 that would say we're live. Are you a robot? And if you were a robot, would you say yes or no? What would your choice be? Hmm. That's interesting thought question. But this is a podcast about science, and we're going to start the show in just a moment here. I just want to let you know that if you're not yet subscribed, make sure you subscribe to us wherever you're watching us. You can find us YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, and click that notification and that like button and be notified all the time for when we're going live. Additionally, this live show will be edited for the final podcast because that's what we do. So if you like edited things, subscribe to the podcast too. Are we ready to start this show? We're ready to start a show. Yay. Turn things on and make it go. And we will begin a show in a little under three, a two, a one. This is twist. This week in science episode number 813 recorded on Wednesday, February 24, 2021. How to choose your Roach. Hey, everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki. And tonight on the show, we will fill your head with dating, gliding, and fighting. But first. Disclamer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Planet Earth is in big trouble. Pandemics. Global warming induced weather patterns. The lack of sustainable solutions capable of overcoming human laziness. The end is not in sight. But it is a good sight closer than it was just a few years ago. And yes, some humans are working really hard to ensure that changes are made to keep this planet habitable. Meanwhile, Mars. It's not ready to live on, not just yet. But the worse it gets here on Earth and the faster we need to come up with solutions to survive here, the better Mars looks. It won't be for everyone, but for anyone that does go there, one thing they will need to bring with them is this week in science. Coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I want to learn if it happened every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know what's happening. 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 Week in Science. We are back with all the science that we can fit into this show, which is usually quite a lot. And I'm very excited, very excited to have pride myself off of a very warm, comfortable couch to come talk about science this evening. Yes, yes, I am. I have stories tonight about I've got some stories about artificial intelligence and video games. I also have a story about magnets. Well, magnetic poles flipping. I've got a brainy story and a slimy story for my section in the end of the show. Fun stuff. What do you have, Justin? I've got dating sites with Aboriginal wasps. How to win at cockroach fighting. Why taxes and red tape for a good thing. And mushroom soup. I love mushroom soup. It's good stuff. It's delicious. Right, Blair. What is in the animal corner? My wish mushroom soup. I have cloned ferrets and monkeys watching TV. And then I also have a fun story about an underwater glider. Like a fish. Just imagine a paper airplane underwater. For science. Great. For science. Yes. All right, I will do that. Everyone, as we jump into the show, I would like to remind you that if you have not yet subscribed to Twist, you can do so on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. You can also find us all places that podcasts are found. Look for this week in science and our website is twist.org. Yeah. That's it. That's where it's been. It's been there for a while. It's been there for a really long time. It's still there. It's waiting for you. The website that keeps on being a website. Webbing. Webbing. That's right. As long as like, yeah, keep paying the bills for it. All right, Justin, you're a disclaimer today reminding us of going to Mars. Wouldn't that be nice to go there one day? The robots that we are sending there in our stead. Last week, it was the night before the Perseverance landing. And this week, we are about seven days, six and a half days since a successful landing of Perseverance on the surface of Mars. Yeah, I was pretty excited. It was very exciting. And all right, the seven minutes of terror. We, for the first time as of Monday, have a video from NASA that brings together footage from off the shelf cameras. They decided, finally, how many years have we been saying, what a camera on it and send images back, right? Let's see some real video of what actually happened. Well, off the shelf camera, off the couple, two or three of them, actually, and off the shelf microphone. And they sent back a video that is outstanding of the seven minutes of terror for the first time. We have video of humans. Well, our robots landing on another planet. Can we watch it or outstanding? Oh, yeah, we can. We can watch it right now. I might clip it out of the. Yeah, it's a three minute long video. So I think it's a it's a bit much, but I do also want to share with everybody before maybe we can watch it in the after show. Okay, that would be, I think that would be good. But I did want to share with everybody the first audio from a from another planet. We have a microphone on perseverance, and it was able to record not during landing, because that was very violent and really loud and probably didn't get very good audio. It didn't work. But after landing, just shortly after landing, this was sent back. And what you hear right now. Yeah. Is that our theme song playing on Mars? Sounds like it. I think it's carried on the breezes of Mars. Yes. But that sound is the sound of perseverance itself, the electronic sounds that the rover was making and the sounds of the wind. And they have taken out the sounds of the rover. And that's the sound of a gentle breeze on a microphone. Yeah, on a microphone, like wind. It's just it's not a thing that you can really do successfully and have it sound like anything interesting. I'm sorry. It sounds like I think that's very cool. I'm not saying it's not cool. I'm just saying like somebody blowing into a microphone or wind on a microphone. It's just not the you know what I mean? It's just doesn't really like hearing the drill operate maybe when it's doing the drilling. That might be cool. Or if there are other sounds because perhaps it'll be capturing sound when there's a Marsquake, perhaps it'll be capturing sound. Who knows? I mean, is there a dust storm going to get going at some point? Will the sound of the wind increase? What kind of information can we get from being able to hear? I don't know. Blair does not seem impressed. She's over there yawning. Okay, I got when we were when we were watching it, watching it sort of live. You were talking about that seven minutes of terror, like we're going to lose communication. Can't tell what's going on with the thing. It's going to hand off to another thing. But it's an 11 minute delay. So even though everybody's waiting for the seven minutes, it already happened. It had already taken place because the delay was 11 minutes at that time. Yeah, and I'm seeing in the chat room, terror is a strong word says Fada. I don't think so for the individuals who spent the last what was it eight years on this lander? Right. And even though they were one job for eight years is to make sure that at the end of this eight years, nothing goes wrong. I'm not sure about that number. You keep repeating my eight years, but I'm not 100% sure about that. Well, we have images from the surface of the surface of Mars from the area from the Mars reconnaissance orbit orbiter as well, showing the variety of objects that have been left on the surface of Mars. We have a heat shield off well off to the east of the landing site. We have the landing site itself. There is a location where the the sky crane descent craft actually flew off to and potentially exploded. There is a picture that's been released of a giant cloud. We don't know whether that is a dust cloud from landing or if it landed and crashed and exploded. And we don't know that for sure. There's also another shielding component that's off on another area within this landing site of Jericho crater and knowing it's all there, I think, is very interesting. This human debris are leftovers, signs of humanity on a distant planet. Even though it's within our solar system, it's a distant planet. And this is humanity reaching out. And so in science and engineering are taking us there. And it's just incredible. And as soon as we get there, we start littering. Come on, guys. Can we just, can we clean it up a little? So also, I checked my math here. Not tell them exactly who we are on the first day. Just so I don't get a million tweets about this. So it's been eight years, nine years, I guess, since Curiosity landed, which is where that number was in my brain. But Perseverance has been going for about 11 years, the project. Yes. Well, it was first, I believe it was 2013 or 2012 that it was proposed right after Curiosity landed. They were like, let's do more of this. And they said, let's send this lander. And there was funding and the Mars 2020 mission was off to the races. And they rapidly, rapidly developed this. Oh, I don't know, are this 11 years? Well, that can be right too. They can already have been working on the lander and its capabilities. Yeah. And then said, hey, everybody was happy that we landed successfully. We've got another one we can send. Bigger, it'll be bigger and better. And it'll take little regular poops. Anyway, if this is the first time you've heard that term from Twist, you haven't listened to enough episodes. No, anyway, I am very, very excited for NASA. I am excited for all the individuals who have been spending a good part of their career in developing this mission. Now the scientists who are going to get to run the science part of the mission. I'm looking forward to all of the results that come from this. And it's going to be so exciting moving forward. I just wrote, after curiosity, there were all these bits of information that came out. Insight brought us bits of information. And this will just give us even more. And I know they're far away from each other, but can they go to each other and interact? So they are actually social distancing. They are. Just like we are. I just think it would be cool to get pictures of a rover on Mars. No, no, we didn't go to Mars to take selfies. Everybody needs to stop with the selfies. I don't know. I think it'd be kind of cool. It would be actually pretty cool. Yeah, it would be cool. But we are placing these rovers in different places around the red planet so that we can answer a variety of scientific questions and spread our resources around. If we only looked at like one spot, it had all the rovers looking at each other. I just mean like later. Like when the place is riddled with robots. I just want pictures of robots on Mars. Very cool. Yes. I mean, when that little ingenuity is up and going, like he could go over and take some photos. Yes. And thanks for mentioning ingenuity. Ingenuity phoned home and everything is good to go. That little helicopter will be soon into the Martian skies. I can't wait for that. I'm very excited about that. Yes. And Michael Gibson is saying also, as we were talking about the different locations, why they chose Jerizo Crater is because there are the hints of an ancient waterway there, an ancient lake bed. And they landed, as Michael says, in what is suspected to be a river delta, which is very exciting. Yes. So many fun characteristics to check out and learn about and we get to learn along with them. So thank goodness we didn't have to worry. We didn't have to be talking about a blown up exploded perseverance and that we can be excited moving forward. But Justin, what's your next story? Oh, let's see. There is a two meter long painting in Western Australia's Kimberley region, which has been identified as Australia's oldest intact rock painting. And they were able to date it using radiocarbon dating on 27 mud wasp nests that they were collected from some of them. So this painting is on the rock wall, but some of it is also over the wasp nests, which has created a very convenient way for them to radiocarbon date the wasp nest that got stuck behind the painting compared to the ones that ended up on top of it on the sort of the roof of this this cave. This makes the painting Australia's oldest known Institute painting says postdoctoral researcher Dr. Damian Finch who pioneered the new radiocarbon dating technique. This is a 600 generations ago. This painting was put on this on the roof and and they say it gives you an insight into what they were thinking. The painting is of a kangaroo, maybe not super surprising. But what's sort of interesting is there is a shift to the really old artwork in the cave because it persists over generations with more and more work showing up later and later generations. But the oldest artwork is life size. If you're going to make a kangaroo painting, you make it the size of a kangaroo, obviously. And then at some point they realized, hey, you know what, we could make the really small depiction of a kangaroo and we know what it means. I just imagine trying to like doodle in the margins of something in life size. But that's it's sort of it's sort of funny like it's almost like this was the first big renaissance in the art movement. You know, it's not it's not just when