 Hello everyone and welcome to another twist podcast broadcast. We are here And this is before the actual show starts just want to let you know This is the time that you do all the likes and the thumbs up and the hearts and the shares and little Comments and other things and we check our mics. So we go. Hey Tom. How are you doing? I'm good. Dr. Kiki. How are you? We're gonna do voices tonight like Natalia like I did the last couple of it Okay, this is going to be extra fun. That's probably Our regular viewers know as we record here right now right here right now right here right now all of you who are watching Are here with us live in the chats and I love you being here part of the chat never think thank you for making the show What it is The podcast will come from this recording and be edited to some degree. We don't know how much yet It all depends on what happens during the show and what needs to be edited out in the final Frontier Are we ready to do this you ready to rock and roll everyone Yes, let's do it. All right starting in three two This is Is twist this week in science episode number 953 recorded on wednesday december 6 2023 jump on into the science gazpacho Hey everyone, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on the show. We're gonna fill your head with dolphins penguins and ketamine but first disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer Video killed the radio star search out engines killed news short form killed attention spans Our kids would rather be youtubers than someone on tv Climate is changing one day at a time and now ai is on the verge of taking our jerbs Or is it who do we want to be today? Who do we want to be tomorrow a sledge hammer? Where will the future take us? On the highway to the danger zone Or are we just along for the ride Or do we just get to decide? Will you think and let your mind be free? We definitely like to think that's the case here on this weekend science Coming up next I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough I want to learn everything I want discoveries that happen every day of the week There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek I want to Good science to you everyone and tom merit. Wow Hey, good science to you dr. Kiki. Yeah, thank you for joining us I'm so excited to get tom merit on the show today. We have a great show ahead I have a bunch of stories about uh, biobots electric dolphins sleepy penguins. Um, some ketamine for mice And bird self gratification. I don't know anyway lots of fun stories And we also have tom merit who is a tech expert podcaster writer and generally a gentleman of many talents Thank you once again for joining so glad to have you here today Oh, thank you for having me. Uh, this this is one of my favorite shows to listen to And the only bad thing about being on is that I will have already listened to it when it's done, so Yeah, there's that whole thing. You're like, do I listen to myself again after I've already done it Let's fast forward through my parts Okay So you're listening now you're gonna listen to all of it. It's all gonna be good And I hope everyone who is here tonight is going to be listening To everything that we say because it's going to be so very very important Muy importante As we jump into the show tonight I want to remind you that subscribing to twist as a podcast is a great way to support the show Find us on your favorite podcast platform We also podcast broadcast live 8 p.m. Wednesday specific time on youtube facebook and twitch and if You sign up for notifications and all those special things you'll be notified every time a new show is being broadcast Which is pretty cool If all of this is too much and you just want to know what's happening every week go to our website twist.org You can find show notes and other things about the show there Time for the science Let's do the science. Let's do Let's do the science again Yes all right this last week has been uh the cup 28 meeting the international united nations meeting their annual meeting to bring uh governments and Operations together to try and actually make progress on some of the promises that they made Almost a decade ago to reduce carbon emissions. We've heard Really really not great news about some some important members of certain factions saying oh the science What the science isn't anything and other individuals who like al gore's Climate monitoring group who are like i see you and all of your carbon emissions that you're not supposed to be emitting right now So there's a bunch going on of just back and forth. There are promises being made yet again but I think on the positive side of all of this is a recent story That's based in transparency of data and in science. I think that is increasingly important nasa has just partnered with uh the you know the us environmental and protection agency and other government groups to release what they call the us greenhouse gas center and this us greenhouse gas center is going to act as the hub for governments and corporations and individuals to access nasa's data from their satellites from their the international space station from All of the data sources that they have as they are in real time putting them together for people So this is going to be their goal as they say is to provide decision makers with one location for data and analysis and it's a way to target greenhouse gases and also try and figure out how stakeholders can be involved in feedback and Creating ideas for how we can monitor things better where we are losing ground in monitoring and also how we can potentially move forward in some of the more Emissive parts of our planet Also permissive but also emissive Yeah, that's a good word also. Yes Yeah, I don't know. What do you think about all this? Uh, the have you been tracking the climate and Climate science and politics kind of I've been keeping an eye on the cops. Yeah the cops. Yeah Yeah, I think it's easy to lose heart uh In every one of these cop meetings if you Approach it the way it's covered which is kind of implying that All right, this is the time when everyone will decide how to fix the Oh, no, they're not one time Uh, and and so I try to look at it as this isn't how we fix the planet Uh, but it is worth doing Because if you don't have a cop summit you don't have the conversation In fact the conversation about why isn't this Working why isn't this coming up with the plan that will get everybody on board Is the important effect of the of the cop summits to me? So I kind of look at this news as very good as well, which is No, nasa isn't making its data on carbon emissions available because that's going to fix everything nasa is making its data on carbon emissions available because that makes it easier for people who do want to fix things To see what's going on and work with each other and it's the unintended consequences of things like this The unplanned consequences that are that are the promising thing, right? I really love that perspective, uh, you know, we try to be Optimistic yet realistic on this program and it's you know, one of the things I love focusing on are the solutions and it's this kind of like I said transparency of data that is going to lead to the solutions and Without the conversation to have started it in the first place we'd still be You know overshooting Yeah We might not even know because people wouldn't have been spurred to do things like this So I you know, I'm not trying to say so don't worry. I mean still worry obviously But this this this is good news, you know, even if it's not the the news we all want someday Maybe this is the thing that gets us there somehow because if you don't know what the effects are if you don't know What's actually happening on the planet? It's harder to figure out whether What you're doing is having any effect in working and which things are the better avenues to pursue Right if we hadn't gone down this road, we wouldn't have gotten to the place where we all We're the science and a lot of a lot of people. There's still people who are contrarians But they're in the minority at this point in time that anthropogenic climate change Is what's going on? We are the main cause of what's happening in our Climate at this point in time and it's because of these kinds of conversations Like that started and having this data is good to be like, oh, okay, so that's the number we have to affect That's the one we have to bring down. That's the one we have to bring up And I want to see more of it in the mainstream media these solutions. That's what I want But we'll see about that. I'm an optimist yet not like I said overly optimistic and there was a study this week related to optimism and you know Positivity is like this huge thing. There's books about being positive. Yeah. Yeah, your life will be heavier. You'll be better well It can also lead to poor decision-making according to A study in the personality and social psychology bulletin This last week researchers at the universe Doss it. Let's see at the university school of management They looked at a number of Individuals from the uk over 36,000 households To look at their expectations of their financial well-being and compared them with their actual financial outcomes And they found that those individuals who scored highest on their cognitive ability Experienced a 22 increase in the probability of realism where basically their predictions of how they do financially were More accurate and a 35 decrease in the probability of extreme optimism. So basically if you're cognitively Um, if you score higher on the cognitive scales, you're more pessimistic less optimistic you Anyway, it's it's good to have balance is what this tells me, right? Yeah, I think that's where this study comes comes out is like if you are overly optimistic Everything's always gonna work out fine. You're gonna be wrong. That truck's not gonna hit me Just think positive. No get out of the way of the truck. Yeah oopsies Yeah thinking positive, uh, you could overdo it And thinking negative I think every I think study like this is so important because We all assume that thinking negatively too much is going to be bad, right? Because then you'll you'll be less likely to take action to improve things We all know that confidence is important in achieving whatever it is we're trying to achieve But what this says is like don't don't just don't go overboard, right? Don't Remember that also if you're over confident if you're faking it till you make it too much then you you will also miss things It's the too much. That's an important part there. Yes So the key the key take homes here from this study from the university of bath is or should I bough is uh People with higher cognitive ability are better at balanced balancing that optimism with realism and making their decision making processes so If you are unrealistic, you're probably gonna have High credit card debt. Maybe business failures. Maybe you're good. Maybe you're like into startups a lot and you you fail You think you can make the the better app Um But yes, I think if you're failing Realistically, that's probably fine because you do have to you know learn from failures, but you have to learn from them. Exactly. Yeah That's the important part The important part is learning and the reason I brought that study up was we were talking about the optimism related to Climate change and what's gonna happen so we can't just you know be like, oh that truck isn't gonna hit us Like you said, we've got to be realistic about it But I like to be optimistic at this time. Yeah, I'm optimistic that we're gonna unify quantum physics and gravity I knew that you I knew you knew where to go next Yes, okay Can you explain this to me because I know But I but I can get us close Okay, all right, let's go So there is a new theory and and again, this is this is very clearly theory This is not we think this is right, but there is a there are two papers actually being published simultaneously by physicists at the University College of London and There's two important parts of their attempts to show a possible way to unify quantum physics and Classical physics right that that is one of the holy grails of physics is is to take the standard model and quantum physics and and smush them together in a way that makes sense Usually it's Everybody's been going like well, let's figure out how to quantitize gravity, right? Right, let's turn it into a particle. We need to grab a time grab a time It's pieces. Yeah, let's figure out like and then that'll be the bridge through relativity into classical physics These folks say they figured out a self Consistent explanation that goes the other way It actually said it takes classical physics into quantum So that's where it starts to be me going like I'm not going to begin to say that I understand these papers and can explain it But instead of modifying space time They modified quantum theory Which is fair enough let's modify let's modify it all and see what we can make work. Here's the best part There's a way to test it Oh You're speaking to my scientist heart right here We can actually try this out and see if the predictions of this theory work and if they do Well, then we've got a winner and if they don't well, then we learn from that too, right? But Uh, it's it's not an easy thing It's not as easy as just like walking down to france and getting the standard kilogram and putting it on a scale, but It involves some entanglement And having like a standard thing that you know with precision what it should weigh and then testing for fluctuations and if there's a fluctuation of classical weight That it meets this prediction then this then this theory would be true this makes me wonder though, I mean we have NIST the national institute of standards and technology. There are French agencies that are also are also measuring the the quantum Not necessarily fluctuations, but they're they're measuring the mass of a kilogram. They're measuring the mass of bits of Of radioactive materials that are we're using to define as our clock to define seconds and microseconds um So it would seem that we should already have this data in hand It's it's a different way of measuring. Okay, and and i'm i'm skating on the edge of possibly being wrong here So I just want to put that right up front but From my understanding of this What they're testing for are random fluctuations So if i'm understanding it, right You know the standard kilogram you measure with precision and go yep, that that's that's a kilogram Right that that's what