 so that our Facebook feed continues. So we are live. I'm waiting hopefully to find out if Justin's internet will cooperate, his computer and internet are having issues tonight, unfortunately. But we are working to keep this show going because there is science in the world, everyone, and we need to talk about it on schedule because the rest of the world is totally on schedule right now. We're staying on time. Yes, Brian Williams in the YouTube chat room. Justin's disclaimers are wonderful and they're always worth the wait. Absolutely. I don't know when he's going to dive back in here, though. So I believe that we need to get a move on things and do the show and hope that Justin will join us when he can. All right. I'm like fluffing myself while we're live. Yes, it's the perfect time. Hello, everyone. We are ready. All right, let's start this show in three, two. Oh, wait, I didn't write things in my list that was all sitting there. We're going to fill people's heads with Space Brains. What is the name of the boat? Oxpecker. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the fab lab. OK, now I can go. So we're starting the wait. Who's reading the disclaimer? Well, that would be you, Blair. OK, great. You like to do it? Just before we start, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Justin wrote it. Justin wrote the disclaimer. Blair will read it. We will go on with the show. Ready? Yeah. Ready, ready, ready, wonderful. Starting the show in three, two. This is twist. This week in science episode number seven hundred sixty nine recorded on Wednesday, April 15th, twenty twenty going crazy for science. Hi there, I'm Dr. Kiki, and tonight we will fill your head with Space Brains, Oxpeckers and the fab lab. But first disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. At a time like this, the civilization reorganizing itself around a particularly pernicious pandemic, we are all awaiting the ultimate. What has science done for me lately? Moment of vaccine, a treatment, an immunity, a cure, a path back to normal life. The way to do it is through the funding of science, because science saves lives. Polio, measles, mumps, chicken pox and Spanish flu have been eliminated. The Spanish flu alone killed nearly 700,000 Americans in 1918. Fifty million lost their lives worldwide. HIV has killed about 32 million people worldwide. Today, around 38 million people on this planet have HIV. But if treated properly, they have the same life expectancy as anyone without HIV. Science saves lives. It's just one of the wonderful things that science does. But it's a really important one, almost as important as this week in science coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I want to learn everything. Discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. Good science to you, Kiki. And good science to you, too, Blair. Unfortunately, Justin's got some internet troubles. We hope that he will join us at some point during the show. But we will have an amazing show for you, full of science and fun. All right, so in the show tonight, I have brought stories about. What did I bring stories about matter? Matters because matter, it matters. Alien breakups and space brains. We also are joined tonight by crazy and Lindsey. Hello. Hello. Thanks for joining us. I will introduce you more fully in just a moment. All right, Blair, what do you have in the animal corner? Oh, I have turtle sex, the now not the verb. I have oxpeckers and I have flamingo friendship. Oh, flamingos, the pink lovely. Brine sifting birds that smell at the zoo. Yes, they do smell indeed. I like flamingos from a distance, but let's discuss later. All right, Justin had some stories in the lineup about T. Gandhi and some spider bites. But hopefully we'll be able to get to those. I don't know where he is, but it makes me sad. But as we jump into the show here, I want to remind you that if you are not yet subscribed to This Week in Science, it's pretty easy to do. You look for This Week in Science on any podcasting platform on YouTube or on Facebook. Just look for us and you can find us and subscribe. And when you do subscribe, you'll get new episodes of twists every week when we publish new episodes. It's so easy and fabulous. You can also visit twist.org, our website. But now it is time to get into the show. I'd love to introduce our guest for the evening. Lindsay Murphy is the creator, executive producer and host of the Fab Lab with Crazy Aunt Lindsay, the award winning kids science web series on YouTube that takes every science concepts and turns them into fabulous DIY projects. Thanks for joining us tonight, Lindsay. Oh, and she froze. Yeah, we lost her. Darn. She also is having the internet issues. We'll give her a moment and maybe her internet will re-up itself and things will come back. Be right back. She'll be back. She'll be back. She'll be back. So tonight is going to be the night of internet trouble. Yeah, it's a great show. Should we talk about the internet and how much pressure it's under lately? I mean, could you imagine? It's probably seriously got some performance anxiety. Well, I was also I was just having a conversation recently that it's getting to the point, especially with so many people working from home that internet is a basic utility now. It's I mean, we've been talking about it for a long time, but really now it's become so clear that it's not a luxury item. Every right. Everyone needs it. The internet. Yeah, I've seen a few people bringing this up more and more often. And Lindsay, you're back. Hi, sorry. Computers like for my back up. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Sorry. Hey, are you she being introduced? Let me shut down and this is what we do. This is how the internet, how the internet is going to treat us tonight. The technology, the internet. It's OK. We just keep rolling. It's good. Just keep rolling. Hi, everybody rolling. I'm only going to guess what you said. If you ask any questions, re-ask it. But hi, everyone. It's great to have you here. So can you tell us about yourself? How you I mean, looking at a bio I read about you, you started in fashion design and ended up in STEM. How did that transition take place? Sort, yeah, sort of. So I was a very precocious, busy, ambitious young person. And I fell in love with cooking and with fashion really early in my life. And because I, you know, I've never been great at having hobbies. I've always like made endeavors out of everything I found interesting. So when I was 12 years old, my so my sister is eight years older than I am. And so when I was about 10 years old, she went to college. And when she came back, like the first holiday back, she had a Vogue magazine and a Harper's Bazaar and I just gobbled it up. And I started like reading a bunch of like, you know, fashion blogs and just all not we didn't call them blogs back then, but like people were writing about fashion and I ended up applying to the fashion institute, the Fashion Institute of Technology when I was like 12 and they sent me a letter back very graciously saying, you know, you need a lot more than just an essay and a hope and a wish, you need a transcript and SATs and all these other things. But they did let me know that they had a program, a summer program, summer and Saturday program for high school students. So I applied to that when I got to high school, I got in. I started going to FIT when I was 15, when I was 16, I was interning in several fashion showrooms, discovered I wasn't that in love with fashion and decided to and decided to, you know, sort of change the plan. So by the time I got to college, you know, my childhood dreams of becoming a fashion executive of some kind, just sort of dissipated. And I went to my second love or technically probably my first first love television and I started interning at television production houses, movie and commercial houses. I was became a production assistant when I graduated from community college. I was recruited into a role at MTV Networks to build their video on demand department, the technology and the service offering was very new. So it was literally sort of like a technical project management job, plus like an ad sales job. And it was a little bit finance and just like just literally building this department, building this new technology into viability for for a consumer base. And that turned into a job in advertising and then advertising turned into burnout. And so I quit my job when I was 26. I quit my job as director of business development at an ad agency and took care of people's children to make ends meet while I discovered myself and who it is that I wanted to be in the world and what I wanted to do. And it was in that experience that I just fell in love with watching kids be turned on to things and discover things. And I would make little projects and activities for the kids I was babysitting for my nieces and my nephews, my godchildren and earned the moniker Crazy Aunt Lindsay because I don't really do things the same way other people tend to do them. And so, yeah, Crazy Aunt Lindsay was born in this in this period of my life. And I was kind of low key making videos for kids specifically specifically around activities, just fun activities and a lot of them turned into more science projects and cooking projects. And the fab lab was born was born out of that. And that was 10 years ago. So, yeah, that's amazing. So when you're I'm just thinking about the the change in career there, like the high pressure advertising industry and then working with children. Do you feel like there were any career skills that you have got from managing advertising with working with kids? Yeah, a lot, a lot of patience, a lot of learning how to communicate to different kinds of communicators, learning how to perceive things that people weren't necessarily verbalizing, but we're communicating, you know, with, you know, their body language or just sort of like underlying notes and tones, just kind of picking up, being able to decipher what wasn't being said and learning how to bring my language to a level that everyone could understand in advertising, in technology, in business. Sometimes there are these huge words that mean these pretty simple processes and simple things and so learning how to bring things to a level where everyone could understand them so everyone could get on the same page and, you know, possibly do things like, oh, I don't know, go to bed, brush your teeth or, you know, make a deadline so that we can all be on the same page. Yeah, when you're when you made the transition, like when you're working with kids, how did you I mean, you incorporate STEM, science, technology, education and math. But I mean, did it start out just kind of DIY and you just started to gravitate towards the how do things work kind of questions? Like what happened? Yeah. So, you know, the first probably year, year and a half of the show was really just so I babysat for about 18 months of my life, maybe more like two years, but about 18 months in, I got picked up as a consultant to help launch the Xbox Connect. And so I was going to move back into the city and then be doing a lot of traveling this particular year. And so I had to basically, you know, quit all quit all my babysitting jobs. I had maybe like, you know, about nine families that I was working with regularly. And so a couple of the families got together and through a going away party for, you know, Crazy Outland Z and it was at this party in 2008, 2009 that one of the parents said, hey, you know, have you ever heard of YouTube? And I'm like, yeah, I heard of YouTube. But, you know, we kind of forget that 10, 12 years ago when YouTube was brand new, you know, digital marketing, digital platforms were really only kind of just being taken seriously. So, yes, I had heard of YouTube where many people had not at that at that time. And they were like, you know, hey, you should, you know, these activities that you do with our kids, you should make videos about them. It would be really a really great way to keep in touch with with us with each other. And I was like, hmm, so I just sort of stashed that away. Went out about my year working with Xbox, going to Seattle and LA and everywhere. And when I came back and was suddenly a consultant and didn't know where my next job was going to come from, I just thought to myself, go back to babysitting so you can pay right next month. And so I quickly drafted this email that was like, hey, I'm available. But then I kind of got a little bit like insecure about just randomly reaching out a year later when I needed something. So I was like, what can I, what can I do? Oh, I know, I'll make a video. So I made a video making play-doh with my Goddaughter page and emailed that out along with my just notice that I was available for some child care whenever needed and right away my schedule filled up and my video got a bunch of views. And it was really adorable because if I had, if I was going to be babysitting I'll say like Thursday for a family's date night. I'd get a phone call on, you know, Monday or Tuesday from, you know, one of my parents, whoever is babysitting for and they, you know, put their kid on and their kid would say, you know, hey, hey, Lindsey. Hey, crazy, Lindsey, I heard you're coming over on Thursday. Yeah, I'll be there at seven and they'd be like, are we going to make a video? And I'm like, that's fun. Yeah, we're going to make a video. So I just started making videos with the kids. I was actively babysitting. And so the first year, year and a half of the show, it was really just the activities that I did with that I brought to the kids for our time together. And after about a year and a half, some people on Twitter started seeing the show and we're just like, hey, this is a, you know, we really love your carbonic colors episode or we really love, you know, your mad science room. You know, this is a great science show. And I just kind of was like, huh, that's an interesting idea. I'm really into science. Everything that I was doing was sort of science, leaning by accident, not intentionally explain, you know, we would do things like make granola to explain carbohydrates or, you know, butter to talk about different molecules and the different types of molecules that exist in the milk solution. And it just kind of happened naturally. The show started out being called doing stuff with Crazy Aunt Lindsey. And within a year and a half, it became the Fab Lab. And that's what it's been ever since. And what are the what are the goals of the Fab Lab? What is what is the the ethos of the Fab Lab? What are the goals? Did you ask? Yeah, the goals and the ethos. What do you. Yeah, goals, the goals of the show really are for kids to see themselves and for families and for parents and for supplementary family members like babysitters and childcare providers, educators in some cases, but really kids and whoever is in their life. You know, everybody's busy, right? And kids like to do stuff. And sometimes it's like, you know, at the time it was, oh, you know, watch TV while I prepare dinner or, you know, here, you know, here's a coloring book or something while I finish up a call or an email or something at the time. Now it's here's the iPad or here's the iPhone, play a game, watch a video. But, you know, as busy as we all are and as a childcare provider, sometimes you only have about 90 minutes to spend with a kid. You know, how do we make the most of that quality time together? How do we just how do we really help that kid to feel seen and participate and equipped and empowered to do new things, make mistakes, make things that they're proud to share. So it really, you know, it really is for the it really is about the kids. The underlying goals and ethos are it's about it's about the kids and it's about the quality time that we get to share, sometimes very limited quality time that we get to share. And then it's about, you know, science. And then