 Hello, and welcome to the latest live broadcast of the This Week in Science podcast. Hey, we're here. We've got some audio, we've got some video, we have people in the chat rooms. Welcome, everyone, to the program, and we are about to begin the recording process, in which we will just be having a show, and that show is going to do its show thing, but it might be edited for the podcast and for the children's, but for now, it is for us, and for the joy and the science. For those of you listening live, too, I'm not even part of the post-edit show, so you're getting a special treat. A lot of people think I left the show a long time ago. I'm still here, but nothing I produce here ever makes it to the podcast, because it's just unusable. But if you're live, I'm still part of the show. Yeah, she pays extra to get to tweet out the little ums and any Justin little... That's it. That's it. By the end of this show, I'm barely perceptible. So we know you're there. We are ready, though. We are ready to jump into this show without all the editing, without all that. We're here. Yeah, yeah, Shnago, we're not going backwards. This is going forwards. Moving forward through time and space. And it's ready to begin, and we will begin in... Oh, this is when I do that countdown thing, right? Yes, it's counting down. Three, two, this is twist. This Week in Science, episode number 847, recorded on Wednesday, October 20th, 2021. How to monkey around with science. Hey, everyone. I'm Dr. Kiki, and tonight on the show, we are going to fill your head with blood, ducks, and lady brains. But first... Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. When wondering about why things are the way they are, keep this little list of thoughts in mind. Everything runs on knowledge of the past. The way roads are built. The way school is taught. The way laws are created and enforced. The way governments are run. The way doctors diagnose. The way food is prepared. The way a computer is programmed. The way engineers engineer anything is all based on past knowledge. Occasionally, there are humans who do find themselves confronted with the unknown. With a set of circumstances, problems, or obstacles that they have absolutely no past knowledge with which to guide them. These are ignorant people. Best to be avoided because they are markedly prone to making poor choices. If they just spend a little more time educating themselves and a little less time unknowingly getting by on other people's knowledge, they would see that no matter what confronts them, humans have found some sound strategies and solutions in the past. And nowhere has this knowledge of the past applied better than right here on This Week in Science, coming up next. Good science to you, Kiki. And a good science to you too, Justin and Natalia. Yes. I'm so happy to be here. Welcome to this show. We are excited to have Natalia Reagan joining us for our show tonight. I'm ready to monkey round. Awesome. You're in it for the monkeying around with the science. Well, everyone, thank you for joining us for another episode of This Week in Science. We've been looking at the news, checking out all the science, you know, visiting all the science farms, pulling out the good science carrots. We're all going to munch on them tonight. Chomp, chomp, chomp. This is not a monkey analogy. I don't know. I mix my metaphors constantly. More of a rabbit thing going on there with the carrot munchie. I had a rabbit for years who refused to eat carrots. I think it was a shame. It probably is. It's probably mythology. Yeah, I think it's just, you know, it's the carrot industry just really trying to, you know, cash in. Yeah, next they're going to tell us we should feed carrots to our cats. Okay, good. Okay, we have stories for you. Not just about carrots and munch. No, there's nothing about carrots. There's nothing about carrots tonight. We have science-y stories. I have a bunch of science news. I've got some green energy, not in the way that you might be thinking though. I've also got my ducks in a row and I have those lady brains. Lovely, lovely, lovely lady brains. You love my lumps. My lovely lady brain lumps. Exactly. Yeah, that's what you were talking about. Unvoluted and wonderful. So good. Justin, what did you bring for the show tonight? Let's see. I've got the kind of wood that you could drive a nail with. Something blood does with DNA. Why being a Christian nationalist is bad for your health and just good news. Just more, more just good news. I can't wait for that good news. Yeah, it's gonna be great. And this would normally be when I would ask Blair to tell me about her stories. But you know what? You know what Blair Witton did this last weekend? No. She got herself remarried. Well, what? She finally celebrated her wedding to her partner and the two of them are off on a fabulous honeymoon for the week. And so we tonight are being joined, like I said, by Natalia Reagan. For those who do not know you, tell us a bit about yourself. Well, I'm a primatel. I'm not Blair, first of all. No. No, I apologize to those who are big fans of Blair. Congrats to her. I'm a primatologist, but I'm also a comedian. So I actually was an actor and did comedy before. I became a scientist and studied spider monkeys. And then when I was finishing up grad school, I kind of combined the two and I make science comedy and have for over a decade now. So I've hosted a Bigfoot show done videos on boobs, butts, balls and Bigfoot, you know, the big bees. Yeah, yeah. No. Yeah, I'm a big believer and, you know, especially as a social scientist, you know, getting science out there, because I think we have kind of an ethical responsibility to talk about what we know to hopefully make the world a little bit better, a little bit more tolerant, a little bit, you know, more bearable in this time of, well, uncertainty. Yeah, I'm actually sorry that that show got canceled because I understand after you did the B words, you were going to go and do an episode of C words. But the sensors, the sensors caught up with you on that one. Well, you know, the sensor being my mom. Are you sure you should be saying that, honey? Yeah. All right. Sorry, mom. Oops, my rod. Yeah, no, welcome to the show for the night. I'm so excited to talk science with you. Gonna be fun. Let's be more than bearable. Let's be fun. Oh, yes. No, I've got costumes, costume changes. So, you know, if you want to include stuff, I don't have any ducks, but I do have a rubber chicken. That'll happen. Always, always, Andy. Where's my rubber chicken? Mine. Well, as we jump into the show right now, I just want to remind you all that if you have not yet subscribed to This Week in Science, you can find us all places that podcasts are found. You can also find us on YouTube and Facebook and Twitch. We are at Twist Science, T-W-I-S-C-I-E-N-C-E, on Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch. And everywhere else, just look for us as This Week in Science. You can also visit our website, twist.org. Okay, it's time for the science. Let's dig in. We are just about living in the future, everyone. As Week Surgeons reported, the first successful transplantation of a kidney from a genetically modified pig into a human being. Wow. I no longer have to sell kidneys to do things, because that's usually my go-to joke. Like, oh, give me a second. I'm just going to, I'll be right back. I'm going to go sell a kidney. Oh, right. So, you know, kids are taking me out of the game. If you still have a kidney to sell, then you still might have time to do that. This is not something that's going to be, you know, at your local doctor grocer shop. Exactly. Yes. We are going to be waiting a while for this to really start becoming available. This is a proof of concept. It was a single kidney in a single human being. This is not yet published research. It is just a report by the surgeons reported by USA Today and the AP and other places not scientifically minded. I just need to add. What they've done is taken the kidney from, as I said, a genetically modified pig. This pig has been modified so that it doesn't produce a certain sugar that our human body does not produce. Pigs do produce one different sugar that causes a lot of rejection issues. And so they've gotten rid of that problem by crispering the pigs. And there are probably lots of crisper pig jokes. But the kidney then, along with other alterations, it's made it safer so that it doesn't have also ancient viruses in the pig DNA that could potentially pop out and cause disease in a human recipient of such an organ. They did not transplant this kidney into someone who was really able to give their permission. It was a person who was about to be taken off of life support by their family. And the family agreed to allow their family members kidney to be used for this purpose or their family member to be used for this purpose to receive the pig kidney before they actually took the patient off of life support. Now, in this, they watched for two days. And over the course of two days only, there was absolutely no rejection. The kidney appeared to be working well and everything went swimmingly. All markers were good. So there's a lot more work that needs to be done. But this is the first human transplantation. And I had thought that we had transplanted pig organs a long time ago. We've been doing livers, haven't we? Human livers grown in pigs, I thought was the... Right, but that's grown in pigs. But not transplanted in? No. So I went looking at this idea of cross-species transplantation and found an article from 2012 that's a brief history of cross-species organ transplantation. And I discovered that this is a long... And it has a long and sordid history. Starting back in the 17th centuries with ideas going back to the Greeks. Ancient Greeks with ideas... Much too soon to start that, yeah. Yeah, a lot of groundwork needs to be done. Blood transfusions from animal species were carried out in the 17th and 20th centuries. They never went very well because of the graft versus host issue. And the problem of the blood typing not working. But if somebody told me, if somebody told me, what you need, what you need, son, is you need some horse blood in your veins. That's what you need. I'm like, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. But yeah, little did we know that back then... Well, I guess they figured it out probably pretty quick. People died fairly quickly when this happens. There was a point in the 1920s when a researcher, a Russian researcher named Voronov, he advocated the transplantation of slices of chimpanzee testes into aged men whose quote-unquote zest for life was deteriorating. Okay, then. This was a thought that the hormones that are produced by the testes would rejuvenate the aging testes of the age. The problem, as I recall with that one, is that while it worked, it made those men incredibly attracted to chimpanzee females. Which is the only initiative they went to the zoo. And with the faces off of other men, just in general. But do you remember the 1993 film Untamed Heart? I was a teenager in the 90s. Now, okay, that was the Christian Slater, Mercer Tomei, and I believe would share the mom in it. Who was the mom in it? No, everybody was Cher's mom, I feel like. Oh gosh, I think I went to a date to that movie and caught none of the movie. Well, I mean, you didn't, we know Rosie Perez was in it. But anyways, yeah, so Christian Slater received a cross-species baboon heart in the film. And I can't, I mean, maybe I didn't make much as an impression because I can't really remember the ending. I don't think it was good. And I didn't mean to imply that the date was going that well. I think the movie was just that bad. The date, I don't think anything happened. But the movie was just so terrible that, yeah, somehow I might have walked out of that one. Oh no. I mean. Yeah, like this is not a good day. Yeah, no. It's a bounce. The heck out. Yeah, in the 60s, a researcher named Riempzma transplanted chimpanzee kidneys into 13 patients. And one of them was able to return to work for almost nine months before suddenly dying. So that's that. Hey, you know, got nine months closer to retirement though. Yeah, the first time. The first heart transplant was in 1964 with a chimpanzee heart. And you're right about that person died within two hours, however. So and then you're right, Justin, that the chimpanzee to human liver transplants. That's chimpanzee though. I thought it was. I thought it was pig. I got to stop toasting the pig livers. Because I thought that was going to save me one day. But pigs are the big hope because we farm pigs. We can use them, these genetically modified pigs that have been authorized for food and medical use. So yeah, food and they make better bacon. They make better bacon. It's just, I know you don't, you think I would never until you smell that bacon. I just see the Twilight Zone episode. It's so much better. What Twilight episode? You were the Twilight Zone, the Eye of the Beholder. Yep. I see a little bit of the, the, remember the end with the pig? No. Yeah, they all had to pick snap people. Yeah. A little side effect, who knows. But I mean, I find it fascinating. I have a father who only has one kidney. So I, you know what? I think, I think he'd actually be happy to be part pig. You know what I mean? Like you're like an instant babe at that point, right? Like that's like, you know. Exactly. You're a babe. To get to be a babe, the pig. Not my dad's a babe, but he's got, never mind. That'll do pig. Exactly. Well, anyway, hopefully these transplants will, you know, pick up some steam and make their way to humans around us to save lives and not just for kidneys, but for other organs to, you know, help humans with our organ shortage, because people need new organs. We're not, we're not good at taking care of ourselves yet. But moving on from transplants, you wanted to talk about knives and nails, Justin? Oh, yeah. Okay. So there was the Stone Age. Long time ago, Stone Age. Then there was, after the Stone Age, you had the Bronze Age, the Iron Age. There was the Industrial Steel Age. But often overlooked in history is the mighty contribution of the age of wood. While some might think wood has always been around when we needed it, some researchers recently reimagined how hard wood could actually get. And the results are pretty impressive. The method, presented in the journal Matter, makes wood 23 times harder than it's ever been before. So then the question is, is everything all right? So the question is, what do you do when you've got really, really hard wood? You drive a nail with it. Of course you do. That's, that's immediately. Immediately the thing. First thing that crossed my mind. Yeah. So actually they did a few things. They made a knife that was nearly three times sharper than stainless steel dinner table knives. The knife, according to the researcher, the knife cuts through a medium well done steak easily with similar performance to a dinner table knife. It says Tang Lee. That's the senior author of the study, material scientist at the University of Maryland. And the other one, and also they can wash it. You can wash this knife afterwards. It can be reused many, many times. So they're thinking this is an alternative, not just to steel knives, but maybe to