they've got the depth perception of within the painting, or they've gone to some other abstract techniques, like, oh, you know what, we don't have to render everything in full size. We can scale it down once in a while. Yeah, so so it also helped in dating some of the other art because a lot of the works are sort of painted over previous works on they sort of overlap in some areas. So you've got this these these wasp nests behind they can be radiocarbon dated. And then you've got maybe paintings that are overlapping that one, you sort of know what order they came in after and you have other wasp nests that are in there and those can get ready. So they got it back to between 17,500 and 17,100 years ago. Dr. Sven Usman from the University of Western Australia School of Social Sciences is one of the project's investigators. So the rock paintings would unlock further understanding of some cultural history and points out something interesting. This iconic kangaroo image is visually similar to rock paintings from islands in Southeast Asia dated to more than 40,000 years ago, suggesting to him at least so far a potential cultural link between the 40,000-year-old paintings and the 17,000-year-old ones. And he says it might mean that there's even older rock art that they haven't found yet in Australia. Right, so he's saying that this is like a ancestral lineage of peoples who have we can and we could potentially tell that because of characteristics of the art. I'm just thinking, don't you think your art would evolve a bit over like 20,000 years? Maybe change a few details here and there, use some new material. But if it doesn't, and that might be kind of the thing, like you look at the stone tools that were being used. Some stone tools didn't change for a million years. They got passed down, you learn it. There wasn't a big cachet on innovation. Apparently people weren't totally getting impressed with the new way to make a kangaroo cave art. People look at that like, that's not how we do kangaroos. Where are you from? You're not part of tribe. If you can't make kangaroo, like we make kangaroo. Okay, I can't find. I'll just go put back. I'll fix it. I'll make it life-size. It's not that hard. I can do it. But there wasn't. It must have also been like, if you got too creative, I think in the ancient times, tried to eat that berry for the first time that you hadn't seen anybody eat. Tried to take on that prey that no one else seemed like they ever hunted before. Like I think it usually ended badly. I'm just gonna, you know, I'm sleeping outside this winter. I'm not even going in a cave. I'm done with the cave. It's too stuffy in there. Never saw him again. Well, until the following spring. It must have been bad trying to be too creative back then. Don't be so creative. Just survive. Just survive. It was just hard enough just surviving playing by the rules. Yeah. Blair, what about gliding through life? Oh yeah. Just wanna glide. So if I was trying to send a robot into the ocean to survey areas of the ocean, what are my limiting factors for that robot? It has to be waterproof. Energy. How long is it gonna last? Pressure might be if it goes too deep. Sure. And then also, if it's super loud and has a giant propeller on it, you think you're gonna see many animals? Drive off everything. And it's dark down there too. So this is a study from Purdue University. This is actually Nina Muddian, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering. She actually started this project in 2012. Everything's 2012 today. Michigan Technological University. And she developed, she has since developed, tested, peer reviewed, now sent out. Ruffy. R-O-U-G-H-I-E. Isn't that how you spell orange, Ruffy? Is the research oriented underwater glider for hands-on investigative engineering. When I was just making things fit acronyms. But anyway, ultimately what's cool is it's highly maneuverable. It's low cost. And it is a glider, which means there are no external moving parts. It looks like an underwater paper airplane as best I could describe it. So they also can last a lot longer. So a robot, an ROV can just last a few hours a lot of the time. This guy can go for weeks, two months between charges because there's less moving pieces. So there's a lot less to charge, essentially. And so it can be deployed for days, two weeks, two months. And it doesn't have those moving pieces. So it's not going to scare away animals. It's shaped like a torpedo with a static rear wing. So for those of you listening, you can look it up. There's some really cool videos. There's a YouTube video that shows exactly how it works. But basically what it does is it pumps water into ballast tanks to change its buoyancy, which provides the glide path ankle. Is it going up or down? And then to control its pitch, which direction it's pointed in, they shift weight forward and backward. And then they also steer with inner components mounted on a rail that rotates. So you can imagine, you know what I was thinking about was, this is like me as a 90s kid, they had those pens that would vibrate that were like squiggly pens. Do you know what I was talking about? Yes. So the way that those worked was there was a weight that was off center that was rotated around with a gear. So I picture it like that. So basically they're able to move this weight around to be able to adjust where it's being dragged towards. So everything is on this pole inside of the torpedo in just this very compact space. So you'd be able to make different shapes, different sizes, and apply this to other types of gliders as well. It also has a much better turning radius. So previous gliders have about a 33 foot turning radius at best, but this guy has a 10 foot turning radius. So much easier. Well, it is a compact design itself. So it's small. It's going to have a smaller turning radius. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so it was such a compact turning radius. And it was so much more maneuverable than previous gliders that they could actually test it in the swimming pool, which I thought was very cool. So they use in the swimming pool. Yeah. And then they've since also sent it into ponds and lakes to measure algal blooms, but they hope to send it out much farther, like to shipwrecks underwater to shipwrecks. Yeah, very cool. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder if they could develop designs that are not just for short term use, but that could maybe like recharge and go out for longer periods of time and be more more autonomous. Yeah, put some solar panels on it and when it's powering down, just have it surface surface and then go back down. Yes. Exactly. You're following me. You're following me. Yeah. See you in a couple years, buddy. And now I'm following you with a story about artificial intelligence exploring video games. Yes, I did say artificial intelligence exploring video games. Researchers have been playing with artificial intelligence algorithms, a group of them that they are calling go explore and go explore. They set on Atari games, including Montezuma's revenge and pitfall. And I like the pitfall game. Yeah, pitfall was super fun. Okay. And so when you are playing the game as you're going along, you have a memory of where you've been, what you've seen, kind of what areas you've tracked through, and you know what the goal is. You always have the goal in mind, but you can keep from getting distracted. You can keep from getting sidelined. You can kind of figure your way around things. And so the question is, how did they, how do researchers start teaching artificial intelligence is these algorithms to do the same thing? So these generally intelligent agents, these algorithms, sometimes they just get unmotivated there, or they they're not properly motivated to actually find the goal. Some kind of proper carrot for the artificial intelligence. Are they just getting bored? Are they getting bored with reinforcement or negative reinforcement? I don't know what works on robots. Kind of. So what they say is that if so say you have a house, a map of a house, and the house has a refrigerator in it, and the AI is supposed to find the refrigerator. Well, if you're trying to get them to the refrigerator, what they say is that someone might provide a reward only when the refrigerator is reached. But since there's only one refrigerator in the entire house, it's action, there are a lot of actions that are required to get to the refrigerator. And so you kind of have to have many, many rewards all along the way to keep the motivation up so that that keeps going. And so they write also a denser reward. For example, the Euclidean distance to the refrigerator can be deceptive. Naively following the reward function may lead the robot into a dead end and can also produce unintended and potentially unsafe behavior. For example, trying to open the cat. Yes. Or, you know, falling down stairs because they didn't properly, you know, avoid them, for example. So you have to figure out how to space the rewards so that there are denser, many rewards. And then also, you have to keep the algorithm from getting detached, which is that it won't, that it stops returning to places. And maybe those places are important to ending up at the end goal. But because they've already visited them, it's like the Roomba that never goes to like the one corner of your room, and it's full of all the hair balls. The room, you're like, why won't you go there Roomba? And the room is like, I'm detached. Algorithms also get derailed. So that means instead of going back to like a save point or a safe space that they've already been before exploring back to that other space. So they instead of coming back to a place repeatedly, they'll get re derailed and end up going off and be like, I think I'm going this way now. So there are lots of issues to deal with. And the researchers cataloged how they changed a lot of these things with the go explore because they gave go explore algorithms at the ability to have lots of those save points so that the algorithm might start at one point and then move out from it, but then make a new save point after it's covered a certain amount of space and be able to move forward. Anyway, long story short, because of the adjustments they made to these factors within the go explore algorithms, they were able to get these AI to far, far, by far beat the best human player on Montezuma's revenge. Like it just just blew humanity out of the water when it comes to playing Atari games. Just got the super high score ever scored. Yeah, it's super human, the score, its performance on this game. And in the process, because of what they've learned, they're hoping that they will be able to not just have AI's show us how much better they are at video games, but actually help us in things like molecule discovery or drug discovery or any of these very large data sets that have to be explored and sites remembered and paths taken and maybe this kind of artificial intelligence algorithm can help us in our data and intelligence capturing moving forward. Go explore! But it's just like you said, it could also be used to dominate online video gaming and humans are allowed to play anymore. Or anything else that people want artificial intelligence to do. Anything. We talk about it like, ah, we could find a cure to a disease because we're doing a science show. If you're in the financial speculation sector, you might go, oh, now would be a good time to short sell GameStop because the robot told me to. And then somebody else's robot's gonna be like, hey, I got an idea. Somebody just short sell GameStop. But it could happen across the financial markets, instantaneously back and forth. War of the AI is probably going to be the most impactful outcome of this. Right. So I mean, at some point, it's going to be AI's battling AI's AI hacking computers. No digital data safe anymore. Everybody goes back to paper. Everybody has to go back to paper because the AI can hack everything in the future. It's gonna be down sides. I know you don't want to hear about but that's I'm just you mean there will be pitfalls. I love that game that the jumping is like an archaeologist game. Yeah, it's good. I always L in the pit. Always the pit always gets you once in a while. It's gonna happen. You know, it's all in the days pitfalling pits, quicksand, rolling logs, fire, rattlesnakes, scorpions and crocodiles pitfall. Harry must jump over or otherwise avoid these obstacles by climbing, running or swinging on vines. She had to go. She had no idea what we were talking about. I played Atari games, but I didn't have I didn't I wasn't aware of quite a large library of them, let's say. I think that was one of the one one of the rare Atari video home video game and you could play at the arcades like the early arcades. I think that was one of them. Yeah, it was. That's where I always fell into the pits. Justin, tell me if we're not going to the arcade, we're going to the cockroach pit fights, right? It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen often, but like anyone else, it happens to all of us. Occasionally, you're walking down the back alley path of some part of town that has seen better days. You follow the muffled sounds of people cheering the faint whiff of cultivated smoke in the air, down