 It says it's starting. We are live. We are live on the internet. Let me just wait and see and get my Thumbs up from the chat room that we're going. Well Check my Now there we go. We are live. So let us begin the show in three two this is Twists this week in science episode number 729 recorded on Wednesday, July 10th 2019 science freestyle Hey everyone, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight we will fill your head with spiders sperm and storage but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer the following program frequently contains information considered objectionable by the United States government Some of it anyway and the companies they represent so subversive is this information that even top scientists working within government who produced This information are not allowed to speak publicly about it In fact when the scientists in the US Geological Survey attempted in March to make this information public It was rewritten by administration agents to remove any mention of global warming consequences Department of Agriculture scientists have seen similar measures as have the EPA and NASA While not all the information contained within the following program is of the objectionable nature Listeners are warned in advance that simply knowing the facts about global warming makes you a political and ideological threat to the wealth and welfare of Momentarily powerful interest that said we will continue to speak science to power because from the big bang to the latest advances We got more science news than Chinese who's got pandas here on this weekend science coming up next I want to learn everything all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week There's only one place to go to find the knowledge. I see. I want to know Good science to you Kiki and Blair And a good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there welcome to another episode of this weekend science. We are back again To science up your week with all sorts of amazing science news. Oh my goodness this week I can't feel my face. Oh my gosh That's what you get when you go to the dentist just a couple of hours before you go on the air Don't bite yourself Don't chew on your tongue Trying to talk here and I'm having some issues at the left side of my face. So anyway Moving forward into the show. We do have science news for you and tonight I have stories about crab power strange places to store your data and we also have an interview with Rapper and science communicator baba brinkman coming up in just a few moments. What do you have for us, Justin? I've got the best diagnosis you can get from a psychologist The tooth about denisa vins and current humans the oldest out of african current human ever a global warming and long-lived corn Corn Okay, we like corn Oh, it's interesting that you have a tooth story tonight Blair what's in the animal corner? Oh my gosh. Well at the very end of the show I also have a tooth story a shark tooth story a whole tooth and nothing but that I can't feel my face because I went to the dentist We don't even need the theme and yet we have this Yeah, here we go. It's how it always works out Uh, but I also have the aforementioned sperm and spiders and I also have inherited memory You I'm sure we all do that's what the story's about Whoa Well, awesome awesome awesome As we jump into the show and give you a few more memories Not inherited gifted tonight from us I want to remind you that if you have not yet subscribed to our podcast you can do so by looking for this week in Science wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also find us on youtube and facebook our website is twis twis.org All right, I would love now to introduce our guest Baba Brinkman. He's a rap artist science communicator and an award-winning playwright He's most well known for his series of rap guides The most recent being the rap guide to consciousness. Baba. Welcome to the show. It's a great pleasure. Thanks for having me Thank you so much for joining us. I'd love to know about your Your whole I guess rap history How you you started out studying literature Chaucer canterbury tales things of that sorts right high and lofty and you moved into hip hop and you Transitioned from Chaucer to Darwin in science and please tell me a story about how this happened Hi, you know, it's your typical rap star biography basically. Oh, yeah I Maybe the only person that went to get an English literature degree because I wanted to You know be a more erudite rapper I studied the canterbury tales thinking it's got to be about the history of rhyme So rappers are the troubadours of today telling the stories and being subversive and doing the social Commentary and a kind of like lyrical entertainment form. And that's what poetry was throughout The history not just of English literature But our species I would say because every culture around the world has some like oral narrative tradition poetic form whether you know, whether it's written down or not and Yeah, so I had this idea Which is what I wrote my thesis about that that rap and Chaucer were kind of like the bookends of English literature As we know it and then I wrote a rap version of the canterbury tales coming out of my masters So for several years I was like the medieval rap guy and I traveled around Uh cambridge university had me as like a literary ambassador to schools I performed in like 20 british high schools in 2005 and 2006 and like a Cambridge lit professor would be like You know 214 year olds somewhere in central UK and they'd be like in case you thought the study of Chaucer was a dry affair at cambridge I had to present the book So in a novel art form Barbara Brinkman take it away and I'd be like And then just you know drop my like rap version of the wife of baths tale on the kids and then What um, so yeah that That's what I did for living for a couple for a couple years after I did my graduate degree and then a biologist saw this show And he was like great job with Chaucer. Do you think you could do Darwin? And that was his challenge to me like do the origin of species like you did the canterbury tales Uh in a kind of like theatrical rap form And I thought that was a great challenge and I was already a fan of darwin evolutionary theory just You know undergraduate biology breadth courses didn't have a degree in it or anything, but um, he said don't worry I'll I'll give you the you know reading list of what the best pop science and uh, You know contemporary article sources that you need to get your head around darwinian theory This was 2009 the darwin bicentennial and they were they were organizing the cambridge darwin festival and all these big 203 anniversaries same year was the 150th anniversary of publication of the origin of species was like the big darwin year um And and yeah that I put together a show called the rap guide to evolution working with the scientists in england And his thing was you know people get evolution wrong Evolution means different things to different people some people just treat it as like You know the evolution of consciousness in the sense of like everyone's becoming More compassionate over time through some kind of like spiritual process or whatever. Um, it gets hijacked So he was like we got to talk about natural selection and specific step how it works I want you to send me your rap lyrics before the performance so that I can fact check the representation of evolution in your work And uh, and so I we did this whole process where I was sending they come back with comments And then I had this collection of songs and for the um, you know on darwin day 2009 I did my premiere of the rap guide to evolution and this professor's name was mark palanese a bacterial geneticist Um, he introduced me by saying don't worry. Uh, you know, this is like once again like 200, uh, evolutionary academics at it at a at a, um, uk Symposium they were organizing and he was like don't worry. I I've gone through his work and it's very scientifically accurate In fact, I can say this is the first rap artist in history that is peer reviewed I was like hell. Yeah, that is my brand from now on peer reviewed rap Um, and every time I would do a show I would be like, you know Take it up with me or with the army of scientists that marches behind me Ironically like getting into science from having a literature background made me way more gangster Because I could be on stage and be like Facts, yeah Because when I was looking at the counterattacks, I was like, this is my interpretation of a literary text You know everyone's interpretation has equal validity when it comes to you know The representations of the semiotics of the works of blah, blah, blah But then once I got into science, I was like, you know, there's really a right and a wrong way to do this and that's kind of That's kind of refreshing in a way. So I got into empiricism Uh via the performative challenge of talking about evolution in an entertaining context and having to feel Questions from the audience about what I was rapping and talking about and then I would freestyle in every show Interactively with the audience and whatever they asked me about evolution. So, um, you know, that was that was 10 years ago and you know Rap guide to evolution was crazy. I I performed it live on the Rachel Maddow show Back back before she was dealing with the topics of world import every single night And uh, you know, I I performed it on on I opened for Steven Hawking at the Seattle Seattle Science Festival and I you know, I've shared stages with Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson and you know, bill my debut to rap on one of my records And so I've done like five other rap guides to various topics conscious in this climate change Anthropology of religion and the new one is rap grad to culture So basically this this like random British scientist reaching out and saying can you do the origin of species and rap Has turned into the last 10 years of my hip hop career as a public science communicator us How did you how do you go about picking these or how have you gone about choosing these various topics for your rap guides and then when you get into Actually creating all of it like for the rap guide for evolution It was kind of okay You're going to write some songs and then fact check it with somebody else get the comments and kind of Edit and iterate from there. Is that the process still or do you have a different creative process? Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty similar to how the first one came together I usually Usually have about six months from committing to doing the show to doing a version of it on a stage And I'm sending drafts of the lyrics to scientists. I now have like A kind of consultant crew Of friendly scientists that like what I do and I can send them lyrics to songs and they can give me commentary Because I feel like the peer reviewed factor is pretty important for just the brand and and you know, just Just representing my work as not just my opinion as an artist, but as You know the consensus view among researchers Although I can still represent controversies like in the rap guide to evolution I do this whole thing about individual versus group level or multi-level selection And you know, there are legit scientists on both sides of that But on that same time my creationism is dead wrong. There's no legit some scientists on either side of that question And as for which topic I pick You know part of it is When I'm working on one I'll come across something where I'll be like this is so fascinating and doesn't quite fit in the show So I'll flag it in a folder and say that maybe that's another show And then also just talking to people and like you should do this topic or what about this and just getting a sense of like What are the? Areas of research that people feel like need bridges to the public because if everyone's down with it You know, like I don't think I would do a rap guide to heliocentrism at this point That was Galileo's problem I mean, I don't know you could have a flat earth rap guide, you know Oh, hey rap guide to a round planet. There we go And weirdly enough it's coming back and it's the symptom of the internet creating these echo chambers of people that can You know feed each other conspiracy theories and create the bubble But I don't know. I'm more interested in areas where Like the scientific community has come to A relatively stable consensus within their group And if you ask people on the street about it, they don't know that They're really surprised that it's consensus. Um, no, so climate change is politically controversial not scientifically controversial in this lens same with you know Natural selection being the process that led to all of the apparent design in nature And there being no need for any supernatural component in the design or complexity of organisms from You know single cell to us a lot of people say oh, I believe in evolution, but they believe in some like You know theologically guided version or you know god had a Role to play of some kind but of course it happened But it was divine at some you know this that that was one thing I wanted to get across and then Um, you know, there's a we can we can go through the list where there's some but I you know I think genetically modified food is an interesting one You almost never hear a GMO researchers say that there's real health major health risks that we should be worried about and yet It's like illegal in Europe. Uh, and so that you know, that would be an interesting one for me to do Um, I think like genetics in general. I find behavioral genetics really fascinating Uh people that do twin and adoption and um genome wide association studies are coming to interesting conclusions about the degree To which genes influence personality and behavior and almost no one is ready to accept those findings But almost no scientists have any You know any doubt about the degree to which certain traits are red at this point, right? You know how much credit plays a role. So, um, you know and climate change origins of religion I found an interesting one because people think oh religion and science. They're at you know, they're at odds but actually Religion and science are totally compatible because evolution explains where religion comes from and how it's biologically adaptive in our ancestral environment And and so it's by the way so by the way English literature and gangster is there I always think of lord Byron as the original gangster He would he would take pangs to uh to attack his critics Uh, you drop the fourth wall attack the critics even just his own