it's about, you know, all the other stuff, representation, you know, access, all that other stuff. But it really is just about helping every single kid, regardless of their socioeconomic background or their race or their creed or where they live, just equipping them and the people around them to make the most of the time that they get to share. Kids grow up fast, you know, so what can we do? Yeah, I'm watching my nine-year-old grow up so fast and people. Kai is so big. I know, I wasn't ready for it. He just keeps keeps growing. His mind keeps growing too. He's so smart. I love it. When you are asked questions by kids, is that what is that? What kind of sends you on an adventure to find new projects? Or are you constantly thinking about new projects that you can just bring to the kids? Yeah, now I'm constantly thinking about it. In the beginning, it really was about whatever the kid was interested in, whatever the kid was learning at school. In some cases, what they were learning at school and didn't fully understand or weren't interested in. And so, you know, how can I make this really fun for them? How can I make them stoked to get to get to finish up their homework? How can I, you know, which is, you know, which is a feat in and of itself? How can I get this kid to want to brush their teeth and get ready for bed? You know, yeah, it really is about questions are definitely the baseline for how I come up with a lot of projects. And now it's just like, you know, I'll be wandering around and I'm thinking to myself, you know, what can I do with this leaf that's never been done before? Or, you know, what's, you know, what's the science in something fairly mundane or super commonplace that we all touch and we all use every day? How can I use this to, you know, drive home some concept for for different kids that will help them to connect dots to other things as they get older and discover more things? So it really is. Yeah, it is. It's about questions. Sometimes it's questions that I have. Sometimes it's a project that I want to do. I'm always looking for reasons to put glitter on stuff. So I'm always looking for the scientifically justifiable reason to get glitter or something with glitter. So that's why I make it sparkle. Kids love the sparkles. Yeah. Yeah. So it's there's a lot of fun. And as I've seen a bunch of your videos and got to take part in one of your your new programs, this. Thank you so much. It was so fun. Yeah. So tell us a bit about how you pivoted to handle things during this pandemic and what you're doing right now. Yeah. So the Fab Lab for the Fab Lab will be 10 years old on November 4th of this year. And, you know, for the, you know, for the past nine years, the show has been anywhere from six minutes to 15 minutes in length. I have a bunch of ideas to do longer episodes and shorter things. I'm working on the on the fifth season of the show right now. We had a really awesome, successful I fund women campaign crowdfunding campaign last year to fund this season. And we were like we were days, days count. We were in pre-production counting the days until we were going to begin knocking out the rest of the videos that we started shooting last year for this for the season. And this global health effort became a very swift whirlwind change. It was it was it was surreal, to be totally honest. And, you know, all I was getting ready to go on, you know, to conferences, conference season, I was scheduled to deliver a keynote for the NSTA National Science Teachers Association conference this year, which was just on the fourth of April was the day that I was going to do it. And, you know, got an email that some Wednesday or Thursday that they were canceling just everything. And so I suddenly had a ton of time in my hands. All of the money that I had, I was going to be getting in for the quarter and for the rest of the year, just completely evaporated. And so, yeah, just totally like within six within six hours just everything canceled, everything changed. And so the night that Thursday night, I found myself in bed and I was just sort of looking around my apartment, thinking to myself, hmm, you know, what could I do here in my apartment? How can I, you know, how can I bring the Fab Lab to families that are suddenly without school and parents are working? What do parents need right now? What do kids need right now? What do schools need right now? Because, you know, the school year just came to a halt and many of the schools were not prepared and many still are not prepared to migrate their curriculum online. So everybody needed time and space and just time. And one of the things, you know, one of the things that child care does is it is it frees up parents, it frees up adults to do the things that they need to do in their day to day life. And so I kind of just went back to my my roots and I just was like, you know, if this was a normal situation and child care was open or if we could move freely, I would probably be gathering children or at least babysitting in one or two households. And I just thought to myself, how can I expand that? How can I serve as many families as possible and, you know, and bring the Fab Lab into a space of solution? And that was like Thursday night, the very next morning Friday, my friend and sister in STEM, my colleague, Nisha of MIT's Bejika Lab hit me on, you know, sent me a text like, you know, hey, are you thinking of doing anything because, you know, I'm talking to Autodesk and they're looking, you know, they're interested in this idea that I have. And I was like, yeah, actually, I was thinking of doing a live stream. And she's like, great, let's do it. And so we just decided to collaborate on an effort to bring a full day's worth of content, programming to families, Autodesk, Greenlit it, Living Room Realty provided us a home to make, to come live to, to all the families with, Ray and the Growth Agency came on board to support an entire week of content where Autodesk was going to be able to support two weeks of content, Living Room Realty and Ray and the Growth Agency, both Portland local female founded businesses, super successful businesses came alongside and made it possible for us to go a whole month with three hours of STEM based kid focused virtual childcare. So thank you to them. And yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, I was watching you on Twitter. Yes, I was watching you on Twitter and trying to see what was happening is you these little little messages from you kept popping up and I was wondering what you were doing. And there were lots, it was cryptic for a while until you pulled it together and the speed that you did, I was incredibly impressed. And, and it's great. So you've got this STEM based programming in this right now on the screen, I've got a video of the first episode from the fab lab. When Lindsay, they were talking about washing hands and social distancing and and and eventually in the video, they moved into creating Play-Doh antibacterial Play-Doh that they then used to make they used it to make virus and cell models with a virologist, which is very, very exciting. Kind of fun stuff for kids to see. Oops, wrong one. I believe Lindsay has frozen again. Yes. It's not me this time. Although that's coming soon. Well, I think I mean, so one thing I've kind of been thinking about throughout this interview, and I hope that Lindsay comes back and we can kind of talk to her a little bit about it, is that there's definitely a recurring kind of theme that happens with a certain cohort of our guests on the show. And I definitely can associate with it as well. And it's kind of this moment where you realize this stuff that I'm doing that I really like. Well, yeah, I guess it's science. And I don't know if it's because science is in everything, or if it's that science just has really bad PR in general, like just the people advertising for science careers with kids just are missing out in some way. There's some sort of disconnect there, because I think that, you know, people like me, for example, I knew I was into animals forever. I but I didn't realize until I was an adult that that meant that I wanted to be involved in science, which just right seems so silly to me now. But I'm not the only animal person I know that has thought that. So there's something about the way we teach science or the way that we talk to kids about science that could use an adjustment potentially. But it's yeah, I think it's such an interesting kind of through line in a lot of our interviews. Okay, we're just going to pull the call this a pause right now. I'm going to keep it Lindsay up there on the screen. Justin, can you hear us? No, what is going on? We can see you. Oh, and now there's the sound of growling. Is that your dog? She's slaughtering a stuffed toucan at the moment. Oh, there we go. Justin says, for some reason, he can't get anything but robots. We are both frozen robots. I want away. I wonder if he just if he would reduce this quality that is a loudly growling dog. You know, we do a live podcast broadcast every once in a while. I don't I don't know. I don't even know anymore. Lindsay. No, we got a good way through. Oh, here. Is there Justin? Wait, but if Justin can hear us and we're frozen robots, why doesn't he talk to us? Wait, oh, but he can't hear us. He just sees the frozen robots. Never mind. I don't know what to do, Blair. I mean, we can finish the interview later. We can finish the interview later at a reasonable spot. Oh, here comes Lindsay. Hold on. Hello. I'm just I'm just glad that one of the hosts is having trouble with the internet today, too. Yeah. Otherwise, I would feel really like extra bad. I feel bad, but I feel extra bad. My grids are overloaded. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Overloading the grades. Netflix right now. So we can't talk. Oh, it's canned. Yes. So, so in this video that is up on the screen right now, we have you talking with a virologist, someone who studies viruses. Yeah, the virus hunter himself. Yes, playing with Play-Doh. Yeah. Yeah, so Play-Doh is is actually the original, the very first fab lab project that we did for you did we did on YouTube. It was the first episode. And so we brought that project back to a live a live experience. It's super easy to make. It just takes, you know, in some in some cases, you could make Play-Doh with a few squirts of hand lotion and some flour or some cornstarch. So we it's just really easy to come together. It doesn't take a lot to do. In this particular episode, we used it to make virus models, models of viruses, and also cells. And we used it to demonstrate how viruses infect cells, and then break the cell down as they reproduce more viruses from that cell. So we actually used Play-Doh super simple to make anyone can make it. And then we added a little yarn to it and helped to explain to kids how viruses actually replicate themselves inside of the human body. It was very, very fun. Oh, that sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Is that one of the most fun projects that you've ever done? I mean, that sounds great. The most fun. I don't know. I think all of my projects are the most fun. I get comments all the time, you know, from parents, you know, from kids on behalf from parents on behalf of their kids, you know, Susie says that you're excited about everything, you know, you open every show saying this is your favorite project. And it's because all the projects are genuinely my favorite. All of the fab lab projects have multiple lives. So, you know, classic science projects or classic science experiences tend to create things that really only have one life or only really makes sense in a classroom or laboratory setting, whereas the fab lab makes things that you would use, like not just look at, you know, oh, you know, you know, Susie made a mask that she's going to wear for like one afternoon and then is going to get tossed out or, you know, we, you know, paper machete of volcano that's going to that took forever to make and rolling on use it like 10 times. And, you know, in this case, you know, like today, for instance, on the show, we made bath bombs, which is the super scientific experience that explains chemical reactions, you know, you know, you learning about different chemical compounds. But then you get to use it as a gift, you get to toss it in your own bathtub. So you're not just learning about chemistry, but you're actually experiencing it at bath time. And then you're also sharing it with your friends and with your family and with teachers and with, you know, whoever. So, you know, yeah, you know, all all the projects are a lot of fun because they're really easy to make. You know, what's fun to make memories with yourself or with your with your friends with your family, but then also being able to use them in a lot of different contexts just takes it to another another level of what it means to have fun or what it means to enjoy something, you know, if you really enjoy something, you share it. And that's my favorite thing to do with these projects. So yeah. Blair, did you have something that you wanted to wanted to? Yeah, well, we were just we were chatting a little bit about how you kind of had this very interesting path to find yourself now, doing laboratory experiments. Awesome. But I think there's there's something in common with a lot of the guests that we get where there's this moment where you kind of have this aha and you go, oh, it's science, science is my thing. That's okay. So how much of it do you feel because I feel like it's both for sure. But how much of it is just the fact that science is everywhere? And so a lot of things come down to science in the end. Or how much of it is the fact that just science is not good at representing itself or we aren't good at representing science to kids in the classical way that we've done it. Will you, will you just frame your question? I'm not really, I didn't catch it. Kind of like with what was your experience? Why do you think it took you so long to discover science? Do you think that it's just happenstance? Or do you feel that you didn't fully understand what science had to offer when you were younger? Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting. I was, like I said, I was a very precocious child. I asked a lot of questions. And a lot of the people in my life didn't have the answers to them. And, you know, both of my parents worked and worked very hard and in their own right are just incredible people who exposed me to so many amazing things that I don't know. You know, it's really, it's interesting. I don't, I think my parents gave me a lot of freedom to discover things. My mom was, was an executive assistant in a legal department at a large pharmaceutical company. My dad was a carpenter. But both of them had these little side creative things that they did that in a lot of ways were scientific and were technical. You know, my dad was a carpenter. So, you know, he I saw blueprints all of the time. You know, I would be on sites with him a lot digging foundations or putting things up. And so, and my mom, you know, where she was an executive assistant, super professional, you know, classic eighties, nineties, you know, working woman. She also was a seamstress, you know, in her, in her private time, she would make, she made all of my prom dresses. She would, you know, she got married when I think was I was in like fifth grade. And she made all of the bridesmaid's dresses and her wedding dress. And, you know, she was always doing prom dresses and special occasion things for other friends. So I got to see how things connect really early, but there wasn't a hard line on this is scientific or this is engineering or this is mathematical or this is technical. I didn't receive that that language, but it was I was entrenched in it all of the time. And being a natural inquisitive kid, asking tons of questions. And my my mom specifically not having the answers all the time, she would always say to me, you know, you know, if I had a question about a word, go to the dictionary. I had a question about geography or a question about science, you know, go to the encyclopedia. So I was always encouraged where if she didn't know something, I was encouraged to go find the answer and go on the journey. And, you know, I would talk her ear off about it, you know, at dinner or before bed. So I was always excited to share what I discovered. And so, you know, and it's interesting, I wasn't a great student. I was a very social charming student. So, you know, I did, you know, OK, socially, but academically, my mind was firing on all cylinders. And then in addition to that, because, you know, I'm an I'm an incredible extrovert and I'm super social. I wasn't always hunkering down and doing the things that actually matter for good grades. So where teachers would be like, Oh, you're so smart and you're so capable, you're so awesome, but you never do your homework. So I didn't have the best grades in the world in the world. Academically, I was a very average, if not below average student. But, you know, I was also the kid that would go into into school, pick, you know, with Wall Street Journal under my arm. And I would be able to explain, you know, stock prices, you know, to people at, you know, in 10th in the 10th grade. You know, I just I was so what I was interested was beyond what was in the classroom. Right. But the interesting thing is my math classes and my science classes, the first B I ever got the like the only B I was normally like a C and D student. But like my B's and my A's came from the first B I ever got the first really like good grade to me. I got in biology when I was in seventh grade. And I didn't realize that I was good at it. I thought I was a bad student just like everyone else and would just but I was just super interested in what it was happening. And then my report card would come and I have these like, you know, awesome marks and I'd be like, huh, wow, OK, biology, cool, great. Oh, you know, whatever, geometry, geometry, OK, cool. But then I'd go on about my life and you know, be a fairly average below average student elsewhere. And when I was growing up, you know, what I understood was that really smart people, like really smart people that get really good grades and test really well. They're the ones who are technical. They're the ones who are science oriented. And I, you know, I excelled in in writing anything that involved speech or presentation. But, you know, beyond that, my grades didn't my grades didn't tell me that I was good at these, you know, STEM curriculum things. And so I got it in my head that I wasn't good at it or that it wasn't for me at the time. And even I think, you know, you know, tech, it's really cool to work in tech now. But back then like tech was not cool, you know, Google didn't really exist yet. I mean, it existed, but home computing was still burgeoning very quickly. But, you know, if you had a computer at home, you were a geek, you know, and I wasn't, you know, I wasn't a geek. I might be interested in those things. But, you know, I was an athlete or I was in the plays or I was so whatever the caricature of what a scientist is or technologist is or an engineer or mathematician, I didn't fit into that from what I saw. And so it really was many years in when I was working with kids and helping to helping them to answer their questions that just so happened to have a lot of scientific explanation and correlation. And just gobbling, gobbling all that information up asking questions, being encouraged to experiment. It reminded me of reminded me of how education was approached as it when I was a child growing up. And it just literally somebody on Twitter, Danielle we specifically had to tell me that I was I was making a science show. I didn't even realize that's what I was doing, much like when I was in high school or in junior high school, excuse me, I didn't realize that I was a great student in biology until I got a report card. And, you know, there was just sort of this sort of this like blaring headlamp, headlight of, you're really good at this, and you didn't even have to try, you know. So, yeah. Yeah. So I guess so I had kind of a similar experience in that I didn't fully understand that science was the thing that kind of connected all of the things I was interested in. But I'm just kind of curious what your perspective is on how we can help make sure that the next generation of scientists, they understand that science is for everyone. You don't have to be the smartest kid in the class. You don't have to be, you don't have to have the greatest grades, nor do you have to be interested in kind of memorizing textbooks to be scientists, right? Yeah. So how do we, how do we kind of ensure that that everyone is welcome in our scientific field in the future? Yeah. I mean, to me, that's that's a that's a multi tiered ask. And I don't and I don't claim to have all of the answers. But what I will say is, you know, I think like, like, like many industries and like many populations, like there's sort of this. And specifically, what's and I will and I will say this, this isn't necessarily from a place of, you know, having metrics to support this or analytics to support this, but I'm only going to report this. Science is populated by a lot of introverts, maybe, like there are introverts and extroverts everywhere. And I think, you know, like advertising sales, like sales jobs, they tend to be populated mostly by extroverts or people who are, you know, you know, introverted extroverts, people who are people facing and talk a lot and, you know, aren't afraid of crowds and, you know, can get to the bottom line, whereas I think science and technology, the experience that I've had throughout my career working on the business end, a very, you know, creative and in some cases technical fields in the last, you know, my career has gone all over the place. But working with technologists and working with, you know, other people who have that minor and are in these industries, they tend to be introverts. And then they also tend to be and I don't and I don't think it's specific to STEM fields or tech field STEM fields, rather, but people tend to become very tribal and insular and they hire people that look like them, they hang out with people that look like them. You know, I can't remember the name of the book, but, you know, maybe 20 years ago, there was this book that came out that talked about sort of the social psychology and and anthropology of you know, the high school or the junior high school cafeteria, you know, certain kinds of kids all sat together and clumped together and weren't necessarily intentionally excluding anyone, but because they weren't necessarily inviting and helping those who were invited in that maybe didn't look like them or have the same understandings as them feel welcome and not just feel welcome and not just feel invited, but feel like they are a part of something feel like they are their their contributions and their questions and what they have to add to conversations are valued. So I think it's, you know, I think it takes a lot of honestly, hard work. I think that individuals there's a certain level of hard work that goes into learning how to open yourself up so that other people can feel invited in. And I don't think it's specific to STEM fields. I think it's a lot of us. And I think that that's one of the things that we have been certainly talking about when we talk about diversity and inclusion, we've, you know, all of the classic ways of, you know, getting people hired and getting, you know, meeting quotas and people still not feeling, you know, still not sticking around. I think it has something to do with the environment that exists there. And I think that there just needs to be people who are more, more open to people who are not like them and find a place, find a common ground to be able to truly value and appreciate the presence of the people who aren't classically found in those environments so that it can grow and scale and more people can come into those places and more people can be contributing to science, the more diverse companies and industries are, the more perspectives that you have, the better those things tend to be, the better the solutions tend to be, the quicker problems get solved because you've got people who are looking at it from totally new and different angles. And I think sometimes those new and different angles can be a little bit, you know, intimidating, not maybe, but also, you know, because you may not understand something, you don't know how to, you don't understand how it's going to bring, you know, really put a cap on things that you might be working on just learning how to recognize and appreciate the, the different, the different perspectives that people can bring and so that more of them will come. But then also I think scientists, you know, I go to a lot of science communication, science communications conferences and so many scientists are afraid to share what they know, you know, they're because they're afraid to be wrong because failure in the society that we live in, regardless of the industry that you in is not rewarded or encouraged. I work, I worked at an ad agency here in Portland, Oregon called widening Kennedy, which is, you know, probably the best agency in the country, if not the globe, you know, in certain, in certain ways, if not all of them. And they had this sort of motto, fail harder. And it was so interesting because, you know, how do you encourage failure? And how do you teach that failure is okay and making mistakes and learning quickly and, you know, getting up and dusting yourself off and trying again is okay. And it's safe for you to do that when, you know, in the past, making us making a mistake means, you know, you're fired or making a mistake and making a mistake means you're on punishment or, you know, whatever it is. Yeah, I feel like she's frozen again. It seems like the the periodic thing. I was thinking about this, though, and it seems to me that science allows a lot of failure. But you fail privately, and you succeed publish publicly, the publications are always positive results. They aren't normally negative results. There is a journal of negative results, but it nobody reads it. I am one of my very best friends. She had to defend her doctorate. She she basically had no results. And so she had to defend based on the fact that basically the experiment didn't work. But it was years of years. So what do you do then? Do you just do you scrap it and start over? No. So she did an amazing job. I got to see the defense and basically she was able to identify a research method that didn't work, which is still an important thing to know in science. Absolutely. Yes. And it was this line of inquiry. This methodology, it does not work. Don't try it. And here's how I figured that out. But I think also, I mean, that's kind of what Lindsay was getting to is also is the communication side of it is that the internet has made the stakes so much higher. Is it anything you say lives forever and can be searched forever? But we are humans with memories. And you know, our memory isn't always 100% accurate. So you could talk about something for 20 minutes and get one detail wrong and be torn apart. And especially now, like during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are changing our understanding so quickly because we started from a place of very limited understanding and knowledge. But scientists are doing studies as fast as they can. And preprints are going into the preprint servers. The preprints are not for the public generally. The idea is that they're open so that people can read them, but they haven't been peer reviewed. The data isn't necessarily completely complete. They are they're on their way to publication. And the idea is that the scientific community can then look at it and give feedback so that the people writing the article can then fix it and get it published. It'll go through peer review. And then the published article, but that is too slow. So we're having premature information enter the public knowledge sphere. People gather like grab onto that as if it is the truth as opposed to some information. And now we have people then then you have the peer reviewed studies come out that say something different or you have new information that negates what was seen before or contradicts it. And suddenly you have the public shouting at one side. This doesn't support my beliefs. I cherry picked this one to believe this study because this is going to help me. And yeah. And the hubbub and the furor. It grows. The din is deafening on the internet. Yeah. But I mean ultimately you have to be able to let it go and just be willing to be wrong. Because otherwise and that's anything out there. Yeah. And that is science. And that is I think what I hope people learn from what we're going through right now is that scientists take new information as it comes and adjust their view of the facts of then their understanding adapts according to the information that we have. And if something comes along that negates earlier information, you have to take a look at that and figure out why it does. Is it actually correct? Is there are you know what was looked at previously? What was not looked at previously? Yeah. Yeah. I mean and kind of to bring it back around to the kids. One of the things that I think makes a really good teacher is listening to the questions of the students. And if a student brings up something you haven't looked into before or you didn't think was true or whatever it may be, but you're not sure. You look into it later and bring it back. And I think there's there's such a kind of mutual respect you can gain with kids when you take their questions seriously, when you help them do the research kind of like how Lindsay was saying she would get sent to the encyclopedia. But you can come back and say oh so you know that really, really valuable question was brought up yesterday. Let's talk about what we learned. I am actually when I was in college, my senior year of college in my vertebrate biology class, a study came out while we were studying the evolutionary placement of turtles in the vertebrate evolutionary tree. A study came out while we were studying that that week. And somebody brought an article to class and said hey, they found an intermediate where they had a partially fused rib like a plastron like the bottom of the the shell. And that popped during my class and the teacher was like, what? I'm going to look into this to get home, looked into it, found the original piece of literature and like, and kind of reached out to the the researchers who who found the the fossil and and was able to kind of add a whole new lecture to our class about this cool discovery that that a student brought in to the class. So it was definitely I think being able to to incorporate your students into into the lesson is is really empowering. Totally empowering. And Lindsey. Hi. Hi. I don't find you too crazy. I think I think you're just just about right. Kids are naturally curious. How do you suggest that adults maintain their sense of curiosity? Have you learned anything? You know, the first thing that comes to mind for me when you ask that question is this, I'm going to recommend a book. And it's more than a book. It's a workshop in a book. And it's called The Artist's Way. I heard about it, maybe. Okay, I heard about it, maybe, like I mean, pretty legitimately 10 years ago. And my creative director at the time was doing it. And she was talking about this thing morning pages, morning pages. And I'm like, What's morning pages? And she's like, Oh, it's, you know, stream of consciousness writing done first thing in the morning. And I was like, that sounds, you know, very interesting. That sounds like something I would be interested in. So I read