 Hello world, we are here to talk about science. This is this week in science, and we are here for the next, oh, 90 minutes or so to talk about all the science we thought was interesting this past week, which you know is usually quite a bit. And if you like the science, we hope that you will stay for the whole live broadcast. If you can't do that, you know, you can subscribe and all that kind of stuff and hit that notifications bell thing. If you're on the platforms that do that so that you never miss the thing. But anyway, we do the live broadcast of the Twist podcast right now. And some of it may be edited for the podcast and for radio broadcast. So if you like it unedited, come to these streaming sites. Are we ready to go? Are we ready? Is that going to be edited out? The part where you tell people to go to the streaming sites? Because if it is for the podcast, yeah, then only the online people have heard to go to the the live stream, people have heard to go to I'm going to say it again. I'm going to say it again. It's going to be great. Repeat, repeat, rinse, repeat. It's what we do. Try and put it in people's heads. And then maybe we have all the listeners and all the subscribers. And that's the way it works. As long as that doesn't get edited out of the podcast version, then we haven't even started the show yet. Here we go, though. It's ready. Right. Are we ready? You're ready, right? Totally ready because it's time to start the show in a hole. Three, two, this is Twist. This week in science episode number eight hundred seventy six recorded on Wednesday, May 18th, twenty twenty two galactic naval gazing. Hey, everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki. And tonight on the show, we will fill your heads with teeth, headbutts and video games, but first disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. If there was an elephant in the room, you would know it. If the lights went out, you'd be keenly aware that it was still in the room. If you felt for it in the dark, you might identify a sturdy foot or a long, sharp tusk, or you might not. You might feel the breeze from a fanning ear or be moved aside by a powerful trunk or you might not. Whatever you came in contact with, you wouldn't forget the rest of it was there because if there was an elephant in the room, you would know it every second that it was there. There is an elephant in the room you are now in. Global warming. You might feel it as a hot day or you might not. You might notice the lack of snow or missing ice or you might not. It could take the notice of an unseasonable blossom or untimely flights of birds, but you might not. You could be so attuned to looking past the bubbling froth of tidal foam to see that the sea has risen, though likely you have not because a global event is very much like an elephant in the dark. What you can touch, what you can feel, what you can experience at any one time is limited by location, but still we know warming is happening everywhere at once and will not rest and neither should we because there is an elephant in the room and we know it. Can't wait to hear another episode of This Week in Science coming up next. There's only science to you, Kiki and Blair. And the good science to you too, Justin and Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We're back again. Yes, we are to talk about elephants in the science, our spherical cows and elephants and black holes in the middle of the Milky Way galaxy. I'm so excited about that discovery from this last week, actually. Have you seen the pictures? Have you seen the pictures? It looks like the picture of the other black hole kind of, except it's smaller. I don't know if I actually saw the picture because everything, I always get like a little burnt because I look like, oh, that's beautiful. That's gorgeous. Artists rendition of what it was like, ah, man, come on. It's a donut in space at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. I mean, we have thought that there would be a black hole at the center of our galaxy for a very, very, very long time. And having seen one at the center of another galaxy, even though it was a very large galaxy, you know, it was like, oh, we should be able to find our own. And we saw these blips and burps and energetic things that suggested, oh, yes, and after years of looking at the data, this tricky little spinning black hole, they think it's spinning, it's moving around, it's kind of blurry. They think that that we've finally gotten a picture of it. They're very excited. They're going to keep looking at it because that's what you do with observations, but I don't know. This was the big news from last week and I wanted to talk about it last Wednesday night, but no, they didn't want to have their press conference until 7.30 the next morning. They wouldn't need any information to us ahead of time. I had to wait a whole week. And so now we had to wait a whole week. So I had to just get it right off the top, right off the top of the show before we even told anybody what the other news is that we're going to talk about because there's a lot more news out there. I have stories tonight about, what did I bring? Tabula sapiens, neuro mech flies, rocket realism, and some video game stuff. Some video game smarts. Good, good. Yes, Justin, what did you bring? Let's see. I've got a 130,000 year old tooth fairy story. I've got just good news, a little bit of good news, global warming wise. I've got new medical contacts, which is important to update everybody on. And why should never head but a muskox? I could think of some reasons. I know, they're probably all the reasons. Yes, yeah. OK, Blair, very much. That's very much going to be the story you think it is. Yeah, that sounds like a very bad. Sure, it really, really is. Yeah. OK, Blair, yes, in the animal corner. I have teeth, I have mouths, I have food, I have taste. I have all of these things. It's a very themed episode for me this week. It is, it's going to be tasty in the animal corner. We're very excited about the entire corner and the entire show. For those of you who have not yet subscribed out there, you can subscribe to the program by finding us basically anywhere. There are podcasts. You can find our accounts on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch, where we are this week in science and we stream live weekly, eight p.m. Pacific time on those channels. Twist Science is how you find us on Twitch and Twitter and Instagram. So very exciting stuff. But if this is all too much information, head to our website, twist.org. For all the show notes and the fun there is to be had. Oops, look at that. I like hitting buttons all over the place. Screens are going dark. Other screens are showing. There's this is this is, I don't know, Mercury's in retrograde. Yo, I'm kidding. I don't even pay you. You better be. Wait, is it? I don't know. There was a blood moon the other night. I don't know. That's not supposed to do laundry or something. I can't remember what that means. Oh, my gosh. All right. So we are ready for this show. I know you're ready for the science. Let's get into the actual stories for the hour. Let's start with the tabula sapiens. Tabula sapiens. I tend to try to keep up with my different kinds of sapiens. Mostly, there's just the one. But what is this? What is this? Is it like it sounds like a countenance? Well, so it's, you know, kind of like the tabula rasa, the blank, the blank slate. This is the slate that is being filled in with all of the information related to our cells, protein coding, coding genes, the RNA that's involved in transcribing those genes, the transcriptome. Just this week, published Friday, May 13th. And it's not even bad news. This is great news in science. The tabula sapiens consortium, which is about 160 experts led by the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, they've published a digital atlas that's open to scientists around the world that maps gene expression in nearly 500,000 cells from 24 human tissues and organs, including the lungs, the skin, the heart and the blood. They have taken all of these cells. And so it was a delicate ballet of coordination between the various teams that had to be ready to take the organs that were going to be donated to organ recipients. And then the team of surgeons or the scientists who came in to do the sampling of the tissues that would be saved for this atlas. And so this is the largest cell atlas to have multiple tissues from the same human donors. So instead of having one cell type from, you know, one donor somewhere and another from somewhere else, this way, now they can cross correlate between tissues, between cell types and tissues in different organs to determine what changes are happening to the transcriptome to make tissues what they are, because really, what the genome is, is a toolbox, it's got all the stuff in it that can be used. Each cell in our body pretty much has the same toolbox and could turn into anything, except it doesn't. Each cell becomes unique because of the way those tools are used and expressed. And so now they'll be able to really dig into, you know, what are the differences between tissues, what's happening at this transcriptomic level. This is one of four major collaborative studies published in Science this week that are these openly available cross tissue cell atlases as part of the human cell atlas consortium. And this work is just, it's very exciting to be able to just to know that people are donating their tissues to this really good purpose of discovering more about humanity and our development, our bodies, our tissues, how we work, what makes us who we are. And I really like that description of it, the genome as a toolbox. I've also heard it as somebody else describe it as building materials themselves. But in either case, it's pointing out that it's not the blueprint, it's like you would think of like plans for a house, like just this goes here, this goes there, this goes there. No, it's just it's actually the it's all like I like the toolbox idea because it's different implements that are going to get used differently in different tissues and different parts of the body. Right. So, so yeah, that's the idea then too of using the same genome over and over with the different tissues can actually better show then the diversity of the applications of those tools in those different tissues, which might get confused if you had a, you know, I guess a different genome for each person. We're all similar enough that it probably we're so we're similar ish, right? There are little differences, but the differences are enough that they do impact how, how, you know, medical therapies affect us, where some people a certain treatment works and for others it doesn't and we don't understand all the reasons why that is. So there's a lot here that can really be useful. It's very exciting. And I love the name, the tabula sapiens. They had fun with that one. They did. They certainly did. All right, Justin, tell me a story. What do you have up next? Okay, so it started with a child's tooth. Actually, it started with a child's finger that was found in 19, was it 1990? And a cave or no, sorry, 2010 in a cave in Siberia, the Denise of the cave, they find this, they find this little finger bone of a child. And they also found a tooth at that site. And they managed to extract enough DNA to get the entire genome of a Denise of this archaic cousin of the Neanderthal that they have then since seen in the human genome across Southeast Asian Oceania. They, they're also, we found a, a jaw bone in 2019 on the Tibetan plateau, which was, I think it was handed over to like a, it was found by a monk and then handed over, but sat in, I think it sat in a university basement for some years before they actually identified what it was. And now there's a cave in Laos that has turned up a child's tooth that dates from around 130,000 years ago. And researchers think it's Denise of it, and which would actually make it the first fossil found in Southeast Asia, which is sort of interesting because that's where the largest hit is Southeast Asia, down into Oceania, Papua New Guinea, Aboriginal Australians have the highest rate of Denise of in DNA and in the modern human gene pool, somewhere, sometimes upwards of 5%, which is pretty, pretty decent good number. And so, yeah, it shows that they could, before we could have been that they could have admixt somewhere else and then moved into that region, but this kind of clearly shows Denise events were already all the way in that part of the world before modern humans got there. And it also shows they have a pretty, pretty wide swath of territory. So we're finding them in a cave in Siberia, but also now in this tropical area where it's now likely because at least based on our DNA overlap and having finally found a fossil there, they were