label and complaining about his publishers In in the middle of it and and would be risque as he wanted to be Uh in telling the stories In-law though, I think that's I love I love that you brought up Byron because um, you know those stylistic points are right But he's also a literary innovator that foreshadows rap because if you look all through English literature from the last 500 years Almost no poets use polycylactic rhyme schemes Um, so, you know M&M when he's like walking a tightrope without a circus net poppin perk has said I'm a nervous wreck. I deserve respect. I work a sweat for this worthless check That's like a multi-syllable pattern that he's repeating which poets have Literally just like wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. It's not hard to think of the idea of combining Uh syllable patterns and rhymes but poets just never did it except Byron did it in his poem don juan He's got rhymes like and all you husbands of ladies intellectual Have you not found that they have quite hand-packed you all and there's like I'm serious. That's this is the way but that's the way I picture Byron I picture Byron laying it down like that Uh when he's writing and and then like, you know, people are reading it out dry. I'm like, no, no, no, no he's he's he's sitting there with a big uh, caravans of alcohol and uh Spilling a little bit while I sing like in the rap guide to evolution I make a fairly explicit case that rap is peacocking all the way down Yeah, you know displaying your traits for the purpose of attracting mates and allies and costly signaling various forms of resource surplus Whether it's uh, you know cognitive ability or or the ability to acquire Wealth quickly starting from nothing. That's basically all the rap. Um, but that, you know Byron was a total peacock on the poet as well too, wasn't he like all about swagger You know, yeah sexual selection theory common explanatory power there I'd say Absolutely Who is uh, who would you say is the most influential is is Byron one of the most influential literary uh people that That has influenced you or Do you mean on me or on on everyone you personally? Who who do you think has influenced your style and I'm I'm a disciple of jeffrey chaucer I I like I did I did my literature surveys from high school through college I read everybody in the norton anthologies of English literature and I decided chaucer was the man I you know, if I'm gonna spend a lot of time on somebody, it's him and Part partially that's because he made more out of less than anybody else Um, you know, everyone who comes before chaucer is read as like a historical curiosity But not as a literary figure. Actually, he's one of the first Um, authorial attributions, you know, like we don't know who wrote bail. Well, we don't know who wrote Sir going into green night So the sort of major poems before chaucer They were either not written in english or they were written anonymously Whereas chaucer was like let's make a literature out of this like vernacular colloquial local Poetry form rather than trying to write in french or in rica and latin And also just the richness of human nature that's on display in the canvary tales Like he tells you what people are like who's you know, mendacious who's generous who's a schemer Who's a social climber who's obsessed with status who really cares about people And you know all but this is from like lowly cooks to highfalutin You know the the hierarchy the the aristocracy of the time and shows that you can have you can be born into any of the stratas of Of a of a hierarchical society and have personality traits that you know should be celebrated or should be denigrated Or help you move up or push you down or whatever the canvary tales is like this grand sort of competition on display for in every level of english society and I really think like He just the genius of it of showing what people are like and you read the canvary tales People are just like that still those personality traits are exactly on display in your average rap song and your average hollywood movie People don't change what changes is culture what changes is you know, how we pronounce words and what technologies we use to transfer our stories from from youtube to You know spotify But the creation of the stories and the representation of the natural human dramas and and pushes and pulls of of how our lives go That's just like each and and it's kind of an evolutionary story in a way isn't it right? Sounding minds modern skulls, right? Still using them Someone in the chat room had asked if you're like The sciences lin manuel moranda. Are you are you the Me and him are peas in a pod Well, uh, I I'll if you'll allow me a little um Backdrop story. I actually met lin at the edinburgh fringe in 2005 When him and I and the group that was doing his uh Is now soon to be Broadway show freestyle love supreme Were one of we were two of the only three rapper hip-hop related theater shows at the fringe that year So it was kind of like this brand new thing of doing hip-hop and theater and mashing them up And and I remember talking to him and being like, you know He was like handing out flyers on the street for show and stuff He happened to create something that went Fairly globally viral and I'm proud of him for it and it like it's Hamilton. It's a work of genius But we you know, we've been working in the same space for the last Uh 15 or so years and uh, I haven't I haven't achieved my Hamilton moment yet But I'm not giving up hope and I definitely see us as like coming at Theater and literature from from a hip-hop perspective in a similar way for sure Yeah, from a very similar angle and perspective you could use that sciences lin manuel moranda Yeah, I just need to I get him to sign off on that first. Yeah, exactly Coming from your literary background and getting into science communication. Do you Feel like it's a disadvantage or an advantage when you dig into these topics I think it's a real advantage because in a way I'm more native to the humanities and the arts and I kind of can take the perspective of a tourist Like isn't this amazing this thing that science has found out and then Where is the relatability factor and that's what storytelling and literature is all about So I'm always looking for that like how how would a person? You know react to this in the context of their lives and I mean, I think I think it helps a lot to have that background And also, you know, there's the culture war between the arts and sciences That you can see in lots of universities where the departments don't talk to each other, right? The like biologists and the sociologists are not friends Like I go I go to university do I do college campus performance is a lot and I talk to people about what it's like And and you know, there this is a real thing where there's anti science Mentalities in some departments. Is there anti arts mentalities in science departments? I don't really find that so much Actually, I feel like there's like a fear of science of it being some kind of totalitarian force that's going to like take the magic out of the arts or You know diminish us somehow or take the meaning out of life if it explains things like creativity and inspiration in a sense of wonder You know that but that culture is my culture because I studied humanities and I was always kind of like, yeah You know, there's got to be you know, there's got to be some miscommunication going on here because I never took that mentality towards science But now when I do my show is I can fully represent the Let's say like the paranoia about science dramatically in the show and then break it down and address Where I think it goes wrong and try to be a bit bridge builder in the sort of yo Wilson consilience sense of like science and the arts should be friends But then the sort of subtext of that is just like when I said like religion and science can be friends Because science eats religion and explains it I think I think it's you know, it's kind of the same with the arts I don't worry the arts and the science can get along just fine because science wins But it's kind of you know, but you know, I I don't feel like that diminished just like Knowing that we evolved to like eating sweet foods or Nutritious foods because the calories were adaptive for us to have and therefore our pleasure sensors were Calibrated towards orienting us towards certain kinds of food and not others knowing that doesn't make food taste less good And knowing where the arts or where humans emotions come from or Sociability or all the things that we love to celebrate like knowing where that comes from doesn't make it less enjoyable either Totally fascinating to explore But I yeah, I'm I'm I'm in the humanities tribe and I'm kind of like it's like Romeo and Juliet You know, I'm crossing over I'm like trying to find a way to bridge the bill Where for art thou science? Yeah, yes. Yeah, um, I'm always fascinated with especially now machine learning and artificial intelligence and kind of this recursive Investigation of our own appreciation of creativity and the arts, especially now there are all sorts of algorithms and ai's that are producing music that are creating artistic works of various kinds, you know, we have Computer programs that can write for us. Hi. I don't even have to be a freelance writer anymore I could have a computer do it for me in my sleep. I mean There there are so many if we can create these things that can do the things that we appreciate in a way Kind of like the touring test that we don't recognize as synthetic Then what can that tell us about our own evolution? Of appreciating those things. I don't I think it just gives us more and more understanding. I'm right there with you Well, I'll tell you one thing it does is it also Um separates the arts into the machine learnable categories and the non machine learnable categories Which is like too bad for the classical music composers and the abstract painters But so far the stand-up comics and actors Uh, and you know, there's some forms like I've never seen I've never heard good rap music I've never heard rap music period produced by an ml program But the classical music is deadly like experts can't tell the difference between Bach and a machine learning Emulation of it. Um, so, you know, what that just tells you is that rap is a far more complex and intelligent art form Because it's so much harder to emulate Get on that Get on it. Yeah, and also the idea of like you mentioned humor It's one that hasn't been uh, hasn't been approached well by machine learning yet either by more homo sapiens Yeah, do you put it? Do you do you try to approach things say if you're you're Composing something related to climate change very serious topic these days Do you approach it with humor? Do you add these things in during your process? yeah, I mean you have to because Like the bottom line is I do a show off broadway here in new york I've done it like 80 times in the last few years And it's called the rap guide to climate chaos and somebody's paying 40 bucks for a ticket And they're gonna sit there for 80 minutes. Like it can't be pulling teeth. It has to be fun How do you make climate change fun because it's such a heavy topic? And it's so so much guilt associated with it and and really like most of the calls to action associated with climate change Are just nothing but guilt trips Which is probably the reason why they don't work You know what I'm saying like admonitions for people to live more sustainably Are kind of like admonitions from your mom to clean your room like how are you supposed to get excited about that? So that's one of the things that I mine for humor in the rap guide to climate chaos Is I'm kind of honest about the fact that I am a world touring rap artist that cares about climate change But hey, guess what? I am not gonna quit my job for the climate I love what I do and if everyone feels like me which I think almost everyone does Ie if you love your job, you're not going to quit it for the climate Then we got a problem because everybody's willing to consume less But no one is willing to produce less if they love their job if they hate their job They're like firing for the climate. I don't care. I was going to quit anyway But if they're doing something to passionate about they're going to keep doing it and try to scale it up And if that is attached to massive emissions Increases along with the scaling which is basically how capitalism works because it's not decoupled From emissions then we that's the core of the problem right there But by saying I'm not quitting my job for the climate You know, I'm like when it comes to rhyming I would not stop this show to save the climate I'm rocking till they make me stop climate change and not I make it hot And then I turn to the audience and I'm like, what do you do for a living? Oh, you're an author. Hopefully you don't become jk rolling or you'll be really bad for the climate I wish you failure and man people go crazy over that because they're like It makes everyone reflect on what they do and what they are and aren't willing to give up You know, it's and also like oh, does anyone here have kids? Great. You just doubled your co2 emissions You know, like the things that we care about the most are the things that are the biggest drivers of climate change Like save the climate kill your dog, you know, so that this is my this is my argument for why there's nothing but carbon pricing That'll get us out of this That's exactly and that's that's why I've redefined this uh as not as global warming Which sounds like a hot day or climate change, which sounds like a setting on the thermostat Uh, but climidia So that so that people will know it's a disease that our planet can have if we don't wear the carbon caps I love that I actually I was hanging out with the researcher, uh, jamie jones at stanford and he looks at the effect of climate change on disease spread um because of the um, you know, the The the the temperature changes in the ranges of human movement and animal movement And one of his papers is about how climate change is affecting the spread of gonorrhea in certain areas Uh, because previously segregated population groups have now been spreading to forge for resources more and you can literally just like Track the std rate along with the um carbon emission escalation so, um, you know that you hit the nail on the head with that one Thanks You have an album that is dropping tomorrow. Can you give us a little uh rundown of What it what what it took to put it together and kind of what the overarching theme is Sure. Um, so the record