 This is twist this week in science episode number six hundred five recorded on Wednesday, February 8th 2017 No more monkeying around Hey everyone, I am dr. Kiki and tonight on this week in science. We are going to fill your head with sea lampreys Jekyll and Hyde and carnivorous plants, but first Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer Global warming is a hoax of vast left-wing communist conspiracy to defraud major energy companies And to slow down the American economic system to give unfair advantages to China in all fact The climate is cooling considerably right now over the Northern Hemisphere ice caps are growing coral reefs are rebounding rain forests are resplendent major flooding is it an all-time low Weird weather is nothing new and not only our extinctions a thing of the past New species are showing up all the time why things are looking so good for the environment these days Serious consideration should be given to reducing public lands before nature encroaches any further on what precious little Developed land we have left and while all this good news in jest will likely reported be reported with sinister Inserity by the EPA soon Science will continue to march on this weekend science Coming up next This Science to Kiki and Blair and Good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of this week in science We are back yet again With more science because as Justin cited in the disclaimer science Continues to march on and on and on every week studies that are always So interesting things that are fascinating to consider think about how are they gonna affect our lives? Are they a lot of them won't even but it's just neat to learn about things, right? Learning is just fun Great. I like to learn. Yeah, I like everything that I've brought today Might actually affect your life or has already Okay, well what I brought for the show this week show we got a great show, right? I have stories about male contraception What's that? meat-eating plants and Justin what life changing world changing things that you bring I have got childhood memes Jekyll and Hyde all in my head and how some people think dogs are people well dogs do not Yeah, dogs are dogs even though they know how to live with us, but anyway Blair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, I brought a whole lot of sex. I actually brought a Deficit of sex I brought fake sex and I brought going extremely far lengths for sex Oh my goodness, hopefully we're gonna get to this meal contraception before Just to be too late as it always has been male contraception a little too little too All right, let's jump right into it you guys First off the docket. I'm gonna set a few things straight just a couple of things straight People have been talking about the USDA since last Friday when they removed information databases about animal welfare documents from their website made them not searchable through the web although they are still available through the Freedom of Information Act and You know, I guess like the whole government now everybody you got it You have to fax in your request. Nobody works with emails anymore To click on things no more little never have things right? That's a big question and a very large concern for a lot of welfare animal welfare or animal rights Proponents people who do want to know how are Animals being treated in scientific studies. How are animals being treated in animal housing facilities? How are animals being treated in industrial agriculture facilities? There are all sorts of places where animals are inspectors go in to make sure the rules and regulations are being followed Documents documentation ends up on the website and it's searchable but not as of this last Friday so Bunch of people have been very upset about this very upset about the lack of transparency and what this potentially will mean for Animal welfare as a whole The outcry was so large that as of yesterday February 7th at 12 15 p.m. The US Department of Agriculture had released a statement about the Removal of these reports from the APHIS website animal and plant health inspection service website quote The review of APHIS website has been ongoing and the agency is striving to balance the need for transparency with rules protecting individual privacy in 2016 well before the change of administration APHIS decided to make adjustments to the posting of regulatory records in addition APHIS is currently involved in litigation Concerning among other issues Information posted on the agency's website while the agency is vigorously defending against this litigation in an abundance of Caution the agency is taking additional measures to protect Individual privacy these decisions are not final adjustments may be made regarding information appropriate for release and posting So the question is okay What information will end up back on the website that we do not know obviously there is litigation ongoing and we talk about individual privacy What are the big issues that people are concerned about is the personal information of researchers who do animal Research becoming available to animal rights activists and so the safety of scientists is in question and so There's a lot of ongoing stuff. I don't know if that is specifically There but it's it's much more likely. It's much more likely it is Life's livestock Companies, but yes, yeah Who don't like to it to be known that they've gotten a red flag or something because then they get monitoring By people who want to go in themselves and do some monitoring and do checkups on this sort of thing So it's it's not just the science angle of it Of course the scientific community also wants these standards in place because those standards Help get good science like if you have a good level of care for the animals and experimentation, which we've talked about Yes animals mean extra variables. Yeah, and you get to these variables in there that Are gonna harm the output of the science that's being done So they're absolutely necessary for the scientific community to maintain these to do good science but less Necessary I think for other industries who are looking for have whoever may be a profit margin and may be able to make better profits by Not spending as much time or effort or money to do the Some of the facilities that are covered in the reports that have been removed include zoos Circuses and animal transporters. There are 1,100 research labs and the total number of facilities number is 7,800 So the another large question here that is not addressed is you know This is a department as many other departments in the government that is in transition and the individual who has been put in Charge of the transition team at the moment Brian Clippenstein is He's the executive director of a group called protest harvest is leading this transition team and protest the harvest is a Website or a group that lists amongst its objectives informing quote America's consumers businesses and decision-makers about the threats posed by animal rights groups and anti-farming extremists So protect the harvest the the person who is now in charge of this transition and this year-long review