we'll use as the basis of a kilogram But if you keep measuring it Every once in a while it would fluctuate right the way quantum particles fluctuate in and out And it's measuring the plonk the plonk scale right where you have that's that level of precision that you need Is like at that level Do we see a fluctuation and there's also something that has to be entangled for this to work and i'm not at that part I don't understand at all So it's it's a it's a big effort To be able to put together a measurement, but it's achievable. It's a thing that could be done The thing that I I like about This approach is that it is looking at you know taking a different perspective on gravity and The standard model versus the quantum and trying you know that whole trying to have the unified theory like you said forever But it's It's such we understand gravity as a force and it's often explained as a force in early physics It's a gravitational force, but really it is It is an intrinsic property of space time gravity is stronger at the bottom of a gravity well, right so Where the sun if you imagine the sun as a bowling ball on a stretched out pair of nylons the gravity is You know that the the highest at the the bottom of where that bowling ball that would be the sun is is resting um And that in itself is not a force. It's a property and gravity changes based on How much space time is being stretched or you know Changed and that's something that I think is Not as commonly understood when people talk about gravity and where we get into this hole is it gravitons is this can we quantize it? But yeah, I'm on I'm on the not I have been on the it's not gravity is not a particle Side for a very long time Yeah I I'm also on the I I think dark matter and dark energy are something else. They're not they're neither They're neither dark energy or or or matter I I've that just something about it I've said this on this weekend site a long time ago when you had me on the like We'll have to go back and like find the clip and because I remember I was in the oakland airport recording it Uh when I said it I was headed to ces or something, but it it I feel The way ether felt right the ether was a thing that just you know Permi it was theorized to permeate everything and provide structure to the universe And then we found out that no you didn't need an ether. There were these other mechanisms Dark matter and dark energy feel that way like they're not wrong, but they're not There's going to be another explanation that goes. Oh, we actually don't need dark matter or dark energy because it's these other forces Right and that that that's kind of That's kind of why I was really intrigued by this It probably like everything else will end up not being exactly right And inch us closer to the end, but there's something very compelling about What we did is we took quantum fluctuations and we applied them to the classical world and said Oh, well if that happens then that actually gets rid of the quantum problem and now we can unify it Like that would really be elegant if it ended up to be true and that is I mean that is the goal so often of Physicists is to write the most elegant equation to explain it totally Totally that they're all just artists Artists, yeah, maybe math artists. They're taking artists I'm not gonna go any further Some biologists like to be artists when it comes to using cells and Trying to create life. No, not life trying to create robots out of cells We've talked on the show for a couple of years about zeno bot research which have been Created out of little frog Embryos little frog eggs these little zeno bots. They're like, oh look we can get these little Frog cells to come together and they go and they move around And they have little rules and they move around and they go do do do do do and then they can make new ones And so they're self Assembling like we would like robots to be and they can do their own things and that's cool The group of researchers who have been Developing the zeno bots at Tufts University and Harvard University's vice institute have created now Anthro bots A new series coming to saturday mornings Rise of the anthro cereal, yeah rise Anyway, they have uh taken human tracheal cells Little's not mine. Not not yours, but they took somebody's tracheal cells and they say they've created tiny biological robots out of these tracheal cells the Robots Are tiny in there like the size of a human hair But they can also be up to the point of a sharpened pencil. So that's within visible, you know within visible Size range and see them coming You can see the other bots rising Yes And and so they grew neurons in a dish across the bottom of a petri dish and then they had created these Little anthro bots out of the tracheal cells the tracheal cells were interesting because they have cilia On them and cilia like to move and wave and the cilia helped to move mucus and other things down the airway And get you know, clean the air the airways out trick the cilia are very important for the functioning of the trachea what they have seen however is that the Cilia of these cells taken out of the trachea get when the cells start to move as individuals or move individually that they they wibble they wobble they Um The bots do all sorts of fun and interesting behaviors that would not normally come in your Happen in your trachea Or at least you hope not you hope not yes Uh, so these uh, they've published in advanced science and they With without using stem cells without using embryonic cells without really They've been able to take The rules that govern how just these tracheal cells work and they're like well, let's take them out of context and put them someplace else And so they scratched The petri dish of neuronal cells So there was damage to it and then they let their anthro bots loose to see what happened and they found that the anthro bots Moved around and they they they moved over the surface of the neurons these human neurons that were in the dish And they encouraged new neuronal growth to happen In the gaps that were left by the wounding the scratching of the layers Um, and I mean, I think they have to change their terminology a little bit because it's really gonna get into the What are you doing sci-fi realm? It already is. Um They've confirmed the neurons grew under the area covered by a assembly of anthro bots, which they called a Super bot. Yeah, that sentence caught my eye as well It's like what you've got like tracheal voltron here. I don't like That's one of those terms that's really funny in the lab when you're naming it But then it gets out in the wild and people go, excuse me. Yeah, you want to put a super bot in my wear Yes So an anthro bot is a zeno bot, but not all zeno bots are anthro bots Yes, exactly. Yes. So this is a type of zeno bot Right. So the zeno bots Well, zeno being other is where the frog cells anthro is human. So if I were if Yeah, if they were putting frog cells in humans, you'd probably have immune reactions and all sorts of You know trouble that zeno zeno Stuff happens. Yeah in your body but With anthro bots, you can even take somebody's own cells, which we've been talking about for years with stem cell type treatments take somebody's Cells and use their own cells to treat certain diseases or Injuries and that is the entry interesting part, but I I am still really reckoning in my own Just like intellectually as their definition of a robot and how Just by taking cells That do certain things naturally and putting them together in a certain way some place that they aren't normally found and letting them go and do something they can achieve some purpose which I guess is Robotic in nature, but they're not programming DNA in this Sense at all. They're They're just looking at what these constructs can do naturally. So they're all Tomata, maybe a tomata. Yeah, right Yeah, and and it's not wrong to call them robots because robots just derived from a slavic word for work worker um Fair, okay. Oh, nobody thinks that so and and with at least with english What the word means is what everybody thinks it means and everybody thinks a robot means a machine that can you know move around So, yeah, I feel like it is misleading to call this a robot Because of that right Yeah, I mean this study and the studies that they have been working on I'm fascinated to see where they're going to go and you know how they will end up differentiating from stem cell therapeutics from studies that are Using genetic modification from you know, what are the actual use cases in which these Biobots and through bots are going to be more useful more efficient more cost effective for the Patient and you know easy to how easy to use in a clinical setting. Yeah How much is it cost to grow like to harvest and grow and what what is that procedure and How is it covered and how how how practical is it? You know in in everyday use is a whole other thing But man the idea that they could just you know, uh scrape a few cells out of my trachea and fix my brain I'm into that idea Especially as I get older as you get older and You don't have to return to an office anytime soon, but no, I don't I work at home And thank goodness. I do because the return to the office is dead kiki. Did you hear this? It's over No one's going I keep hearing the shouting from the CEOs that are like Well, Amazon in particular got a lot of Yeah, all right, let's just agree to disagree. You're all going back um My side note my theory is this is really a fight between introverts and extroverts And CEOs tend to be extroverts not always but You know hr people also they like working with people So and extroverts want to be around they charge up around other people. I totally get that so The story here though is that nick bloom an economics professor at stanford university Who studies workplace trends? Is saying yeah, so we had an abnormal amount of working from home in 2020 Because of lockdowns and cautiousness and again, let's just say this right up front We're talking about jobs that can't be done from home. A lot of jobs can't be done from home and And we're we're we're not talking about those jobs. We're talking about office jobs remote work and that When lockdowns eased we saw the decline of work from home. We just saw the decline of remote work Uh, but he says uh, we're getting to the end of that um The share of paid work from home days has been totally flat This year according to a survey of working arrangements and attitudes from wf at wf fh research Uh hovering around 28 percent Uh, that's still four times greater than before 2020 so We have gone from you know, I think it was something at the height of like 60 percent Down to 28 percent and it's just staying there Uh and bloom says we're we're three and a half years in and this is kind of stuck Uh, so I don't think we're going back and in fact, he thinks that some of the forces coming in the economy That will pressure companies to save money by getting rid of office space Will counteract any tightening of the labor market that might cause people to take jobs where they have to go into an office even if they don't want to and that Technologies will continue to improve things like video conferencing and telepresence and he expects that 2024 we might start to see remote work start to grow again I'd like to see it grow again. I want to see the Balancing I think that a lot of this stuff is a pendulum. Um, and we got used to doing Work a particular way in office for but then If the realization was why do we have to spend hours of our lives Commuting every week, you know going to a job that You know is for many people just a job, right and There is evidence that mental health is better for people who have less of a commute Right that don't have to commute as as far or as long every day um and I the the comment within this whole thing that That would take something at the level of the pandemic to change it from this trend of Leveling out work from home. I think is uh, it's pretty accurate. I as much as companies might want to Really push it because of their investments in buildings in infrastructure in a lot of things that There's there's a shift And why not have One or two work days in the office so that you can get in there and meet people and have the water cooler Conversations and have those mentoring moments that don't happen unless you're in the office, you know, there are some things that really can help Careers and businesses, but Do you have to be in the office all the time? Yeah, I I think I think we learned what can be done outside the office I think we learned what kinds of things are better in the office I think there's still some studies to be done to refine that but we kind of have a General idea just from our own working experiences Uh, and and the argument about whether it should be everybody in or everybody out is an emotional argument And it's not actually what's best some kind of hybrid like you're talking about where there are Well planned events to bring people together and get that serendipity and get those human bonds are important And then there are times when people need to be able to work on their own Outside of the office so they are not disturbed so they can be more focused Again, you may not live in a situation where that's possible either which case you might have to go to starbucks or something I don't know but you know that there's a lot of nuance to this but in general There are benefits to one and benefits to the other and we're figuring out that balance now is what this looks like to me Yep, I and I I appreciate that economists are starting to look at this and that it that's you know, it's not just a CEOs say or it's not simply the emotional reaction anymore, but Hopefully the science will continue to look into which way things are going and it And one of the economic pressures to keep offices open has been leases that companies have uh But as the as the economy gets even tighter the pressure becomes maybe just figure out how to get out of that lease Maybe figure out how to sub lease it or the leases are starting to expire in which case. I think it was unity Recently announced that they're closing a bunch of their offices around the world To save money And they are no longer requiring people to be in the office three days a week In fact, they're going the opposite way and they're saying you could only come to the office three days a week But weren't they the ones who were I'm not yet. They were I don't was unity the one who were having the Everyone has to come into the office thing