inhabiting that area pretty regularly. Sort of interesting note too here. They said they managed to identify the tooth that belonged to a child, likely female between three and a half to eight and a half years old, which I thought was kind of a big range, age wise. But this, so this could absolutely be a tooth that the tooth fairy dropped by accident after collecting it. You know, this could be a naturally lost tooth, tooth fairy comes by, picks it up. It's dark. It's in a cave, drops it, can't find it again, hopes nobody notices, squirrels away. The tooth itself was too old for carbon dating. DNA has been was badly preserved because of the heat and humidity in this particular cave, paleoanthropologist and study co-author Fabrice Demeter was saying it's too bad we can't get the DNA. But that proteins did allow us to identify sex female and confirm its relation to the homo species. Interestingly though, interestingly though, the characteristics it fit like they kind of like this tooth would have fit into that job they found in the Tibetan plateau, but the tooth structure had common characteristics with Neanderthals from whom we have many more teeth available. And it's not too weird because they were genetically close to Denisovans. They were thought to have diverged around 350,000 years ago. What I found curious about this, though, is that we know there was a lot of tooth evolution taking place after that split in Neanderthals, like the Neanderthal tooth changed quite a bit. And it seems like that the only thing that they have to go on for this being a Denisovan, aside from the age, is that of is the location it was found. So it's sort of, you know, it's still a little bit up in the air without DNA. So far, it fits very well with Denisovan, but could also be the less likely, but still could be the furthest east that we found of a Neanderthal tooth, if it ultimately came to be something like that. This is discovery shows Denisovans occupied by part of Asia, adapted to a wide range of environments from cold altitudes to tropical climates, whereas Neanderthal cousins seem more specialized in cold Western regions, which again, I think is odd because that's sort of a misnomer. The Neanderthals were found very far north, but they were also found like down into the Levant, you know. Right. They had a very wide range. Very wide range, yeah. Themselves, and there's nothing that was specifically cold adapted about them. And they were, you know, they had kind of in a way similar regions. They were actually found in that cave in Siberia as well, all the way down, you know, down into Spain and the southern regions of Spain as well. So, yeah, I don't I don't know if I buy that comment from the from the report, but says Neanderthal. I mean, sorry, is the tooth is currently located at the University of Copenhagen, which I believe is in Denmark. So I should probably go and think. You think so? Yeah, I think I should go down the door. Say, excuse me. I think you made some mistakes with these teeth. I'm here to fix them, please. Yeah, it's also because I thought it was also weird that they were doing that cold weather trope because one of the things we've also learned about Neanderthals have been listening to shows. They had genetic markers for both light pigment in the skin and dark pigment in the skin, which is something you might see from a creature that has, like us humans, a very wide range of northern and further south. And it had a fairly wide range for a while. For a very long time. So you would expect actually that, you know, people like what did the Neanderthal look like? Probably had a range of, if we're talking skin tones or even hair coverage. You know, they probably had a very wide range of appearance, depending on where and when we found them because they had a lot longer just in the ranges of Europe from the top to the bottom than we've had on the planet. Yeah, but basically this comes down to they found a tooth and the tooth suggests that these Denisovans were further afield earlier than we thought. And that means that there's lots of mixing and this explains probably where a lot of the Denisovan DNA mixing comes from. And really a big deal because this would be the only the fourth Denisovan fossil ever found for something that's five percent of the population of, you know, Oceania and is there throughout Southeast Asia to only have gotten this. And it's because the tropics, they're just bad for fossils. Tropics are bad for fossils. Why don't you tell the fossil makers that? Geez, fix it. Yeah, try to tell people. But you try, you try. They're already dead, but we have these old dirty teeth. Yeah. Blair, what are we going to do about that? Can we do anything about these dirty teeth? Yeah. How about some tiny robot dentists? What? This is from my mouth. Oh, I love it. I'm open up wide for the tiny robot dentists. This is for Indian Institute of Science looking at how to make root canals more effective and less dangerous. So in a root canal, you remove the infected soft tissue inside the tooth. It's called the pulp and flushing the tooth with antibiotics or chemicals. They're able to kill the bacteria that causes the infection and they, you know, paste you back up and send you home with lots of painkillers. But often the treatment fails to completely remove all the bacteria. It's really hard to get all the antibiotics and all the chemicals in every little crevice inside your tooth after they drill it through, especially antibiotic resistant bacteria like enterococcus fake callus, face solace. And so those often remain hidden inside these little tiny canals in your teeth, like feces. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bad poo bacteria. Great. In the dental tubules in your teeth. Yuck. Well, researchers have an answer. Nano sized robots that you can manipulate using a magnetic field. They designed helical nanobots made of silicone dioxide coated with iron, which can be controlled using a device that generates a low intensity magnetic field. They can inject these nanobots into extracted tooth samples is what they did in their research and kind of their proof of concept. And they were able to track their movement using a microscope. They made the nanobots move at will. They penetrated deep inside the dental tubules where the chemicals could not reach and successfully extracted them from the teeth. Via the magnetic fields, the way they actually kill the bacteria. Don't picture the little robots. They kind of just kind of strangling the individual bacteria. No, no, no. They actually just heat them up. So they use the magnetic field to make the surface of the nanobots generate heat, which kills the bacteria nearby. So other kind of strange methods they've tried in the past include ultrasounds or laser pulses to create shock waves in the fluids used to flush up bacteria and tissue debris. That only penetrates a distance of about 800 micrometers. But these nanobots could go up to 2000 micrometers. So much more effective at getting deep inside those dental tubules. And they are safer than the chemicals I mentioned earlier. So all of that to say these nanobots, these tiny robot dentists seem very effective at cleaning out the interior of the teeth during a root canal. And they do believe the researchers do believe they are extremely close to clinical testing. So keep an ear out for that. I would sign up for that clinical testing for sure. Or or dentists could just wash their hands properly. Whoa, whoa, buddy, look, whoa. No, I mean, now you've already got bacteria in there. It has nothing to do with your dentist's hand. Yeah. And everything in your mouth, that normally your dental tubules are protected by the teeth, the outside of the teeth, that's all exposed. You're it's like during surgery, no matter how clean you try to have a surgery. There is still a chance you can get an infection because the inside of your body that is not supposed to be exposed to open air is exposed. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, look out for some tiny robot dentists coming your way. They're I mean, they're kind of like if they're if they're controlled by a magnetic field, they're really like little tiny scrapers. It's like it's like the magnets that you put inside your fish tank to get the sludge. Oh, yeah. The algae off the inside of the fish tank without putting your hand in it. Right. Absolutely. Kind of picturing it that way, scrubbing those little places. And think about not having to take a bunch of antibiotics and then you decimate your own systems and all that. You know, it's you get to keep your beneficial bacteria if you go this route. I love it. I like this idea. Yeah, OK. But I'll let someone else test it first. You can you can do the testing, Blair. Other people doing testing. They've come up with a fake fly. A little fake fruit fly. Is that like VR or is it like real tangible fly? No, it is VR. Well, it's not VR. It is a simulated fly. It's called the neuro mech fly. This is a fly that has been created. A digital model that's been created based on 2D images, 3D video collection based on knowledge they have of behavioral responses of the Drosophila and what they've been able to show so far with their digital model of the fly simulated in virtual space is that for as far as the mechanics of the legs and the wings, everything seems to work right. So that the amount of force, pressure, torsion, other aspects of the movement of the fly all seem to work. And so the idea behind this is that the Drosophila is the one of the like the staples of genetics labs around the world. And we know a lot that we can try out with actual flies, but it could be faster to try things out virtually and not with real animals having to actually wait for animals, the flies to go through their reproductive cycle. So the idea behind this is that in the virtual space, they could alter aspects of the neural system of the flies, see what happens to the movements and the behaviors of the flies in the simulated reality. And then check and see whether or not it matches up to real reality to see whether or not their ideas work. And so far, things are working really, really well. But they say they're most interested in when it doesn't work. They really want to know what the things are when their model does not predict real behavior. They want to know why that is because they think that is one of the more interesting things. Yeah, I mean, it's for them. So for them. Well, the reason I'm saying that is because it seems like a model like this is an input model, like you go, you get a result and then, hey, we could add it to what this, you know, this body of knowledge within the connections of this this fly. But the idea that you would then use this fly to make discovery or make new discoveries, I feel like that's why they'd be so. Hey, now we were interested in this because you don't have it. But what you would still likely get, I would think would be a bad result or would a result that's based on the information in the model that isn't connected to reality. So I don't know. I love the idea of uploading everything to a model that's then a sort of a body for shared knowledge about the interactions and that sort of thing. That's fantastic. But using it as a model for new discovery that's actually could work if once the body of knowledge is there, I suppose you're trying something out. Yeah. And as we know, since the fruit fly is such a model for all sorts of biological discoveries, if we can reverse engineer aspects of fruit fly behavior, it could help us lead to other biologically inspired robots. So if we know that we can like we know that we can change something in these virtual flies, maybe we create real flies or maybe we can go another step further and create other kinds of robots, animals, things that are inspired by what we learn. And I've talked myself into a circle because now I'm like, I think this is an amazing idea. Well, because. Wait, is it good or not? I don't know. Well, because you have so much research, especially on like you're saying on the fly that nobody's got the time to read everything and retain everything and every bit of stumbled upon knowledge, let alone core analysis of any study. You put it all together in one model. You don't have to read all the things. You can just try it out on this little model fly and then you're like, why did that work? Oh, it is the three, four or five papers you need to read that are connected to the. Yeah. And then maybe also you're not like. Genetically engineering flies with, you know, like Frankenstein flies, you know, with really odd disabilities, because you don't really understand what it was that you were tweaking in the first place, right? Then I'm against it again. Because I think that's the part of it needs to continue. Anyway, we're non-existent Frankenstein fly. There's going