is called see from space And it's it's about the scientific perspective on so many things that are happening in the world So there's evolution tracks. There's climate change tracks There's stuff about just like reason and skepticism and and how we should You know reject the idea of just being a post-truth era And uh, that yeah that record came together over the past few years several of the songs were commissioned by scientists um Some of them are about trump uh, and the trump administration climate policies and there's um, there's a thing called the national climate assessment that comes out every year and it's you know, it's by federal government scientists, and it's totally a good sort of assay of us based um climate impacts economic and and ecological and human and So I've done a couple of tracks that are like summarizing that to trump Uh trying to like explain to him why he should care even if he doesn't seem to and uh, yeah And then a bunch of the tracks are just like Science raps that I made for the for the nerd posse out there There's not a rap guide most of my albums are a rap guide do a topic and this one is just like science rap for the masses I love it the one uh, the few of them are uh available as videos now and one that I came across earlier today is confessions of a skeptic and Um, so you consider do you consider yourself a skeptic? I do I I would only put the footnote on that that by that I mean scientific skepticism Not the various bastardizations of the word as like some global warming people Uh, you know to deny or climate deniers will call themselves. I'm a climate skeptic, but that's not what skepticism means It means you don't accept claims unless you have a rational basis with either reason or evidence or probabilistic inference to You know to believe in things I put provisional beliefs on things unless I've seen good evidence to agree with them But yeah, that but confessions is because you know saying that is almost like an argument starter with a lot of people Because are you know people want to accept claims on face value and think that opinions matter Uh to more than just the opinion holder And uh, you know, that's why that's why darwin said like yes. Yes I believe all species have a common ancestor and admitting it is like confessing to a murder And I That that goes for a lot of skeptical positions today that are not politically acceptable, but Pretty much seem to be true based on the evidence Yeah, so I'm gonna play just a little bit of that track right now if it's okay Got a picture like a revival tank I confess if I'm a skeptic, I believe in the scientific method. I believe in reason and evidence I'm really not trying to be rude when I tell people I don't believe you I believe you believe it to be true. I want to see some theory Human beings are oh so deceivable. Oh, so promiscuous with what's believable. I'm old-fashioned I just want to see if it's repeatable with a mechanism. That's conceivable. Don't dismiss this as if I'm just a hater If you make the claim you're the instigator I just want to see if that claim could be replicated in the presence of a skeptical investigator I'm not scoffing if it's true. That's awesome. And until proven my thoughts are agnostic open minded Seeking truth, hoping to find it trying to light a candle instead of groping blindly There we go. That's my testimony Testimony I'm a skeptic. Yeah, I've I've I have always had uh, I guess it's Because of the various ways that people use the word skeptic. I've always had a reticence to confess I say I'm a scientist I'm not a skeptic. I'm a scientist. I look at things rationally But I I love the um, I love the jazzy background Well, I think uh, yeah, it's a it's a fraught term I kind of when I made that song I was like Do I am I really ready to own this because a lot of people associate skeptic with sin? You know in some context it can mean the same thing. Um, but I think uh, I don't know if you guys have Interviewed michael schermer if you have any interaction But you know, I think the you know the the skeptic society has fairly clear definitions of what they mean by skepticism And they started out with debunking claims about you know Bigfoot and aliens and the Loch Ness monster and weeping virgin statues and things like that and come on Are we not all skeptics about those things, right? And then they then they take that same process of let's go do first hand inquiry Which is basically just putting the scientific method into everyday life and then apply it to now lots of other topics Including global warming. So um, yeah, uh michael schermer is uh does a feature in the video for that track And um, you know, he he actually reached out to me and challenged me Like could you capture the arguments of scientific skepticism in a rap song and then that's the product and You know, I copped to it But the funny thing is I was not a skeptic when I first started writing my rap guide to evolution show It was the process of researching and and and trying to like find the Find the the entry points into this topic that made me re-examine a bunch of my claims and be like Oh, maybe I won't take this echinacea anymore Because the evidence base isn't really holding up for it Uh, I I started out trying to debunk creationism and ended up debunking homieopathy. Whoops. Um, but that's you know, that's where I left Tangent, but okay Yeah, you're like a little brain. There we work Do you have any other songs that you'd love to that you want me to share before we go to a break? um, okay, sure this I'm gonna I'm gonna get you to play this one just because it's uh You know, it's it's a totally different style from any music I put out before but check out tvol remix And um, maybe i'm kidding myself But I hope some dance floor dj's in a visa are gonna play this track and get people like fully Like sweating rave style to some science rap Okay challenge Hope I turned it down Oh Selection selection selection natural artificial and sexual I'm looking at Darwin to figure the form of an organ adaptive revested Everything comes with a precedent genetic and cultural replicants Selection is when one of them is successful at passing it on to the next selection selection selection It's like clock in an extra dimension. It's like neo perceiving the matrix Increasing the depth of perception selection selection the reach of it's awesome from pollinators and trees when they blossom From the beak of the finch to people who went from quadrupedal to walking Selection don't be afraid of that life evolved no one created it The genome of every organism nature is always mutating and changing selection selection selection It's a question of comprehension. Some people can see it as study and others believe it's the devil's invention Selection and science is settled. Every religious objective is embedded and rejected selection is happening The only question is in which direction selection selection selection Embrace it for all of its benefits. It's paving the way for a dance isn't everything from robotics to medicine Selection at multiple levels genetic and cultural symbols selection selected your mental capacity to select and disseminate info So tell me why rap is so cocky Versace versace versace Selection that sexual instinct to go bling on this signal is possible Oh My five-year-old daughter loves that song and gets down to it. Oh my gosh. I love it. I'm gonna I'm gonna send it to my dj friends Hey Check this out That's not a throwaway comment kiki has a vast network of dj friends awesome vast Someone's gonna be on a dance floor. It's gonna be just nothing But still X and then that song is gonna come in and they're gonna be like, huh, and then I'll just be like, yeah And suddenly like the Darwinian Is gonna just be like it'll be insidious. I love it. I want to hear it at one of those summer festivals, you know Yes, it'll be it'll be great. Oh, this is so much fun Before we go to the break I would love to know From you where people can find you and should they take a break right now? Where can they find you? Where can they find information about your album and all this stuff that we've been talking about So the album is only at uh band camp You know pubbrakeman dot band camp dot com it hasn't even come out on the apple music and the rest yet I just loaded it up yesterday. Um, and my general stuff is that pubbrakeman dot com and that's this You know b a b a b r i n k m a n Instagram twitter facebook all of you above and also rap guide is me So if you type in rap guide into google anything that's called a rap guide chances are i made it Fantastic. All right, everybody. We're gonna take a quick break baba. Thank you so much for joining us tonight You're gonna stick with us for a little while. I will maybe do some science thing Kind of science the science is coming in just a moment. Stay tuned for more this week in science All the things I couldn't see Thank you everyone for joining us for this episode of this week in science We love that you are sharing part of your week with us and the science and the fun that we bring Oh my goodness. It's so much fun. If you appreciate us every single week Maybe consider beyond Subscribing which you can do easily by going to twist.org and clicking on the orange subscribe button Maybe consider supporting us and helping us do what we do and maybe even helping to grow what we do As I get my websites loaded. Hey blare. What have you been doing lately? You had something you wanted to talk about Yes, uh this past monday. I was a guest on the daily tech news show. That was so much fun So if anyone wants to hear that episode we talked about actually This story we talked about last week on this show About lab-cultured meat and we kind of dug into the tech side of that and how people are kind of wary Of certain technologies getting up in their business. So it was a very interesting conversation You can check that out in itunes You can look for dtns daily tech news show and the name of the episode was meet your new meat So that came out on monday You can also go to daily tech news show.com and and listen to the show or watch the show there as well I also in our after show was tasked with at some point making a veggie bagel dog So I have to write into dtns If I ever actually get that done complete with pictures and let them know what I thought of it All right, I'm looking forward to finding out about your veggie bagel dog adventures If everyone else out there is looking forward to it I'm sure that blaire will write about it in our newsletter as well You can subscribe to our newsletter if you want if if you don't get a pop-up window When you go to twist.org that asks you if you would like to subscribe You can send me an email at kirsten at thisweekandscience.com and I will put you on our newsletter list So you can find out about blaire's sciency adventures in veggie bagel dogs For everyone else if like I was saying if you are interested in supporting the show You can head to twist.org Where there is a button yellow donate click on it It will take you to a paypal interface that will let you donate an amount of your choosing single time or on a recurring basis if you're interested in supporting us on a more recurring basis You can click on our patreon link that will take you to Our patreon community where you click on the red become a patron Button and choose the level of your sport at ten dollars a month or above We will thank you by name at the end of the show. That's right that long list of names I read off at the end of the show. Those are people supporting us on patreon Don't you want to be like them? Come on click that button support this week in science We also have a zazzle store if you're interested in our merchandise You can go to our zazzle link It'll take you to that store where there are t-shirts and all sorts of things with artwork from blaire's animal corner catalogs And oh, I forgot to tell you for the patreon supporters if you are supporting at $25 a month or above you get a t-shirt and I just got brand new t-shirts in They're pretty great. So if you want one of those babies I haven't even seen this new shirt new t-shirts. Yeah, I haven't even seen new t-shirts yet Anyway Everyone we really appreciate your support. Do you have one? Can we see it? Is it? I'm sorry. I'm interrupting But I'm super excited. I didn't know we had new shirt. It's in a they're in a box That was it's open a box Oh, you're teasing me. This is terrible. I'll uh this week. It's a verbal verbal tease next week I'll show you a shirt cliffhanger cliffhanger Or you can just click on that support button at patreon and you'll get one in the mail before I even see it Before just an even sees it Then you can text justin and say hey, I got the shirt. You don't have it Yeah, everyone who gets a t-shirt tweet justin a picture of it Before I get one too. Oh Thank you for your support. We really could not do this without you And we're back with more this weekend science Yeah, we are back and the time now is for that portion of our show that we Know and love as this weekend. What has science done for me? It's a short one again this week Rodrigo Rosler wrote in to say What has science done for me? It helped me plan my vacations well in advance So I could come to argentina to watch the eclipse also no polio Oh, that's a good one. That's a great one. Not having polios You're here. No polio. Hey, is that a new cheers? We should all do no polio No polio. Yes. Thank you science also for those people who were able to plan their holiday to go to argentina to catch the only solar eclipse of 2019 What a wonderful vacation for you your families and what an experience made possible by science Yes Science is great in so many ways if you have ideas about how science helps you or other people that you know Send us a note a letter a sonnet a song That's right. You could put it in rap just like baba brinkman You can send them to us at our facebook page send us a message there facebook this week in science Or you can send me an email kirsten at thisweekinscience.com We want to keep filling the segment of the show with letters from you All right, let's talk about science. You ready? