 30 minutes. Okay, before you have to be under the blanket. Hi, everyone. Hello, everyone. Are we ready to start a show? Yeah. There are people in the chatroom. I see you. I see you there. Do you see me here? We're all here. Yes, I have new hair. And we're live. So we are starting in three, two, this is twist. This week in science, episode number 707, recorded on Wednesday, February 6, 2019. What's the science climate? Hey, everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki. And tonight on This Week in Science, we are going to fill your heads with warm thoughts, mouse farms, and fish daddies, but first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Go. Hang on. We're going to have to do a retake. What happened? What happened? That's what I'm saying. What happened to you? Everything I had just went away. Hang on. You're having internet issues. I'm having massive computer fails today. The fast pace of current day life. That is actually, that's how it starts. Oh, yeah, I could pull it off of that thing, huh? Yeah. Hang on. I'm going to do it here. This will be fine. Okay. Do you want to do the intro again or should I just jump in? Count three, two, one and jump in. Three, two, one. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The fast pace of current day life. Life in the information age, where we are surrounded by so much knowledge. An age where we stand on the shoulders of giants, those thinkers and tinkers of the past. An age where we advance science beyond and above and otherwise further away from where science woke up that morning. And yet if we look at how we got here, the things that actually led to a bigger brain, or more importantly, the massively increased blood flow to the brain, the running, the hunting, more running, keen-eyed foraging and more running and sniffing out dangers and still more running and the careful listening the night and really just constant running pretty much all the rest of the time. We must take pause and contemplate how differently most of us who don't run constantly are living from the creatures that preceded us. Yes, we have big brains and we rely on them still for our survival. But there is a distinct possibility that the brains of current humans represent peak human intelligence, in which case we should probably use them as much as possible now before evolutionary atrophy can set in. And how better to utilize a brain of peak intelligence than by listening to This Week in Science coming up next. Let's go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know what's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in science. What's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in science. Good science to you Kiki and Blair. And a good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back again to talk all things science from the week and we hope that you do enjoy the show. Tonight I have stories about mouse farms, melting ice and MRIs. What do you have for us Justin? Ah, let's see I've got adding up with bees. Again, global warming and climate media change forecasts. What girls like to do? Counting sperm on marijuana and why all of the gun violence people? Why? I just want to know why. Blair, what's in the animal corner? I have panda pasts. I have fish fathers. And I have rose colored rodents. Is that because you're wearing your special glasses? No. Okay. Social glasses are involved. All right, well let us get down to the science business and party with the facts y'all. We're gonna jump into the show but before we do I want to remind you that if you have not yet subscribed you can subscribe to TWIS as a podcast pretty much everywhere you find podcasts, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pandora, Spreaker, Stitcher, Tune In. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube and Facebook. Look for this week in science. We're also at TWIS Science on Twitter. You can also visit TWISTWIS.org for more information about the show. But now it is time for... Oh, right, that. Yeah. Please. Yes. Yes. Let's science this. What's she gonna say? It's time for what? Dance party? No, we did that. Time for science. Okay, good. It's time for science. Yes. And this is a pretty fun big story. A story of mice and men. Well, a story of men putting mice into pens. Well, normally when men deal with mice they're putting them or they're putting out traps for them or they're hanging out with them in a laboratory, right? You've got the common lab mouse that we use for all sorts of experiments, genetic experiments. But nobody's yet done a fully scoped out natural selection study of evolution using mice. And so a researcher, a group of researchers who just published a paper in science this last week called Linking a Mutation to Survival in Wild Mice. They did get wild mice. They trapped wild mice and put them into six different fields that they had to... They dug down into the ground. And first they put metal walls around these little field areas to separate them. Three of the fields had sand and three of the fields had darker colored soil. And so the study was, right, to see if they would change the color of their fur to better hide in the different colored soils. Exactly. That is exactly what they were doing. And initially they just had these metal walls that went down two feet. But then they found that these little mice are wild and wily and liked to escape through little cracks. And so they ended up having to dig up the barriers and actually put in a cement wall around the outside of all of these different fields. But they ended up doing this. They were able to get a farmer in a farmland region to agree to give up some of his alfalfa land to this in the name of science. And in doing so they kind of made friends with a bunch of people out in this rural area. People come by and stop, stop off at the experiment to see how the mice are doing from time to time. And so they took 500 wild mice. They took pictures of every single one of them. They took genetic samples of every single one of these mice. And then they split them up through the six different little fields. And like I said, three were sand, three were darker soil, and then they just left it alone and came back a while later to trap them and see who was left. I feel like this entire study was at the mercy of an opportunistic hawk. That is, you know, I could just hang out around here for the next couple of seasons and I'll just be fine. Maybe a barn cat or two also. A couple of owls. Exactly. So you're guessing, you know, Justin, you've guessed about this being a test to see whether coat color changes in these populations of mice. Hypothesis is what, Justin? Yes, they did see a change. And they did. They actually saw over a period of several months, they saw a change in the coat color where mice in the sand, lighter color soil pens developed populations with overall lighter colors. And it was enough of a difference that this is something that's visible to the naked eye. It's not something crazy, can't really tell. No, this is like, oh, these mice look lighter than the other mice. Mice in the darker soil areas have developed populations with darker hair. And they went and they looked at the genetics as well and they found that the alleles actually changed in these populations. They diverged from each other based on a mutation called agudi. And this agudi gene is known to be associated with survival and coat color. And we've talked about it before. You've talked about the, the, the truck foxes. Is it the truck foxes? Yes. Yes. And they became lighter coat color. Their agudi gene changed. It also is associated with domestication, right? But this is still these, these mice were not domesticated, but they were able to actually find that this mutation, this agudi mutation, and link it to this difference in the groups and the mutated version of the gene. Actually, there's a, the mutation in the gene affects the ability of melanin to form. So that less melanin or the darker pigmentation is actually chemically produced in the lighter haired populations. So, so here's the, here's the thing is I was aware of this study. I've heard of this study. I know about this study, except, I mean, I know the result. I knew the result that they, that they had, had sort of changed in accordance to this, the soil. But what I don't know is why? I don't know if there was like a predation events taking place, like the, my, my, my opportunistic hoc scenario that was simply picking off and then accelerating a natural selection of you happen to have the lighter or the darker code or whatever it is. Or if they, this was not part of considered an important part of this, but that they were simply adjusting to their surroundings on some genetic strategic level. So I, so I don't know how this happens. Right. Well, they found there were avian predators, absolutely, that were, were to blame. So this is really a, a blending in with the surroundings helped with survival type of situation. So how many generations did this happen in? Roughly. Do you know? Because so now they're, the experiment is continuing now, but it's a completely new generation of mice. So this isn't, I don't think it's multiple generations, mice can live up, mice can live up to two to three years. But that's, you know, optimal. But they can also have, yeah, they can have babies pretty frequently. Yes. They can have babies very frequently. And so new individuals were popping up into this population. And now all of the mice, the original mice are gone, and it has completely gone through. So there are no original mice left in. Because I don't, I don't know how old the study is, but I know it's been going on for years. Multiple years. Yeah. So I have to say, I'm not, they did, I'm going to say though, I'm finding here, it was within three months, they saw that the rodents fur had shifted according to which group they were in. Yeah. I know from my own experience, having mouse breeding at facilities that I've worked at, that there's always somebody who thinks they're, they're going to make some really cool looking mice by putting certain ones together for the next generation. And it happens so fast. And then if somebody else comes in and messes up their selection, it gets muddled so fast. And you have those fancy individuals and they, you have those, those not so fancy individuals. And it's, it's a very quick change. So what it sounds like then is there's a sort of a stochastic, that's the word, nest to coat color. That is, is, has been a long-term benefit to mice is, is the, is they travel through different territories over the many, many millennia, which is, which allows for, you, you may or may not win the lottery coat color of whether or not it matches the soil well. But if you do, you're going to be around for the next generation. And if you don't, well, nice note. Yeah. Exactly. But so, so looking, looking a little more deeply into this experiment now has been going on for over a decade. So it's very, very long running experiment. And the, the depth that they went through, went to not just showing the change in coat color in the populations with relation to the soil and predation. They're actually showing that there is this genetic switch that is involved and they've linked that genetic aspect to the mutation in the DNA to the physical phenotype, the change in the characteristic, the outward expressed characteristic of these mice. And so in doing so, this is the study is going to really go down in history as one of those, those, those keystone studies, a landmark study really connecting genetics and the mechanism of natural selection to pop the evolution of traits in a population. Yeah. So this is going to be one for the textbooks, absolutely. And then another thing for the textbooks, I know, Justin, you've got some global warming stuff coming up here in a minute. It doesn't have anything to do with melting ice, does it? Well, of course, it's hard to talk global warming. I've got some melting ice. Mine's just the, mine's just the forecast, not the what's going on right now. All right. Well, you know, since President Trump didn't talk about climate change in his state of the union address last night, I figure it's a good idea that we do so that we continue to discuss what's actually happening on the planet and, you know, maybe rally people around some solutions. But it turns out researchers from McGill University, they published in Nature this week, a study that is a really pretty huge study modeling or simulating the effects of what's going to happen under current climate policies of to the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets between now and the year 2100. They, their simulations don't really have much good news for us. Other than the sea level rise being different in different places around the earth, the melting water from these large large, these large blocks of ice on land is going to raise sea level. It additionally, though, will change ocean currents and because it's going to be warmer melting water going into the oceans, it will likely also, in addition to changing those circulatory currents, also change weather patterns. So there's some big stuff that's probably going to get going here in a bit and the largest increase in the rise of the sea levels is expected to occur between 2065 and 2075. It was a good run, humans. Yeah, we're 45 years from now. Yikes, that's, we're going to see that. Yeah. Hopefully. No, for sure. I'm going to see it. I don't know about you. Then I, you'll see many, many more seasons. It's not just that I'm younger, it's that I'm determined to live to 200 as we discussed many times. That's right. Go determination. But in my climate change communication network, they've come up with a really cool metaphor to explain exactly what you're talking