of animal welfare records and Trans the transparency issue There are still questions in the air, but I wanted to make it aware. I may wanted to make our audience aware of the transition that was in place ongoing litigation and the reasoning that the USDA has brought up for For its removal of those documents Come back most likely. Yeah, I just want to re-re-re-reiterate that it's this is not something that was pushed for by the scientific community This is this is a different industry that has this interest perhaps and limiting access to information potentially we don't know that I'm Moving on another. Let's make the information clear this last week news headlines came out that Fukushima has had its largest Radiation measurement ever. Oh my gosh The end of the world people are freaking out again about so no more sushi ever, right? Yeah, no no not at all. So I just want to clarify what has happened. They Tepco the company that is in charge of the Reactor to Fukushima the number one power plant and cleaning everything up Tokyo electric electric power company Holdings Inc. This is Tepco They are they've been trying they're still trying to figure out what the status is because since 2011 when the meltdown occurred The these reactor cores have been in meltdown situation and they've been melting and releasing radiation and doing their thing and they in an ongoing manner they test for Radiation levels and also they try and get closer to get pictures if they can and so They've been able to actually get a telescoping arm with a camera on it into this reactor to this crippled number one power plant and Based on they have this image that they've taken and based on the Static in the image is that's how they determined how much radiation was coming from this reactor Which I think is fascinating using using camera static as a measure of Of radioactivity. So this image that has been shared by Tepco There is a depression kind of a melted hole in a grate at the bottom of the reactor And they think that's where some stuff kind of all piled up and melted through And there is currently drilling its way to the core of the earth will release in magma explosion No, don't know I'm trying not to say no, that's not That's basically it is just a little depression and they actually see bits of the reactor cores, which they had not Seen before there are bits of black that they think Are evidence of the melted cores that they have not actually ever seen before which is great news The radioactivity they just measured at a maximum of three five hundred thirty seabirds per hour But this is also right next to like the camera is right in the reactor core looking like basically right next to the Stuff that's releasing the radioactivity Previous measurements have not been this close You're going to get a bigger measurement, right? Stuck thermometer and oven got hottest reading in house exactly Exactly so This is much higher than the previous high that has been measured But this is a Different method of measuring it and the big take home is that this is not adding any more Danger to the waters is not adding any more danger to the situation What it's going to affect is the cleanup method whether or not tepco can actually go in and clean it up Whether or not they'll be able at this kind of radiation. They probably still can't send robots in there And so what it means is they might have to pull a share noble on it and just encase it in concrete and let nature Do its work and wait and wait and so that's this is what we're looking at is their process And this is just get more information, but it does not change the ongoing story Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah Based on a study we reported on on the show last year if we encase it like Chernobyl and then wait 30 years we'll have some amazing flora and fauna living there on top of it. That's right Everybody wins bring back the biodiversity, right? Nature takes its course Yeah, so anyway the Fukushima news not as big a deal. Hopefully as people had Might have thought it was based on headlines Headlines have been exceedingly misleading. They're very misleading. Yes This is the large largest measurement that they've taken but there are factors relating to how it is this big or why it is this big It's not like it's a it's a new it's all basically Probably always been this big. They just haven't measured it like this before And then moving on to our favorite virus that nobody seems to be talking about anymore because it's winter time here You know it's winter in the northern hemisphere. So who cares my sweet toes. Yeah Zika right we've talked about various vaccine efforts ongoing and there is another one that has just gotten through some new trials, which is very exciting This is a study that was published in nature this week and What it involves is instead of using DNA to encode vaccine components or broken bits of protein from the virus little bits of virus to cause an antibody response In the body, which is how the vaccines work This uses zika virus m RNA So messenger RNA that has been encapsulated. They took it and they wrapped it up in a fatty Fatty bathrobe basically It's a they they took these little m RNA bits these little strands of m RNA and then wrap them up in lipids So it's like soap lipids, right? I love me a good lipid bathrobe. That's right. And so what it can do now. So m RNA gets kind of Gets recognized and it reacts with stuff all the time And so to get past that part of the problem because they need to get it into the cell to have it actually react with the right immune The right immune Stuff to actually cause a good Vaccine reaction, right? You need a good immune response to create these antibodies so that there's immune memory formed And so they have to get past the cell membrane first to be able to do that And so they decided okay lipids will do and these lipids do allow the m RNA to Get into the cell and then there's this really kind of backwards part of the story that they don't really understand how it works the way that it does but These vaccines these RNA vaccines since they do Since they do interact with lots of stuff Mammalian cells internalize RNA very efficiently more efficiently than they do DNA Um They they had to add to it another factor to keep it from getting degraded once it got into the cell So there are all these RNA degrading enzymes and they had to kind of wrap it up Or or add this other little this little factor to the m RNA so that it would last longer But the lasting longer could potentially they thought Make it have less of an immune response, right? So if you you're like here get in there and react with stuff But we're going to um make sure that you're not very nice and things in the cell don't want to react with you So it's like this backwards thing where they want it to have a really great immune response But they also don't at the same time Anyway, it's very strange. They don't they don't understand how it works, but the RNA this m RNA actually has a 20 time times Effect then using DNA so they they could use 20 times less genetic material m RNA than they have to for DNA so they use less