 rare. Hi everybody. We're just here doing the science conga line. Well, we're getting ready for the show. Are you all ready for science? Yeah, let's say a few words and check our audio and get a little bit of a check, check, check. Mic check with everyone who's here right now. Worm milk. Worm milk. This is a new mic check. Worm milk. Worm milk. Worm not warm milk. Worm milk. Would you like some warm milk with your warm milk? Warm milking worms. We're milking worms? No. Justin, what do you think about warm milk? Fat bear. Fat bear. Fat bear. Fat bear. Fat bear. Fat bear. We like them. Yes. Check, check. Check, check. Check, check. We're here. I hope everyone is here for live broadcast of the twist podcast. We will be recording our podcast. No, and it's very exciting. Whoa, whoa. Wee, wee. Yeah, science. It happened. Wee, wee. A lot of it happened. And we are here to share with you and to discuss and enjoy. So, are we ready to start? Yeah. We're all good? Yep. Okay. Let us start a show then, shall we? In three, two, this is twist. This week in science, episode number 845, recorded on Wednesday, October 6th, 2021. Who are the science prize winners? I'm Dr. Kiki, and tonight, we will fill your heads with worms, women, and fat bears, but first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Because of information that has recently come to light, the program you are about to hear has been removed of all algorithms. While occasional audience members have reported no direct ill effects, artificial intelligence has been used on the show to direct users towards interesting and informative information. Frequent consumers of our content have reported an increased appetite for intellectual pursuits in their daily lives that cannot always be consolidated with the grim reality of living in a society that is mostly devoid of such engagements. As difficult as it is to say, we fully admit that we have intentionally used our algorithms to get you to interact with our content, and we further acknowledged that we knew it was very likely to give you the unrealistic expectation that interest and excitement about science was universal and that it painted an unachievable goal of intelligent conversations with your fellow humans. And we're sorry. Actually, that was easier to say than I thought. I just said the words, and there they were. Well, now that that's over, remember to like, comment, subscribe, and get on the Patreon train because it's this week in science coming up next. Good science to you, Kiki and Blair. And the good science to you too, Justin Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We're back. You ready to talk about science? Oh, good. We have all sorts of yummy science news for you this week. Little tidbits of brain stimulation from my corner. I've also got spider medicine myths and Nobel prizes. I'm handing them out all over the place. Do I get one? No. No, next year. Maybe next year. Maybe in 50 years. Justin, what did you bring? I brought fat bears, water bears, and an ancient jaw that got found. Is it a bear jaw? It is. It is not, but you'll have to bear with me. You said jaw. I thought you said jaw, like Jeff with a G. Yeah. Yeah, that. And a jaw. No, I found a sketch and skeleton named jaw. That might be what I said. I can't tell who's who's taking more pills to get to the show tonight me or you, but very possible. It's both of us. Wow. Okay. All right, everybody. Blair, what's in the animal corner? It's not bears, I hope. I know what you came here to hear tonight. I know what you're all asking about, and I brought you all the worm milk. Don't worry about the other stories. I brought some other stories too, but really just focus on the fact that I brought worm milk tonight. I'm focusing on that right now, and I really don't know what to think about it. Really don't know what to think about it right now. Just you wait. All right, I'm waiting. I am waiting. But while everybody else is waiting, I do hope that maybe they take the time to look for us on podcast platforms where they can subscribe. You, if you have not subscribed, can find us. All places podcasts are found. Just look for this week in science. We are also on Facebook, which sometimes disappears, and on Instagram, which also sometimes disappears, and on Twitter and Twitch. If we're not this week in science, we could be twist science. Our website is twist.org. Okay. Well, let's just get the awarding done with. No reason to make anybody wait. Let's just, let's award things. You ready to give out prizes? Let's do it. Okay. Well, let us give today's prize out for the Nobel Prize, Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2021, to Benjamin List and David W. C. McMillan for the development of asymmetric organo catalysis. Basically being able to make molecules in a more efficient way so you don't end up with a lot of stuff that you don't want. It allows researchers, chemists, to produce enantiomers or these mirror images, asymmetrical molecules that are specifically chosen, and there's not a bunch of stuff left over. So it's great for making drugs. It's great for chemistry in general, creating the chemicals that will help us live a more vibrant life, which is just, you know, just fun and fancy. It wasn't what I was expecting for chemistry for this year. David W. C. McMillan in an interview with the Nobel Prize committee said, we thought it had a very low probability of success, but there you go. And he goes on to say it's the stuff that should never work, which is where all the good stuff is, which is kind of fun. Benjamin List said, making molecules is like creating something beautiful. It is creating something beautiful. I don't think it's like creating something beautiful. It is something beautiful. It's fantastic. The Nobel Prize in physics is shared between Siokuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselman, and Giorgio Parisi for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex systems. So systems complexity, which people were amazed that it was awarded this year, but the complexity of systems is something that underpins so much of our understanding of our own world at this point in time. Climate change research, a lot of that is based on the complex interactions of multiple different environmental parameters. How do the clouds and the sun and other aspects of the atmosphere work together to give the climate that we have? How does humanity influence it? They also say it revolutionized the theory of disordered materials and random processes, randomness. It really does exist in the world. The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2021, no, it did not go to mRNA this year. It went to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discovery of receptors for temperature and touch. They discovered the TRPV1 receptor for temperature and heat pain. The PA01 and PA02 touch proprioception receptors, which without our understanding of these, we wouldn't understand how our senses interact with the world. How do these receptors work to allow us to sense temperature, heat, cold, pain that can warn us that our body is being damaged? How do we sense pressure and those slight changes, vibrations, and those slight movements against the covering of our body, our skin? These researchers woke up and David Julius said he was woken up by a text from his sister-in-law, someone has been trying to reach you. I didn't want to give him your phone number. So if you are outside of the Nobel Prize time zone, researchers can be woken up very early in the morning. Some other researchers who did receive the award this year, they let the phone ring and finally answered it after they had let it go to voicemail a couple of times. If they missed the third one, they move on to the next story list. No, all you can buy, all you can fit in the shopping cart, shopping spree for you. Oh no. I still think for the medicine, I think the mRNA, if they haven't, if they don't already have that locked in maybe for next year or something. It definitely will be. Just get timely, just you can bump somebody off of the thing this year. I get to touch things important, but if there's millions of people's lives being saved right now by this mRNA vaccine technology. And I think, perhaps, I'm going to guess that people involved in vaccine development and the mRNA usefulness that there were nominations. I'm going to guess that there were, but I'm going to also guess that they are waiting because the potential for mRNA is really great. The same way that the potential for CRISPR was really great. And it took a few years before Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuel Charpentier got the Nobel Prize, which was a couple of years ago. But it took many years for them to really see the benefit of it. We've seen a huge benefit from vaccines, but there's this potential of, is mRNA going to lead to other vaccines? Is it going to lead to other treatments and therapies that we haven't even seen yet? What else is it going to do? And I think perhaps the Nobel committee is playing it safe on that one. Maybe, maybe. It's just application is so separate from things sometimes. The Nobel Prize was awarded in 1964 to three people who invented or perfected or pushed further the science of lasers. Now, they got a Nobel Prize for it. Great. But what does lasers do? It's just an amplified light thing, right? No, now we use it from all of our optical reading devices to like eye surgery to just like lasers are used in so many different medical things. It's like everything, technology, lasers are all over the place. They had no idea. They're like, hey, we found this cool way we can amplify light. Check this out. Oh, Nobel Prize. Yeah, that was amazing. You did that. No idea what the actual applications would be. mRNA is, I think, already that impressive. But yeah, it takes the time. Yeah, on the chat room ask how much money do they win for Nobel? Yeah, so I was just looking that up and they receive the reward for the Nobel Prize is a gold medal, a diploma and a monetary award of about $1,145,000 split between the three the winners. So if there's one, two or three, that award amount is split. It's a nice sum of money, but you know, it's not the full amount. They also, from what I've heard, get a much better parking spot at their university. I've actually heard about this. Yes. If you win a Nobel Prize, it's not just the money prize. It is a lot of steam. Yeah, the prestige that comes with it. Gravitas. Yeah, for sure. But you know, I really do feel like every year we've talked about this before, it's like the Nobel Prize. It's time to celebrate the old white men of science. Whoo. Yeah. You know, and then it's like, oh, yeah, okay, no, maybe it's not all old white men of science. Okay, there were just a lot of men this year. So, okay, people who stood on the backs of others while erasing the influence of other people who helped them, like graduate students and lab assistants and so many others, because science is a collaborative effort and no, okay, wait, I'm not selling this correctly. So, okay, it is a celebration of the achievements that science have brought us that have changed the way that we exist in the world and the way that we see the world around us. It is a human award, so there are issues with it. And hopefully, as our society changes, the award and others like it will change with it. But it's good to celebrate. And it's just a bad time for me to point out that the woman who pioneered mRNA vaccines was a woman. Yes. Who also didn't get 10- The woman who did it was a woman. She also didn't get 10-year at her university very likely because she was a woman. Yeah. Same old story. So, you know, timing. Timing is everything as we were talking about, but you know, this might have been a good one. Yeah, but congratulations to all the scientists who received the Nobel's this year and to science in general, because it is a time of year when we can celebrate the achievements of the human mind and human endeavors. And so, that in itself is great. So, now we need to celebrate something else, Justin. What are we going to celebrate that you brought to the show? Oh, okay. So, how many times have these people, these humans won their top prize in their category? What? Oh, they win once. Oh, they just win once. Okay. Win once. One, one time. Just curious. Okay. So, each winter, the brown bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska do what brown bears everywhere do. They snuggle up in their dens for some number of months doing absolutely nothing. No foraging, no fishing, no drinking, no social media, just nothing. And when it's over, they emerge pretty much emaciated. They can lose a third of their body weight in as much as over these period of months. So, they spend the next rest of the year trying to pack the pounds back on because winter is going to be coming again. They are at their fattest in the late summer, early fall, which is when the preem, when the park holds its annual fat bear competition. It's a weekly voting bracket where people can pick their favorite fat bear each week until there's only one bear standing. And this year's winner, Otis. Otis is one of the older bears in the park. And this one makes him a four-time fat bear champion. So, he's very good at what he does. He's really good. He's good at fattening up to survive the winter. The keys to Otis's multiple wins are come down to patience, a lack of exercise, and a good PR campaign. So, while most of the bears are mulling about the park chasing after salmon in the river, then it might be searching in a forest trying to find the bear snacks, Otis has a strategy of sitting in the river in one shallow spot by a waterfall and just waiting for the fish to come to him. His favorite spot also happens to be close to one of the park's many live video feeds, which makes him an easy bear for the camera to focus on when the other bears are wandering off or wandering back in. Otis is still just there sitting, waiting for a salmon to swim up to him. So, maybe this might make him an easy bear to watch for the fan base that then is tuning in to, it's the Explore.org, which has, they've actually got hundreds of wildlife video feeds from around the world. So, you go check out Explore.org. But because he's just sitting there in that one spot, right near where the camera can catch him perfectly, the camera spends a lot of time watching Otis watch the water waiting for a fish. He's not the most exciting bear, but somewhere between the lack of him exercising at all apparently throughout the summer and the front and center on the camera I think is why he's a four-time winner. On the Explore.org. He knows his good side, he knows how to pose for the camera. He knows how to, he hands it up for the camera by doing almost nothing. Occasionally though, another bear will sort of wander too close to his fishing hole and he does have to kind of, they have this dominance play thing, they kind of roar at each other and then kind of ends in snuggling a little bit, which is interesting. Snuggling with claws and teeth. Well these bears are all in the same park and they kind of know each other and so, you know, they have a little like, ah, this is my fishing hole and then they, you know, all right, we're fine. But go check out, again, Explore.org. They have so many wildlife video feeds that are, many of them are live all the time and they have some highlight ones that show you sort of the best of. The Rhino Sanctuary is my favorite, but you might like the penguins or there's polar bears, elephants. There's a hippo one. There's a hippo one, maybe you want to see a beach covered in walruses. See what walruses are up to when you're not looking. And there's a puffin, there's a puffin chick cam every spring, which I also love to watch, the puffins. Nice. I like to catch, I like to catch the rhinos right about bedtime. See, so that bear that's wandering on the water, I don't think that's Otis, but if you look to the left and further back, you'll see Otis, the kind of grayish bear sitting way back there. He does not move from that spot like all summer. There's bears swimming. There's bears up on the, up on the, wandering around. There's Otis. That's Otis. He's just hanging on right there 24 seven waiting for a fish. Now I gotta tell you, I've watched, I've watched Otis. I've probably logged 20 hours or more of Otis watching. This must be on a highlight because I have never, oh yeah, it's dark there now. So this is a highlight reel. There he goes. I waited 20 hours. I missed Otis. I waited 20 hours to see him even go after a fish. All I saw him do was stare at the water. He's just enjoying his jacuzzi is the thing. It's not that warm. It's a very difficult one. But the jets, there's jets is the thing. Yes, jets, yes. Yeah. Oh, Otis didn't get you fish. He put out all that energy. Just be patient. That's, that's your key, man. That's. Oh, well, we hope that they fatten up nicely. Otis is all ready for the winter so that we can see Otis all skinny next spring after they disappear for hibernation. Aw, that's fantastic. Otis did not seem very stressed out. Otis seemed very relaxed. Blair. He's very calm, Bear. Yeah, but Blair had something to say about stress. Stress. Yeah. Yes. Tell me. So this is a Dartmouth study looking at how stress impacts how we socialize with others. How do you think it impacts how we socialize with others? Very poorly. Yes, so we do not a great job of socializing. Do you think you socialize more or less on your stress? I think I socialize less when I'm stressed. Me personally, the N of one anecdotally, I'm stressed. I don't want to go see people and if I do, maybe I snap at them and then I'm like, I need to leave. Yeah. I think actually, I think I'm the opposite. Being an extrovert or like a complete extrovert. I don't have an introverted side. Which we noticed. When I'm stressed out, actually the thing that relaxes me is going and talking to other people about anything other than the things that have been stressing me out. Well, Justin, that might be stressing those other people out. Actually, Kiki sits with the majority here based on this Dartmouth study. They wanted to look at how feeling stressed impacts the amount we socialize with others and overall they found that people who experience more stress in a day socialize less with others the next day and that this effect can persist for up to two days after a stressful day. There have been previous studies with animals like rodents which have shown that animals prefer not to socialize with peers if they're stressed the day before. This is called stress induced social avoidance. But to date, it's been very difficult to figure out if humans do that too. We are animals. We are mammals. We use rodents as test subjects for us all the time. So I can't say I'm entirely surprised to hear we follow the trend. Past research has often been based on self-reporting. And so that can be tough. Instead, this is what's really crazy speaking of Justin's disclaimer. This was based on mobile phone sensing data. Now, the participants did in fact opt in. They were part of this experiment knowingly. But this mobile phone data, both passive and automatic sensing data through something called the Student Life app, they recorded sleep, movement, time spent at home. They also looked at conversation through the mobile phone's microphone. So the actual conversations or sounds weren't recorded, but basically they just would identify how long there was more than one voice happening, essentially. And so through the app, participants were also then asked questions about overall well-being, including stress once a day at random, at a random time of day, between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. And they reported based on images. Also because apparently images do a better job at identifying emotional levels than kind of a strongly agree, strongly disagree situation. So they had one no stress to 16 extreme stress and they were all based on images. So for example, a peaceful pond might be a one and someone pulling their hair out might be a 16. And so based on all of this information, they investigated whether participants stress, social interactions persisted when they then controlled for sleep, movement, time at home, and other variables that they could they could kind of control out. And they found there was a correlation between spending more time at home and decreased levels of movement after a stressful day. The opposite was also found to be true greater social interaction associated with more movement and spending less time at home. But there was there was not a reverse that was true where the amount of social interaction could predict stress. Right. So right. So the amount of the amount that you were socializing didn't necessarily predict your stress. But if you were stressed, that would be predictive of how you would socialize the following day. Yes. So yeah, stress could correlate to the next day's social activities, but social activities could not correlate to the next day's stress levels. So they're so basically they were trying to separate out like, is the social interaction what's making them stressed? Could be could also be fixing it. So it's like, yeah, it could Justin said it could be relaxing and nice not to be talking about the things that you're stressed about. So maybe yeah. So yeah, that would affect it. But what I'm wondering is with the pandemic and people at home working at home, you're stressed at home, your stress levels are home. And so you're already not seeing people and you're not socializing and then you're stressed and you're not leaving the house. Like how did that downward, I'm saying downward spiral, but you know, that feedback loop of activity and stress, how would that have affected people? And it seems like it would be negatively. Yeah, more specifically, I'm curious if they repeated this study now directly after the I'm gonna say after in quotes the pandemic much later yet. I know, right. But all of this to say, like for me, for example, I 100% identified with Justin here pre pandemic, where if I was stressed out, I needed to be out with people socializing. After the last almost two years that we have had, I have kind of the opposite response now. And if I have a stressful day, I want to go sit on my couch. And so the pandemic has actually shaped how I respond to stress and changed it. That's interesting. Yeah, so I think it's also fair to say that that our society is is flexible and the social norms are flexible and we are flexible. And so I don't think this is 100% the time. Yeah, exactly. But to what you were talking about, Kiki, don't quote me specifically on the statistic, but my understanding is that 2020 saw a spike by about 20% of domestic homicides. And depression also increased substantially. There was a study out this last week showing there was a substantial increase in rates of reported depression. So that in itself, you know, on its own, it's like, okay, what leads to those things and potentially the stress factor could have been tied into all of that, I would imagine. But yeah, so I think you're I think your big point, though, Blair. Yeah, I was gonna say, I think your big point, though, is that we are adaptable and that it's a feedback cycle, but at the same time, it's not one that goes on forever and ever and ever and things just keep getting worse and worse and worse. It can be broken at any time and we can change our patterns. Yeah. And I think the thing, except for those people doing the homicides. You're going to jail. Yeah. But what I think what's interesting about this is it's specifically looking at the connection of stress to then social interaction. If there is another study, like kind of what we are talking about now related to the pandemic of socialization, then related to stress, that is a completely different study, right? And if we can put those pieces together, that can help us do a better job of taking care of people who need it. So if you know that somebody is stressed and their response to that is to isolate and you know that that person is prone to depression based on isolation, then that is an opportunity for those person's loved ones to kind of like intercede and prevent a feedback loop that could be really harmful. So this is where this could actually turn into some really good preventative science. Yeah. I think that, yeah, at the point where we can take this information and turn it into preventative steps, activities, therapies, ways to help. That's where it gets really good. Yeah. But it's also mindfulness notice. Maybe say, oh, yesterday was a really stressful day and oh, I'm not going outside today and I'm not maybe I should take a walk. Maybe I should have a conversation with somebody, you know. Or maybe I can have this day alone, but maybe I shouldn't let it turn into two or three or four. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Let's talk about spider silk. You know how much we love spider silk on this show. But where's my spider silk everything that I was promised a few decades ago? Yeah, it still isn't here. Modernist make oil. It fixes tires. We're going to use it for everything. It has tensile strength. Don't we have goats that are making this and then we figured out bacteria could, where is it? Where is my spider silk? Tell me. Well, one of the things about spider silk is that spider silk has all sorts of fabulous properties. And somebody we know in this show has talked a lot about cool things that spiders do with their silk. But one claim about spider silk that has remained untested is that it is antimicrobial, that these spiders who are trapping prey and doing all that, that it, the prey is not deteriorating because there's no microbes. There's an antimicrobial aspect to it that's helping to keep all of the desiccated and sucked dry prey that they're digesting externally, I guess, in the best shape possible that microbes aren't involved in it because the spider silk is helping things out. However, researchers just publishing in iScience have come out to say they've tested it and, man, I got to get to the right, I got to get to the right window here and they want to say that myth is busted. They've tested it all out and nope, no antibacterial, antimicrobial properties at all. So they looked at, they did a systematic study comparing antimicrobial properties of different silk types from seven species of spiders across the spider phylogeny, so not all within the same group, and they found bacteria. They didn't find any evidence of, of antimicrobial properties. So they found, they did not find the antimicrobial activity of silk in direct contact and disc diffusion assays against gram-negative E. coli, pseudomonas putida, and the gram-positive basilis subtilis, and staining experiments indicated no antimicrobial effect on contact. And then they looked at the research and the literature and they're like, yep, nope, we did the right methodology and spider silk is not antimicrobial, we find absolutely no evidence of it. So if somebody else is doing studies out there of this, that's great because there are obviously more species than seven across the spider phylogeny, but at the same time there's no evidence in this systematic study. Spider silk might be awesome for making all sorts of, I don't know, other things like steel replacements and fabrics and really cool stuff, but it's not antimicrobial, so. And that's okay. It's fine, it doesn't have to do everything. Yeah, it is, it's okay. So moving on from spiders, let's move to other, not insects, even smaller organisms. Justin, you got more bears? Yeah, in more recent bear news, because that's all I'm covering tonight, apparently. Tartigrades, aka water bears, the microscopic invertebrates that are best known for being cute and their ability to survive the extreme conditions of being exposed to the vacuum of space even, harmful ionizing solar radiation and then being returned to Earth and being fine and reproducing in their offspring being fine too. The tardigrade fossil, however, is exceedingly sparse, partly because they're really really small and so they're hard to find, and also because they don't biomineralize, so despite the fact that they live on all of the continents, they live on the land and the sea and in freshwater, there's not a great record, a fossil record, being able to track back the evolution of the tardigrade. That's because they're from outer space. Well, if so, they got here a while ago because, just like the octopus. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers describe a new modern looking tardigrade fossil that actually represents a new genus and species that they believe is extinct. They found it in a 16 million year old lump of amber, and they had to use lasers to get a good look at it. By the way, fun fact, a guy that invented the laser did it back in 1960, he created the first laser. Four years later, three other guys got a Nobel Prize for it. They didn't have any idea what it was going to be used for either. Nobody did. Lead author, Mark A. Mappolo, who is a PhD candidate feeling pretty good about his chances about getting that PhD now. The Department of Organizmic, an evolutionary biology at Harvard University said, the difficulty of working with this amber specimen is that it's far too small for dissecting microscopes. We need a special microscope to fully seed the fossil. Generally, we have light that's transmitted by dissecting microscopes that works very well to reveal morphology of tiny, tiny things. You might be able to see very well the eggs of a spider in amber, or something of this nature. However, this thing only has a total body length of 559 micrometers, slightly over half a millimeter. So at such a small scale, dissecting microscope can only reveal the general morphology of the fossil. So it turns out the tardigrade's cuticle, its outer shell, I guess, is made of chitin, which is a fiber, chitin? Is that what you're saying? Chitin. With a chitin. Chitin. Am I getting closer? Yes. So this is a fibrous glucose substance that is the primary component of the cell walls in fungi, which is a fun, interesting thing. It's also the exoskeletons of arthropods, but I didn't know that them is also being utilized the same in fungi. That's a very fun fact. And it also happens to fluoresce really well when excited by lasers, which is what they did. They used lasers to sort of light up the shell and get a much more clear view of the internal morphology. With this method, Maplot was able to fully visualize two very important characteristics of the fossil, the claws, and the foregut of the animal, which is also made out of the same substance. Even the quoting again, Maplot, even though externally it looked like a modern tardigrade, with con focal laser microscopy, we could see it had unique foregut organization that warranted for us to erect a new genus with this extinct group of tardigrade super families. So new tardigrade has been discovered and it's 16 million years old. I'm so impressed by researchers who are able to look at a chunk of amber and see something that looks like a weird little smudge, and go, no, that's a tardigrade. There is a certain skill there. Our human ability to recognize patterns and be able to see things allows for these kinds of discoveries. Yeah, my assumption is we could probably, if you're looking right, be able to find many more. Yeah, okay, so here's the big lump of amber, it's about the size of a dime, and you can see there's other chunks of detritus, some of it might be insects. Looks like a spider up there that's kind of curled up. Looks like some kind of plant maybe. And then there's this little dot that they've zoomed in on. It doesn't look like anything in comparison. It looks like an air bubble. Looks like an air bubble. And you get in there, you zoom in and there it is, there's a little tardigrade. So I think that anybody who's got one of these collections of amber with insects in it, you might have an ancient tardigrade in there. You should take a closer look. Yeah, everyone's looking for very macro animals, insects in amber. Let's look for the smaller things. If you've got amber at home, just go ahead and grab your specialized lasers. So they needed the special laser to be able to highlight the the morphology in enough detail. However, with just a regular microscope, you should be able to get down close enough to see no dude. Look at that. That's not nobody. Okay, I understand this is somebody who's looking for tardigrade. I get that. Yes. But for me, looking at a piece of amber, I'm not going to look at that and be like, Oh, that's a tardigrade. Totally. No, it's a little flick. It's not, especially the way there's like weird matter clumped up on the bottom, you can't see all the legs. But then if you use the lasers, you see the legs. So the fact that they saw this and they said, Oh, that's definitely a tardigrade. No way. That's, that's a very specialized person that can do that. Kind of what Kiki was saying, right? That's not just, that's, you really got to be looking for it. Well, here's the thing, the image that we have up now, which is almost the outline of a tardigrade. If you see that, actually, you can kind of see the front claw situation going on there too. If you see that something similar to that, something approximate, that's your, this is your legend, I guess. This is your, your example that you can, you can identify off of. Now you have claws, everybody. Now you know what to look for. Look for six pairs or three pairs of little legs with claws and I don't know, maybe a set of paddle legs. I don't know what the, what that is off the side of the tardigrade, but that's it. This is, it's a wonderful, wonderful example. And if you have a telescope at home, if you have a telescope at home, a telescope, sorry, if you have a microscope at home, sorry. There you go. Thank you. If you have a microscope at home, tardigrades on the moon, everybody. No, they've been in space. You might need a telescope. If you have a microscope also, you might be accustomed to using it to look at very tiny things for your own amusement or interest. And so yeah, go grab some amber, see if you can find some. Go get it. Go get it. Final really quick story. I just wanted to pop in here for those of you who've been following the quantum computing advancements. Excuse me. Researchers have published in Nature this week their work in reducing errors in quantum qubits. Quantum computers and quantum qubits are known for errors, the mis-flipped qubit that, that occurs. And we can't really use quantum computers until we deal with the problem of errors. So these researchers to create an error-free quantum qubit created what they call logical qubits, which are really just a combination of like nine qubits. So that instead of just measuring one, they're measuring nine. And it's kind of like replication in science where it's like, oh, you got one result. Let's see what happens in all these others. And so it's fact checking based on basically data triangulation. And so they're working this system out to create these logical qubits, which are these combinations of multiple qubits, and then comparing those against other qubits in the computer. It limits the size of the computer at this point in time. But because they're able to get rid of the errors, unfortunately, not yet in real time, it's like they go back after the fact and go, oh, that was a mistake. It's like proofreading after the fact at this point. So two things they need to do. They need to get it going in real time. So it's not the proofreading kind of error correction. And they need to make the computers bigger. So right now, because of the logical qubit and the way it's set up, it limits the size of the computer and what they can do. But because they're starting to limit errors, this will lead to advancements that will lead us to quantum computers that we're really going to work and will be very accurate. One step at a time, everybody. Yeah. The computers are coming. There's there's the problem, of course, they're trying to create an almost quantum free zone. Right. Right. You don't want as a quantum fluctuation taking place in this quantum system. We want everything to be tied together. They do. And that's actually what they're trying to do is in a weird way is make these systems tied together within there. But the problem is there becomes an exponential calculation of processing that needs to then take place. Like you have one, you just need a couple of calculations. And then you have two of them in there and you need four. Then you got three. Now you're at eight and it goes up in that sort of way that we're used to memory having grown over the years of having computers. It's the same thing with these how many of the you've got in the qubit, right? How many qubits you got involved there? It's the same sort of problem. So the more accurate you make it, the more processor heavy. And then at some point it's like, ah, now I've just made my old computer over again. So but we are not the two distant future, I think, going to get there with this quantum computing. And then and then we know what we're going to need. A million people who know how