some below street level stairs through an unmarked metal door, and suddenly you find yourself where the action is hissing. Cockroach fights! You want to place your bet with a three-fingered man in the orange visor, but how do you know which roach to ride? Science to the rescue! Turns out not all cockroaches are equal. Some are super athletes with larger respiratory systems and are more likely to win in physical mating battles. So this is research published in the journal Animal Behavior led by Dr. Sophie Mowles of Anglia Ruskin University. She studied aggressive interactions between male, wide-horned, hissing cockroaches, grompador, himna, oblangora. The animal contests are usually won by the larger opponent in physical fighting, and that's pretty much the same across all the animal kingdom. And they also can sort of size each other up and go, yeah, I'm not going to fight you in, because I can tell you're bigger. So what they did was they took a bunch of same-sized cockroaches and they put them up against each other to see what would happen. And they studied the winners of those battles, or those who were the rated most dominant, whether they won the battle or sometimes maybe even just scared the other one away. CT scan of all the cockroaches was then carried out and allowed them to see the whole body, including the size of the respiratory system. And that was when they realized, hey, all the winning cockroaches have bigger respiratory systems. So anyway. So they look the same from the outside. Look the same from the outside. But on the inside, they're very different. Totally different. So they're getting more oxygen. They get more oxygen. They can fuel their little cockroach muscles to twitch. But yeah, so if you go to a cockroach fight, bet on the cockroach who isn't smoking. With the biggest lungs. One with the biggest lungs. Blair, you lost concern. That's a wild thing to do in the name of science. I get it. I just wasn't expecting to see a cockroach cage match today. It's not on my radar. I mean, you know, really, both cockroaches, they come out just fine. It's not like they ate their wings off like your story last week. That was consensual. It could be worse. So the worst that happens typically in these is one cockroach gets flipped over on its back and then does this for a little while. It was just especially with the red lighting. Oh, no, that's actually from one of the cage matches. That's one of the cage matches. The red like cage matches are to the death. That was different when you were witnessing. You just went to the most extreme version of the sport right away. No. Oh my goodness. All right. I have another story that doesn't have to do with cockroaches. Well, it kind of does. It has to do with running in underground and hiding in the cracks until it's safe to come out. So I guess that it has to do with cockroaches, except it has to do with all life on earth because researchers in Australia, they looked at a really, really, really old tree. So these researchers were looking at a tree that it's the New Zealand Calry tree. And it's one of the most ancient types of trees in the world. And it gets preserved. There are trees that have been preserved by the swamps and the bogs. And these trees can be dated way, way, way, way back. And so these researchers dated the trees back to the Lechamps excursion, which is about 41 to 42,000 years ago, about at the last time that the Earth's magnetic fields flipped. So the researchers looked at cross sections from four of these old trees going back to about 41, 42,000 years. And they analyzed them for carbon 14. Now, why did they look for carbon 14? Well, the reason is that when the magnetic field of the Earth weakens, more cosmic rays make their way through the atmosphere, through the surface of the Earth. And as they make their way through the atmosphere and they come into contact with carbon, they cause the reactions that lead to the production of more carbon 14. So weaker magnetic field, more cosmic rays, more carbon 14. And so they thought, huh, we've got these old trees, let's look at them and see if we can find a signature of increased carbon 14 dating back to the time of that last magnetic pole flip. And that is what they found. They found increased levels of carbon 14 in the trees going back to about 41,000 years ago. And this supports a hypothesis that has come out a few times over the years that periods of magnetic pole flips are potentially very dangerous to life on Earth because of the increase in cosmic rays, changes, a decrease in ozone. So there's more radiation making it, solar radiation making its way through the atmosphere to the surface of the Earth. And they've got all sorts of things that back this up that are really interesting, which like tie in a little bit to the paintings on the cave wall story that you were talking about, Justin, because they suggest that there is an increase in cave paintings about 41, 42,000 years ago because people went underground to survive. That's the idea. And so they went underground and they're like, Hey, I'm bored. Let's paint. I don't I don't know if that's true. But there are cave paintings back then. But people have always lived in caves. So I think that's like off and on, off and on depending on the weather more than anything. And so if you go outside, you get burned. I mean, you're gonna you're it hurts when I go outside, you'll go outside, you hunt and then go back underground again. But 40,000 years ago. No, that's too long ago. But that's, that's interesting. That's interesting. It does seem like when the major die offs that I saw was being attributed to this kept they kept pointing to like large fauna. Yeah, that largely disappeared as the overlap of mankind. Yes. Also, so that's like, it could also be, it could be mankind, our influence, but it could also be that kind of thing that the environment changed. The climate changed. There was an increase in solar radiation, a change in the atmosphere that led to more atmospheric hydrogen, more nitrogen oxides, less ozone, because it's getting consumed by those things. And because there is less shielding from radiation, you'd see you'd see a lot of changes in weather weather patterns, they suggest that there could have been massive cooling to the planet as a result of the magnetic field shift. Yeah, but lots of things tying back and the just very interesting that they have this, this bit of evidence from these very old trees in New Zealand. Yeah. So I mean, it's also interesting because we are potentially going through the beginning of a magnetic pole shift right now. So what's gonna happen? We all live inside anyway, so it doesn't matter. Wait, how often are these things? It's what, every 24,000 years? No. Something like that? If it's that often. 42. No, I think it is every 42,000 years. I think I got the, yeah, the, yes, it's about every 42,000 years. It's a pretty consistent amount of time that these pole shifts, yes. Any minute. Any minute, any second. I mean, we've been talking about this for probably 20 years. Oh, that's how we saw a global warming. How do you make one happen? We need a cooling. Right. This is our shot. It's our one shot. That's right. Magnetic field flip. Let's let it happen and see what happens. You're already living caves. We're there. I know. Gord, yes, we all live inside. That was a shout out to you. No, I'm kidding. Yes, the cave paintings, John Hogan saying the cave paintings have major celestial events associated with them. Sometimes they do, yeah, not all of them, but some of them do. And so, yeah, how much were they staying? Celestial, you're going out at night, not during the day when the sun is hot and burning. I don't know. There's lots of interesting pieces here. I don't think anyone has put the entire puzzle together yet at all. And there are still massive questions outstanding. But it's one of those unknowns. Life has obviously survived for millions, billions of years in one form or another. Humanity has survived for over 200,000 years. Humans in one form, primates have survived for much, much longer. So it's not as though this is something to be really concerned about, but really, what should we be concerned about? We don't know. I think it's very interesting. I am fascinated by this question. And I hope that you are too. This is This Week in Science. If you just tuned in, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. If you've been here all along, we are so glad you're here once again. Oh, hey, do you need a twist shirt or some kind of mouse pad or a mug or something? I don't know. Maybe need a new hat to shade your face from all that solar radiation. Head over to twist.org and click on our Zazzle link to find a bunch of twist merchandise that will help support the show. We appreciate your support. All right, everybody, back to the show. It's time for a COVID update. Well, I just want you to know that according to the CDC, vaccines are just doing awesome. I mean, we're not getting them out as fast as we would like, but we really are getting them out there. And that's just awesome. I think props to people getting vaccines to getting vaccinated. It's all helping to push this pandemic a little further away every day. 13.8 million doses of vaccine were administered in, let's see, where was this, that the CDC reported on, yes, the first month of COVID vaccine safety monitoring. So this time period is December 14th to January 13th. And we're now end of February, so you know that there's much more adding on to this. But in that first month, the data from that 13.8 million doses of vaccine were administered. 6,994 post-vaccination adverse events were reported in the VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. And the most common symptoms were headache, about 22%, fatigue, 16 or so percent, and dizziness, again, 16.5%. Anaphylactic reactions were reported in approximately 4.5 out of every million vaccinations, which is similar to the rate that's expected for inactivated seasonal flu vaccines. So it's to be expected and not anything out of the ordinary, which is great to see. Adverse events were more likely to be reported after an individual's second dose than their first dose. And additionally, within the data, there were 100, let's see if I can get the exact number, there were 113 deaths reported in the adverse reaction database. However, all of the information has been looked at and they have confirmed that it does not seem as if any of those were actually as a result of receiving the vaccine, that all of them were just other reasons but were reported because they were within the two months of getting the vaccine itself. So I think it's also important to note these numbers of the adverse reactions, 22% headache, 16% fatigue. So if you talk to friends and family who've gotten the vaccine and you look at social media and stuff, you would think that that number was like 95%. But part of the reason is that the people talking about it are the ones who had bad reactions. So first of all, you're going to hear more out of the people having a bad time than the people who didn't. But on top of that, our brain is programmed to remember better bad stuff. So I don't have any data on why it seems that way, but based on our understanding of bias and how reporting can be misleading, I'm pretty confident that that's what's going on here because this number hasn't really increased. But it really feels like everybody's saying, oh my god, I got a fever and a headache from the second dose. But that can't be true because that's not what the data says. I think it really is a reporting problem. Yeah, I think that as well. I mean, it's not everybody who's having these problems. It's usually the case we have a negativity bias. Yeah, exactly. So it's very exciting. Vaccines are rolling out and that is extremely positive. Additionally, researchers are looking into ways that we can potentially treat COVID-19 moving forward, a research team at Penn State University just reported on their investigations of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in which they did some fun maneuvering to look really closely at the spike protein itself. This is the part that binds to the ACE2 receptor. They used amide hydrogen deuterium exchange mass spectrometry, HDXMS. And so they used this to bounce hydrogen deuterium off of the molecules that make up the spike protein as it was binding to an ACE2 receptor so that they could actually see what was happening. So this deuterium oxide, they use heavy water deuterium oxide and this probe, they let it come in there and it's like getting a footprint but getting these little tiny snapshots as the components come together to see exactly what happened. The researchers say if you put the spike protein, an ACE2 receptor into a solution that's made with deuterium, the surfaces and more floppy regions on both proteins will more readily exchange hydrogens for deuterium compared to their interiors and footprints of each protein on the binding partner can be readily identified from areas where you see little deuterium and only detect normal hydrogen. They were able to determine that the spike protein and the ACE receptor is necessary for the activation of what are called furan-like proteases and these are enzymes that are like scissors and they