about. And it's the climate, it's the ocean as the heart of the world's climate. So basically, you have these hot and cold water currents in the ocean and it's just like how your heart pumping delivers oxygenated and deoxygenated blood around your body. And so when you heat up the earth and it heats up the ocean, it causes stress just like stress on your heart is going to affect its ability to pump. And so the idea is that preventative care is the best care for your heart. And the same is also true for the ocean. We need to put our planet on our carbon dioxide diet. Yeah, we do. So I don't know, I would, I would immediately stress that the planet doesn't care what the climate is. I mean, in terms of stress or not stress or anything like this, but it is all of the life forms on the planet that have found a niche within the current climate, which has gone on for a very long time. And can we can adjust slowly, incrementally over time, not as quickly as mice, not three months. But it's hard to, it's hard to point to a lot of species that are going to be more visibly affected than humans. Yeah. So tell me your, your, your climate change, global warming forecast, we do love forecasting the future here. Yeah, this is, this is the climate of forecast. The global average surface temperature for the five period, five year period projected out to 2023 is predicted to be near or above one degree Celsius above pre industrial levels. So if this prediction sticks, that would make the decade from 2014 to 2023, the warmest run of years since records began and these records began in 1850. So it's kind of just in line with last few years, I guess the 2015, 16 and 17 and 18 are the four warmest years in the 169 year record data set. So that's kind of a pretty good indication of the trend when all of the warmest years are the most recent ones. And this, they also say that we could, you know, they're, they're predicting the average of one degree Celsius. This means that we could also easily, well, I say easily, they say 10% chance at least one of the years between 2019 and 2023 could be 1.5 degrees above the pre industrial levels. So climate media forecast, it's looking pretty warm people. It's looking very warm. And, you know, you get, we get in conversations all the time and there are people asking questions and even on our Facebook page, somebody asked a question recently and said, you know, said, I always see anecdotes related to sea level rise. Where's, where's the data? How do you know? And he says, I'm not a denier. I just don't know. And so I responded to this person without attacking and answered the question and sent him to places where there are links to actual data and graphical representation of the data to show that it's not just anecdotes. And this is a very concerted effort to understand how change is happening. And so I urge people out there, as you're talking to people, don't push people, don't push people away with anger and attacking, try and try and actually have a conversation and be friendly. And unless people are show animosity to you, try and try and feed them a little bit of information and help them with curiosity. Absolutely. There's, there's been a lot of research that shows that a conversational tone is the first step to getting somebody to start considering what's happening and that actually they're being fed a lot of kind of explanatory chains that are missing these huge parts, they're making these jumps from one thing to another. And if you take the time to actually explain something very clearly and simply and non-judgmentally, there are a lot of people that can turn around pretty easily. Because if you can tell them that it's in everybody's best interest in a way that is not just it's the right thing to do because I said so and because science said so, but it kind of explains a common interest at the start, there's, it really shows that there's a lot of people that will start to recognize the urgency and will be more open to action. I wish that was true. The President of the United States said that global warming is a hoax created by the Chinese to ruin the U.S. economy. Like, I mean... He's one person. I'm talking about, I'm talking about, I'm talking about social science research across party lines, across ethnic lines, across socioeconomic lines, across the entire United States. And as much as those people might be the loudest that you're talking about, they are not actually representative. And that's what's really important for us to know when we have these conversations. And I will tell you that as much as we have discussed Republicans, conservatives and the Democrats, progressives having completely antithetical views about the climate change science and statements like President Trump and what he has made and various representatives within our government making various statements. Today, this morning, there were simultaneous meetings of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change and the Full Natural Resources Committee. They were discussing the need to act on climate change and the costs of inaction. And the Republicans at these meetings fully affirmed climate change as something that is an issue that we need to worry about. It's the steps that need to be taken that were not agreed on in this meeting. But Representative David McKinley, a Republican from West Virginia put it, we all agree, quote unquote, that climate change is largely driven by greenhouse gas emissions. But where we disagree is on solutions. And so and no of those greenhouse gases, it's the tilting of the earth. It's the sun's getting high. What I'm saying is there that conversations are helping. Positions are shifting. We can continue this conversation. Oh, no, absolutely. There's there's more smart people than there are. And then salvage people. Okay, let's talk about bees. Do you have a good bee story? So this is okay. So colony collapse has been a growing issue in the nation's farmlands. And when I say the nation's farmlands, I'm mostly talking about California, because most of the nation's farmlands are California, where at some point in the season, 80% of the nation's bees are put to work right here in California. 80% of the nation's bees come here to work. A lot of researchers have been spending a lot of time counting those bees to see where those levels are. Turns out bees might have been counting the researchers right back. This is turns out bees they think now can do basic mathematics. This is a building on a finding that honey bees can understand the concept of zero Australian and French researchers set out to test whether bees could perform arithmetic on the lines of addition and subtraction. So let's see. Okay, I'm going to I'm going to skip all the like how amazing it is that an animal can think sort of thing. This is by the published in science advances, adding adding bees to the list. They've shown previously birds, primates, babies, even some spiders, other add and subtract. So honey bees, they say, will go back to a place if the location provides a good source of food. And so the bees repeatedly returned to do this experimental setup that provided them with yummy stuff to eat. When a bee flew into the maze, they would see a set of elements between one to five shapes. The shapes were either blue, which meant the bee had to add or yellow, which meant the bee had to subtract. After viewing the initial number, the bee would fly through a hole into a decision chamber where it could choose to fly to the left or right side of the maze. One side had the incorrect solution to the problem. The other side had the correct solution. Correct answer was change randomly throughout the experiment to avoid bees learning to visit just one side of this maze. Beginning the experiment, bees were making random choices until they eventually got to the the yummy stuff. Eventually, over 100 learning trials that took four to seven hours bees learned that blue meant plus one while yellow meant minus one. And the bees could apply that rule to the new numbers. Quoting voice these days, we learn as children that plus symbols mean you need to add two or more quantities while minus means you subtract. Our finding shows that the complex understanding of maths symbols as a language is something that many brains can probably achieve and helps explain how many human cultures independently developed numeracy skills. So according to Scarlett Howard. How do you differentiate between one of the colors meaning more and one of the colors meaning less versus a plus and a minus? So it is language, but then at the core of mathematics is language. And so, I mean, understanding whether you're saying add or subtract or more or less. Oh, I just mean that you said you said it meant it meant plus one. Right. How do you differentiate that from just there's more in there? But what I'm saying is you're making a false differentiation. There is no difference between a plus symbol and saying more. I'm saying how do you know they know it's one more and not just more? Well, I think they did just know it's a simple math. It's not hard math. But that is I mean, that's a mathematical because that's like in terms of math. In terms of math, that's a greater than or less than symbol. It's not a plus or a minus. So they understand greater than which actually gets introduced much later than plus one or minus one. Sure. Okay. No, I'm actually I'm actually curious is are they actually counting? Are they actually assigning numerical values knowing that plus one is what the blue means? Or is it just there's more in there? Well, if it if they're learning that that blue means plus one and not just more, but plus one and yellow means minus one. And then you go into a chamber or a maze and you see blue, blue, blue, yellow, then they would know to go to two or go to the place that represents to the decision chamber. They would know whether what the answer would be, right? They would be able to understand some kind of complexity of it. So I guess I guess the thing that I again, it's an animal intelligence story that is surprising and also just points out just how absolutely ridiculously arrogant humans are. And this was like not something that a brain of any size would be capable of. Well, I mean, it's it is really amazing. I mean, we when we discovered that that other primates could count. Oh, they know there's more apples or less apples or, you know, they're that that other we started figuring this stuff out. And, you know, then it's like, well, they can do that because they have a more complex brain, right? They have more brain tissue to be able to do the processing. And then to bring situations like this to the point where this is such a basic aspect of animal cognition that insects with tiny brains can handle this kind of stuff because it's important to their survival. I see. So sorry, I wasn't totally understanding the methodology here, but that's really cool that they saw like a circle with five dots in it and they knew they were looking for the number five and they chose that wall. That's awesome. That really is math, right? They're able. So there is there is they're matching or being able to show that they understand these numerical concepts. Yeah, that's really cool. Good job, bees. Bees can do pretty basic math, but it's math. Better than like a two year old, right? Exactly. Four two year olds. They got picked on a lot by Blair. I mean, crows are smarter than three year olds. So well, yeah, no, this is this is what we're getting at. How old in comparison to a human? Well, and I mean, ultimately, they're just half baked at that point anyway. So it's not that impressive. They're baby brains. They're still forming. They're very impressionable. There's an empty sponge. Bee brains and baby brains. Sponges for learning. Yes. Oh, and we just that was a great story about bees and it's getting me thinking that maybe we need some more animal stuff going on in here. Is it time for Blair's animal corner? I have some beef for pandas. What? Right. Shocking. I have some panda beef to express. You always have a beef with pandas. I know, but in this story, maybe it's the pandas that have the beef. So panda, do you know what the word panda means? Bamboo eater. That's right. And Nepalese, negalia panya, which means eater bamboo is the origin of the word panda. And the red pandas are the original pandas. Later came the giant pandas, but they are called that because they pretty much only bamboo. And the conventional wisdom is that pandas, giant pandas have exclusively fed on bamboo for the last two million years. However, there's a new piece of scientific evidence at play here to know exactly what extinct animals ate is difficult. But researchers can get clues by analyzing the composition of stable isotopes in the animal teeth, hair, and bones in fossil remains. And in this new study, researchers analyzed bone collagen of modern pandas born between 1970 and 2000 and other mammals living in the same mountains. When they looked at the stable isotopes, they looked at carbon and nitrogen from modern pandas and other modern mammals. And they found they looked at carnivores, herbivores, and the pandas, the bamboo avores, and not a scientific term. And the giant pandas were unique in their isotopes, as you would expect, because they're only eating bamboo. Next, they measured bone collagen from 12 ancient panda relatives collected from seven archaeological sites in southern and southwestern China and compared them to the patterns they found in giant pandas and the other animals in the region. What they found was contrary to previous belief, ancient and modern pandas have isotopically different distinct elements suggesting that their diet is completely different. So if they were continuously just eating