just the few paragraphs about morning pages, and then started doing morning pages 10 years ago without reading the rest of the book or having really any any understanding of what was really about. And then 10 years later, I'm on the phone with my best friend Leah. And she's like, you know, all my brain feels so full of stuff. I just, you know, I can't even think of my way around it. There's just so much swimming up there. And I was like, you should try morning pages. You know, it kind of helps me feel like I'm, you know, taking the trash out every day. I'm just getting it all out of my mind. I can think clear. It's like I'm meditating. I have a hard time meditating to clear my mind. I just maybe I'm just too hyperactive. I don't know. But when I started reading, you know, but when I made that suggestion to her, it pretty like hit me like a ton of bricks that I've never actually read the book myself. I'm recommending morning pages in the artist's way. And I don't even really know what's in it. So she and I started, we both got our got books and we started working on it. And it was just it was totally monumental. I would have never described myself as a creative up until that point. As a matter of fact, I actively rejected being called a creative because, you know, where, you know, being being a brown person, people always assumed that I was the creative. They sort of defaulted me to the creative person. And I was a business person. I was a serious business person, you know. And when I read the book and went through this experience, it very much so helps you find your inner child that really helped and not in sort of like a woo woo kitschy kind of way. But it really helps you to pick up the breadcrumbs of when you sort of lost your childlike wonder when you sort of lost your sort of juvenile curiosity and glee and willingness to learn and, you know, sort of ask the questions or see things from a perspective that hasn't been trained and ingrained in you by the conditioning of the world. It really helps you to go back to that, that place where you sort of, you know, lost or forfeited your childhood self as an adult because it does. I mean, you know, there are all these studies that we see all the time, you know, a child that's five is, you know, thinks and processes on the genius level. And by the time they get to be 12, they're, you know, 30% you know, creative or innovative or whatever it is. You know, we hear these statistics and we there's tons of research that supports that. And it's because the world trains you, the world conditions you to put things in boxes and narrow your view. And it really is about widening that. So, you know, if you're, if you're not the type of person who would go out and get a book like the artist way, which I, I recommend right next to therapy. I mean, if you can't afford a therapy, get the artist way. But, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about my eight year old self, you know, on my website, it pretty literally says, you know, eight year old Lindsay is the creative director of the fab lab because, you know, I do this, I pretty actively ask questions from my eight year old perspective. I put on outfits for that. I think eight year old Lindsay would have been excited about. I literally think about who I was at that particular point, what I was into, what I was excited about. And I just dive, I just dive in. So I think, you know, as an adult, you know, having hobbies, you know, not letting work be 100% your life unless your work, you know, really enriches you. I think a lot of adults, at least the many adults that I have in my life, and they could be science teachers or they could be, you know, lab technicians or they could be executives, you know, of, you know, big companies from tech to advertising to, you know, water, you know, your work takes over your world and it's really easy, especially in 2020 to, I mean, maybe not so much now since the whole world is really slowed down quite a bit. You know, which to me is great. I think the world needed to slow down. It was, you know, some things just aren't sustainable and going 100 miles an hour isn't sustainable. But, you know, but I think getting yourself out of the mentality that I'll lose my job if I don't work, you know, 80 hours a week or, you know, I have to this is the end all, you know, be all just this one thing I have to, I think having many things in your life that are both mundane and exciting, just being able to switch gears and really throw yourself into something that maybe has nothing to do with the rest of your professional life or your serious life or your public life and just allowing yourself to be interested, allowing yourself the time to be interested in things that you maybe would dismiss because you don't have the time to get involved or it doesn't seem like it would have a connection to anything immediately valuable to you just, you know, if you're the type of person that normally reads, you know, fiction books, pick up a self-help book, you know, have a conversation with a stranger, you know, ask them questions, don't necessarily, you know, be so quick to talk about yourself, but get to know people who don't look like you, you know, go to a restaurant that, you know, you would otherwise be too, you know, afraid or not, you know, not think that there would be anything on the menu that you'd be into, travel, you know, go to a restaurant that you know, you would otherwise be too, you know, when the travel band, you know, is lifted, you know, but, you know, take a walk, you know, take a walk down that neighborhood or that street that you don't normally take. I mean, I do little things like, you know, take different routes to work where it's really easy to just take Burnside straight down. Sometimes I'll just, you know, make a right and then a left and then another right and I'll just go away that I'm not used to going and I'll open my eyes and I will look around. You would be surprised how creative your mind can get and how curious you can become if you just open your eyes and look around. So, yeah, I think there are tons of ways to keep your curiosity and your creativity going with that childlike wonder. I think it just maybe takes a little bit of extra thought and intention to do it. Right. I intend to stay a child. I mean, to find my inner child again. I want to grow up. I'm a Toys R Us kid. I mean, that is my song. Someone wrote that for me. All right. So where can people find out more about you and the Fab Lab? All over the Internet. The Fab Lab.com is a great place to start. I'm the Fab, excuse me, yeah, the Fab Lab HQ on YouTube and on Facebook and on Instagram. I'm very easy to find. Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us tonight and telling us about what you're doing. And I do hope that there are many parents out there finding a little help and knowing that their kids are in good hands, even though they're on YouTube or Facebook for a couple of hours every day. I do hope so. Thanks so much for being a part of it. Your solar system exercise was so much fun. Yeah, I will let him know. We had so much fun doing it. It was good. It was a lot of good. It was fun. All right. We are going to take a very, very quick break so that I can tell everybody, thank you. Thank you for listening to TWIS. You are the reason that we are able to do what we do every week, bringing you up to date on science. And with your help, we can do even more. Together, we can bring a scene perspective to a world full of misinformation. Right now, click on the Patreon link and choose your level of support. You can choose to be a part of bringing sanity and science to more people. All right. Let us continue this show with some science. You ready for it? Yes. We are going to start off with a little COVID update. I feel like I should do some do-do-do-do-do-do music, but it's really not exciting times. No, cases continue to increase globally with the U.S. still leading the world in new cases and deaths. However, we might have reached a high level today. It was pretty high this week. And conversations have started to turn within the country and around the world to plans to relax strict social distancing measures and lockdowns. That said, the situation will continue to shift as more information is added to our arsenal of prevention and treatment options. A peak in cases is not the tail end that we have to ride through, and several models show us experiencing societal impacts through at least 2021, if not into 2022 or beyond. I saw one study suggesting we might see outbreaks until 2024. But don't despair. It's kind of downer news. There is some good news out there. While some argue about models, or researchers, scientists are organizing volunteer efforts. That's right. Scientists are working together to make sure that papers get reviewed more quickly, that tests get tested, that there are labs open to do work, that labs that have printers are printing and helping to source personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. So there is a big effort within the research and science community to not just do good science around COVID-19, but to also help make sure that we can weather this storm a little bit better. Additionally, a study looking at Remdesivir, it's an Ebola treatment. It is a treatment that has kind of gotten some use already to treat COVID-19. However, researchers have been looking at it to try and figure out exactly what's going on, why it seems to work and to see if this is something we should be putting more efforts into and a new study looking at its mechanism of action suggests that it acts as a direct antiviral against COVID-19. That directly inhibits RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. So pretty much just shuts down the RNA copying machinery that is responsible for making more virus. And that's good. So hopefully we can make more Remdesivir and get it out to people who need it quickly. Also, if you're trying to figure out if you have COVID or don't have COVID, there's a new symptom. Look out for loss of taste and smell. Oh, yeah. That's right. If suddenly you can't smell anything, you might have SARS-CoV-2. And finally, in my COVID update rundown, one of the most, most awesome programs around. We've talked about it on TWIS for years is the Folding at Home program. Folding at Home uses the distributed processing power of people's computers at home to help figure out the physical structure of proteins. At least that's what it's done historically. It also uses people's brains. People come in and shake and rattle and match little bits of proteins together to see what seems to work structurally in different protein confirmations. While Folding at Home has transitioned itself into looking into the structure of SARS-CoV-2. And now the computing power the combined computing power of Folding at Home is more powerful than the world's most powerful supercomputer. What? It has crossed the threshold of the exa-flop barrier. Yes, exa-flops of operations per second. This is people around the world working together to figure out how this virus looks and where they should be looking for treatments and medications and I find it very promising and it makes me just happy to see people coming together around the world in such a significant way. People! It's like Voltron, right? It all formed the head. I'm suddenly reminded and I feel compelled to plug the fact that there's lots of citizen science projects that you can do from home while you're stuck at home. I haven't even really thought about it. This is a huge one, obviously and it directly relates to why we're stuck at home, so probably the most relevant. But there's huge banks of camera traps that you need to look through other things that you could do from home from your computer to help forward science. I haven't even really realized this is a great opportunity. It's a very great opportunity. It's super exciting. I'm thrilled. You want to talk about some science? Yeah, I thought this is the way we're doing it. We are. Oh yeah. We are. I keep getting lost in my show. I'm lost in my own show. That makes sense! You know, I was like we did about earlier. There's clearly a temporal disturbance happening right now. Some sort of anomaly. It's really hard to tell what day, what month, what year, what hour it is. I don't even know anymore what's going on. We're doing a podcast. We're talking about science and now it's time to talk about matter and reality itself. Oh no! That's what we were just doing! Hey, Neil. This time is holding on itself! It is. So, okay. There has been a big question since researchers have been looking at the matter in the universe. Around about the 1950s some researchers said, hey! There's wrong amounts of these particles that we're looking at. And so they were like there's more matter than antimatter. That's how we have matter in the universe. We've got this imbalance and these researchers Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reigns they talked about the neutrino, the smallest bit of material reality ever conceived of by man. Now, neutrinos are one of these subatomic particles that make everything up. And we've talked about the different flavors of neutrinos and how they transition from one kind to another. But neutrinos are kind of cool, too, because they're hard to see. They don't interact with stuff very much. They just don't like interacting. These neutrinos are like the ghost particles, right? And so we've created these giant experiments with lots of mirrors and big detectors. And one of them is the Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan that is meant to detect these neutrinos. And so they had a collaboration with some other researchers with a place called Tokai. And in Tokai, they could create a bunch of neutrinos. This is at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex in Tokai. This is on Japan's east coast. So they create the neutrinos at Tokai and then the neutrinos travel through the earth about 300 kilometers and then intersect with the Super-Kamiokande on the west coast of Japan. And for the most part, the Super-Kamiokande, even though it's made to detect neutrinos, really didn't detect very many neutrinos because neutrinos don't like to be detected. So over several years of looking for these neutrinos, the collaboration finally got 90 neutrinos that it detected and 15 anti-neutrinos. Now anti-neutrinos are the anti-matter corollary to neutrinos. And so lots of neutrinos, not very many anti-neutrinos. And with this data, they don't have a complete 5-sigma, 6-sigma significance, which is what physics experiments like. They like this really, really, really high significance. But they have a 3-sigma significance, which is okay. It's like 95% confidence interval that there is a symmetry violation in neutrinos and that there is what they call a C-P violation. And this is very exciting to physicists because it potentially means that if we look at neutrinos more carefully, this may lead us to find the answer to why there is more matter in the universe than anti-matter. Yes. It could take us somewhere. So the aspect of it being significant, but kind of significant in a lot of science, 95% confidence interval is like, that's great. It's a significant result. But in physics they like it to be like 99.9% confidence intervals. They like it very confident. And so what they're suggesting is, oh, we should build more giant neutrino detectors because of course we should. Yeah, for sure. Bigger instruments for detecting the universe. More science items. More science items. Yes. Yes, it could take a very long time between building. They're already working on building the next cameo con day. It's not super cameo con day. It's like mega cameo con day. It's bigger and the name represents that. And that's on the way to being built. So perhaps within the next 5, 10 years we could be seeing more more data. But hopefully along this time, the collaboration will