come in and they snip off one of the subunits of the spike protein but it only happens when the spike protein has bound to the ACE2 receptor. And it's like this long distance messaging that happens as soon as that binding happens there is this long distance messaging, this cascade of cell signals within the cell that activate these scissors to come in and snip the subunit off and that is what allows the S2 subunit of the spike protein to fuse with the cell membrane. If those scissors don't come around there's no fusion, there is no viral entry into the cells and so now that they know this and they see where this is happening. That's brutal so it's the cells attempt to get rid of it, turns it on. Yeah, that's brutal. Yeah, so this enzyme should be snipping it up and but it's not, it's helping it. It's helping it into the cells. It's opening it. It's opening it, yeah. So now that they know this process and they've seen it more exactly what they are hoping to be able to get from this is that this cleavage might be a target for inhibiting the virus and that, you know, so far everybody's been like, no, just neutralize the virus. Don't let it bind to ACE2 but maybe there's another set of steps that can be used so that- Set of steps. Put that enzyme in every hand cleaner. Yeah. What was this? No, no, you just, you gave us the solution. Put that enzyme, spray it in the air, put it everywhere, man. Activate the thing when it's not in a cell. To chop it up. Get it to open up and it's done. That's all that it was. Yeah. History. I don't know. I mean they'd have, maybe somebody's trying something like this. I don't know. But it's very interesting in light of the various mutations that are occurring and how these variants with their increased transmissibility, their increased binding to the ACE2 receptor, you know, how are they changing and how does that affect the furan cleavage and how can we get in the middle of that to affect it? And so it's neat to know that this kind of research is going on. Blair, do you want to talk about gorillas and selfies? Yeah. It's never a good idea to take a selfie with a gorilla. I would not suggest it. I would never do it ever, ever, never, ever. But I guess there is this thing called gorilla trekking with mountain gorillas, which is part of ecotourism. And so there's a whole thing where people go and they get to see these gorillas in the wild and so they're taking a distance of seven meters in between them and the gorillas. But they don't. So where this is really a problem is last month in January, some gorillas in San Diego Zoo got COVID, which proves that it can jump from humans to great apes, which is not a surprise. There's lots of diseases that we share with monkeys in general with primates and then also especially with apes, chimps, gorillas, stuff like that. So Oxford Brooks University looked at about 100 Instagram posts from gorilla trekking tourists and they found that they were extremely close and they were not wearing masks. They were definitely close enough that they could get these gorillas. Because wildlife and they're just like, I'm in nature. I'm outdoors. I'm outdoors. Why do I have to wear a mask? They're not thinking of the gorillas as other beings. Now gorillas, most gorillas you see in a zoo are Western lowland gorillas. They are in trouble. They are reduced numbers. They are endangered. The mountain gorilla, there's about a thousand of them left on earth. They are very scarce and very endangered. And so if they get COVID, it's not good. So this also this is this is focusing on one species of course, but there's lots of tourism locales where people are in close quarters with primates. So if you think about great apes, that's one thing. But if you just think about primates in general, there's a lot of opportunities for COVID to jump to primates and impact wild populations. Because also it's one thing if a zoo population gets sick, that sucks for those gorillas at San Diego, but they're not going to get gorillas at the LA Zoo or San Francisco Zoo sick. It's confined at least. But if you get a wild population sick, it could get others within their troop sick. It could get other primates that live nearby them sick. It could jump to other species. There's lots of opportunity for it to get out there and get worse and also mutate. The more species it ends up in, the more it can mutate. And as a former zookeeper, this was not surprising for me to hear because if we had a cold, if we had any sickness at all as a primate keeper, we had to wear full PPE. We had to wear a mask. We had to wear gloves. We had to tie our hair back and we had to scrub in and out our boots. So there's an understanding that we're so similar genetically that you have to be so careful. So these people that are going on gorilla checks, treks and taking selfies with wild animals in close quarters without masks on, stop. Well, I hope that there are at least the people who are giving these treks, who are taking people into close quarters with these animals will require masking because if these people are traveling in the first place during a pandemic, it makes me wonder whether or not they're the type to wear masks in the first place. Can we just not do gorilla treks during a pandemic? How about that? How about it? Don't forfeit the monkeys during a pandemic. If you love nature, go nowhere near it. That's the best. That's the best way. Don't try to commune with it. Don't take a selfie with it. Just stay away from it. Or go volunteer for a research project in the wild. This is a great thing you can do. You can do is called an earth watch trip or anything like this. So you can actually go for like a, it's like a flat fee. You do like a 10-day or a seven-day trip. You participate in conservation research and you get to stay in this exotic locale. It's pretty cool. I really want to do that. That's the type of vacationing I want to take. That sounds like a blast. We should do a crowdsource for the three of us to do one together. Let's do it. Anyway, in the avoiding things vein last story for our COVID segment, unless you all want to talk about the variants and things that are happening right now in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times stories that came out yesterday, scaring us about a new variant that we can't do anything else about except actually just staying home and wearing masks and continuing to try and reduce spread of the virus even further. Anyway, from that tangent, places you should avoid, the gym. People are breathing and hopping and puffing. They're not open. What? Some are. Some are. They open and then they close again and they open. They're doing what they can. These are businesses. I understand, gosh, I mean, it's businesses that are struggling right now. I feel for, but at the same time, if you can work out at home or outside or YouTube videos, I don't know, gyms are not safe because of the huffing and puffing studies in the CDC MMR or what is it called? The Mortality and Whatever Report. Studies from the CDC report a couple of instances of gyms exercise facilities reporting high numbers of COVID-19 illnesses in one among 81 attendees of indoor high-intensity fitness classes during one week. 68% developed COVID-19. If your gym is a very high number, it's really high. If your gym is not requiring masks during exercise, if your gym is not requiring physical distancing, if it is not decreasing class sizes and if it is not making efforts to improve ventilation, you should consider a new gym because these are things that will help. Masking, physical distance, decreased class size, improved ventilation. Oh, by the way, same thing goes for schools. You need to follow these kinds of procedures for opening schools as well. Anyhow, anyhow, can we just, can we just keep working together to complete this, to complete this pandemic? That's what I would like to do. The science is here. Science is working. If you have questions about COVID, COVID-19 vaccines or about the variants that are out, please send them to me, kirsten at thisweekandscience.com. We'll do what we can to answer them on the show. Yeah, be good. This is This Week in Science. If you love the show, please tell a friend. That would be really helpful. Thank you for listening. Coming on back, Blair. You know what time it is? What time is it? It's time for Blair's Animal Corner. With Blair. What you got, Blair? Oh, the Animal Corner tonight is full of heartwarming goodness. Oh, yay. Yeah, balance out that COVID update we just did. So first, we have a new hope for black-footed ferrets. Now ferrets, if you're not familiar, are the adorable weasel, if I may. But a lot of people are familiar with European ferrets. They're the ones that you see, I'll say domesticated. They make questionable pets and they're actually legal to have as pets in California, mainly because of the black-footed ferrets. Let me tell you about the black-footed ferret. They do look a lot like that domestic European ferret, but they have black feet. Done. End of story. No, they live out in the plains in North America and they eat small rodents mostly. They're number one thing that they really like to eat is prairie dogs. And around the 1980s, thank you, Kiki, in around the 1980s, we thought they were gone. We thought they were completely extinct. Chalk one up to a loss column for humans. We lost another one. But actually, in 1981, just a year later, a rancher found a small population on his property. Before that, as people did westward expansion, they were developing farmlands and homelands on these prairies that were riddled with holes from the prairie dogs. And they create these kind of networks of tunnels underground. And it's really cool. They actually have room-based tunnels. So they'll have a bathroom, they'll have a nursery, they'll have all these specific things in their tunnels underground. Very cool, very important to their colonial lifestyle. But these settlers said, I don't want these prairie dogs around. I can't prosper with my farm and my prairie like this. So they eradicated them. They started killing them often in huge numbers, poisoning them, shooting them, trapping them, everything they could do to get rid of the prairie dogs. But again, that was the main food of the Blackfooted Ferret. So their population just plummeted. And so as I said in the 80s, they thought they were gone. In 1981, they found a very small population and they pulled them all out of the wild for some captive breeding. So this is one of those situations where if you only have a handful of individuals, if you just let them do their own thing, they wouldn't make it more than a couple more generations. But if you can pull them in, figure out how best to, you know, in the 80s, you didn't have their genes, but you did know who was related to who after one generation. So you can kind of manipulate things so that you're ending up with the least inbred individuals. It's the most genetically viable individuals for the most iterations. And so right now, there's about 650 alive today, which is a good start. But the thing is, that's all from seven original ferrets. Talk about a population bottleneck. Yes, exactly. So they, they tried to get more of them to reproduce, but only seven of them were able to reproduce. So that is a huge lack of genetic diversity, huge bottleneck. So this new story is, this is a collaboration with US Fish and Wildlife Service, of course, ViaGen, Revive and Restore, Pets and Equine, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and San Diego Zoo Global. They have cloned a black-footed ferret. They used frozen tissue that was stored as part of the frozen zoo that we talk about all the time at the San Diego Zoo. They've been collecting tissue samples for integer species for a while. And so this was from a ferret that was christened Willa. She died in the mid-1980s, and they were able to use pretty much the exact same method that they used to clone Dolly in 1996, the sheep, very first cloned animal. So they, they used a surrogate mother of a domestic ferret, the European ferret, with this donor egg. This project actually started back in 2013, so it's been a long time coming. But finally, Elizabeth Ann was born in December 2020. Elizabeth Ann is so cute. I know. So good. Yeah. Elizabeth Ann is just adorable, and now I would like a cloned, cloned ferret, please. Don't, they're bad pets. Go volunteer at a zoo. And that, that photo, that photo, I didn't know they made sound stages specifically for ferrets. Oh yeah, for sure. Yes, animal photo shoots are a thing. Yeah, so actually this is, this is the very first clone in the United States of an endangered species. It's been done in other countries, but this is the first time we've done it here. And this is important because she will be able to inject some genetic diversity, which is kind of a funny oxymoron genetic diversity from a clone, right? Yeah. But this is going to be some genetic diversity that they'll be able to inject into this gene pool of ferrets. Right, because it's from an individual that was deceased before this population. It's, it's from some, somebody else from outside the population of the original seven. Exactly. Yeah. And so in case you were wondering, I kind of teased it before, the reason you can't have ferrets in, I believe also