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, we have some stories. I've got a story about crab power rays It's a new superhero crab power right power crab Power crab No, no, it's not. I'm talking about the crab nebula. Oh I'm talking about and by association a group of chinese and japanese astrophysicists have been looking for high energy Gamma rays and now gamma rays Especially high energy with up to 450 trillion electron volts This is wow means a lot. It's it's a lot. This is a lot And we've never seen them before we have never found gamma rays at such high energies photons of light energized and accelerated to this to this high frequency and To this to this high of an energy ray that have made it to us in a way that we could detect them Part of it is detecting them is hard and then telling them apart from Just cosmic rays, which are also a very high energy is very difficult now The cool thing about gamma rays is that gamma rays they travel in a straight line. They're like I'm a laser beam, but I'm not I'm a gamma ray Then they get where they're going So gamma rays are really neat because if we can detect them, especially very high energy gamma rays then Knowing where they came from we can triangulate back To their source and find out where they came from to be able to go. Okay. What's going on over there that would create such high energies whereas cosmic rays they get twisted and spun around by magnetic fields, so You they hit and it's kind of hard to figure out where the cosmic rays originated from The detectors for these gamma rays were spread out across 66,000 square meters on the Tibetan plateau so very high elevation and these were basically these are water wells that were dug beneath the surface of The Tibetan plateau so high elevation but still underground encased in earth and then using water as the detector and They would go into the water kind of and and then be able to hit the detectors where They could then figure out the timing and the energy of the strikes and reconstruct like I said the trajectory So this team the Tibet ASG gamma team Had 64 locations around this town with these Wells that were meters below the ground and they found the world's highest sensitivity to gamma rays in the in this region in the 100 tetra terra electron volt region and they looked from February 2014 to may 2017 caught 24 gamma rays that ranged from 100 Terra electron volts to 450 and they all Came from the crab nebula so It's like the crab nebula. What is going on there where well The crab nebula is this place where there's a lot of there's a lot of Energy right now. It's a it is as we know it the I guess the universe is to this point that we have seen most powerful natural electron accelerator outside of our galaxy We think that there might be other very strong high energy gamma ray sources like supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies But we haven't seen them yet. And so we need more observatories to be able to discover what's going on um where these things are coming from and Be able to get a picture of high energy in our universe Yeah, i'm suspecting there's a intergalactic EDM event that we just aren't invited to It's just a big party going on But then the crab nebula and yeah, we we didn't get tickets Yeah, the crab nebula is a remnant of a supernova that happened a thousand years ago And so this remnant is still emitting The most energetic light that we have ever seen That I think is is what is also very fascinating even though this you know These supernovas are supposed to be these incredibly intense events that release all sorts of energy And you think that would in itself would be the huge thing, but it's this is the aftermath Where the energy released by the supernova is still Burning up gas is still forming things things are still dynamic within this area of space even a thousand years later There's probably a very large supernova i'm just imagining I'm I think are they supposed to have like a critical size limit Yeah Black hole right if there's a they go supernova and they don't go black hole. Yeah, there's like supposedly uh Anyway, there's a neutron star at its heart that is probably the source of all this stuff It's extreme Yes, um moving on to another story. I I wanted to talk a little bit about Data storage because that's always fun. Where do you want to store your data on a floppy disk? Oh, no, wait So I'll take half of a jpeg on this floppy disk Wait, you want me to take my data and you want me to throw it in a lake? All right, I'll take my thumb drive and I'll throw it in a lake behind it So that's not what I was supposed to do. What are you talking about then? Well, this research is actually closer to throwing your data into a lake than it is putting it on a floppy disk researchers at brown University funded by DARPA Have been looking into alternative data storage methods and we know how uh molecular Storage methods are panning out so far. We've seen dna be used to potentially store Bites of data. We've got people looking into a storage capacity that we know can store so much information It can make people these molecules of dna, right? But they went a step further. They said well dna is it's great, but it's this kind of big molecule Why don't we think about the other aspects of data storage and manipulation in biology? and so they turned to the metabolome the metabolome is That set of all molecules that's involved in Managing and organisms metabolism and so it's you know, it's it's Little molecules. It's RNA. It's little compounds It's all sorts of little bits and pieces of things that interact with each other And so they published a paper in plus one this last week about their proof of concept experiment in which they were able to store Up to very small still like two kilobyte It it file images uh in this kind of liquid metabolome Architecture and what they did is they set up it kind of it's like it deals with bits and bites and one of the Things that they do is so you have something like glutamic acid or you have tryptophan and if that's present It's a one if it's not present. It's a zero. So you have ones and zeros binary just like in so many data storage forms, right? It's binary data storage and then the different compounds work together to create a matrix of information that encodes how The image is displayed and so they then have a set of wells that they put these little drops drops of metabolome liquid in and then the computer can then read out using mass spectrum spectrometry What things are present and what what aren't and reconstruct the image at a later date? So it's kind of like a I mean it sounds like like code breaking, you know, we've got ABC is zero one zero one whatever, you know You've got a code that you're going to set up in a particular way and the computer then has to read the code to create the image which Um, you know, it's a very it's a fairly basic concept. The only little twist in this is that unlike DNA, which is pretty stable In its molecular form it it's kind of locked down until molecules come in to open it up for transcription and translation, right? The metabolome it's so dynamic. It's like one molecule's like hey, I've got a little hydrogen ion over here and another one's like Hey, I got a hydroxyl over here. Let's combine and let's do stuff And so there's all sorts of molecular manipulation that happens that could alter the data If you're not careful, but this also could be a perk if you're taking it into consideration So this is it's potentially a very interesting method of data storage still at the beginnings So somebody's still gonna have to someday explain to me Uh, the benefits of storing information in these ways like for instance, I'm working in uh genetic research Where we are the giant data sets that we have are of the genetic code And I don't think it would be sufficient to say hey, we should do do all the sequencing and store this data somewhere If we were like, oh, we would store it as DNA then why did we bother? Yeah, we already had that to begin with What are we even doing? We're just replicating the data and storing it in now two places You have to be able to access manipulate and work with Uh, and that always becomes the tricky part With any of these with any of these systems or any of these ideas You kind of need espionage context to think of a use for it Like we're trying to smuggle all of the terabytes of data out of some fortress and all other men It means a communication of shutdown So you like give somebody a cold and the virus has it written in its dna or something Or like this is just my travel shampoo but actually So I'm bored of important data Just a kind of shaving cream with a few dinosaur dna fragments in it. Yeah, no we do Exactly. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting. I mean the the point the point is at what point does it become useful Is it only in that like you say espionage sense or is it always going to be Proof of concept. Is it always going to be this thing that we could use to store lots of data? But it's also going to take, you know refrigeration And it's going to take all of these things to keep it stable Um, oh, you know I I can think of another context in which suddenly I'm on board with this Which is if it starts looking like geopolitically like this civilization is not going to continue And there was a project to put wikipedia as a bunch of junk dna I would actually sign on for that because somebody in a thousand years after the next civilizations You know after we get through world war three and all that imagine How valuable it would be to pull wikipedia out of the cells of somebody But but only but only that information that was pertinent to mice because He will be rolling the planet in the future. They're all they're just scanning for that human stuff human stuff human stuff Oh good. Here's a mouse research project. Perfect. Yeah They did what to us in the lab Our history. Oh my goodness our our mousy peoples our mouth mousy brethren This is this week in science. Hey, Justin, what'd you bring? Okay, so we talked recently about the rediscovery of a 160,000 year old deniseven jaw That was discovered in the 80s But uh, not properly identified now identified as deniseven and now that jaw is contributing To our understanding of human ancestry and solving an evolutionary mystery All with a single tooth Study which appears in the journal proceedings of national academy sciences centers on a three rooted Lower molar that molar with three roots is kind of an anomaly. It's not something Most humans have it's a very rare trait That occasionally pops up primarily in modern current human asians A trait thought to have evolved after the dispersion uh from africa New research is obviously pointing to a different evolutionary path. Uh, quotey voice here of sarah bailey The traits presence in the fossil suggests that it's both that the trait is older than previously understood And that some modern asian groups obtained the trait through Interbreeding with denisevans Uh, sarah bailey is a professor of anthropology at new york university and papers lead author previous study published In nature they they were concluding that the denisevans had occupied this tibetan plateau long before humans had arrived in the region But this is obviously showing uh that uh, they were weren't gone When the humans first arrived there and now this is 160 000 year old specimen where they've got the tooth from So it doesn't mean that that Uh specimen is is is, you know, it's way too old to have interacted with with the current humans It would have to be something more reason because the oldest we've found of a current human And the fossil record is about 50 000 years old although we've found archaic dna In neanderthals that hinted that humans might have left africa at different times much much much earlier than than that Than that recent fossil more recent fossil record of about 50 000 years my next study. Oh a 210 000 year old current human skull has been identified Uh in a cave in greece making it the oldest human ever to have left africa by about 150 000 years more than the one that they previously thought Wow, this happened today. This was uh, this came out. Uh, so this is Obviously changing some of understanding about how modern, uh humans populated eurasia What's also interesting about this is that there is Also a neanderthal That was identified from the same cave That is 170 000 years old Meaning this human Was there 40 000 years before that meaning Human and neanderthal interactions may go back a lot further Then we thought Which we already kind of know but this was the from a neanderthal dna sample where we saw in archaic uh current human uh Somewhere in syberia In northern russia, right? So this is that's far away from from greece, but this is a good clue that yeah, we We were pretty mobile with our running around this so yeah oldest uh skull of a current human out of africa now 210 000 years old That's that's that's super old. We're old. That's super old We're very old and a new study published in psychiatric Research has concluded that psychiatric diagnoses are scientifically worthless As tools to identify a discreet mental health disorders Publication team at psychiatry research then cleared the calendars of all meetings Boxed up the belongings from their desks and have not been heard from since It's this real study led by research from the university of liverpool involved detailed analysis of five key chapters of the latest edition of the widely used diagnostic The dsm diagnostic and statistical manual On they looked at specifically schizophrenia bipolar disorder depressive disorders anxiety disorders trauma related disorders This dsm. We've talked about sometimes on the show Frides a common diagnostic language for then health professionals to Have a language and a list of health problems and symptoms to then make diagnoses from Main findings of the research were psychiatric diagnoses all use different decision-making rules There's a huge amount of overlapping symptoms symptoms between the diagnosis Almost all the diagnoses make the role of Mask the role of trauma and adverse events in the individual's life And and make it a bit more of an inherent thing and the authors conclude that the diagnostic labeling represents a disingenuous categorical system Weed researcher kate alsop university of liverpool says although the although diagnostic labels create the illusion Of an explanation. They are scientifically meaningless and can create stigma and prejudice Hope these findings will encourage mental health professionals to think beyond diagnoses and consider Other explanations of mental distress such as trauma and other adverse life experiences uh So what I also this is uh, this is professor john reid university of east london Perhaps it is time we stop pretending that medical sounding labels Contribute anything to our understanding the complex causes of human distress Or of what kind of help we need when distressed So I I've talked about this a little bit on the show In the past, but the everything that