continue and maybe we will learn more. Maybe they will find new significance. Did you hear we've talked about on the show, Lindsay, did you hear about the interstellar interloper, the interstellar object? It came into our solar system and flew close to the sun and scientists went, that's not from here. I think I did hear about it. Was that in the last week? Actually this week in science, never mind. So I think I did hear about it. It looks like a cigar, right? It looks like a cigar. It looks like a cigar. It looks like a cigar. It looks like a cigar. Exactly. And everyone was like it's an alien spaceship. And scientists had to be like, probably not. Probably not an alien spaceship. But they have come up with an idea as to why it looks like a cigar. Why would it be shaped that way when so many of the asteroids and comets and other things in our solar system are more spherical. They look like space boulders. This wasn't so much like a space boulder. It was like more of a space surfboard. So researchers at the Côte d'Azur Observatory and a colleague, they looked at computer simulations to figure out exactly how this all happened. And they determined that this object was probably part of maybe a small a small planetoid or a comet or something, but it basically got ripped apart and stretched in some by tidal forces. And they say that if Oumuamua's parent body was a comet, it would suffer to fate from strong gravitational tides, ripping the comet apart, making the ice on its surface baked away by the close call of passing by its parent star. And if an object swooped past a larger warmer star like the sun, then those ices would evaporate and distribute into space. And if those emissions were uneven at all, they would act like booster rockets to create the trajectory of the object. So if there's any kind of water ice beneath the surface, it could have led to and through heating of passing by stars, it could have led to the trajectory that would lead it to become an interstellar visitor. Wow. That's a lot of coincidental things going on. But I guess considering the number of objects we've seen in space that are not cigar shaped, then all these coincidences mean it's going to be unusual. Very unusual, yes. The giant's cigar shaped. It could be a rubble pile, I don't know, but it's not any longer and now it's flying through space and it may be on its way out of our solar system for good. Bye. Oh, the things it's seen. Oh, the things it's seen. All right. We are going to take this moment if you're tuning in, just now you're listening to This Week in Science. If you're interested in a twist shirt item of Twist Merchandise, head to twist.org, click on the Zazzle link to browse our store. It's time now for Blair's Animal Corner. Woo-hoo! With Blair. Great and small Biped, milliped No pet at all If you want to hear about this animal She's your girl Except for giant Pantalaxia Pantalaxia Pantalaxia That's great. I'm waiting for Justin to say what you got Blair. It's very disorienting when he's down here. So my first story tonight in the Animal Corner is something that I've actually been thinking a lot about lately. In fact, actually there's a little mini-soad in our Patreon feed right now about sex determination in animals. I have a really cool story about sex determination in turtles and a new development in how we can tell which turtles are boys and which turtles are girls. That's an important thing to know because their sex determination is not determined by genetics like an X or a Y chromosome like with us but instead it is determined by temperature. So the nest's temperature indicates whether an egg will hatch into a male or female turtle. With sea turtles yeah, with sea turtles the warmer eggs become female and the cooler eggs become male. And so with global climate change and global temperatures rising especially around the equator where most sea turtles live there are more and more females being hatched which becomes a problem for population dynamics because then it's not as easy for females to find males and have the next generation of babies. So tracking populations of turtles and the sex ratios are essential to protecting turtle species for this reason because if you can see that there's a particular group that's going way off course in their sex ratios then you can try to step in and do something about that. But the problem is it's pretty hard to sex turtles. It's really hard to tell if they're male or female when they're babies. The usual way to do that is actually with histology or laparoscopy which is actually not that reliable it's really invasive sometimes the turtles aren't able to go immediately back out and also the other way to tell them is by actually their sexual dimorphism so with turtles the males usually have certain structures in their shell to help them protect themselves and then they also have a concave plaster on the bottom part of their shell and the females are flat there for obvious reasons and so like how much is that different the concavity difference is this obvious? As they get older it's very obvious but it takes more than 25 years for that to show up so when you're trying to sex turtles when they're first hatching out of their nest and going towards the ocean there's no way to tell them. So this new research actually found a new way to be able to identify if baby turtles are boys or girls this is from Florida atlantic universities Charles E. Schmidt College of Science and they are able to identify they tried two different sea turtle species a freshwater turtle and a marine turtle so two different aquatic turtles and they can actually analyze the blood samples they found a sex specific protein that has been identified and so they can actually do this through the day and it's really really successful it is 100% reliable in identifying both the freshwater turtle and the sea turtle in one to two day old hatchlings which is when you're going to do the majority of your surveying is when they're first coming out of the nest and it was 90% reliable in 83 to 177 day old juvenile so overall quite successful and they just take a teeny tiny little blood sample and plop them right back out on the sand or in the water so it is it's not invasive at all and it doesn't prevent them from going on their way that's a little invasive blood sample yes so it's slightly invasive but it's not they don't require healing time you don't have to pull them back to a lab you just take that little blood sample and stick them right back in the water so it's in all of the ways that you could potentially be impacting turtles trying to figure out get samples from them assess their sex this is probably the best option you're going to get and so this really has an opportunity to push turtle conservation forward in a big way one thing we've talked about on the show before is other ways that turtles are impacted they're trafficked they're also impacted of course by plastic pollution that people usually think about when I think about sea turtles but the reason this temperature dependent sex determination thing keeps coming up is that as is the case with most climate change impacts on animals it's not just the climate change it's that that's kind of the final straw out of all of the other things that are happening to these animals and so if we can reduce impacts on a population out of one of the categories of conservation issues it can have a huge impact on that population also that ecosystem because they play a really important role so as we kind of try to slow the rising climate the rising global temperatures if we know which sea turtle species are most at risk for this kind of imbalance then we can keep an eye on them we can potentially pull eggs raise them in a lab at the correct temperatures put them back right before it's time for them to hatch there's lots of things you can do to kind of try to slow the impact as we are trying to slow the impact on the planet that's really interesting and also shout out to my brothers on the monitor my brother went to I think that's all I wanted to add that's great well they're doing important work with turtle sex turtle tax turtle tax there we go yes turtles there's a couple of really cool stories in the animal corner related to endangered species so the next one I have is actually about black rhinos which rhinos of course one of the most trafficked animals on the planet for those horns and this study was specifically looking at the oxpeckers that hang out on their back their red-billed oxpeckers they're these kind of black birds hanging out on the backs of rhinos and they're usually eating bugs that are hanging out on the rhinos and in Swahili the red-billed oxpecker is called the rhinos guard which is interesting because this study from California State University Sacramento in conjunction with Australia found that oxpeckers are providing a pretty important service to those rhinos they found that the rhinos carrying oxpeckers were better at sensing and avoiding humans than those without them oh that's fascinating that is fascinating yeah so rhinos tell me about how well they see and they hear so they see terribly if you look at a rhino head which you zoom out of that picture a little bit you'd see huge ears so they have a really good sense of hearing they have huge nostrils and a really good sense of smell and teeny tiny BDIs and a terrible sense of sight so that means the majority of the work that they're doing to protect themselves is based on sound and smell and that's why one of the big rules about being anywhere near a rhino if I was in the African Savannah and I was in a space where I knew there were rhinos I would want to lick my finger stick it up in the air and make sure that I was downwind of the rhino because if you are downwind they can't smell you and so that's actually what happens with hunters, with poachers is that they can walk within 5 meters of a rhino if they are downwind and the rhino won't see them and if Justin were here maybe he would tell us 5 meters is approximately 15 feet yes but he probably wouldn't picture yourself 15 feet from a rhino and I will tell you that is too close but so these oxpeckers they eat the ticks and they kind of pick at lesions on the rhino's body and so they actually help keep the rhino healthy for that reason but that means that the rhino is this really important source of food for the oxpeckers yes it's a traveling buffet exactly and so the researchers recorded the number of oxpeckers on two different groups of rhinos some of them were tagged with radio transmitters and some of them were not so the radio transmitters meant that they could actually track them and try to locate these rhinos even if they were attempting to avoid detection so they'd be like oh the rhino's kind of hiding over there and they'd be able to kind of sneak up on them enough to get visual and some of them had birds on their backs and some of them did not the untagged black rhinos they found the ones that did not have radio transmitters none of them had oxpeckers and it sounds like that's not because there weren't untagged rhinos with oxpeckers it's that the ones with oxpeckers were so good at avoiding humans so that is interesting but also in the ones that were wearing radio transmitters they were able to avoid human interaction way more if they had that oxpecker on them so the experiment found that rhinos without oxpeckers detected a human approaching 23% of the time they were not good at it but the ones with oxpeckers detected humans 100% of the time in trials and at an average distance of 61 meters that's so much more helpful that's way better and the more oxpeckers on the rhinos back the greater the distance at which the human was detected when the oxpecker called the rhino would reorient themselves downwind so basically it's as if the oxpecker was saying like hey somebody's coming and they knew where their blind spot was and so they turned to it because others are like I don't smell anything so it's got to be over here so now how do we make oxpeckers the new rhino fashion accessory so that is the problem oxpecker populations are not doing great because rhinos are dying out so yeah we don't I don't exactly know what the where this started right but there are even some areas where black rhinos exist where oxpeckers are locally extinct so actually what this tells us most of the time I'm like do not introduce animals where they don't belong so this is a case where this is a recent local extinction this animal still exists in Africa bring them back reintroducing them into the areas where they are locally extinct and bolstering their numbers could help protect rhinos yep which is so cool that we could actually we could protect an endangered poached species the species that humans are hunting we could protect them by giving them an early morning system yes there's there's a natural way to protect rhinos from humans so one thing this seems to be specifically a human signal so this has developed since humans started hunting rhinos this relationship and the way that oxpeckers help so that's fascinating but then the other side of this that I really appreciate that they brought up as I mentioned at the very beginning of this the Swahili name for oxpecker is called the rhinos guard yep so how long did indigenous people know about this relationship and it took us decades because we don't listen as westerners to come over there and be like what's going on with these rhinos right so we're not listening exactly to the clues and the knowledge of native people where these animals live which is a constant echo also in conservation science as we learn more about it is that you have to connect with the people who live with these animals first but yeah I just I absolutely love this idea these little little oxpeckers hanging out on their back making sure they're tick free also hey hey there's a guy over there watch out so how do we but how do we make sure even if we did bring oxpeckers back to some of these regions where they have recently been lost how do we make sure that they choose a rhino buddy that they decide to find a rhino to be friends with or is it that some rhinos are friendlier to oxpeckers than other like what is it that makes a rhino amenable to this relationship or vice versa a rhino skin is so thick I bet they don't actually I don't think there's a lot of like should I let this thing stay here I feel like that's not really it but I do think there's probably something to be said for making sure doing some behavioral studies of oxpeckers and making sure that they either it's an ingrained kind of just natural response of let me find the biggest thing that has bugs on it or if it's something that has to be passed through generations then you got to pull some wild oxpeckers that are hanging out on rhinos and raise a captive stock from that that you then release so I think you're right there's an element of study that needs to be done on the oxpeckers themselves to make sure that that roll out is successful yeah roll it out let's do this work let's keep these beautiful black rhinos alive we don't need to lose any more of these incredible species more ways we can do it speaking of conservation I'm gonna jump us into our quick stories at the end of the show the name of conserving time no no no because it's almost Earth Day Earth Day is coming up on April 20th we'll have another show a couple of days after that but I just want to get everyone thinking that direction right now there was a recent review study in which researchers from the University of Leeds in the UK analyzed nearly 7000 studies identifying which strategies are best for reducing household emissions they determined that the biggest savings overall in transportation is oh don't drive a car go car free but if you can't do that shift to battery powered electric vehicles or take fewer long distance flights which seems to be something a lot of people are doing right now maybe not by choice