things like plastic disposable knives or things that aren't going to break down over time. They also demonstrated, and there's a video to go with this, although it's long and not very impressive, a team also demonstrated that their material can be used to produce wooden nails that are as sharp as conventional steel nails. So they say as sharp as, so there's the, okay, so we got the video up of the cutting the meat with the wood knife. And there's another one that's below there that should show them putting the nail through like three pieces of wood. Now I have a feeling that there's something about the brittleness of it still that hasn't, that's not quite the same as steel, because they're driving a nail like, you know, when you tap on a nail to get it sort of in there just a little bit before you can drive it through. This is like an eight minute video of them tapping one nail all the way through. Takes a long time, but it's still. And little did you know that this, these are like IKEA boards that they're tapping through. It could be a soft wood, but it's still, it's still a wooden nail. I mean, they reinvented dowels, but you got to drill it first. So they couldn't just like, there's things that you can do instead of this already, but it's still a kind of a cool proof of concept for this. Some of the other things that I'm thinking about doing with these, with this wood technology, they're thinking about making more scratch resistant, wear resistant flooring. Also, those nails, the nail that is getting tapped in there has an added benefit that the nail will not rust because it's made out of wood. But if it's made out of wood, it won't rust, but will it deteriorate? So they're looking at this at the wooden knives as a possible replacement for plastic cutlery. But on the other hand, the nails would do better than regular nails. I am finding this confusing. Okay. So what you have to, we have to add up though, is that the wooden nail, if you were, for instance, building a house with wooden nails instead of steel ones, the idea would be that it would deteriorate the same rate as the rest of the wood around it. Maybe a little bit slower. Maybe a little bit slower. So the way that they did- The house would fall apart at the same time. Which it's going to anyway. Is the wood treated, I mean, is it treated with like a resin or is it? So it is treated with mineral oil and it didn't specify what I was reading, didn't specify what. But we use mineral oil, some types, like on cutting boards and that sort of thing, to preserve the life, to make them last a little longer. So that was just for the longevity thing. But the process they used is different. So usually when we're making wood things, we have a compression and steam thing that is reshaping or forming the wood to make it stronger. What they did here is a little different. So cellulose is the main component of wood, which turns out has a higher ratio of strength to density than most engineered materials. So more than ceramic, more than many of the metals, polymers, but wood that we use ourselves is also only 40 to 50% cellulose, has a bunch of binding materials. So what Lee and his team did is they created a process that removes the weaker components while not destroying the cellulose skeleton. So that's the sort of process there. It's like the process that we use to denature all the tissue around the scaffolding that is the architectural scaffolding for the heart or for physiological stuff that they're talking about using for future transplants with stem cells and that kind of stuff. So then to drain out all the lignin, I don't know what to say. Lignin? Lignin. So you got this ligninless wood just sitting there now, it's a little soft, flexible, it gets a little squishy, and then they do a hot press. They apply a bunch of pressure and heat and they remove any of the water, anything else that can be left behind, and then they carve the shape of the thing and then they coat it with the mineral oil to extend its lifetime. And at the end of that, they've got this super strong wood that can last a really long time. Interesting. I just think of termites and just how happy they're going to be as we make this switch. Maybe though they're going to be like, my little termite teeth don't work on this anymore. They're going to cut their, you know, they all adapt and evolve. They'll get super, but that's really awesome. I mean, although we're already, I mean, I don't, in terms of it being an alternative to plastic, I mean, that's a great idea, but we're already trying to cut down on, I guess, deforestation. Is there, are they talking about using like sort of recycled wood, scrap wood, things like that? That wasn't part of this discussion at all. But yeah, you know, whatever material humans use is going to destroy the planet. So yeah, so we'll have less trees and we'll use less of the trees when we make this wood. We're going to use trees to cut down trees. Maybe, yeah, we'll use wooden saws to cut down the trees in the future. Oh, the betrayal of that. Yeah, we'll actually be using half as much of the wood than we would have been using before of the lumber that we cut when we use this process. However, we'll be using less heat to produce it because it creates less heat in the molding of this than it would to create a metal or a plastic. So we're saving the energy, but we're still seem to be spending out of the same overall account. I feel like this is like when Waze takes you on a journey, like you're going to save five minutes and then you end up adding 10 minutes to the journey. Because everybody else got the same message. Yeah, everybody else got the same message. Is it really a good choice? That's right. I don't know. You want to save you two minutes. That's exactly why I ignore that every time when they try to save me nine minutes. I'm like, I'm good. I'll let all the other suckers, because we all have the same devices, telling us the same information, let all the suckers go there. I'll be fine. Let's move from your green, green nails and knives to a little bit of green energy. Have you ever wondered if you could be powered by the sun? Aren't we? I mean, pretty much that when he comes down to it, we consume food that is. There is that aspect, yes, of being powered by, oh, what just happened? We're fine here. My screen just went blank. I was like, I don't see anything anymore, but I'm back. Dude, dude, yes. You're still here. You never left this. Oh, here, I'm just catching my space. Yeah, sorry about that. Brain went wee. Let's go someplace else for a moment. Anyhow, yes, powered by the sun. Plants are powered by the sun. We eat the plants, and so indirectly, yes, we're powered by the sun. But what if the sun could get through our skin and just what if we could photosynthesize and power ourselves directly through photosynthesis? Some researchers just published in iScience, an open access journal on their method to give little oxygen-deprived tadpoles more oxygen by injecting photosynthetic algae into them. They injected these tadpoles with photosynthetic algae. They put them into a oxygen-deprived water bath, and then they illuminated the top, the skin and the tops of the tadpoles, and they found that oxygen levels were refreshed within the brains of these little tadpoles. That's amazing. My first reaction, though, really was, though, I wonder how many other just off-the-wall bizarre experiments these people did and the creatures died. But then I realized there was probably past knowledge that they were working with. Well, one of the researchers, the first author says, you have to have new ideas and new concepts to explore. This is one of the ways science is driven. If you are open-minded and think it through, all of a sudden you can see all the possibilities from one idea. They envision this research benefiting laboratories that work with isolated tissues or organoids that, as the organoids grow, need to get oxygen, that potentially these oxygen-producing algae through photosynthesis could help the tissues survive and allow research to be better. And that could potentially lead to fewer animals needed for research, which is something that a lot of people would like. Could we use fewer animals for the research that we do? And if we can find ways to get the organoids to work or other lab tissues to thrive and survive like this, let's see if we can do it. They're not going to be injecting photosynthetic algae into people anytime soon because your immune system is not going to like that very much. So don't try this at home, kids. No, don't do that. But yeah, they can apply the algae directly to the brain and it found that it, or into the tadpole's heart, the algae spread through the tadpoles and they were able to see a benefit. Happy tadpoles. That's really cool. Wow, yeah. And there's a video where you can see the algae. It's bright green photosynthetic algae and you can see it through the skin of the tadpoles. Another reason that these African clawed frogs were used is because you can see through their skin when they are tadpoles. That is so cool. Pretty awesome. Yeah, don't go injecting photosynthetic algae anytime soon, but this is an interesting direction of research. Let's photosynthesize ourselves. Okay, so from green blood to regular blood, Justin. Yeah, this is actually research that's revealing what regular blood already does. Something I guess that we just didn't know it did. Our new research has revealed that red blood cells function as immune sensors and can bind free cell DNA, which is also known as nucleic acid, present in the body circulation during sepsis and even in COVID-19 cases. So this DNA binding capability triggers their removal then from circulation, which then can drive inflammation and anemia during severe illness. So there's this thing I guess that they talk about, which is people who get sepsis, which is, what is sepsis exactly? It's like a throughout the body type of an infection. Yeah. You get an infection, but then you get new infections throughout the blood. It's moved around through the blood, so now the infection is kind of everywhere. All right, so they've seen that with this and I guess malaria and some other things when they've given people treatment, they end up with anemia, but they haven't had a really good explanation for it. And it turns out what's happening is the blood is grabbing these little bits of DNA that are broken free from this infection and they're kind of cleaning it up. They're like cleaning it up, but they're also saying, hey, you might want to look out for this, this is going to be a problem later, letting the whole body and immune system know that this is present. But then, if there's enough of an accumulation, so this is then like in a malaria or a sepsis or something where the infection's gotten really, really bad, it begins to deform the blood cells, which then gets them taken out because they're no longer looking like red blood cells anymore. So then the body needs to get those out of circulation and that's where the anemia kicks in because now you have this reduced red blood cell count. So one of those things that they had seen the correlation between disease and anemia and now they have discovered the mechanism, which is always, I love when a mechanism is discovered. That always feels like it's the hard science thing, whatever it is. Here's how that's taking place. The correlations are always great observation. Now what? But yeah, now we have a mechanism. We know that red blood cells are running around doing work. We didn't know that they were doing. That's also interesting for those that may be already excited. I know for years I had severe, extreme anemia is what my doctor called it, which is always fun when they use words like extreme and a health issue. And really, thanks. You could have just said anemia. No, couldn't. Actually, I haven't thought about this in a while. I had a really bad staff infection. I got hit by a truck many years ago. I'm a pedestrian. Yeah, I'm fine now, mostly. But I had a really bad, I'd vancomycin-resistant staff infection on the lower part of my leg. My leg was basically filleted open. But I wonder if maybe like, because they could, nothing worked. Nothing, nothing worked. And it was spreading and they were really worried. And I mean, it wasn't sepsis yet. But I remember them not realizing or not understanding why nothing was working. And I just wonder if the anemia was possibly made worse by the infection. Who knows. Yeah, so I mean, that's a great correlation. It's not often we get a testimonial during a story. So that's fantastic. And it's one of those, we just didn't know how the one was affecting the other. Yeah. But I mean, red blood cells, we usually just think of them as the oxygen carriers. They're the ones with the hemoglobin. They're just carrying oxygen around the body. They're going to go pick it up in the lungs and they're going to take it where it's needed. And then they're going to make their little trips. It's the white blood cells that we think of as the immune cells. And so what's interesting to me is this is like a, this is a different job for the red blood cells that everybody's involved in cleaning things up. That if a red blood cell is walking by a piece of trash, the red blood cell is going to pick up that piece of trash. And then the red blood cell has to be taken to the dump. But anyway. Yeah. The body is amazing. It's amazing. So fascinating. Oh, I have one fun story before we keep moving on. I like fun. Yeah, I have a fun. It's really a very sweet study. I mean, I love it when physics answers a question that people have asked so many times when you're looking at a little arboretum with a lake and there are the ducks on it and the spring and the little, the little cute little baby ducks are all around after their mom. They're not like mech mech mech mech meching in a random way around their mom. They end up in a street line. Their mom's like, let's go over here to look for food and all the little ducks line up in a row. Why do all the little ducks line up in a row? Well, because it makes it easier for them. It's energy because these researchers who just published in the Journal of Fluid Dynamics, they have discovered a couple of properties where the wake of the ducks affects the way that the ducks are able to swim. So they're basically wave, wave riding. And I'm moving that fast. Yeah, they ride little waves and they also, there's wave passing and wave riding. And so back to about the third duckling after the mother duck, they are basically being pushed by the wake that their energy input is, they don't have to work really. The wake, the wake is pushing them. And then beyond that point, it starts to go down and down and down and down and they, and the little duckling at the end is the one that has to kick the hardest. Yeah, look for that third duck. That third duck is either the most clever one or just the laziest one. Those little mother duckers. Maybe both. So the next time that you are out looking at ducks and appreciating them swimming around in their little formations and going, oh, wait, I know this. This is energy conservation. These little ducklings are lazy. These little lazy ducklings are just getting a free ride here. Really, that's what they're working on. I just like