is in this dsa dsm Identifies things in terms of deficit and disorder Uh, and by default actually implies that there's a specifically healthy version of human mental health that exists Right, but they never describe that Reference it or even address it But there are enough Deficiencies that everyone's covered because there's also sort of a non-specific in terms of severity Meaning anyone can have a mild version of multiple disorders at any given time And the way they're framing it in the first place is disorders is almost saying these aren't legitimate ways of being a human in the first place So, uh, we could rename them all Bipolar disorder could be intense emotional perspective ability Right, okay. Yeah, I have the ability to intensely still but to perceive different emotional perspective Uh, just depressive disorders could just be higher standards of happiness than other people Uh trauma related disorders Uh traumatic response is not a disorder It's a perfectly natural reaction to have been been going through some serious stuff So we would call it perfectly normal trauma reactions Like all of a sudden oh, I have perfectly normal trauma reactions Okay, that I should be able to deal with better than a disorder that makes me attention deficit disorder doesn't mean your intention Your attention is disordered or at all in the deficit No, and in fact is probably heightened attention multitasking superpower. That's what that is. That's what you've got Your mind is tracking a highway of inputs all at once anxiety disorder heightened risk anticipation ability All right, maybe just slightly more informed on the odds than at the other average other person certainly there is there is uh a Has always been a negative driver behind Addressing uh things that people go through and like I think I think I love this article for pointing it out For addressing it for pointing out the vagary of it, uh of these diagnosed and also pointing out the fact that there isn't a suggestion for uh applying therapy Behind it either Which means you have it's like having a troubleshooter that you're following to fix a problem on the car and then it just stops Okay, wait, okay. I got the carburetor off. I lifted the thing I'd re undid the seal and removed the bolt and it stopped right there. That's it. That's all I think I think it's important what you're bringing up and what what the study has looked at, but I also think um There's there's a side to this that's really important to acknowledge and that is that certain of these issues that people have Are completely debilitating right, but I think you're right. There's there's an issue with the name there So maybe instead of a disorder they have an oxytocin deficiency or that why is it deficiency? So this is the because that is causing them for certain people to not be able to leave their house or their bed to say that that's not an issue is No, no, no Wait a second. I'm not saying don't address a problem. I'm not saying ignore a problem I'm saying legitimize the fact that that's how some people are and that's you know It's it's it's not you don't have to negatively reinforce all of these things Uh, and and it was I think born of an age when we were looking for defects in humans There isn't a perfect human that first has to be Acknowledge, uh, and and yeah, they're you know, that's the way the other day we were talking about ocb heavily debilitating But I was pointing out then too It's kind of a coping mechanism, isn't it if somebody has this tremendous fear and has to go through these actions It is a coping mechanism now. Is there is there a better way to do it than they're doing? Is there a treatment available? If so make that part of it, uh Don't label people as being disordered Right. I think it it adds it adds a weight and a potential guilt that can feedback and create a worse problem than what What they're starting out with um, and I like you know the last I just I really like the last sentence of their abstract for this paper and they say Um a pragmatic approach to psychiatric assessment allowing for recognition of individual experience May therefore be a more effective way of understanding distress Then maintaining this commitment to the disingenuous categorical system So it's like instead of coming always from the outside It's understanding like they're trying to say that there is many times this influence of personal trauma That has had an influence personal experience has has has played a role in shaping the mind of the person And then there's also going to be individual differences in Neurotransmitters brain chemistry how things are, you know neural networks how they're set up and so that There needs I like that they are saying they're just needs and what you're saying justin that We need to address this and that something needs to change Well, and that also is yet, but we need that it kind of takes it that has the opportunity depending on how you go About it of destigmatizing Quote-unquote getting help in general, right? So I firmly believe every single human should see a therapist at least some point in their life You'll learn something about yourself. You'll feel better. You'll feel healthier From just being able to talk to somebody freely about how your brain works because you know as we discussed at the ocd Uh conversation last week that I do a couple of things where she was like, oh, that's oh that's close to it You know everybody has a little bit of something that's close like justin was saying a little bit of something somewhere The vagary of these descriptions in the mildness that you can attach to the severity and in the fact that we've all met somebody who has Gotten this diagnosis whether they did it themselves Which is most of the time or from an actual where they're like I have this and then wait their perspective on their life of this thing Uh now it's and and I and I truly believe that if if it was a positive thing They'd be like I got this check it out. This is what I do This is my deal Let me also though say that just as an extra little caveat on this with particular Situations like people on the autism spectrum Giving a name to an issue that they are having is actually extremely empowering So in certain cases being able to give a quote-unquote diagnosis and being able to give them a reason for a way They feel other is actually really helpful in their ability to cope and learn and grow So there are certain situations where it is very helpful for their own needs, but I understand overall, right? When we're talking about these other agreeing with you and I agree with you 100% I'm saying they need a positive label instead of disorder Yeah, they've been at the disorder and the Diseffective you're not broken. You're just different and that's okay. Um, and also, yeah, especially when we talk about something like autistic or schizophrenia spectrum giant gigantic spectrum of Of these and we've all seen like the you know the the savant types, you know, which which then we pull out Oh, this is a no, they're all everybody's a savant. They're just doing it differently Right, that's just we just didn't get to hear their music. Uh, that's that's playing Uh, or see the artwork that they're they're creating elsewhere in their life. Can I can I uh throw a pitch in right here? Yes, one of the um songs on my record is called feelings for reasons And it is exactly about this and it's based on a book that was recently published a few months ago called good reasons for bad feelings Uh by Randy Nessie and he is one of the founders of the field of evolutionary medicine Which looks at where physiological diseases come from from the perspective of fitness trade-offs between for instance longevity and reproduction So organisms will have the option to sort of live fast and die young and try to reproduce quickly Or to conserve resources and invest in offspring more And you can't necessarily say one of those strategies is better than the other strategy because it's all context dependent In terms of like adapting to environmental situations So his original book was called why we get sick and I did a whole record about that wrap guide to medicine but the new one is about Psychiatric now we've just problematized the word disorders But what is currently considered disorders under the dsm and was a couple of things about it just to add to the conversation One is that most of these behavioral quote-unquote disorders are just extreme cases of adaptive things that everybody has And and to the degree to which they're influenced by genes appears to be like literally like one gene has one Degree of additional influence and everyone has genes for east ocd and everyone has genes for anxiety and everyone has Genes for addiction and if you get you know enough of the certain combination of them Then you'll get for instance autism seems to be mostly Um inherited and other ones are mostly environmental But you can make an evolutionary case for why humans have these and why it was beneficial to have the capacity for anxiety And on the idea of a fitness cliff can help you understand why some people like let's say it's beneficial to to stack the anxiety Sort of like sensitivity Genes or capacities in the brain But there's a certain point at which they tip into completely dysfunctional behavior But there's benefits right up until you get to the cliff and in genetics you've got these fitness clips right where there's like Like everything is more adaptive until you get past one threshold point and then there's a crash of adaptiveness and You know so that like from an explanatory perspective I think it's powerful and I think in general like one of the wrap one of the lines in my Lyrics is like it helps to know the ultimate reason like if you have a situation where you're like Why can't I function like most people seem to be able to function When you know in these kind of contexts to be able to say like this is from our ancestry as a species and people Exactly. Everyone's different. We are on spectrums and people that fall closer to this end It's because of the adaptive benefits throughout the history of our species that led people to be in that You know Diagnostic category. I think that's Psychologically and for treatment that and then then then throw the insane level on it on top of that We've also discovered that regardless of your genes the expression of those and they are totally related to your microbiome And so then you're like, okay, I have these genes for anxiety But actually if I had the microbiome of the ancestor that developed these it might not be anxiety at all It might be some I might have a completely different affect Uh, that that would be being expressed through my personality If my microbiome was what the ancestor was when they were developing that to that edge And now my microbiome change is what's pushing me over the edge but if you try to prescribe somebody with Like a severe anxiety disorder also to then have a fecal oral transplant That feels like insult to injury unless you put it in the right kind of It might it might sound that way, but we we were covering this this now to your study where uh Doing that with kids with autism Showed a 50 reduction in the symptoms. So we're we are Is is every geneticist will tell me Genes aren't the answer that we hope they were They're not One quick fun fact on that last topic Um when people need to have a an oral fecal transplant and then donors are suggested to them They don't want there's their siblings Uh To be a donor they don't want strangers to be a donor In fact, the only person that people are generally fine with being a donor of a fecal transplant is a spouse Oh There's a metaphorical version of eating feces that being married puts you in anyway, so You know, you know, you know, I didn't used to have this I guess I should call the x I didn't this is a new problem. I should call the x She'll love this because then I will literally never mind All right, I think this brings us definitely to Blair's animal corner Oh Well, we were talking about brains. We were talking about families. We were talking about memories good or bad Um a new study from dart myth looked at fruit flies drosophila millenogaster And their ability to influence the phenotypes of their offspring We've talked about inherited memory in the past, but this study in particular Jumped out at me or perhaps flew out at me as a fruit fly One exposed to parasitoid wasps which happened to deposit their eggs into and kill the larva of fruit flies These fruit flies were known to shift their preference to food containing ethanol as an egg laying substrate Why because ethanol protects their larva from wasp infection In this study the fruit flies were cohabitated with female wasps for four days before The researchers collected their eggs the embryos were separated into two cohorts So they took the eggs. So they they never hatched near mom. They one was exposed Two wasps and one was unexposed. That was the control, of course And developed to maturity without any contact with adult flies or wasps One group was used to propagate the next generation and the other was analyzed for ethanol preference They found that the original wasp exposed flies laid about 94 of their eggs on ethanol food and that this persisted in their offspring Even though the offspring had never had direct interaction with wasps The ethanol preference was less potent in the first generation 73 of them laid their eggs on ethanol food But the inherited ethanol preference persisted for five generations Gradually reverting back to pre wasp exposed levels So it's it's isn't it this is this is It's groundbreaking. It's amazing because we've talked about this for so long Yeah, uh, and we keep seeing examples of it, but in the sense we've had a word for this for forever It'll be an scientific which was instinct It isn't it isn't so in my understanding of instinct like when I talk about the instinct of an alligator Because you can raise it in a bathtub not that you should and then you could release it into the wild Not that you should but it will immediately act like a crocodile or an alligator Um, that is instincts. That is an ingrained Uh, how to be the animal that you are key This is different because you have flies that were around wasps Which is something they should avoid and flies that were not around wasps And only the ones that were around wasps then laid eggs where those babies avoided wasps So this is different because it's not instincts across the board for fruit flies to avoid wasps It only happened when mom was exposed But but those instincts that we see across species had to get learned