stuff It's a smaller amount of stuff. It gets in there and it was able to stimulate a uh an immune response in macaque monkeys and in mice and so the next step is to figure out exactly what this um this uh This nucleoside that they added to it um, how it enables them the molecule to evade immune recognition, but still allows it to have an immune response They got to figure that out But that one detail they don't understand and they say they're going to work on that But that's that's a fantastic detail. Um To work out, but I mean it's in fact a fantastic effect really That if we could apply it elsewhere, we might have uh, you know A 20 fold way of coming up with a lot that cures lots of things Yeah, yeah, so it's a Yeah, I mean and and if we can use mRNA instead of DNA it might make it uh make it easier for us even to come up with Vaccines cures, I love it when science doesn't know something it always leads to something awesome Yeah Yeah, so anyway, those are my intro stories Justin what you got? Yeah, so when we interact with people We often tend to mirror the other person's affect Whether we are doing this through our facial expressions our gesticulations Or in the tone and cadence of our speech we tend to pick up and copy some of the mannerisms of whoever it is We're talking to I have no idea. What do you mean? Often much subtler than what just happened Uh, but a study by michigan state university psychology researchers published online in the journal of personality and social psychology now finds That when preschoolers hang out with each other they tend to take on Not just each other's affects, but each other's personalities Our findings that personality traits are contagious among children flies in the face of common assumptions that personality is ingrained and can't be changed So that's exactly what I thought. This is Jennifer Weddingdale associate professor of psychology and co-investigator of the study But I think it's exactly what I thought when I read that I'm like Is that what they're teaching psychology students because I've always felt when I'm around really negative people I start to get really negative and I start complaining a lot when I'm around really positive people I start noticing what's great about everything Yeah, uh, so it goes on to say this is important because some personality traits can help children succeed in life While others can hold them back the researchers Study two preschool classes for an entire school year analyzing personality traits And social networks for one class of three year olds and one class of four year olds Children whose play partners were extroverted or hard-working became similar to these peers over time Children whose play partners were over anxious and easily frustrated. However did not take on these particular traits Oh, I think that's yeah, that's what eventually I would have expected that kind of could have gone together as well But uh, what happened when you put both of those together Extraverted anxious frustrated No, you put the extroverted hard-working child in with the anxious introverted one and just see what happens Yeah Let's play with their child minds. Yeah personality clash, maybe Uh, so Emily Durbin Study co-investigator and associate professor of psychology said kids are having a bigger effect on each other Then people may realize parents spend a lot of their time trying to teach their child to be patient to be a good listener Not to be impulsive Oh, is that what you're supposed to teach? But this wasn't their parents or their teachers Affecting them. This was their friends their peers. It turns out three and four year olds are being Change agents themselves. Uh, so The study was limited scope to children three and four years old But kind of like your reaction blaire. It's sort of easy to see how the Transferrence of traits takes place Not just in these children But throughout life, right Not just the How you're raised or how you intend to be in the world when you when you go out there But how the people you interact with on your regular basis affects your personality I've always thought yeah, it had to do with emotional intelligence too, right? How much you read other people and how much you can kind of blend in with the crowd and Uh, respond to cues I've always thought those were kind of related Right. So how the personalities in a classroom, for instance might determine the learning environment within that classroom Right. How how you work might be uh might determine your success or who you work with might determine your success at work But also who you hang out with outside of work might influence how you are at work or it could be vice versa Karen might come up a lot like Karen Your home life your relationships outside of work because you can't stop talking about Karen There's probably a certain amount of how long Children hang out together because all of a sudden you go from being with the parents almost all the time right or you know to You're spending all of your time with your con specifics You're spending all of your time playing in a preschool setting or at least you know from 8 a.m Until noon or however long your parents have you in preschool I put I put my son Kai in preschool from like 9 a.m to 4 p.m The last couple of years so that I could have some time to work So he was spending a majority of the day or at least half of the waking hours of the day with other kids I have absolutely no no doubt in my mind that they influenced the way I mean he has his own strong personality, but they definitely influenced the way he interacts with people now Or he could have been a more of an influence on them. I mean that's also possible right like I'm sure dominance has to do with it too, right? So who is dominant in a in a herd in a group in a pack? And then who is picking up after those traits and usually it's not the anxious person. That's the head of the pack Usually it's the extrovert Here's what's sort of interesting though, right? When my takeaway from this is when we start looking at personalities somewhat being genetic and Largely now according to this also being an environmental thing Of course, this is the impressionable age where you're trying to take on And soak up the world around you so it makes sense that they're easily absorbing each other's personalities Maybe just trying them on as opposed to really Um Having three kids you've probably seen each of your kids try on Different personalities from time to time Kai totally did that. It was like he would suddenly He'd be home one day suddenly acting out or he'd be really shy another time or he would just he it was very Obviously that obvious that he was trying on some ways of being So so but but think of this think of this and it's already again This is going to be somewhat redundant and I like yeah, that makes sense and we in ways we already do this but what we might take from the study is a forward-looking thing of a Personality immersion therapy in the future where you might go to a camp full of extroverted people To to to become a little bit more extroverted yourself Uh, you know and again You could it could be things that