additionally food so food is a big part of our daily lives but adopting a vegan diet has the biggest impact on reducing emissions if you want to make choices in your own household and finally housing if you would like to reduce emissions it's not a matter of just using less electricity in your house they suggest adding solar panels or otherwise generating renewable electricity it's not enough to stop using electricity you must now make it as well but they find that the adopting all of their 10 most effective options would cut emissions by 9.2 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year which would be which would have a major impact so even if but even if you can't do all those things there are things that you can do and small choices that you can make every day and I mean everyone's stuck at home right now there's lots of resources out there you can find your bliss if you're really focused on food waste and you want to work on that you want to start a Meatless Monday trend you can share your Meatless Monday recipes and get other people involved whatever you do the more people you can get involved with you the greater impact you can have as well because I think one of the things that we always have to remember with climate change is that there's a lot of power in social influence because it's not just enough for me to do it if I can get everybody around me doing it it's actually a greater impact than if I went completely off the grid myself right yeah more than one as a group we can have a big impact yes maybe there's a lot that we can learn beyond just how to work from home from this from this pandemic I think you're right there Blair Additionally Blair this one I also this is a story for you because I know how much you are looking forward to being ruled by artificial intelligence in the future no researchers have been developing he's a computer scientist Kwok Le a computer scientist at google and his colleagues developed a program called auto ML zero that can develop AI programs with effectively zero human input. They programmed it with basic mathematical concepts, basic as in high school students would be familiar with these kinds of mathematical concepts. And from there with specific learning tasks, just kind of there, the AI is growing and learning on its own through a process that approximates evolution, but creates a population of 100 candidate algorithms by combining a bunch of these basic mathematical concepts and then tests them on something like image recognition and then comparing performance, choosing the best of the pack, using also mutations that are from editing, deleting parts of code, and then the population becomes better and better at doing what it needs to be done. And so far, they have published a preprint, I think, a while back a month ago that has included that this algorithm has stumbled across through its own natural evolution, machine learning techniques like neural networks, all by itself. And this week, they published another paper on the archive that showed a similar redesign for a popular ready-made component that's used in many neural networks. And so pretty much they are hoping that this AI that's learning on its own will figure something out that humans have not figured out yet. So right now, it's proving what humans have already proved, what we've already done through science and our own mistakes and learning and trial and error processes. And now, maybe this AI will do it a bit faster. You don't look happy. I mean, I was just thinking, you know, once they start figuring things out on their own, all the high school students all over the world will have no excuse. No, not being geniuses all on their own. You've been given the same tools. Yep. Or it's going to get real moody and start playing video games instead of looking into the universe. It's going to find ways to entertain itself. I hope that this leads us to our benevolent supercomputer AI master who pretty much figures out our problems like climate change, world hunger, solves them for us and then tells us how to live our lives better. Because we're doing this, we're having issues. Because of what we said before about how everything we say on the internet lives there forever. So you're just trying to plant the seed to get put in a good position when AI takes. OK, well, I'm going to when when robot world robot domination comes, I have said all along that I am a supporter. Yeah, I'm going to remain part of the underground. Or all right, resist resistance, space brain. If you go to space, you will probably get space brain. What is what is space brain? Well, because of the microgravity in space or lack of gravity, if we were to leave the orbit of the earth, astronauts have been shown through testing to have a change, a shift in their cerebrospinal fluid and changes in their ventricles, in their in the fluid that bathes the brain, an increase in white matter and also changes to the pituitary gland. So beyond just affecting the ocular pressure and an astronaut's eyesight when they return to earth, it could also create permanent changes to the brain. These studies on astronauts that they have done to date have not shown any reversals in the aqueduct, aqueductal CSF hydrodynamics, intracranial volumetry, or the measures of the pituitary gland. We've talked before about how having a baby changes your brain as well. So it is going to space. Is it similar changes, baby brain? Or because I know it's it's a physical change, right? The baby brain is also a physical change. Right. So the physical change, though, there's because of women who are pregnant. They have increased blood flow. There's also in the brain, new neurons that are born in the pregnant woman's brain. And there are also new connections that are made within the brain. So it's more of a physical restructuring with new cells and their connections. But with this, it seems to be related to the fact that all the hydrodynamics, the the fluid in the brain is getting distributed differently because we're not if you're in space, you're not getting pulled down from your feet all the time. So it almost feels like the baby brain is like a software update. Right. Yes. And space brain is like somebody dropped the computer on the floor. It's a hardware problem. That's a hardware problem. Yes. Although there have not necessarily. I'm going to guess she was going to say there has not necessarily been any proof of problems related to cognition from this. But I don't. Oh, camera not available. That's a new one. And it's just me now. I've taken over the show. And then there was one. It's just me. My show now. Kiki, I was guessing you were going to say, oh, no, she can't hear me still. Oh, no. Well, that's I mean, that's we've already found out that it makes people what, taller, right? But it messes with their bones and there's all sorts of physical things that change from being in space. So sure, why not the brain? But I'm guessing, Kiki, that what you were about to say was that the physical change in the brain that they found so far has not shown any cognitive change. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. All right. Still to test it this way. They have to. Yes. Or it just hasn't been published yet. And there's data somewhere hidden in a computer. Yeah. Yeah. But also, how can going to space not change the way your brain works? So mind blowing experience. It would be, right? But I don't think that it's like you go to space and then you come back with memory deficits. That doesn't happen. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Blair, you had a fun, fun mingo story. Fun, fun mingo story. Flamingos, yes. You know, they go right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. And they just stick their head upside down. Yeah. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Flamingo conversations. Yes. Conversations are exactly what this is about because they live in these really big groups. And this is a five year study looking at multiple flamingo species to find out how flamingo social dynamics work. And it turns out there's a lot of different bonds and types of relationships in a flamingo group. So they're married couples. They're couples that are together for long periods of time. There are same sex friendships, a couple of girlfriends, a couple of guy friends. And there's even groups of three or four close friends. They see pairs of males or females that like to hang out, trios, quartets. And those are maintained. Flamingos, you might not know this, live a long time. And some of the birds in this study have been studied since the 1960s. And those friendships have been stable over all those years. Wow. That's a long time. Yes, so those friendships are really long lasting. That's amazing. This is just, it's food for thought for a couple reasons, one being captive management. So when you're moving a bird from one zoo to another, as happens because a lot of people don't realize zoos have these things called taxonomic advisory groups where people are basically mapping the entire lineage of an individual animal. So somebody could be the Chilean flamingo advisor for the entire United States. And their job is to actually match, make different flamingos and go, okay, this zoo has space for flamingos. They have this female. There's this male who would be a good genetic match. Okay, you send him over there. And then there's a female over here that would be a good genetic master over here. So you guys will just trade flamingos so that the species can continue and be healthy. So it was actually really scientific and so fascinating. I went to a primate tag meeting once and they did matchmaking with mandrels for about two and a half hours. So interesting, you're just looking at family trees. So cool. But anyway, when that happens, you have to take other things into account. And in this case, if you know that they're part of this girlfriend group of five flamingos who's been together for 30 years, maybe you don't transfer that flamingo out. Maybe you transfer a flamingo in instead, or something like that. So that can be a really important thing to consider. But also when we're studying them in the wild, social interactions are very different between flamingos than we had previously thought. And it also means that the larger the flock, the better, which has impacts on conservation, but also in captive management as well. So flamingos, you want those large groups because they have the little clicks that develop and they sustain. That's amazing, those long-lived friendships. I wonder, because you do see them, birds of a feather flock together, right? But what are the social benefits gained from not just flocking together as a large group, but actually maintaining connections with particular individuals within that group? So why form a click? Why do that? That's a good question. And I could certainly speculate, for example, flamingos fly, but baby flamingos cannot. And so it might be beneficial to do some, kind of, it takes a village group raising of the chicks, because you all kind of have the chicks at the same time, so it'd be beneficial. I could also just see how the way flamingos feed, they kind of stamp their feet around in the mud to stir up all of the krill and other things that they eat in the water. And if you fed in a group, you would stir up way more stuff and you wouldn't have to expend as much energy stomping all the time if other people are stomping next to you. Might be way more effective to feed that way. Why they develop a preference for some individuals over others, I don't know. I mean, birds definitely have personalities as you can attest to, Higgy. So if birds have personalities, then some of them are compatible and some of them perhaps are not. Why not? Oh, fast flamingo friends. Yes. All right, last story for the show for tonight. If there's nothing else good in the world, it's that chocolate, it's great for breakfast. That's right. Stop. Just, yes. What? Yeah. Specifically, Blair, this is for your partner, Brian. Oh, okay. Specifically, this study looked at circadian desynchrony in models of jet lag and shift work. So thinking about the idea that night workers and people who travel long distances, they shift their sleep a lot and have circadian desynchrony. And so that puts them at risk for metabolic diseases, cancers, mood disorders, all sorts of problems. And so to study this, they said, why don't we give chocolate to rats at different times? So they modeled the shift work or jet lag situation and then either gave a daily piece of chocolate at the onset of the active phase, which is normally when you would have breakfast, when you would get up and start your day and have breakfast or at the opposite end, at the end of the active period, which would be for dinner. And they found that in both of the models, the shift work and the jet lag model, that a piece of chocolate for breakfast prevented circadian desynchrony and it increased the amplitude of a specific protein called C-Fos in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is an area of the brain that's responsible for our circadian rhythms. So and when chocolate was eaten for dinner, it prevented the re-entrainment that happens and it favored circadian desynchrony in shift work models. How interesting. And chocolate for breakfast resulted in low body weight gain and chocolate for dinner led to weight gain. Well, chocolate for dinner makes sense because you're about to go lay down. So you're not gonna metabolize it the same way. Right, so why chocolate? Chocolate because it's high calorie and palatable. So it's something that the rats would be excited to eat and also has lots of calories and fat that would start the body's systems off right, I guess. But so it doesn't necessarily have to be chocolate for breakfast, but chocolate worked really great in these rats, so why not people too? That's my addition. I mean, chocolate does taste really good with coffee. So it's great with coffee, yes. But I find it really interesting that this idea of when you eat, like a high calorie meal, something that gets you excited to eat in the morning, that the whole process of eating something like chocolate for these rats, that it led to these major metabolic shifts and if it works in the same way for people that could, it could be the kind of thing that is part of a general strategy to avoid the metabolic issues and problems that come along with jet lag and shift work. So tell Brian to eat chocolate in his morning. I don't have to tell Brian to eat chocolate, eat chocolate in every meal. Get up in your quote unquote morning and eat chocolate for breakfast. Perfect. Perfect. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Extrapolation. Extrapolation, everybody. I mean, if you wanna eat chocolate, go ahead. But yeah, maybe I will start eating chocolate for breakfast because I'm not. I mean, I certainly, I have been baking a lot of sweets. So a lot of them have chocolate in them. That's an easy thing to achieve. That's an easy ad for sure. Yeah. Yeah, all those chocolate cereals, turns out they were actually good for you. Mom. Possibly, right? Were they good for you? Yes, or like in the chat room here, they're saying, how about chocolate cake for breakfast? I'm down with that. I think I will, I don't know. We'll see, maybe, I don't have jet lag or shift work to worry about with my child. So I don't think I'm gonna, he doesn't eat chocolate for breakfast. That doesn't need to happen. Have we finished the show, Blair? I think we did. All right, we have done it, everyone. We've come to the end of another hour. Or two of twists. I'm not really sure how long this show took tonight because of our many technical issues. But we have done it. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for being a part of our journey through science this week. I'd like to say thank you to Fada for your help with social media and show notes. Thanks to Gord for manning the chat room. Thank you to I.D.4 for recording the show. And thank you to the Burroughs Welcome Fund and our Patreon sponsors for their generous support. Thank you to Paul Disney, Andrew Swanson, Stu Pollock, Ed Dyer, Craig Landon, Tony Steele, Alex Wilson, Steve DeBell, Joshua Fury, Ken Hayes, Phillip Shane, Ed Mark-Misaros, Richard Porter, Brian Conjan, Richard Eric Knapp, Bill Kay, Jason Roberts, Matthew Litwin, Jack Bob Calder, Dave Neighbor, E.O. Byron Lee, Kevin Parachan, Matt Sutter, Aaron Luthin, Lying Out, Christopher Wrappen, Brendan Minnish, Greg Briggs, Robert Gary S. Marjorie, Rudy Garcia, Kurt Larson, Steve Leesman, Sean Lamb, Greg Riley, Jim Drupal, Lisa Suzuki, Christopher Dreyer, Brian Carrington, Jason Olds, John McKee, Paul, Artie Amulissi's Adkins, Kevin Reardon, Noodles, Dave Wilkinson, Sue Doster, Paul Ronevich, Gerald Meishack, Dave Freidel, John Ratnaswamy, Steven Alberon, Seth O'Gradney, Mountain Sloth, Rodney Lewis, Sarah Chavis, Corinne Benton, John Gridley, Jean Tellier, Cararro, Darwin Hannon, Matt Baste, Dan Kay, Sarah Forfar, Donald Mundus, Harold Tower Tan, Josiah Zainer, Taylor P.S., Ben Bignell, Maddie Perrin, Ashley Doyle, Marc Hestonflow, John Atwood. Thank you for all of your support on Patreon. And for information, you can visit Patreon.com slash This Week in Science. On next week's show, we are going to be joined by Dr. Kevin Hand, who will be talking to us about his book on watery planets. It's going to be exciting. It's a space interview. It's going to be wonderful. And we will be back on Wednesday at 8 p.m. Pacific Time, broadcasting live from our YouTube and Facebook channels and from twist.org slash live. Hey, you want to listen to us as a podcast? Just search for This Week in Science wherever podcasts are found. If you enjoyed the show, get your friends to subscribe as well. Yes, do that. Get them to subscribe. For more information on anything you have heard here today, show notes and links to stories are going to be available on our website twist.org. And you can also sign up for our newsletter. Also, you can bypass all of that middleman. Just contact us directly. You can email Kirsten at Kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistminion at gmail.com, or Blair, that's me at BlairBazz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist, T-W-I-S in that subject line. Your email will be spam filtered so far into oblivion. We will never, ever see it. So far, so far away from me. You can also ping us on Twitter where we are at twistscience at Dr. Kiki at Jacksonfly and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback if there's a topic you would like us to cover or address or a suggestion for an interview or as Justin would say a haiku that comes to you in the night. 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. Science, this week in science This week in science This week in science, it's the end of the world So I'm setting up shop, got my banner unfurled It says the scientist is in, I'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to stop their robots with a simple device I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand It's 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 earth Cause it's this week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That what I say may not represent your views But I've done the calculations and I've got a plan If you listen to the science you may just then understand That we're not trying to threaten your philosophy We're just trying to set a roll and a die We may rid this week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science I've got a laundry list of items I want to address From stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness I'm trying to promote more rational thought And I'll try to answer any question you've got But how can I ever see the changes I seek When I can only set up shop One hour of science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science Out of this week in science You may now unbuckle your safety belt Please exit the aircraft in an orderly manner We've done it everyone, we did the show We made it to the end Thanks everyone for watching Thanks for joining us Yeah, the RSS icon is there on the website Yes, but thank you Thunder Beaver, it's a good recommendation Tell everyone to get off the internet during our show Yeah, come on I really want to figure out what's going on with Justin's computer And why it didn't work Yeah, I don't know Ah, Lindsay! Thank you! Thank you Thank you for joining us There she is Yes, she popped into the YouTube chat It was wonderful to have you on the show I'm so sorry about all of the internet issues Things went... I don't know Is the rover in tardigrade again? Is mercury in tardigrade again? Is that the problem? It's like rover... Mercury is in tardigrade That's why we're having technical difficulties Thank you It was great to talk with you, Lindsay It was wonderful to get to hear about your work and your story Really good to get you on the show Finally, we talked about it for so long So long And we will also be... My foot is pushing on my camera, isn't it? Too wiggly today Yes Not retro... I don't... Not... I know retrograde I know it's supposed to be retrograde I just... I have my own ways We will put links to the fab lab on twist.org On our website It will also be in our show notes In our YouTube description And we will link to all these things I'm moving myself back over here again I think today I was a bit flustered I apologize for my flusteredness Hmm Hmm Well, I think... I try and remain... Time to be generous with yourself and others I try and remain a professional Through all the things It's hard sometimes It's hard sometimes Today was a rough day Oh, thanks, physics police Thank you Today I had a rough day I'm gonna... I'm just gonna be honest about that Today was one of those days where I had to crawl back into bed For a while Mm-hmm Uh-huh Yup Yeah, I... Gosh, some days I set my alarm And I have such high hopes for the day Mm-hmm I had a similar problem today I mean, I had a very clear reason My dog barfed at 1.30 in the morning So I had to get up and clean that And then She woke up at 3.30 And demanded to go outside So... You're just tired I came back And then she started whining And I was like So then my alarm went off at 6 And I was like No Nope, not at 6 a.m. That's a no I'm getting up at 7 a.m. And it's okay It's okay, I'm not going for a run It's okay It's okay Thank you, Brian In the YouTube chat room Thank you Thank you for being here Thank you for joining us for the show tonight How many people around here? Ed says he has high hopes for the day He gets his stimulus funds Who's got stimulus funds? I got mine today You did, did you get a check? No, it went straight to my account Yeah If you've done your taxes through direct deposit It's most likely just going to come direct deposit It was funny Brian I'm going to call him out He'll probably hear me Brian was like When am I going to get mine? I was like When did you file your taxes? He goes Taxes And it's April 15th So we did them right before the show Oh, no You don't have to do taxes this year No, I'm kidding He was like Didn't they do an extension? I was like No, they did They did an extension for the payment I thought I thought you still had to file by the 15th Oh, really? I thought there was a full extension I don't know I didn't do It's April 15th We gotta get it in Mark got there Noodles is waiting Well I know Yeah, identity for I mean, for some people It's going to be everything It's going to pay rent It's going to make such a huge difference But for people who are living in Larger metropolitan areas It really, you know, it's a It's going to be like Putting a piece of tape Against a hole in a dam, you know It just Well, that's my thing It's just not that much It's not even half of my rent Yeah It's like This is I feel like I should get a different amount Of living in the most expensive place To pay rent I know New York, L.A., Seattle Yeah Yeah, it's definitely I definitely was like Yeah, no, this is great I'm not going to say It's not helpful Because it is But it's not rent So if you think you're giving me rent You're wrong Yeah, identity for says My mortgage is four times what I got Yeah Yep And it's not even like It's here's help from the government It's just, it's your money It's your money It's a credit from taxes From this year, from 2020 No, is that true? Yeah Oh my god So you'll just get less money back next year I might actually owe money next year now Maybe, I don't know Oh my god, that's stupid Oh yeah Yeah That's so dumb Oh, Brian Williams That is great Your housemate makes cloth masks And gives them out for free When out walking for exercise That's great Oh, Eric in Alaska is saying No, not true So maybe I got it wrong But I was pretty sure That's what I had read It does not have to be paid back Huh No, it doesn't have to be paid back But you may not Get a refund Get a refund next year I don't know, it's a weird It's a weird workaround, yeah I think they're playing games With us is what I think But you can send A bunch of money to airlines Come on Oh Airlines that charge me eight dollars For a drink Yeah, well if anyone can explain What's happening with this Tax credit refundy thing That is helping some Which is very good But yeah, I'd love to know I'd love a link Or an explanation For exactly how it's going to Financially affect Things Okay, so this Business Insider You find one Yeah, so it says You won't have to pay back your check Even if you get too much The payment Is an economic impact Payment, it is a recovery rebate It's not a loan Uh-uh It's a refundable tax credit Your stimulus payment Is our fundable tax credit Which reduces your 2020 tax bill On a dollar for dollar basis Looks like having store credit At your favorite clothing shop When you apply it to the total bill It reduces what you owe Even if you have no tax liability The government is refunding Your credit back to you Your payment So it's coming off of what you owe It's not in advance of your refund It's not in advance of the refund Okay Shubrew says that it's a considered Income I had heard that it was not considered income Because it's part of our taxes It's not taxable It says It's not taxable income This is frustrating How many different opinions do we have In this one place? And I would like to argue that most of us Probably try to keep up on this Try to pay attention to it, right? Just the average person How confused must they be? Everybody is confused right now Oh my goodness I think things are just It seems as though Things are halfway thought through Yeah, it's not I mean, just like I don't want to get too Holorizing here But There are other places Like our friends to the north Where they just said Here's $2,000 a month For every month Until the shelter in places lifted Which makes more sense Than a singular $1,200 payment Yeah, Gaurav Sharma Basically taxes got reduced a bit I get it Yeah, at least halfway thought through Would be an improvement, exactly Let's see, yeah But Blair, that's communism No, actually No It's not even really Democratic socialism It's just an incentive To keep people at home Which incentives are the most Capitalistic thing you can do, isn't it? But it also In doing it It's a hard A hard situation Because people Trying to keep them at home And not working in doing other things But This is basic The universal basic income Yeah, exactly, physics police That's a UBI universal basic income So it's a test of What happens when we give Our society this money Right, which I think The secret thing about it is that You don't see a lot of people being like Yeah, I got paid by the government I got laid off, guess what I don't have to work now That's not really a thing that you're seeing What you're seeing is people who really Really, really want to work A lot of people Really do like to work And do like to do things A lot of people really do They like to hurry It's like Big That's like the big myth that I feel like We're busting right now Is that there's all these people who are being Given not a free pass But like A reason to sit around and not work Which is always the argument, right If you give people universal basic income They won't want to work No, people still want to work Because universal basic income also Doesn't give you the income that you need To buy that cool stuff that you want Which is the basis of our capitalism That we have Is that like there's Have to have a nice to have And the nice to have is partially What is a lot of what drives our society So In order to get that nice to have You still have to earn extra Right Which means you have to work But at least you're either housing Or your food Or you know there Like essentials can be taken care of And when your essentials are taken Care of You have More freedom to work Jobs that you want to work As opposed to jobs you have To work You have freedom to go to school You have freedom To To apply yourself to things That maybe you would not Consider otherwise because Of the need To make money For those basics I don't know I just Think about the possible Like what it could possibly free up In terms of intelligence Capital In our society You know when I mean we hear all the time that Poverty is responsible for So many terrible things And Stress and You know People who are poor die Younger that they live less Healthily there are all these Detriments to being poor So if you can lift people slightly Out of poverty Give them a leg up how many more people Will go on to live healthier Better longer lives That Are really impactful to our Society I mean it comes down to that whole When you're in fight or flight A fear response Stifles creativity Yeah like we were talking about With aunt Lindsay Creativity you can't be creative When you're afraid and stressed out You're gonna be just like Okay what is this thing I need to do Do what I know Yeah it's definitely When you're worried about When you're worried about where Your next meal is coming from It's a very different world That you live in And part of the problem is It's an impossible thing to describe Unless You've experienced it How can you possibly It's It's part of the problem right Like empathy ultimately Draws from previous experience Yep So there's a really hard Disconnect there That people in charge have never Worried about Their shelter or their food Or their healthcare Then how can you Expect them to understand how Dibilitating that worry is They have no concept That's why representation Is so important Real representation People who have Who have maybe grown up Impoverished Who maybe grew up In a rough neighborhood And have made it somewhere else Or you know maybe they still Live there But yeah that representation Is so important Yeah So we really need to support The Postal Service The United States Postal Service Not the band I'm planning on buying Some stamps To support the post office So that You know it will be here When we need to vote by mail So that was the conversation I was having with Ryan actually Was that how can you How can you privatize The way people vote That's not allowed No and okay A bunch of articles that have been Bringing up this point But the last mile Out in rural America To the post Boxes that are On posts in the middle of nowhere To the post office To post offices that are regional And like in the middle of Wyoming or North Dakota You know there are places In the middle of nowhere That the post office Delivers mail to And these private Companies Dump their packages At the post office To have them delivered that last mile So If we get rid of the post office Those private companies are going to stop Delivering To people who are In areas that are hard to reach Where it's more expensive or We'll just have to start paying a heck of a lot more For our mail It's so frustrating It's really frustrating We have an amazing resource That everyone in our country can get mail delivered To them I