at some point And that's my point. It's like we we assume. Uh, it just was super slow It this this was just a thing that through selection or somehow Yeah, well because It it would make sense for it to work in selection because if fruit flies that lived in wasp laid in territory Didn't lay their eggs in ethanol They would get Destroyed so those babies wouldn't happen. So there's a very clear potential for a mechanism of natural selection But in this case that's not what's happening Yeah, this is specifically the memory being inherited. This is not those specific Like it's not you laid your eggs by ethanol. So you survived because this is an experimental situation But it could have led to instinct You didn't say epigenetics, but this is met. This is understood to be an epigenetic effect. Is that right? Yes, so this so the next part of the study the one I wanted to mention is that What makes this particularly interesting because we've talked before About just kind of memories proof of memories, especially in crows. I love talking about crows and their their memory propagation but So in this research, they were able to determine one of the critical factors that drove this behavior change And that was depression of neuropeptide f And it's imprinted in a specific region of the female flies brain This change Which was based in part on visual signals was required to initiate transgenerational inheritance And both male and female progeny were able to pass on the ethanol preference to their ostring So yes, this is indeed an epigenetic trait that has changed specifically for how the the fly's brain Is structured So in one side, this is just amazing in the role of epigenetics and inherited memory and learning more about that But on the other side in the kind of human selfish side The researchers hope that these findings may in future In the far future lead to greater insights on the role that parental experiences play across generations in humans such as in diseases or drug and alcohol disorders because There's a potential there. I mean, I certainly know people who stay far far far away From alcohol because they had family that had issues with it in the past and you wonder if It's just the stories they were told growing up Or if there's something else in their body telling them to stay away That's their complex. Yeah, hard even for them to know. Yeah, absolutely So fruit fly memories can be passed. Um, and then I have some uh, amazingly good news potentially from the world of endangered Species, so as somebody who spends, uh, I don't know a fair amount of time talking about endangered species Um, one of the things that we do in zoos is when an animal is on its way towards extinction Or is even functionally extinct like in the case of the northern white rhino, which is what this study is about There's actually only two northern white rhinos left in the world. Both are females. So guess what? Not a lot happening there. Um, one of the things that zoos do is they hold on to specimens from Males specifically for the most part, but also females that we have sperm we have eggs that we can keep On file kind of like the the seed vault. So this is like the animal seed vault, right? So that in the future if we have the right technology, we could potentially Uh rebuild certain populations. So yes, Justin, this may in fact apply to mammoths someday as well But for right now, I'm focusing on the northern white rhino um, this is a New study from europe. This was um with a southern white rhino at the chorzo zoo in poland They were able to successfully transfer A test tube rhino embryo back into a female whose eggs were fertilized in vitro. So they they fertilized egg and sperm in an essentially a test tube And then they were able to implant that in a live rhino so this is a Southern white rhino. So this is not the species that I was saying is functionally extinction. Remember, we only have two female Northern white rhinos. We do have some male northern white rhino specimens that are on file That could potentially be used for this in the future But the proof of concept that the IVF Transfer worked in the southern white rhino has Promise so the female northern white rhinos are not able to reproduce um, I don't know if they're past reproducing age Um, or if they've tried in the past. I'm guessing they've tried and they just had bad luck. Um, but The idea here is that you could take the eggs from these ladies and the sperm that we have on file in vitro fertilize those eggs and Implant in a southern white rhino surrogate So so the thing is though the the females, uh, if they're making eggs Revival, right the the idea would be like why use up the two of them? That you've got and make two babies when you could take eggs and spread them out to lots of surrogates So there's yeah, so that is something that we could do The main issue is that the the research team is waiting for permission from the kenyan government to harvest the eggs From the female northern white rhinos. It's not quite as easy as harvesting sperm So it's something that has to be approved since it is a surgical procedure So they're waiting on that paperwork right now, but the The kind of two caveats here one is that the ultrasound tests so far in this southern white rhino show the embryo Is growing, but it is so far small so far smaller than expected So they don't know what's going to happen in the end here. This is prusas concept that it implanted So it's it's growing so far, which is really good. It's a step in the right direction The other caveat and kind of an exciting caveat is that we've talked previously on the show About turning different cells into gametes and so this is their eventual next step Is they're hoping that they can turn preserved skin cells from a dead rhino Into eggs or sperm so that then they can have a greater Genetic diversity as well if they were trying to bring the species back Yeah, it would be much easier to preserve genetic information As opposed to gametes So if you want to preserve genetic diversity, that genetic information is what you want You don't just want the gametes and so this goal of producing gametes being able to just I mean be able to make synthetic cells Be able to use skin samples if you have them, but even if going beyond that it's Having the genetic information and printing a gamete wouldn't that be great? And then you can get really crazy and you can try to use crisper to adjust the genome so that you have a good representative Kind of genetically diverse groups Or you use a modern you use a modern relative of the extinct species And use crisper to take out the more modern Mutations the the genetic changes and to put in the older ones so that you can create that older species once again But you have the gametes and you're like there you go Now we'll use the animal as a surrogate and you've got the animal, but we will have a landing But then you've got out for the wrong why now you've got a woolly rhino Yeah Regardless, I just thought I would throw it out there I know it's in the preliminary stages still and there are a lot of steps to saving species that are on the brink of extinction Or already extinct, but this is a this is actually I feel like it's a really big step in the right direction And it's very exciting. It is now tell me this last story about about spider aggression Okay, it's fascinating It's a pretty quick one. Yeah, let's move this forward So this is a study looking at Why spiders are so darned aggressive? So in the spider world only about 30 of the almost 50 000 species of spiders have been described or characterized as social and so Most spiders out there like to live alone. They are lone operatives. They are also very aggressive And so there was there's been this question in the zoological entomological community for a long time does the aggression breed Solitary natures or does being solitary Make you aggressive and so kind of that first one was the original expectation was well, if you're mean to everybody No one wants to be around you. So if you're aggressive, you will be solitary But this study found Quite the opposite So in this study, they used a combination of behavioral chemical and modeling approaches to look at The spiderlings of solitary species. Yes, that is the a baby spider is called a spiderling. Thank you so much. Yes so they had some spiderlings in social isolation and some that were in Social contexts and when they were in social contexts, there was there were no aggressive interactions observed And when they were isolated, they were very aggressive So, um, it does appear that being alone is what makes them aggressive So they're disperse when they disperse out into the world and they're far from other spiders They become aggressive as a result of that is what it looks like. Um, the question there Yeah, so the question there is is why is what is the trigger and their hypothesis actually Is a lot like what happens with dogs if you don't bring your puppy out to the dog park They'll end up being aggressive to other dogs because they don't know how to talk to other dogs basically, right? So their favorite hypothesis is that isolation leads spiderlings to forget the social cues emitted by siblings and um that Just by being alone. They kind of they lose the spiderling language That happens to me when I'm at home working alone in my basement And then I look outside and I'm like, who's that person parking their car in front of my house? Get off my lawn and it's your husband All right, let's run through a couple of really quick stories for the end of the show this one I thought was really fun. Uh sperming and spermidine. These are some Smelly compounds that you know, I bet from the name you can tell where we first isolated them That's right sperm They are odorant compounds that Give sperm its smell and at least in humans and for the first time Michigan State University researchers publishing in plos biology have discovered that spermine is important To mate selection in lampreys, which is can be an issue because in some rivers lampreys are pest species and if we could figure out how to Make it so the females can't smell the sperm. Maybe they wouldn't made as much Yeah, that would be good. That would be good. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, spermine Makes the sperm stink nice Smells like love for lampreys Yuck No Okay, give me your quick quick stories Um, so I have a lovely story about florida man um florida man, uh finds Shark tooth 25 year old shark tooth in his foot and it is tested for dna So this man was bitten on flagler beach in 1994 But just recently a little blister like bulge on his foot He picked at it and found a piece of a shark tooth It was actually sent to a shark research lab in florida tested for dna and in fact They were able to figure out what kind of shark bit him Um, yeah, it was a black tip reshark, which is what uh, usually it is out in florida but only About 30 of bites of shark bites are identified which species it's from so This would be helpful in figuring that out if there are teeth left over which often there are because shark teeth are not Well anchored and fall right out Um, but so this is an interesting Um bit for that reason, but also because this thing was 24 years In this man's foot being attacked by his very own immune system And still there was enough dna left in there to figure out what shark bit him Baby shark No By the year 2050 london's climate will resemble madrid's Paris will be more like can bear a stock home like budapest mosca like sofia according to a new analysis published wednesday That relied on the most optimistic projections They say changes will be even more dramatic for the world's major tropical cities like Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and singapore, which will experience unprecedented climate conditions resulting in extreme weather events and intense droughts Uh studies carried out by scientists from eth Zurich and published in close one on sunday using the most Optimistic predictions, uh, they looked at 520 cities and kind of paired them up to where they were kind of moving It's all gonna get hot Who's gonna get hot in here? Also a team of clemson university scientists have achieved a breakthrough in the and genetics of senescence Senescence is that thing what cells do when they decide they've had enough Being part of a thing. It's the expiration expiration date. So this is published in the plant cell General the implications of they've done this in corn So what they've basically designed is a way for well, what they So, okay, corn has like lots of varieties. Some of them stay green a lot longer than others and produce bigger better More sugars, uh, but they don't plant breeders have been trying to get these things these these stay green Plants to to be better and better and better and rajan stikhan who's a plant geneticist assistant professor college sciences department of genetics and biochemistry at clemson university has identified 600 genes that appear to determine that Affect that the plant breeders have been searching for breeding for Uh, basically now having unlocked the code to be able to produce different versions of this and he says He thinks that this is actually going to translate very well into other serial type things So we're talking about increased Well, he will say best The ultimate goal is to help the planet and feed the growing world with ever worsening climate shrinking land and water and increasing population Food security is the major challenge faced by mankind stikhan says so he's uh made a he's been working on this Stuff for many many years, of course Uh, and his has uh now delivering on his promise to make the world a better place With corn not just not just the favorite flavor tomato, but now the stay green corn Yeah, stay green greens Oh my goodness. We have done it now Before we go and do the end of the show I had spoken with baba and I don't know if baba's been listening to these stories He's piped in a couple of times to this conversation But we're wondering if maybe you wanted to Flow a little freestyle rap for us Related to this the science con Conversation that we've been having over the last 45 minutes Okay, i'm down I I stay quiet, but I pay attention and i've uh, i've taken three Patient pages of basic notes Key phrases that you guys said, uh over the last bit and there we go You got the lampreys on the last one there and the evergreen corn Okay, so i'm going to try to uh encapsulate all the themes from our hour and a half conversation in a freestyle right now So, uh, and I even have a beat all queued up. This is a beat from