and or you're all fired under the old ceo. Yeah Yes, okay Wait a minute They switched that pretty yeah, they have a new ceo who's like, you know what we need to bring down these costs So, you know, they're also unfortunately having layoffs and things like that as well um, but that's the kind of economic pressure that Nick bloom is is talking about him MJF in youtube is saying traffic seems to be back at pre covid level where I am So it seems more people are back in the office But that is actually a very interesting point because while traffic levels are back up to pre covid levels People are not going back to the office in the same numbers So the question is are they going to cafes? Where are they going? What are they why why is traffic? Back up and that is something that nobody really understands yet And it's it's not back up at the same pattern right Or uh, what i've noticed is is traffic being really bad at odd times of the day that used to be oh everybody's at work Uh, so yeah, I think there's just there's people are taking advantage of the fact if they do work remotely that they can You know pop out at any time and go run on their end Bwa ha ha ha but Woe be you You're gonna get stuck in a traffic jam. Exactly. Right. Everybody else is running errands at the same time Oh, but hope yeah Hopefully though those uh people in traffic are not uh getting in accidents that leave them with traumatic brain injury that is um, you know one impact I'm not intended of uh, but should have been a kind of traffic accidents. Um traumatic brain injury can be uh caused by multiple different Different sources of injury, but um, it often leads to dysfunction of the networks in the brain Because basically you got a big bowl of jello in your brain that's like a bunch of but it's not jello It's like a very sensitive like, uh, I don't know fine spaghetti I don't know they're all but all this spaghetti little tiny spaghetti thinner than angel hair angel Yeah, thinner than angel hair, but they're all connected to each other And then it's all in a bowl of gelatin and then it goes And it gets wiggled and the connections break apart and so you have these injuries at the points where inflammation takes place where the connections are broken And it often can lead to very severe impacts on the ability on cognitive abilities of individuals This study I was just taken by it's in nature medicine this week Researchers looked at six participants with uh, what are what's called moderate to severe traumatic brain injury they had uh had been in coma and come out of coma and And achieved some amount of of self Selfability after the after their their injuries But in this particular in in these participants they were between three and 18 years post injury They put deep brain electrode stimulators into specific locations within these Dallam phylamic nuclei of the brain and they knew they knew which locations to target Yeah, and the researchers say that the the targeting of the location was actually like incredibly Important and that if they didn't get it right then it wasn't going to work And so it was a really important a sensitive operation to place these electrodes in in these patients so that It's just amazing to me. They were able to use this deep brain stimulation of the thelamic nuclei to Give these people back Lost abilities. So they used a particular test for Processing of information what they what they call the trail test which is used for studying Cognitive ability following a line from one place to another and being able to have find motor control and understand the the Processing of one instant after another and planning and all these things that are kind of higher cognitive abilities and they they found that They were looking for a 10 percent in improvement. They might give it just 10 improvement over baseline These individuals on average exceeded the average by by 32 percent Wow, yeah And this was they they had the deep brain stimulation They spent 90 days with the device turned on for 12 hours a day So half a day it was on then turned off and they found that when they turned it off The people that be it's shock like electric stimulation. Yeah, basically There's electricity going on in your brain all the time. It's just adding a little more. Okay. Yes It it worked the way they predicted. Yes yet even better and they had they wanted to Have the control of taking the patients off of the stimulator and seeing what happened and The two of the patients were like no No, I like where I am I don't mess with it. Don't mess with it. I can read books. I can do things I can watch a tv show and remember what I can keep track of what's happening. I can play a video game They can you know do homework they There was so much improvement And the the three who participated in the withdrawal. They actually had 34 percent slower Averages on the trail making test after only three weeks without the stimulation Oh, so it doesn't have lasting effects then Yeah, well, so it's only 90 days and one of the things we do know is that the The nervous system takes a long time to repair itself Some of these people were 18 years post injury. So These people are 18 years and they're still had not repaired themselves. So the likelihood of it being Massively reparative is minimal in that case. Yeah, sure So is it feasible for them to just keep this in their head? It is it is feasible. So that's the the next step is this there were This is one of those tests where it's like, is it safe? Does it kind of work and it did and it exceeded their benchmarks improved their executive function? there are many people who have deep brain stimulation there are you know The brain eventually wants to eat the electrodes and wants to Degrade them away. And so that's something that still needs to be considered. But it is you know, it at least will add value and ability to people's lives for as long as they're able to use it so I I just thought this was really really cool and They're now hoping they can make it a therapy that I mean I'm not going to let perfect be the enemy of the good It would be better if like oh, we put this in for 90 days and then took it out and it stayed it rewired things Like that would be amazing. Uh, but lacking that just the ability to say well Yes, it's risky to do brain surgery. Uh, and you know long-term basis You'd have to be going in there over and over and that's going to bring risks At least, you know, it works, right? And so I can see why people would say yes That leave it in there as long as you can and then if you if it starts to break put another one in please Uh, because I this this description in here of of it being like turning the lights on is is repeated by a few of these subjects Yeah, the I mean I could I it's hard to imagine being in that that spot of Not having the cognitive abilities not having memory that can keep you You know allow you to learn new things that can keep you engaged in a conversation or in a television show or Um, even just to do day to day Tasks around your own house, you know that how how debilitating that would be so Yeah Yeah, I mean I I've had brief periods where you know exhaustion or stress or or you know, just just just life Uh, you're talking about my life right now. Yeah, where it leaves you where you're it's hard to focus like imagine that Being permanent and 10 times worse. You know, that's that's what we're talking about here. So I It's fascinating that it seems like just upping like the brain is protecting itself still From the trauma and keeping the voltage low and if you just go and up the voltage The pathways just work like they always worked. Yeah And I but I think one of the big questions here is like you said How many individuals will it or could it potentially lead to a recovery in because there is a standard Saying in neuroscience is neurons that fire together wire together and If you get neurons firing then potentially that will lead to New wiring potentially it will lead to Astroglial cells coming and helping to put the neurons back together Or maybe we can take your tracheal cells and stick them in it And how many people did they do in this study? It wasn't that many. No, it's six people. So it's yeah It's a very this is just the beginning. Yeah But the the impact on the individuals I think can't be understated Indeed Well, you can fire your neurons or you can fire a rocket off to the moon And the united states is going to do that for the first time in 50 years on december 24th It'll be the first launch of the ula SpaceX rockets have been doing most of the heavy lifting lately, but the united launch alliance is going to be doing their version December 24th with a an unmanned Uncrued mission If it's the first i'm glad that's great to uh to land Yes, if it's the first ula you probably don't want to crew on there Uh, the first uh first time to put something on the moon by the united states anyway In 50 years and they will attempt that landing. It'll be an autonomous landing So they'll just be watching and keeping the fingers crossed that you know the math worked Uh on january 25th That's so soon. I am I mean, I know that the the first stage of the Artemis mission went off without a hitch. Uh, they're uncrewed Test that went around and and around and around and it did great got out there did all the things it was supposed to But now it's gonna land. Yeah, they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna put something on the moon Uh It's not the first thing to be on the moon in a long time. China has put something up there. India has put something up there Uh russia crashed something up there. Japan crashed something out there. Yeah, didn't japan crash it on purpose though? One of them Yeah, some of them have been like we mean it to impact and we'll study the impact But this one will not be meant to crash this one will be will be meant to successfully touch down uh, and then they'll be studying the surface of the moon in that area particularly as part of the art of ongoing Artemis mission But this one is landing and it's not going to come back This is not going to come back. Yeah, but the eventual idea with Artemis is that we will have crewed missions that will go to the moon land come back potentially Oh, the japanese one did end in a crash. I see that it's in the article, right? Yeah, uh, yeah Four countries have successfully landed on the moon us russia china and most recently india So yeah a long time for the us Let's get there And yeah, the idea is this will start to pave the way for us to send crews to the moon And then once we land on the moon again with those crews They will start to prepare for the next leg which is for Artemis to be able to send people to mars someday I love the uh, the name of the rocket from the ula is vulcan centaur Which is of course means it's half goat half spock. Oh, yes It's definitely the goat at least half the greatest of all time spock the vulcan centaur Uh Speaking of the goat, uh Bottlenose dolphins Well, I don't know you said you're gonna put a dolphin in my brain. I'm gonna put a dolphin in your brain. That's right. Uh Scientists at the university of raw stocks institute for bioscientists sciences in nuremberg zoo's behavioral ecology and conservation lab Germany just published their study in the journal of experimental biology looking at the abilities of Bottlenose dolphins two dolphins be uh two Dolphin species previously sotalia Guia nensis the guiana Guia nensis the guiana dolphin and ter seops truncatus, which is the bottle nose Have been shown to have what are called vibrissal crypts I'm so sorry to hear that rostrum these are innervated ampullary electroreceptors Oh, yes, vibrissal crypts. There would be into their little little spaces that are potentially sensitive to electro Electrical field deep brain stimulation. Perhaps potentially deep brain stimulation. Yes And so in this particular study, they looked specifically at the bottle nose dolphins And they showed that the dolphins when trained they'd been previously trained on this task in a Another study in which they discovered that they had these Vibrissal crisp crypts that worked They were trained to kind of go put their head in a bunch of pipes and touch a target And to hold it there when there was an Electrical signal that was there and they changed the amount of the electrical signal to see how sensitive these vibrissal crypts actually were um, it turns out they are Not as sensitive as sharks or some other fish species that we know about but they're able to detect dc Electric field as low as 2.4 and 5.5 micro volts per centimeter So It's similar to those as in the in the platypus I was going to say this is this is not that rare in the sea, but it's rare in the mammals, right? Yeah, and so that is the the big Discovery or the big investigation here is how How sensitive are the mammalian species of the sea to these electric signals? and micro and macro scale Electro orientation could be used for navigating based on electromagnetic fields of the earth Could also be used for hunting for Determining where and when particular prey are in a certain space um So it's a it's a really interesting question as to what dolphins are using this magneto Electro magneto reception for Um, but they can yeah, they they do and I imagine some of them use it for good Others you know not all dolphins are have the same personality. Let's there's there's a lot of rude dolphins out there I do have to say there's a bunch of rude dolphins who do whatever the heck they want. Yeah, I don't know how yeah It's just their personality. I don't know how smart they are how well they do Against very some dolphins are smarter than others. How do you think they do on the touring test? I think they would do better than the humans possibly based on this study Uh, that is a pre-print. Uh, it has not been peer reviewed but two researchers from UC San Diego uh looked at several Large language models. So they were based on three Well, I should say several Models two of them were large language models gpt 4 and gpt 3.5 gpt 3.5 is the one you get if you don't pay for chat gpt It's the one. I think you get it being gpt 4 Is the improved next version? Uh, that is more capable from open ai and that model is the one you get if you pay Those two that most students are using to probably not. Yeah They also used Eliza. Are you familiar with Eliza? Do you remember Eliza? I mean, not that you remember Eliza because it was made in the 60s before either of us were born It's an old test. I don't know. Yeah. I first encountered