to be forward feeding information coming out of this kind of a community project. It is open source. It's freely available for scientists to use and modify. So this is something that isn't just going to be behind a paywall. It's open source modular and there are guidelines on how to use and modify it. And so this could be a very interesting community project. Also, let's see where neuro mech fly will fly us. Yeah. Where do you want to fly us, Justin? Oh, my God, a story for you. Oh, have you got a story? Oh, boy. Oh, boy, let me just tell you I've got. Oh, yeah, it's the it's the just good news story. Just good news. The science that finds the good news finds the good news you are hoping for, regardless of the actual results in an attempt to make you feel a little better about a subject before pulling the rug out from under you completely. UN annual report on climate addition. The good news is we had back to back La Nina events at the start and at the end of 2021, which had a cooling effect on global temperatures while still being one of the warmest years ever recorded. The United Nations World Meteorological Organization has put out its state of the global climate twenty twenty one report, which still isn't complete, complete. Information is still coming in for some of the things that they look at there, but it already shows four key climate change indicators. Greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat, ocean acidification, all set new records. Good job, guys, all set new record. Oh, highs, record highs in twenty twenty one. The United Nations state on Wednesday that the global energy system was driving humanity towards catastrophe. Global sea levels reached a new high record in twenty twenty one as it has been rising an average of four and a half millimeters per year since twenty thirteen, which is about twice the rate of increase we were seeing in the nineteen nineties when people began to be alarmed by global warming. This is largely due to ice cap and glacial melting, which, according to the review here, won't be reversed by carbon reduction as it can take thousands of years to form. Report confirmed the past seven years were the top seven hottest years on record, taking the heat off previous record holder the previous seven years. Ocean acidification is the highest it's been in the last twenty six thousand years. According to UN chief Antonio Pateris, the early report amounts to a dismal litany of humanity's failure to tackle climate disruption and points out unsarcastically the global energy system is broken and bringing us ever closer to climate catastrophe. But we had the couple of a couple of La Nina events. Yeah, they're still going, which is why it's still rainy up here in Portland and oddly hot in the southern US. Yeah, we got a lot of rain still going on. It'll probably switch. But as Derek Schmidt is saying in the the chat room, that sounds bad. It is bad, but we don't want to just say, hey, it's just bad. The United Nations has also said that renewables are what we need to pin our our future efforts on. We really we have solar, we have wind, we have water and we can really take advantage of regional resources to get energy that we need, but we need to we really need to take advantage of technology that we have now. We can we can do this, people. Come on. If we if we stop all extraction and use of fossil fuels tomorrow, we're probably only in for two and a half to three and a half Celsius rise in temperature. Yeah, and there was a a news story says if you really, really, really would like to help stop climate change. Do less just pretend it's still shut down. Is that pretend it's locked down? Don't drive. Don't go anywhere. Don't do activities. Just sit on your floor. I know I know I'm not trying to do a whole climate change episode here, but I also think that that is one of the great fallacies, right? Is that it's all just on yourself. It's it's you you becoming the perfect off the grid human is not going to solve climate change. You have to work together. You have to work in within your community. You know, talk to your workplace and get them to install electric vehicle chargers, then it creates a community of electric vehicle drivers that want to come and charge for free at work. Right? There's a bunch of elections happening right now. Elect people who want to do something about climate change. Yes, that's the way that we're actually going to fix this thing is to get our politicians out of the pockets of oil industries. First of all, but also to hold the people you elect to their promises and to make a community level action. Yep. Oh, thanks for that. Just good news. I love it when we start breaking records. Work to work to work to work to work to. Oh, you know, who's always breaking records? The space industry these days. It's like all more and more launches every year. We've got more rockets, more satellites, more stuff going up into space. And I've said so many times, I wonder what the environmental impact of all those rocket launches is when I've had space reporters just be like, it's not a big deal. There aren't that many launches. And it's like, OK, fine. But if there keep being an increasing number of launches, it might be a big deal eventually, right? You know, it's like one airplane, not a big deal. Now we've got international flights all around the world. And they do change. Whether they do they do affect the atmosphere. Rockets are going to do the same thing. So researchers have just published their study in a peer-reviewed journal, Physics of Fluids, and they studied a simulated launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasting into space. Their take home message is, all right, overall is not that terrible when it's down at ground level where these launches take place. But as the launches get higher into the atmosphere, where the density of the air is less and less, they continue to have a consistent output of water, of nitrogen, of carbon dioxide, and they have an increasing influence higher at higher altitudes of the atmosphere, where they can have some not necessarily great impacts because of their placement there. So, yeah, so they overall rockets are not responsible for putting all that much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We talked about that many times on the show, according to an article from Interesting Engineering, they say a tent typical launch burns roughly the same amount of fuel as a day-long commercial flight produces seven times as much CO2 between 200 and 300 tons. But that's so each launch is a lot more than any one of us individually will produce in our lifetime. Yeah, so as these rocket launches increase and increase and increase, it's going to be more and more and more and more. And we don't know the full environmental impacts of rocket launches. The researchers say the current level of data about rocket emissions does not provide researchers with enough information to fully assess the impact of launches on the global environment. It's like we're launching a rocket that's like an old truck that has black exhaust coming out and it's also just constantly throwing litter out the window on its way. And the thing is, once upon a time, that's just how trucks were and nobody noticed litter. Right, we didn't think about it, right? Because if you're driving down the road on your old truck in 1936, why you could throw that Mars bar wrapper out the window and it wouldn't even be noticed by nature. But now there's like eight billion people doing it. Yeah, suddenly you're just got piles of trash on the side of the road and the sky is dark with soot. Like the numbers game catches up, right? It always does. And that's what's going to happen here as well. So if we can start paying attention to it before the number of launches gets to be to the point where it really is impacting our atmosphere to to a negative degree, then we can start regulating better. Maybe there is a number of launches per day that we can't go over. Maybe there we need to have better rocket designs. Like there's so many questions, so many questions. But give me a hydrogen rocket. Yeah, these are things we need to consider. I didn't go so great before when we have no things in the air. Hmm. Oh, it's fine. And don't overthink it. How about electric? As I'm sneezing here and we're talking about pollution. Pollution kills something like nine hundred nine million people last year around the world. I don't know. Some massive numbers of people are killed by pollution. Blair, do you have a solution? Yeah, eat your vegetables. What? Yeah, a University of Delaware researcher. Has discovered a way to mitigate the effects of air pollutants in our bodies, and that is increasing the daily intake of vegetables like celery, carrots, parsnips and parsley. It turns out that vegetables from the. A pious family. Which are those things I just said, celery, carrots, parsnips and parsley. They protect the body from accumulation of acro, acrolean. Yeah, I'm not sure, which is an interior, an irritant to the lungs. Just trust me, it's an irritant and it's a, it irritates the lungs. It irritates the skin. It has a strong unpleasant odor and it is found in cigarette smoke and automobile exhaust. Yeah. And so these vegetables supported detoxification through an increase in antioxidant enzyme activity. They also have provided protection against inflammation, because in the liver, these vegetables enhance conversion of this chemical, I'm going to say it wrong again, acrolean into a water soluble acid for bodily excretion. Save your tweets in your emails. I know I said it wrong. It's fine. It's A-C-R-O-L-E-I-N. I know it. I know. I got it. Anyway, all of this to say, they are hoping to start with human intervention trials soon to figure out exactly what the ideal amount of vegetables is to protect you. And if there are supplements that you can take, especially because I have this on the mind recently, because I saw a whole thing about environmental racism. And also there's this very interesting overlap of people who are put into situations where they have a lot of pollution and exhaust in the air. Those are also places that are food deserts. So you're not going to be able to find a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables in those areas a lot of the time. So if that really is the solution, there needs to be a fix to that discrepancy. Is it going to be better availability of these foods? Is it going to be supplements? So if this really is the protection, we need to find a way to get fresh vegetables into the hands of people who need it most. Yeah. It's very interesting. The overlaps there too. Those are also areas that used to be redlined, which means banks wouldn't allow people to get loans for homes and that sort of thing. There are also areas that have today the highest rates and incidents of COVID. So it's a very, I don't know. There might be something worth looking at there. Something about it. Yeah. Yeah. Chewing celery while you're working at the toll booth. Right. People don't do that anymore. Have you seen it? I know. They've got automatic now. Yeah. It's healthier. Don't know what those people do now because that was a job where they're healthier maybe, but they had a job where they didn't know. They're probably at the computer looking at the cameras that captured the license plates and then billing the people. There are for sure. Looking at those. For sure. Or they have the jobs where they're looking at videos of things on different streaming channels. I don't know. Make sure they're safe and good for people to be watching. Those quality control checks. Eat your celery, everyone. This is This Week in Science. Thank you so much for joining us. We've got a lot more science yet to come. I do just want to say thank you so much. And if you are enjoying this show, please tell a friend, bring someone to twist with you next week. All right. I only have one COVID story this week. And it's another positive one. Happy Blair. You're going to appreciate this one. Oh, good. At least I hope you'll appreciate this. Yeah. This isn't a just good news situation where it's a bait in the switch. No, no. But you know what? When is a COVID news? Good when it's positive. Oh, fair. All right. Well, researchers publishing in biological conservation. And you're like, what does biological conservation have to do with COVID-19? Well, apparently their analysis of to 2,651 online reports published across 26 countries. They've determined that not only did the overabundance of poorly contextualized reports on bat associated diseases increase persecution towards bats immediately after the COVID-19 outbreak. Justin. Additionally, the use of media and media outreach proper messaging globally by conservationists very likely stemmed an increase in that persecution so that conservation experts around the globe