imagine them, you know, when you like hold on to, if you're on a skateboard, you just hold on to a car and it's just like a little row of them. Yes. And now I want to put ducks on skateboards. I probably should be stopped. Somebody should, somebody please stop me. Well, let's see the video you produce first and then we'll decide. Sounds like that's something for the comment section. Let's go viral first. Yeah. Oh my goodness. It's too fun. It's just ducky. It's, yeah. No, I, I'm all about that. I can't, I'm a big fan of waterfowl. Yeah. Because they're so fowl. Yeah. Party fowls, you know, foul play, you name it. It's not just for the birds. After all, it's for us. It's for science. It's all for the puns. That's what it is. Oh my God. Yes. You better believe it. Mm-hmm. You don't call me the punisher for nothing. Oh, the rest of the show will be nothing but puns. Sorry. This is this week in science. I do hope that everyone is enjoying the show, having as much pun as we are. If you are having a great time, hey, remember, you can share it with a friend. Don't keep it secret. Tell somebody today. Okay. Also, we have calendars. So, head over to twist.org and click on the link to purchase your 2022 Twistblair's Animal Corner calendar. Keep up with all the science-y holidays. You gotta let you know when things are going on. Support Twist as well. All right. Coming back for a little COVID update. You ready for some COVID news? Let's go. That was well-timed in vaccine news. This is actually good news. For those of you who have been wondering whether or not you should get a booster if you had gotten the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines. The FDA as of today has authorized all three vaccines that are in use in the United States, Pfizer's, Moderna's, and Johnson & Johnson's for boosters. So go ahead and get your booster if it is time for you to do so. And you know, if you're like, oh, well, I had the Pfizer, but maybe I want the Johnson & Johnson, or you go to the pharmacy and they're like, well, this is all I have. And we've had the question of whether or not we can mix and match our vaccines. The FDA is saying, go ahead, treat it like that crazy candy candy bag that you buy for discount prices at your local discount candy bag store. And while you're at it, sell all of your Johnson & Johnson stock because nobody's going to go back for the third one or second one of those. Second of, so let me tell you though, the Johnson & Johnson, the second booster boosts it up to the effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna. So now you're like having a second shot. Yes. And unlike Pfizer and Moderna, it appears that Johnson & Johnson only increases in effectiveness over time. People six to eight months after receiving their primary Johnson & Johnson shot do continue to have elevated levels of antibodies and T cells, which is very important for mobilizing a good response. So Johnson & Johnson, just getting your second Johnson & Johnson, that'll be fine. Otherwise, Moderna is doing great, Pfizer is doing great. The issue is, you know, get vaccinated. That is the big one at play because vaccines keep people out of hospitals. I don't want to speak out of turn. I did have a discussion. A good friend of mine is an ER doc. I'm trying to find, because she had preliminary write-up, so I'm not a doctor. I'm not going to pretend to be one. I just play one on TV. But basically, one of the initial findings of this one report was that in combining an mRNA vaccine with more traditional Johnson & Johnson could actually be beneficial. But I don't want to say that as, you know, fact. But it's something I think to look at in the future. I think we had something about that on here too. Like, yeah, because they address different, slightly differently. How to get your immune system. I didn't get a booster, but I got a third dose. A full dose of the Moderna, which was, because I just got it last week, before they approved the half dose. I was just like trying to figure it out because it was like, before the FDA, they're like, will we approve? Well, they won't. They approve it. It's the half dose. I'm like, oh, okay. But my doctor's like, yeah, go ahead and get the third dose instead of the booster, which is a full dose, which makes me wonder why they had to consider whether or not you could get the half dose as a booster if there was, or, you know, anyway. So, yeah, stuff got approved. That's great. That's good. It's approved. They just want people's, they want people's to stay healthy. Yes. And someone just mentioned that, yeah, the J&J has, it's actually, it's the chimpanzee adenovirus is the delivery system in the Johnson & Johnson, which is pretty neat that we can, you know, utilize our closest genetic relatives to kind of help us out to combat something like COVID because, you know, they are also, they're at risk as well. So, you know, but we can, we can, yeah, there was news that a bunch of gorillas, zoo gorillas, and actually gorillas, I think gorillas in the wild had been, had caught COVID. There was something recently related to gorillas. San Diego Zoo, I believe, had a while ago. This is, I remember I, at the time I had a friend who was trying to create a very, it was basically a rapid test, but it was a rapid PCR test back at the beginning of the year when rapid PCR didn't really exist. It was just kind of like PCR, or, you know, the rapid ones that had a lot of false positives. And, but yeah, because a lot of zookeepers, I was talking to friends of mine, you know, I work in the film industry, you know, in New York and LA, and a lot of my friends were getting tested every day in the film industry, but zookeepers working with some of the most endangered animals in the world were not getting tested unless they had symptoms. And you know that you're more contagious when you're asymptomatic. So as somebody who loves animals, and obviously primatologist, I'm like, no, how do we stop this? Because zoonosis, you know, the transition of diseases between different species is such a big problem. They had it with, you know, Ebola and gorillas in the 70s. They had a bad outbreak. So, you know, what's to say that COVID can't, it's not, you know, obviously Ebola's mortality rate is a lot higher than COVID, but still. Anyways, down from my soap box, girl, down. But there's a good soap box. Get back to me, please, please. We should have more testing. And this is something that we've, this is an issue in schools. This is an issue in the zoos. It's an issue. We should be testing more. Yeah. Think of it. I mean, I don't, I, living in New York, it was very interesting. You know, it was like, you know, STDs. Everybody was talking about who are you hanging out with? Wyndham was your last test. I mean, like, treat it like your, your, your nether regions. How, hopefully, unless you're not, unless you're careless than don't, but still, you should treat. This is very important. This is your health. This is the health of your loved ones and it spreads far and wide. So testing and hopefully vaccinations. I totally agree. Although I was, some of you were saying that about the mortality rate. I wish, like we'd all be much better off if the mortality rate of COVID-19 was, was much higher. If it was much higher, if people got it and were dead within like three days, just killed everyone who got it within three days, we would be talking about, uh, there having been maybe hundreds or thousands of cases worldwide or we need to be talking worldwide. Well, I mean, it's a question with the dynamics. Yeah. The dynamics of disease transmission really depend on a lot of things because, say for Ebola, the transmission rate is extremely high if you come in contact with fluids. It doesn't, it's, it's rare. It's a very specific set of cases in which it seems to be respiratory spread. It's usually fluid spread for Ebola. And, um, some, some epidemiologists on, and infectious disease biologists on Twitter, we're talking about Ebola just the other day and talking about how if Ebola spread like COVID, we would have been in trouble a long time ago. And that the fact that it's not respiratory spread in this aerosolized kind of way the way COVID is, um, really has made the difference and enabled us to actually be able to combat Ebola more effectively. Yeah. Ebola, you're most contagious when you're dead. No, it's true. I mean, I, my friend is, my friend is an epidemiologist who was in Liberia during the Ebola outbreak, developed symptoms and they just sent him, he was doctors without borders. They sent him to his tent and, you know, he actually, uh, is an author on a paper about how he discovered, uh, Ebola still in semen of men two years after infection, making it thus an STI, right? Uh, and also looking, he's even looking at COVID and how that could possibly be a thing. But because COVID's not spread through fluids, it would be a little bit harder to transmit that way. However, Ebola because it is fluids, that is a problem. But yeah, when you're dead and you are very much fluid, that's when you're most contagious. So that's why treating, that's why it was such a sad illness in, in terms of dealing with one's dead, like a dead relatives. Like how do you prepare the dead? You know, that's a lot of people were getting sick by doing that. Yeah. Through their normal traditions and how they would normally approach those situations. Yeah. These infectious diseases are, it's, you know, it's humbling when we, when we, when we see how they, how they work and, you know, put us, put us in our place in the whole web of life and, um, and death onto another story. However, um, published this week in science translational medicine, researchers have discovered that people who are pregnant, who catch COVID-19 respond, their immune systems respond differently depending on whether or not they're pregnant with a female or a male child. This one, yeah, this, this, this one, I had the same reaction when I started reading about it. Yeah. So male placentas produce more pro inflammatory genes and proteins than female placentas. And the, the those with male sons produce fewer antibodies following infection as well. And they pass fewer protective antibodies onto male fetuses, which is very interesting because we've seen over the last several years that there are differences in the way that hormones, estrogen, testosterone interact with and influence the, the immune system or inflammatory response. And so it's just fascinating that the, the stages of pregnancy and the sex of the baby that increases certain circulating hormones can have an influence on the health of the mother as well. And so researchers are, are interested in how they can use this information moving forward. The researcher who was part of the study says, what the downstream effects are going to be for the child, we still don't know. And it's definitely going to be important to follow up the development of these children on the basis of sex because we see these really profound changes in the placenta that suggests the intrauterine environment is suddenly altered even in the setting of mild maternal disease. Wow. Yeah. So, yeah. COVID's a tie-in. Get vaccinated. So much. Get vaccinated. I know. Yeah. Well, that was what killed me when it was like, herd immunity. Let's just like, let it rip through the United States and just see what happens. I was like, no, we don't know the long-term sequelae. Like, we don't know what the effects are going to be. That and the math, the math on it was so bad. Like, as many as deaths as we've had to this point, which is more deaths than Americans have encountered in all of the soldiers who we have lost to wars combined of all of them, starting back at the beginning, the civil, the world ones, all of them, we've lost more people to COVID. The number was almost for herd immunity would require us to do that like 14 times over. We don't need to do that. We don't need to do that. Yeah. No, no, we don't. But the thing is, the thing is, it just didn't make sense. You know, not to mention, we don't know what the long-term effects of in terms of like any sort of heart damage. I didn't bring a study that was showing that there's a possible link between having gotten it recovered from it, whatever, and neurodegenerative disease increases because it's too soon. This is the kind of thing we want to look back at 50 years from now and go, why won't I be dead? But the people who are still alive 50 years from now will look back on and go, oh yeah, okay, I see what the effects were. But right now, we're living in this time. We don't need to know all the downs. Yeah. Last quote from the study from this article out of the scientist. The data of interest, this is Ruth Karen, a virologist and pediatric infectious diseases professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, not involved in the study. The data is of interest, but I think it doesn't at this time have practical implications in terms of vaccine rollout other than what we already know, which is that 97% of pregnant people who have been hospitalized with COVID in this country are unvaccinated. So, got it. Yeah. That's a hurt lying. You know, and I really feel for the people who were pregnant and didn't get vaccinated because, know that for a while, everyone was afraid because they weren't, they weren't sure how the vaccines were going to affect them. They needed the research to come out. But now we have the research and we have the information and we know that the vaccines are safer than catching COVID. So, and I'm saying this, this information to share with people. I can do a testimonial. I know a pregnant person. Yes. Who was not allowed to get vaccinated in a foreign country. I won't get into, but she was not allowed to get vaccinated because she was pregnant. Because they didn't know at that point in time. And then within really actually only a few weeks, they had reversed course and said, okay, yeah, now all the pregnant women need to get vaccinated. But it was, there was this like, had gone down thinking she could get vaccinated and was refused. And I think a week or two weeks later was able to get vaccinated. But it's because there was, I don't know if it was a lack of information or a lack of what, but that, you know, being pregnant is such a difficult, oh, look at that much. Thank you. Being pregnant as you should, as a man can tell you. It's a time when, it's a time when, you know, you look at food coloring cross-eyed that you never did before. You look at, you look at, you start looking at ingredients of normal foods that you can go, I don't know. When you start being hypersensitive to what you're ingesting because you know it's going to be part of the formulation of a human being. And so the pressure to decide whether or not to get vaccinated on something that the research you don't know, or the officials aren't confirming or backing or science isn't backing up is terrifying. So I feel really badly for these women who, this 97% of unvaccinated pregnant people in the, in the emergency rooms, what have you, because even, even with the information they had at hand, that's a tough call. It is a tough call. But if you need information about COVID vaccines or other COVID related issues, I urge you to check out the CDC's website. They have many answers to these