c from space for my new record How's that is that coming through? Yeah, all right. Yeah Yo, it's baba brinkman and i'm known to rip it up my gamma rays are coming straight from the craft nebula Can't you even see I speak like emcees do check it out. Those are high frequency groups indeed These are the rap flows they could test it in the water pools on tibetan plateaus. Can't you even see? Yeah, I make the music unlike the asians with the tooth. That's three rooted three rooted. See like the tibetans This is the way that we're scientifically setting check it. Yes. I am repping i'm kicking it I guess they got that trade originally from denis events see yeah I'm rapping the poems you can feel it right down deep in your metabolone. This is the way that I rip it I got no chorus. It's just a freestyle. It's all about data storage inside your dna because we've got that espionage I'm just kicking lots of random hair pop check it out now This is how we're gonna go though baba brinkman my species is homo sapien back 210,000 years It means we found our way out of africa clear new evidence can demonstrate it 210,000 years ago I guess we just made it up into grease. I speak so easily. This is how I'm gonna have to talk about gene frequency Yes, that's is the data that we restore it right now I put people to sleep like the snoring or maybe wake them up check it out. I'm live I am not believing in the dsm 5. Why because it makes the disorders too basic and disregards all of our human situations What are you going through ptsd? That is a little bit too easy if you ask me No, it's about how recently we're grieving. See that is something I can believe in it's adaptive I'm freestyle rapping. I'm just masking taking all these ideas right now and trying to smash them Yes, indeed. I'm a rapper that's keen. You can smell it on me like my spermine Indeed that is the smell of sex. I am trying to just share some of my intelligent sets and people listen to like Hip hop like back in the day I use it as a mating cue like a lamb prey a jawless fish Can't you even see they are not a recent ancestor of us or all of this? Um, vertebrate styles. This is how I'm freaking out checking down I'm gonna have to just speak it now about a floral man a florida man with a shark tooth in his foot They got the dn out of day out of that. It was real good. Ah, I'm starting to stutter But even if I make a mistake out over the rhythm, I am introducing evolutionary randomness into the system See these are mutations mistakes that I'm making. This is not hard I will bite rappers like a black tipped reef shark up in florida and you can extract it It's massive check it out pretty soon. London will be like mad red in the future when the climate increases the heat This is not something that i'm speaking from me. It is not just an opinion I am just trying to tell you scientific facts and try to get you into them See what i'm saying 600 genes inside a cord cell could teach us how to make it stay green I'm mad keen on us using that technology to feed a lot of people that would be dope Can't you see come on. This is freestyle rapping I'm saying reform psychiatry make it happen from now on we'll call it a normal trauma reaction instead of a disorder That's the diagnosis people try to figure out human nature. It's not hopeless. We can figure it out now It's the aversion I am kind of put it into a lot of freestyle verses and somehow the fruit flies had ethanol aversion Why because of the wasp I just kick it my freestyle is getting your brain. I'm parasitic laying my eggs It's like an alien syndrome. This is me by the brinkman. I'm bringing the info Can't you even see the epigenetic effect? It's the way that we break into the basics and the fruit flies you can follow it for five generations You can find 13 generations in an nematode. Maybe one or two as far as people go mice Maybe two or three. It's mad genetic. Can't you even test it? Yes, is how I said it Nice think it's probably still Darwinistic. Why because epigenetic is a form of adaptive behavior that we can do to make it happen Wait a second. It's phenotypically plastic. Can't you even see represented in my rabbit? Yeah, that's gonna be dope This here is my flow. Come on people. We got to save the northern white rhino. I mean that would be dope people Yes, let's get it up in the clinic of IVF. Can't you even see that's how we'll make it happen Like the IVF clinics in the upper east side of manhattan. That would be really dope to get social This is Boba Brinkman coming with the safety and homo don't flow. Can't you even see this is my show Right now. I'm thinking not like a spider that's social me. I'm just trying to test it I'm kind of gangster a solitary spider. That's aggressive So don't mess with the flow that I'm bringing Boba Brinkman spider man. I'm web slinging Nice And what's amazing is Boba's gonna be doing that for the after show every night And going back because we have like seven hundred and something episodes that we've already done. We're gonna we're gonna That was really awesome Wow Yeah, I'm so impressed three pages. You kept going and yeah To be able to put that together while listening to the show real time and being able to participate in the show at the same time That's I I don't I can't write down any rhymes, but I write down references and they prompt the the rind cues And in my in my off-roadway shows I do a version of this where I ask the audience to bring up any scientific questions They're interested in and then it segues into a whole freestyle section of the rap Wow That's fun. It's also a way you yeah, you can bring in the audience and get them to interact with you And so it becomes this kind of group created Rap they help you out Yeah Spontaneous freestyles, it's the you know, it's the it's the most accessible part of hip-hop culture people that say I don't like rap We'll love a freestyle Yes, and the other thing is too it's like I remember lyrics Uh a lot better than I will remember A lot of other things that that if there was like a cliff notes version of any subject That was wrapped. I would actually have a better chance Of forming memories from it because that's how my my brain is sort of trained to Listen to the lyrics and to hear them and process them Um, I mean, it's the schoolhouse rock kind of Tom Lehrer rationale for science communication But I could make a case that rap is a better suited musical form than any other for this process Because it packs more information and it's also like a storytelling art form You know like most other genres of music are speaking to emotions first and like information Channel second, but I'd say rap is really about like getting a message across Yeah And thank you. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you for your time Thank you for your energy and creating that free freestyle that was it's just so impressive and For sharing with us. I I hope that uh people Will come to our website. We've got we'll have the link there for your website and for your band camp um So that people can access that if they find this show to make it easy for them Um, but once again, can you give people the band camp if they're interested? Yeah, um, bobberbrinkman bandcamp.com The new record is called see from space and actually, uh, here's a here's a brand new Premiere that's going to be for your watches only Which is that in my inbox right before the show started landed the final edit of the video for feelings for reasons About how psychiatry should be reformed around evolutionary principles So that video is about to be uploaded as soon as I sign off and your viewers can check it out on my youtube channel You know within half an hour from now Love it Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us. Baba. It's been wonderful. Thank you for listening to us Thank you to everyone in our chat room for being a part of the show Thank you to fada for helping out with show notes and with social media Thank you to gourd for help with the chat room. Thank you to identity for for recording the show And thank you to our patreon sponsors Thank you, too. 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I use the scientific method for all that it's worth And i'll broadcast my opinion all over the earth Because it's this week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That what i say may not represent your views, but i've done the calculations and i've got a plan If you listen to the science you may just get understand But that's what we're not trying to threaten your philosophy We're just trying to save the world from jeopardy And this week in science is coming your way So everybody listen to everything we say and if you use our methods federal and i We may rid the world of toxoplasma got the eye Because it's this week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science Science I've got a laundry list of items i want to address From stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness, I'm trying to promote more rational thought And I'll try to answer any question you've got But how can I ever see the changes I seek When I can only set up shop one hour a week This week in science is coming your way You better just listen to what we say Look at me changing things up and fading it out early What? Because I feel like it It's in the after show, we're in the after show You do you, man! I did me! Good done! Bobba, thank you so much That was great I had a great time, thanks for involving me Yeah, you're welcome I'm really glad to have gotten the chance to chat with you And to dig into what you're working on and what you're doing I remember, you said it was 2009 I remember when your rap guide to evolution came out actually Wow I've known about you It gives you highly adopter status That's right I knew about it before you was cool You knew about me before I was moderately more well known than I was 10 years ago Yeah, that's right Exactly And your kids didn't wake up, so that's good Yeah, I did hear the monitor give a little And I was like, here we go And then they must have fallen back to sleep Good job, kids They heard you freestyling and they went Oh, that's the sound of daddy freestyling Exactly, it's a regular occurrence around here Yeah, do you just freestyle all the time? Is it like an instrument or a craft Or do you have like, I have my work hours I freestyle from one to three p.m. every day Or is it just kind of like a Has it has to happen or as a I probably should if I If I treated it more like a meditative practice I bet I would be better in the performance modes, but I don't I just do it as a performance only at this point And it does well enough that people are sufficiently impressed And they don't have to go back in practice Even if I probably should I started doing it 20 years ago And at a certain point it comes when you call Even if it's not perfect I was at a battle last night in New York I was one of the judges, I wasn't one of the competitors But I have competed frequently And I can be at these battles and be like These people are objectively better than me at this thing But I can still compete and I still Really enjoy being part of the scene It's the art form I fell in love with as a teenager And I still get a thrill every time I do it In the show or on a podcast or wherever That's cool I dabbled in it a little bit Myself, I'll say Although I had to quit as soon as I got started Because I should have done what you did And rapped about something useful And positive I thought gangster rap got a lot of traction Being that edgy So I was doing terrorist rap Which Which is ill-received by everyone who heard it What breed of terrorist? Are we talking like eco-terrorist rap? No, no Islamic extremist terrorist rap? Yeah, more like that I'm going to say not white supremacist terrorist rap No, no, that's actually the more You're right, that's a great point Mestic terrorism is very much Much more a thing in this country But no, it was I won't do it in the actual show Even the actual after-show It was that bad The State Department letter Was sufficient to Yeah You mean like necro-style Like shock content rap, basically? Yeah, it was very And the thing is, regardless of Whether you Didn't like terrorists Or That divisive issue about those who do And those who don't like terrorists, right? No, or thought that I was Objectifying a group of people Who were not involved in terrorism Nobody liked it Nobody who heard it was like Except that it was really good I was extremely good at this This was my niche I nailed it, and I had to walk away Did you consider it satire? Yes, definitely satire You were the Oscar Wilde of the hip-hop scene I walked away Nobody could understand the satire I was close to home Can I do one line? No, no, no If it's labeled as satire now If we've labeled it satire, isn't it safe? Yes Okay, this is satire This is satire Not your everyday run-of-the-mill Israeli hater I'm so dedicated to this caterer They call me the crusader fader Stuff like that That's pretty solid, right? Not without knowing anything else There's more that gets worse I'll leave that part It brings up an interesting phenomenon Which I have really wanted to explore But I'll just mention it right now Which is that there was a weird Disproportionate number of rappers That went to join ISIS Did you guys read about this? No, I did That was the inspiration of it European and mostly European and British But I think some American as well They had videos of them rapping And when ISIS came out, they were like I'm going And there's some kind of crossover Between the do or die hardcore mentality Of gangster rap That made ISIS appealing Because we're going to live in the desert With a gun and try to conquer people And if we win, we get sex slaves There's some aspect of hip-hop culture Or what rappers brag about That isn't that far from how ISIS was living And it's just an interesting That's a real-world thing that happened I had no idea That's fascinating Yeah I.S. represent the Islamic State Holding it down Keeping it reviled for the New Cal fate But to convert your punk infidels Before it's too late Because we be heading your way Be heading your fate That was like That was like ISIS was a couple of years ago This was not something you abandoned as a teenager You did this recently, didn't you? No, this was a long time ago This was during ISIS This was not that long ago I guess Was this when you were doing the open mics? And you were like I'm going to go do this open mic thing And we were asking you if you were doing stand We thought you were doing stand at the same time I got booed and cheered in the same voice So But I also