Eliza on my Commodore 64 as a piece of shareware and Basically it it's a psychologist, right? It's a psychologist who's only paying half attention to you because it will repeat back a lot of what you say as a question It will respond to Certain words that you say in a way that sounds kind of convincing And the first time you ever used it, especially before open ai put out chat gpt It was kind of impressive because it it could feel like you were talking to somebody even though it was very rote Very simple algorithm. Uh, well, they did a touring test with humans And gpt 4 gpt 3.5 and Eliza the multiple models of gpt 4 all outperformed Eliza except for two And the model of gpt 3.5 paled in comparison, uh, it just it just lagged behind Eliza The other takeaway from this is that none of them passed None of them were more than 50 percent In fooling humans. I think the other even humans are good at fooling The other the other interesting thing is that humans only were dead were correctly identified as humans 73 percent of the time. So Uh, yeah, some humans failed the touring test as well Which I think and they actually acknowledge this in the paper like this may say as much about the touring test as it does About any of these models, but it is an interesting, you know apples to apples comparison of how these models do and the fact that gpt 3.5 Is maybe easier to tell that it's it's a it's a machine than even a more mechanical machine like Eliza It also in it is inspiring More people now that the study has come out possibly to pay for chat gpt 4. No, yeah, maybe I That could be a side effect that part was not included in the study Uh, it does it did actually impress me now. They're varying implementations of gpt 4 here. So Some of them didn't perform better than Eliza, but most of them did and there was one that they labeled dragon That that even got close to 50 percent. But again, even gpt 4 is not is not fooling people most of the time into thinking it's a human I like to hear that still as I think about where we are with ai and I mean, especially in the academic front and with the spoofing of papers the spoofing of intellectual ideas the spoofing of content and You know, I There's the question with this these tests, right these touring tests. Are they are the Is the test made to figure out Whether the ai's are getting closer to humans so biasing the design of the ai's or is it the that the ai's then are Being biased. It's like they're learning the it's the teach the test method, right? Yeah To pat like ai's could then pass this test, but maybe not others I also think uh, there is a literacy at work That benefited Eliza. I think if you do this same test with people in 1969 That Eliza does much better if you do this test in 1985 Eliza will probably do worse uh, and I think as time goes on gpt 4 will do worse Because we'll all as a species start to learn What those little hallmarks are that says? Oh, that's probably an ai ai's do that a lot But we don't all know that yet Right, we haven't figured out all of the the various One thing is there are programs that are out there. There are programs that are looking for the You know, basically the the watermarks. Yeah, the watermarks in the ai so There is a predator prey kind of Evolution happening which I know one thing fascinating that our brains are really good at his pattern recognition Yeah, so I I feel like if you have people in a study Let's say you did the same study, but you did it with people who have used chat gpt the paid for version gpt 4 for eight hours a day for a year Which is not a possible because gpt 4 wasn't out a year ago, but you know Versus people who never have Exactly you you're gonna see these these rates drop because those people are just they're used to it They're like, oh, yeah, I see that a lot the same way that photoshop was way Way more convincing When it was new and even less capable than it is now when we're like, oh, that's probably photoshop. I can kind of tell It's still impossible to figure out how to use That that's true Can a human or a large language model use photoshop that will be the real test That's gonna be the one That's gonna take us places Oh my gosh Okay, I think we've hit all of the stories for the first part of our Of our show here. I do want to reintroduce you right now. Oh my goodness everyone This is tom merit. Do you know? We've gone through a bunch of fun stories Tom is it's just always wonderful wonderful treat to get to talk to you tom and it has been quite a while I think we actually last Emailed or talked probably it's like last year. Yeah, I think you're right. It's been a while But anyway, you're a technology reporter You've got a large number of podcasts that you do and I don't understand how you do it The day the daily tech news show is The daily tech news show that you do or it's a thing with mollywood. You also write science fiction We're on book number four now or something like that Vera. Is that what it's something? Yeah, yeah trigger Was the the more recent publication from from ink shares and then yeah project vera is an audiobook The audiobook right and then you also discuss fantasy and science fiction on Sword and laser with Veronica Belmont. You're always posting on social media about the food that you're eating Are your dogs? but Can you let us know what you're I mean have I what have I missed here? What have what am I missing in your life? Yeah Well, it's all let me just say it's it's as much or more of a pleasure for me to get to chat with you on the show As well, so I I'm very grateful that you invited me on this is a lot of fun for me And it's because I deal with the technology side of things, but we don't get a lot of dolphin stories on daily tech news show So it's nice. Yeah, it's nice to cross the waters literally in that sense I do daily tech news show the the point of daily tech news show is to help you understand technology So we are not in the business of hyping up technology We're not in the business of tearing down all the the evils of technology What we're trying to do is help each other understand What does this do for us? You know like we were talking earlier like not being too optimistic, but not being too pessimistic How can we actually be realistic about this stuff and make good use of it? That's for free 30 minutes a day if you're a patron of our show you get a longer version You get an hour a day And then I also do a sub stack now that that would be the new thing that you probably might not have known about at free tech newsletter dot com and that's more of a Line up of what I think about stories daily tech news show is a lot of different people sharing perspectives And I share my perspective on there, but there's a lot of like triangulation of our different perspectives The sub stack newsletter is really just me saying, okay Let me explain this story why I think it's happening and here's my opinion on it Again You have how many hours do you have in the day? You must you must get up at three in the morning and go to bed at two in the morning No, I go to bed early Yeah, I think I think it's wonderful to be able to get your Your ideas out how often do you take the ideas? From the you know tech that you're regularly reporting on and thinking about with your own perspective And then also mixing it up, you know little cocktail with other people And then you know, how often does that? Bleed into your creative thinking and the the fiction writing that you've done Yeah, it does it it it absolutely crosses over because a lot of what i'm doing for daily tech news show is Trying to understand. Well, why did twitch leave korea instead of you know, that that was a story that that we did this week Where twitch is pulling out of korea because of high network transit costs and so I didn't want to just be like well, that's bad and you know, it's bad for esports I wanted to be like, well, why why are they doing that? Like that that doesn't that doesn't seem like a right idea So I I dug into how this new policy in korea. They're the only country that does this Was put in place in 2016. What what are some of the motivations etc etc etc And now because of that if i'm ever writing a scene in soul I'll have all of this knowledge that I can unpack and be like Ah, well, let me like put in a problem with the bandwidth that is because of this, you know Sender payment plan etc etc etc And of course machine learning and things like that Obviously inform what I do In some ways it can be a danger though. Like I wrote a character that is a machine intelligence Uh that I now feel like it might already be dated and not very impressed Compared to what we've had in the last yeah, I think that's one of when you when you're working in science fiction especially it's like okay, how fast is the science advancing to The point and how how realistic how far in advance are you creating this character or this world that you're building and How rapidly will it end up there? yeah, because one of the tricks that kori doctoro talks about using that that i've learned from uh is extrapolate what's now to its logical conclusion and then make that the future And it's a near term future and and you won't be far wrong um But the other thing that I do is just Don't name things So I I will often if I if I have somebody on a spaceship just talk about screens Like they picked up a screen they looked at a screen because as soon as I say, you know Oh, they they they picked up a device and described the device I know that in five years somebody's going to come up with some technology that's going to make that device look really silly Uh, so you know specialized zener blubber blubber blubber Yeah, occasionally keeping it vague and like well I'm you know screen's probably a bad one too though Like maybe everything's just going to be floating holograms that are projected into our brains in the future. So who knows? Uh, it all depends on the story. It depends on the consistency of what you're trying to create and I mean that's I love the you know the interplay between science Leading to technology as an application but then also The extension of all that into science fiction, which is you know the creativity Which then can lead to new scientific studies and ideas and the whole the the whole cycle builds on itself in a certain in a certain way yeah I I I just uh, I just am publishing right now in newsletter form a story that is uh Set in both the current time and the future And in the future they solved the climate crisis With a form of energy that causes Uh, the fundamental constant of physics to fluctuate and eliminate people randomly And there's the story this week Unification of standard and kind of physics there you But I wrote about it. I pulled like you know, like what are what do startups do and like why how do they get funded? And when do they pivot and like I used all of that that technology stuff in there um And but but also we're was kind of taking that model of of you know Side effects and innovation and what makes something popular that we know about technologies now and worked it into the story So thinking about things that you have been thinking about recently this year There's been a lot of progress in AI, right? So we just talked about the GPT-4 GPT-3 Yeah, the a the touring test the touring test. There's also some work with researchers creating AI I mean, I say AI, but it's machine learning algorithms that can predict molecular structures. So Chemicals that we don't know how to synthesize or haven't discovered yet and then putting them into a robotics lab that can then do the experiments And there there are hundreds of thousands. They've already got hundreds of thousands of enzymes and proteins that they've got Robots doing experiments on little chips with and I mean Where are the people here? um This is one that I I I really think about a lot Because well, first of all, like you said AI I think we're getting into a comfortable world where we think of AI as a collection of things and I'm starting to be okay using it Again, but for a long time I tried to avoid using AI because people were using it as like magic thing That that you know, we don't understand it does amazing stuff So you'll still hear me say large language model machine learning deep learning neural network As much as as possible Yeah, because those are different things And I think it's important to to not be afraid of this stuff to understand What those are what they can and can't do And and how they interoperate And this is a great story this this story is a really good example of where I think it isn't quite as daunting as it might look at first I wrote this in my newsletter earlier this week, but the one thing that hits me about all these tools is They're all trained on Our knowledge and of course everybody talks about how that brings in our biases, but it also brings in our limits so They can't create new knowledge And this is a story where you might look at and go well hell hold on they're they're finding all these things that we've never found To which I would say that yes, but they're doing what we could if we had time Right, they're just plowing through and making associations And they're doing that the busy work for us right they didn't come up with a new theory of cosmology they didn't create new concepts and That's what I'm keeping an eye out for is like if I start seeing these things coming up with concepts and not just mimicking They're very good at making it feel like they came up with a concept But when you dig into it, you're like oh well They they came up with that concept because that concept comes from this other author Right, that's why they're so impressive is they can be all of our knowledge at once and none of us can't None of us can have all of the knowledge at once, but they can't add to it And so to me, that's just a super tool. That's very good at things like this But not something that I'm yet worried is going to take over or start acting on its own volition Which is that big up wingers and down wingers conversation about whether we should like only start to use these tools when we're sure they're safe or Use them knowing there's a limit to them and then adapt when we find out that they do harm I think of machine learning algorithms all of this As you know, it's tools at this point in time. Um, I find in interactions with individuals online Especially in the scientific community at this point in time. There are many many people who are entirely against using any of these ai tools to help with writing