bamboo, their isotopes would be the same. There was more variation among ancient panda species from each other as well. So not only were they not just eating bamboo, but the amount of bamboo and what else they were eating varied from space to space. And the niche that each of them occupied was about three times larger and wider than that of modern pandas. So we've talked before about how radio color studies with pandas have found they don't really move around very much. And if they do move around much at all, they'll get lost and they will be able to find their way home. No, no, this is not true. Yes, I did that on the show ages ago. I thought that they also though when like pregnant, they will eat a different type of bamboo than when not pregnant and they will go seek out different nutritional. Yeah, but they could get lost and they'll never find their home again. Maybe that's not where they want to go back to. But anyway, so they have very small niches is my point, but these ancient pandas had much larger niches. And so from all of these isotopes that they studied, it's pretty clear that ancient pandas were not exclusive bamboo feeders. So their their extrapolation from this is that panda diets evolved in two phases. First, the pandas went from being meat eaters to omnivores. And then later, they began to specialize on bamboo. So they want to see exactly how this happened. Did it go carnivore, omnivore, herbivore bamboo? Or did it go carnivore, omnivore with bamboo, just bamboo? Right? So those are two kind of different trajectories. So they want to see how that happened. And they next step of the study, they want to collect and study panda samples from different historical times over the last 5000 years, which still not that far considering that they thought it was just bamboo for the last two million. But it'll be a good starting place. I have a prediction. Yeah. Which we may never ever resolve. So it's a pretty safe prediction. And I'll predict that the last type of meat that the omnivore pandas were eating. Was other pandas another form of bamboo eater? Because one of the things that's really interesting is the microbiome of the panda and the red panda and a bamboo eating lemur share a lot in common with the microbiota. But that's where this gets weird. Those specific types of animals don't live anywhere near each other. They don't live anywhere near each other and are separated by many, many more like 11 to 80 million years, depending on the right. So it's a good question. But what it's like, I mean, we have talked about the microbiome of these bamboo eaters actually being more conducive to a carnivorous diet. And so what it suggests to me is that this happened over a very short period of time. Yeah. So Justin, about a year before our microbiome study that found that pandas, red pandas and bamboo lemurs all had similar microbiome in their gut for bamboo, there was a study a year before that that the rest of the microbiome in the giant panda gut is for meat. And so there was a hypothesis that the reason that they don't breed well, the reason they don't move very much is because they have a constant stomach ache. Do you remember this? So yeah, so that was that was before. So, so looking at their gut bacteria, just the giant panda, they recognized all these enzymes and micro microbiota for meat. Later, doing this comparative study, they found similar strains for bamboo. One of which also is in termites. That's how amazing this is. So, so part of this, I mean, they may be maybe they're reading, but like it reminds me of like the studies that have looked at insects changing their diet based on their microbiota. And if, if, if at some point the microbiota of the panda gained all of these sort of plant eating or bamboo specific cellulases to digest, perhaps that was a big motivator more so than a desire or, you know, interest in bamboo itself. But if the microbiota change, which if you're eating things that eat bamboo would maybe be accelerating. Perhaps my theory about all of this is that this is just further proof of runaway rebel evolution in pandas, because this was a very short change to a not energetically advantageous lifestyle. So if we know what happens so fast, then, then there's even more evidence for the fact that it was just kind of this weird evolutionary event that created this dead end, which happens in evolutionary history all the time. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe, you know, they just, they started their omnivorous and they started eating bamboo while they were omnivores. And then they just got tired, but they're, I can't go anywhere to hunt anything. So I'll just eat more bamboo. And there you go. Yeah. Or there's even something weird, like there could have been a die off that created an evolutionary bottleneck. There's any potential, you know, weird trigger system, which is what they're going to try to find out is what this factor was that created this very quick change in diet. So there's also, isn't there just also the possibility that they were numerous and everywhere? It sounds like they were all over China, large area. And we're, and we're actually, actually a evolutionary super performer keeping the populations low enough so that they didn't have an overpopulation boom to over, over, over the, the resources that were available. And we're living in perfect harmony with environment over a large area until the humans showed up and started eating them. That's what we need to find out. How many hominins were eating pandas? That'll tell the rest of this story. I'm going to guess no, because they're pretty dangerous, but we'll see. All right. Anyway, moving on. Let's talk about fish sac. So, wait, fish don't have sex. This is what you've reminded me over and over and over and over. Exactly. You passed the test, Justin. That's why I should never date a mermaid. Yeah. That's why shape of water was very inaccurate. Anyway, um, so as you mentioned, Justin, fish do not copulate. The females lay their eggs. The males kind of sprinkle their deposit over them. But that also means that there is a huge potential for cuckoldry in the fish world, which to remind everyone is when a male who is socially bonded to a female gets kind of sneakily usurped for fatherhood of, of the babies. So when, when the dad is kind of away, another male swoops in, fertilizes the eggs. Male comes back, fertilizes the eggs. Oops, it's too late, but he doesn't know. So then he helps tend for and raise babies that are not his. Yeah. Well, you're the baby's daddy. You're baby daddy, but you're not the baby's daddy. Exactly. So cuckoldry is really common in these guys also in a lot of bird species because the, there is a lot of paternal, whenever there's paternal care, and there's not a lot of mate, mate guarding, this is, there's a lot of potential for this. But when you have external fertilization, the potential for cuckoldry obviously goes way up. Researchers from Carl Fransen's Universitat Graz in Austria, so many consonants, looked at cichlid fish and they looked at cuckold behavior, specifically looking at how related the males were to their eggs when they were cuckolded. So was there a relationship at all between the male and the eggs that he didn't fertilize? The reason you would look into this is you'd want to see in a social group, if any of his brothers or cousins are the ones swooping in. And the researchers found that on average, the cuckold males and the mother's social partner were on average more related than expected by chance. So overall, more times than not for kind of statistical analysis, the cuckold male, the one swoop, doing the swooping in, cuckolder, cuckoldy, this gets complicated, the one swooping in on the kind of the father of the group and edging him out for fatherhood of the eggs was somehow related to him more than by chance. It's probably the teenage son who thinks everything's fine because he's alone in his room, but there's no walls and there's currents and you really never know how this is going to end. So that would not be an evolutionary advantageous method because he'd be related to his mom still, right? And so that would not create healthy babies. However, in this case, they're not related to the mom, but they are related to the supposed father of the whole, you know, you are not the father. Turns out he's related though. And so the reason that's happening is not your father, but you are the uncle, you are not the father, you are the second cousin. Okay, anyway. Complicated in space. Yeah, let me say that. So the reason this might happen, you can probably guess pretty easily. It's right down to the selfish gene once again. So the idea is that if you're going to be cuckolded, I'd rather be cuckolded by someone I know. Maybe it doesn't make sense in the human world, but if you're a fish, it actually does because then if you end up putting all this energy into the eggs, at least some of your genes are getting passed off. So we talk about this as if it's like, hey, I am so, you know, for this being my brother, you know, but the conscious aspect of it, the cognitive aspect of it is very likely not there. And so what I'm wondering is if behaviorally what's happening is, you know, as a male is defending a mate, right? Defending the ability of other males to have access to the females eggs as she's laying them. Maybe the defender is a little more lax in those efforts if there's recognition of some kind that whatever fish recognize each other, that perhaps the that male doing the mate doing the defending, maybe he's like, I'm going to take it, I'm going to go, I can sleep. This is someone I know. I recognize this individual, I'm not going to fight as hard. Maybe they lose the fights a little bit more often because they're more evenly matched because they're related. And I'm just wondering what aspect of behavior is going on there to allow it to happen. Right. And so what it looks like is mostly that it's an allowance of proximity. The idea is related males, quote unquote, work together to compete against a host of unrelated males. So you can I'm almost I'm almost picturing it kind of like, like football, like you have this line of related males that are all trying to go in and get the eggs and they're kind of edging out all of the unrelated males. They're they're defending their line really well. This is actually repeated in human history. When we go back and look at we did a story about how females genetics were widespread over a region like females traveled their gene spread. But there was these consolidations in these these, what do you call it? Points where the male genetic population would be very condensed to a single sort of family. And it is sort of like that the brothers, the uncles, the everybody worked together as a team. And the women could come from anywhere because they were you just mumbled so much that we couldn't even hear you that I'm going to delete that. So what's also sort of interesting is like the first is like maybe this is why these fish haven't evolved very far. Of course, all life under pretty much on land came from fish initially. So within the question is, is this a really successful strategy? Or is this the strategy that was left behind by things that didn't evolve because it never progressed to a point where it was stronger for their evolution? To your point about the ocean and how stuff just kind of gets everywhere. This is a type of fertilization that's very risky and has a huge potential for cuckoldry. So knowing that this we I would argue we there hasn't been any research on other species that may or may not do this yet. That's kind of the next step of this is to see whether these conclusions could be applied more broadly to fish, to aquatic external fertilizing animals to animals and who knows, right? But the it makes sense that if you are trying to win the evolution game, you're trying to get the most of your genes possible out into the world to the next generation, that this could be a way to combat some of the risk of having an external fertilization strategy. And also a good clue to me that the next time I want to date a mermaid, I need to find one with the fish parts on top. Yeah, that's that's an important part for sure. You wouldn't have a full set of of chromosomes, otherwise I don't think. Yeah, let's always go for the full set. Let's go for that full set. I think this is a good full set of the first half of our show and we have finished that first half. We will be back in just a little bit after this short break with the second half of our show. We've got what has science done for you lately coming up. Oh, yes, people have started writing back in again. And a number of other stories. I've got new species fMRI and LSD. So stay tuned, everyone, for more This Week in Science. Thank you so much for listening to This Week in Science or for watching, for that matter, if that is what you are doing now. Thank you for joining us for another episode full of fun-filled science conversation and facts. So many facts and thoughts. We keep bringing it to you week after week. Thanks to you. Yes, it is because of you and your help keeping the show going that we're able to continue doing it week after week. Your donations and your support help us to bring the show to you to maintain our equipment and to just do the show every week. So I ask you to continue to support TWIS. 