to fit more dairy. I look for more ways to fit dairy into my diet every day. Here's the thing though. We're now we're talking about food and food is something you have to take care of three times a day every day. But you don't need a brooch made out of ivory. You don't need any broaches at all. So to say that even that these conversations are equivalent, I think, is a false equivalency. The whole wildlife trade thing is based on this desire for tokens made out of animals. And therein is the problem. If people start to recognize that the animals themselves are valuable and that the animals themselves provide people an important service, then that's I mean, that's my job. My entire career is based on the idea that the more people understand animals and the environment and their place in it all, the more they will value those things in their natural state. Yeah. So I mean, it's definitely better than it used to be with the wildlife trade. We're getting better. We're having the conversation. We're moving in the right direction. Let's not lose traction by creating fake versions of things. So our job becomes harder to figure out what's real. By the way, Blair, you've got to spend a little bit more time with my for you. Okay. We went to the zoo a while back and we went to this. They had like, they were having like, what do you call them? The docents or whatever they are. Like retired people who, yeah. And they had like the turtle out and the owl out and had a couple of snakes and stuff. And they had this, it was cold. So they had taken it and it's taken it all indoors. Usually they're like sort of around the park. And we had gotten there as the thing opened and we're members. So we just went right in. We were like the first people in. So we go and we realized, oh, they're showing all the animals in place. Great. So we went over there and it was just her, this four and a half year old. And she went from like animal to animal to animal, learning all about them and why they're important, what they do and their feeding habits and all this. And we were the only ones there for like half an hour, I think. And then like the floodgates opened to the main entrance and in for all these people and all these kids are coming in and she didn't want to leave. She wanted to, she took over. Oh good. Kids were like looking at the animals. She was retelling what she had just learned about them. That's great. All the other things. And it doesn't like adored her, of course, because she's like, I, oh my God, she listened to us. She's like remembered all this stuff. Yeah. And she's being like the presenter for all these animals. She's like really, and we have to always walk by. There's this one part of the zoo where there's a window. And on certain days, you can see when animals are getting their like their checkups. And so they have minutes. So we always, that's like her, her main thing at the zoo is she wants to go and look in the window and see if they're doing a checkup because then she's like mesmerized by that. That's to be an animal doctor at the zoo and tell people all about that. Nice. Well, that's three different jobs. She'll have to pick maybe two of the three. She's going to do all three. She can handle it. She's four now and she's like doing two of them. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's pretty adorable. You know, I hear they had this, they had this big, like I guess puzzle or something that had all these rainforest animals on it. And one of the docent people was like, Oh, so do you know what this animal is? And she was identifying, like she was identifying animals, like some of them that aren't at the zoo. And I don't know how she identified them where she's picking up this extra knowledge. Books, TV. Yeah. It's probably in some cartoon thing she watches or somewhere like she knew the sloths, you know, and then, and then the, the docent asked, well, how many, how many monkeys are in here? And she counted three and the docent pointed out a fourth and my daughter goes, but it doesn't have a tail. She's four. And then, oh, what were we watching? Where was she? She was like, she likes goosebumps. She likes scary stuff. Like she loves the everything that's Halloween or spooky or scary stuff. And, and there's one episode that was, she was watching the other day that had somebody, somebody put in a spider, a tarantula that was supposed to scare somebody. And, and they called it a bug. And she goes, it's not a bug. It's not an insect. That's a different thing. It's a, it's a, and she didn't have the words. And she goes, it's, she goes, it's a spider. And I'm like, I racketed. Yeah. It's an arachaninid. That's not an. Yeah, arachaninid. Like, I know I encourage this sort of knowledge of my children, but the fact that she's got it on lockdown like has been surprising to me. She's definitely focused on animal oriented knowledge. Does the SAC zoo have zoo camp? Um, no, I don't know. Look into it. See if you can find a zoo camp near you. No, no, no. It's a day camp during the summer. Zoo camp is great. Zoo camp is science and animals, appropriate for the grade level of the kids. At whatever zoo you're at, the zoo camp is always so good. That'll be good. Yeah. Or, you know, you could drive all the way to San Francisco every day. Yeah, yeah. Drop off at San Francisco zoo camp. Just might. I just might. Oh man. Get this call like Blair, there's a little girl at the front door. It's she's just got your name, safety pin to her shirt, and she's lost. Oh my gosh. Well, you know, she can hang out at my desk when you're late picking her up. So because you have to drive an hour and a half to come get her. It's going to be a couple of just put her on the Amtrak back. She's okay. She's very resourceful. Yeah. Ben, I don't work in zoo camp. I I work with the teenagers in the summer. So. Which is like a zoo within a zoo, no doubt. Yeah, it is. Oh boy. All right. It's past your bedtime. Oh yeah, it is my bedtime. Yep. Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. Thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for watching for the show. Thanks for letting us do another show. Hopefully the audio will be fixed for next week. We'll work on that. But in the meantime, we'll catch you on the social media side. And we hope to see you here again next week. Have a wonderful night, everyone. Good science to you all.