saw the possibility of bat persecution and spoke out to help protect the bats. And it helped, at least according to this study. Blair, when did I persecute any bats? Last week. Last week. Like every week. Last week I had a bat story and you had on a whole thing about you didn't want bats anywhere near you. No, daytime bats. That was because you had daytime bats, diurnal bats. And that would be like everyone in my hometown would be freaking out. Yeah, bats are great. They're pollinators. They rarely, rarely ever carry rabies, which is what you are worried about. It is an extremely unlikely scenario that bats carry rabies. Not in my hometown. I'm not saying they didn't get it from the raccoons. It sounds to me like Justin is speaking from a place of emotional response and lack of information, whereas Blair may be coming from a place of more information that could be useful in helping you to address your emotional response. Right. Yeah, it could be. But then I've seen how she's like always defends cats when we talk about talk spots. That's not true, actually. That's so funny. COVID-19. Yeah, bats. That's great. Yeah, the scientists jumped to the bats aid and they took care of it. That's great. Yeah. But it's also this write-up. It's really interesting. I love the insight here. They say, knowing how the media acts is pivotal for anticipating the propagation of misinformation and negative feelings toward wildlife. Working together with journalists by engaging in dialogue and exchanging experiences should be central in future conservation management. So it's a really interesting combination of understanding of media, understanding of how people respond to things, misinformation spread, and also the science communication that goes into managing that, which I think is something good to be understanding now and to putting into use for future efforts. Yeah, and I think directly related to this, if I can just tag on, is that I think one of the really bright sides of the internet and social media and connectivity such as we experience these days is that it has removed a lot of the barriers and distance from scientists and the community. And so there's really, I don't know if scientists would have been as successful at this in the age without the internet because this allowed them to come out and talk about bats and zoonotics directly to just the general public, which is so cool. And it's really unique and I feel really privileged to live in an era where you can do that. You can just like tweet at a scientist. Yeah, you don't have to wait for the opportunity to be the animal person that gets invited on the Today Show. Right. Or, you know, that's not just those opportunities. We have many, many more opportunities for experts to share, which, yeah, that's great. But speaking of animals, bats, we get batty all the time, but, you know, I think we're going to just dive straight from here right into Blair's Animal Corner. With Blair. Yeah. What you got, Blair? I have animals in their favorite foods. First, I want to talk about the cuddly cockroach. What? Cuddly. This is a study from North Carolina State University looking at male German cockroaches, Blatella Germanica. I can say that one. They wanted to look at the pre-meeting gift that males offer females. That is a gift of body secretions. Yum. They combine sugars and fats. And so they attract and hold a female's attention by offering the secretion. And while she's munching, they can start copulation. So it's, call it what you will, a bribe, a gift, a trap, I don't know. But ultimately it's this sweet little treat that allows life to continue in German cockroaches. And this study in particular is looking at preferences in the females to specific sugars. They have found that there are some females that are averse to glucose. When they mix their saliva with the male secretions, some of the sugars that the males secrete, they break down, they degrade and turn into glucose. And glucose in the cockroach's mouth becomes kind of bitter. And so she usually stops eating and scurries away before the male can get his hook in, literally. The way that they mate is with an appendage that kind of telescopes out, it grabs her with this hooked appendage and then it helps move her into position. And then this only takes seconds, but after that they can be latched together for up to 90 minutes. They're back to back and then the male uses a second appendage to transfer a sperm package to the female. So this few second courtship tells the story of whether that 90 minute love lock, I guess, is going to happen. And so that sugar has to be the right kind for him to be able to get that hook in, to be able to proceed to handing off his sperm package to the female. And so this all depends on the type of sugar that they have to offer. Generally, as humans have started to develop and there's been roach baits placed outside homes and inside homes, the types of sugar available to roaches has changed. And so in the roach trap, for example, there is a simple sugar that is more likely to degrade into glucose. So that means there is a higher percentage of food or situations in which the food that the male is eating could turn into this bitter version that the females don't want. So there's a higher chance that that's going to happen. They have these different kinds of sugars that they eat that they turn into the secretions, maltose, maltotreos, and then they also have fats. Maltose converts to glucose right away. Maltotreos is more complex. It takes longer to break into glucose. And so it's less likely to become fully glucose and bitter to the female. And so figuring that out, figuring out that there are kind of glucose-averse females and they're not, they're kind of glucose-fine females, I guess, whatever, they have not attracted. I don't know. Basically the ones that are- I don't like the sugar. Yes, exactly. The ones that are glucose-averse, they avoided the wild type males that were not averse to glucose. So you have this problem where these wild males that would eat the glucose or would eat the stuff that turned into glucose. This is getting really confusing. They made these glucose-averse females run away. The glucose-averse males that they were able to make in a lab, they had higher levels of maltotreos in their secretions, which converted less easily to glucose. Males had extra time to begin mating. They were more successful. So these naturally occur in the lab, but they were able to kind of identify who's who, figure out what happened in which situation. And so they were able to see exactly how these things played out, how these exchanges played out with the cockroaches. They also changed the quality of the male secretion. Sometimes they would substitute fructose in for the glucose, and the glucose-averse females- Sneaky. Loved the fructose that on it longer. They were able to mate with these females. So they were that- you know, is that last bit of research work that allows you to pinpoint, yes, this is the variable that was changing the behavior for sure. So that's great. What does this all mean? This is all interesting, right? We have cockroaches that care about glucose and ones that don't. There was a 2013 study by this same research group that informed bait manufacturers not to use glucose in baits. There was a 2021 study that expanded that recommendation to all sugars that contain glucose. Baits made with glucose, sucrose, maltose, and other sugars. Those things are going to be ignored by the glucose-averse cockroaches. So the suggestion was, don't use those things, not because you might be hurting cockroaches, but because you'll catch less cockroaches, because there are these averse individuals. And as more cockroaches with glucose aversion continue to survive and thrive, that trait will continue. It becomes the dominant population. Exactly. So we are, by putting sugar into our cockroach traps, we are pushing the adaptation, the evolution of populations to, yeah, to adapt to less sugar. Right. We don't want to eat the sugar because that's when we die. Right. We don't want to eat the sugar because then I can't make new cockroaches. And so then, right. So the cockroaches that are reproducing are the ones that don't have the taste for sugar. And so then the females aren't interested in the sugary chemical secretions and so then there's no mating. So in a way, we're actually continuing to influence the death of the cockroaches, which was our primary goal in the first place as humans. So, but you could kill them more effectively if you didn't have sugars that broke down to glucose easily is the point. It's a long-term plan we've got going on here. You've got to think in the long term because the cockroaches, they're not going anywhere. First we kill them and then we kill them because they don't want to mate anymore. It's diabolical. Are you one team cockroach Blair? No, not really. I mean, they'll be fine without me, honestly. They don't need my help. But what you really got to do, right, is you got to continue on this route for a long time. You have the glucose traps. You then you end up with exclusively glucose averse cockroaches, right? Then you make it so that there's a bunch of food that they don't know is going to, I don't know, somehow hidden glucose. Way to give them. These cockroach, glucose averse cockroaches eating the glucose. Then the females won't mate with them and then they have, you have population collapse. So you have to, you have to use your engineer. I don't know. Forget it. Anyway, I've been thinking too much about this. It's turning in on itself. Let's move to spiders. Sugar binging cockroaches are bad for their own future. Okay. Spider time. Spiders. What do spiders like to eat? Flies. Yeah. Also mosquitoes. So University of Florida study in collaboration with University of Canterbury, New Zealand and international Sondra of insect physiology and ecology in Kenya. I don't know why I said it with a French accent. It's because it's spelled Sondra. Anyway, the three of these organizations together have examined the dietary preference of an Eastern African jumping spider, jumping spider is my favorite, known scientifically as avarca colisevora. Watching them in the field, they noticed that they were eating almost only mosquitoes. That's not normal for spiders. They usually don't specialize in one kind of prey. They usually eat pretty much anything that flies or calls. Sometimes depending on the size of the spider, they will also eat lizards, frogs, birds. But generally speaking, it's anything of the invertebrate, tiny invertebrate type. But these guys were pretty much only eating mosquitoes. They also noticed that they were tracking the mosquitoes and targeting those of the bright red abdomens. Those are the ones that recently fed. To see what's going on with this preference, the researchers then went into the lab. They provided mosquitoes either with red dyed sugar water, which caused their abdomens to look like they had just had some blood, or gray dyed sugar water, no blood. The spiders predominantly went for the red-bellied mosquitoes. What's important about this is that they smelled the same. So there was no odor cue here. It was all visual. So they were just blood preference? Yeah. So they wanted the extra nutrients of a freshly engorged mosquito. And so they are using a visual cue. This research helps inform mosquito control. If you have spiders that you know, prefer mosquitoes and prefer mosquitoes who have recently eaten, that can help you kind of use biological control on mosquitoes. But it also just helps us understand spiders and their decision making more. They're these teeny tiny little animals with teeny tiny little globs of neurons for brains and very weird eyeballs. And it turns out that not only is their vision good enough to differentiate mosquitoes based on who has eaten recently and who hasn't, but the visual cue is their predominant cue for hunting, which may not have been what was anticipated. We think about spiders. We think about the vibrations on webs. We think about auditory cues that they can feel vibrations of in the hairs on their legs. We think about all sorts of things that spiders could be using to get around besides visual cues. We know they use visual cues because we've done reports on the show about spiders watching videos of flies and stuff like that. But it's really interesting to know that for these jumping spiders, their main motivation is just what looks delicious. Yeah. That one. They're picking out like the reddest apple at the produce store. So spiders are your friends, everybody. And I've always appreciated spiders. I've always appreciated the fact that they catch mosquitoes above everything else. Love that about them. But now I'm a little bit why they're helping is so that, you know, securitously they can drink my blood. Which, and then it sounds like they might even be like, all right, here we got one of you coming. Has it got any Justin blood on him? Nope. All right. We'll let that one pass. We'll wait for one that has gotten him already. It sounds less like helping than I hope. Yeah. But also if you're in a place that has blood-borne pathogens that are passed through mosquitoes, it would be really good to have spiders that eat mosquitoes that just ate. So that's going to prevent those mosquitoes from passing pathogens from person to person. Oh, yeah. No, spiders are your friend. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I like friendly spiders. Friendly neighborhood mosquito blood-eating spiders. They want the juiciest mosquito. You know what it's like? It's like when you go pick out your jelly donut and you try to find the one that has the jelly that's like just coming out the end, because it's so full, just so squishy, full of jelly, that's the mosquito. You're welcome. Oh my goodness. This is This Week in Science. If you're enjoying the show, I behoove, no, I'd not behoove you. I request, I humbly request that you please head over to twist.org. And while you're there, click on our Patreon button. Patreon is the platform we use to support the show, our show is listener supported. So you could support this show in our weekly endeavor to bring science and fun and curiosity to as many people as we possibly can. While you're there, that Patreon button will lead you to a place where you can choose your level of support, $10 a month and more, and we will thank you by name at the end of the show. We thank you for your support. We really can't do this without you. All right, Justin, tell me about headbutting? I got the aga. Headbutting and behooveing animals. Behoove animals. It would behoove to not be headbutted. We've talked about on the show before the dangers of concussions. That's when the human head bumps up against something causing the brain to squish against the inside of the skull causing inflammation, brain damage. So scientists were like, hey, you know, we should look at Greenlandic musk oxen and some big horned sheep to find out why these creatures who intentionally part of mating and sometimes play fighting for territory headbutt each other but don't suffer from concussions or the ensuing brain damage. These are horned animals, so they're built for impact. They've got the additional structure for it there. Then they're known to get into violent head-to-head collisions. Male musk oxen, this I did not know. And why would I? They get a running start at the headbutting thing and can reach speeds of 30 miles an hour before slamming heads into each other. And these are like, you know, 1,000 plus pound animals. These are pretty big. Or at least they look it because they got all the fur. I wonder if they're like cats. They're big. 30 mile an hour head-to-head impact. And still they're fine. No concussion, no brain damage. Scientists at Iken School of Medicine at Mount Sinai studied the brains of musk oxen and some of the big horned sheep found, oh wait, no, they get brain damage. Yeah, no, it's not good. It's not good at all. Having horns, generations of behavior around mating and territorial disputes, not enough to avoid the brain damage from slamming your head into things, even if you're built for it. Musk oxen showed actually extensive damage. Sheep fared much better. They didn't have nearly as much brain damage as the musk oxen. Musk oxen? Is that because sheep aren't as big? I think so. That's what I thought. Maybe they're just because they're lighter weight. Less momentum. Mass times velocity. This is physics. Curiosity, curiously, an old female musk ox had the most brain damage, 20 times more indicators of damage than the older male, and five more times than the other females. This is not what they had expected. They actually expected if they found the brain damage at all that they would see it much more in males who spend their time budding heads that are known to ram each other very hard and very often. But yeah, no, females. Females had the more brain damage, which they're asking questions then like, why did the female musk ox brains appear to have more damage than the male ones? Is it because there's a difference in skull anatomy? Why did the brains of the big horn sheep have so little damage, but I think you probably queued on the right answer there, Kiki. But I think stuff like this is really interesting. When you get at the question of, is it something to do with the skull, with the anatomy? We know that woodpeckers have special ligaments that are wrapped around the back of their heads to basically act as shock absorbers. But biological tissue is biological tissue. And so the question is, what can we learn from these species? They might have traumatic brain injury. They might have all the markers of like, you know, tau proteins and all sorts of tangles. And do they have Alzheimer's disease? Or do they have things that are fixing it? Do they have, what kind of mechanisms do they have in place if this is normal behavior? I think they likely, what they have is wolves. Oh, there's that guide. Well, so this is related to what my theory was. The wolves can tell, the wolves can tell if you've had one too many headbutts in your life and they zero in on that very quickly and take care of the problem. So my theory for why the female has this extensive brain damage is that she was protecting young. So that would make sense. Yeah, you could see, you know, if you're doing intraspecific selection, no, is that right? If you're muscox on muscox. Intra. Yes, okay, good. Then you, we know that kind of escalating behaviors where especially large herbivores are competing with each other and they're fighting against each other. They often pull punches because they're not trying to die. So they, they're just trying to get to the point where somebody gives up. It's like a game of chicken. But if you're protecting your young from a predator, you're probably not pulling punches at all. Right. It also could be a fluke. It could just be that this individual didn't have as good of padding as another individual and it could have been that simple also. But if it's consistent amongst females, that would be my guess. I think those are very good hypotheses that should be tested Blair. Maybe you should go study muscoxing. No, no, no. Other people can do it. I'll report on it. You guys go ahead. I don't need to be in the lab. You guys go. And last story I got today, published in the nature, the journal Nature Communications, researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in China have developed a contact lens that can monitor eye pressure changes and even dispense glaucoma drugs when they're actually needed. Glaucoma is pressure within parts of the eye that creates problems for the optic nerve. It can lead to damage of the optic nerve, which can result then later down the road and from partial to even complete blindness. The disease is difficult to treat because the pressure changes are stochastic. They don't come at a set time of day or when you're looking at something intently they just sort of show up and then the pressure goes away and as a patient if you had this you can't actually feel the pressure differentials. So if you don't know when the pressure is increasing you don't know when to apply medicated eye drops that you may have been prescribed even for treating them. So damage can continue to accrue if you've been diagnosed and given an eye drop treatment to correct the problem because you just don't know when to use it. New contact lens that was developed is double layered with the pocket of air between the layers. The air pocket serves as part of a cantilevered electric system so that the pressure change in the eye then squeezes the air pocket alerting an electronic component which is the need to administer the medication. And this one it's a... So it's pushed out. It's pushed by a small electric current from the underside of the lens along the outer edge across the cornea and into the eye. The outer layer is made up of six copper plates that serve as activators ranged in a ring around the pupil so it doesn't affect, interfere with your vision. Researchers note that the contact lens is minimally invasive, gives the iris to the patient a golden hue. Yes. They note that it is also... that is wireless, battery free, could conceivably be used to treat other eye conditions, eye ailments and can be paired with a smartphone to give patients real-time information regarding the health status of their eyes. I think that's very exciting. There already are lenses that you can have implanted for glaucoma, for cataracts. I know people who have had this surgery to replace their lenses and it's like they don't need glasses anymore. They can see like they're young again. And so to add to the benefit of just replacing the lens but also to be adding medication when you have situations that require that and have the constant monitoring that's taken it this one step further. And so you've got this active... it's almost like getting to the point where you've got a synthetic part... it is a synthetic part for your eye. It's bionic eyes. We're getting bionic eyes, everybody. I love that. I love the idea also of looking at your eye and seeing what looks like a gear around your pupil. That is so cool. I bet they were like, we have the technology to make this be basically invisible, but nah. Nah. I mean, this gives GoldenEye, right? Yeah. The whole new meaning. There it is. So cool. It's also sort of interesting that this is a thing that you can't feel. Yeah. The pressure differential. So there's... the body doesn't have a sensor in place to notice change. And this performs that, which I thought was... that was kind of my favorite part of it is here's a part of the body that never figured out how to self-monitor for this thing. Most of the body can monitor. Not necessary. Pain to an immune response to something is paying attention to something everywhere in your body, it seems. Here, the pressure of the eye, though, was invisible to the body, to the human, the brain attached to this little casing on top of their shoulders. But this just took care of it automatically. Brilliant. It's great. It is brilliant. One thing that men can do is wear fewer ties. What? Ties. Ties. Ties. The blood and fluid flow, so your intraocular pressure increases. What? Wearing a tie. It's not good for the pressure in your head. Or if you wear a tie, very loosely, it's dashing that way. But I like the idea of like, I got my robots in my teeth. I got my bionic eye contact lens. It's got gears on my eyes. I love it. It's great. You just do want to live forever. I know. I'll take it. More machine than men. More machine than Blair. Yeah. Oh, I just deleted the thing that I was going to open. Anyway, I have some stories that I would like to talk about right now. One of them being primarily, we hear so much about the negative aspects of screen time for our kids. No more than two hours of screen time for your children a day. It's going to have negative impacts on their behavior. It's going to influence all sorts of bad habits. It's going to be bad for their brains. And this is what we hear repeated over and over again. However, researchers have just published a paper in nature communications, looking at the influence of TV watching and video games and video watching on children's IQ. And what they determined is that the more video games that a child plays the longer time a child spends playing video games. The higher the likelihood that they will have an increased IQ that the, and it's a correlation of playing video games leads to increased IQ. Not that kids with higher IQs play more video games. No. They looked at screen time records for 9,855 kids in what is called the ABCD study. These are kids in the United States. So we've got a very localized sample in the United States aged nine or 10 years old. The youngsters reported overall spending about two and a half hours a day watching TV or online videos, video games and half an hour socializing over the Internet. They looked at data for over 5,000 of those kids two years later. And they did pre, they did IQ tests at the first test. And then they also looked at all the IQ stuff. The data went along with that at the second two years later data point. And they saw an increase of 2.5 IQ points above the average rise for those who were playing their video games. It was based on their performance on tasks, including reading comprehension, visual spatial processing and memory focus, flexible thinking and self control, which the self control part I think most parents would not think would come up as this is benefiting. Because you don't have self control when it comes to turning off the video game. But plenty of self control when it comes to doing things