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Choose one of those, whichever one works for you or send someone else to twist.org to get them to subscribe. We really appreciate your help. In fact, we could not do this show without you. Thank you for your support. Can you explain the things you've heard from all that intuition? The libraries that shows the way to go. New conclusion. The methods of hypothesis and patience are the only things I need. And we are back with more of this weekend's science. Yes, we are. It's good to be back. I know we took a little break there. So good to be back. Now it's time for This Week In. What has science done for me? What has it done? Oh, last week, we had a little break there because we didn't have any letters, but the letters are coming in again. Thank you, everyone. Keep them coming. Keep them coming. So our most recent letter is from someone who has written in previously, Ed Gabois. He writes in and says, hello, Twists. I was listening to the most recent episode of the show and I was bummed when you had run out of listener submissions. I love that segment. Well, back. We had emailed in April 2018 about how my then three-year-old son had been diagnosed with a cranial pharyngeoma, a really rare type of brain tumor that mostly impacts kids. It can have lasting and severe impacts for the rest of their lives, everything from sight and neurological defects to hormone deficiencies and more. I'm not sure if you wanted to share my update, but I figured I'd give you guys one just in case. So yes, we love updates. Update is my son is doing great. He's a happy and healthy five-year-old. We've started getting ready for his leaving preschool and graduating into kindergarten. We've started human growth hormones over the summer since his tumor calcified his pituitary and he's shot up. He's gone from being one of the smallest kids in his class to one of the tallest. He's still on a number of medications several times a day that help us maintain all of the different hormones in his body that regulate everything from thirst to growth to parts of his immune system, but it astounds me that modern medical science can not only do this, but do it so well. He's a completely normal kid. No one knows anything is different about him unless we tell them and it's all due to modern medical science. If this had happened a hundred years ago, I wouldn't have him in my life, but because of medical science, 20 years ago even, right? Yeah, and a huge team of people who dedicated themselves to making kids well. He's thriving and excited about going to big kid school. We've had four monitoring MRIs since I emailed you last year. We've seen some small expected tumor regrowth and we have another surgery somewhere on the horizon months or years from now, but our neurosurgeon and neuro oncologist aren't concerned about future complications. The diagnosis is good. We shouldn't even need another craniotomy. We should be able to just do an endoscopic transphenoidal operation through the nose to remove the growth. The whole ordeal has left him with a huge appreciation for science. Lately, we've been doing science experiments at home that involve that involve, I gotta get a scoot over a little bit, involve the, where did it go? Sorry. I was telling the story and I'm lost it. Blah. That involve the cold weather we've been having in New England. He really got a kick out of learning all about dry ice with me very safely. Don't worry. And the water cycle. Keep up the good work guys. I hope more listeners share their own stories too. That is awesome. I just love to think about, especially since they're already starting with science experiments, this kid could grow up to discover some cool new thing, be a scientist, be in technology, be in engineering. There's this entire world ahead that this kid could do. Yeah. We are inspired by our experiences. Our experiences make us who we are and kind of shape our interests. And so who knows what he will be, but it's amazing that because of science and medicine, we have yet to see. Yeah. He'll get to find out. Yeah. This is very exciting. So Ed, thank you so much. Thank you for writing in. I love that you gave us an update that makes me very happy to hear. And everyone out there, if you have a story to share about what science has done for you lately, please don't wait. Send it in. Send me a story at Kirsten, K-I-R-S-T-E-N at thisweekinscience.com or send us a Facebook message on our This Week in Science Facebook page. Justin, whatcha got? Oh my gosh. What story does it say that I have next? What a girl wants. What a girl needs. So girls don't want to be scientists according to a new study. They do, however, love doing science, which might sound like this is something that can't be right about. So yeah, so according to this, asking young girls if they want to be scientists is not effective, but asking if they would like to do science leads them to show a greater persistence and interest in science. Really strange at the outset. So describing science's actions by saying let's do science leads to more science engagement than does describing science in terms of identities by asking them to be or pretend to be or act as if they are scientists, explains Marjorie Rhodes, associate professor at NYU's Department of Psychology, senior author of the study, which appears in the journal Psychological Science. These effects particularly hold for children who are the target of stereotypes, suggesting that they might not be the kind of person who succeeds in science, in this case, girls. And this is sort of following on a subject that we have talked about a bit on this show about women in science and the need for role models and for young girls to see girls as or women doing science that they can sort of plot the path on. But very interestingly, I think I've noticed at least when we've gone out to the STEM events, it seems like it's mostly girls doing the science. Like the entire when we were in Philadelphia, it seemed like everybody who was just about doing robotics and programming was female. And again, they had one person, one female who had started her own computer club who also created a lot of interest and excitement and did a fantastic job there. But I think it's very interesting and motivationally that these these young girls are interested in doing the work of science, but not in simply the role play aspect. So a couple of things. One is that I've talked on this show a bunch about how I somehow was never explained. Nobody explained to me that if I wanted to work with animals, that was basically science. Nobody explained that to me. But so I through high school, pretty much until college, I was like, Oh, biology is not my best subject. Chemistry is not my best subject. Physics is not my best subject. So I don't want to do science. But if somebody had said, Oh, if you want to work with animals, and you want to understand their evolutionary history, and you want to understand their behavior and their diets, that's science. I think there's this there's this miscommunication of activities that are science related. And what is science, just like the whole conversation of what is a scientist is this kind of big amorphous mixed ball of yarn, right? But I think to your point about Philadelphia, and I just, I don't know, we didn't count heads or anything like that. But I can't help but wonder, because we have a societal expectation for who does science, and it is not female. If it's kind of that thing where in a boardroom, if a woman is talking 50% of the time, public perception is it's 80%. If it's because we saw so many women, it felt like it was more women than men, just because it wasn't anticipated. It could be, but I didn't, I don't think that I walked into it with that presumption. And I'm saying it's a vital presumption that you can't help. I don't know if I'm pretty sure I don't have this, but one of the things that I thought was interesting in this also the discovery in this study was that boys before the age of five were interested in doing science more than being called a scientist. Boys after the age of five were actually more likely to be prompted to pursue a scientific activity if they were being scientists rather than the idea that they were doing science. So it may be that the root problem in all this is that as boys grow up, they have a stronger affinity for identity combined with profession that women may not, that the girls might continue to go, it's about doing not the being, and that that's why all of the misogyny came about is because boys identified this is the thing that boys do and separate from being interested in doing the work. Yeah. And I wonder, I mean, there is the aspect of girls not competing as much when they're younger and being more likely to work together in small groups where boys are a little bit less able to do well in those situations. All sciences collaborations. Exactly. And I'm just wondering, you know, there's the identity versus action based language, you know, it maybe using particular phrases in talking about it is the way that we get different segments of the population, the child population into things, you know, you go, Oh, well, do you want to be a scientist? Oh, oh, what do you want to do this thing that has science in it? Sure. That sounds awesome. So the idea, though, is if you had a young scientists club based on maybe a girl wouldn't necessarily little girls might not sign up. Right. But if you had a wetlands exploration club, like then the population. So it's a very interesting at least enticement to educate and a tool that could be used and how we approach getting people interested in these activities. Absolutely. How do we interest people in the science in the science? How about we interest them with just cool things like finding new species? Always exciting. That's always exciting. Would we find some finches, some monkeys? What were they? No, bacteria. Oh, that's important, too, actually. In the human micro biome. Yes. I reported on February 4th in Nature Biotechnology, researchers from the Welcome Sanger Institute, Hudson Institute of Medical Research, Australia and EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute. They created the most comprehensive collection of human intestinal bacteria that the world has ever seen. Mwaha. Yes. They created this collection of human intestinal bacteria to create a baseline, really, to figure out what is living in us. Because at this point in time, we really haven't been able to get a handle on everything. And we have little ideas here and there, but don't really know. And so researchers studied fecal samples. This is the best part. Yes, you too, children, could study bugs in poo. Fecal samples from 20 people from the UK and Canada and grew and DNA sequenced 737 individual bacterial strains. They isolated bacteria and analyzed what they saw there and revealed 273 separate bacterial species, including 173 that had never been sequenced before and 105 of them had never even been isolated before. So they'd never even been seen genetically before. And so the researchers are very excited to be able to have this new culture collection be, you know, basically be referenced genomes for researchers to determine the regularity with which different bacteria are present in healthy individuals and in diseased individuals. And to start figuring out what role bacteria play in our health a little bit more specifically. Over 100 new species by looking at human poop. And again, this is also... They didn't even have to go to like an isolated island in the middle of the ocean. No Marianas trench. No. No man is an island. Sorry. There you go. So, but this is also for anybody who's seen advertisements for probiotics, for anybody who's been subject to a diet of one type or the other, nutritionists, probiotics, people who were claiming these things. Obviously, they were missing a ginormous part of the equation. So once again, they have to start over. So I'll throw it on my yogurt, is what you're telling me? No, I'm not saying throughout your yogurt. But I am saying that, you know, we're still at the beginning of this huge story of the human microbiome. And this new revelation says that might be even earlier than I thought. Yep. Exactly. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So all of these these pop diets and microbiome, this and that, man, take away the greatest salt. But, you know, eat your fiber. That's what we do. So put your salt on your fiber. Put your salt on the fiber. There we go. Yes. Tell me another story, Justin. All right. I'm still searching for the rundown. I know I have it somewhere. But what would you predict the next story to be? Something about guns. Oh, yeah. Okay. So this is a horrible story, but it's one it needs telling. So each year, the estimate is between 75 and 100,000 Americans, one country alone, although that's probably the largest number, are injured by firearms. 