Oregon and California is because they're escape artists. They're really good at getting out. And if European ferrets got out, they would basically take over the black-footed ferret territory. They could start taking their burrows, they could start taking their food, they'd start taking their resources. So it'd be a concern that this endangered species would get robbed of their niche, essentially. Yeah, competition. Yeah, absolutely. So they're, these guys are perfect in the wild, the black-footed ferret in their own spot, these, these selective bred individuals slowly being re-released in the wild. Hopefully they won't have a disease come through that affects all of them because they're so genetically related. But for right now, it's doing okay. It's doing good. Cloned endangered species. There you go. Yay. Happy Elizabeth Ann. Yes. And from Elizabeth Ann to Socky Monkeys in Finland. What? Yes. Socky Monkeys in Finland. This is actually a follow-up to a story that I presented last year, which is why I was so excited to bring this story. This looks familiar. And as I kept reading, so do you remember last year, I talked about monkeys in a zoo that were given a tunnel-shaped device to play different sounds and that they really liked traffic sounds? Do you remember this? I don't remember that. Yeah. So they were given the option of rain, music, silence, or traffic. And they preferred traffic. So we had a whole conversation about, is that because they're zoo animals? Right. Is it because they haven't grown up in the wild? They grew up in a zoo. And is that what? Yeah. Okay. Or is it because it's similar to sounds that they hear in the forest? So anyway, so ultimately that that was kind of the funny initial story that came out of this. But step two, what do you think step two of this study is? It's TV. Yeah. Yeah. Visuals. I think they're from television now. I mean, really, it's, it's like, it's more like a tablet, I suppose. But yeah, it's in a tunnel built of plywood and acrylic. And it has a monitor on the other side. It has, of course, a camera and sensors so that they can figure out what the monkeys are up to. And so it was up to the animals to decide if they wanted to step in. When they go in, the sensor recognizes them there and it turns on the TV. So they could decide, do I want to watch TV right now? Or do I know how to watch TV right now? And then they would see a video of the week. So during the study, the videos that played were sea life, like fish and jellyfish, wiggly worms, other zoo animals like zebras and deer, abstract art. So like moving abstract colors and stuff or lush forests. So they, it was hard for them to identify exactly what their preference was because there was a video of the week every week. So they couldn't pick. But what was clear was they spent most of their time watching worms or underwater scenes. Worms are interesting because they eat worms. But that also were those were the things that were available in the middle of the study. So they didn't randomize what was available when. So that means it could have just been when they finally realized how the system worked and they weren't sick of it yet. So difficult to say, requires further study to figure out what they really like. But what they did find out was that they could really see and discern things on the video because for example, they tried to lick and eat the worms on the screen and they even went around to try to see if the worms were behind the screen. Yeah. So they could definitely see there. I want them. What was on the screen. The other thing that's interesting here is that compared to groups that had no video content, those groups showed more intense grooming and scratching, which is a sign of stress. Which group? The one that didn't have the TV. The one that didn't have the TV was more stressed. Well, so they did not test. Yeah. So this is where I have to be sciency about it. They did not test hormone levels. They did not pull hairs and test hormones. They did not test blood pressure. They didn't look at adverse medical impacts or anything like that. So they have like no data here, except. But the monkeys that had TV did more hair combing. No, the opposite. They did less scratching. Because the scratching is like a bird over cleaning and pulling out their feathers or yeah. So you'll see sometimes if an animal has an adverse behavior like that, this does happen in primates a lot and captivity. If you can't figure out exactly what their issue is, but they'll over scratch and they'll have, it's a lot more complicated than that. But yes, they'll have like a hairless area because they've been scratching a lot. And so people spend their entire careers trying to figure out what this animal needs. And it depends from individual to individual. But if this was an option, if this was something in the barrel of potential things to give to an animal who's showing these adverse behaviors, if a TV is one of them that could help them reduce stress and reduce this kind of adverse grooming behavior, that would be a really cool way. And also not that expensive. You just need a wood tunnel with plexiglass and an iPad behind it. So be pretty easy, pretty inexpensive to offer. I will also say when I was a zookeeper, we used to play videos for a lot of the primates when it was really rainy or when they were recovering from a medical procedure and they were shut inside. We would show them videos. And they would definitely watch them. Lots of Disney movies. That's funny. I wonder if they got to pick, right? Yeah, I'm just wondering if the individuals that did not, if they didn't get the videos, the reason that they're itching and scratching is because they are lacking stimulation or they're jealous because they don't have TVs to watch. Yeah, I don't know if they, it's a dominance thing. I feel like they probably didn't have visual access to the same areas. Yeah. So I would guess that it, I don't know for sure, but based on what I know about how these things are usually set up, I would guess that they were in a separate enclosure. But yeah, not sure. It's a good question. Yeah. I don't know. Thanks for bringing these two feel good stories. Monkey's watching TV. Aren't we all? Worms. Oh, that's my favorite. I hope the monkeys watching their TVs right now are thinking, oh, this show, it's great. It's just missing some worms. Right. Oh, this is This Week in Science. Thank you all for watching. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of This Week in Science. If you enjoy twists, please consider heading over to our website, twist.org, and clicking on the support, support us on Patreon button. If you support us on Patreon, you will continue to help us bring this show to you every week. We really do our best to do this over and over again in a fresh and fun way, bringing you new stories and new guests, new content every week. I mean, who wants to watch This Week in Last Week in Science or This Week in Last Week in, oh, just the same week as always in science? That's not what we do, and it's because of you and your support. So please head over to twist.org, click on that Patreon link and choose your level of support, $10 enough, and we will thank you by name at the end of the show. Thank you for all of your support. We really cannot do this without you. All right, Justin, you ready to tell us a story? You got some news for us? Yeah, I got a couple of stories. Oh yeah, what makes a stable society? Is it income inequality? Is it a willingness to believe in false information? Could massive deregulation and zero taxes lead to the longevity of a nation state? I don't think I've ever heard of anything like that. I don't know if anybody's ever really proposed that, but some people have actually sort of leaned in some of those directions. Studied in the journal Current Anthropology by Purdue University. Didn't we have another pretty story earlier? Anthropologists assembled data on 30 pre-modern societies and conducted a quantitative analysis on the features and durability of these societies to see which ones had good governance. What made a good government? Results showed that societies based on broad, equitable, well-managed tax systems and functioning bureaucracies were more likely to have political institutions that were open to public input and more sensitive to the well-being of the populace and lasted longer. There weren't very many to choose from, though, from about a quarter of the ones that they had in those 30 sort of fit into the sort of good governance. For more than a century, it's accepted textbook account that democracy was just a western phenomenon, which, yeah, it kind of was around before that to various levels. But, yeah, it's sort of interesting. The overwhelmingly demonstrates that authoritarian regimes that have broad discretion over a nation's wealth tend to start to use it for a more personal and political gain, as opposed to the welfare of the nation-state as a whole. Right. And when you weaken a nation-state, it tends to not stick around. Just skimming off the top and, oh, just take a little bit more and a little bit more. All of that, all those bureaucracies, all those regulations and red tape and all the taxes you pay, that's the price of being in a civilized society. That's sort of just the way it's, there hasn't been a successful model without taxes and bureaucracy, anyway. And the bureaucracy does help to hopefully stop that authoritarian control or use of the funds. You could be going anywhere from checks and balances as a thing, or one of the things they sort of point to is there's a sort of a positive feedback loop when people are paying taxes and they know what they're being spent on, that they know they're being spent on, something that generally benefits them in their society. Then they're happier in the society, they're more supportive of it, they're more willing to pay taxes to it and work towards the interests of the city-state. And politicians in that system, the bureaucracy side of it is, if you are spending those monies on your nation-state, on trying to improve people's lives, the people will support you. And it was a very positive feedback loop. And I think that's part of what sort of projected those longevity of those tax and good bureaucratic management systems. And then this is the last story that I've got at least. What makes a healthy diet? We have the high food groups. Can you name them? Can you name them? Isn't that defunct? There's grains. There's dairy. Dairy, meats. Yeah, proteins. Produce. Yeah, fruits and vegetables. That's five. And then your yogurt probiotics. Is that where you're going? No, no, no, that's dairy. That's definitely in the dairy category. Well, is it grains? Is that like wheat and rice? So yeah, it's grains or starches. They kind of put grains and starches together. So I guess, I don't know, spaghetti, noodles, spaghetti, pasta. That's in the grains and starches. What about fats? Is fat something? That's probably somewhere in the protein foods to dairy, right? Well, yeah, it's all included in there. But anyway, yeah. Okay, where do mushrooms fit? Protein, vegetable. It's a little, it's sort of, it gives you some of the nutrients for the meat would. And they kind of, they have slept, slept it into the vegetable category because people cook them with vegetables, right? Which is not, you know, for, for a reason to put it into a food category, people cook it with vegetables. Well, that's why people think tomatoes are vegetables, right? Goes on your salad. So no, I like actually that's, that's very specific. What you just brought up is a very specific thing. The reason is a vegetable. The reason tomatoes are a vegetable, this was under the Reagan administration. Oh, right. He declared it a vegetable so that ketchup could be considered a vegetable in a kid's lunch. Yeah, I recall that. So that for the mandatory lunch program that we had to feed all the kids, which is a good thing, you could take out the green beans, I guess, and put ketchup on the menu and you wouldn't have to have them both. It doesn't have to be good. I would say, though, as, as a long-time vegetarian, little chicken pescatarian eater now, mushrooms have always been a big source of protein. I've always thought of them as an alternative to meat. Well, think about how many portobello burgers there are. So many. But you can do mushroom on pasta. You can do like mushrooms are fantastic. I love mushrooms. Except for the weird ones that are too chewy and that's gross. But anyway, that's just me. Other people love them. But go on. This is a follow up study from something they were doing last month. They identified reasons to add more mushrooms to the recommended American diet. The slight disclaimer, this is a mushroom council funded to study. Okay. But if you think about it, who else is going to finance research into the nutritional value of mushrooms other than the mushroom council? So they spent like a million and a half in the last two years, three years on the fungus council food research. There's a mushroom council. If you didn't know, it's not huge in the edible mushroom commercial circles. Anyway, the new research is published in food and nutrition research examined the addition of mushrooms to the USDA's recommended food plate. So they said if you had