can buy a stamp Stick it on an envelope And mail a letter to somebody It's amazing We've just gotten so used to Our electronics That we've kind of come to take The post office for granted But It's Something that we really need to Continue to support In the same way that We support public radio Public television The post office The libraries There is certain Things that just I don't know and hospitals need to be Not privatized also And health insurance And the list of things All the things Yes, buy stamps to support The post office Ah, Brian is having Brian Williams from YouTube Having to stay home Not able to work Finding it frustrating I feel you there Oh cool, I love Kurgisat Gaurav Sharma is A video on universal basic Income on Kurgisat I love that YouTube channel They do great descriptions Of things. People want to know What's on your shirt Blair Oh, there's Sea Lions And it's from the Marine Mammal Center The largest marine mammal Hospital in the world I have a poster From the Marine Mammal Center They're great They do such great things It's funny working In the field that I do I become like a fangirl For other institutions So I'm totally I'm like a hype man For the Marine Mammal Center I love them so much They're so cool They're free when they're open Yeah And they do docent tours They have information on their website They have a stranded Or an injured marine mammal Anywhere along the west coast Of the United States If you call the Marine Mammal Center And they end up rescuing that animal You get to name it Which is so cool Because then forever These animals get tagged And if somebody calls in a sighting Of a tagged marine mammal They'll go oh yeah that's potato chip Or whatever It's a very magical place to me Yeah Yeah it really is I've been there a couple of times That they really just the people are great The facility is wonderful They do good work it's fantastic Yes Oh Ruth is saw us Stamps coming out soon Yeah I need to figure out How to get my hands on some of those Yeah Identity 4 Washington state Votes only by mail Whoa That's great Really? That's cool Sounds like the way to do it There are two ways to do it We're not doing either One is 100% vote by mail Two is national holiday Yes Wasn't there a governor Who declared a national holiday For election day It's like Duh hello Accessibility I'm sorry But if Christmas is a national holiday If we can close down for Christmas We can close down For election day No everybody needs to work All the time and never get a day off And So come on people There's one reason to not do it Maybe I need to cross the river I'll be the voice of Justin here There's one reason that it's not a national holiday It is to keep people from voting Totally That's exactly why Because Accessibility is important I miss Justin too I know where is he Yes I absolutely miss Justin He gave up after a while And I don't know where he went Did he text? Yeah he texted some There he is Oh man yeah He's saying that At one point he got it to work And then he opened the google sheet And the whole thing crashed I also feel bad for him Because I think he probably got that hotel room Well to shower too Oh yeah Weekly shower But yeah That sucks Yeah Justin might need a new computer Yeah His turn Yeah it's his turn for a new computer I mean right now he still needs a laptop Because He is not in a location But your chromebook has always worked really well Yeah that's what I was Yeah in the text I learned I did a fair amount of research before I bought the chromebook And I found out that You can get a chromebook for $70 But You can get chromebooks for $200 And you can get chromebooks for $600 And What I found in my research And it seems like it's been pretty true Based on what I bought Is I bought like a I think it was like $180 But it was on sale So it was under $200 But what I really found out Was right around that $200 Spot If really you just want to be able to do internet That is the sweet spot The $70 one is like a disposable Computer Yeah And if you go past that $200 mark It's if you're doing anything more Than just browsing So I went for like the $180 or whatever It's been super good I'm using the desktop for this But every time I've traveled and done the show I did it on the chromebook Yeah but I also we use the chromebook When we play Dungeons & Dragons Over Google Hangouts And it works great That's a video chat with like six people And that's over wifi When we do that Nice We can buy, I think twist Should buy Justin A laptop Yeah, maybe even like a Legit laptop Yeah We'll see I should talk with him about that this week Because if you can't make it on the show That's just ridiculous And he's all alone in a hotel room I know that sucks Oh My son has an introduction To D&D class on Monday Really? Yeah It's through an online School program Like some guys teaching A class Dungeons & Dragons We were talking about before that Being smart is less of a stigma now And tech is less of a stigma now D&D is kind of becoming more mainstream Now too And I now know I wish I had started when I was younger Because it's like I listen to all of my favorite comedy Podcasts are like improv based And D&D is basically just Puzzles I love puzzles And Like hanging out with your friends And joking around Basically doing improv And bouncing off of each other So It's not at all what I expected Because the media Especially growing up in the 80s and 90s The media made it look like You're sitting in your basement In chain mail with an axe in your hand Like being a real nerd Or whatever Which is nothing wrong with that But it's a completely different Experience than I thought that it was Yeah, it's a great experience Super fun But I remember A movie That I saw on television So I don't remember when it came out But it was about some Kids playing D&D Or some role playing thing And then one of the kids Like Went crazy And got into the game And it was all about how the game Was bad for people And the kids all stopped playing it And I don't know It's a Somebody decided They were still in the game And killed themselves or something I don't know, it was very heavy Yeah, it's very heavy But Dungeons & Dragons Is fantastic Oh yeah, if you work At a game studio with a D&D game You better know how to play Ha ha ha Mazes and monsters Was that it? I'll have to go look back at 1980s Movies about role playing Scott Johnson's doing a D&D podcast That's awesome That's great Dungeons & Dragons is fun Oh, Ben Rothig was here I didn't see him Oh, that's it Nord Nord Prefect I'll have to check it out for sure Yeah, it was kid playing D&D Yes, it was, it was heavy I remember watching it and just be like What am I watching? This is weird I don't know if it was supposed to be like A cautionary tale of Dungeons & Dragons I don't know You know that Dungeons & Dragons Really messes kids up It's a gateway game, you know It's right to more games Yeah Yeah We battled a block of ooze A couple of sessions ago I was like, yes, one of the stereotypes Is happening Like acidic ooze Pretty good That's great Yeah, I think it'll be fun If we take this intro To D&D class with Kai And I know one of his Friends His mom's has been studying up On being a dungeon master Oh, that's so fun Yeah, she is awesome So one of my son's best friends His mom Has always just been super geeky She's into like horror movies And And Stop animation And like role playing games Like Dungeons & Dragons And she's always coming up with all these things Like games for kids And she's finally at the point where she thinks Her son is old enough to get into Dungeons & Dragons Like full on real thing And so she's like, okay I've got myself the master guide I'm reading it all I'm learning how to be I'm learning how to be a dungeon master She's like, this takes work I'm reading a lot She's like, this is a lot She's like, I have to take a lot of time Every week to figure out what I'm doing But she loves it So it's pretty cool So I have a feeling There will be many Dungeons & Dragons Games in my and my son's future In my family's future It's so fun Of course Now that I've played a campaign for a while We've played for every year I think now Bye Shubu Now that I kind of Have a better understanding of how the game works I know exactly What my next character is going to be Now I've figured it out Figured out how the game works Yeah, I'm pretty excited Yeah I'm in My current character is really good too He's a Dragonborn He wears a top hat And a monocle Of course he's got a monocle Yeah Maybe wears the top half of a tuxedo Like Donald Duck Yeah I wonder Only the top half? What's on the bottom half? Tails He also has something called the cloak of many fashions Which means it'll ripple And turn into different visual effects Anything else? Yes So good Do you think Gaurav Sharma is saying Stranger Things Helped popularize The game Maybe I think it might have a little bit But I think it's kind of been People have been playing it for a while Maybe it reminded people Of a wider audience of people About it But I really feel like it's I don't know I've known lots of people playing D&D All the way through But I That might just reflect on me and the people I know I think it might have brought it to groups That didn't have it before I can see that Noodle says we should start a twist Guild In a massive multiplayer online Role Playing game Maybe Possibly That's a possibility I don't know what game though I mean I don't think I'm into something like Fortnite That's not like role playing to me That's like hey Didn't shoot people I like fun games I mean everybody has their own definition of fun I've been playing some Mario Kart Online with some of my friends And then like joining a Like a google hangout So we can like yell at each other When we hit each other with shells and stuff That's been very nice I have to say like in the first couple weeks And I was really struggling I had a night where I did that And I kind of forgot About a lot of my problems Because you're just in the moment You're playing the game and you were like yelling at your friend And you're not like visually You wouldn't be looking at them anyway Yeah So it feels very normal That's cool So that was pretty Cool I was trying to play My son has a switch And so we have the switch controllers And they're these tiny controllers And I was trying to play Mario Kart And my fingers started cramping up I'm so I'm like not used to Controlling little controllers Got to get another controller There's no controller But The like That we have is like it's called the pro controller But it's much more ergonomic Especially because I need an ergonomic controller I have the Nerve damage from Video games are really hard On me if I play them for too long So Yeah, the Joy-Con is like It's not gonna It's not gonna work for me long term That's Good I'll do it It's almost 11 My computer's gonna crash again in a couple of minutes I can sign up Should we head out Yeah, so science is continuing Everyone There's lots of science We can all Remain flamingo friends I have to say though Flamingo friends forever I was worried that the releases would slow down And they definitely have They have, there's not as much Still coming Which I was kind of scared They were gonna stop People are still working My friends who work as PIOs at universities They're still translating Papers and publications Into press releases And papers are coming out But yeah, things are definitely On the Slow side Yeah, so what Right now So the labs are shut Which means Or they are greatly reduced In the amount of work that they're able to do And so what That means is that there is going to be A several month period Where there won't Be a lot of Work that's gonna come out But right now researchers Are at home Working on writing papers They're taking data that they had Been sitting on or whatever Or they're doing review papers Or you know so there are So right now there's a bunch of articles That are being written And that are gonna get submitted for publication So I'm guessing in the summer and fall We're gonna see A lot of Articles But then fall to winter Things might slow down We're gonna be playing D&D instead of Talking about this week in science It'll be interesting to see what happens But I think because of the Where is the basic Work that's being done To produce the new papers And so I think there is going to be A period of time that's going to be Very reduced I think it'll be interesting to see Asked a very good question Who is taking care of the lab animals Lab workers Some people are essential workers And are taking care of lab animals You know someone who's taking care of lab mice right now But it depends on the animals Some animals particularly invertebrates They all get euthanized Really? Depends on the lab But especially if you've lost funding For the lab which has happened As a result of this as well Then the lab gets shut down The animals get euthanized It's not good I know But most animals I will say most lab animals Are still being cared for Doesn't happen to all of them But it is something that happens When you lose funding for a lab If there's nobody to take care of animals Suddenly you do With animals at the end of an experiment anyway Which is another thing that you have to keep in mind Is if an animal has been exposed To a variable of any sort Conditional, chemical, any of it If they cannot be used in future Experiments because that could be a confounding Variable in future experiments Sometimes those animals are euthanized Which one of the really cool things About zoos is they take The control animals From lab experiments And they get them from labs Often already frozen And they feed them out to carnivores Recycling I think it's really cool That's good use Yeah The animal kingdom Biology Well On that note, many thanks to All the animal care workers Many thanks to the animals Many thanks to healthcare workers Gosh darn it Two minutes early Yeah Two minutes Can you hear me? Yes Oh good I froze for a minute Really? Anyway Yes I ruined Gorav Shamar's sleep It was a good ending Probably mantiships I would bet a lot of the mantiships end up In aquariums That people take them home? No, they end up in Aquariums Oh Maybe I don't know But animals that were really hard to collect You're not just going To euthanize them They're going to be taken care of But yeah There's different studies you can do On animals that could or could not Have impact on other studies So you can be kind of Conservative But specifically when you think about rats and mice A lot of the time at the end of an experiment Especially since they don't live Very long They start having hereditary issues From getting old Then They're going to get euthanized But then they'll become food So it's okay So it's all right They're cool of life I remember working in My bird lab in grad school And we had Brown-headed cowbirds for a while And the brown-headed cowbirds Are an invasive species In the area of California Where the lab was And so once we had them in the lab We were not allowed to release them So if we brought them Into the lab to do research We could not release them So we either had to keep them Or euthanize them So it was Well It was a choice They're very cool birds Pretty, pretty, pretty birds Pretty, pretty little nest parasites Beautiful And shiny, shiny-headed Cowbird and the brown-headed Cowbird and... All right, let's go to bed It's time for sleep everyone Thank you For joining us Thank you to the healthcare professionals Out there who are doing the work At the front lines Thank you to the researchers Trying to find ways to help To make the science faster Faster, better, stronger So that we know more And can do more to help ourselves Thank you to all of you for joining us Blair, thanks for being a trooper And having good internet tonight Thank you internet I did it You did it Have a wonderful night all And we will be back again next week Don't forget The Earth maybe once on Earth Day We'll see you next time