within the games. Yeah, because this is one of those. This is I love this to the reaction because it's a very kids today, you know, kids 20, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, maybe they didn't have more screen time than kids today. They just watched television, which is a very passive thing. I mean, you can go back kids didn't even have like kids programming. They'd watch like, you know, the newlywed game and they'd watch, you know, the Barnaby Jones. Leave it to Beaver. And you know, there were kids. Yeah, there was that for a little while for a couple of hours. But kids would consume as much screen time as they did today. But it was all very passive. And in a video game, you're interacting. You're problem solving. You're doing, you're actually exercising, flexing that, that brain muscle to do them. So I totally make sense that they would see an improvement. Yeah, but they did say, you know, not that they saw the larger improvement, the more the more significant effect for video games specifically, but additionally video, online video, watching and TV watching did correlate to an increase in IQ as well, although the result was not as robust. They think it has to do with the types of programming that are available to kids now, that even though that aspect is still passive, there are a lot, you can choose your interests. You can watch things that, that potentially benefit those interests and are more interesting. Anyhow, they specifically, and this is always a question I know that comes up, especially with IQ, they controlled for genetic differences in cognition and for socio-economic background because they knew that that has been an issue in previous studies and also small sample size. They wanted a much larger sample size. That's where they've got this almost 10,000 kids. So they've hit a lot of the critiques, the critical points for creating a fairly robust result with this particular study. Yeah. Anyway, there are for sure more factors in play that they didn't look at, but it is this, you know, not all screen time is bad for kids. It's not, it's not just going to rot your kids' brains. Yeah. I'm surprised about the TV part, but to Justin's point, back in the day, there was not educational programming before really Sesame Street started it. Not as much. Like Electric Company and Sesame Street started it. But now you can really make sure that your kids are watching educational content. There's, you know, like in Blue's Clues, there's the expectation you speak back to the TV. And so it's, it's a little bit more interactive now for sure. But that's, yeah, I still am kind of surprised about the TV thing. I'll buy. Oh, and I misspoke. I said it was nature communications. It is scientific reports where it is published. And then finally, for those of us who are getting older, you know, we don't, we've always heard the story that, you know, we're born with all brain cells we're going to have and then they're just, they're just going to die as we get older. So you're just losing brain cells the older you get. Well, not necessarily. There's a lot of evidence that neurogenesis happens within the brain. And unfortunately, the study out of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine doesn't have to do with people. It has to do with mice. But they'd like to apply it to people because that would be really nice someday. These researchers used optogenetics to stimulate areas of the hypothalamus to increase neurogenesis in the brain, which led to in the mice, the production of more neural stem cells that led to reduced anxiety in the mice, better memory and better emotional processing, memory cognition, emotional processing, all better in the mice who were stimulated. So I don't know how we're going to stimulate people optogenetically, especially the hypothalamus, which is right in your basal brain areas. So until we put a window in our brain for that neural stimulation, I suggest we take walks in the park, stimulate ourselves with new ideas and lots of great science and conversation places like This Week in Science. I think that's a perfect idea. How about that and a window in my head? That's fine. I have lots of hair. I'll cover it up. Just put a nice hair clip in. It'll be great. Have you ever seen on Star Trek when they open up Data's Head? You can totally put a hinge in there. It'd be fine. It'd be totally fine. Yeah. I think the big question here is we see these neurons, new neurons being born in mice and rats, and the evidence in humans is still limited. But if it's happening in mice and rats and other species that we're looking at with very similar brains, why couldn't it happen in people as well? Yeah. Why not? Why not? I'll say for the third time tonight, sign me up. Be good to your brain. Stimulate it regularly, and it will be good to you. So go play video games. Are you putting that down on your task list? And listen to me. And actually, if you play one of those first person shooter games or you're in 3D and you're running around doing stuff, it'll improve your grayscale vision. True. Yeah, it will. All sorts of things. Hand eye coordination. I don't know. I'm not going to go into that right now, because I think we made it to the end of the show. Have we done it? Yeah, that's it. I got to go play some Kirby. Let's wrap it up. Oh, wrap it up quick then. Got to let Blair go play her Nintendo's. All right, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Twist. I do hope you enjoyed the show. Got to give some shout outs to people who make this show possible. Thank you, Fada, for all of your help with social media, show notes, show descriptions. Gord, Aaron Lohr, thank you for manning the chat rooms, and kind of keeping an eye on things in there. Identity four, thank you for recording the show every week. 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Zima, Ken Hayes, Howard Tan, Christopher Rabbin, Dana Pearson, Richard, Brendan Minnish, Johnny Gridley, Grimmy Day, Flying Out, Christopher Dreyer, R.T.M., Greg Griggs, John Atwood, Rudy Garcia, Dave Wilkinson, Rodney Lewis, Paul Phillips, Shane Kurt Larson, Craig Landon, Sue Doster, Jason Olds, Dave Naver, Eric Knapp, E.O. Kevin Parachan, Aaron Luthon, Steve DeBell, Bob Calder, Marjorie, Paul Disney, David Simmerly, Patrick Pecoraro, Tony Steele, and Jason Roberts. Thank you for all of your support on Patreon. And if you would like to support us on Patreon, head over to twist.org and click on the Patreon link. Woo, on next week's show. We will mostly be back Wednesday, 8 p.m. Pacific Time Broadcasting Live from our YouTube and Facebook channels and from twist.org slash live. Want to listen to us as a podcast? Maybe while you play your puzzle-solving video games? Just search for This Week in Science, whoever podcasts are found. 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And if you've learned anything from the show, remember. It's all in your head. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science is the end of the world. So I'm setting up shop. Got my banner on furrow. It says the scientist is in. I'm gonna sell my advice. Show them how to stop their robots with a simple device. I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand. And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand. This Week in Science is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth. And I'll broadcast my opinion all over the air. Cause it's this Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Revenge. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. Science. Science. I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news. But I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just get to understand. That would not be possible. Whatcha got there, Blair? It's the after show. You can tell us now. Whatcha got there? It's just a desert rain frog made out of Legos. I love it. No desert. Beep, beep, beep, no little desert rain frog. Beep, beep, beep. Is that what they sound like? I'm winking at you. Yes. You should find a video and play the sound. Yes, play the sound. Desert rain frog. What's the other one? Whatcha got? It's a macaw. Oh, a macaw. Oh, I see which one you've done. It is the world's cutest frog. Yes. So we'll see. I have to procure more Legos, so I don't have to undo these ones. But I'm thinking about making shadow boxes out of them with some art in the background for the calendar next year. I have to figure out how to take pictures that are good enough for the camera. That's a whole other thing. But I'm not a hugely successful photographer, but I know some, so I feel like I can ask for help. But you can make that happen. We can get it to happen. I know people with cameras. Yeah, yeah. And then lights. But I'm thinking if I make actual mounted shadow boxes, like almost dioramas, we could have a way to send those to certain people, which would be pretty fun. I think it's fantastic. I got the odds again. Why is my volume not working? I can hear you. No. On a YouTube video. No. I'm trying to play the meep meep peeping of a desert rain frog. Let's see if I can. That's weird, I think. I know why. Check all of the cords and the volume knobs, Kiki. The volume is always the volume. Yes. He's so mad. That's the sound of me when I'm angry. Here, let me share my screen. OK, Eric Knapp, musk ox. The wool, the under-wool of a musk ox is called kivit. How do you pronounce that? There's no key. How did I do it before? Kivit. Kivit. Kivit. Is that right? Chivit, kivit. Really, so it's soft wool. Interesting. Chrome tab. There you go. Oh, wait, what? Wait a second. Oh, Justin's back. There's that fierce little frog. Oops. You and I are both knocking Justin in and out of here. You get in. You get out. You get in. You get out. A desert rain frog? Have a good night, Fada. Have a great week. The other night, I just started watching frog videos on YouTube. I went to bed in a very good mood. I'm sure you did. I mean, that is some wholesome fun right there. I saw a video of a mother sloth getting her baby sloth back. I don't know why the baby had been taken away from the mother sloth. But it was so sweet. And the mother moved so slowly to grab her baby. But once she had it, she just hugged it. Sloth mama hugging the baby. I can watch those kinds of videos all day long. Every once in a while, I think about unfollowing all of the political people that I follow on Twitter. Oh, no. What would happen to my feed? I mean, if you're on Reddit, then you only sign up for things like the cutest ever or moments of awe. Happy, happy times. I did have a slight correction from, I think, an after-show conversation last week. I think I said that Texas had the highest rate of incarceration in the United States. That's not true. That's not true. Texas has the largest prison population in the United States. They have more humans in prison than any other state in the country that has more people in prison than any other country. But it's actually their seventh in per capita incarceration rate. It's Louisiana, number one, then Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Arizona, and Kentucky, which all fit into what you would maybe expect. And then it's Texas per capita. So just a clarification there. Those are also from, I think, the week even previous. We're also the states that those are also on the list of states that underfund the foster care system, and are also the list of states that have trigger anti-choice laws on the book. So yeah. Wow, yeah. But yeah, there's a section, there's a swath of our country that is, how do you say, kind of looks like a police state in those incarceration rates. And they also seem to be the ones that feed more children into that system without any kind of spending. Well, there was another thing too, as we pointed out, there's one of the states that actually of that group that spends the most per capita on foster care systems, is Tennessee of that bunch. They're the better of that grouping. Tennessee spends a considerable more than some of those states on the foster system. They're also the only state that are at least the first state I was ever aware of that bans sex education and has the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the nation. So maybe that's why they're having to spend so much more money on the foster system. You know what I saw on Twitter right before the show tonight? Is that 192 Republicans voted against a relief for the infant formula shortage currently. Yeah. Which is hilarious because it's supposed to all be about babies, the abortion laws. But you don't want to feed them. You don't want to worry about the formula problem. So go ahead and, once they're out, don't care. I just say, I know. Wait, this is frogs again? I know, right? Derek Schmidt is saying, the Q sound in the Inuit languages is amazing to hear when pronounced correctly. I cannot do that correctly. It is