this portion in there, which is I think was 80 something 84 grams of mushrooms about four or five of those big white medium to big white mushrooms increased several shortfall nutrients including potassium as well as vitamin B and minerals and have minimal impact on calories, sodium or saturated fat. So it showed here that they had with that 84 grams of mushrooms an increase of potassium eight to 12%, copper 16 to 26%, selenium 11 to 23, riboflavin 12 to 18% increase, and niacin 11 to 26% increase with just five mushrooms there. And yeah, none of the negatives. Also, oddly, and I don't understand this at all, this I need to have explained to me at some point mushrooms exposed to UV light increased vitamin D by 67 to 90%. Interesting. So kind of, so they have a process similar to animals in that vitamin D conversion that sunlight, sunlight converting cholesterol into vitamin D probably. So you're going to tell me all those black light posters of psychedelic colored mushrooms. Vitamin D. It's true. It's good. They fluoresced. I'd also found an increase in a lot of other micronutrients that are supposed to be good for you, but the FDA hasn't really said anything about whether they're good for you yet, but it has like some other increasing stuff too. But yeah, and this is what I thought about this is like how perfect for all of the Nordic and all of Canada, I guess for the Pacific Northwest or the Pacific Northwest where people aren't getting any sun. Yeah. Hello, Eric in Alaska, right? Here's a here's a way get yourself a UV light. I should just pre UV light them. I don't understand. It seems very specifically like when I don't know if you can still do it once you bought it from the grocery store. I've thought about trying to learn to grow my own mushrooms. There you go. Perfect time. You're in San Francisco. You people are all vitamin D deprived. Yeah. There's some age groups by a little brick of them and then you just chop them off every once in a while. Just keep them in a nice, nice, nice place. Not too hot. Not too cold. Yeah. I don't think you know you don't need dirt. You can they have these bricks and just put them in a box and you leave them in your closet and they're happy. Yeah. Yeah. Growing mushrooms is a very fascinating thing. Okay. So I also I looked at the Kiki knows a guy. Kiki knows a guy. Kiki knows a guy. I know. So the food pyramid has six food groups on it and the top one is fats, oils and sweets. But also because it means don't have very much of them. That's why it's at the very top. It's the little portions at the top. Right. But all that to say the food pyramid was largely defunct some years ago. Yeah. I said it was all a bunch of seven pyramid. It's not that it's well, it's not all nuts. You can't eat all nuts. That's only one of the five. See, everybody has their own idea and they're all wrong. But well, the main thing is the base of your food pyramid should not be grains. That's really the problem is you should not be eating the majority of your food as bread and cereal and rice. I don't know. I feel like I feel like humanity probably for like most of the early civilizations did a lot of that did a lot of that. Yeah, but their bread was very different than ours. No, it's not. It's the lack of it's because humans don't move around anymore. We used to walk 50 miles a day in our daily. Yeah, we move. We're just lazy. We're just like, but yeah, so I pointed. There is research to suggest that we have always been lazy. That we didn't all wait. We weren't always on the move. Yes. You know who did that research? The council for the couch manufacturers. That's who did that. We always got to know who did the study. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Let's move on from couch research into a bit of a seasonal change. Spring is coming. Right? Isn't that going to come? Blair, Blair, you are the least enthusiastic. Because what has been ever been on the show? Maybe it has to do with a lack of Mew opioid receptors. Or maybe she has too many researchers. Spring looks like fall in San Francisco. It's still foggy. Like it doesn't change. Yeah, but I want you to know that researchers decided to look at this question of how opioid receptors in the brain are associated with seasonal changes. Do our receptors in our brain change with the seasons? We already know that there are changes to the brain in terms of... Move myself around here. We already know that there are changes to the brain with respect to other neurotransmitters. So dopamine, serotonin, these other neurotransmitters and their receptors also go through seasonal changes. And these researchers are like, well, opioids may be someplace to look as well. Our body produces natural opioids. It's also involved in socio-emotional behaviors. They said, let's check this out. Now, interestingly, these researchers are in Finland, in Turku. And so they were looking at changes in day length as the indicator of seasonal change. And in Finland, they have extreme day length changes. So they looked at humans who had been PET scanned, positron emission tomography, and over a period of time, and they looked at their brains to see if there was a change in what are called the mu-opioid receptors, or in their acronym in their paper, more, M-O-R, the more signaling. And while they found a slight change, and it wasn't like a huge link, what they did find enough of a signal in the change in mu-opioid receptors, the more, the mores in the brain in areas related to socio-emotional cognitive processing, they did find a small link. And so it's very interesting that, in addition to these other neurotransmitters, there is now this link with the opioid system and seasonal mood changes, perhaps. They also looked at changes in the brain in the opioid receptors in mice, and they looked at how they changed in their mood over months. And there are a lot of interesting things brought up in this study as evidence, as sources for their ideas moving into this study. Some of them that I found really interesting, the largest number of suicide attempts are in the spring. This is also when the most extreme mu-opioid receptor changes have taken place. So you've got the most opioid receptors in this period of time. It's also a period of time in which a lot of opioid, opiate, not opioid, opiate suicides and overdoses take place. So there is a link, according to them, and the work that they cited, that the summer months are kind of like the sun and everything's happy kind of months. And then the dark, long, dark, Finnish winter changes these opioid levels. People turn to opiate abuse, and then this culminates in a very negative way by springtime, after a season of dark depression. But all this aside, what they are very interested in considering is this link between the opiate system, the natural opioid system in the body, and seasonal affective disorders and other mood disorders. We know that the other neurotransmitters are connected, and now we know that there's a little more evidence that this system is connected to that as well. And why wouldn't it be? Yeah, I thought it was an interesting study to think about. Yeah. I think Norway is too far north. Yeah, a little bit. It's one of those places that would probably be really interesting to visit in the summer. In the summer, yeah. I found the significance of this study originating in a far northern country that experiences 23 and a half hours of darkness in the winter to be looking at these, to be for people to be asking these questions, whereas more equatorial areas, people might not be, you know, day length is more steady. Where you are on the planet makes a difference, but it's interesting that our brains adapt regardless of where we are because of the differences in day length. And day length can impact our behavior because of those changes to our brain. So I think that's where it really gets really interesting. So I think it's also interesting because maybe like 10 years ago, if you had talked about getting a sun lamp, people would have looked at you like you were talking about crystals or something. But I guess now there's actually a body of research where you could actually go to a doctor and they could prescribe you a sun lamp that could actually happen, which would be great if you could find a way to help people through seasonal depression that nothing that, not that there's anything wrong with pharmaceuticals, but if you could get around that and get through it by getting them a sun lamp, that would be really great. And you could even figure out exactly how much you would need. You would say like, okay, you have to put it on for this long every day. Yeah, I don't know. It's very interesting. I would like to see it turned into actual treatment. It'd be neat. Yeah. And if it could be, that would be, it would be amazing. Yeah. And my last story for the night is, it has a bit more whimsy to it than the previous story, figuring out our own brains. How about figuring a map, figuring out slime mold brains? I mean, no, slime mold doesn't have brains, but how do they do things? They're so cool. I love slime mold. Slime mold is amazing. It's a basic, it's a biological computer. It's a very basic biological computer. And we're still trying to figure out how it does a lot of the seemingly intelligent feats that it does. And one of those is how it remembers things. So slime mold is known for having memory. And when we talk about that, it's one of the ways it remembers, one of the things it remembers is food sources. That's important to it. So if you put a food source in a location and the slime mold is able to detect it and find it, there is somehow a system in place in the slime mold that changes the structure of the slime mold, allowing it to remember where that food source is for a long period of time, even if another food source might show up someplace else and it might have to grow and move to other places, it could potentially go back to the food source from before. How does that happen? How is it able to calculate that? Well, researchers at the, let's see, where are these researchers? These researchers at the Technical University of Munich decided to take a really close look like under a microscope at the slime mold. And they've determined that slime mold is made up of these little tubules. And when it is exposed to a food source or something that it might be interested in, what it does is it releases that causes the release of a chemical. And that chemical then spreads through the slime mold to other areas of the slime mold to say the food is over here, grow in this direction. But, you know, it's a slime mold. So this is a chemical signal. There's no words actually saying this. It's just a chemical call and response, signal reaction. The trick is that the slime mold, it isn't just branches of mold growing off in a fractally pattern like a tree with its branches. What it is is a series of tubes. It really is a series of tubes and the compound that is the signaling molecule softens the tubes so that it allows the flow of nutrients and also increases the flow of that chemical to other areas in the slime mold. And so the branches, the tubes get bigger and they grow and they enable more stuff to flow through them and they allow more growth to take place. And so it is this structural change that occurs as the result of a chemical signal that leads to this so-called memory of a slime mold. The structure is indicative of memory. But you're talking about structure. So here's, maybe I have missed under the estimate. Can we have the picture back up? So what you're showing is a Petri dish, which at first look appears to be a giant colony that has spread out across of all these tiny single-celled fungi or whatever this mold creature, like all these things that spread. But that's not what this is, is it? I mean, aren't they like weirdly, they're like the largest single-cell creature or something? They are a single-celled, yes. So this is a single-celled organism. It's not a bunch of little cells. No, but that what we're looking at isn't a bunch of single-celled creatures or is it? No, it is a single-celled organism. That is one single-celled creature spread out across in it. So these things can be like from what I've heard, like 10 feet. They can stretch out over 10 feet and there still is. I'm like not quite understanding this. You understand that it's not a colony that you're looking at there, but one creature. Yes, Phasarum polycephalum has no nervous system. It is somewhere between, they say it exists at the crossroads of animals, plants and fungi. It is a link between I guess the ancient eukaryotes. It is a single-cell and it's made up of these tubes, a bunch of tubes. It's a network of tubes. Look at that Petri dish picture that we had up there and it looks like a sprawling colony that has all these little, like you said, sort of fractally branches going off as it's sort of colonizing the Petri dish, but it's not. That's the one creature. Yes, it's a single creature. Yeah, so it's not communication between different organisms, between different cells. It is just it. It's just it. It's yeah, it's as if a neuron, it's like a neuron sending an action potential or any signal down its length, except there is no neuron. It's just the cell, the organism that is what it is. I remember