already people do like go to an artist retreat or join a writing club to capture more creative traits or be around more personalities or you could simply listen to this show and immerse yourself in scientifically curious conversation and become more scientific That is right and as we are so curious about all these Sex stories of blairs. What time is it? What time is it? It's time for there's animal corner. Yeah Well first I have some science about science So every once in a while Researchers will take a look at research that has been done and run models on it And this is important because it takes a look at the research that has been done It identifies trends and it identifies holes in those research areas that need more study Well a recent study from the University of Exeter Was looking at climate change studies Specifically climate change and its impacts on animals More specifically climate change and its impact on marine animals And what they found was that these studies are lacking sex Less than four percent of climate change studies have tested the impact of ocean acidification On males and females separately Looking at how males and females react to ocean acidification and how it affects sexual behavior Well that would just make everything so much more complicated Yeah, so the thing about sex Here's the thing about sex teach me about sex blair It's kind of where we all came from and by we all I mean humans. I mean vertebrates I mean invertebrates. I mean everything that has a genome For the most part There's a lot of asexual reproduction Yeah, but then also they're They're organisms that are mostly asexual that also exhibit sexual reproduction It bleeds in in a lot of places a lot of things Most things with the genome Sex is part of the deal If that external fertilization internal fertilization more and more we're looking and we're seeing that there are Selections being made and they're based on behavior Even when animals are thousands of miles apart from each other And it just all goes into the kind of the soup that is the ocean It's all based on time And hormone response to make sure that these things find each other and create new things right, so It would be a good place to start When looking at marine ecosystems and trying to determine species change Unfortunately looks like this research Tells us that it has not been the main focus of study. So a lot of Studies look at species dynamics. They look at population shifts. They look at changes in dietary behavior they look at All sorts of things but not directly at a difference in response from one gender to another and Direct impacts on sex So climate scientists Study your sex Study animals study marine animals And their gender differences in response To carbon dioxide levels. There we go Yeah, gotta be very that'd be very interesting. Yeah, yeah, especially if we're talking about like many fish species are Different sizes males and females are different sizes. So they're going to be using resources differently invertebrates and Mollusks will often will often have the same kind of size differentials So how much how much carbon dioxide is going to in the water is going to affect a female shell versus a male shell Absolutely, and and we've also we've talked on the show about how carbon dioxide affects hormone response to how it affects Receptors and With broadcast spawners. That's what I was talking about before if sperm is released When eggs are released. Yeah, that's kind of oops end of the line there. Yeah That's a big oops. That's a big oops. It's a big time. Oops Okay. Yeah, um and speaking of external fertilizers I want to talk for a real quick second About and this is external fertilizers not the fertilizer you put on your lawn or in So these are animals where the males and the females release their Stuff so the males release their sperm the females release their eggs Outside of their body and those combine in the water. Um, so there's there's often still mating in these species which Depending on the species sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't usually it's just so um, they're right next to each other when it happens so each individual knows Whose Jeans they're pairing theirs with for the next generation. Um, so when when an animal is making that Energetic investment they They often want to know what genes they're combining their genes with So that they know if it has a better chance in the next generation but so sexual selection in external fertilizers is harder because it kind of Includes a lot of guesswork and it can include a lot of Sneaking around it can include a lot of uh, whoopsies so lamb praise lamb praise are external fertilizers and Our researchers at Hokkaido University have found that They are also very promiscuous. Um lamb praise Males and females gather at this spawning site And it's quite a display Single females mate with many many many males many many many times They in a mating event sometimes females will mate over a hundred times with dozens of males so Wow up until now They haven't known how many eggs are released each time Why the female is mating so many times? That should not be necessary It's more energy and it increases the danger of predation. They're tired and they're exposed So this research was looking at why on earth this female is mating Sometimes over a hundred times with dozens of males They found that females are actually doing something called sham mating Essentially, they're faking it They're go faking it. They're going through they're going through the motions of mating and then they're not releasing eggs Why great question. Why so? Like I don't really know you're not really the one. Yeah I don't want to I don't want to make you feel bad, but this just isn't working for me Um, so in order to test this they had two Experimental areas an experiment a one male and one female were put together and an experiment b Three males and one female were put together and then following each spawning event Eggs were removed with an aspirator and counted So the research researchers predicted that the proportion of sham mating would be lower in a because she only had one choice And she couldn't select her mate. So they think that this is a form of female mate selection So they repeated the experiment 15 times each using different females each female mated an average of 77 times ranging from 20 to 196 times On average sham mating occurred about 65 of the time ranging from 35 to 90 percent And they found that sham mating increased with a larger number of males Well, the number of eggs released on each occasion fell so It looked like the males often released sperm and sham mating. They were completely fooled by it But as we've talked about before on the show sperm is pretty cheap And anyway, um, they that this was consistent with their hypothesis. They think that the female lamprey's they're choosing their mates The other thing they also looked at was one thing that the females might be selecting for which is body size the males wrap their tail around the females tail in mating and Previous research showed that reproductive success varies depending on the male