to program these things because the logic is different. The logic is different than classical programming. Yeah. So if you want to be a whole new doorway, yeah, a whole new profession, that's going to be cool. And so start like, hey, if you look, if you're into computers but don't want to just be a input slave in the bottom basement of a mega tech company where you're just just typing 14 hours a day for no pay and paying high rent because they want to be in the fancy city, go study this stuff. Go start studying quantum programming. Yeah. There's this and that that. There's going to be the engineers who build the systems that are going to be the programmers that work with the system. It's you're going to get to be at the beginning of the computer revolution that happened where all of these people like became wealthy and famous when they got there early on. You can do that if you start going in this direction, studying this type of programming today. It's not going to be the easy transition from the classical. This is This Week in Science. Thank you so much for joining us for another week of science. If you really enjoy the show, share it with a friend today. All right, let's now jump into a segment of the show we haven't done for a couple of weeks. The COVID update. All right, everybody. Some good news. It's very good news, actually. This last week, Merck announced the results of trials that they have been working on with an antiviral drug of theirs called molnupiravir. Molnupiravir, according to their results, reduced the risk of hospitalization or death by approximately 50% compared to placebo for patients with mild or moderate COVID-19 in their phase three clinical trial. Nice. Yeah. Molnupiravir didn't come just out of the blue. It is an antiviral that they had started working on for the flu. It actually is kind of meant to be a broad spectrum antiviral. They've been testing it in other experiments and other tests against different SARS viruses, against MERS, and it seems to be successful against broadly against SARS viruses and MERS, other coronaviruses. So it could be used very successfully should another coronavirus pop out that poses an issue. At this point in time, they have to still submit all the data to the FDA to apply for an emergency use authorization for it. So don't expect anything for probably a month or two for things to get really going and for it to become available. Unlike remdesivir, which is another antiviral that is being used for people in hospitals, which is an infusion. These are pills. So you have like two pills a day for five days and this molnupiravir costs about $700 for a whole suite of these pills and it could help people fight off COVID if they get infected. So I really like the idea that antivirals after all this will get kind of a boost and that they'll get kind of surged ahead in their efficacy and in the testing because it would be great if after all this, first of all, like you were saying, when the next coronavirus comes around, we have something to use. But also it would be pretty cool if we did have something that would help us fight off flu. And then also just very surface level. It would be really cool to have something that would kind of take the wind out of the common cold. That would be great. I would love it. It would be, yeah. If we have something that generally is good against lots of different viruses and isn't like, you know, extremely expensive, $700 isn't anything to scoff at, but if it's something that could potentially be covered by insurance, if it's something that when you get into the hospital, this is something that'll really help. Stuff like this is what we need. So it's great. It's the first one too. So like once they get further research and more and more companies, so their hat in the ring, the price will go down a little. Hopefully. Okay. So I'm kind of curious. I don't know if it said so specifically in this area. Was this 50% efficacy on unvaccinated people who were at the hospital? Or is that all who's the only folks going to the hospital? It was, as far as I know, it's people in the hospital. So I believe that most likely they were unvaccinated. Still the best prevention for getting COVID-19 is vaccination at this point in time. That is the best prevention. This malnupiravir is not preventative. This is treatment. So it's something you get infected. You can take the treatment and it can help keep you from having severe disease and dying. This is the wrong time for me. You look exasperated. This is the wrong time for me to bring up that I'm a little bit scared of broad antivirals. It's a little bit scary to me because we're just learning so much about microbiome from the bacterial perspective. There's a whole virus I do. Let me tell you how the mechanism of malnupiravir, and then you can tell me your concern. And there are people who are concerned that the clinical studies have not to date contained enough people for us to really be certain that there are not any bad side effects. So far no major side effects have been reported. It's successful and it just works great according to Merck. But malnupiravir is what they call a ribonucleoside analog. So what that means is they give you the pills. The pills get in and they copy. They basically pretend to be a cytidine base. And so it gets incorporated into the viral RNA. And so it basically creates an error in the viral RNA because it gets incorporated instead of a T. So it's a C. It's like a fake C because it's the drug instead of a T base pair. And so it causes an error in the RNA that codes for the virus. And so it inhibits replication of the virus. The concern is that because it is active as an ribonucleoside analog within human cells that it could be confused for a ribonucleoside in human genetic replication. So that in cellular processes it could be incorporated accidentally and lead to errors that inhibit translation transcription processes. To date this has not been seen but it is a concern of researchers. Okay. And that wasn't actually my concern. My concern would have been My concern would be that it would be concerned about the people. Yeah. Concern about the people. My curiosity. I don't even know if it's a concern. There we go. Curiosity. My curiosity has more to do about we still getting to learn about beneficial viruses and what beneficial viruses are doing in our bodies. And so there's a little bit of me when we're talking about antivirals in the same way that we've discussed antibiotics in the past, not knowing or understanding a broad spectrum antibiotic and then just not having any knowledge of what the gut microbiome was even doing when we were trying to kill it all off along with the bad thing which you got to do from time to time. It's fine. Just have some viral yogurt afterwards. You'll be fine. Right. Yeah. Go like a flagpole. Yeah. But what I'm suggesting is that I also hope as we've done all this, as Blair was talking, all this new antiviral research is being done, my hope is we'll actually also be getting some good microbiome research thrown in there to kind of learn what's supposed to be there. And maybe that's what's supposed to be there. It's also preventing other viruses from getting in. Who knows? This is kind of what I'm also curious about. There are so many questions. Really, there are so many questions. We need all the people to go into science and study all the things. But the big thing right now is that we do know that mole neupiravir, it works. It's successful in limiting hospitalization, severe disease, death in people with COVID-19. That is potentially a great thing. And it could be a wonderful tool in our toolbox for helping to save people's lives. But there are lots of questions. A.L. Legolas in Twitch chatroom is saying, would that be a possible cause for cancer and mutations? We don't know possibly. I mean, is if the ribonucleoside from the drug gets incorporated into human DNA, is that what's happening? We have not seen that yet. And so, since we haven't seen it yet, hey, that's great. Maybe our cellular system is smart enough to tell the difference, whereas a viral replication machinery mechanism is not smart enough. But it also sounds pretty specific. You also have to understand that you eat all sorts of DNA. We eat it all the time. We're eating stuff. We're, yes, exactly. Don't be afraid of the idea that you ingest tremendous amounts of RNA from all sorts. Have you, I don't look anymore like a cow or a chicken. And you're constantly inhaling it, and yes. I'm not plant-based either at this point. So, you also don't have to take it to an illogical conclusion. Further on this published in JAMA, this month's surveillance for adverse events after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination, they looked at 6.2 million people who received 11.8 million doses of an mRNA vaccine. And they looked for 23 different serious health outcomes and found that they were not significantly higher for people within one to 21 days after vaccination. So, even looking at stuff that has been reported, like myocarditis, they did not see a concerning level of risk or increase for individuals looking at this massive data set of 11.8 million injections. And then even beyond that, another study that just came out in clinical infectious disease found in a mouse model for those people who have suffered from the acute myopericarditis, which is an inflammation of the membrane that surrounds the heart and has been an issue for young men mostly after getting vaccinated with the mRNA vaccines and still much less so than for individuals who have been infected by COVID-19. It's still higher risk for myocarditis with COVID-19 than for with vaccination. But what they found is that with muscular injections of the mRNA vaccine in mice, that if the vaccine got into a vein and became accidentally an intravenous injection, the mice got myopericarditis. And so they're thinking that in these rare cases that there's the possibility that you're jabbing this needle into the muscle and it's hitting a vein possibly or you know going through a capillary getting in somewhere that it's not supposed to necessarily and causing this inflammation. All the more reason to get the shot in the butt. There's even just big muscle. Yeah, so what they say, their conclusions from this study, the study provided in vivo in living animal evidence that inadvertent intravenous injection of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines may induce myopericarditis. Brief withdrawal of syringe plunger to exclude blood aspiration may be one possible way to reduce such risk. So instead of just jabbing the needle in and squirting the vaccine in, take a second to pull the plunger out if you are delivering the vaccine to see if there's blood. And if there is, you know that you've hit a vein. Take two. Take two. Sorry, got to do it again. Don't want you to have heart inflammation. So that's good information. That should probably get out there. Yeah, right. I think it's very interesting. I mean, this is still caveat in mice, but it's not something that would it could only positively affect people to make that slight change, especially when vaccinating young men. Yeah, I mean, it's not going to hurt to make sure you're not giving a shot into the veins. There's literally nothing like that's not, there's only positives there. This is something we have to sit and wait to collect all the data and get it peer-reviewed and figure all this stuff out. Just do a little plunger pull. That's easy. That's a very easy thing to get out there and ask people to do. So I hope, yeah, I hope that happens. Right. And if that can change the prevalence of these very rare cases, that could be, it's still going to be a massive result. It could be really helpful to people. That's what I had for the COVID update. Does anyone else have COVID news? No. Yeah. Well, it's over. I said before it's over. So you, new people, it's not over yet as much as we like it to be. It's the same thing is over. It's never going away. Exactly. Yeah. It's just getting down to a regular tide. Right? We've got the waves on top of the tide. We've got the big waves and then we'll get there. Yes. This disease, we're going to learn how to live with it. That's what we're doing right now. So thank you to vaccines. Thank you to antivirals. If anyone you know needs someone to talk to to get convinced for vaccination, if anyone you know has questions about vaccination and you are tired of talking and you think it might help, let them know about us and see if, you know, if they ask, we're here. I'm here and willing to answer questions. All right. This is This Week in Science. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode. Thank you for listening. It's really wonderful that you take time out of your week to share that time with us, to spend it with us, to put us in your ears, to let us put the science in your head. Really glad that you chose Twist This Week once again. If you do appreciate what we do every week, please consider heading over to twist.org and clicking on that Patreon link. Patreon allows us to continue doing what we're doing. By supporting us at $10 a month or more, you will be thanked by name at the end of the show and get some nice little gifts in the mail. Thank you for your support. Help us continue to bring science insanity to the world, to even more people. It would be really great to be able to reach even more people with your help. We really couldn't do it without you. And now we're coming back with This Week in Science to that part of the show that we love to call Blair's Animal Corner. With Blair! Whatcha got, Blair? Oh my gosh, we've arrived. It's worm milk time! What does that even mean? What's worm worm milk? I mean, so everyone listening watching wherever you are around the world, if you're eating breakfast, if you're eating any meal, but specifically if you're eating breakfast, I suggest you put the spoon down to enjoy this amazing story. Wow. This is from University College of London. This is looking at C. elegans, our buddies, C. elegans, the worms that we use to study to figure out how to prevent aging. Something near and dear to my heart. Their lifespan can be massively increased by gene manipulation up to 10 fold. We know this. If we can figure out how this works, this could help us slow human aging, of course. So, in the latest attempt to unlock the key to long life through C. elegans, scientists have discovered that as warm mothers age, they secrete a milk-like fluid through their vulva that is consumed by their offspring and supports growth. This is both a selfless and sacrificial act, and it helps explain a number of mysteries that scientists have had about this nematode worm. It's both a form of primitive lactation, which only a few other invertebrates have been shown to do, and a form of reproductive suicide. Why? Because as warm mothers milk themselves to death, they are sacrificing their internal organs and tissues when they run out of reproductive material. They have both male and female reproductive organs, so the females will reproduce by fertilizing themselves with a very limited stock of sperm. And when the sperm runs out, within days of sexual maturity, they stop reproduction. They have nothing else to use, right? Then they generate large quantities of yolk-rich fluid, which accumulates in large pools inside their bodies. It destructively consumes their internal organs. They lay more than their own body weight in unfertilized eggs. The previous assumption was, this is just a mistake, basically, like their body was dying and it just kind of blah. But now, this is part of this worm milk. They're destroying themselves in the process of transferring nutrients to offspring. The unfertilized eggs are full of yolk milk. Yoke milk! So they are acting like milk bottles. The baby worms do in fact eat them. It helps keep those worms alive. This milk-like fluid appears to benefit those young worms. They found larvae indeed ingesting worm milk, and that when they have access to milk, they grow more quickly. So this is a new way that has been discovered that C. elegans maximizes evolutionary fitness. This is important because it comes at a time when they cannot reproduce anymore. So what else can they do to give their DNA a kind of a boost? And it is to basically destroy themselves to improve the fitness of those babies. Once they've run out of sperm, what do I do? Oh, of course, I melt down my own tissues to turn into yolk milk to transfer to my offspring. Let me be the giving worm. Yes. It really is. It is the giving tree story, but it's a worm. Yes, that secretes yolk milk out of its vulva indeed. This seems to have a genetic location and origin that is related to what gets messed around with when they're able to extend these nematodes' lives. So really where this gets interesting, besides just being a crazy thing that has been learned, is that this might be the key to them being able to extend the lives of C. elegans. So if really all they're doing is turning off suicidal reproduction, then this doesn't actually help us figure out how to make us live longer. So this is a really important key to figure out. If this is what they were effective, they were turning off suicidal reproduction by increasing their age, then really we learned nothing in relation to extending our own lives. Lead author Professor David Gem said, quote, in the end, what is critically important is to understand the principles that govern the process of C. elegans aging and explain the cause of age-related disease more generally. We don't yet understand this for any organism, but for C. elegans we're getting there and the discovery of worm milk gets us another step closer. So worm milk is not like a technical term, is it? There's no lactose in it. It's actually, yolk milk is a closer thing to say. If you want to call it worm yolk milk, that's probably the most accurate. It's really just yolk. Basically it's yolk secretions. They are they are dissolving their internal tissues and organs to create yolk-filled unfertilized eggs for baby worms to eat. If that's better. Here are your snacks. They are part of me. I am you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I just thought you all might really appreciate that. And now you can go back to cooking, eating. I don't know. Maybe can you? I hope you're not shopping at the grocery store right now in front of the dairy aisle. Every mother is sitting looking at their child right now. Yeah. Thinking I am yolk-filled. You're dissolving me from the inside. You are dissolving me. Being consumed. Yeah. So that was my worm milk story. Any questions? So just tell the mothers out there. It could be worse. It could be worse. Yeah. But it could be worse, but at the same time, yeah, we're not worms. But there is a lot to be learned from the worms, especially when it comes to like you are saying Blair, aging, longevity, figuring out whether or not we can affect some of these genes that are involved. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I just really wanted to spend some time with the word yolk milk. But now I'll move on to a silly story. It's nice and quick. It's from Tel Aviv University. And it was some researchers who wanted to figure out why women are always colder than men. Why are women always cold? And men are like walking around in t-shirts and shorts. And women are like, turn the heat up. Like give me a blanket. Which like might not be a universal truth, but it is a common experience. Yeah. So researchers at Tel Aviv University School of Zoology want to offer an evolutionary explanation to this phenomenon. In fact, their research has shown that it is not unique to humans. Many male species of endotherms specifically looking at birds and mammals prefer cooler temperatures than females. And so they have theories, but for I'll explain what they did. They have a statistical and spatial analysis of distribution of birds and bats. This is all over Israel. Israel is a great place to do it because they have an insane variability in temperatures and, um, and types of habitats and lots of birds and bats that are native. Birds and bats were also a great choice to look at because they fly, they're very mobile, and they, so it allows for a lot of spatial separation between the sexes. So all of that to say they could see kind of a nice microcosm of what birds and bats are doing in terms of males and females and preferred temperatures. And migratory birds, males spend the winter in colder areas than females in many mammals that even in ones that have pairs or mixed groups for all of their lives, males would prefer shade where females preferred sunlight. Males sometimes would go higher up mountains. Females would remain in the valleys. And this was over 40 years of research on thousands of birds and 11,000 individual birds and bats in this study. So this is a pretty, pretty wide, widespread study. And so, uh, they propose that this is a built-in evolutionary difference between heat sensing systems in the two sexes, which is related, among other things, to reproduction and caring for offspring. So there are certain times that segregation is really helpful in species between males and females. And so this might actually be something that is being pushed based on these temperature differentials. They say there's a lot of previous research on different pain sensations and experiences and neural mechanisms between males and females within a species. And so this could be just another sensing difference in males and females, right? And so this could help with reduced competition over environment, especially in species where males can become aggressive towards babies. But also females are often the ones that are trying to maintain body temperature of babies before they can temperature regulate on their own. And so there might be a reason that females would spend more time in the warmer areas because of that. So they're just kind of accustomed to it from rearing young. And so this is the craziest thing. One of the lead researchers said, quote, the bottom line is going back to the human realm, we can say that this difference in thermal sensation did not come about so that we could argue with our partners over air conditioning, but rather the opposite. It is meant to make the couple take some distance from each other so that each individual can enjoy some peace and quiet. So that's a leap, I think. But I do think it's interesting that males and females have different temperature preferences in bats and birds as well as in humans. I think that's probably one of the most interesting points there is that, okay, these temperature differences that we argue about, you know, oh, I need the warmer side of the bed. I need another blanket or whatever. Turn the air conditioner up, turn the air conditioner down. These things we think of as very human behavioral dynamics that they're not, they're maybe more, they're not even just mammalian. They're across different, you know, different taxa. And so I think that's fascinating. But the idea that part of it is evolutionarily on purpose to keep males and females apart, that there's potentially a benefit for females to, you know, when we've talked about lions and other bears, other animals that where the males can be aggressive and they seek out young so they can kill them and have another chance with the female for reproduction. And so if you think about it, maybe it's like, okay, I got it. Yeah, that was nice and cozy. I got to go now. All right, see you later. I'm going to protect my kids. You know, maybe that's where it came from. Who knows? This is definitely one of those cause and effect questions where it's, it could also be the other way. It could be sure that their internal processing is that require the females to have a higher temperature than males and it has nothing to do with needing to separate them. Yes, we're a plot where we're attributing value or where maybe there is no behavioral value. What are you going to say, Justin? I was just going to say, it just seems like everybody might be overthinking it might just be an evolutionary adaptation. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Like I'm nice and warm, but do you want, would you like to snuggle? Right, great. Maybe it's better for relationships. I think it's just like men were like, woman won't lie with me in cave. And then the warmer guys over, over the years, they were the ones who were like, they were successful because they were That's the thing. We don't know. We don't know the answer to it. It's all figuring out these evolutionary reasonings. Is it behavior? Is it social? Is it, is it physiology? But that's super fun. And the last thing I will just mention is that a lot of reptiles have temperature dependent sex determination. So there is a fundamental difference in the way an animal develops in reptiles based on what temperature they're at. So there is no reason that evolutionarily that's a carryover of some sort. And perhaps it is better for reproduction if women have lower temperatures. Maybe it's better for that self-division and for everything to work. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's all it is. Yeah. I think it's funny that the one of the leads researchers though is like peace and quiet. It's an evolutionary reason to have separate beds. It's an evolutionary reason that I need a den. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Thank you for that, Blair. This is This Week in Science. And you know what this time of year is. This time of year always brings Blair's Animal Corner calendars. We now have a link on the website. So if you head over to twist.org, you can get yourself an order for the Twist Blair's Animal Corner calendars for 2022. Head on over. Get your orders in today. Justin, what stories do you have for us? Okay. So this is a very small finding. There's an anatomically modern human jaw was discovered in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Sulawesi, I think, is the island of where Indonesia is. It's kind of confusing the maps down there. There's like also just next to Kallimantan, if you're familiar, which is also Burma, which is also Malaysia, I think. There's like a lot of, they're still figuring out all the names. They're still working on all the names. But this big island, which I think Indonesia is on, there is a jaw that they've dated between 16 to 25,000 years old and is a very rare find. It's, I think, the oldest one on the Sulawesi island that they've discovered at this point of a modern complete, of an anatomically modern human. The discovery, the recovery of these elements consisting of basically the complete palate and the frontal process of a human right side of the jaw, it belonged to an elderly individual. They haven't been able to age or sex it, which is usually something you can do with teeth. These teeth are very small, which might make you assume it was young, except that it exhibits very severe wear on a lot of dental pathologies that push it into that more elderly age. So they're having some issues dating the age exactly, sexing it. It's small, which is sort of, this teeth are small, which is sort of weird. They have some aboriginal native looking aspects to them, but it's still a curiosity. It's still sort of an interesting find, especially where it is. This is right in the crossroads of where we're finding Homo Floriensis, where we're finding the other, there's like another hobbit, like right in the same area, I forgot what the name of that one is. This is also where we have this very distinct line between the Papuan lineages and an East Asian lineage. This is also an area where everybody's got some Denisovan. This is also the area where it's thought that the aboriginals of Australia would have progressed through at some point in order to reach Australia. So it's this very interesting area, so they found this call. It's one of the oldest that they found of a modern human, but now what I really want them to do, they go into great length, describing the morphology and just get some DNA. They don't even talk about the, because that's still become hopefully. They have teeth, so they can hopefully get DNA and dentin out of the teeth and get some information. Yeah, and they may have more and they may have more finds there. So this was a site that they were digging in that they initially had found burned animal bones and some small signs of at least manufactured, what looked like the manufacturer stone tools, if not the stone tool artifacts themselves. So they had some clues towards human habitation, but they haven't found, this is the first human find that they've got there. So they're hoping that there's a burial site somewhere nearby that this might have been displaced at some point slightly, so they're gonna be going through this area and digging more and more. But the Sulawesi site, I'm kind of excited about it. Hopefully they'll find more. Hopefully they can get some DNA extracted from some of this, because this island's story is pretty wild. They do have findings of stone tools elsewhere on the island that are like a hundred, an 18 to 194,000 year old. There are stone artifacts and technologies that are straightforwardly not associated with human fossils that they have found near them. So the identity of who made them is unknown, but it's been kind of thought that this could be Denisovans that were there, that they may have been present in that period of time. So there could be also overlap in time between Denisovans. Some evidence on the northern part of the islands are saying maybe 30,000, to as recent as 14,500 years ago, there could have been Denisovans. Which if correct, both means that they were there at the same time as humans, because now we're finding atomically modern humans in that area. It could also be kind of curious because it means that Denisovans would have been capable of some major sea crossing, so that instead of Denisovan modern human admixture happening through more on a mainland of Asia, that they could have actually been taking place on islands. Again, and or this could be people who had admixt, who had moved. We could be talking about a hybrid thing. So there's all sorts of interesting things that can get unraveled once this, once this fossil, once this, and hopefully others can be found, can answer. Finally, there's an element. Need more than one for sure. Yeah, there's an element of this that's also interesting. In the region, there are early human ghosts species. There are ghost species that can be inferred from patterns of archaic integration into the genomes of the modern day people there in various parts of the island, Southeast Asia, and Asia in the wider region that we don't have currently identified as Neanderthal or Denisovan and aren't associated with any other lineage of modern human. Now, could this be something along the lines of the Homo Floriensis or the other one whose name I keep forgetting, which I got to learn because it's going to come up again. Maybe that those are some of those ghost lineages. Maybe it's something else. So there's a whole bunch of exciting stuff we got to learn out of Wallacy. Very cool. Yeah. Did you have something else? Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Just good news. Healthcare edition. I just pulled this one up while we were doing the show because I totally had missed it ahead of time. Somebody in the chat pointed out. So I found just good news story this week. And this one has to do with healthcare. Turns out Americans are investing more in being healthy. This is where it has come from. This is from the Healthcare Cost Institute, Annual Healthcare Cost and Utilization Report. It finds that we spent 2.9% more per person on healthcare in the United States in 2019. And that between 2015 and 2019, we increased our investment in healthcare by 21.8% or $1,074 per person. Our investment, huh? Yeah, a utilization of healthcare services declined slightly in 2019. We still had increase. So we like healthcare. We're not using it as much. That's great. But we're putting more money into it. Because we love to be healthy. That's why I'm reading it. People are spending an increased over that five-year period that they studied between 2015, 2019, 14.8% more today in 2019 than they did in 2015. Prices only increased 10.5% while the professional services increased 3.9% over those years. It's sort of interesting. Outpatient services, pricing increased 31.4%. Oh, these are prices not necessarily just based on spending. Inpatient admission cost grew 30.8%. Spending on prescription drugs increased 28.4% over the five years. This is just talking about the cost increases. Not that people are using healthcare more. We actually are kind of trying to avoid it for some reason. We're avoiding it because it's really expensive. Healthcare costs are increasing. We're spending more money on healthcare. But we're not using it as much probably because we are avoiding it because it's expensive. So this is not good news, Justin. But we're trying to be healthy. More in the end. You know what? It's probably supply and demand. More people are going to get checkups or something, except it's declining. Yeah, no one went to the doctor last year. COVID's a little bit different. Nobody was going. All right. Is it just really good news? Yeah, is it? All right. Last time, that's the last time I try to find the just good news story while the show was already going because that did not work. That did not work out well. I thought that was because it was like Americans are spending more on their health. I thought it was like, yes, finally people are doing good things with their money. But it turned out we were just paying more for the same or less actually service. Paying more and getting less the American dream. Meanwhile, some really good news potentially. The World Health Organization has green-lit malaria vaccine. The vaccine is a bit controversial because it does only have 30% effectiveness. It takes four shots to really be effective in kids. But when used with other treatments and other prophylactics, it can reduce incidents of disease, hospitalization, death by 60 to 70%. So it is another tool in the toolbox. So the World Health Organization has said, yes, let's use it. And this will allow it to be distributed throughout Africa and malaria, prone regions, and hopefully save lots of lives. Fingers crossed. We'll see where that goes. In other really good news or interesting news, very good news for one person. Potentially great news for more people if it works generally. Researchers reported this last week in Nature, their use of deep brain stimulation to treat depression in a woman. The woman had not reacted well to any other treatments for depression. Nothing else seemed to work. And the researchers said, well, let's try this deep brain stimulation. Let's see if it helps. The researchers previously have tried deep brain stimulation to try and treat depression. And it has not really had great results. But the difference this time is that the researchers took the time to measure her brain activity while she was experiencing depressive thoughts, depressive incidents throughout her day. And so every time she would have a depressive thought, she would mark it and say, I'm having a depressive thought. And they would take a look at what was happening activity-wise within her brain. And so they got a recording of that and plugged that in to their stimulator so that the stimulator reacts to that specific brain activity as opposed to just stimulating a particular area of the brain. So it is very specifically unique to this one woman. But the treatment made her smile and laugh for the first time in what she said was as long as she could remember. It is successful. It has been successful for this woman, successfully treating her depression to the point where she's able to have her negative thoughts interrupted by the brain stimulation so that they don't continue their feedback loop so that she doesn't get into a depressive spiral. The researchers are saying that they hope that they will be able to do this kind of work within more people in the future. This is for sure the kind of thing that is a last-ditch effort because it is implanting something into the brain. It's very invasive. And if people can respond to drug treatments, then that's going to be better, hopefully, than going to deep brain stimulation. But the researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, said that they're really starting to recognize some of the complexity involved in how mood is regulated in the brain as a network. Sarah, she said, when I first received stimulation, I felt the most intensely joyous sensation and my depression was a distant nightmare for a moment. I just laughed out loud. It's the first time I had spontaneously laughed or smiled in five years. You know, this is interesting. I feel like it's based on the same basic theory as shock treatment, like electric shock treatment, like you're trying to interrupt the negative thoughts. But that's using a hammer and this is using a scalpel, right? So you're basically just saying like, just stop everything as opposed to like, oh, let's interrupt this very