questions. And if you have questions for us, we have some answers. And maybe we can find information that we don't necessarily have answers for yet or let you know, hey, nobody knows that. So I'll let us know if you have questions. This is This Week in Science. We're done talking about COVID. It's time to do a lot more fun stuff. But first, I do want to tell you that if you really love the show, please consider heading over to twist.org and clicking on the Patreon link that is there at our website. It'll take you to our Patreon community where you will be able to choose a level of support in an ongoing fashion. You'll be charged monthly. You can pick your level, whether it's $3.14 a month or $10 a month or more, $10 a month and more. We will thank you by name at the end of the show. You do get little gifts in return for your support and also just start undying gratitude because you really are what keeps the show going. You help us do this every single week. Thank you for your support. We really can't do this without you. And now I want to come on back and I want to ask Natalia some questions. Do you want do we put on a hat? Should I put on a squid hat? You could wear a squid hat. Do you want a Charles Darwin in a bathroom puppet? I mean, what would you like? Will you be able to do a Charles Darwin in a bathroom ventriloquist act puppet show? Here comes Charles. Oh, it's fabulous. I was doing a show a long time ago and I needed a Charles Darwin puppet and I realized that if you buy the Noah puppet from Amazon and you just get a little wee bowler hat to put on, it looks like that. It's not a Lance Charles Darwin. In a bathrobe with sandals. Oh, his sandal fell off. Hold on. He's all apart. Barefoot, barefoot Darwin. I hear he has bad feet anyway. You know, and it's very likely after seeing all of the animals come marching at two by two, Noah probably did go, you know what? You know, it's interesting. I just kind of noticed that they all seem to be pretty well adapted to their environment in very specific ways. Yeah. This whole natural selection thing. I mean, maybe Noah was the OG natural selection. Anyways, yes. So how did you get into spider monkeys, speaking of animals that are adapted to a particular niche and niche and all those things? Well, I started out, it's a good question. I started out wanting to do, I wanted to study gorillas like so many people do and I still very much love, I have a gorilla costume at my heels right now because every primatologist at least has to have to, but I wanted to study grower's gorillas, which were a subspecies of gorilla after I kind of discovered their plight. They live only in the Democratic Republic of Congo and were heavily affected by the tech boom in the early 2000s because a lot of people were going in and mining Colton, this heat resistant mineral and 80% of the world's Colton is found in Africa and 80% in DRC. And so basically the grower's gorillas habitat was being destroyed and then when the boom busted, people were turning to bushmeat or other forms of perhaps killing these gorillas. And I fell in love and also wanted desperately to help. But when I was about to go do that or do some work there in 2008, it was no longer safe for me to do so. So I pivoted and I met a primatologist named Dr. Christina Campbell who studied spider monkeys and I pivoted and went to spider monkeys. And I was able to do conservation in Panama with a critically endangered subspecies called the iswero spider monkey. And they're the most beautiful beasts ever, very charismatic. They have a prehensile tail, meaning a tail that can manipulate like a fifth arm. A lot of a lot of people think that all monkeys have those, but it's very rare. Wait, that's a, but isn't that, I thought that was just a, that's like a new world monkey. The only ones that have this, right? Like that's the old world monkeys. What's the old world? Circopythicoids or so. Yeah, so like, yeah, like the, so yeah, we're actually, it's so funny because we're trying to move away from old world and new world. Yeah, it's a very weird term. Yeah. It's tough though, because we're like platyrhines and circopythicoids, which is nobody knows, but that doesn't roll off the tongue. Not quite like east world, west world. Can that just be the thing? Cause that's works. That kind of makes sense. That kind of does. Yeah. But then why east, I guess, yeah, I mean, if we're going to just go with that's what we call it, then yes. I just say it like the monkeys of the Americas. But spider monkeys live in, you know, Southern Mexico into South America, multiple species, but only a few species have that tail. It's howler monkeys, spider monkeys, capuchins, I'm sorry, woolly monkeys, marikis have these sort of prehensile tails that can manipulate and be used like a fifth, fifth arm. And spider monkeys also lack a baculum, which is the penis bone, which most non-human primates have. Spider monkeys do not have a baculum. Wait, do I just not know? Okay, I'm just going to show my ignorance. No, it's okay. I didn't know that became a primatologist. Like, I didn't know that about the monkey. What about apes? I'm just going to ask you different mammal penis structures. Actually, my friend, she's also a primatologist. Dr. Michelle Byzanson has a great acronym. It's Prick. It's primate. Is it primates? Is it primates, insectivores, is it chiropractor? No, it's prick. Yeah, chiropractor, which are the bats. The bats. No, no, no, no. Yeah, it's bats. So yeah, I know primates. Is it insectivores? Am I missing one? I'm missing one. But a lot of mammals do have a penis bone, a baculum. Walruses have a very large ospinus. They call it an ospinus. It can be up to 18 inches long. Most of the great, all the great apes have them except for humans. I don't like to speak for everyone. By the way, the plural term for baculum is bacula. So I, when I do presentations, I always like have a picture of Scott Bacula with like a line like, no, no, don't get too excited, not Scott Bacula. But yeah, it basically- Don't make that mental quantum leap. Yay! So wait, like- Dr. Coopie and our friends. Yeah. So wait, now I'm like really curious, because I want to know like how we don't have a baculum and all the other great apes do. Why don't we have one, dad? So what are the thoughts? The lack of bacula. First of all, I just want to say congratulations, male humans out there. You have the largest penis to body size of the primates. Congrats. Like I just want to give a slow clap. Oh, we did it! You did it! We did it! When it comes to the cahones, I'm sorry. No, chimpanzees have you mad beat. They've got some massive huevos, testicles for days. But there's the idea that possibly being able to achieve and maintain an erection could be a sign of health and virility. It could be attractive to the opposite sex when trying to meet the ladies. So that is one of the ideas that it's a sign of health, that if a guy can keep it up, champ, then that can help. But it does make it easy too. I mean, for the non-human primates, the first time I ever did fieldwork with spider monkeys, I saw three copulations. It was basically a spider monkey threesome, three copulations in one day, and it was one male with two females. Also to note, and you might lose your mind when I tell you this, spider monkeys also have what is called a hypertrophy clitoris, which is a very long pseudo penis that dangles from the ladies undercarriage. It looks like a fleshy lady finger. It's great for researchers when they want to determine the difference between males and females because the males and females are very similar in size. And so from a distance, it's like, oh, what is that? And then all you have to do is look through your binoculars. If you see a dangler, you're like, oh, it's a female. Female. Yeah. And that's how, for me, for instance, when I first met a spider monkey, I was at Monkey Jungle. I did a movie called Sex Drive in 2008 where I played a pregnant prisoner, random side note. But I went to Monkey Jungle because we were shooting not too far from there. And the handler there let me actually feed spider monkeys, which I wouldn't advise. But at the time, I thought it was really cool. And I saw a female and I was like, look at that dude. And he was like, nope, that's actually a female. So yeah. And it's not 100% sure why they have that either. But, you know, I mean, pseudo, we see pseudo penis throughout, you know, the animal kingdom hyenas have them. Capuchin monkeys have something similar, but not quite, not like a spider monkey. I mean, a spider monkey is like, damn, you know, it's interesting because with hyenas, the females, I mean, they have this really interesting dominance hierarchy, their social structure. There's a lot of stuff going on. Makes me wonder about the spider monkeys and their social hierarchy. It's not as, so it's not, they're social. So they live in these fission fusion groups where it's basically the beginning of the day. Think of it as like the beginning of the day, they have a large group in a sleeping tree. Usually it varies with how many depending on, you know, what area you're in deforestation, human encroachment, blah, blah, blah. But they start off in a bigger group and then they fission off into smaller groups, usually to mitigate any sort of resource competition. Like, you know, you don't want to compete with the big males. So when I was doing fieldwork, I work in an area that has a lot of deforestation. So I saw a lot of females by themselves with their infant and that was it. So there's not like the same kind of hierarchy that you would see like with hyenas and things like that or even like baboon females, you know, I remember years ago, I did a good DNews episode about it was the Toronto Zoo where they had like the battle of the baboon females because one alpha died and there were two jockeying for position where they have kind of a more set social hierarchy, spider monkeys are not quite like that. So, yeah, I mean, it is fascinating. And but also, and I talk about this a lot, I teach biological anthropology and one of the things I always talk about is the environment. And as you both know, plays such a huge role in behavior that we see behavioral differences, and which many can call culture, you know, in different areas because of the access to resources or lack of access. So, you know, who knows? I mean, some of them might get real territorial with their hypertrophy clitoris. But hyenas, one note, they actually give birth through their clitoris, which is also like, that's not okay. That is not that is mean. And I don't like it. That's why hyenas are so angry. Yeah, aggressive. I think they laugh out of just come there. Maybe it's cry laughing. It is. Oh, my God. So you've moved on from the monkeys, you're teaching biological anthropology, you are doing acting. And I've seen you on Twitter recently, posting that you're trying to get some shows made. Oh, yeah. So it's funny enough, I pitched television shows, science comedy shows. And one of the shows I developed over a year ago, it was Mel Brooks is my hero has been since I was a little girl, I actually, I have all sorts of Mel Brooks, like memorabilia and stuff that my boyfriend's like, let's not put that on the wall quite yet. But I'm like, please, I want to. But I came up with an idea called the uncensored history of the world with Mel and Nat, because I feel like, you know, history of the world was such a huge part of my life. And I feel like the history channel has done such a great disservice to the world at large when they talk about, you know, who created the pyramids. I'm not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens. You know, we need to get past that. Every accomplishment of non white people throughout all of history had to be aliens because they were too dumb to have done anything. Yep. Is basically the take home message from ancient aliens. Yep. In a nutshell, there it is. It's always it's gotta yep. It's it's anything that was somebody who does not look like me, who is not a white European male, pretty much, you know, it must have been an alien. How many aliens are out there going, God, we didn't do that. Well, okay. And then there's always fun stuff. Well, yeah, but what gets left out is like, you know, well, yeah, actually 65% of the produce that humans eat was developed over thousands of years in the Americas. It was a long drawn out process of cultivating this piece of grass until it came in ear corn that took thousands of years and Peru and the or you know, you know, yeah, poisonous tubers, tomatoes, tomatoes weren't even edible things. They was weird berries. And then and then like so much of math and so much of everything else is like the Europeans only been there a very short time historically compared to the burgeoning of information that was that was happening on this planet. Yeah. And then to say, oh, yeah, no, it was all aliens because they couldn't have come up with it. You didn't come up with anything. Your opinion by you, I mean, all of us Europeans sitting here, but you didn't come up with everything. You just used it right at the very end, a bunch of stuff and then claiming it. But it's yeah. No, no, I totally agree with you on that one. Yeah. No, I mean, that was what we're talking about show. Well, no, it's a show that I basically came up with that I've been pitching and then just to kind of, you know, the idea was almost like Charlie's Angel it where, you know, Neil or Neil, that's that's my old boss. Well, Mel would like basically come on and basically, you know, in a hot tub or at Fromman's deli or getting a massage and be like, yo, it's Holly, I heard some putts on the history channel say that, you know, the aliens beat the built the pyramid, like what gives and then it's like, don't worry, I'll sphinx this once and for all. And then it's like going into the country working with the people actually in the country doing some drunk history like bits because I'm a big fan of drunk history and I have the comedy background. But what happened was a couple days ago, it came out that and it's awesome because it's a great idea and it's freaking fabulous. And it's like one of those things where I'm both excited, flattered that someone else or not flattered, but more like excited that someone else came up with the same or a very similar idea. But Nick Kroll is doing a history of the world part two with Mel. And so I was like, I saw that I'm coming, right? 40 years we waited. But so now I'm trying to get on that, you know, try to help out if they need a science correspondent, a history, you know, buff expert comedy, because I wrote comedy for Neil deGrasse Tyson, like, hey, whatever you need me, I'm here, you know, don't tell me one of the reasons that Neil deGrasse Tyson has been funny. Yay, hire a shixa. I'm right here. Yeah, so anyone out there knows Mel Brooks or anyone close to him or Wanda Sykes or Nick Kroll or was it Ike Bernholz? Yeah, there's a there's a list of wonderful people. Yes, I would love to just just I'll bring you coffee and me and tell you dumb science jokes, but yeah, but yeah, I pitched that and then some awesome science facts too. Yeah, yeah, just you know, you want to know about the hypertrophy clitoris of a spider monkey? Holler at a girl. I'm right here. You don't want to find me. That would be good. But yeah, so just hopefully I'm back in LA so hoping to produce some more live stage stuff so we can have more science comedy fun stuff here in LA. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be good. There aren't many big foot big feet big foot in LA, but you know, at some point when this you don't know that, I mean, I don't know that big mountains. It's pretty like nobody in LA goes to the woods. They just don't. It's actually some of the most pristine untouched wilderness in the nation. Next to 14 million people there could be very well could be up here in the Pacific Northwest. I mean, that's where we hear about the sightings and all this. I do have a big foot lore. I do have a pilot. If anyone wants to do I pitch a pilot called the deadly squash. It's a but it's scripted. Yeah, deadly squash. It has a has a spin off called Marge the manatee with massive mammaries. She's a manatee that runs the largest seaweed dispensary off the coast of Florida. So yeah, that's what I'm doing with my life. Sorry, mom. Sorry. Oh, it's a one. It's a wonderful life. But yeah, the big I mean, the big foot's in Los Angeles. There is a big foot lodge. I believe in Atwater Village. Is it Atwater Village? Yeah, possibly possibly. I don't know. But let's keep this show going. I love finding out about all your your goings-ons and things you're just doings. The monkeying around and the serious. Let's try and do some good science communication. Let's do more entertainment. Yeah. Okay, so I Oh, it's time for me to say it's time for Justin to tell a story. I don't need to do any stories anymore. Justin, it's your turn. Okay, so this one's going to hit point blank. Christian nationalists, it turns out, are less likely to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Okay. Yeah. Well, political conservatives in general express high skepticism towards coronavirus or science in general. They're two separate studies published by the same group in West Virginia University of Sociology. So yeah, the belief that Christianity should permeate American civil life is one of these strongest predictors of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and is negatively associated with having received or planning to get the vaccine. This is quoting Katie Corcoran, associate professor, sociology and leader, author of the report. It's the belief that Americans are chosen by God and that God protects them. They tend not to trust science and are against government intervention. So they're more focused on individual freedoms than public health protections. It's hypothesized that those are the reasons that Christian nationalists are less likely to receive the vaccine and are more likely to not trust it, which is interesting because I was talking to Kiki, I think it was a week ago or two weeks ago, maybe, where I was saying, it's not the people out there who the politicians are pandering to. It's the politicians who have created this thing for them to get behind, but I think I was wrong. According to this research, there's a group that has ingrained in them an opposition to vaccine because it's connected to science and connected to government that has nothing to do with what was presented to them as much as a group realizing, hey, we have an audience who wants to hear this. And so I totally correct what I was. I think you're right. The flow is a pandering and not a conspiring. Yeah. So yeah, it's not necessarily a conspiring but a pandering. But an interesting point from the communications side of this is some research people have done and have been trying to get the word out about is that when talking with people who are very Christian and have these beliefs that they hold very strictly to and they believe that God should be the ruling all of our lives in the country, that coming to them with conversations about not necessarily because the government wants you to get vaccinated because the vaccine is going to protect you or any of these kinds of messages. That's not going to help because they say, oh, well, you know, if God thinks I should die, I'm going to die. If I'm going to get sick, I'm going to get sick. If I'm going to, it's all God's will. So you don't talk about them as individuals but talk about how God would ask them to be good neighbors and to love my neighbor and to actually have conversations about you can get vaccinated so you can help your neighbors or help yourself because or help yourself because the whole story that the flood, the guy had to go up on the roof and then a raft comes by and he goes, I'm waiting for God, God will save me and then another raft comes by and he goes, don't worry, God will protect me and so the raft leaves and until he's sitting on there on the roof and he's starting it's dehydrated. He's been out there three days. He's beginning to die. There's a God way of forsaken me and then God speaks in a clear, godly voice. I sent two rafts. Why didn't you get on them? So because God is Jewish, you know, everybody knows that, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so, okay. So I'm going to pause it there though for a minute, Kiki because here's the thing. This is not Christians as you and I may have generalized Christianity. These are Christian nationalists. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. This is a very specific subset of it's a subset of the population within the United States. Yeah. So it's actually accounts for about 20% of the US population. These are not just these are not Christians. They're Christian nationalists. So in past studies we've talked about on the show have shown that Christian nationalists, these are the people that believe that religion should be part of national identity. All life. Yeah. Yes. Are less likely to attend church, church functions, have relationships with other church goers than other Christians. So the argument about helping others like in your flock is likely going to fall on deaf ears with them because they don't have a flock. Yeah. Which might explain why they want government identity to be part of the religion because they don't have a local relationship but also seems to be weird because they don't trust government to do anything. So who knows they might just not be the best thought out ideology really might be at the end of it. You think? Yeah. Sorry. Was that me? Was that me? Well, I mean I think these are the same people that probably if you talk to them about what what what what was Jesus's background. I hate to break it to you but Jesus was not a white white person. You know what I mean? If you really want to get down to it, it probably they have probably some very strong beliefs, you know, thinking Americans are the chosen people. It's like, oh, you clearly did not read the same book that I read because I went to Procule school from age three to 18, you know. Yeah. I mean, I'm not, I mean things like, you know, Jesus never talked about abortion. Jesus didn't talk about a lot of things that we hear about, you know, being screamed at by the right because there's nothing to do with the Bible and has everything. I mean, it has to do with current modern life, not the Bible. In defense though, they do want, they don't they don't tend to also like foreign religions, which is even though their religion that they is from is very foreign from a long time ago. It's from the Middle East. It's from the Middle East. Yeah. So there's a lot of confusion and I always I always believe that these people have never actually read the text because they can't tell you ask one of them who who's tell me 12 of the disciples names. They're not going to be able to come up with it because they haven't read it but it's an identity thing, not an actually thought out thing. But they further on the second part of the study was they looked at conservatives and their relationship to science and basically found that you could correlate their skepticism to COVID-19 to thoughts about evolution, climate change, that sort of thing was all sort of mirrored. There was one thing though that I thought was interesting, which was that the the only issue that was regionally specific, the topic of evolution was the only science topic with a regional pattern. They found that individuals residing in the south were more likely to view evolution with skepticism as were people that had lower levels of education. But specifically in the south, so one of the things like it was in the disclaimer of today's show, I think part of it is if you haven't gone to college, it's not that people there's this fear that there's trope that people get indoctrinated at higher levels of education into more liberal thinking about things like science. But really what's taking place is they get laid out before them all of the conversations, all of the discoveries, all the things that went on, all the knowledge of the past that led up to the knowledge of today. And if you don't have any of that, of course you're going to come to ill conclusions. Of course you're going to make bad choices. Of course you're going to not be able to take out new situation and put it in context with all of history and civilization and science that's come before, because you won't understand how it got here. You won't understand that these aren't the first waves of even a pandemic that humanity has had to face if you just haven't been exposed to that conversation. So don't blame people for being ignorant. Just understand why they are and maybe they're somewhere people are coming from. Yeah, maybe they're somewhere we can start to bridge that gap. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big believer of snark does not win anybody over. It feels good. It feels really good to be snarky. Oh, I like it. Oh, I enjoy it. Sometimes more than doing good. Right? Yeah. I mean, and it's tough because I mean, I know that for me, I know that I work with John Fugelsang who's a very, very progressive comic and I used to co-host his, we used to get into like little punch ups on his show, not anything serious, but like because I'd co-host the show and I had some pretty strong beliefs in people who like voted for 45 and I was just like, I don't believe the intentions are good. And he was like, oh, no, there's some good, you know, and it was just trying to like really understand the motivation and why people think the ways they do and ask them. And it gets uncomfortable sometimes because you got to ask them questions like, why do you not want this? And kind of like it's like the question game to get to the point of, you know, now get inside rather than like coming in and going, okay, this is why, this is why, this is why you should do it rather than asking them, why are you afraid? Or why are you hesitant? How can I, you know, is there anything I can do to help? But it's tough to have these kind of conversations on Twitter when you're limited to, you know, how many characters and people like to yell at each other behind a keyboard. So it's this, oh, people love yelling on Twitter. It's like, you say something and people read into it. You're like, I didn't mean it that way, but suddenly it's created this massive thing. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah, but you're absolutely right. It's the, you, we have to put our own wants and our own ideas about what's right and what we want aside and just listen, start asking questions and listen because it's just not going to work otherwise. Yeah. Sometimes they answer their own question, you know, it's true. But I think they came to that conclusion. Oh, is it time now for, is it time for some good news? Just good news. The segment that explains itself in its title. It's just good news. Climate mitigation addition. Current climate change is causing temperatures to rise and is also increasing the likelihood of storms, heavy rain and flooding. Professor Philip Pojvan Strandman of Johann Gutenberg University in Germany asked an important and very timely question. How quickly can the climate recover from the warming caused by an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? His team looked at the Paleocene-Eocene Thermomaximum. This was a significant rise in global temperatures, five to eight degrees Celsius, which if you're not familiar with Celsius, it's you got to do math to get even more or maybe it's less. It's a different number in Fahrenheit, but it's enough. That's like some heat. It took place 56 million years ago. The fastest natural period of global warming that has ever impacted our planet's climate, you know, while life was on it at least. By studying rock formations of this age, they found that they went underwent a significant increased weathering. According to the research, there's if there's a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, some of it then reacts with water forming carbonic acid. This acid promotes and accelerates the weathering process in rocks. Because the weathering process, the atmospheric carbon will then eventually find its way into the seas via rivers where it finds CO2 as carbonate and form a persistent ocean-based reservoir of carbon. It has to do it. There's a couple types of lithium, lithium-6 versus lithium-7. The clay, I think, takes up to lithium-6 at the bottom of the sea. So it basically stores it. It creates a big carbon sink for it. And when they looked at some of these ancient rocks, what they found was sometimes a doubling or even a tripling of the amount of weathering that was going on on the rocks and accelerating that process through increased weather activity and erosion activities. And we ended up with a huge reservoir of carbon dioxide in the ocean that was sinking it, therefore revitalizing, lowering the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, resulted in that increased rock weathering, climate stabilized, and it only took between 20 and 50,000 years for that to happen. So it's good news to know the Earth's climate will surely recover one day. And in a time frame that humans should find somewhat reassuring future humans, if we're still here, we'll find very convenient. But then they're going to be like, oh gosh, it's getting too cold. It's getting too cold to live in the Arctic now. What are we going to do? I don't know. I just think, you know, the future humans living in our caves underground because we can't weather the surface anymore. It's more thermally stable. 