to female body size ratio They found here in fact that the ratio affected sham mating. So if he was too small for her she Did not release any eggs Well, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes that makes perfect sense. Yeah because uh You would assume the larger tailed male Would be older and if you're a little bit older chances are you've survived longer or are just more robust or a combination of the two and that combination of being robust or having just survived out there in the wide open for as long as you have Mad skills Yeah, so their expectation is that body size nest building abilities and other qualities are actually being assessed by these females and This is kind of unusual because there's not a whole lot of studies showing where females select in external fertilization So this uh, it's not the males competing with each other to get access to a female Which is more what we're used to with external mating. So this is Highly unusual in terms of previous studies about this. Um, so It opens it opens kind of a door to new ways of looking at mate selection particularly in external fertilization and future studies can look at All of the different variables of a male and the amount of sham mating that a female does And then they can kind of start to see what actually is Causing the female to either release eggs or Participate in sham mating So pretty interesting stuff It's very interesting stuff and lampreys are just interesting to begin with they are. Oh, they're so cute So cute. They're like look at those. They're just trying to give you a kiss We like eels except they have this tubular mouth that opens onto these scraping and grating teeth Adorable just in time for valentine's day in time for valentine's day. So you have a sea lamprey today And um, yeah, maybe we should have saved this promiscuous sea lamprey story for That's right. This is our pretty Twisted times day You're right. I should have saved all these stories for belt Wednesday. Oh, well Maybe there'll be more next week in science Hopefully there will be more more more more romance in science next week Uh, we have come to the end of the first half of the show. Yeah next Wednesday It's going to be valentine's day. But do you know I think Yesterday yesterday today is the 100th anniversary of eintine einstein's Um, uh cosmological constant Oh So, yeah, we are at the centennial of einstein's Gravitational constant for his and I know it will be the day after the equation. It will be the day after Valen or valent twist Valentine's Day is next week. I'm talking about this right now. This is Yesterday today Yes, anyway a little bit of trivia there for you. We are going to going into the break right now We'll be coming back in just a few moments with Hmm lots more stories Mail Yeah, we'll be talking about things We're gonna talk about some stuff Empty contraception and jekyll and hide coming up in the second and a half so Stay tuned for more this week in science just a few minutes Hey everybody, I want to say thank you so much. We are in february And I hope everyone is enjoying their twist calendars. Let me know if you got it send a picture Tweet a picture let people know that you are enjoying your twist calendar And um, I just yeah, just thank you for ordering those flair. Thanks for making them and I'm glad that we sold out again Thank you everybody Also twist has other merchandise that you might enjoy So if you head on over to twist.org you will be able to find our zazzle Store link twist org is basically the one stop shop for all of the things you consider there is um, there are links to all of Blair's waving account last year. 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Thanks to Our friend fada who breaks all of the stories down so you can get to the stories at the exact time point and you can share those Which is pretty cool So uh, there are lots of different ways, but really however you can help but it really all does help keep this show going We we appreciate your support and we really could not do this without you. Thank you I can't believe you believe in that We disagree, but I still give a damn The ramification of treatments from holy men leaves me slightly Down in the aftermen and hence that's the lives that they lead need adjusting They drive to the bookstore and blindly start trusting the miracles and cures all laid down in black Never even bothering to stop and And we are back with more this week in science. Yeah, we are and justin. What's your brain? I'm gonna I'm gonna switch ours. I'm gonna change the order that we got in the rundown here and talk about astrocytes Okay Astrocyte kiki An astrocyte Is a support cell in the brain It's like a glial cell an astrocyte. It's a glial cell. It's a brain thing. Got it They are far more abundant larger and diverse in the human brain compared to other species they may be part of and parcel with our bigger brain and Our increase of intelligence as they do this maintenance on neurons that we know to keep things healthy and interactive And a healthy brain astrocytes are vital for normal functioning providing nutrients to support neuron by By uh viability releasing factors that aid formation of connections between nerve cells Notice synapses as well as many other important functions As we learned from episode 601 earlier this year astrocytes shift their regional gene expression patterns upon aging To important brain regions for memory and movement. Those are areas that as we age also start to decline So that's sort of interesting. This is a repair thing But it seems to be changing And and showing up in different expressions as we age back in 2013 Scientists isolated human glial progenitors the cells in the central nervous system that give rise to astrocytes From human brain tissue, then they transplanted these into the cells These cells into the brains of neonatal mice As the mice matured the human glial cells out competed the hosts native glial cells Well at the same time leaving the existing neural network intact. These mice became more rapid learners Both acquired new associations and performed a variety of tasks significantly faster than mice without the human astrocytes Astrocytes has also been long implicated in pathology range of human neurodegenerative diseases from Or injuries including Alzheimer's honeytons parkinson's disease brain trauma spinal cord injury And they as they seem to gather in larger numbers around injury and inflammation sites. That's been noted this study Which i'm finally getting to published recently in nature and led by researchers of the university of melbourne and stanford university Looked into why in some circumstances the astrocytes appear to be having this beneficial neuronal viability connectivity effect And in others appear to have toxic effects on neurons This is a researcher dr. Shane lidlau Following nerve damage astrocytes form scar tissue that can help in their regeneration of severed fibers But we have also discovered that under certain conditions they can turn Become negatively reacting causing cell death Many decades the trauma and neurodegeneration research focus has been on neurons