interesting. There's a formulation in it that is not intuitive. There was a town, which was named after one of the wave of founding peoples in Greenland. And the town is Q-A-A-N-A-A-Q, and it's pronounced Kana. Yeah. So there's like some of them that turn into K's, some that are silent. And it's not an intuitively written or designed language that at some point picked up the German habit from Germans that they were interacting with, trading with, of combining two words to make a bigger word. And it just kind of kept going so that you would have what was four, five, six words get turned into one meaning word. And so if you ever read Greenland Inuit text, like a novel or newspaper or something, you don't have something in a newspaper. You're going along and then there's a hyphenation because one word was too long. That word can take up a column or two. It can keep having to hyphenate the same word because they get ridiculously long. So, yeah, so I'm just looking. I'm looking into the pronunciation of the Q sound. And apparently it is a uvular sound. So the Q comes from the back of the throat. Chronic. It's going to be a kuh. It's back of the throat. That's fascinating. So that's going to be because most American English speech is very much in the hard palate and in the front of the very nasal and hard palate. We don't have a lot of that guttural like uvular stuff. The like Russian has a lot of that. You also have like, there's, that's interesting. It'll be hard for us to hear and hard for us to make as well. Danish has a bit of that. You know, if your ear isn't ready for it, we're not even going to hear it. Danish has a bit of that and it has a little bit of guttural. It has that in some of it. And it has like three extra vowels that we don't have that are very breathy. And yeah, there's things you can't hear with the English-tuned ear that just goes right by you. Yeah, you don't hear it. And that's always one aspect of language that I thought has been, it's really interesting is because it's not just the words we learn. It's the hearing aspect. And our language does start to crystallize after a while and our brain doesn't pick things up as well. And so that's the hearing part. It is really what makes it harder to pick languages up as you get older because your brain is crystallized hearing certain sounds as opposed to hearing, paying attention to lots of sounds. We just don't hear it. We don't hear the things that people are saying. It's fascinating. And then there's the whole dialect thing. East coast, the Boston area, they do this old form of English actually that really drop the trailing Rs off of everything. Yeah. That's why it's, you need the keys to the car. The car. There's no R. It went to Boston Yad. Yeah. You need the keys to the car. They just drop Rs all over the place. Like it was never a letter in the word. And you know. Ooh. It's a London British thing too. They do a lot of R. There's similar stuff. Yeah. But there's also like the, there's, yeah. Really? It's a softer R. It's a R. It's a really, are you serious? Are you serious? Are you serious? It's like, it's a softer R. The R is further back as opposed to further forward. Droppin' Rs like Australians. I can't, I can't. Australians. Yeah, yeah, I guess they are R droppers. Oh, they're big time R. They're big time R droppers. I just, I just tend to default to my friend, lady. All I want is a room somewhere far away from the cold night air. Oh, there you go. There you go. I mean, there's a really cool website I just found. In you it. Nip. But I want to know your top five Eurovision socks. By the way. Oh, yeah. By the way, I tried to tune into that thing. Oh, I don't understand. What are you? I don't understand. So I tuned in, I guess I got there right at the end, you know, at the grand finale. Oh, wait, so like the votes? It went on for five hours. Oh, it's so fantastic. Waiting for like Baltic countries to get internet feed. Albania. Well, it looks like Albania doesn't have internet tonight. So we're just going to tell you how they voted. So that is actually like this really interesting controversy this year, because apparently there were some voting. Inaccuracies that people think might have been like boat stuffing kind of stuff going on. And it just so happened that the couple of countries that dropped their connection were the countries where they were having having issues in the vote counting. Very, very suspicious. Yeah, overall, all of those acts. And by the way, I guess this is a competition, but they've always just been doing the same song over and over again. Like a regular challenge. America's got to tell one of these things every week, you know, they're bringing people back who made it through the next round and they do a different song. They were doing the same song over and over again throughout the competition. So I don't know how you can even perform. Well, each each band and it's a song competition. So you have to do the song in your country, in the country. And then you have to come and you have to win in the semifinals. And you say I need to win in the final. Yes, it's because it's the song is the right thing. Yeah, but I can see that it seems like trailing interest after you're like, oh, yeah, I already heard all of these songs before. I didn't watch from the beginning, so I didn't experience it. I'm just trying to imagine having watched from the beginning. I would have kept hearing the same. Yeah, I don't know. And then some of it was just OK, I guess. I mean, that's there are some songs that are just OK. I mean, it's very I love watching the votes. And on this point, good to. Although although they wait, the Australian for just just raw talent. Yeah, the Australian voice was incredible. Yeah, he was really, really good. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That was afraid to pronoun it, but that was that was you can say they were. They were that was by the best dress for sure. But it was pants. Yeah, they were wearing pants, dress pants. But that was good. I was like, OK, if this is a talent show, they won. But it wasn't. Right. It is a talent show. It's like it's I really. I'm sorry. My favorite this year was Norway. I was really rooting for Norway. And they did not have a banana or something. Yes. Yeah. Before the wolf eats your grandma, give that wolf a banana. Give that wolf. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't know about the talent side. I get this competition doesn't have so many levels. They got the assignment. They understood the assignment, which I think was very important. Question. Did Ylvis start at Eurovision or were they just their own thing? So Ylvis was their own thing, but the quest. So we don't know who the. So the band from Norway is called Subwoofer and they wore these masks and so nobody knows who they are. And Ylvis for sure. People think it's Ylvis. Yeah, there are some other people who think it's a combination of a couple of boy band people that it might be. There is one in a tall one. I know it seems like Ylvis. It does. It really seems like the lyrics and the funny like the funny. Yeah, I think it's Ylvis. Also, I got to say I felt like all of Europe is is swaggerjacking a little bit too much. What? Well, like they were cut from one band to the next and there'd be people going over one. Oh, my gosh, thank you. Like there's a little bit of like if you're all pretending to be the same grateful people band, like that has just like there wasn't. I don't know. It's just like to me, it looked like swaggerjacking. If it's not, I apologize, but it's just sort of seemed like everybody had the same emotive responses to things. And I don't know, like they're all trying to be the same act. You know, that's that's fine. People can do that. I guess if it was all hair bands, they'd all be, you know, man spreading and, you know, having cigarettes dangling from their mouths. But there was Rasmus, Rasmus from Finland with the with the balloon guy. The balloon guy with no shirt, eventually. Yeah. And then. Yeah, there weren't very many hair bands this year. There were there was one other kind of they wanted to be metal in the semifinals, but they didn't make it through. Yeah, Australia had a great outfit and sang really well, really like they were not just really well, like that that voice was on a different level, a different level of competition than anything else that I saw there. And if it was a talent contest, but I get it's not a talent contest. It's a song contest. It's not. It's a song competition. And that's very different. That is very different type. OK, so it's yes, it's a song, but it's also the talent of the singer goes into because it's a performance. Also, like people are voting on the performance and the singing because there are some songs that I thought were good, but they would have been good if they had been sung by somebody else. So, you know, that can sell a song. But I mean, I, you know, if I wrote a song about, you know, give a watermelon to a rhinoceros, you know, the lyrics might be hilarious or great and everybody has a nice little Casio program backbeat to it. But doesn't mean there's any talent involved. Not really. Just wrote a good song about a rhinoceros. Yeah. So so I liked Ukraine. I thought Ukraine was great. Yeah, they were good. They were good. I think they won politically. But I totally won politically. I don't I I'm I'm going to say I think they got the. You know, the vote from the public because everyone wants to support. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, they were great, though. Yeah, yeah, they were good. They I did really enjoy their their performance and song. And it was for it was a song that had more diversity of sounds to it. And I think what do you thought? Yeah, whatever genres involved, which I thought was cool. Yeah, I liked Spain. I thought she was she was like, like she was amazing. She was like like a Paula Abdul, like a Janet Jackson. Like she was this hot little piece of fire. And she was great, like just an amazing performer. Great song. I thought Spain was. Fantastic. Was it Moldova? I think I'm a little over I like because they were like, I like Moldova. And they serve. I like the weird. Yeah. Yeah, you got you got some some fast paced foot stomp in accordion music. That's that's what I go for every time. Yeah, that sounded like it's reminding me a little bit of like, oh, it's actually Ukrainian guy. Oh, his name I'm totally blanking on right now. Gorgio Gordello. Yeah, I love that. He's absolutely awesome. Kind of reminded me of something like that because he pulls in all sorts of different instruments and fun sounds. And yeah, UK. Yes. So so I'm I'm I don't know. UK was good. I was like kind of surprised by UK. It was like the UK performance was it was like Elton John and Queen had a baby with like a pop singer. I don't know. It was good. It was a good song. UK was good. Gorov thinks they overperformed. It was a bit of it was good. But this is not I mean, I did not think you were good. I know nothing about this Eurovision other than having watched the final this one final final. But isn't this wasn't it wasn't this the thing that was basically for for like ever in the government? Wasn't it Britain at one or UK that won every year or something? For a while, but now they don't win ever. No. So the thing is, it's like everybody in the UK was really excited because the UK was like going to win. And then Ukraine's like, boom, we get all the votes. Yeah. Yeah. So UK was very thrilled because they've lost many, many, many years in a row. It's been many years. OK. But yeah, it's been a very long time. Oh, serious question, I don't know. Oh, thanks, Derek. Thanks for cheerleading out there. Yeah. Can we get more than two likes? That'd be great. If you're on YouTube, click that like button. Just a little little up. Little give us give us a little thumbs up. Boop, boop, thumbs up. That'll be fantastic. Help us help us in the ratings. Well, I'm just looking at the past winners. This is it's pretty mixed. OK, good. Yeah. The past winners, it has been like it's been. I mean, this is. Oh, my gosh. You're looking at one in like what, six, seven years? Something like that. I think you're going to follow this years ago. You're so that is it. When does it start? Because I want to catch the I want to catch those songs the very beginning so I can hear it. Repeated the most amount of times. The same song. You want to hear the same songs over and over again? Yeah. So usually it's start like really gets going in the like January, February. You start really hearing about different things now. Yeah. So next year, January, February, you'll start hearing local like different regional competitions, country competitions will happen. And apparently, nor I think is Norway has the largest like independent country competition. It's this big music