30 to 40,000 of those or 30 to 40,000 additional die from firearms. This is according to the Center for Disease Control. Vietnam War lasted roughly 20 years and had around 58,000 US casualties and countless more on the other side, the magnitude almost. So in two years, we're outpacing a 20 year war in the amount of firearm deaths in this country. It's a serious problem. And one thing that as a response to this, that's sort of a common trope is that something should be done about mental illness, that we need to address this in response to the mass shootings or just the general level of gun violence in the country. So according to this study, a better indicator of gun violence than mental illness is access to a firearm is actually a much greater indicator of potential gun violence than any form of mental illness. This is a researchers University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston. They looked into the association between gun violence and mental health. The results are published in the journal preventative medicine counter to public beliefs, some public beliefs, Cody voice, the majority of mental health symptoms examined were not related to gun violence. This is Dr. Yulu, postdoctoral research fellow at the University Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, also the author of the study. What researchers found instead was that individuals who had gun access and they can put your hands on a gun were approximately 18 times more likely to have threatened someone with a gun. Individuals with high hostility were three and a half times more likely to threaten someone. So it's not even like the highly hostile people. The people you would expect like that person would pull a gun on somebody at some point because of how highly hostile they are. Oh, was that a five ish times less likely to pull a firearm than somebody who just happens to have one around all the time or have access to it? Anyway, that's kind of all I really have to say about that study. That's a pretty decent argument against people having ridiculous access to guns all the time. For guns. Guns don't kill people. I've heard this before. People with guns do kill people, however, and people with guns who kill people kill people with guns just to get all the way around. That's how that works. Statistics are interesting. Just it's like bees could do this. The bees could figure out that it's like, okay, this is a subtract the gun and there's no gun violence. Add a gun, gun violence. That's how that works. That's pretty much it's access. Yep. Then I don't like it. I don't like it, but yes, maybe we can do something about it. Eventually, fingers crossed. But in the meantime, let's talk about our brains. Sure. Work and what is consciousness anyway? What is it to be conscious? Two studies this week I thought were very interesting came out and about related to functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain and how it acts in different conscious states. And in one, researchers published in Science Advances this week, a study of individuals in vegetative state versus minimally conscious state versus conscious. And so they had 47 fMRIs of healthy individuals and 78 patients who either had unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, which is a vegetative state in which patients eyes open, but they don't exhibit any kind of voluntary movement whatsoever, or minimally conscious, which is defined as having complex behaviors like eye movement that can follow an object, but not the ability to communicate any thoughts or feelings. They did these scans in Paris, New York, and Liege-Belgium. They looked at what they, for about 20 minutes on each patient, trying to find identifiable patterns of activity. And they were able to reproduce four specific patterns from the data and that was very consistent across facilities and across individuals. Two of the patterns, the likelihood of the occurrence depended on diagnosis. Healthy individuals were more likely to display pattern one, which is high, what they call high spatial complexity and interregional complex connectivity, which basically means there's a lot of stuff going on in the brain. Patients with the unconscious or unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, they really didn't have that very often and were most often seen to display pattern four, which had low complexity and low interregional connectivity. And the MCS patients are minimally conscious, fell somewhere in between and the occurrence of patterns two and three were kind of evenly spread across all of the patients. They looked at another set of patients in Canada and were able to identify again the same four patterns within the fMRI images and were able to connect the diagnosis with the patient's based on these signatures. Six of the patients had the unresponsive wakefulness syndrome and predominantly had this pattern four and the other patients had what's called cognitive motor dissociation, which is a much higher level of consciousness actually had higher rates of this first pattern. And so what this study comes down to in terms of patterns in the brain is the idea that if we're able to identify very specific patterns within unconscious or minimally conscious patients that can't talk to you, can't tell you what's going on, and you don't know how active their brains really are, whether there's, you know, whether there's a chance that they might come back at some point, if we can start to begin to identify patterns within the brains of these individuals that are related to higher levels of consciousness and also to higher levels of recovery, then this will give us a much better standard of care for patients. One thing that comes across a lot in these these brain in patients in which the brain is damaged to an extent where patients go into these vegetative or minimally conscious states, because they can't respond, you have no idea how there they are. And so you don't know whether they're hearing what you're saying when you talk to them. They don't know if your presence and you don't know if your presence is having an effect on their experience. And if we can give care to people that involves interaction and social contact in a higher cognitive way to patients who are locked in but can't just can't respond and are just stuck in their own brains but still functional, then that's going to help people a lot a lot more through these situations. It'll also help help families kind of know, you know, where their families family members lie on the on the on the level of recovery. And regardless of the scale, this is why I have the standing do not unplug order, which I reiterate as often as I can just to make sure everybody knows it is my minimal mental state on the on the base introverted Justin level is just fine by me. I'm okay with that. I don't actually need to interact with you. I don't need to react to the story you just told me. I don't need to tell you a story for me to be perfectly okay and not and not needing to be unplugged. My interaction with you tells you nothing about where I am or what I'm doing or how satisfied I am with my current existence. Keep me plugged in even the minimal amount of cognitive ability that I experienced is plenty. Okay. The second study that I looked at was another, as I said, functional magnetic resonance imaging study. This one, however, looked at the recreational hallucinogen LSD otherwise known as acid and this drug along with other hallucinogens. People have been wondering how these drugs interact with the brain to affect the brain's function. And in other work, researchers looking at ayahuasca and psilocybin suggest that psychedelic drugs may lead to disorganization of signaling within the brain. And so we don't really know that yet and this study doesn't exactly do that. But this study that took place in Zurich, Switzerland, got people to take LSD and stick their heads in an fMRI machine and then do pretty much nothing because what they wanted to do is get a baseline of how the brain works in a resting state. Or in an fMRI machine. Or yeah, in an fMRI machine, but a normal brain resting versus a brain that has acid in it, but resting. And so the individuals just had to lie there and have their brains, have their brains not poked and prodded, well, I guess, magnetically poked and prodded. One of the ideas is that hallucinogens are get in the way of the thalamus acting as a gatekeeper for sensory information that flows into the cortex and- So I mean, does it get in the way of- That it would block. Right, because this is the opposite almost of how it was described to me by somebody who had done research in this area, which is that it actually opened it up, that it allowed too much. I mean, you know, it didn't- Yes, so what I'm gonna- So exactly, that's what it blocks the action of the thalamus. The thalamus is the brain- Is the filter. Is the filter. And the thalamus takes in all of our sensory information and decides which of it is going to get fed into the brain so that the brain can act on it because the brain has its own stuff going on in there. But then, so it does its own things. Our brain keeps itself entertained all the time and sensory information comes in and the thalamus goes, yes, no, yes, no, you don't. Prioritizes. Yeah, prioritizes things, exactly. And in the idea of what happens with these hallucinogens is that it blocks the activity of the thalamus, you know, it's like basically taking that bouncer out of the picture so that everyone can get into the club. And so there's a flood of information, sensory information that comes in that normally is not processed and the brain normally doesn't have to deal with. And so that's the idea. And in order to understand this resting state, not active, but just you're lying there, what's the thalamus doing, what's the rest of the brain doing in each of these normal versus drugged states. And they, that's what they looked at. And so they were modeling the activity of the brain. And in order to really get an idea of what was happening with LSD, they also had a group that took LSD and a drug that binds to proteins in the brain and blocks serotonin receptors. And so LSD can bind with serotonin and dopamine receptors, multiple receptors in the brain, but this is going to block some of the neurotransmitter effects and the nervous effects of LSD. And so they had these three different groups and the thalamus did seem to act as this gatekeeper, but instead of finding that there was a flood of information that came into the cortex, they found that the specific regional areas in the brain became differentially activated. So instead of the whole brain going with the LSD in there, it was just specific regions, little bits and pieces going, oh, okay, there's little differences around the brain. It's like a fixation aspect to this. I attested this day and I've already admitted to having a history of experimenting with this drug a very long time ago, so this is not a huge revelation to the show, but I still to this day do not believe that I would have observed or known about the existence of the baseboard trim, because that's the first time I noticed it. And I'm sure there was a part of my brain that was very active, but only around like how many miles of this are produced. What is the purpose of this? Is this in every structure, in every house, everywhere? So can you take the square footage of all houses and can we assume then that there's a baseboard trim? There's about a half inch piece of wood or plastic that goes along all of them. Can it reach to the moon and back? Like it became a very specifically oriented, but there's also the thing of the visual because it's not actually that big of a hallucinogenic. And if you've ever light trails, which is also I've been told, because you're not limiting the observation to that time point, you're continuing to process the information of that light as at its different points that it passed your vision. Yeah, and so the interesting thing that I don't know if anyone out there has ever interacted with somebody while they are on acid, you can talk with people and have a completely normal conversation and not really know what they are internally experiencing. And I think this speaks to the idea that there is not a overall disorganization within the brain. There that obviously some centers of the brain are still fully capable of functioning normally and don't go into informational overload. Unless you're the person who is on LSD, in which case there's a neon sign above your head that's flashing. Be cool, man. Don't let on. Don't blow your cover, okay? That's right. But anyway, too many turmies squared things with your mouth whole face sounds that you're making. Cool. You're cool. You're cool. So these two studies I thought were really interesting that they came out, you know, they're done by completely different groups looking at different things but using the same technique to understand patterns of activity in the brain and to really get at this underlying mechanism of how information flows through the brain to allow for differential states of consciousness. And so these are all, I just find this stuff fascinating and that we are moving forward. There's, again, so much we still don't know, but we're step by step getting there. I'm just shocked they were able to keep somebody on LSD in an MRI machine still. Because honestly, that I mean, I don't have any personal experience with this stuff. But based on what you just told me and what I've seen in movies, that seems like based on my experience in a CT machine, which is kind of similar, right? There's a lot going on. There's lights, there's sounds, it's confining, it's uncomfortable, it's a little bit freaky when you're not on any drugs. Have you done an fMRI? I've done an fMRI. No. So the, excuse me, the MRI machine is a closed tube and so it's very claustrophobic or confining and then you have to put your head in a very, there's sometimes as a holder for your head and you have to keep your head still so that they can image your brain. So you're not allowed to move your head at all. And the magnet starts moving around and it makes, and when it starts going, there is this loud whacking noise. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's disturbing just on its own. And I'm trying to imagine the sensory overload that could possibly happen, trying to keep yourself from moving, keeping yourself in the confined space, maybe nice. Who knows, but the noise, all of it together. This is also, this is also the case for a lot of, of governmental LSD studies and I think the 50s where they would, they wouldn't do fMRI. No, they didn't do fMRI, but they would do these like head cover things for, for like, they would do it like a little bit. That's the scientific term. Well, okay, they would do a slight temporary deprivation aspect of it while you conversed with a handler or psychologist type person. So it's my next story you'll be about marijuana because I really feel like we already did, like we're already sort of self-branding by accident because I didn't know you had that story, but I did bring a marijuana story, which is very interesting. Go for it. Let's, let's get into those quick end of the show stories. Yeah, this, this study is men who have smoked marijuana at some point in their life. And there are, are a more than decent representative number of these folks in our society have significantly higher concentrations of sperm when compared to men who have never smoked marijuana according to research by Harvard Chan School Public Health team. So the study conducted at the fertility clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital also found that there were no significant differences in sperm concentrations between current and former marijuana speakers. Quote a voice from Jorge Chavarro, associate professor of nutrition, epidemiology, Harvard Chan School. These unexpected findings highlight how little we know about the reproductive health effects of marijuana and in fact, of the health effects of marijuana in general. Our results need to be interpreted with caution and they highlight the need to further study the health effects of marijuana use. The study is published currently in the journal Human Reproduction. So this is correlative. It's just a correlation. Well, no, it's self, it's self reported. But here's that. Okay, for the study, 1143 semen samples from 662 men between 2000 and 2017. On average, these men were 36 years old. White college educated men. So here's the thing, though, for most of that time of the study, marijuana was illegal. Right? What if this has nothing to do with marijuana whatsoever? Right, self recording, huh? Yes, what if higher semen concentrations are correlative to honesty? Yeah. Men, what if that's the thing? Right? And then, you know, then we have a whole completely different study that now needs to be done now that it's legal, because now the self reporting, because at this point, they said they expected that 16% of men have used marijuana. No, that number is grossly under reported. That's way off. The number is much higher. It's not 100%. No. But it's closer to 100% than it is 16%. Yeah, I'd say it's over 15, for sure. Yeah. So here in California, probably 90. Yeah, maybe California is a special, but this is New Hampshire. I mean, I can't believe that never. Yeah. So this is what I'm suspecting that correlative is. Honesty is correlated with higher sperm counts. That's all I took away from this has nothing to do with the marijuana. Interesting. But yeah, more research will probably assess that one out. The only way you can find out if marijuana actually affects sperm count is to take somebody who's never smoked before, take a sample, have them smoke, take a sample. That's the only way to find out if that's, but they probably couldn't do it then because marijuana was illegal. So it was this whole extra level of clearances to ask somebody to use a controlled substance, blah, blah, blah. But this is something that could be done now. So what's interesting in this was that in the same study, they found that those with greater use of marijuana were associated with higher serum testosterone levels out of that. They did some 300 and something play test as well. That's interesting. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, and I guess I guess it's also just builds on that we're learning that the cannabinoids in these things do affect a lot of things within the human biology separate from it being a drug or the, no. Or it's the other way around, which is that higher testosterone levels lead to lead to risk taking, which we do. That is true. So more risk taking, i.e., smoking marijuana, or more to peer pressure or higher tolerance to the drugs. So therefore, you require to take more to get the same effect. And testosterone is also going to be tied in with semen count. So it, yeah. So there's a whole lot of correlatives within the correlation of this correlative, but I still like mine the best. Hey, Kiki, speaking of hallucinogens, do you want to hear about pink squirrels? Well, man, you just blew my mind. I was thinking about pink squirrels right at that moment. I was totally picturing a pink squirrel, and then you were like, I speak squirrel. Or did you say it after I thought about it? I can't really tell now. Texas A&M University Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in College Station was looking at a forest survey with ultraviolet flashlights, looking at lichens, mosses, and plants to see what had fluoresced. And in a fluke accident, a flying squirrel was near a bird feeder. The flashlight passed over. And in the ultraviolet light, this flying squirrel was hot pink. With access to a museum collection at Minnesota Science Museum, they then took the same ultraviolet light and looked at different types of squirrels. They looked at stuffed flying squirrels that had collected over time. Every single flying squirrel in the collection fluoresced hot pink in some intensity. It's the end of the show of UV light. They tested all three of the North American flying squirrel species, the Northern flying squirrel, the Southern flying squirrel, and the Humboldt's flying squirrel. Did you know there are three flying squirrel species in the United States? I did not. Now I know. Now I know. All three of them fluoresced. After they compared them to other squirrels like the American red squirrel and gray squirrels, they did not. So now the question is, why was the flying squirrel pink? It's not the setup to a joke, but we still don't know the answer. So far, the hypotheses are for communication or camouflage. How that plays in we're not so sure it could have to do with mate choice. It could actually be a coloration that is some sort of warning signal, but the ultraviolet spectrum is crazy. So it actually could be camouflage if you're thinking about ultraviolet. If there's lichens that live in the same area that fluoresce pink, it could be good camouflage. We don't know. So this much, much, much, further study is required. But for now, we can say with certainty that North American flying squirrels fluoresce hot pink. And I guess the question now would be, do all those squirrels live in similar habitats? Because if they're all hot pink, is it just because they were, they're related and it came from one and they've all kept it? Or is it that, like you said, it is camouflage and they're tying in with lichens. But it just, it's hard to think that all of the Northern squirrel, the Southern fly squirrel, the Humboldt squirrel, they're all going to be camouflage. Yeah, that's interesting. It looks like they, they don't over spread. They do overlap a little bit, not by much. The Northern flying squirrel is way up into Canada. So it's a pretty different habitat. Totally different. I don't know, man. This is, this is one to be studied for later. Why, why you pink squirrel? Pink squirrels? Oh my goodness. And in, as we come to the very end of the show, I want you all to know that all those times in college, you wished that you could, you know, fall asleep on your textbook and have it help you learn. Yeah, it doesn't work exactly like that. But a new study just came out in which researchers published in Current Biology, a study in which they got people into deep sleep states, which is very, when the, we're not in the REM cycles, you're in the deep sleep. And they played German words paired with their English counterparts to these individuals who had never learned German before, never heard, really heard German before. And these translations were played over and over again to the sleeping people. When the people woke up, they were more likely to somewhat recognize the words that they heard. So, and it also determined, depended on a particular state of the, the cells in the hippocampus of the brain, they call the state the upstate. It's an active state in which, in which the cells are actually doing work. They're downstate, they're not active, they're not doing work, and the states alternate every half second. So up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. And when these words were played during upstates, it helped with that learning. And so when the sleeping person woke up and heard, the sleeping person word, the, heard these word pairs like tofer, key, guga, elephant, and then they were more likely to categorize tofer as something small and guga as something large. So there is something to be said for learning while you sleep. I like it. Yeah. Maybe if you do play those recordings of lectures to yourself while you sleep, something will get in there. I wonder if there's something to that whole kind of like self-help craze of sleep therapy, playing motivational tapes while you sleep, stuff like that. This might be why it works, or if it works, I don't know. Or guga sounds like, or guga is just the way the word sounds. Giga, which is a gigabyte or a gigawatt, which is a big thing. That were other word. Yeah, I feel like, so German is, American is, English is a Germanic language, right? So like, so there is weirdo links there, but I'm sure, did they just do German or did they do other languages? I'm sure they did other ones, right? I think they only did German in this particular study. Maybe that's the next step is to pick a language that is not related to English in any way, like Arabic or something and see what happens. Exactly. And my final story for the night, we have a use for all those discarded fidget spinners that are around your houses. Now that the fidget spinner craze is over, what do you do with all those fidget spinners? Oh, well, maybe you can use them as a blood plasma separator. Exactly. That was finally something to do with all that blood I have lying or oh wait, it's the fidget spinners. Sorry. Yeah, researchers wanted to know if they could use fidget. If they could use fidget spinners as a hand powered electricity free centrifuge platform. And it works. It takes about four to seven minutes to separate blood plasma. So for areas where centrifuges are hard to come by and you need to separate your blood or in the case of, I don't know, an electrical outage, you get those fidget spinners, keep that blood spinning and yes, fidget spinners for the scientific win. That's pretty cool. Actually, that might be helpful like out in the field and stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Like if you're doing blood samples in the field, taking small like in this case, I think they had little capillary tubes that they taped to the fidget spinners and you could in the field if you're doing animal blood samples, bird blood samples, just do your sampling and your separation right in the field. So wildlife biologists out there. Yeah, maybe we your fidget spinners can be used or you know, the discarded fidget spinners from your seven year old nephew. That's what's going to work. All right. Or the ones that I've confiscated from teenagers. Oh wait, sorry. Exactly. Have you been stealing toys from children? Confiscating there's a difference. Okay. All this and more on the next episode of This Week in Science. We will discuss the dip. No, we won't. But we have come to the end of this episode of This Week in Science. Thank you everyone for watching. I want to say thank you to Fada for your help with show notes and with social media and with the YouTube descriptions and helping with the chat room there. Gord McLeod, thank you for helping with our chat room making sure it flows nicely. Everyone is in there. Everyone's nice in there right in our chat room. Identity 4, thank you for recording the show so that we can have the audio version as a podcast. And everyone who does support us, thank you for your support. 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Thank you for all your support on Patreon, and if you are interested in finding out how you can support us, you can find information at twist.org. You can also tell your friends about twist and twist.org. On next week's show, I'm working on an interview, but I don't have it specified yet. I've got a couple people bouncing around, so we will have an interview on next week's show. Once again, we'll be broadcasting live online at 8 p.m. Pacific Time at twist.org. So if you can watch live, you can also join our chat room. But if you can't make it, don't worry, everything is archived. You can get the podcast. If you subscribe, you can also find episodes at twist.org and on YouTube. Thank you for enjoying the show. Twist, as mentioned, is also available as a podcast. Just Google this week in Science in your iTunes directory, or if you have one of the new mobile-type devices. You can look for Twist, the number four, Droid, app in the Android Marketplace, or simply this week in Science and anything Apple Market plays in. For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes are available on our website. That's at www.twist.org, where you can also make comments and start conversations with the hosts or other listeners. Or you can contact us directly. Email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinScience.com, Justin at twistminion at gmail.com, or Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist, T-W-I-S, somewhere in your subject line. Otherwise, your email may be spam filtered into oblivion. You can also hit us up on the Twitter, where we are at TwistScience, at Dr. Kiki, at Jackson Fly, and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback if there's a topic you would like us to cover or address. A suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes to you in the night. Please let us know. We'll be back here next week, and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. Yes, and if you've learned anything from the show, please remember, it's all in your head. My advice is to show them how to stop the robot with a simple device. I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand, and all it'll cost you is a couple of grand. TwistScience is coming your way, so everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth, and I'll broadcast my opinion all over the earth. Because it's this week in science. This week in science. This week in science. This week in science. This week in science. I've got one disclaimer, and it shouldn't be news, that what I say may not represent your views, but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just get understand, but we're not trying to threaten your philosophy, we're just trying to save the world from Japanese. 