Researchers are excited by the discovery of these Neurotoxic reactive astrocytes because for the first time these findings imply that acute injuries of the retina brain spinal cord and chronic degenerative diseases May be all much more treatable And even reversible Then had been previously considered Researchers now can look at new pathways for dealing with neurological diseases and injuries by targeting toxic astrocytes In addition to the neurones and neuropsychiatric diseases or oleodendrocytes As for the incidence of multiple sclerosis ultimately, there's still hope That one day it may be possible to switch back astrocytes From the toxic To the helper state which is now a long-term target for dr. Lillow and colleagues So a fantastic, uh, uh discovery or or drill down on mechanism or identification of of Uh an aspect of astrocytes that sort of has weaved a a thread through A number of stories that we've covered in the past and how how And and how amazing too that Because this of course is we have the thread going back. This could not only Uh help reverse diseases But this could be a an angle of targeting regular loss of cognitive and motor function as we age making us, uh, uh more more Cognitively healthy and and maintain our our our physical, uh activities as we get older and older and Oh, and so if we can figure out exactly how to target them what makes them special What makes them toxic? I mean now we know that there are these toxic ones part of that mechanism for sure Yeah, what what does that? And we need to know we need to know why there are that these forms of the astrocytes and that'll be a big part of Helping it for sure and and also make us one step closer to uh creating sentient mice It's just I think equally as important. Oh, you don't think mice are currently sentient Well, okay, let's let's say, um Increase they do run they do run the simulation, you know Increase their sentience their their brain individual brain power collectively they they're much more brilliant than us, of course fair enough What was your uh, what was you what were you going to say you were going to and then and then I interrupted you Oh, that was that that was it about the sentient mice nice nice nice This is very this is I love this study. This is so fascinating astrocytes glia in general are um Are just so much more There's so much more to them than we used to think you know I used to be like oh, these are these cells and they help nutrients go to the neurons and you know They they kind of it's the packing material that keeps the brain from getting Injured if you you know if you hit your head or you move your head around too much It's you know like packing packing popcorn in a box, right? And you know, also we're finding out it's so much more important Also an episode 601, uh, it had been previously considered that we just had a certain number Throughout our life and that they were the sort of the same ones because the numbers seemed to remain pretty consistent throughout a lifespan Uh, but we've also since learned That they do reproduce themselves and that they can actually show up Uh in the glial can show up in greater numbers in certain areas as we age That that there's so there's there's a whole bevy of things now That we're we're drilling down on Uh with these with these helper cells that that go rogue and become toxic that we may We may actually be able to affect some significant change to a large array of diseases I mean, this is what would affect a significant change to a lot of things Male contraception. Ooh, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that a little bit. So male contraception really currently the only thing that is Really readily available are uh vasectomies Right, you know, you can have a little snip snip and the little swimmers don't make it pass the The snip point the cut in the vase deference And that they don't make it to the intended target, right? So Is there a better way? Is there a reversible way something that's more reversible more easily? I mean, I know some of the vasectomies reverse themselves, which is like oops surprise, but Slip that so that I can just Get a tug and undo the Researchers are trying to figure out how to make something Better and it sounds like they've come up with something similar to Uh a vasectomy but that actually might work better. They've created a special Gel Oh, so this involves a giant needle. This involves an needle injected into the vas deference, but it's an easier procedure than surgery So this is still invasive, but not as invasive um, and it's also not a pill or something that um A male would forget to take so published in basic and clinical andrology They're reporting that and this is a team from uc davis working at davis's california national private research center. So Hey davis shout out to you um Valsa gel vassal gel vassal gel vassal gel Vassal gel vassal gel vassal gel And this is a hydrogel so a gel that contains a bunch of water in it But the way that it works is very interesting. It's also it's a polymer a polymer You know, so this is a protein that um will hold a bunch of fluid So it's a gel and it gets injected into the vas deference and forms a spongy high molecular weight hydrogel in the vas deference that allows fluids Like semen the seminal fluid to pass But not sperm cells So the whole it's like a cheese cloth. It's like a cheese cloth or a strainer or something that Can be it blocks the passage of larger things, but the fluids can get passed. It's like a coffee filter exactly filter for Keeping the sperm out and or keeping the sperm in in this case as it and What they did is they tested it on 16 male reese's monkeys that lived in outdoor group housing lived with a bunch of females they injected this into their vas deverences and Then let them cohabitate with the females as if nothing had happened for an entire breeding season Nobody conceived any babies Whereas in the past both male and female monkeys all of them who had been involved in the study had mated successfully prior So it wasn't that they couldn't do it or that they weren't trying to do it But the gel worked and so and it's reversible you said Yeah, and so this is something there's like an enzyme that you would then inject in and it would eat it up So they're saying that this is something that could be Could is reversible in these Or at least it was in these reese's monkeys But they need to make sure it's reversible in other mammals before it's tested on humans So it's just a temporary band. It's a temporary as long as you want it Yeah, so they basically and it's not even an enzyme they used sodium bicarbonate solution How natural natural sodium bicarb there it goes away. That's pretty cool. I love that Yeah Yeah, that's if it's the nice thing about it being reversible too is that you don't have to say okay. I'm done having kits Yeah, it's kind of like an iud for a woman, right? You can be like this is my three to five year plan No kids right now. This is great. This is perfect and it's not hormonally based so it won't change any hormone balance The body continues working as it normally does and the sperm presumably