specific brainwave at this very specific moment. That's really interesting. I love that. Yeah. And hopefully, this can treat more people. This device is used normally to treat epilepsy. It's the NeuroPACE-RNS system. They've adapted it and it costs about 26,000 pounds, $35,000. But they're hoping to recruit more people for a larger trial to see if this can be more broadly successful than previous efforts. So this would be like a pacemaker. Like it would be something that is self-sustaining inside your brain that learns your own brain patterns. Wow. Yep. So it's trained to you, not to anybody else, but yes, it would recognize certain patterns of activity, interrupt those patterns of activity when they arise and hopefully allow you to interact with the world where normally you would not be able to. That's awesome. Yeah. I think it's very, very cool. Really, it's existing technology being used in a slightly different way. It's got a little different spin on it. It's a personalized medicine and hopefully that can be very helpful. And then my final story for the night, maybe if you're constipated, we can treat you and make your memory better? What? Do you have to be constipated? Yeah, it's like that, the prerequisite to getting a better memory. Don't think you have to be constipated. But these researchers publishing, they reported at the European Society of Neuropsychopharmacology and they've also published their work in Translational Psychiatry. They used a 5-HT-4, which is serotonin receptor agonist. There are multiple different forms of serotonin receptors. It's like serotonin is a key that can fit multiple slightly different locks. And when it gets into these different locks, it has a slightly different effect. And 5-HT-4 is a receptor that in the brain has been shown to be involved in cognitive functioning and memory. And there's a lot of 5-HT-4 receptors involved in the hippocampus and amygdala and areas related to memory formation. Well, it's also in the gut and a compound called procolapride is an agonist of the 5-HT-4 receptor. It gets in there, binds to the receptor, and in the gut, it treats constipation. When it gets into the brain, according to this study, it improves your memory, which changes brain activity because it's stimulating these same receptors just in different locations. So in this study, their volunteers for the study were not constipated. Just normal people, but they got the constipation drug. So my question that has not been answered adequately in the paper or anywhere is whether or not they were more regular after this study or during the study, but after just six days of procolapride, they had improvements in their ability to remember images during a trial situation. Lose of diarrhea. I hope not. Okay, so immediately then, I'm trying to do the what came first thing. So if somebody deals with frequent constipation, is there a higher generation of this that's being utilized to attempt to treat constipation? And then when the constipation is overcome, does this then migrate to the brain? No, so it's in the bloodstream. If you take it as a pill, right? Systemically, it's going to go to the gut and it also apparently can get into the brain as well. But I don't mean it as the drug. I mean, if this is something, I'm talking about the natural formation of this to fight, to get somebody unblocked. What do you mean the natural formation? I thought you said that this is utilized to the bodies uses this to combat. No, no, no. So in the gut, the activation of these serotonergic receptors leads to increased motility and the pushing, the gut moves things out. But the serotonin or whatever it is is not doing that naturally. Serotonin, yes. Serotonin will naturally be involved in that in the natural process. And so this drug basically adds more. It's like getting more serotonin, but it's not serotonin. Right. So my question though is, is being constipated, generating more serotonin in the gut to attempt to overcome it? And then once overcome, does it get into the bloodstream, go to the brain, and give you a better memory? Because then I want you know what I want to do. That means I now want to study people who have frequent constipation and see what their memory is like. I want to know if people who are on this drug on a regular basis have improved memories. Okay, that would be, that's fine. That's step one. Step one. You take this for constipation, has it helped your memory as well? I want to test the memory of people with IBS. I have a feeling some of the most hallowed halls of physics and computer programming have a lot of people texting from the bathroom. Possible. Right. Now I'm starting to, I'm starting to formulate a hypothesis there, Justin. This was just, I say this problem, remember? Do an experiment. Okay. I think it's a good study. If somebody's looking for a study, I would, I would see if there's a correlation between memory skills and IBS or frequent constipation. IBS covers a lot of things though. The constipation one. Yeah. You have to be specific. Yes. People who get. So the researchers, they're, they're wondering whether or not they, to get better results if they need to increase the dose of the, the drug compound in their studies. They need to see if they can replicate these findings again. This is just a proof of concept. So they had one study prior that led them to doing this one. It's still just very proof of concept. There are a lot of questions to ask here. But yeah, potentially frical, fricalapride might clear you up and clear it, get your brain working too. Rock Haglin thinks I'm conflating memory with intelligence. No, they're not the same thing. I totally agree. However, I've met people with photographic memories who always have imposter syndrome because they feel like this is, they feel like they're cheating a little bit. Like people who have real photographic memories, take a look at something, walk away from it and not having read it, now can read through a page of material because they looked at it. Don't like to mention that because they know other people can't and they might, they have this weird imposter syndrome where like I'm just doing it because I can still read it now, not because I know the material. Like somebody else might know the material even though they don't have the memory of it. It's this really interesting thing. I don't know how many of these folks you've met, I've met a good handful of them and had crazy conversations about this stuff. But having a really good memory, especially when you're dealing with large data sets or information like doctors typically have to have really good memories, people working with large data sets of information have to have really good memories to be effective in those roles. So it's not a complete conflation, but there is a very useful tool for humans to have really good memories. Yes, it's a great tool to have, we need good memories. Memories help us, memory helps us get through so many things in life and when our memories begin to fail us, it makes life much harder. I do hope that tonight's show has unblocked some people and helped your cognitive processes and that TWIS is stimulating your mind. Yes, absolutely. Did we do it? We made it through all the stories. Did anyone have anything else? We made it! We did it! Oh my goodness! I would love to thank you. Thank everyone for being here and being a part of the show tonight, listening in. Fada, thank you for help with social media and show notes. Identity 4, thank you for recording the show. Gord, I want to say thank you and Aran Lore as well. Thank you for helping in the chat and making sure everything runs kindly in there. And additionally, thank you to Rachel for editing the show and helping create little bits and pieces for social media. We've got audiograms, folks. And most of all, thank you to our Patreon sponsors. 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I've got a laundry list of items I want to address From stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness I'm trying to promote more rational thought And I'll try to answer any question you've got So how can I ever see the changes I seek When I can only set up shop one hour This weekend science is coming in a way You better just listen to what we say And if you've learned anything from the words that we've said Then please just remember it's all in your head This weekend science This weekend science This weekend science Science This weekend science This weekend science Science This weekend science This weekend science This weekend science This weekend science This weekend science This weekend science This weekend science You shrink too For a moment Oh I hit the off button But it didn't want to go off Hey Jake Man, how you doing? First assumptions were correct By Jake Man I love our last song But there's a lyric That used to be funny That's not funny In the current time anymore And Could it be clipped Could it be clipped early? It's in the second half of the song I know maybe I could just not play The whole song anymore You could fade it out at a particular time Find a good fade out moment I know I've had the same thought I've had the thought Thanks everyone this is the after show We're here Justin's not Back yet He'll be back in a minute Yeah okay I'm not alone in that thought then Yeah no I've thought about it too Is it noticeable in there? Is it bad? Yeah It's bad Yeah Based on the knowledge that you gain As you grow As a human I'd like to do that Maybe that's what I'll do Maybe we will not dance for the full 3 minutes and 33 seconds I think that's fine It's a pretty long song Long song Yeah We definitely have one of the Not the longest But one of the longest Of any podcast I think Yeah The intro song I'm okay with Because it is like 30 seconds I love this song And also Our whole intro is With the disclaimer and everything It's like this kind of longer thing But yeah The intro is short I'm sure on the podcast That people are like Tuning out and moving on to the next podcast Well before Yeah Well before the song is over There's a cat hair all over my Mixer I have a hypothesis Ha Yay, noddles ordered Calendars Thank you Yeah, I gotta get that Settled and handed off to Rachel Before I go offline Yes That's on my list Don't worry, it's on my list So I can order it Yeah, basically I'm just gonna I have to plop the pictures on And then she has to check the dates And then it can be ordered But it's set up so that you can Like quote unquote collaborate So I can just Invite her to collaborate on the Cool On the calendar It should be easy That's definitely gonna happen this weekend Great We'll get it this weekend You're gonna make a newsletter for us too, right? No I know Should I stop mentioning the newsletter and the thing? No, Rachel can make it I'll share that with her too I mean You can sign up for a newsletter But you won't get one You'll get one like quarterly Quarterly newsletter It's time for another newsletter I think Did we miss the last quarter? I think we missed the last quarter No, we made the one before that It's time for a newsletter Yeah, I get Kai to do it Semi-quarterly What would that be? By yearly By annually Yeah What was I thinking? I was thinking I'll just try to log in Share this thing with me And I'll just do it And it'll be fine Because if you help me log in Then I'm in and I can do it Yeah Indeed And I can do it before you go away And That's fun I know, I'm gonna get to see both of you in person We'll have to take a photo Obviously At least one One photo That's all There'll be a photo booth We can do a whole photo booth thing Photo booth Wait, that sounds like an enclosed space No, it's outdoors There's no enclosed space It's like a backdrop Okay, that's great Come on, dude Not sure I like that, Paul We email everybody All the letters and numerals And they can build their own newsletter It's like build a bear, but build a newsletter Here's all the letters and numbers We would have used In constructing our newsletter This quarter Yeah, no graduate gamer Yeah, I was ignoring that one No If we're planning on going to any conferences next year Not yet Well, yeah I am running a conference For Science Talk Science Communication Professionals Conference in Portland We're hoping it will be in person In the end of March Which seems like a good amount of time From now to Be able to do that kind of thing So fingers crossed Yeah Yeah, what is a