because there is such a a problem with the hallucinations, right within ai so the fact that it's The the machine learning Algorithms and the informational networks that they're using are probability banks based, right? So how how often is the probability of this word and this context used together and they and it Puts the ideas together and can sometimes make the things up, right? And there's this Speaking about the knowledge creation, which scientists, that's the job of the of scientists There's this fascinating backlash by individuals saying I I think anyone who's using Any ai to help with any aspect of their writing Is is isn't doing the job of a scientist And I there's a part of me that sees what they're saying, but at the same time I I feel like there's room for There's too much emotional Yeah, I mean That becomes a problem when it's like, okay, but which Which tool is the ai you don't like spell check? Okay. Yeah, everybody's fine with spell check. Okay, cool What about like, you know auto completing the sentence and email is that one? All right. Oh, okay So you're maybe you're okay with that. Maybe you're not Uh to to me where does the line get crossed? I think there's really really good Limits being placed. I was just at a conference about content management systems for newsrooms And they are very sensibly saying we would like to bring these tools to reporters to help them write But the reporters still on the hook for what goes in the story so What we've seen all these bad stories about a publication that uses these auto-generated stories without anybody looking at them That's exactly the wrong way to use them the right way to use them is Uh as an assistant as a tool where you say, hey, can you summarize this? You know this set of data for me and then you look at that that summarization And you say, okay, does that check? Does that look right? Uh and the argument against that is well if that's not more efficient than than doing it myself And if that's the case then don't use it but there will be cases where it will be more efficient Yeah I I tend to agree with you there will I mean it'll be it'll it's yet to be seen where it's going to be uh Used and where it will be misused It's already being misused and content farming and the creation of fake research papers In the in the scientific area it I mean yeah across the web everywhere just there's It's kind of like oh Chumming the seo waters with content right just put a lot of stuff out there and people will you know, it'll People say their site eventually maybe it's tempting and comforting to say, you know There's so many bad uses for this just don't use it at all and then that'll stop the bad uses I get that argument But I do think the You know once the smoke clears We will see Like everything else like there are there are people who eschewed computers and were like I would never write on a computer Uh, you know that the typewriter allows me to think about what i'm writing and a computer is a horrible way to write and That's just not a very common way to think and anymore Because people have grown up Writing on computers and we've learned like oh this these are their pitfalls and we now know how to avoid them I love the difference between the way I think and the way my son. Thanks. He's grown up on computers and he has he Has never liked writing As with a pen pencil on paper never enjoyed that process But get him a keyboard And he is magic his eyes. His ideas come out. He gets everything out. I'm the I'm the opposite I have to get my ideas out on paper because that's what I learned and so it's so fascinating that you know The tools that we use are also enabling our thought processes and how we think And so I think that's also going to be an interesting question moving forward as we adapt ai as our tool to Help us with our thinking moving forward I mean my grandparents chided one of my grandparents my grandpa chided me for using a typewriter Yeah, he's like, ah, it's lazy You know hand write that's a it's it's good for you You know like it's around your your legibility sign. It's a yeah, it's an old it's a you'll need you'll need this You know typewriters won't always be around. You'll need to know how to write. You'll need to know cursive Yeah My gosh now cursive is going to be one of those like preserved Yeah Kids these have I just I've this oh my gosh. I just did that kids these days. Yeah can't read cursive And it's shocking. Yeah, it's antiquated already I tell you I I have a thing where I I actually compose best with a keyboard Uh because I grew up using like the ti 99 and and a typewriter I have a hard time composing on a phone with a touchscreen like it just doesn't feel right, right? Yeah, but I know people who use their phone to do everything Yeah, yeah, it's a whole different thing. I can't do touch touch screens and I'm just like This is why it is part of the reason why I'm not an apple iphone user. I'm like, it's just too much touching the screen I can't do it. Well android's the same way. How do I do that? But at least android has like pretend buttons now. I mean come on It's got some buttons. I like it's got a few not as many as you're used to What are we gonna do to sit down and write you a letter? Yeah Oh, okay, so thinking about the future I mean we could talk about quantum stuff or we could move on into talking about the history. You said, uh, you had a show that you did recently you're doing You're know a little more Podcast you've always been interested in history. I know you've always done like there was always like a bit of history podcasting always in there and I love this So, um, tell me about this mother of all demos Yeah, so, uh No, a little more is a show I started because I was doing this anyway Where I would be like, you know what? I just really need to understand arm The the processor Instruction set and I would dig in and I would make notes and I you know, I would learn all about it And I was like, well, I should just turn this into a show So I started doing it as a show And then a year ago I hooked up with Justin Robert young at dog and pony show audio And he's like, let let me take that show you're doing and all that good research and make it make it sound prettier Uh, and so we started working on the construction of the show and the storytelling elements Uh, and we did it. We did a season last year that was pretty good But this year we themed the season of the show Around something called the mother of all demos. I have you heard of the mother of all demos before? No, so this is all new to me and I'm excited. So so in 1968 in san francisco douglas engelbart Who is generally if you have heard of him you've heard of him credited as the inventor of the mouse Which is a very good argument that he is the the inventor of the mouse He did a demo on stage at a computer conference Where he not only showed off the mouse He showed off word processing collaborative editing video conferencing Um pretty much everything you do with your current computer, uh, you know, the uh cut and paste insert editing Everything this was like around the same time as steve jobs was first getting up and talking about like his new Macintosh, no, this is 20 some. Yeah 20 years before that Steve jobs is very tiny at this point I'm sure he's alive, but yeah, we haven't landed on the moon yet So you can't say we can put a man on the moon But you can't build a mouse because it's the opposite when he's giving this demo So so the season of know a little more starts with talking about the mother of all demos How it came about how douglas engelbart was able to create this lab at stanford To make all these experiments how people Reacted to the demo by saying wow, that's really great. We could never do that and just let it all languish eventually a lot of his ideas make their way over to xerox park up the street in palo alto and of course then That's where they are developed farther and steve jobs and bill gates both stop by and borrow a bunch of ideas And bring them into the mac and windows later on but but yeah We have an episode on the mother of all demos Have an episode on word processing episode on video conferencing episode on the mouse all of that A few a few others in there as well and we finish with kind of a forward-looking one Called aloha net where I talk about how one of the few things To happen in that time period that didn't come out of the mother of all demos was ethernet And it came out of people in hawaii trying to figure out how to Time-share computers across the islands On the University of hawaii system and that led to the protocol that that underlies both ethernet and wi-fi actually So that's the final episode of that season But you know dns the domain name system came out of engelbart's lab Collaborative editing was probably the last of of the amazing offs to kind of make it into mainstream use But we wouldn't have google docs if it hadn't been able to build on on what engelbart's team Put together so that's that's the story and it's it's really a fascinating story in writing it I kept discovering more connections like I I was just updating my domain name system episode and I found the connection to engelbart And I was like well we have to include this in the season But the thing that's the just is the most surprising and I guess not surprising is How he was ahead of his time and there is always this idea in technology that there are things that come ahead of their time and then They languish for just a little while until the resources or the technology become available or It's it's I guess it's in the in the design world It's putting a solution ahead of the problem So it's basically engelbart was like look we're gonna want to do all these things But people were like I don't want to do these things yet. I'm fine. I don't need that. Why do I need that? So yeah It the attitude was sort of like oh sure because hypertext I didn't even mention hypertext was one of the things he showed off in 1968 You know clicking on a link And people were like yeah, that looks great in your demo But but I really need to to figure out, you know, how to do my my local timeshare allocation Like people were so practical with their immediate problems That they couldn't see how this would help them and I still see that attitude all the time whenever there's a new technology There's a there's a strain of people who just want to tear it down and go well What is that good for um and sometimes they're right because you know stop clocks right twice a day, right? But A lot of times, uh, it's just that It's it's ahead of its time like you say where like it's new we haven't quite figured out Where exactly it fits of course, it's not going to be obvious yet Because it hasn't been implemented before now It's all it's that's why it's I don't know it that I I think that's the fun part of the also the science and tech kind of There's always a bit of a bit of tension between the two You know the science is always like we're gonna work on this no matter what we got basic science We're gonna figure out how to do these things and we just want to know why they work and then there's the applied science which is How do you take the science that has been figured out and actually put it to use and then there's the okay Now we've got the applied science. We've got some ideas here. How are we gonna actually get that into use Cases in the market and how do we get people to want these things? And now I feel like we're just like in this I don't know hamster wheel of startup vc Unicorn app death I don't think that's new I think our awareness of it is new And I think that's what a lot of people feel like. Oh, this is this is the worst technology has ever been Because we are aware of all of the problems and that's a good thing sunlight is a good thing Because it allows us to see the problems, but it's demoralizing right to see them all the time So we we kind of have to get used to that That's awesome I hadn't thought about it that way. This is why I like to talk to you. Oh, thanks a different view That I can then incorporate and think about for a little while and maybe I'll start my own Substack what I think about tom's substack Dot com Here's what you got wrong merit Thank me. Oh my goodness Is there anything else you wanted to bring up in this segment as well? We're talking about No, you mentioned real quickly the quantum stuff. The only thing I'll add to that is that um You may think quantum computing is kind of moribund. Uh, there've been very slow sort of not very headline grabbing Uh progress But they're the kind of progress that are making it more useful And a lot of the folks that I follow who follow that industry say That next year we are going to see a lot of practical Uses for quantum computing. They're probably going to be enterprise level stuff They're not going to be things that you can take advantage of directly They're going to be very academic research oriented kinds of stuff in a lot of cases, but but it looks like Probably in the next year, maybe 2025 but probably in 2024 We're going to start seeing quantum computing show up as as something that is being used for real things You're not going to have quantum computing in your phone though. Probably not. No, no No, so like you said enterprise level, so it'll be quantum computing and when we when we talk about applications for quantum computing It's uh calculating. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's you know climate modeling or projecting Things like that very a lot of a lot of modeling kind of stuff different kind of modeling than the ai modeling We're talking about but but yeah very very specific things I do wonder what the two would be like put together machine learning at the Superfast Superfast quantum speed. Yes Yeah, I don't think quantum computing is good at the kinds of processing that they're using now But that doesn't mean they won't figure out a way to take advantage of it, right? Right I don't know. All I'm hoping is that maybe one day portland will have accurate weather forecasts. That would be very nice Weather forecasting is a good one. Yeah, quantum computing can help a lot With that weather forecasting is actually better than it's ever been. It's just still not Always great and still not always right so but so that's another recent study that came out where They used machine learning to put a whole bunch of basic climate climate weather forecasting models together and They said It came out more accurate than all of them. Yeah on the large level On sadly on the portland neighborhood level yet, but you know slowly getting there We'll get there eventually Oh our quantum future. Okay. So if you were to be on our prediction show for this next year, you'd say Quantum computing is gonna Yeah, keep an eye on that that might I might end up in my dTNS prediction show actually too Put a little pin in that one. We'll just stick that one right there This is this week in science. Thank you so much for joining us If you just tuned in I need to let you know that this show is listener supported and if you are looking for your 2024 Calendar, please head over to twist.org click on the zazzle link and get yourself a twist calendar I did send out links through our newsletter. I did I sent a newsletter everybody. Isn't that exciting? But yes on zazzle we have our 2024 calendars available that Blair During her maternity leave has so wonderfully done the art for and put together And so you can get those as gifts for people for the holiday season for yourself while you're there buy other gifts for people There's mugs. There's lumbar pillows. There's blankets. I have a really awesome Beach towel that I got like if you're planning for your, you know, winter summer vacation The twist beach towel. I highly recommend But anyway, all the gifts a portion of the proceeds go to support twists. 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I have a few more stories Put that ketamine in my brain I would like to but I don't know if you would like the effects Let's find out By talking about it. Not by putting it in my brain. Yeah, so ketamine has been looked at as a possible treatment for treatment resistant depression. It's also Good for not pain killing but Disassociation it's often used in anesthesia And in veterinary medicine as an anesthetic part of the question With research previously is how does it work in the brain? What is it doing? What is happening in there? And so This group of researchers just published in their cell reports paper Um their whole brain mapping Of the divergent impacts of ketamine on the brain previous studies have only looked at particular areas basically hypotheses that We're like, well, we think ketamine will impact this area of the brain this way because this is an effect that ketamine has when people take it so So This group went in kind of without that Hypothesis and and so they said what's happening all over the brain? So they washed Washed mouse brains in ketamine and I'm Didn't it say not to do that on the little tag that came with the mouse brain Do not wash in ketamine dry clean only do not wash in ketamine Anyway, they found that Repeated exposure of ketamine leads to a decrease in dopamine neurons in regions that are Important for regulating mood There was an increase in neurons in the hypothalamus, which was related to homeostasis and metabolism So it's very interesting. They think that the changes in dopamine in the midbrain mood related reasons Kind of it could be related to why some ketamine users and abusers find Symptoms similar to schizophrenia over time That makes sense It does but uh, there are really good health and therapeutic impacts of ketamine as well So now the question is how can we like how can we really tune in on the dosage the timing the Uh, you know the the length of time the duration the frequency of ketamine treatments to help various things like Eating disorders mood disorders other other aspects where it is potentially therapeutically helpful helpful How do we get it to the right part of the brain? That's exactly. Yeah Yeah, that's the exact question We need the answer of us Send them to the brain One part of this study that uh, did Uh It kind of perked my skeptic brain was that the researchers They're they're repeated exposure to the drug Was it doses that are higher than I think most people Recreationally would be taking ketamine. You mean the mouse the exposures of them to the mouse to the mice. Yeah So the uh, the amount of copa of copamine My new word ketamine, um It was analogous to the dose used during a model depression and treatment And then another was closer to the dose that induces anesthesia And they did this on a repeated Daily exposure For up to 10 days Yeah, that's that's not a normal amount Right and even in therapeutic Dosages, that's not what they're doing But it's not like there's an argument to be made for 10 days and having these massive quantities You're doing it in order to make sure that you see the effect and then you can do another study at normal levels to see how it differed Uh, but you would need another study for sure. Yeah, I think that's the thing is more study is necessary The big picture here is that They start with the big doses, right? They see that there is alteration of the dopaminergic system Alteration of the neurons and the way they connect to each other the way that they increase or decrease their release of dopamine and That in itself on a brain-wide level is Something that needs to be looked at and like you said, you know to help us figure out targeting in the future Yeah All right I really like this study also because it has very very pretty pictures of mouse brains Ah, I bet these mice have framed these. They're so pretty I like them Mom look, it's my brain. Look, it's my brain on drugs Literally Literally on drugs. Okay, uh, but what does It mean to be doing this to mice and looking at their brains and everything another study just published this week in neuron Showed that mice display Self-recognition behavior during the mirror test. Tom, are you familiar with the mirror test? I have heard I've heard of the mirror test When you look into a mirror Do you you see a stray hair or one of those odd gray ones that grows out of your eyebrow or something and go Oh god and pull it out because you realize it's on your own face as opposed to somebody else's Yes I rarely look in the mirror and go start laughing that guy's eyebrows are all messed up Yeah, I usually I usually I'm I usually I'm aware of that Usually, yeah So the interesting aspect of this is that we've looked at a number of different animals that we're like, of course, they're self They they have They have self identity they they can recognize themselves. Of course. Yeah, I can hear I know Blair is listening right now and Saying the usual Blair line of like yes, of course But in this study they determined that it's fascinating with mice Specifically that they if they haven't been trained how a mirror works if they're not familiar with mirrors They don't look at themselves and I mean it's not a big thing and also also if they're not socialized to Be around other mice and to know themselves from other mice And so So they have to be trained what a mirror is like hey, that's you and they have to understand what you is Right That's interesting But they wouldn't know then according to their results mice don't necessarily know who they are If they are raised alone They don't have a con they don't learn a concept of self from other if they are Raised in isolation, which is a very sad thing to think about but it's really also very Very telling and interesting in terms of thinking about lots of different species and how we look at Yeah, socialization versus isolation and there is no me without you Yes, yes tom tonight It's true Yeah, so uh from house, that's true for the mouse mice. It's very true um, and in this case they had to use very big dollops of black ink or white ink and they had to be kind of Like a paint that the mice felt in their fur And then the mice would look at it and try and get it out when they looked in the mirrors But little tiny dots didn't bother the mice as bigger as much as bigger dots less tactile dots didn't bother them as much either You know that could also just be you know, they don't care about How they look, you know as much as yeah, the next study needs to look at like, you know But what what is their self opinion like? Yeah How do they think of themselves? Yeah, so they found a set of neurons a subset in the ventral hippocampus a very specific region of the hippocampus where They got activated when the mice recognized themselves in the mirror And it was this group of neurons that they could then make non functional and they could Make it so the mice no longer Cared whether they were had ink on their foreheads and didn't do self-growing. Yeah, because they don't even recognize themselves. Nope. Neurons turned off mice don't care Yeah, so it's it's going to be interesting moving forward. They have this mouse model. They can manipulate the neurons. They can now Look and see how this circuit works Mice are actually very very close to humans on the like phylogenetic evolutionary scale, uh, so in terms of Mice we're doing a great job of figuring it out. Maybe it'll help us understand more about how neural neural circuits for sociality self-recognition isolation loneliness other aspects are developed in humans as well, but Who knows right now? We just know how we can get a mouse to look at themselves in a mirror Yeah, and I guess if they don't have a sense of self they wouldn't feel lonely Right I don't need anyone else. I don't know you don't know what the other anyone else means at that point I just know myself Mouse know thyself. Do I even know myself? Oh, jeez mouse self Oh my gosh, now i'm gonna put a my self on the shelf for christis That's a gratifying thought So gratifying that I want to talk about some birds that like to delay their gratification published in plus one, which is an open Open journal where you can read the research yourself if you want to researchers from anglia ruskin university in cambridge, uk and the university of cambridge compared the behavior of Eurasian jays and new caledonian crows jays are like, I don't know if you know scrub jays or blue jays blue jays they're They store food. They do all sorts of things. They're very social Maybe a little bit more aggressive than the crows the crows are also incredibly social But they have a different social structure and there are questions about the levels of cognition intelligence and also You know where they can What decisions they make and why and in this particular study they showed that yes Both the jays and the new caledonian crows are able to delay gratification for their favorite food They can do that But the jays are more likely to eat Stale bread or whatever is given to them like the first food thing And not wait for their favorite food thing if there are other jays around Whereas the the crows They're gonna wait it out But I mean their favorite food is meat. So they're like, I'm gonna wait for that Nice little right rare steak. You're gonna get me there. So So the jays the jays are the are the personalities of like If you're gonna if you're gonna try to take that I'm gonna take it first Like I don't want you to I don't want to I don't want to miss out I better take it where the crows are like Go ahead. I bet something better is coming and you'll regret it. I can I can wait I can do this all day. You go to the salad bar. Yeah, I'm gonna Wait until the barbecues over. Yep. Yeah, I'm gonna wait for that surf and turf to come out Yeah, and it uh, you know, it has been shown in their different cultural Habits that the new caledonian crows are also, you know, they're they're maybe more able to Cooperate with other crows for tool use for developing, you know for finding food for even hunting and Managing their managing their their families. So yeah I have an understanding with the crows in my neighborhood that I do not have with the jays I don't know if that really ties into this But like seriously like I could I could walk my dog used to like jump and bark at the crows And I would stop it and then I would look at the crows and I would apologize And the crows like stopped flying away when I came they're like, oh, yeah, he's he's he's got the dog He's cool But the jays are like the jays were just always like screech screech. Ah get away no matter what I did That sounds like jays. Yeah, it really does It's just who they are that's who the jays are it does And you know tom as we're getting to the end of our Show right here. I want to talk a little bit about sleep and how important Maybe napping could be during your day some people nap like we've talked about Some people not sleeping full nights They get up a little bit have a you know second sleep in the night time Or maybe you take a 20 minute nap during the day to regain a little bit of energy. Do you nap at all? I love to nap I don't always get a chance to nap and I have noticed when I don't nap I will often go to sleep And then wake up after an hour or two and then go back to sleep. Whereas if I've napped I sleep all the way through the night That's fascinating. Mm-hmm. Hmm What's your napping makes you restores you and makes you more tired? It's like it's like my body's like no, you're gonna take a nap We'll just take it now at you know and then wake you back up or something. I don't know It's interesting. But I yeah, I always feel better when I get a good nap I have never been able to nap People nap little naps. I am a sleeper. I will lie if I lie down for a nap. I'm out for like three hours I have to limit my nap. If my nap goes past 40 minutes I'm in trouble like that will that will mess me up But 20 minutes is ideal like a 20 minute nap. That's good. How about four seconds? That would probably Don't it doesn't do anything So a new study in science the authors studied chinstrap penguins pagoselles and tarticus And uh, they are estimated in nearly eight million breeding pairs on the Antarctic peninsula and south Atlantic ocean islands so They have to stay awake To watch their eggs to watch their young babies during Their breeding season because the scuas if anybody has watched What was it happy feet or oh, yeah There's some of those penguin movies where the scuwa comes and like the scuwa is the bad guy is gonna Get rid it's gonna eat your scuas gonna eat your baby if you're a penguin so they have to watch out for the scuas and their partners There's often one parent left at home to watch over the egg Guard them and the partner goes out to forage. It'll be gone for days and days and days and that's Could you do that stay awake? like You're like I have to stay awake to Got to sleep sometime right, so they um implanted electro electrodes in 14 birds in a colony and recorded the electrical activity in their I should This time they were not stimulating. They were recording the brain and neck muscles and they used accelerometers and gps to figure out where The penguins