just get endocytosed away get digested by the body and Recycled for use another day I do always worry though I was gonna say the problem here is that we don't know how long it lasts Oh, yeah, absolutely. They did this for a single breeding season. I imagine if you're going to have a needle On near your testicles, uh, you probably don't want to do that Once a year even you're probably gonna want that to be a much more longer every three to five years Yeah, and two other points, of course, uh, it doesn't prevent the, uh disease that's what I was gonna say, yeah As well as you also have to trust that your partner actually Actually had that done, right? So For a Healthy monogamous relationship would be the idea behind this right just like iud's don't prevent disease So this will apply. This will apply to uh, uh monogamous healthy relationships where no children are What so it's it's gonna apply to about five percent of the population. I don't think that's true I think that also, you know, there's enough people out there that want a safeguard That it would also be useful Yeah, I think I think it's the more we can provide a realistic long-term More effective way for males to be involved in this conversation The better I think I think it's good that it gives men a choice about their own bodies that oh, geez Wait what? Oh, geez. No, I think this is I think that's fair That men should have the you know be able to can uh have control over what their own bodies Uh effect is outside of their own bodies Do you want to talk about dogs? Let's move on to dogs. We should talk about dogs now Before I I'm allowed to keep speaking. Okay, uh human empathy It's what allows society to flourish when we empathize with others We are actually seeing them as being like us our self identity Is largely based on who it is we empathize with right The more empathetic we are The more our own identity can expand to others who may not be so similar to ourselves And people with higher emotional empathy are able to put themselves into the shoes of another Regardless of what shoe size the other person wears or even how many feet they have According to this study from the University of Helsinki empathetic people Interpret dogs facial expressions more intensely Empathy affected assessment of dogs facial expressions even more than previous experience with dogs probably because The face is a biologically important stimulus for humans our earlier studies have showed. However That when considering the entire body language of dogs Previous experience with dogs increases the importance That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, our creases and importance. Uh, this is is being explained by postdoctoral researcher Mia Maria Kujala, which Is now my new favorite name if I have another daughter. I'm going to name her Mia Maria Kujala Or I might just rename one of my Mia Maria Kujala, I love that name. It's sort of a literative and then kujala at the end. It's very fun Based on previous results researchers knew that people with higher emotional empathy Evaluated other people's expressions more quickly accurately and often also more intensely However, kujala notes that it is possible that they over interpret the expressions of dogs Empathy speeds up and intensifies the assessments of dogs facial expressions But defining the accuracy of such assessments is currently totally unreliable. That's what I was going to ask you is if they then had Animal experts Interpret those same Expression so they they did they did and that was sort of what's what was interesting about this. So So animal experts did better than the baseline on this good But the highly empathetics seem to um more quickly and possibly Uh, correctly do these identifications as well correctly Well, I mean correctly is still vagueness though because we don't absolutely like part of it too is Uh The those who were like dog trainers Were more likely to To identify what a happy dog looked like But that might just be a dog that in their mind is going to perform the right task or seems like it's listening or paying attention Or less like who knows what all because then you got the not only this is the dog thing unknown But then the human rationality is oh, we can't do human studies. These things are totally Unreliable. However Darwin himself noticed similarities and mammals expressions So a common evolutionarily preserved language of facial gesturing does exist An angry face is an angry face across much of the mammalian kingdom, right? This is like when somebody's like Like bearing of teeth scrunching of face like these are things we're Now nature has has has found a a good communication device and it's kind of well preserved Throughout much of this animal kingdom. I was thinking about pain scales pain scales and mammals are a very easy thing to measure Yeah, uh the animal mind of research group has previously demonstrated that dogs clearly recognize the threatening expressions of both humans and other dogs They gazed intensively at threatening dogs But quickly looked away from threatening animals or from excuse me from threatening humans, right? So they like we're like, oh that dog looks mad. I better watch it carefully But when a human looked angry, they were like I'm gonna go be over there Yeah Also human subjects were good at recognizing the threatening expressions of dogs and consider them Much more intense than similar expressions in humans Contrast people assessed happy faces more intensely in the case of humans than dogs researchers are suggesting that this is because We may have a tendency to consider the faces of our own species to be generally more pleasant than those of another species We make more might more readily Assess a happy face in a human than we can in a dog Although again, this is where it comes in the people who who Uh people well hang on it People may find it more difficult to recognize happiness in dogs based on their facial expressions but those who had experience in dog training estimated happy expressions Of dogs is happier even happier than other people did Well, it's interesting. So this is based on pictures. Yeah. Yeah pictures Huh, not actually being with a dog makes it easier if you just have right and that's also the troll the expressions And that's yeah, and they they kept that little caveat in there that if the dog trainers could see like Wacking tails or how a dog was walking around they that their numbers could could largely increase if they were getting a larger picture And more information. Uh, but this is just all facial expression. Yeah, well, I mean, it's very similar to I mean I think it's very similar to maybe you People, you know You maybe understand their facial expressions better because you've had more experience with them And so you can really get the micro expressions much more easily of a of a friend as opposed to a stranger um and a strange dog or never having Come across dogs if you see an expression that looks threatening you're going to be Concerned about the teeth in that dog's mouth And wondering how how threatening it really is and so I'd be Less likely to be like, oh, that's cool But