20,000 to 50,000 years. Is this good news, Justin? Yes, because I think the alternative to not knowing that would be, we could be Venus. Right. I think it's good news. It's not just a runaway that goes from global war and climate change, climidia straight to Venus. Although I've heard Venus has always been like Venus. There was a study out recently suggesting that Venus has always been too hot for life. Too hot to handle. Too hot to handle for sure. I mean, I always joke that conservation, I mean, it's a very selfish endeavor because the Earth is going to be fine. There's no saving the Earth. It's fine. It's going to be great. Once we're gone, it's going to be like party. It's all the life on the planet that we have to worry about. And so I think people forget about that. Yeah. Well, you know, there's always going to be those little microbes that don't need oxygen, the archaebacteria, that they're going to survive in a crevice somewhere. It's going to be a tardy party. It's going to be a much tardigrade party. Just hanging out. All the cockroaches and tardigrades and possum, all the things that can survive. Like massive extinction events. Oh, that's a party I want to go to. Maybe throwing a cephalopod I'm in. I think our odds are either, I can't tell if our odds are good or bad because human ancestry lineage has survived basically all of the extinction events on the planet. Every single one of them. Not one of our ancestors went extinct to the beginning of life on this planet. If it were otherwise, we wouldn't be here. But then I feel like, are we really, is it like, it's like picking one too many teams for a parlay. Like, do we really want to roll the dice one more time? Like we've made it this far. We should just feel very lucky to be here and quit pushing that envelope. Quit messing with it, people. Quit messing with it. Yeah. All right. We are running down to the end of the show. I have three more stories to get through very quickly. Story number one. Some machine learning computer science people decided to make a neural network of the olfactory system. And basically, try and design the neural network and design it just like the olfactory system is designed to kind of see if the olfactory system we have makes sense, if it's an efficient system. And so they looked at the fruit fly olfactory system because it's small, it's tidy, and it's very well described. So we know that it has been very well mapped. It has three different layers. And these different layers have very specific numbers of neurons and specific ways that they connect with each other. And that information flows through to allow fruit flies to identify voters. So these researchers said, hey, let's put this all together and they created a model of this fruit fly olfactory nervous system. And then told it to organize itself using artificial learning and machine learning techniques. They basically said this, we want you to end up smelling things. So we're going to give you a little input, you put it together and then figure out how these three light layers should be organized. And the artificial network organized the connections between the three different layers that it had been given by the researchers. And when it came out in the end, it looked exactly like the fruit fly olfactory system. The artificial system arranged itself exactly the way that nature arranged the fruit fly, the fruit flies system. They say that in one particular level, one layer called the expansion layer, each neuron receives about on average six compression layer neurons. And that's exactly what happened in this artificial network, the exact average number of connections from one layer to another. And the researchers are quoted as saying it could have been one, it could have been 50, it could have been anywhere in between biology finds six, and our network finds about six as well. That's crazy. Yeah, this was created through machine learning algorithms. That doesn't stink. I mean, yeah. And fruit flies are really interesting because I used to always joke around and say that I had the alcohol tolerance of a fruit fly, not realizing that fruit flies have ridiculously high alcohol tolerances because they eat fruit, writing, rotting fruit. That's all they eat. Is that the null? They're flying around, not stumbling around. I'm so surprised and so shocked and impressed. No, that's really cool. Yeah. So if I was an alien, if I was an alien, I would say so, earthlings created an artificial intelligence to see how earthlings, other earthlings would develop the model. And then they came up with the, it just seems like two in house. You know, the information is being given by earthlings about earthlings on an earthling process. It is, but the earthlings are trying to understand things and the earthlings have decided that the fruit fly factory system is optimally adapted to its purpose. Sure, sure, sure. But I just still feel like if there was an alien logic, it could have come up with a better solution. I feel like the human nose would just be like, how can we find pizza? It would just be like, how do we sniff out, like, you know, ignore Dracar Noir and find pizza? I mean, I don't, yeah. Let's never mind that X body spray. Oh, God. Yeah, please, please. If I could tell my olfactory system to just ignore some smells, that would be great. Yeah, but, but we don't want to do that smells. Tell us so much about our world. Okay, but let's talk about lady brains for a minute. Ladies, ladies, ladies. We have the brains that change through our lives. As we get older, changing hormone levels impact our activity levels are, you know, so whether or not we're more sedentary, a lot of women as they age become more sedentary, they become less interested in sexual reproduction, they be in the in the activities that go along with that process. There's a whole bunch of changes that happen. And so researchers at UC San Francisco have been trying to figure out what goes on during the different phases of female cycles to change activity level levels. And one of the things that happens also, right before females become, right before females ovulate, activity levels increase. And these researchers are like, is there a neural circuit behind this that can explain this increase in activity, the change in activity that would lead to a drive to move around your environment potentially interacting with reproductive partners right before you ovulate. So this is a great behavior for reproduction, but what's the mechanism? How does it happen? These researchers at UCSF say that they have identified a neural circuit that becomes active. It is impacted by estrogen levels. And when the estrogen gets into the brain, what it does, it interacts with the estrogen receptor alpha, it activates a gene on the surface of these, with the estrogen receptor, it's called MC4R. MC4R then produces receptors that are on the surface of these estrogen sensitive neurons in an area of the brain called the ventrolateral, ventromedial, hypothalamic nucleus. And it's this nucleus with these estrogen receiving neurons that regulates energy in all adult females. They put together a map of where proteins attach in various parts. And they use some, this article is really awesome because it really got into some acronyms that were used by these researchers, not just the techniques, but the acronyms. One is cut and run, also known as cleavage under targets and release using nuclease. Anyway, they use this to identify sites where this estrogen receptor binding happens and show that there's a link between the receptor and the gene. And then they found that these ventrolateral, ventromedial, hypothalamus neurons also connect to speed cells in the hippocampus. They are cells within the mouse brain. They weren't looking at human females here. Oops, did I not say this is all in mice? In mice. But they think that this is applicable to all mammals because they think it's a very important process. I think that's going too far, but we'll see. But these cells in the mouse brain control how fast the mouse moves. So when the circuit gets activated through the ventrolateral, ventromedial, hypothalamus, then it tells the hippocampus, boom, boom, speed up and the mouse activates. And so they turned up this circuit and turned down this circuit and they were able to make male and female mice more active or less active based on how they affected the ability of estrogen to be able to connect with all of these neurons in this circuit. And in the process, this is another great acronym. They have a system that's the designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs technique. It's a chemogenetic technique called DREDS. The acronym is DREDS. Designer receptors are exclusively activated by designer drugs. So they've designed some specific drugs because there is a drug called Bremilantinotide and it's also known as Vileci and it treats a condition of hypoactive sexual desire. They were able to use this drug to impact the ventrolateral, ventromedial hypothalamus and all of the activation of the mice. They caused mice to lose sedentary mice who didn't want to move around. They made them active and made them lose 10% of their body weight in 24 hours of administrating this drug because they just were moving around so much. Were they dancing? Yeah, they were dancing, no. They were active. I bet if they had an activity wheel, a little running wheel in their little mouse cages, they were just spinning that thing. But the instance of DREDS reversed diet-induced obesity and estrogen depletion and sedentary activity. So these mice were slimming down, they metabolic health was better and so the researchers are looking at all of this and they're like, okay, so this DREDS stimulation, that can work. But can we do this within people and how does estrogen, like now that we know that there's this circuit, how can we potentially use it? As opposed to just estrogen replacement therapy for women who are going through menopause, how can we actually specifically target cells within the brain in the ventral lateral, ventromedial hypothalamus, or even these speed cells in the hippocampus or other parts of the circuit to be able to help women live more dynamic, vibrant lives and not just get tired. We want to be dancing and running on our wheels. I want to run on my wheel as I get older, maybe. No, I don't know. So ladies, ladies, all the ladies, when the estrogen is in the house, ladies, you're going to be dancing like a mouse, ladies. Well, I was going to say, I mean, I feel, I don't think, I mean, mice don't go through menopause, do they? Like, are they reproductive pretty much to the end? Humans are unique in the fact that with the whole grandmother hypothesis. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that's so interesting is that's why I do wonder, like, you know, and I know that there has been studies showing that a woman's libido will get decreased over time, but I sometimes wonder if it's just like, she's just annoyed, you know what I mean? Men just get less attractive. That's all it really is. But I think that women do have, I mean, I, you know, I think women, I think that's kind of a false message and a false narrative that women don't have libidos far past their, you know, once they reach menopause. I just think it's maybe not reported on correctly or yeah. I'm saying that men get physically less attractive with age, because obviously, I mean, that's not a thing. But they get mentally less attractive because men just slow, it's a slide down to grumpy old man. Yeah, they curmudgeon. So maybe this is something that curmudgeonly get off Milani talk all the time. Maybe this is something that should really be helping male brains as opposed to, yeah. Probably. Get off Milani. Nobody wants to have sex with to get off my lawn guy. That's just, he's the worst. Tell you that much. That's no, he's a pain in my, uh. You're trying to, you're trying to have the pillow talk? And he's like, you know, the problem with the kids today. What's the deal with millennials? My grand kid said he was What's an emoji? Turn off. Oh, my grandchild sent me a poop emoji. This is the, yeah, I come from a It looks happy. What's happy about a poop emoji? Why is it smiling? I find that disconcerting. Why is it disrespectful is what it is? I find this poop emoji very disconcerting. These are a pair of earrings a friend got me. I find that disconcerting. No, but I mean, you should, you're really, really, this is our friendship to you. My mom is nine years older than my dad and my grandma was 10 years older than her husband, both of, you know, which, you know, it's not a huge age difference, but, you know, a little, it's a way to mitigate the, the, you know, the amount of curmudgeoning that happens over time. Yeah. Yeah. Just, you know, keep it fresh. I don't know. Too late. Anyhow, sleep is coming for so many of us, maybe not those of us who are in more European early morning time zones at this point in time. The sleep is coming, but there's a study that found that sleeping is good for reactivating your memories. We've talked, I mean, so much, everyone's like, sleep on it. It'll, it'll help, right? It does. But not just your, your memories about things, it also improves your motor skills potentially. It's a study out in the Journal of Neuroscience Researchers at Northwestern University wanted to know how sleep would help their volunteers that perform a challenging motor task. And, and the learning of that task, they had individuals with a basically a little muscular stimulation and muscle, musculoskeletal recording device that was attached to their arms. And it was these, this myoelectric computer interface enabled them to use their arm muscles to control a cursor on a, on a sound cue. So it was this cursor on a computer and at the sound of a beep, they would have to do some kind of movement with the cursor. They had the learning segment in which the sound would go and they had to engage their arm muscles to make the cursor move. And then they got to take a 90 minute nap. While they were napping, the researchers played this sound cue to them to hopefully reinforce the brain kind of getting those memories in there. And then they found afterwards after the nap that those volunteers who had had the sound played while they napped did better than individuals who did not have the sound playing while they were napping. Their performance was faster. It was more accurate. And yeah, and they didn't have as many kind of extra movements. It was more efficient. Yeah, faster, accurate, efficient. So sleep training with audio cues can help with motor skills. So we thought about, you know, you follow a sleep while listening to that audio book or, you know, the last, the next great lecture series or whatever it is. Or this show. Or this show. Or maybe you practice a piano sonata and then you go to sleep listening to that piano sonata. I don't know. Maybe there are things that can help with some things. But what they're hoping is really they'll be able to help in rehabilitation for stroke or other neurological disorders as people try and regain muscle control. Wow. Yeah, that's really fascinating. We should all just sleep on this right now, I think. Yeah, I feel like I feel like I feel like this is because I tried the whole thing, we just put the textbook under the pillow. That does not work. That's a myth. It's also a very hard pillow. Yeah, it's that that osmosis from the text in the pages through the pillow has apparently too much of a barrier. Yeah. But the idea of listening to the audio of the textbook while sleeping and then waking with some knowledge is maybe then possible to sleep a chance to dream. Yeah, I feel like that would be a great job. Like a side hustle like, hey, you just send me your notes and I'm going to read them to you and whatever accent you want, whatever weird impersonation voice. And that's how you, like especially if it brings back some triggers, some sort of memory. Like I was a really big fan of, I don't know, Steve Irwin or I don't know, David Attenborough or I don't know, Gilda Radner, whoever. Attenborough. I can sleep too. Yeah. Yeah. Have we done it? Have we come to the end of our episode? We made it. I think we did it. I think we've done it, everyone. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us for another over an hour, almost two hours. I hope you all enjoyed the show. Natalia, where can people find you hiding under a rock? Now I am on Twitter. Exactly. I'm on Twitter and Instagram at Natalia 13 Reagan, TikTok, if you're into that kind of thing, I'm at behold Natalia. And if you want to watch or listen to a podcast I've done with StarTalk, I do a lot of anthropology themed topics on StarTalk All Star Podcasts. And if you want to take a biological anthropology class, find me at Lehman College. That's fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us on the show tonight. I had so much fun. Thank you. It's been a lot of fun. It's been a lot of fun. I hope you can come back again sometime. I would like that. That would be great. But in the meantime, it's time for shout outs, everyone. Shouting out to Fada. Thank you so much for your help on show notes and on show descriptions. Thank you to Gordon, Aaron Lorne, all the people who helped to keep our chat rooms moderated and moderate in all the things so that we're all happy and helpful and sciency in the chat rooms. Identity four, thank you for recording the show. Thank you so much for catching that recording from earlier today as well. That was a big one. And Rachel, thank you for your amazing assistance in so many ways. Finally, I would like to thank our Patreon sponsors. Thank you to Kent Northcote, Rick Luvman, Pierre Velazar, Ralphie Figueroa, John Ratnaswamy, Carl Kornfeld, Karen Taze, Woody M.S. 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Just put twist in the subject line so your email doesn't get spam filtered into oblivion. You can also hit us up on the Twitter where we are at twistscience at Dr. Kiki at Jacksonfly and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address, a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes to you in the night, please let us know. We will be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember. It's all in your head. No little costume is a couple of grand. This week science is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth. And I'll broadcast my opinion all over the air. Because it's this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science. Hello. Hello. We have made it to the after show. This is the time where the show is after. The show's not more. It's gone. It's not done anymore. Well, it is on. It's still on, but it's still after. Oh, it's after now. It's the after time. Did Justin leave? Was that his? No, he didn't leave. He like here, I'll bring him back. He like disappears at the end of every episode for like a second or two. And I'm like, okay, well, instead of just having, well, I mean, we could just have the moon. He's probably peeing. That's okay. Yeah, it's just the moons. There's shame in that game. I have to go in a minute because I am leaving town tomorrow. So I'm not packed. Yeah, I don't know. I wanted to say thank you so much. And yeah, this was so much fun. Thank you so much. I feel bad. I science. Yeah, this was great. I would anytime you want, you know, if you need enforcements, I'm here to just Hi. Hello. I like enforcements. So my every time now I hear the word enforcements. I think of my husband's story about his enforcement's memory, which is that every time he hears the word enforcements, he thinks blueberries because at some point in his childhood, he was sitting on, he was sitting watching some like, you know, old TV war show or something. And some general yelled bring in the enforcements. And he dropped a bowl of blueberries and it He'll never. Yeah, that's, that's funny. Yeah. So now I think blueberries because of his enforcement story. And now I'm giving it to you. Yeah, no, this is this is this enforce. We're all enforcing. Wow, this is going to, I wonder if this is going to be like, you know, it's going to grow exponentially. I'm going to tell a couple people. They're going to tell a couple people. And all of a sudden now everything is going to be coming up blueberries. They'll be coming up blueberries. That's right. Bring in the enforcements blueberries. What? I just seeing a bunch of people getting pelted within blueberries. I'll show you some enforcement. Take this blueberry in the eye. Yes, son of a, never mind. I'm like, I don't know if you, it's a family. I'm pretty sure you're family friendly. So I tried not to drop any terrible language. Yes, we are. We do try to be family friendly. So other, if it for the podcast, I would probably be like, beep. Oh, I see. Yeah, okay. I don't have, I don't have the control here to be able to bleep. Bleep me out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the science monkey threesome thing might have been a little too much for some of the underage kids, but I don't know. I feel like you see worse now on like network television, you know, what's a little spider monkey threesome? Come on. Like, no, I mean, I thought it was really interesting. I mean, it's interesting and it is, you know, it's like. It is. These are nature programs. It's, it's natural. Right. It is. And we do study it scientifically because it's all part of the natural world. And I don't know. I feel there are viewpoints which hold us back from discovery because of our concern for propriety or, you know, and yes, we need. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? A lot of homosexual behavior in animals has been attributed to dominance when it's like. Just no, not really. Just doing a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I do. I mean, I appreciated how you, how you brought up, you know, you know, the stories that we tell and it is something that's so important to think about, like, reconsider the stories that we're using to frame the way we tell stories. So from the estrogen, menopause, libido perspective, or even, you know, the spider monkey perspective or, you know, any of these things, you know, where is where did the story come from? And why is that what we know? Because who does the science matters? And when it's white old guys that whose wives might not want to have sex with them, they might just take that bias and take it to work with them. It's yeah. No, there was actually a great tweet recently about like anthropologists really struggle answering questions because we answer a question with six other questions. Well, what do you mean, you know, like, I was going to do a TikTok, like, what time is it? What do you mean? I mean, I do you're doing a linear time. I told you times in a circle, you know, like, are you talking about it's it's technically the Holocene, but some would say it's the Anthropocene, you know, Anthropocene, you know, like, we just, what do you mean by time? What do you mean by this? What do you mean? I mean, there's always a bunch of other questions, theoretical framework, blah, blah, blah. You know, and if you're talking about like, if you're talking about the quantum effects on time, it's like, how far above the earth were you? Because time is different because of gravity. Exactly. Yeah. Are you on the 10th floor? Are you on Mount Everest? What's going on? That's, you know, your death valley? Let's talk. So many, so many questions. There's so many questions. Yes. How are you doing? I'm good. Yeah, I'm doing well. This week is fun. I got to speak to Neil Shubin today, which was a good time. Yeah. Oh, here's Justin. He's back now. I never left. You guys kicked me out of the show and I'm like, what's going on? And then sorry, Justin, for having me back. Hello. Hello. Great show tonight. Yeah, it's good. It was a good show. A lot of fun. We got to monkey around a little bit. I liked that Charles Darwin came out. That was awesome. Bring out the Darwin. Yeah. And my orangutan is in the car. I've been working in an animal shank shirt. Shank. Whatever it is. Shank, I'm shank. I'm shank. Sean Connery. Sean Connery. Sean Connery. Hello. I'm speaking of Sean Connery. I've been working in an animal shank shirt and I actually brought my orangutan puppet and was doing, I have some great footage of Chrissy the baboon. She's an all of homodriah's baboon hybrid just staring at the puppet like, what the hell is that? What is going on? I tried to grab some of the food and Chrissy just slapped me. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, good times. Okay, good times with baboons. This is what we get. She's a former pet. Otherwise I'd be terrified. I'm terrified of baboons, but she's been in, she was raised with bihumans. I was going to ask, you were close enough to a baboon to have it slap your hand. Like that's way closer than I would ever be to a baboon. No, no, no. It's, I mean, trust me, the first time I ever met Chrissy, I was terrified. And I've been around her for a little bit now and not a ton of time, but enough that she's trusting, but she, you know, she was, it's sad. It's, she's a former pet and luckily the sanctuary is all about like, you know, no monkeys. We're trying to actually, I'm developing a web series to do there about, you know, just say no to pet monkeys. Because I did a video called just say no to pet monkeys on, you know, YouTube maybe eight years ago and it gets, I get hits on it and comments on it almost every day. People get mad at me because they don't like what I have to say, but because Who are these pro pet monkey people? People that hunt pet monkeys. I know. Probably no offense to Florida, but most people I think in Florida. Most people in Florida. Yeah. Oh, well that makes sense. Texas, Texas, Florida, Ohio has a lot of like, I know big cats and stuff, but yeah, we want to do a series where it's like we, we, we, we talk about all the amazing traits of the primates, you know, like mothering, culture, grooming, play, but all these amazing traits also make them absolutely terrible and horrific pets. So trying to drive home and I have to be very careful that I'm not in contact because the, you know, when I go to the sanctuary, they're all over me because they're used to humans when you feed them and everything. But when we do the, the web series, they cannot be on me. It has to be very much, let's, we need to, you know, because I could scream, I'm miserable. I hate this. They're hurting me and people will still say, I want to pet monkey. So you have to, it's walking that line. Yeah. Yeah. Slowly walk, walk them through the thought process. Please. You can hurt yourself. I know. People, you're gonna end up hurting yourself or that primate. Yeah. Right. Yeah. No, because they usually have pretty shitty lives. I mean, excuse me, crappy lives. It's fine. It's the after show. Okay. Fine. Fine. Their lives are at risk. Wait, we can curse in the after show? I didn't know that. I didn't know that the whole time. Oh, shit. Yeah, I know that, that the monkeys and entertainment animals too, terrible, terrible way to go. You know, not a good way to do life. So I'm glad, like with Andy Serkis and with CGI, but mostly Andy Serkis, every, he can play anything. But yeah, I think we're moving away from that, which makes me really all the planet of the apes, the new ones don't have any nonhuman primate actors in them, which is amazing. Wow. Yeah. So that's awesome. But yeah. Wait, wait, wait a second. I was not paying attention close enough. Do you mean those were real apes in Planet of the apes movies? No, none of those were real apes. How did they get them to act like that? That's amazing. Have you ever done that? Yeah, I'm way more impressed than I was with that. The Reisner technique is really effective. I'm not going to lie. As somebody who was classically trained in my youth. Chups. Who is the other one? Who is the other one? The other one, the method acting guy. Strauss, Strauss. Strauss, yeah. Oh God, in Hollywood. There's, I almost said Malinowski. That's so funny. No, what's his name? Stanislavski. Wait, that's... Stanislavski was one of the acting coach. Yeah, so he was early. I almost said Malinowski. See, that's when Stanislavski and Malinowski, my anthropology and my acting reads go like this. It all collides. That's hilarious. Oh my God. Wow, it was blueberries. Blueberries. Encounters? No, enforcements. Enforcements. Enforcements. Reinforcements. That's the calvary. I keep thinking Carl's trust. This is such an inside thing. This is not common knowledge, what we're talking about now. Oh yeah, no, no. This is gotten crazy. Phil Justin in while I try to bring it. No, I'm there. I got it. I got it. It's reinforcements. It's because the calvary are coming. Blueberries. No, blueberries. Blueberries. Blueberries, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know. We don't know Marshall's dreams. Yeah, exactly. Acting. Yes, Eric Naps. Did we see the new dating evidence on the North in North America? Yes. Go away, Columbus. Yeah, I love that story. 1024, right? The North. 1014 or 1020, yeah. Yeah. Stanislavski. Sorry, I'm still on the method acting. Lee Strasberg. It's Lee Strasberg. Lee Strasberg, okay. Whoever it was who trained James Dean and the method acting, maybe you can look that one up because they were so like commit to the role as if you're there and the camera isn't there and there won't be an audience and you become that person in that moment and commit your essence to it. There's a scene. I think it's Strasberg. There's a scene in Rebel Without a Cause where this young kid has been, he's been got drunk or something and he gets, he's there with the sheriff and he's waiting for his dad and he's like getting front, he's frustrated and he's letting it out and he's punching this thing. He's like, ah, God, things in life is tired to be drunk, teenager. He broke his hand. He broke his hand. He was, he's crying in the scene but it's also because he just broke his hand. Hands. Because he is just not acting. And it's really weird because he's such a pop culture icon and nobody, if you've ever go back and watch James Dean movies, he wasn't just the attractive young pop culture kid doing a team movie thing. He was an incredibly amazing actor. He was the most, probably the most believable in any role that James Dean's ever been in, any actor I've ever seen. Anyway, but he broke his hand in the scene and kept going and didn't say anything because he was just being that person. Who just broke their hand? Wow. If you're interested in like actors, if you haven't seen the Val Kilmer documentary yet, Val, is it good? So good. He's a good actor. Yeah. I had no clue so many things. It's a great documentary and it's mostly, it's his own footage. He had a camera everywhere with him for his whole life basically. So it's all his own footage. I love that. That's real. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's really cool. I need to see that. I was in a short film. Actually, it's kind of funny. I did this, it was a student film. It was, my friend went to Long Beach State and he was actually my boyfriend for 24 hours. We met at Magic Mountain when we were 13. Our song was Save the Best for Last by Vanessa Williams. We met online for a ride at Magic Mountain. But I randomly found this acting post in Backstage West when I was about 18 years old. And I played this role and I remember the girl who, it was called Edelind Rex. It was a play on Oedipus Rex. And I played a nurse and she has a freak out and she was very method. And she hit me with a metal sheet, like basically like cookie sheet. In the face, gave me a black eye, cut my eye. Oh, jeez. This massive Shiner. Well, I just kept going and I was like, okay. You know, but it's like, this is a student film that will not ever be the same. Dang. I was an actor. But it was, yeah, super painful. Wow. Yeah. I guess this is what we're doing. This is, okay. I like the whole method thing, but you know. Yeah, can you actually hit people? Come on. Yeah. Don't do the violence thing to each other. No. I do have to run you guys because I have to pack, but I'm going to get ready for... Okay, but wait. One last question though. Yes. Because I had, because of the comedian thing. I need your top three favorite comedians. Let's see. I mean, so George Carlin was a huge... There we go. Influence growing up. Just, I mean, just, I mean, if you watch his stuff now, I mean, his bits on stuff, his bits on, you know, the maniac and I'm a big driver. So, you know, idiots and maniacs or is it morons and maniacs? But yeah, I just think he was so ahead of his time when it comes to just anything and everything. Geez, I love... Well, I mean, so Mel Brooks is my favorite in terms of just, I love satire. Yes. And the ridiculous, the reduction to the ridiculous that he is so keen at, where we're going to take this thing instead of just, we're going to make it ridiculous without really, in a weird way, never being over the top because all he's boiled the whole thing down to, like spaceballs, let's just boil it down to the most ridiculous elements and focus on that. And there's something just brilliant about that. I totally agree. Yeah, I'm trying to say it's tough. You got a third. You got one more. You got one more. Yeah, you got Brooks. That's great. You got Carlin. Yeah, well, I used to watch Richard Pryor a lot when I was a kid too, like live on the Sunset Strip. I mean, like, you know, the matchstick of him running down the street on Sunset Boulevard, like kills every time. But also, like there's, it's tough because there's also Steve Martin's live album, like in the 70s. I loved a lot of older comics. And I feel bad because there's not a lot of women, you know, that I have in my list and I feel like an asshole for that. So my, actually one of my top comedians is, no, no, no, no. Comics, like nonsense. Not enough. You know, I mean, they're not enough. Not enough. Yeah, not enough. Eligated. Okay, of the few that there are, I think to my, one of my personal favorite comedians is Sarah Silverman. Sarah Silverman just slays me. Like, she just kills me. Like, I mean, my God, was it, is it Laura Lapinelli? I'm going to say her name wrong, but she's to do the roast. Yeah. She is brutal, but just bad. I mean, I love her because she's so badass. I mean, even Joan Rivers, if you watch. Joan Rivers was, yes. Yeah, I mean, she could, she could deliver and that was one of the things. She could also like destroy somebody. Oh yeah. She was the best at roasting, which I like. But yeah, I mean, Sarah, I think is, is incredibly smart. And, you know, again, I'm big on social commentary because I think that for me, you know, especially as a social scientist, I think that comedy is such a great way to kind of just, although satires, I think you probably maybe her or maybe you haven't. I don't know the idea that satire sometimes doesn't, doesn't do what it wants because the people, there are the people that are, that it's not targeting or the people that, you know, it's making fun of think it's actually, they're being nice to them. And so they don't quite get the fact that they're being made fun of, you know what I mean? They're like, no, you understand us. You get us. You get us. You know, like, and it's like, no, no, no, no, no, we're making fun of you because you're an asshole. You know what I mean? So, so there's a combination there. There's a Norm MacDonald always wanted to formulate the perfect joke where the setup was the punchline. And I think the best version of it was Seth Meyers doing a joke that he would imagine a Norm MacDonald would approve of, which was, which went something along the lines of, this week, the Democrats complained, or there's a new voting law in Texas, and Democrats are against it because they believe it'll suppress minority votes. The GOP is for the new measure because they believe it'll suppress minority votes. Like, that like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, both sides when you hear that joke, you're like, yeah, yeah, no, that's what I believe. Yeah, I know. I totally also agree with that. Well, it's, and that's, yeah. I'm going to have to think more about it. I haven't thought about this list today. Ricky Gervais is a comedian who also like adore. Ricky Gervais, yeah. I love Eddie Izzard too. He's one of my, oh, yes. There's a guy who's like, who's a British guy. But part of what I like about him is that he has a, gosh, either of the most amazing memory or he's really good at interacting with the audience. Jimmy Carr, Jimmy Carr has almost like a rain man. He's just got like, joke set up. Here's the joke, joke set up. Here's the joke. But he'll put like hundreds, he'll do it like hour and a half show of that and then have the audience like attempt to heckle him. And he'll invite like derision from the audience and then tear him down every time. He's, I think one of the most brilliant real-time comedians. Yeah, yeah. That was out there. I like that. I love to affect him out. That's an impressive feat. Jimmy Carr, yeah. Matt Berry, he's one of my favorite actors, I think. He's, he was in a show called Garth, he's in what we do in the shadows now, the TV show, but he was in Garth Merengue's Dark Place, IT crowd, a bunch of other, Toast of London. He's just, he's, I just, he's hilarious. He's also an amazing, amazing musician. Like I love his music too. So it's like, yeah, he's one of my, like his voice is one of the funniest things. The weatherman was wearing tweed. All right, again. Yes, exactly. The weatherman was wearing tweed. Uh, can you do a tag? Yeah, do a tag, yeah. It's so... The weatherman was wet. Are you sure? Yeah, just, we need like eight more times. It's just, we need you to say yes, 50 different ways. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, okay. I have not seen his stand up though. I've only seen... No, I don't think he's done. That's okay. Oh, okay, okay. But he's just like comedic. I mean, I just die every... He's in my, but here's the thing. Here's the thing. When a comedian isn't doing stand up, the only, always the thing I always have to wonder is, did they write it? Not that it matters. Not that it should always matter. But like, I remember when I learned, when I got to know Larry David, a little bit with his, with the curb, then I realized all of Seinfeld, Seinfeld, the comedian's career, through the Seinfeld show, was doing Larry David. I mean, they wrote it together. They're like-minded. I get that, but still it's like, okay, so that wasn't all from the mind of Jerry Seinfeld. This is the existence, the essence of Larry David. Now I get it. Boiled down. So there's always a thing when I want to know who wrote it also. I mean, I work with a lot of... I worked on the Drew Carey show for a long time and I'm friends with a lot of comedians and writers for comedians actually. I have good friends who write for well-known comedians and it is a mix of the comedian themselves and then having actual writers because obviously they can't do it all, especially a friend of mine writes for the roasts. And I actually was... I was... He was so sweet, my friend. Shout out to my friend, Kevin Cheney, who's an amazing comedy writer. And he worked on... Very rarely do you meet people that are just so freaking supportive because I remember I met him 20 years ago or something and he's always pushed me in my career and they were doing historical roasts. They were going to do a historical roast and he immediately thought of me. He was like, you'd be perfect. We should immediately get you on and he tried really hard to get them to take notice and I didn't end up getting... You know, there was a lot of other people that kind of had already jockeyed to put themselves in the right spot. Yeah, to put themselves in there. Yeah, you know, and I've been up for... I got lucky years ago. I created a... I did that Story of Boobs video that got me on the Today show and then Stephen Colbert made fun of us and was like, what about butts? And so I had this whole Butt Week movement. And I remember I was going to maybe... I was, oh, I had a PR person that was pitching into Jimmy Kimmel's show and they were like, yeah, have her write like 10 sketches. You know what I mean? And I did. I wrote 10 or 12, including America's Next Top Bottom about a butt double contest featuring Guillermo and Matt Damon. It was very stupid. And they were like, yeah, we're not going to do a Butt Week thing, but would you be interested in being like in the running to write for the show? I did not get it. But because there's literally people that have been worked their whole career to do that, but just like... To do that. Yeah. But just the fact that I even was like... That was that, honestly. You know, you have a moment where you're like, I don't know if I should keep doing this. I don't know if I'm good enough. I don't know if I have what it takes. And it was that. That was the moment that I was like, keep going. It might... You know, and that was eight years ago. You know what I mean? It was a long time ago. So I, you know, I hopefully... I hopefully I made the right choice to keep going, but... Keep going. Always keep going. Yeah. But... Daniel in the chat room is pointing out that I left out... We left out Ginny Graffalo. Ah, huge Ginny Graffalo fan. Love her. I'm a big jerk for missing that one. I got to work with her a couple years ago. Oh, are you serious? Yeah. Did her chronic flatulence get in the way of it all? Because that was... I mean... I really adore her and everything about Ginny Graffalo. And I got the chance to meet her once, but I had to leave really quick. Because it was just... It was really like noticeable. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You might have had a bad day. I don't know. Haha. Maybe it was your bad day. No, no, no, no. Okay. I'm sorry. It's some... It's the only thing I remember about one of her sticks. About... It had something to do with the unwanted advances from adoring fans. She was like, I mean, I'm always appreciated, but it's not long before they realize I have chronic flatulence. There you go. It was her way of saying, stay away. There's a lot of techniques women use. There's the itch technique where you just start itching in places to make people just flee. I will say, she was one of the nicest people I have ever, ever, ever worked with. In terms of just you meet and you're... I grew up with reality bites and just being like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. It's Janine Garofalo. And she was just... Couldn't have been more down to earth. Just taught. We were talking about drugstore makeup. Like we're talking about lipsticks and concealers we liked. And like, oh, that one makes me break out. And that one... I mean, it was just like, I can't believe I'm having this conversation with Janine Garofalo. Like 13-year-old me would kick myself. And she was on the radio as part of the majority report, which was a great... It's still a show now with Sam Cedar, but it was the two of them to begin with. And it was a much better show. But I mean, it's a current day politics. So how do you say things better? It's like saying this show is better than it was five years ago, because that stuff five years ago, we already know about that. Yeah, but we didn't then, which is why we did those shows. It was new then. Because we had to get there. Clem Fandango. Sorry. Clem Fandango. Yeah. Tarun is saying, please let her go, Justin. I know. Is it me? Tarun is watching out for you. You're so sweet. Please let her go. I know. But wait, what is the hurry? Let me get your coat. But wait, there's more. Oh, there's more. He was in my name, he was in Yes with the TMV. Oh, yes. Yeah, Drew Carey was a, Drew Carey. We're actually the whole Drew Carey show, like the whole crew and cast. We're all very still, like good friends. We have reunions as much as we can. We all love each other. It's really, and I was just an extra on a stand-in on the show, but we all stay in touch. You know, like if I see, I haven't seen Drew in a couple years, but if I run into him, like he'll just stop me and be like, hey, you know, and it's so great. He won't remember my name because he doesn't, he's not good with names. But he'll remember you. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I get it. If I worked on a soundstage with 200 people, I probably wouldn't remember everyone's name either. You know, so. But yeah, I do have to run. I'm sorry. I hate this. Okay, so this is where we do the... This is where the last, last question? This is the last, last, last question? No, this is where we do the Burns Gracie exit. And I say, say good night. Wait, what? You're going to do it. And then you got to say, say good night, Justin. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Yeah, I'd love to come back. So if you ever want me, I'm here. I work for Peanuts or Diet Mountain Dew. Oh, look, I accidentally put the green screen on. So like my, my, my Mountain Dew is also a brick wall. I was wondering about that. You're taking a drink earlier and I was like, how do you? That's awesome. Nice work. It's just like a really cool weird painting. Okay. You guys are awesome. Thank you. Go ahead. Have some good voyages. Thank you. I'm going to go wedding, not my own. Yeah. Go enjoy then. Do I just leave the studio? How do I do this? This is awesome. She's going to, she's going to leave you. Kiki's going to, yeah. We're all, we're all going. It's time. Oh, okay. We're all going now. It's going to be hard out. It's going to be hard out. Yeah. So I just wanted to answer Gorov was asking of how the wedding was Blair's wedding this last weekend. So I'm going to actually, they went through with it. It was fantastic. But we will wait to have that conversation until Blair comes back. Yeah, we'll do that. Yay. Yeah. We'll have that conversation. It was sweet. A little bit of rain. Just a little freezing temperatures. No big deal. It was good. All right. Good night, Kiki. Good night, Natalia. Bye. I will see you guys. See ya. In the future. Good night, everyone. We will see you next week. We will see you all. May you science in peace. Maybe be curious always. And wait. Oh, that's the button I press. I put it way over there. Resized my screens. Got them way over there. Good night, everyone. We'll see you next week. Oh, I almost forgot to say this Friday at 11 a.m. Pacific time, if you are around and about and interested, I am going to be interviewing a Brazilian neuroscience researcher about sleep. He's written a book on sleep. Sedarta Ribiero. And yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about sleep on Friday. Very important. Very important, which we're going to go do pretty soon right about now over here on the west coast of the United States of America. Okay. Good night, everyone. Thank you. Bye.