festival that's like a really big deal in Norway where they do all the voting and stuff. It's supposed to be a lot of fun. But really, it gets you can start like tracking stuff. January, February, really, it starts getting going April and then May is like the big. And I have a question. It's mid May every year. I have a question. Why are Israel and Australia part of the competition? Israel is part of the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums, too. They just get lumped in. And it's also to do with the European Broadcasting Corporation. So the Broadcasting Corporation at one point brought in. Australia and because Australia became a part of their television broadcast network, they they get to be part of Eurovision. It really has to do with like. So there's the the let's pretty it up reason to have Eurovision, which is that it is unity and peace and love between all of these divided European countries and all that kind of stuff. But really, it's for the TV corporations. Because in the beginning, it was like, look what we can do. We can do this live television and do this live voting and how we can create this contest and, you know, it was like a very, you know, very technologically advanced thing. So now it's a it's showing off technology and connectivity. And it's a yeah, yeah. Hey, Corey, Beck, thanks for the thumbs up. Glad that you're still here. Thanks for listening live to Azerbaijan, where what's that? No, no, no, no, we don't have. Oh, they actually don't have the internet yet. OK, well, moving right along. Well, what was it? Azerbaijan got so many votes this year from all the countries. And I there's got to be some European political. And it wasn't the popular vote necessarily, but the country votes. Everybody was voting for Azerbaijan. I did not like the Azerbaijan song or performance. Apparently, all the countries did. I'm wondering what is going on politically? Does it have something to do with NATO? Does it have something to do with Azerbaijan? Connection to Russia? Like, I'm like, why did everybody vote for Azerbaijan? Let's explain this for a second, because because the first American four hours, the first four hours of voting are countries that are involved in this thing one by one, saying who their bestie is, right? And you know, it's just like, oh, OK, the votes from Finland go to Norway. Why not? You got other friends. We like them. And then Norway is like, I am not voting for Finland. We're voting for Azerbaijan. Oh, we're going to remember that next year, because it's because every country gets like this little block of votes that they can give to one other country. So that takes four hours. And then and then they have the the listeners who have called in. And it's interesting, you're not supposed to be able to vote for your own country, but VPNs, who can tell? But everybody can call in and vote for somebody who's not the country that they're calling from. That's the audience voting. OK, so then they start the whole after four hours of the countries one by one, saying from the great state of country of Denmark, we would like to tell you that it's a happy place to be. And oh, can you move it along? OK, and so we give our votes to Finland. I love that. I love hearing your like your whole thing on this after watching it once. Yeah, yeah, because I was just like, how is this on a broadcast that people are watching? So for four hours, that's my favorite thing. I love it. And then and then they go, then they start the then they start bringing the audience votes in. Yeah, and they start with the country that got least the least amount of besties. And so like Germany didn't get any country that voted. I was so sad. I thought that kid did such a great job. And so OK, great. It was I mean, all of these numbers can change. I was so sad for him. All of these numbers can change because there's more votes. And then he got six point votes from the audience and or did or nothing. But now now Germany. No, it was Switzerland. Switzerland got nothing. Well, they're neutral. Like, you know, what's the point of wasting points there? But yeah, and so then it would go in and every once in a while, like I think it was Moldova got a huge bump up from the audience. And like, because Moldova. And then you're getting up there. And you're getting up to like, you got a lot of votes. And I was like, OK, now we're going to Italy from the audience got two votes. The last country got like 240 and they jumped up in the rankings. And the next one above them, voted by their other country, got like two votes. And then you see the then they cut to the poor performers who just got told that they got nothing to vote it for you. But the audience really hated you, your song. And then they're like, I got two more votes. OK, thank you. Oh, and that goes on for, I think, six hours. So there's I don't know when there was some songs that happened like fast. There is a song. Here's a song. You've already seen them. We'll just get, you know, go there real quick. And then 10 hours of voting. Oh, my gosh, never would that ever make it. He keeps getting longer. It would never, ever be allowed to be put on air. Broadcast, television, or so good. No, it would, because it is the biggest viewed television event. And if you've got commercial. That's just by attrition, if the Super Bowl went on for 14 hours, yeah, eventually everybody tuned in just to see why it was taking so long. But it doesn't mean no that the show is interesting or it was not rich in content. It just means people like, oh, is that thing still on? Let's see if the hosts are still awake. One of the hosts left. One of the one of the people who was emceeing the show just disappeared like an hour and a half. And this is like, I got others things out of here with my day. And then came back left. And it was like, the other rooms, he's like, where are you? It's like, yeah, I had to go take a nap. Like the kids in school had to go do. And I'm back now. We can keep going. There's another 14 hours of this left, I think. Oh, so you have to, from the semifinals, you got to check out Circus Mircus. They're from Georgia and they didn't end up in the final. But I really thought they were fun. They had an interesting sound. Circus in their name sounds. Yeah, Circus Mircus is great. Highly recommend just for a different sound. It's not a normal pop song at all. It was very fun. Yeah, I thought it was good. Oh, yeah. In Lithuania, Monica Lu, she was so very like, she was just like an old, I don't know, it seemed like an Edith Piaf kind of jazz singer, just a sexy, female, crooning kind of voice. It was very, very wonderful. What's the name of the short, dark-haired, performing star? She was with Lady Gaga in the Oscars this year. She was in a wheelchair now. She's older now. Just to be fair, I don't watch American entertainment things. I watch some of these things. Wasn't it Liza? Liza Minnelli, thank you. Yes, thank you Blair. It was Liza. Yeah, that's who Monica Lu kind of reminded me of. She had a very kind of Liza kind of vibe. Yeah, they're good ones. Anyway, those of you who might not ever watch the subwoofer video or listen to that song again, know that I am singing it daily and probably watching it and listening to it and rotation on my on my mixes. And now I have to wait for a whole nother year, darn it. It's all done. Yeah, it's done. That was it last weekend. The finals, that was it. Oh, it's done. It was a one song competition that took six months to complete. And the last month, the last month was just the voting. Fair. And just keep tagging it. Fine. They had like 50 countries they had to cycle through and each have them come up and do like a one-two-minute thing where they said what their points went to. And everyone, they're like, OK, come on, come on, come on. Like they were trying to push them through. They'd say something in their foreign language, say something about their city, say something. And the only one I really appreciated was the French. Because as soon as they went to the French, I was like, they're not going to speak English at all. And they didn't. They did not disappoint. They went on for like five minutes saying things in French. Which, fair enough, used to be an internet. The 12 points. And with something like that, I think that's pretty accurate. Would you like 12 points now? No, I'd like some more. You have a pineapple. Bien sûr. Of course. So I have a pineapple. Improvisational French with twists. I'm here to translate. I studied French when I was in college years ago. Yeah, I have a French minor. I was this close to a minor, but I hated writing. And they wanted me to write papers. And I was like, I don't want to write papers. I wrote, I think, a 12-page paper in French. And I did a 20-minute presentation on the songs of Edith Piaf in French. That's cool. Yeah. That was wild. That was like. It is really interesting to study dead languages, to see how people talk in ancient times. Justin jokes on you because I understand 30% of Spanish because I speak French. So actually quite helpful. Because the French comes from the Latin and the Latin is the root of a bunch of languages. So it lets us understand many languages. And it's kind of nice. It's really cool. You can understand Italian, a bit of Italian, a bit of Spanish. I feel like Italian is way harder. I don't know why. It is a bit harder. I feel like the Spanish and the French are very similar. But once you throw the Italian in, it's a lot harder for me. I don't know. Oh, yeah. The French song, Greg Champion. Yes. A collection of French words. And then there is that one, there is that one song that sounds like it's in Italian, but it's a bunch of gibberish. Oh, the song. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Is it called the song? No, no, no, no. I have it on my Spotify. It is called. I love that. Okay. It is called. It's in my like foreign language playlist. So he made it. Brian introduced you to the song. This guy made this song. And it's called the song. It's called the song. To prove that he could make an American hit with no actual language. Yeah. It's called freezing. And. Name. It's great. That's great. Is this going to get us. It sounds like the jibber jabber. We can't play it. Yeah. All right. We'll look it up. It's like this super poppy song. It's like, oh, you're, you listen to it and you go, oh, it must be Italian. He's Italian. I do believe it's gibberish. It's just complete gibberish. I'm putting it in chat. Cole. Good. It's in Cole in. And sin name. Good night. Noodles. You. Oh. That's like the, that, that could be somebody's password. It's a great song. It's fun. Oh man. My dead languages. My hands were too fast. I had to fix it. Anyway. All right. It's 1030. I'm going to go to bed. Okay. Wait, hold on. Just sweet. Justin, you're gay. Justin, you're not going to be here next week. Maybe. Maybe not. Probably shouldn't be. I probably shouldn't be. Okay. Cause I'd be heading to the airport right now. So it's probably, yeah, it's probably not wise. Yeah. That's not wise. Yeah. No. But Justin, you never miss a show. No, I will still tune into it. That's not the same. I don't listen to the, I tell you, I don't listen to the shows that I was present for. Yeah. But if I've missed the show, meaning I wasn't here, I then un-miss it by watching. Do you really? Sure. Really. Okay. She asks because of the last time when you brought a story that Kiki did the week before. Did I do that? Cause I feel like you guys have done that, but I don't think that I've done that. Have I done that? Nobody's ever done that. I think that you have both done that, but I don't think that's happened to me. No, no. In fact, when I did it last time, I deleted it and I didn't report on it, but you actually reported completely on a story that was reported on the week before. But it's fine. We're all human. I think you're making it up. Look at the show notes, Justin. It's in the show notes. It's cute. Is it? Justin re-reports on. Well, who did it better? Well, you're the only one that actually reported on it because I always pull it out at the end of the day, but it's, it's fine. I'm giving you a hard time because you give me a hard time and I just want to make sure I don't even know that I am giving you a hard time. So I apologize in advance. No, that's why I was joking. Cause when I miss a show, you say, well, I never miss a show. Well, I never do. I always pay attention to say good night, Blair. Oh boy. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Say good morning, Justin. Good morning, Justin. Good morning, Justin. That's right. Good night. Good night. Good night, everyone. Thanks again for joining us for another evening of science. And we do look forward to seeing you again next week. Without Justin, even though he'll be lurking. Possibly. Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay curious.