we reported 100 million years ago on somebody who like hooked up some sort of microchip thing to a slam mold and got it to move in different directions. It could like joystick control it to move around. It's a really strange creature. Mm-hmm. It's an incredibly strange creature, but they're fascinating and being able to understand how it is able to do what it does will tell us a lot about the basics of memory. What is needed for memory? What is needed for behavior? When you break it down to the ultimate simplest form, which this pretty much is, how does it work? It's very interesting that what is happening in this particular case is it is a structural change brought about by chemical signals. The researchers write in their abstract, they combined theoretical model and experimental data to reveal how memory is encoded. A nutrient source locally releases a softening agent that gets transported by the cytoplasmic flows within the tubular network. Tubes receiving a lot of softening agent grow in diameter at the expense of other tubes shrinking. Thereby, the tube's capacity for flow-based transport get permanently upgraded toward the nutrient location, redirecting future decisions and migration. This demonstrates a lot. This is a logic. It's a logic machine. It's like a single cell computer. Yeah, that's what I said. It's like a little basic computer. It really is. No, I've done it. You said it. Now you really get it. It's computer because it's using logic or something. No, this is, ah, that's like a mechanical logic system in place. Wow. That's amazing. Yep. This demonstrates that the nutrient location is stored in and retrieved from the network's tube diameter hierarchy. Mechanical logic gates in a, I don't even know what to call them tube. It's a slime mold. It's a slime mold. I don't even know how to categorize this. The blob. All I have to say is that after this story, I think slime mold is totally tubular, man. That's only like, it's more than 30 years out of date. That, it's fine though. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It stuff comes around again eventually. Somebody listening to this. You're the Jetsons. We'll totally get that. Yeah. Eventually one day, one day we will get to the Jetsons. I will have my jet pack, so will you. We'll be happy. Did you see the new, the new post office cars? They look like the Jetsons car. No, do they? We'll talk about it in the after show. They look so futuristic. All right. After show it is. I have a letter that I wanted to read from one of our listeners in response to our conversation about fractals a week or so ago. I enjoyed the story about fractals you brought last week. I would like to share something related to it with you. Art is not science, but art can be informed. Wait. Art is not science, but art can be informed by science. In particular, music is informed by mathematics, physics, and cognition. Musicologists have long recognized self-similar and recursive structures in music, which are characteristics of fractals. More recently, some composers have intentionally used fractals in their music, usually in digital compositions. I create self-similar recursive patterns of intervals that look like fractals from which I compose. I imagine these fractals to be infinite, but the part that appears in the score is the part that occurs in our hearing range. I used one particular fractal, fractal to compose a piece, which is then shared as a YouTube link that I will share with you all on our website if you head to twist.org for the show notes tomorrow after they're posted. It's fractal music and it goes on and on and the but the clarinets and the Luis Viquez on clarinets composed by Paul Lombardi. But I love the idea that music could be that they're the mathematics of fractals because music is inherently mathematical, can represent fractals as well. And so I think that in itself is a very, very interesting idea that these repeated patterns and infinite complexity could play off. And so Paul, thank you so much for sharing your music and sharing your thoughts. Oops, stop screen sharing in my emails. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and your composition. I think it is wonderful. Paul is an associate professor of music theory and composition at the University of South Dakota and has been listening to Twist for a long time. Yeah, if you have any responses to stories that we've had, be sure to email Kirsten at thisweekinscience.com or there are other emails that we will read off at the end of the show for Justin and Blair and me. And oh my gosh, it is the end of the show. Oh, what? How'd that happen? We made it to the end of the show. I want to say thank you to people. Thank you for joining us. Excuse me. I just made myself have a little throat thing. All right. So, uh, Rod Haglin says that was Jackson Pollock on Clarinet. Do you like a good Jackson Pollock? It's like a scatterplotter of everybody's data with no filters. It's, it's, it's amazing. And, and fun fact, fun fact, my, uh, my, my letter J's, I got from the way that my mother does her letter J's, which is this sort of like it, it's sort of like it doesn't look like a regular, it's more triangular and it just goes down to the bottom and didn't have a little loop at the bottom. But I was made them that way because that's how my mom made them. And then I saw one time I said, and she was an artist who's also a big Jackson Pollock fan. One day I saw his autograph and I went, oh, she stole his letter J. That's where I got mine from. She absolutely copied it. Her letter J is, is the J he uses and when he signs paintings, which I've used my whole life to think and I just copied it from my mom and that was weird, but she copied it from the Jackson Pollock. So it's just, uh, it's a fun fact. Jackson, Jackson Fly, Justin. Oh, thank you all for listening, for being here, for enjoying the science. I hope you did enjoy the show. I would love to give shout outs right now. Bada, thank you for your help on social media and with show notes. I would love to thank Gord for manning that chat room and heading over to twists. I've seen, not twist, Twitch a couple of times now I've seen. I'd also like to thank Rachel, our new assistant. Thank you so much for helping out on show, show, on show things that need to be helped out on. It's just great getting notes on things afterwards to help me, help me manage what we're doing here and identity for gifts. We have a new, we have a new Blair. Yeah. No, no, no. And thank you to identity for, for recording the show. We really could not do this without your recordings. Additionally, I would like to say thank you to our Patreon sponsors. Thank you so much. My camera's in the way. Thank you so much. Ken Hayes, Howard Tan, Christopher Rappin, Dana Pearson, Richard Brendon Minnish, Melizan, Johnny Gridley, Kevin Railsback, flying out Richard Porter, Christopher Dreyer, Mark Mazaros, R.D.M., Greg Briggs, John Atwood, two fabulous thespians. Rudy Garcia, Dave Wilkinson, Rodney Lewis, Paul Rick Ramis, Mount Sutter, Phillip Shane, Kurt Larson, Craig Landon, Mountain Sloth, Jim Drapeau, Sarah Chavez, Sue Doster, Jason Olds, Dave Neighbor, Eric Knapp, E.O. Kevin Parachan, Aaron Luthin, Steve Debell, Bob Calder, Marjorie Stanton, Paul Marjorie and Paul Stanton, Paul Disney, Patrick Pecoraro, Gary S. Tony Steele, Ulysses Adkins, Brian Condren, and Jason Roberts. Thank you for all of your support on Patreon. And if you would like to support us on Patreon, head over to twist.org and click that Patreon link on next week's show. We will be back Wednesday, 8 p.m. Pacific Time, broadcasting live from our YouTube and our Facebook channels and from twist.org slash live. We will. And if you want to listen to us as a podcast, you can search for This Week in Science for podcasts are found, really cut through all the silly stuff in between. If you enjoyed the show, you can get your friends to subscribe as well. For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes and links to stories will be available on our website, www.twist.org. And you can also sign up for our newsletter while you're there. You can also contact us directly. You can email Kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistmeaning at gmail.com, or me, Blair, at BlairBazz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist, T-W-I-S, in the subject line, or your email will be spam filtered into the tubes of a slime mold. And remembered. You can also hit us up on the Twitter. We're at twist science, we're at Dr. Kiki, we're at Jackson Fly, we're at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address, a suggestion from interview Haiku that comes to you in the night, please let us know. We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember. It's all in your head. I'm setting up shop. Got my banner on furl. It says the scientist is in. I'm gonna sell my advice. Show them how to stop the robot with a simple device. I'll reverse for the warming with a wave of my hand. And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand. Science is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth. And I'll broadcast my opinion all over the air because it's this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, science. 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This is coming in a way. Listen to what we say and if you learn anything from the words that we've said then please just remember it's all it is. This week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science. So I have these new hue lights in here and my big lights are too too strong but I was trying to like put different colors on you can kind of see in the background right now. I've got Soho. I just put on Arctic Aurora. Here is let's see let's see let's see make yourself big so you can see your colors tropical twilight I don't know if you can see the colors change because my lights are too you can see the one up at the top I think changes just a little bit yeah now I'm on golden pond just changed it to multi here you can't really see it I'm just gonna make them bright again bright be bright I have this on my little globe ooh I like that that's cool lights are fun look at this bright green and there's blue ooh very nice purple orange composition made what made you feel like we were part of npr fata what yellow oh yellow's kind of nice maybe I should be using yellow for the show it is kind of nice here let me put you there because that's that's too blue it's too white I've been using but yeah maybe yellow yeah warm it up I think yellow is better yellow is better next time should I do red yeah gourd everything is pretty close pretty close but I could or I can in strobe strobe look look at I was zoomed now you can see my backdrop zoom zoom did he zoom oh the with the music it was very npr yeah it was a bit yeah the yellow is nice everyone agrees all right I'll do yellow next week jg my great great granddaddy was a slime mold well at one point maybe we all evolved from a slime mold somebody's grandpappy on down the line was a slime mold somewhere a fractal slime mold that maybe played music and it's too appendages like an organ it also reminded me of fantasia the original fantasia yeah a lot of like experimental music there's justin justin came back there he is went away so oh but you're not there gonna unmute yourself man I never left you just turned the camera off I've been stuck here in backstage the whole time that's not true put a lot here saw you so what were you talking about there was something for the after show that you were gonna talk about yes no oh Blair had something to talk about but uh the Mars the Mars video also the Mars video that's what it was yeah I was talking about the new mail trucks yeah that too oh there's all kinds of after show stuff I mean you need the mail trucks we need to so here can I can I screen share yes screen share some mail trucks and then I'll find the video okay so I'm sharing twitter I don't think there's any bad language what why would that be bad language I don't know just because it's twitter oh right that can't be real no that's from up that's that's it's so straight out of picture that's up this is real oh they're cute that's awesome they're all decided oh that's awesome 165 thousand electric delivery trucks that's great that'll be awesome okay where was that video I know I had so everyone's talking about how like they're very cute yes I love her um and then it looks like my attempt to draw a truck in first grade true it looks like it comes from the busy world of Richard scary so there's the lowly worm and then the other one I liked that's probably gone now oh yeah here's I think this is like Johnny Bravo there's a us mail truck from that show um and then here's cloudy with a chance of meatballs and here's the famous car that Homer invented oh yeah um anyway I I think it's adorable look at it go oh we are starting to straighten up and fly right maneuver yeah go ahead are you are you ready for three minutes and 25 seconds of awesomeness perseverance I don't see it okay okay let's watch this I'm gonna share my screen and then I have to oh never mind okay ready set we are starting to straighten up and fly right maneuver where the spacecraft will jettison the entry balance masses in preparation for parachute deploy and to