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I've got a laundry list of items I want to address From stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness I'm trying to promote more rational thought And I'll try to answer any question you've got But how can I ever see the changes I seek When I can only set up shop one hour a week This weekend science is coming your way You better just listen to what we say And if you learn anything from the words that we've said Then please just remember it's all in your head Cause it's this weekend science This weekend science, science, science This weekend science This weekend science, science, science This weekend science This weekend science This weekend science This weekend science That is the end of the show everyone it's the end of the show we did it we did it we did it we did it all of the science all of the science it was good i have some calendars left you can click on that link twist 2019 and buy a calendar you can also click on subscribe you can also buy things on zazzle or patreon Also patreon supporters at certain levels can get one of these original pieces signed sent to you know the originals and just in last night sent me some Some recordings some recordings of an MP3 for a voicemail that i'm going to be sending out to a few people who are within the patreon support level that gets a voicemail message Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer and then it goes on to say some other things yeah it's pretty funny good fun mm-hmm so we've got some voicemail voicemail message to send out to some people some new original artwork which is very exciting I have a question kiki yes i've been trying to assemble a coloring book items cool but i don't know how to put them together like what what format it would need to be in like if i just if i just gave you a pdf that's like 60 pages long is that what you want or does it need to be in a particular format and then like if it's a pdf like what does the dpi need to be for it to look good as a book like these are these are the things i don't know adult coloring book what why are we talking about adult coloring books stop blush stop it right now why what are you talking about i made a whole calendar of them dude oh yeah no that was awesome i thought that was just because you were colorblind though i didn't really know i thought it'd be fun that it was that would be a fun thing let me see if i can find let's see i will look for that information for you okay great yeah i will look for that and then i'll start slapping stuff together yeah and then i'm oh i had an email from tom merit over at daily tech news show and he was wondering if we wanted to do a trade intrigue collaboration yes collaboration and a trade so i'm guessing they want blare he said blare and justin and he was saying that like every i don't know the details for show but the idea would be that like three times a year on both shows we would like trade some hope trade some hosts around i love it which could be a little host's weapon i didn't know you two were down yeah i brought this up a long time ago throw a bunch of podcast keys in a bowl bunch of microphones maybe is that what i was getting who's coming home with twist tonight it sounds very exciting yeah but wait i missed it because i didn't start listening until part way into what you were saying what's what's the podcast it's called the daily tech news show okay it's fun i've been on it a few times and usually they do like it's a bunch of tech headlines and then they'll have like one it's in it's a kind of half hour long show it's about an hour maybe kind of time commitment it's usually mid afternoon that they record so i don't know how easy that'll be for either of you if it's only a couple times a year that's it's not too hard as long as i can as long as it's i get advanced notice it's not a big deal at all it's right now if it's like hey can you do it this week thursday that's hard but if you're like hey next month like oh yeah i can figure that out yeah and so it would be kind of split up so like you know one episode you blare would go on and maybe talk something you know they and we will figure out what tom and i'll kind of you know we'll figure out with you guys what you think would be good to good to talk about on the show and then you'll usually they get into some kind of they'll have like a in depth conversation kind of that's usually about 10 minutes long maybe much shorter than the kinds of conversations we usually have here on this show yeah and then the other way around we would get sarah roger or tom yeah it'd be fun right yeah i love it that's great yeah host swapping that's right ed from kinetic it said yes sarah lane is asking ed is asking who are the other hosts on dtns tom is the main host there's also sarah lane roger chang and yeah he's the producer sometime commentator but he he's he's good commentator he's he's got some good interests and good knowledge roger is great to talk to yeah yeah it would be fun i think we fun i'm glad you guys are into it so i will i will get back to tom and we'll figure out what we're gonna do and how we're gonna do and and what we think yeah which would be great yeah awesome okay i will get back about that anything else that i needed to talk about for the twist business side of things um we were trying to figure out how to set up an interface for people to sign up for for the new yeah is aran lore in the chat room tonight i didn't see him but yeah there's html in there that and i also need some i need some help because i got a hacker in there again that i got to get out i don't know if they're getting in through the wordpress or getting in through our main server but what's what's been affected if you look for twist on google you'll see that some of the responses want to send you to oh no yeah stuff that should that might be my fault i've been doing a lot of google searching lately um yeah sorry we're in firefox i don't know it yeah maybe search for twist.org i don't know i searched recently and was like oh no i know i know i want to go levitra yes there you go i see it so it's under the main header yes yes wow i'm heading or something it doesn't show up behind it it's super sneaky i know i know uh super sneaky you're gonna get in there yeah it cut out the claims to be twist.org slash live yeah it's gotta yeah that's weird there's a weird well you know as long as we're getting paid are we getting paid? it's my wordpress thanks bleak okay wordpress is easy to fix i can get i can get people out i think we should announce this maybe it's maybe this is premature maybe it's too soon to announce what but after i think have you announced it to us yet no you announced it well you know this is a a direct order from you um the the the justin jackson disclaimery bit yes for the patreon thing which has been promised for i think 10 years finally got made so if you want and it is it is we might actually have to speed it up uh because i've i'm playing it back i realized it's quite long yeah voicemail message it may need to go double time but it has been recorded and i am very proud to state that this voicemail covers all bases of what you would want to voicemail to cover from an unknown caller at least covers all the bases yes but this is i don't know how long we've been i feel like it's been at least five years well we i don't think we've been on patreon for five years i feel like on it for a little while yeah it's been five years it's i think this has been a patreon sponsored level for five years but just just to be fair it took this long to craft the perfect voicemail uh outgoing message there you go so i think we started our patreon right before kiki moved because i remember yeah 2015 so it's been what three four years yeah so i remember going to your house went when you still lived here and uh helping you package up all the patreon perks because like it was new so you had to hit all the people at once kind of with their t-shirts and their stickers and their their arts and we did it all in your your little office yeah but this is that i mean that how long have we been when reading the names i feel like that's longer than 2015 but i don't i can't tell i don't know i have to go back and see go back and see should i get premium support with word fence would that help my word press no idea what word is word fence is a security plugin for word press that uh that i don't have premium right now but maybe you know i will consider it this has happened twice maybe you know why it's part of the premium key because they left gapping holes in their security and tell you pay them this is exactly this is how this works otherwise it would just be the service that they provide to begin with oh bleak is sending me links blogging wizard what's that i'm not gonna stay up and do it tonight but yeah i'll try and fix things i gotta that means i have to get into the google site links yeah i think i have to get into my server i don't think it's word press i think yeah i think it's he's in my code he's in my code man that sucks why do you assume it's a heat geeky could be a she that's right well it could be a she trying to sell erection pills i guess it's this is listen i grew up in a day in an age when you refer to the unknown person as a heat i know i get in trouble with this still or no now it's like i know this it's just the way that grammar works it's the two things that are getting me in trouble now are you guys hey guys okay guys people don't like that anymore but the other one is dude and i refuse to relinquish my use of dude and you know what you know what i i'm all i yes people can be as sensitive as they want about what you know you know i think i'm old enough where i can say i don't care i'm gonna say hey guys and i'm gonna say dude because it has nothing to do with you sensitive people who i i i'm i but words do me thanks and and and i catch i catch myself because i i cover a lot of uh human origin stories on the show and i have like i like i hit upon ancient mankind yeah and i go uh is it my only time telling half the story if i talk about mankind and the other one that i've played with a lot recently and then it's human kind but can you say human because humans have the words man and it it's a rabbit hole but it's humans but then okay but one man is also part of it but then i like the other thing i is instead of saying modern humans i've been actively trying to convert my language to saying current humans oh right it's funny so you're not offending the neanderthals that are hanging out no it's not even the neanderthals it's the future humans who are gonna be like okay you're the modern humans because that that whole then it's next generation modern humans like you keep having to add extra words to it so then it's like i've been trying to like uh use current humans to describe the people of today versus modern because it's always been modern going back all the way neanderthals were modern hominins right there was a point when when when everything was the modern version of whatever so modern really is a temporal meaningless word so you just say current to talk about your current time frame anyway yeah i mean slang term slang terms change from generation to generation and i grew up with excuse me grandparents who you know used insensitive racial terminology um and that changed and in my gen you know growing up i was like oh can't believe you said that wow grandma all right you know and now i'm you know and now i'm hitting a stage when racial and gender sensitivity is something that's very high and it's it is important to pay attention and be clear about stuff um and yeah i i fully support everybody having access to uh language to information to society and to not be to not feel like they are being shut out because of certain language um there's there's comfortable transition there's uncomfortable transition there's necessary transition and there's nice to have transition and i feel like those are all very different things like you might have been frustrated with grandma that didn't know how to work the vcr but that's us now who don't know how to write code and run something through our very own raspberry pi right that's right like that's the next generation's version that's like god you can't even write html whatever right so it's like just like that there's and we're moving in the right direction which i think is ultimately what's important right we're moving in the right direction towards equality and sensitivity but there's going to be some bumps when you've grown up using a certain lexicon and there are some things that are necessary to remove which which is you know like using mental disability as a diss or using sexual orientation as a diss those are things that happened i know in my childhood that i have recognized is entirely not okay and is completely out of my vocabulary with good reason but there are other things that are harder to replace and might not be as necessary it's saying dude might be one of those uh yeah yeah and i just isn't like doesn't dude actually mean elephant but hair does it