were how they were moving What was the ppi out there displays, uh, you might be able to sell these I know so The they found that these penguins would fall asleep More than 10,000 times a day But only sleep for about four seconds less than four seconds each time they fall asleep 10,004 second naps a day sounds Yes, it's like Insanity to me. Yeah, it's 11 hours of sleep. I guess. Yeah But none none at a none at a go right none None continuously like the whole idea of REM sleep and deep sleep that we as like mammals think Like it is circadian rhythms that are supposed to be like we have to get into our 90 minutes of sleep for you REM sleep and then deep sleep and you have to have a whole cycle or else. You're not going to be refreshed blah blah blah these penguins Are not doing this at all And at all they packetized sleep Ah Yeah, so penguins, uh, apparently, uh, they If they are on the outside of the colony They got longer deeper bouts of sleep than the ones getting bumped around who are in the center of the colony Okay But the ones in the center of a colony are also At greater risk of another penguin stealing their nesting materials. So they did There's safety in numbers from the scuas but also nest theft from other penguins and weird things going on but the From all of this the researchers know nothing about how restorative that sleep was to those penguins How is it even how can you count it as sleep when it's only four seconds? Like that's just That is so fascinating to me. It yeah quantized sleep. That's really what it is. But yeah, it's totally abnormal But it's normal in these penguins. And so who knows maybe we too can get through the day Not just so, you know, I napped 200 times during this conversation Dammit Tom You never do though. I never know It's totally fine. I I bet we got through it And on that note, we've finished the stories for today and I hope that this last story Didn't make everyone nod off to a four-second nap but might get you ready for a full night of sleep or whatever day is ahead Uh-huh All right Everyone out there. Thank you for listening so much. I hope you all enjoyed the show Tom. Thank you for joining us This was amazing I really enjoyed it. Where can people find you? Oh, thank you kiki I love being here as I said and I will keep saying millions of times. It's one of my favorite shows I've been listening to it forever So it's it's an honor to be invited back on it If you would like to find other things that I do Head to daily tech news show dot com. That's that's the main thing that I do If you only remember one thing, uh, or you can look at all the stuff I do at tom merit dot com Those sound like reasonable places to send people I hope so And for everyone out there, I'd like to also say thank you to the people who do help with the show fata Thank you for your help on show notes and social media Gord, thank you and our lord. Thank you for manning the chat room and keeping it a happy place to be Identity for thank you for recording the show and rachel. Thank you for your editing and I do as always need to Thank our patreon sponsors. 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Yay once You can contact us directly. I'm kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com justin is twist minion at gmail.com blairsblarebazz at twist.org And you know tom i'm going to let you do this one Make sure to put twist in the subject line so Your email doesn't get bathed in ketamine and washed out to see to be observed by a napping penguin Which means not observed at all You can also ping us on twitter uh twist science at dr kiki at jackson fly at blairsmanadry on at ace detect Good luck spelling it. We love your feedback if there is a topic you would like us to cover or address or a suggestion for an interview Please let them know We will be back here again next week. Like we said, 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 this week in science this week in science This week in science is the end of the world. So i'm setting up a 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 the warming with a wave of my hand and all this is coming your way So everybody listen to what i say. I use the scientific method and i'll broadcast my This week in science this week in science This week in science science science This week in science this week in science This week in science science science science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That's what I say and we fade out into the after show. Thank you so much tom Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. That was so much fun. Thank you I and I know I've kept you up late so You think dr. Kiki's kidding But I told her for the show. She's like, do you how long can you go? I'm like as long as i'm awake I uh Because I I do tend to go to bed early, but i'm doing good. I'm doing fine. I took a lot of four second penguin naps totally working for I mean, that's what i'm gonna be Yeah from now on in meetings kiki. Why are you blinking so long? I'll just take a penguin nap penguin nap, you know Just the whole thing It keeps me more alert in the long run. It's great What you don't know about penguin naps it's It's a whole learning thing now. It's like now we can teach everyone about the importance of penguin naps Yes, public service I mean, it's penguin. So of course it's applicable to people. I mean, that's what we always do with animals 70% penguin This is where I don't have to be accurate anymore, right? I could just say whatever comes in the way Or we could be a potato exactly. Yes Yeah 80% related to a potato I mean We have dna anything else that has dna is going to be pretty similar to us. So Yes Oh and speaking of dna I have a book story idea that i'm working on tom. Oh, yeah I do And it's a little near future science fictiony dystopian I love it and I've only gotten a little bit into it, but i'm trying to like work out the things i'm trying to you know Do the corey doctoro thing? and extrapolate In a thoughtful manner and i'm reaching out to other to scientists who work in genomics and phylogenetics and other things and trying to you know get my science down um But the big thing I think is the characters, right? Trying to because if you don't have characters that people like Who cares? They need to be they need to be different Right, they can't all be the same character Oh and bob said to bob Yeah, uh and they should not all be you that was another thing I learned along the way So yeah, yeah, you gotta you've got to create characters and then they have to do interesting things In service of the story you're trying to tell Yeah, yes, um, do you know about the four doorways into a story? No, I see I'm just I am like I've been I've I science forever And I I told myself I was the world's worst writer for a very long time But had lots of ideas and then I've recently in the last couple of years allowed myself to do more than just journalistic writing and I'm exploring Po bad poetry mediocre poetry And now you know some other creative ideas like this. Yeah, you know, it you know, it's I think it's like a uh a young adult type science fiction thing, but Anyway, no, I do not know the four doorways Um, they're they're really more for readers, but I find them helpful as a writer too Nancy pearl a library and kind of Crystallized these thoughts That have been kicking around and it's that people have different entry points into a story Uh, and there are four doors that they go through and this is why people disagree on whether a book is good or not Because you have a different doorway that you prefer And the doors are story character setting and language And so some people are all about world building and the setting is what's important Some people are character. Some people are plot story And some people are very style like literary fiction fans usually are very much about language But this is helpful to me as a writer Because I don't feel like I have to nail all four of those to have an enjoyable book I have to pay attention all of them. None of them should be bad But if I look at a story and I'm like, well the world building is really good Uh, then I'm like, oh, okay. This is for the people whose doorway is setting then and as long as my characters and story are also good My setting can be the star of the show Our lord says what if I just care about the cover art? Which door am I? You're you're the front door Also are in lore. I I I do support twists on patreon. You just don't see it But the art lord was calling me out in chat for not being in your list to be in the show. Yeah No, I mean you're being here. I mean, that's huge support in itself and you're listening and talking like you've had me on your show. There's There's support Oh, yeah, there's plenty to go around um, but yeah, uh I So so yes character is important and and I'm not trying to say that any of these things aren't important But if you've got a really good story, you can lean into that a little bit is is why I brought up the four doorways I'm gonna check that out. Thank you. Um, and I'm potentially if you're into young adult kind of dystopian science fiction stuff would be interested in early chapters Absolutely. Yeah, I would that would love to Um, I yeah, that would be that would be thrilling I'd be like, look at look at the look at the word crap I put out in the internet I can see that now because it's the after show sure Um, yeah, and I whatever whatever feedback or no feedback you would want just let me know but yeah, I I love Reading stories. I should probably send you some of my stuff too. Yes. You did at one point and I I read it, but I wasn't able to get back to you in time for like you had like I need comments by this Oh, yeah, that wasn't able to get comments back in time, but I well the comments can come at any time I think that one I haven't actually still, uh, I haven't actually published really was that the girl at the bottom of the lake No, wait. Oh, was was it about us? Uh, like dimension rangers and Was that any of that ringing a bell? Yeah Yeah, I still haven't I still haven't published that one. I still have that one It's not not too late. It's not too late Okay Yeah, now I'm like gonna look Book Yeah, the girl. No, it was it was girl at the bottom of the lake. That's what it was called. Yes That's the one I'm still trying to fix some stuff in the second half of that story. That's why that one's still sitting around Okay Well, if you want to, uh, send me your latest we can Maybe I don't know I like reading Yeah The the the moment is the one about the uh, uh, the um The people who solve the climate crisis and then cause a worse crisis Which sounds It's the story is not nearly as depressing as that makes it sound But you know the premise is that they they tap Another dimension to bring in energy But by doing that they undermine the fundamental constant and it causes variations in the laws of physics that will just get rid of people people will just disappear disappear and so They figure out how to communicate back in time. You can't travel back in time, but you can send information and so They contact Uh, there's a whole the explanation of why they pick this person, but they contact a person as a young child And they say we're going to be able to contact you four times And they try to convince this person because they know that they'll be in the right place To do something to stop the problem from being created And that's you know, the question is like can you can you right? Is it is what is the And that's the tension of the story is like will they do it and if they do it could it actually Is it going to cause a paradox or is it actually going to just by doing that? You just set the whole chain of events in motion that lead to the end event in the first place Exactly That's the story I love the timey wimey stuff. I have my yeah really I really enjoyed watching bodies I think uh that what was that on? Netflix or bodies. I don't think I ran into that one really that I'll have to look for that. Yeah So that's an interesting one. It's all time-based and it gets into it's like it's The same event kind of happening at multiple times and there are detective characters throughout history 100 150-year-old period who all kind of Come in contact with this dead body and this mystery, right? And so they all have to try to solve they're all working on solving the mystery and then you know, there's But it all weaves together in the end in this very interesting time Perspective that at the very very end they throw a wrench in it and you kind of go oh What is gonna happen? And so it's I I really enjoyed it. It's I it was I thought it was fun I love those concepts and yeah, I'm even forgiving because I personally This is a belief not a not knowledge Believe that if time travel is possible in any way that it can't change anything Right that if I were to go back to 1968 Are you a marvel? Are you a marvel? Time traveler where it's like different timelines or it's like if you do anything it has to be parallel It has to it it splinters time I I I think you probably don't even have that is my guess My guess is like if I go back to 1968 and I do something It won't change anything whatever I did already is affecting now And that yeah, there might be alternate universes and alternate timelines, but that's kind of a cheat They probably all collapse into one timeline really and so I like the challenge of trying to think of a compelling time travel story That seems like well, that wouldn't be very interesting if you can't change anything And it's like no it's could still be interesting because You're a human and you're gonna want to try and you're gonna think you did it but The world is way more time is way faster than we think right And so you might be like well, I would know that it happened not necessarily So many things happen that it's hard to tell and history Isn't always accurate. So you don't always know what actually happened stuff like that. So I find that really fun Let's see gourd mccloud in Twitch is saying I think for me, I'm good with the story and character doors I can be pretty forgiving of the story if the characters in world engage me enough even more so the language Those are your doors Those are your doors and then our and Laura says what about when you go back and kill baby hitler You can't that's the thing right you may think you can but every time you try something will happen and get in your way. So It's just uh You know or it's uh Yeah, but I that's what I wonder if you could would have already it would have already happened Right that's the that is one of the paradox things right is like if these things were gonna have happened They would have already have we wouldn't just like it's I almost think of it like electron valences Like you just can't change it because it's It's it's gonna happen the way it happened. So Whatever you think you're trying to do will just get pushed away and it won't happen Yes, think of it exactly like that It's really hard for an electron to get out of its orbit. It's really hard for a human to change time I don't know all it takes is a good burst of photonic energy and electron get a boost up Then you get an alternate universe and you're in marvel land Oh, it's so much fun. It's yeah, I love the I love yeah, I love chatting about like the Would it be could it be you know kind of knowing or understanding where we are right now and yeah I always love the what ifs You have you talked to I do love the what if stuff. Yeah. Have you been uh on philip shane's podcast. Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, that was fun Love philip. He's great. He's fantastic. Yeah, he's one of he's one of the good ones Very much All right, there are a lot of good ones You're a good one. You're a good one There's two I try to be a good one. I don't know if I am a good one I try yeah, I'll take your word for it. I'm doing my best I mean, you know when I'm off air, you know, I'm like You just let it all go all the bad stuff evil kiki comes A fair kiki's just like throwing straws out the front window and burning coal on her front lawn Digging up out of the earth Burning natural gas for no reason All right, I have kept you up and I have kept myself up Off your salami apathetic That's the deepest cut You just hurt me You wound me deeply. Yeah Wow Hates birds That's right. I I yeah, I lace my bird feeder bird poison. You know, yeah, this is alternate universe the evil kiki One with a has a goatee I don't ever want to goatee See that's how we know you're not the evil kiki Maybe I should do that one halloween. Just be evil kiki for halloween Who are you? I'm evil me Oil is great. Homie. What would you like to try my homeopathic remedies? I'm pessimistic about everything and stage capitalism is the best is the best. I love it. Let's make more money off of your sorrows Oh my gosh Is aileen still up? Oh, yeah, I can hear I hear the bloops of youtube The bloops as she's yeah on the apple tv as you did like What are you gonna watch next she's not watching this obviously, uh, I don't think so. Um, although, I don't know Daniel says Daniel Smith says evil kiki is staring me make it stop Okay, we'll make it stop. That's not what I do It's funny for a second. Yeah. Yeah, it's not you're gonna draw the line I mean, we might bring it back next halloween for nightmare juice, but other than that, you know, there It's all good. Yeah Let's do more happy optimistic realistic things. Yes indeed the real Yes, all of it. Are you going to see es again this year? Is that I am? Yeah, I think I just just kind of settled on On the plan this week. So yeah, I'll I'll be there. Are you going? No Yeah, good for you Like I went back when when we were with twit and uh Yeah, it was it was a whole thing and everybody seems to like See yes, and I just was like I just remember looking at it was going back to the Products that were kind of before people wanted them like the certain televisions another thing Everybody was all like these are the best. It's amazing. No, no And I had to do all these interviews with people who are like selling their stuff and I was like I don't want to do these interviews anymore. This is it's a it's a thing I don't want to talk with a marketer Well, that's that's I approach the engineer. Yeah, I approach the yes very selectively I'm there to cover like tell people like, okay, here are the interesting things And then I go to the press events and I look for the the stuff that's like, okay That's new and small and interesting Yeah, and possibly possibly usable or it might yeah, yeah, give it give it some time and Somebody's gonna, you know copy it The last one I actually attended in in person There was a guy there was a really tiny startup that was showing wireless power running a model train And they were really upfront about like, yeah, this is totally line of sight. It's a really low voltage This is pretty much all it could do but you know, it might be good for automatic soap dispensers, you know, or Door locks that are like, but these are the advances we're hoping to make And it was just this year that that company finally started shipping a product where they they made some of those advances They was hoping to make so it's stuff like that that kind of I look for and it's like, okay, that's cool That's fun. I think it I think it is cool when people make things that end up being usable, but now I am also on the Okay, wireless power Is not I mean wired power is not efficient Wireless power is even incredibly inefficient less less efficient wired power. So why and Well, if we clean up if we clean up the energy source, that's not a big deal If I got a solar panel that's sending the that's powering my my wireless. I don't care. So there's Yeah, it's a good fusion. If we it's it's fine. We can fusion it or wind power it or wind power Wind power just passed coal in the u.s. I think yeah, it's that right. Yeah. Yeah they've been shutting down coal plants and there's been a lot of Hubbub about that solar also is becoming the photo photovoltaics are becoming even more Efficient like I know coming up with new materials I've had mine for five years and they're I almost feel like I need to replace them Because they're half as efficient as the ones I can get now Yeah, but that you have to make your money back before you invest in a new one I think I think five years was the the break-even point For me. So yeah There you go. Now Daniel Smith Daniel Smith says I see a use case in medical tech for wireless I see that too. I think that's yeah Yeah, but anyway, absolutely solar You have you live in the LA area. So you have sun You probably have more solar power generation capability than you think but yeah, it won't be the same No, that's what you you would take more than five years to make you money back Oh, yeah, no my house is like on uh now the It's on a side of a hill. I don't really I I forgot the compass and um It's yeah the the sun in the winter especially it just barely goes over the top of the You have your your own version of polar night. It is. Yeah, look, I'm like outside at three o'clock in the afternoon and I'm like, it's like It's like Seven or eight p.m. Am I supposed to go to bed now? Yeah, you could still generate some power with that but yeah, whether it's Whether it's worth the trouble or not becomes a real question. Yeah, yeah the investment in that Yeah, but if you get the more efficient, I always then it becomes something that's more likely I always recommend people go to energy energy sage and just do the calculations because like my my Friends and relatives in Illinois were like, oh, I live in Illinois. We can't do it I'm like just just look it up and they they're always like, oh, I I can generate more than I think It sounds like you're in a particularly Shady situation Number one. I live in Portland, Oregon. Yeah, so you're not getting as much sun Never do I live in the lee of a hill? Yeah. Yeah Surrounded by trees I'm like, oh, it's so pretty. I'm in a forest and then there's that that board of griffons that's hovering over you all the time. It's like, yeah, it's just Yeah, it's crows and coyotes, but yeah, I get it flying coyotes Horton Croyotes, oh wow, that's gonna give me nightmares I really do I'm friends with the crows in my neighborhood because I know they're smart And so I treat them with respect and it really does like they hate my neighbor who shoots them with salt pellets And so they like go and they tear up his roof and like pull off wires and stuff Yeah, and if you just talk to him and be like stop messing with the crows, they'll stop the crows with salt pellets Like you have to start being nice to them and they'll be nice to you. They're just They see you as a villain You're a villain in the crow novellas. Yeah There's like a silhouette of you standing on a on an old decrepit cemetery gravestone Feed them all the food except if they bring their whole Murder which we started doing up here. We bought a house this house this last year When we were down in the southeast of portland, we had a little group of crows and they were little family And they were cute and occasionally they brought a little larger Social unit along with them and it was It was nice. It was great. Yeah, we moved here and we we do have a little local family. That's good But the the murder that comes Is so big It's like this horde descending from the sky. It's like you should talk to Veronica about that She had the same thing up in vancouver Where she was feeding the crows and then suddenly like she has a video where they were it was like a hitchcock Like yeah And they have like this one call that they do it's like three or four Cause that they do and if they do three or four cause that means that they're calling all of the others to come Like everybody come This is the place to be and then oh gosh You can have hundreds in your driveway Covering the street in the trees Staring through your windows. Yeah That's a little much We have there's one the family that we Have gotten to know over the last year. There was one we called baby crow And we got to know baby crow because baby crow had a little bit of white on it And baby crow would come and started sitting At various points outside of windows Where our window shades were open To let us know that It was there It'd just be like hi baby crow Baby crow's here. Yeah What's up? How you been? Got any meat? Can I feed me something? I like the food. Yeah Yeah, I called disney Don't start trouble with that lot. Yeah Just go talk to them. Just go up and be like, hey, what's up? Look, I see you digging up my front lawn I'd prefer it if you didn't do that and then see what happens They may not speak your language, but they kind of pick up your inference Just go out make friends throw a bunch of mealworms in your salon and just you know, go with it Or throw them over on the sidewalk and be like that over there That's evil kiki time There's a little bit of that inside me. I want you to know It's inside of all of us I Spends on the neighbor too, right? I have such good neighbors now in this My goodness the my old neighborhood they were fine, but they were not they were not like this It's good to have good neighbors now very thank my neighbor. Oh my gosh. He listens to the podcast He knew me before I moved into the house He is an engineer who worked on lasers and He is the most awesome dude. I'll just be taking my garbage out and we will start talking about like uh Fusion companies and the potential for like small fusion reactors to really become like regular It will start talking about uh synthetic biology like in the driveway like this I have the best neighbor. That's great. That's so good I'm like hi cordon And he'll be like no no no. I'm just painting or I'm Recalculing my windows and I'm like that's awesome and he'll be like so what about this and I'll be like oh well that okay Yes, and there we go Yeah, he's like yeah, he's fantastic and his wife puts up with him very well Oh Mary's wonderful also Need to go on a I need to go on a walk with mary actually Because I know I haven't talked with mary as much but there's uh-huh. There's got to be a lot behind deep waters Yeah, I walk and walk and so you're the dog Is is really what gets me to know folks in the neighborhood. I know all the dogs in the neighborhood I Don't walk my cats so you should They would like coyotes And not usually not every day Not every day. We've been only on fridays Coyotes take fridays off. That's the safe day Yeah, but walking a dog seriously you go out you have to get out once or twice a day go for the walk Howdy neighbor, I know bowie the dog at milo the dog and string and And do you know their owners names? No Actually, I know a few of them But not most of them be honest. It's awesome I know your dog. That's great. Yep. Milo's mom Ruby's mom Oh my gosh. Yeah, so much like taking your talk to the playground I would take kai to the playground when he was younger and I'd be like, oh, there's this kid, you know Not remember the name of the parent. Yeah at all. Yeah There's a thing I don't know if this this if you had this experience where parents exchange phone numbers and the names in In your contacts are just kai's mom. Like you still like you have the phone number, but not the person's name Oh, oh, yes. Yeah, it it I that's real. Yeah, it's it's real I have many of these and uh-huh a few of them I have adapted as the years have gone on and I have Oh my goodness All right, it's 10 30 I need to go make sure my child is in bed because he has school tomorrow and he has a tendency to stay awake without the proper parenting Yeah, go to go to bed Wagon waggle waggle the finger Yeah I try And I know you need to you go make sure Sawyer is asleep Sawyer will be asleep wherever he is Oh, he'll be fine. Yeah But thank you kiki for for having me on this was super fun It was really really fun. Wonderful to chat with you a bit before but after and also to do the show with you really just Just wonderful Really enjoyed it. I hope you have a good holidays and Let's not take a year to get back in touch again. Agreed. Yeah, let's do a crossover again. That was fun We could do that. Yeah, maybe Blair will be bring her baby We could we could have Roger bring his kids too. We could do a baby Oh, it would be kids tech and science kids hour I bet Roger's kids would be awesome. Yeah, they're pretty fun Say hello to everyone on the DNS team for me. Say hello to Eileen. Say give a little Little head scrub to Sawyer for me. I will yes Give a little head scrub to yourself Okay Kiki says good night sleep well For more than four seconds. I will I will definitely sleep more than four seconds All right, everyone, thank you so much for showing up. Thank you for being here. Thank you for chatting We really really appreciate everything all of you in the chat rooms and the discord and all And if you are just watching and getting to this later, no matter what stay safe Stay sales stay stealthy. Yes. Stay stealthy. Stay healthy And stay curious I'm also lucky because that's a good thing too See you next week Good night