roll over to give the radar a better look at the ground like they indicate shoot deploy the navigation has confirmed that the parachute has deployed and we're seeing significant deceleration in the velocity our current velocity is 180 meters per second at an altitude of about 12 kilometers from the surface of Mars heat shield set perseverance has now slowed to subsonic speeds and the heat shield has been separated this allows both the radar and the cameras to get their first look at the surface current velocity is 145 meters per second at an altitude of about 10 kilometer nine and a half kilometers above the surface shield in the shot keep the heat shield in the shot there it is there it is going down there my god it's falling oh he lost the impact yeah so the filter converge velocity solution 3.3 meters per second altitude 7.4 kilometers now has radar lock on the ground current velocity is about 100 meters per second 6.6 kilometers of the surface who's that photo that we saw perseverance is continuing to descend on the parachute we're coming up on the initialization of terrain relative navigation and subsequently the priming of the landing engines our current velocity is about 90 meters per second at an altitude of 4.2 kilometers lvf valid we have confirmation that the lander vision system has produced a valid solution and part of terrain relative navigation I mean I brought into salad we have a landing engine I need a cop salad ordering wow back shell that is 83 meters per second at about 2.6 kilometers from the surface Mars the confirmation that's a giant cliff we are currently performing the divert maneuver current velocity is about 75 meters per second at an altitude of about a kilometer off the surface of Mars here in safety Bravo we have completed our terrain relative navigation current speed is about 30 meters per second altitude of about 300 meters off the surface of Mars I feel like I'm watching that powers of 10 video right now accordion which means we are conducting the sky crane about to conduct the flight crane maneuver there goes the sky crane still haven't done the sky crane it's got that much activity on the surface wow yeah about 20 meters off the surface 20 meters there it is a little jetpack jetpack some real people they can happen on Mars there's one right there we're getting signals from tomorrow tango delta and there it goes that's all confirmed perseverance safely on the surface of Mars ready to begin seeking the end of past life not amazing so to be clear this is the first time we've gotten this view right yep first time that's a phenomenal cancel that's pretty bad so that's insane we just saw we just watched ourselves land on Mars yep yeah isn't that neat I know Gord it's so cool like I can just watch it all that watch it over and over again it's amazing like I've said many times I am perfectly happy here on the moon oh oh so cool study that uh it was like an old study that I came across but researchers are trying to figure out if they can put fish on the moon why of course you can you can put anything on the moon it's just whether you know whether it'll survive yeah it does anything once it's there yeah um so their French researchers were studying different kinds of fish eggs I mean it's not because of caviar and whatnot but they were studying different kinds of fish eggs to see like they were simulating a launch and how much shaking they would be under during a Soyuz launch and in checking to see how many of those eggs would still be viable and go on to produce fish because they're thinking that if we have a moon colony at some point um that something like fish would be an easy if they grow and everything works because I mean if they're in water like well yeah if you and if you get enough fish on the moon then you put whales on the moon yeah that way if you can put fish on the moon I'll set it up again if you can put fish in the moon then you can put whales on the moon and then what can you have what are you rejecting no you're the Futurama uh song like jukebox we're whalers on the moon we carry a harpoon but there ain't no whale so we tail tall tails and sing a whaling tune moon tuna yes yes but moon fish fish on the moon that is a goal of some no researchers maybe maybe hi yawning people what's going on and you started it and then I listen I haven't slept properly in over a week okay I know how's your leg it's a lot better but I still can't sleep for more than like a couple hours in a row because I keep waking up in pain but right um because yeah because I like I go to sleep with like my like elevated on two pillows with an ice pack on top of my knee but that doesn't last very long because I'm a stomach sleeper normally see that would be it right there I would never be I would get terrible sleep just because I'd be on my back yeah yeah so I I get terrible sleep and then I wake up on my side and I'm like okay maybe I can figure this out and I like put a pillow in between my legs and I like put the ice on the side of my knee and I'm like okay then I fall back asleep and then I wake up on my stomach and terrible pain to like roll back around but it's getting better I'm glad it's getting better yeah but I'm tired is the point I'm like I just wow as the person who and I'm aware I'm planning on starting a family eventually and it's all gonna go out the window and I'm aware of that but I just currently I sleep I hit the pillow I'm asleep in five minutes and I sleep for about seven and a half hours straight amazing so this is messing me up you're like what is going on well the fact that you fall asleep quickly is great because you will probably continue to fall asleep very quickly when you are a new parent if that happens and yeah it's just the waking up multiple times during the night the lack of sanity yeah you hear that she lose track of time entirely nothing makes sense anymore yeah anyway it's it's fine I'll be fine it won't last forever Gaurav stomach sleeping is fantastic just stretch out well I'm also like a starfish sleeper also which like is so usually it's like I'm like this on my stomach and then this is out and both legs are akimbo just completely out I like doing that as well taking over the whole bed yeah yeah which is is one of the reasons that Brian and I feel like get along so well is uh we only share the bed 30% of the time so most nights I have the queen bed to myself and I can fully starfish and I also oh I didn't mention I'm at a diagonal so ma'am I'm sorry there isn't uh there isn't a double California king size mattress no no that doesn't exist you could buy two and put them to get I guess yeah yeah you got the gabanino but there isn't no no no bunk beds bunk bed California king yeah I'm sorry ma'am but that's also hasn't been invented yet room of beds dang that would be great yeah room of bed you should just have a room where the whole floor is bed and you can have like yeah one of the things I always love most bed in the movie help in uh in the Beatles movie they're they're like a crazy house and they had one of those sunken couches like circular couches in the floor and I always thought that was so fun looking it does look fun although now that I have an injured knee I'm like ooh that that would be really hard to get out of that's a young person's game a floor couch yeah when your knees start to give in your back then you're like oh god I gotta get up what I'm just gonna stay down here just a little longer room of foam pit yes you could have a foam pit identity four yeah last night I didn't get much sleep either don't know what's going on don't know what is it a full moon is that what's happening no it tomorrow I think there you go that must be it unless the kiddie and rhythms are all met they are oh hot rod what was what was tmi hot rod was that on the moon tmi for your sleeping habits yes was the fact that I share a bed with my husband was that tmi it's you're right we have twin beds so we have separate twin beds like I love Lucy it's fine don't worry about it was that did that last the whole series or was that just in the beginning I feel like they finally got a bed together at some point I feel like it was very late in the show yeah but they had you're right they had their they said their own little twin that they went to bed in I think I wouldn't want a twin bed I like the idea of his and hers king size I mean that sounds great I think sound fantastic yeah California king bunk that is that's brilliant I hear I hear that many many many couples they're very happy not not sharing a bed yeah she's like I can sleep how I want you sleep you want you can how about we might even have the same room you can stay up as late as you want some couples are happier with separate residences and some couples are even more happy with separate spouses there's gradations of it but yeah there's people have ways of making relationships work sometimes by not ever seeing each other again it's always it's yeah it's amazing how many ways there are to get along with somebody there are a variety that is for sure I love I love Lucy they never had anything but the twin beds okay so we're gonna be allowed on television rave awkward primate uh says I sleep on the couch every night I actually there was one point when I had the best couch we're just gone now because mice attacked it one time oh no but I had the best couch and it got to the point where I had moved into a new place and uh I was like I don't remember the last time I slept in the bed and it takes up a tremendous amount of room and I got rid of the bed I just got rid of it I'm like I used I the couch is perfect I like sleeping in that preferred the couch is the best night sleep I get that's it and I just had that couch for some wow yeah huh did you move the couch into the bedroom no no but the bedroom became then the uh just a twist studio it's just like I just had desks in the bedroom so do you think it was the couch or do you think it was the fact that you like were doing other things and then would just succumb when sleep took you no no no I would I would if I could I toss and turn and it's nice queen-sized bed it was tossing and turning I'd get up go lie down on the couch and be out like that wow it was just a better I just sounded like you had a bad bed the bed was fine I don't haven't met other beds that I'm like oh this is what I was missing really you've never slept on a bed in like a hotel or anything and been like oh shit can I take this to go no actually every hotel bed I've ever been in I'm like this is awful hotel beds are the worst I've slept on a couple that were like if I could have stuffed it in my suitcase I would have it was so good but I think they were they were pretty fancy hotel rooms like I mean wasn't that that wasn't the whole thing with some of the big fancy hotels where they're like you love our beds now buy them and that turned into a whole commercial like yeah the problem is the problem is you bought beds that they had for a long time so they always had stains on them no like how many thousands of different people had slept in those beds it was a bad plan that was not the plan it's not what you did you're not buying used mattresses from a hotel but gotta get rid of them somehow gotta get rid of them somehow no no thank you where do you think all those discount mattresses come from oh Justin with recycled materials you know what recycling means they went they took the stains out most of them that's how they're recycled okay uh I think we've come to that point player you've been yawning all night I think it's time for you to say good night Blair okay good night okay say good night Justin good night Justin oh no I forgot to remind everybody mark your calendars April 17th 4 to 6 p.m for the this weekend science daily tech news show show super show science tech extravaganza didn't you make a joke that that wasn't the name of our show earlier we're like you know it's this weekend science not this daily tech news web night and yesterday last week show and every day the same day and science kind of but we still forgot to plug yeah I wrote yeah show show for the show show it for show show yeah you know where we should put you know where we should put the reminder on the website show notes the show website would be good and show notes yes well you see next week is a new month though we'll have to remember to to put it in the new we need then we need to do show notes so we need new show notes we need new notes for the show notes we need to shout out those notes in the show and yeah Justin why don't you write a disclaimer about it the faux show notes I will I will but it's gonna be the week after it happened you know sometimes you make notes you leave a note and then you set something down on top of the notes and then a week after the notes were really prescient you find the note again and it's too late can't even make a note to remind you that the note needs to be noted noted no longer take note of the note thank you for watching and we do hope that you will come back again next week tell your friends about twists make sure you're subscribed click that like button down below if you're on facebook or youtube just twitch have likes do the likes I don't know tell people we like you thank you for joining us we'll see you next week i'm gonna end this thing bye