kind of felt like That was sort of like audience hunting Like a little bit like Okay Nobody's given these guys a theme song Alright Like I will be the The greatest Rapper Except for all the rappers that Literally joined Except for all the rappers That's what they were doing though You know I'm not doing very well with the gangster rap thing In my hometown It's not really a deal But I know there's an audience over there That's got nobody Putting rhymes together for them I saw it as an alternative path to status But what never happened As far as I know is that they went and then Did a rap song from Syria Or Iraq Which would have been an interesting thing But as far as I know they gave up their rap careers To go literally fight for ISIS You know I'm talking like five or six of them But there was a few news articles that was like Why do rappers want to join ISIS? No they got Around the campfire They got to be superstars Maybe in their own minds This is similar to your rap career Justin in your own mind But you know one of the aesthetics of hip hop Is you got to fake it till you make it You know you got to be a legend in your own mind Before you're a legend in the world I couldn't commit to terrorist rap It was too big of a commit for me That's the thing if you crack a smile Halfway through the set Then the effect is lost No laughing allowed Oh my gosh Oh my goodness Alright Blair is not looking this Blair is looking Nope Effectively Unamused by any of this You think? I would need to see more to pass judgment on the execution But I respect the courage of even trying something like that Because it would be almost impossible to do right And that makes it impressive This is worse It should not have brought it up It's probably something guys Something just keep to yourself Justin I'm of the philosophy of art That there's no topic that is off limits in principle There's just ones that are butchered in practice I want to see how people try And how they thread the needle And whether it's got the right tone But if someone says there's a thing that's this I'm not going to disregard it until I see it It's kind of like when life is beautiful Won an Oscar for best picture There's a beautiful being on the stage Saying I love everybody And there's some Hollywood directors I kind of remember his name I keep thinking The famous one Spielberg Doesn't stand up Doesn't clap You don't make a comedy about the holocaust In principle I object In principle But it was done so well It was done so well You got to give him respect For trying something almost impossible And killing Yeah I think that's an interesting point I mean there is definitely If everybody had an idea And never tried to act on their idea Then it would just We would just be sitting around in our chairs Thinking a lot And we wouldn't ever have that Forward movement That maybe pushes the needle That is controversial Whereas that side of art That forces people to think And to talk about stuff And to maybe push our cultural evolution To a different place And how would art be If it was all designed not to offend anyone Some people are offended by banality In which case you're going to offend people You're going to Defending them over And we're going back I mean we're going back to You know the roots of English literature Or by Lord Byron Again Don Juan was offensive This is what the critics were saying Like this is an offensive piece of literature This should not be being published You know we look at it today With a completely different eye But at the time That was something that was pushing The limits of what was socially acceptable And it was immensely popular At the same time And then you look at somebody Who probably would have had several diagnoses Of defects There was a failed Well I would call him an artist But he failed at being an artist Completely He basically had to trade His paintings for like a pint of beer Or a glass of wine or here and there We're talking about Hitler right now? No we're talking about Van Gogh Who completely failed to make a living as an artist He burned paintings right? And he's one of the iconic Most expensive works of art now That's ever... Again somebody who was fantastic Saw a glimpse of Stardom He saw But still nothing lived in poverty His whole life Also we also have to look beyond The time that we're here Are you telling me to have faith in posterity For my career's current mediocre level? I will catch on after you're dead My calendars will be in a museum In several thousand years We're all gone But if you're going to be a poor Struggling artist Then enjoy the art that you're making Don't care what anybody thinks Make it for you Yes I was just reading I'm reading a book My summer homework for myself Is to read a bunch of books on science writing And science storytelling And so I've got this stack of books that I'm going through And the one I'm reading now Is Annie Lamott's Bird by Bird And it's this just wonderful story But part of it That she was just Bringing in another author And his advice is just Not to ever write For other people But just write for yourself Because it's just going to be for you in the end Because you may never make money off of it You may never get that fame and fortune That you're looking after You might hear other people get fame and fortune But in the end You might get that or you might not But you should write anyway Because it should be your own journey And so yeah We should all have things that we engage in That we continue to do to push ourselves Our hobbies that we That we do, that we engage in In our off hours For no reason, no money Whatever I was talking to you This is a good rule of thumb It's not a rule of thumb Regardless of how much you Think it's Funny Do it for yourself and then put it away Yes No, I was talking to one of the teens In my programs today Who was saying that he wants to start A podcast Maybe it's not going to have enough Mass appeal Maybe I should do something more general So people are more likely to like it There are literally Thousands, probably millions Of podcasts on the planet To do something that will reach Everyone will reach no one The beauty of podcasts Is that There's something out there for everybody So if you want to Kid wanted to do a podcast about About bathrooms He wanted to rate bathrooms On like smell The art, he wanted to critique the art On the walls and the graffiti The Cleanliness Like all that kind of stuff And I was like, you know what Honestly, if that was a five minute Once a week podcast, I'd probably listen To that, I think that was hilarious Like do what you want to do Somebody will enjoy it That's the beauty of the internet Is that there's this kind of low investment To get out there Somebody might like what you're doing You don't have to find this general Appeal out there, that's the beauty Of this thing If you're a proctologist Make sure that the thing you really Really like Is colonoscopies Choose career paths So you will enjoy Interestingly enough I got my theory of art from Proctology Yeah, it's I think about Proctology every time I'm writing a new show And it's actually something I got From Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow Book You guys probably heard of this peak and rule concept So when they do Colonoscopy research They find that the pain Retrospect of patients that had a colonoscopy Are entirely related To the most intense painful moment And the last moment of it But other than that It's all kind of washed out in averages So if basically you drag the colonoscopy out Longer than it's medically needed But have the last few seconds of it Be less painful The person will remember it as being far less painful Than if the last second is extremely painful And that peak and rule thing Is That helps figure out medical treatments But also like That is what a good song does That is what a good play does That is what a good stand-up comedy set does Nobody remembers any details from it It's the peak and rule is what stays with our memory The best moment and the last moment And if you don't have those locked The whole thing will fail Even if it's all pretty good all the way through So that's just a thing to Keep playing back I didn't know it until I read about This piece but it actually applies to a lot Childbirth maybe that's the thing with Childbirth I don't think many women would agree to have that Artificially dragged out longer No See that's the thing too I almost always would Opt In other medical procedures and stuff like that For the shorter More painful version Most people would But I don't know I guess maybe There was a study out This week of toddlers Toddlers apparently Always go for the last Item In a group so if you're Toddler a bunch of choices Just be aware of that What age Does that end at Which of my kids Would it work on The two-year-old You can have the french fries or you can have the broccoli Which one do you want My two-year-old So this is something that I've Discovered when I do classroom programs Is that if I give Usually If you say do you think The general group will say Yes Even though it's obviously no right But also so if you ask in an affirmative They're more likely to respond In an affirmative If you have a caveat in there You make it sound like you want them to say no They will always say no no matter what it is But I've also noticed Yes that if you give a yes You say do you think yes or no Or do you think left or right or anything like that When I'm doing kind of a presentation Style question In a program Yeah they'll usually pick the latter one Because it's the one that's front of mind Right it's the one they heard most recently So if they're used to doing call and response It's like waiting right there for them I'll take that one I'm on the east coast So I'm gonna need to sign off because Oh yeah it's probably morning I think it's Late here too No it's not It's still early here No we're just It's later This is still part of the stream Is it or is it just us chatting Yeah this is live This is the after show This is the after show We're just sitting here talking now But the podcast part This will not be on the podcast No they will edit All of my bad behavior Which I save for the after show Like how Justin says they They I don't know who does it You know I'm not editing this show It's all mystery to me This YouTube video after show May even be edited We'll see So it's all the Yeah I have no idea what takes place In the internet webby box that makes The show happen But it happens like every week I do all this Whoever does it they're doing a fantastic job Whoever they are I'm picturing a large team Of trained professionals Baba needs to go to bed Thanks guys I really enjoyed this Thank you so much Have a good night He's like I'm being polite But I gotta go you talking people People sleep Especially east coast people He's one of the latest staying East coast people Yeah He's in New York That's a city that never sleeps They're fine So a quick update On my schedule In Florida For Professional development related to Noki The first week of August But I'm gonna bring My new little laptop And I'm gonna try You got a new little laptop I got a little Chromebook Little baby Chromebook Little Chromebook So I'm gonna try to do it from there Last year when I went To the next spot But I'm gonna try So I will do it with My little Apple headphones With the microphone in it And the built in camera And I'll do my very very best Okay Yeah just let me know Maybe test it when you get in Although different times of days Are different So I remember there was one night I watched an episode That I had and that worked fine And then another night Like the night that the broadcast was I tried to jump into the chat room And watch and it was totally not working So I think it also depends So it's on this big Palatial estate thing With all these different housing spaces So it also depends which one I get put in So last year I was putting the one that had 20 people staying in it That had 20 rooms So everybody was on the same Wi-Fi In their bedrooms and if I'm one of those The Wi-Fi will be way better Yeah So I'm gonna try Okay Where is it? It is in Florida It's outside of Jacksonville It's in Uli, Florida And it's at White Oak Which is a conservation center Where they actually breed rhinos And yes hot rod I could tether My phone to the laptop Zero cell phone service What? I bet you that changed No, no, this is since last year No, this is a place that's been around For a long time It was actually an estate And It was a tree farm for paper It was like a paper mill type of thing But it wasn't the paper mill It was the place where they raised the trees They're probably somebody Is looking at the future map And who's deciding where to put towers And then looking at it going It's gonna be underwater pretty soon Let's not even bother No, it's actually they don't really want This place super hardcore on the map Because they have a bunch of rhinos there Yep So they don't want people to be able to use Cell phone towers and GPS They don't want that Yeah, they don't want people really coming out there Either probably Stop talking about this You're giving up secrets You can go visit You can go pay to stay there And tour and all that kind of stuff It's just like You can go to their website And see exactly what they have They're just gonna tell you exactly where it is Okay But how are you going to Ping and triangulate So you can GPS To their front door And then they take you in a shuttle bus In It's huge Wow Nice Compounds always fun Okay Say good night Blair Good night Justin Good night Hi Kiki Good night everyone Have a wonderful week I hope that you will join us again Next Wednesday We're gonna talk about physics It's gonna be amazing We're gonna have so much fun Our guest next week I was looking at his online Information And he sounds very interesting Just like an interesting fun person So Physics with a fun person Yes And I hope everyone had a good 4th of July And now we're back to the normal summertime Stuff And I hope you have a good summer week Hurray It almost rained today And then it was sunny And then it was foggy It did rain today In Portland Hurray Because Portland Does that Link to guest What Justin just left And I don't know Okay good bye everyone Justin's weird Understatement of the century I won't stop talking But now I'm gonna hang up on everybody Okay bye I shouldn't talk about a thing But I'm gonna talk about a thing But I shouldn't talk about it But I might as well just tell you all about it We're getting dinged by YouTube Love you all Thank you so much I hope you have a wonderful week SCIENCE