conference? I was, I Excuse me My throat's drying out Good It's because I'm drinking a cider In that water It's dehydrating Yeah Today I was part of a conference I've moderated a small panel discussion For the ASTC Aztec American Science and Technology Center Or Association of Science and Technology Centers Which is pretty cool Hmm Yeah But it was virtual I put on like real clothes I put on a bra I put on makeup I did my hair It was this whole thing that I did today And I haven't done anything like this In a very long time And it made me realize that I'm going to have to Do that very soon When I go visit Yeah California I don't know how to Dress for the public anymore Hahaha I'm I wear yoga pants And T-shirts Well you might want to bring something else When you come In a couple weeks Like a sweatshirt No like Maybe a dress What A dress or a pantsuit I don't know Ooh a pantsuit I think it better be like from the 1970s And made out of fine corduroy Burnt umber Oh Grouchy Gamer I have not seen it I don't know anything about it And I said I would take a look at it Thank you for the reminder I know it's California I can wear whatever I want No Paul No He says I can wear whatever I want Blair You're using your real name I'm just gonna Pack my yoga pants And then I'm gonna go to Heather and Jojo's house And I'm gonna say Heather can I wear your clothes They'll be fine actually They'll dress you They've been going out in public They know how to wear clothes Yeah That's right Getting back to real clothes Yeah Heather will dress you no problem It's a thing everybody Yeah I'm a little sad about it Like I realized I I mean nice clothes They're nice but I don't want to wear them Yeah No it's definitely I had a moment of like Denial When I started going back to work full time Yeah I thought we agreed As a society That we weren't gonna wear bras anymore We can wear Comfy pants Who gave it Because it wasn't me The time I was going back to work everyone was doing it Again Yeah I mean there are people In the world who really like clothes And It's a thing and there are a lot of them This is why we have a problem with Fast fashion destroying the world But Yeah I was really hoping That This would be the pandemic Would teach people that we don't have To Be focused on fashion And that we could wear what we want And be comfortable And you know not always have to be Shopping and buying and consuming And destroying the planet And you know Focusing our whole economy Like in our society On this capitalistic consumer Culture Man I'm just gonna go I just want to stay in my cave everybody My next year has been stressful for me So I need to spend the next year In my cave I'm pretty sure that's not what the research said But okay It's an even amount of time isn't it Isn't that what the research said Yeah I mean if you interpreted it a certain way Oh Yes You gotta have a good mask That's it Paul Oh and Eric Knapp Yeah Neck ties and high heels Are two things we don't really need For most For most occasions I will say there are some Where they are nice but For most No high heels I don't think so I was walking behind a woman on the sidewalk today After I picked up my son from Or dropped Kai off at school and I was like I'm gonna go back to my car and wear my tennis shoes And then I'm like hiking up the hill And there's a woman wearing like a pencil skirt And high heels trying to walk up the hill in front of me She was super slow And her heels kept slipping and she just was like T-t-tottering And I was like that Like nope I will not do that again Yeah I will not I will only wear heels that are a very small wedge Now What are you trying to do Gaurav Sharma Yes Yes These are the snuggliest rhinos you'll ever meet Rhinos are big time snugglers So we got up the explore .org This is the rhinos waking up It's six rhinos They all go in at the same time at night They kind of March in there together at night And they kind of have their own little spots In this little enclosure And Almost all at once They just drop down And snuggle up to each other Do a little bit of nuzzling A little bonking around And then they fall asleep And this is them Six rhinos waking up in the morning Sort of one by one We're like come on Let's go start our day Those are white rhinos They're so cute They are so cute They're such snuggly bugs They have shrek ears They're pointing around They're so cute What's also very interesting about this They also The outdoor cam Sort of the front part of the vision Is This row of poop Because They all go to the same spot Yeah, a midden They go to the same They have like a pooping spot And they've declared This is where we go poop and pee And then you know throughout the day One by one they'll go over there Back up to it And they're so civilized On top of being snuggly In the bathroom Backing up That was what I was a zookeeper One of my favorite strings I did have to clean up the rhino Midden every day It was a workout But you didn't have to wander around Looking for it, right? Once a day Once a day we cleaned it up It was two wheelbarrows For one rhino Yeah So If you catch it just right You can actually on the outdoor cam You can see them doing the cleanup You can actually watch What it's like to clean up after six rhinos Yeah Somebody does not want to get up Somebody's like it's too early It's too early No, the sun's up No Oh I want to go in there and snuggle with rhinos Is that allowed? No, you'll for surely die You could pet some rhinos Through some fencing But I would not suggest you do free contact with a rhino Okay They seem really friendly They're extremely friendly They're very gentle They have terrible eyesight They have really good sense of smell and hearing So if you make any strange sounds Or smells If I'm not a rhino You could die Basically Because they're thousands of pounds And they'll charge you I've seen them sort of charge each other a little bit And I'm always wondering How they haven't all lost an eye Because even though they're like snuggling noses They've got that big horn right there I mean it's made out of keratin So it's like On the edge here It's probably nice and smooth Also it's pretty blunt at the tip You'd have to have a lot of momentum behind it Which I feel like a rhino could have Definitely, but not when they're snuggling But they're not like I've been watching and they go out And then they play throughout the day They're out there playing with each other And they have the cutest little tails That are wagging As they're having fun These are the cutest, sweetest Creatures I've ever met They're my new favorite animal And I can't believe They're in danger All of them, all five Because of their freaking horns Which is just fingernails It's very sad Very sad Because they're beautiful incredible animals So this is, I mean We've talked on the show about it before A lot of it has to do with Ancient tradition related to Medicine But there's kind of two problems with that So one is The perpetuation of that within the community But the second and potentially The much worse problem Is that people travel to those areas And want to buy that stuff As like a weird souvenir Oh no Or they import it They decide that this ancient medicine is worthwhile And so they want it imported into other countries And so the demand has exploded But ultimately There are areas Where Conservationists have worked directly With People who live alongside these animals And convince them that those animals Are worth more to their community Alive Than as medicine And so it's a tough process Because you can't just walk in as like The white American And be like This is why your medicine is BS And you need to do this So you have to work Are you telling me it's local medicine I thought it was from places Not in the locality Where it was being used as medicine There's lots of Indian And Asian rhino populations And so That's definitely part of it Well I think if everybody Got to watch these rhinos Snuggling up for bed You know the whole idea that You know because I've Heard that it was used for Basically to treat or rectile This function If you see how Non-ferocious and how snugly The structures are And how all they want to do is Pop down and take a nap Might change your mind about what your medicine Is going to do to you But Justin you haven't watched long enough then Because there's a very clear reason It's Suffice it to say If You're in the zoo at the right time A child will ask their parent Why does that rhino have five legs Oh I haven't been watching It's striking It's fantastic Well maybe these are mostly females Look at how cute they are How snugly Ugh And yeah there was A baby rhino I think with its parents At the Copenhagen zoo And it was just Being Like an alpha Rhino And going up and pushing its dad around And the dad's like Backing up Oh it was so cute It was so so cute I'm trying to find The year that you Let us see the rhino blare Oh I was still a zookeeper then right Yeah Before we moved so I'm guessing 2014 or something I was a zookeeper from 2010 Until 2013 2013 okay No Were you still a zookeeper then Until July 2013 But So I had gone to Israel for six months and come back And then I was a zookeeper For like Three months before I got a job With the aquarium Right okay But then you went back to the zoo As an educational specialist For five years Gosh it's gotta be tough The one in the back that wakes up and then all the rest In front of you are still sleeping Come on you gotta convince everybody Get up come on wake up somebody I gotta go I got things to do Where are you gonna ask Kiki I was just trying to remember If you Took us to see the rhino When you were an educational specialist No I wouldn't have had rhino access then Okay I was definitely a zookeeper Okay I think that was like at the very end of my 10 years Zookeeper like I think I even said like Okay Kiki if you want to meet the rhino Yeah I'm leaving so I do think it was 2013 Okay I will try to find it It was such an amazing experience Thanks for that It would have had to have been either 2012 or 2013 Because it started the show in 2012 Right which is why I thought it was later Right Yeah no I was at a crime of the bay from 2013 to 2015 I thought I had pictures Trying to push your way through a crowd When that crowd is a bunch of rhinos Hmm No that one just does not want to get up No That rhino is like No thank you He's even got another one pinned in There's one that always Goes and sleeps in the corner Two in the back corner always Are completely snuggled up next to each other How do you know it's the same one Because I've watched enough of this Hours Yeah I've actually This is my I haven't actually seen them waking up before But I like to tune in And watch them all go to bed When I do I watch it as I'm going to sleep When they all come in together They munch a little bit because they get some food Put out for them They do a little bit of snacking And then one by one Or sometimes two at a time Three at a time They'll all hunker down to their spot And how happens pretty quick But oh gosh I like to watch it Right as I'm about to drift off to sleep Then I I dream that I'm a rhino Snuggled up with all my rhino Rhino dreams I like rhino dreams They have one of the best collective Nouns It's a crash of rhino Crash of rhinos that's so good It's very good Yeah like a bedtime snack too Well it seems like we are Yeah Losing energy Well the next time I see you both I'll be wearing a giant dress Wow I'm excited So fun Now I know what you're talking about Yeah I need outdoor clothes too I need people clothes Right Like people clothes I'm very weirded out by this whole thing There's forcing us to be humans Hey I'm not forcing you to do Anything I just invited you To enjoy Yes I can enjoy things I think Maybe Alright well then in that case You're gonna need some rest so say good night Blair Good Good worm milk night Blair Say good night Justin Good night rhino Justin Good Good night Doctor Kiki Good night To all the rhinos Out there Get your calendar orders in Blair have a wonderful couple Of weeks We'll see you in there Thanks everyone for watching Yes Blair will be back at the end of the month But we'll be back next week We'll be back the week after Week in, week out We'll be back and I hope you all stay safe Stay well Snuggle up like the rhinos It's getting to be fall snuggling weather Have a great night, have a great morning Wherever you are Stay curious Subscribe