what are you talking about get out of it no is that like dork i swear i think that wait hold on according to google dude is also a verb which means to dress up elaborately my brother was all duded up in silver and burgundy is the dude no no that's dutted oh no it's du de now but it's like you put your duds on you get uh all dutted up but it says dude now and it's and it's shortened from doodle urban dictionary says yes due to word americans use to address each other particularly stoner surfers and skaters dude is what you call someone when you aren't sure about their names what you call your best friend it's another name for homie or friend originally dude meant a stuck up person who dressed overly well total it emerged in the year 1883 later it was used in the old west to mean a city person who moved to the west without actually knowing what he was doing oh yeah a dude ranch he's got the fencing on the wrong side of the post you can tell a dude right away yeah uh later in california the term changed from these insults to a term meaning any male human or otherwise and sometimes is used to reference tom girls and emphasis as well yeah it's a otherwise known as the universal pronoun here it is an aggravated hair on an elephant's butt wait what's an aggravated like like like like infected or ingrown or something oh so this is saying yeah so here's the the weird thing see words man see i'm saying man now man i'm not me okay but anyway man she's talking to me is what she's so the so i just saw something that said that dude came from the english word doodle and that's where it originally came from but there is also a bangladeshi word dude that is related to a hair on an elephant yeah i don't think that's the one that spread really far and wide somehow stop please stop listening what yeah etymology it is a thing absolutely words words go from meaning one thing to another thing yes i like dude i like dude what about i want to know the etymology of guys you guys it's a man uh-huh british figure representing guy fox uh and as a verb it means to make fun of or ridicule he didn't realize i was guying the whole idea what that's not used oh boy yeah so let's see definition from mariam webster man fellow person used in plural to refer to members of a group regardless of sex individual creature as in the other dog's pale in comparison to this little guy often capitalized guy fox chiefly british the person of grotesque appearance yeah okay so so you know that you know the word that i like the best and it's also so it also implies a good naturedness about a people a generalized term folks folks is non-gender and you don't say like you know those nasty folks went about trying to conquer it folks you can't use as a derogatory folks is always like the good people folks is always the good people and it's non-gender specific so if you want to say nice about something about a group of people call them folks yeah the other thing they always say is you can say y'all but i don't want to say y'all well so the first known use of guy was in 1806 in reference to get this studying or reinforcing with a guy a rope a rope chain rod or wire that's attached to something as a wire as a brace or a guide a guide a guide a guide a guide yep brace interesting yep there you go so it yes etymology everyone i can still say guy guys dude dudes uh that's fine it's fine growly bear thank you for that thank you for saying that what uh that if i need wordpress help yeah i always forget to open the youtube chat room yeah and noodles if i use bro it's gonna be bra bra what what what up bra bra bra what up bra bra bro heam bro oh i like buddy too ozzy bogey and tech buddy i don't like buddy hey buddy what movie was that was that brennan ranger that poly shore everyone forever always yeah hey bra to you even left i do that right yeah i think you did you have to pop your collar first though let's run hey buddy oh my goodness i try to be sensitive i do i really do want to be sensitive there are some things i'm gonna have a hard time giving up and i really have to learn the reasons really really really but i can't it's it's you could like you could take it uh to um extremes i i don't know if i talked about this everything can be taken to external games but uh jaywalk you know what that is right yeah it's against the law it's against it's a crime because you're crossing the street in a way that you're not supposed to that interferes with vehicles well it turns out that the word jay meant hillbilly and the fact that you were walking in the street which is used to be all all pedestrian right away wherever you were and at some point was replaced by a vehicle right of way wherever they are being a jaywalker meant you were walking like a hillbilly and it was a derogatory term that's very interesting and yet it's actually so i've always like i've always imagined like someday i'm gonna get a ticket and they're gonna say jaywalking i'm gonna be like how dare you and of course the officer won't get it but i'm gonna go to court and i'll be like i was charged with a racial epitaph attached to the like but because nobody knows that that's like racially or societally charged it won't have any bank so it does have to be one of these uh meaningless words that has been used uh in current enough history against i have meaning for it i have meaning yep language and culture it's all mixed up and tied together it's all tied up into our cognition how we think things we are ourselves an extension of the world we live in and i speak of which this is the thing that keeps reoccurring which is people talk about ethnicity as though that can apply to any people's anywhere whereas my actual heritage of family goes back to the people on the island of ethnos the actual ethnic people we were an actual people we were the ethnic people and now people talk about being ethnic or ethnicity as if it's a general term for for uh where's the ethnos it's kind of uh west north of Greece smaller island than then crete um it's a very subject but we were traveling people because the island was small it didn't you couldn't have a very large population so our people traveled a lot and then when they saw somebody who was not from your neck of the islands you would say ah there's an ethnic person because that's very logically what they would assume but the thing that like this is like the first meme it like grew into like all people of a foreign place are ethnic people right but no there's an actual ethnic people and the fact that ethnic or is is used as a general term is so offensive to the actual i think there's like still like 300 and something people living it's a tiny island living on the people on the island of ethnos who are really pissed about it and then their relatives who all had to move are like yeah well we get it it's but but still you never know how in which way the language and the and the origin of the language was at some point normal and at some other point later uh dragratory so it can be difficult fascinating yeah yeah but i also like like and then this is also like the thing that we should probably have cut the show right before i got into but it's the the the nuance and layers and levels of gender that are currently available and uh like i feel guilty not having learned all of them on the one hand and also on the other hand don't care and i don't care because not because i don't care that that they can have a group that they represent and and own but it but you just it doesn't matter to you about no like i like it shouldn't be i also feel like that's not how like you're you're like i mean like the other side of this is because that's just a sex thing so who cares like i don't feel like i need to go out and define myself as a list of specific sexual fetishies or preferences and like that's not that shouldn't be identity well part part of it is it isn't just that it's about um it's it's not all related to sex a lot of it has to do with their own personal identity right and so i think that more of it's about just getting the idea that it's not binary it's not one or the other right but the more the more like striations there are the more complex it gets the more i think and you know i can't speak for any group of people in particular but i i i bet a lot of them would just be happy if assumptions weren't being made and that they were allowed to call themselves whatever they wanted yeah and i don't have a problem with anybody calling themselves what they want but it it becomes very like if somebody says that guy and i went whoa whoa whoa you also have to throw in that extroverted existentialist atheistic guy like like you're you're pulling in from categories aside from general and that's it's too much to expect i think other people to fulfill all of your identity qualifications for yourself when they respond or converse with you or interact with you and i think i think that and it's and it's like how we started this whole conversation you guys could mean anybody yeah dude could mean everyone like there there's to try to pull people away from all the generalities because i'm like ah you know what folks you know some days i'm a folk someday i'm not a folk someday i'm a piece and you've picked the wrong day to call me folk because i'm there's a part where you're you're asked of other people's acceptance not acceptance but um adherence to your self-definition is asking more out of a society than is possible i think ultimately what i will aim to do as a human is um make adjustments where i think that they are appropriate and then other than that um make adjustments when people ask me to for their specific case right yes that's the thing that i really try to focus on i like if something is a trigger for them if they've struggled for much of their life with their gender identity and they don't want to be called a guy then i will not call that person dude or guy or man or whatever to be called a klingon i'm totally down with that but but but don't get upset if i didn't recognize you were a klingon i knew 20 parsecs away like that's not going to happen right well i guess if i was already in parsecs i might be and i think that's really what it's about is just allowing for the um the social construct of being asked to not be called a thing without making it a big deal except again i'm also like speaking as a californian where we're like accepted all these things are realities and and a lot of the people struggling with us are not really comfortable california ish yeah i mean i i i exchange and then second i exchange emails with lots of people who in their email signature put their preferred pronouns okay which is like becoming a thing which is very cool you go to a conference and people put it on their their badges you have it on your you have it in your email signatures you have it on your website you have it in your twitter uh profile right yeah that you know but that's i think that is helpful because then it lets people know yeah oh yeah what the preference is so that when you do when you are 20 parsecs away and i go oh wait i remember this person okay i know i know what i know what to do here i know how to i know how to how to refer to someone yeah so i think i think that's that's the that's at the heart of this is allowing for people to ask for adjustments but also allowing for people that don't have any bad intentions to adjust which i think is kind of like the two sides this right so like i it's the only way that that kind of this can progress in a in a in a productive way i think there has to be allowances for missteps right which is why i i mean and everyone who i have spoken to who i have for example used a pronoun that is not the pronoun that they desire have been so gracious and and it's just been like a very simple thing and it's just been like oh yeah no i i go by you know him he i'm just like okay cool moving on like not a big deal but um i think there there is kind of this like fee it becomes this fear of like oh no the floor is made of glass it's like no there needs to be a conversation to be able to move forward but isn't it also on the other hand kind of awesome that a lot of people got to turn the floor to glass oh absolutely yeah like the other side of that is too like good on you yeah i'm so glad you turned it like now i'm like awkwardly don't know what to say but kind of can appreciate that the the floor was turned to glass because we've turned that corner so yeah because it because the whole world was made a glass for them before yeah all right i got i got a role so i'm gonna um say say good night player good night player say good night justin good night justin good night good night everyone thank you for watching again and i think the evolution of the language that we use as our culture shifts is going to be so fascinating to watch as well and uh next week join us again i will be here this friday for not not here i will be on my twitch channel this friday at one p.m pacific time for my twitch conversational science stream and uh other than that we'll be back next wednesday here right all of us will be here there will be an interview i'll have details it's the twist love fest next week also it is next week is valentine's day so get get it let's get our love science on how much do we love science i'm really crossing my fingers for some invertebrate sex come on scientific community throw it at me oh man let's make Blair's animal corner shine that's right um yeah so we'll talk more and i will have news hopefully within the next week about our live show here in the portland area as to a location hopefully we'll be getting on that very soon so without further ado i hope everyone has a wonderful week wonderful week enjoy the science and we'll see you next week and if you're a mermaid with the fish parts on top call me