if you're experienced with dogs, you go Yeah, that's nothing. I've seen way worse Yeah, unless all of you have experience with dogs is is having been bitten Dogs are bad. Yeah Yeah, so there's lots of there's lots of body cues aside from the face That you can look at and you can see what's going on There's wagging tail, of course, but the big thing is the hackles, right? So if they're if their hair is is up and they're kind of in a hunched position That's not a happy dog. Um, but thinking about their face alone. I I really pay a lot of attention to eyebrows are so expressive such a huge part of a human if you if you try to To figure out what a human is feeling and you cut the picture right here It's extremely hard to figure out. Oh, yeah What's going on with them the eyebrows are a huge part of expression in dogs too So fada is asking if dogs smile So a smiling dog a dog with the the corners of their mouth up and their mouth open Can be very different with their eyebrows like this Or their eyebrows like that or their eyebrows like very bright and excited, right? So there's that's a huge difference just the eyes right our eyes I've seen dogs that they when they are angry they growl and they bear their teeth, right? This is this is a signal across mammals bearing your teeth is a sign of aggression It's basically humans when we smile is the real difference But some dogs do this as well some dogs like tom merits dog jango used to Growl and get its teeth wide that was its smile and its laugh, you know that dog It was a very threatening thing and he'd have to say no dogs totally fine And then and then we have a dog to a comedy club Where everybody's like laughing would they be like oh my gosh all these threatening humans, right? And then there's their teeth and then another friend's dog She she plays with her whiskers and the dog does this Very forward tooth bearing where she just shows the front of her teeth, but that's her smile So that like knowing the dog, you know that the teeth are not threatening But generally showing of teeth are threatening so it's This is it's I think there's a lot of a lot. This is interesting And I think you're right the body language would have been the thing to really give it more strength Yeah, but I think also being able to measure it for accuracy based on some baseline So to know for example based on context that the animal that you were taking a picture of was happy Because they got one of their favorite things, right? And then showing that picture to people and seeing if they could properly judge it So having a way to kind of score it against what you know is actually happening in that dog's brain Would I think help strengthen a study like this and I and I assume I I didn't You know, I assumed that was part of it Although I think what they were also saying is even with that Is that dog like happy or is happy even the right word? Like, you know that that was sort of the thing dogs dogs are not people Dogs are not people. So yeah, I mean, you know, you can know threatened. You can know content You can know even scared you can know Comfortable you can know uncomfortable, but to be able to know what happy is My dog's so happy. I mean, that's that's really tough. It's just kind of like you can say, oh, my dog knows that I'm sad They might Yeah, but they also might just be responding to stimuli that you don't normally give Yeah Because when you're sad, you're not petting them You're ignoring or you're petting them like compulsively. Yeah. Yeah They must have had a bad day. I've never never my my ear doesn't even itch But I'm not gonna walk away because then the gosh knows what they'll do Hey, you guys want to know about uh carnivorous plants? Yeah, always Yeah, so carnivorous plants are so neat They eat other insects, right and some plants will even eat small animals You know, these are plants are amazing But not very many plants evolved this ability to break down exoskeletons of insects to be able to Have enzymes that could digest bone and hard tissue chitin Now this is a this is a big development And it's been shown before that not all of the various species of carnivorous plants are closely related to each other. So It was convergent evolution, eh? So this is it is an example of convergent evolution and so carnivorous plant in Are in australia is more related to just regular old plants in australia than it is two carnivorous plants in Asia or in america So this is something that has arisen multiple times independently, so yes convergent evolution What exactly happened and so what these uh what This recent study has shown is that um, the ancestors they all of all of them had genes for All of these genes for digesting the chitin the exoskeleton of the uh of the insects that they eat They come from this it's all the same genes originally It's all the same enzyme pathways and so in each case of Evolution this independent evolution these plants that became carnivorous all used The same gene pathway just with slight tweaks to create this chitinase this chitin chitin eating enzyme And they think the researchers say the chitinase that was originally probably evolved in defense from fungal chitin So it was then repurposed so these plants were being attacked by funguses And so they were trying to protect themselves from funguses and a mutation that allowed them to Digest the chitin of the fungus that was attacking them But could then be mutated again to allow them to break down chitin in insect exoskeletons And so this is just a a similar gene that comes from much further back That was then independently in these each species used for the same job Gateway mutation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah That's the very say the researchers as the very same genes from non carnivorous ancestors have been recruited for carnivorous purposes Yeah, this is uh, I guess the first of it the first study of its kind Really to find How these yeah, this repurposing of these genes has led to this very similar Very similar effect and Something that was very interesting in this study. They to be able to figure out What the genetic changes were and how they got there. They actually looked at genes In the australian picture plant what genes were active in the leaves that were capable of digesting Insects versus what genes were active in the leaves of the plant that are actually able to photosynthesize So they these picture plants do have photosynthetic parts and they also have the insect digesting parts And so different genes are active in the different tissues And so that's where they they went first To sequence the dna and to see what types of genes were getting turned on or off in each type of leaf and they found that Uh, certain genes are only on in the picture leaf or preferentially in the perp picture leaf And some of these very likely have to do with the trap development Yeah Lots of cool lots of cool stuff here in this study and carnivorous plants Totally cool. They're very unique Yet they're all the same Yeah, right Convergent evolution carnivorous plant So great. Hey Blair you got um, is there one more sex story in there? Uh kind of I put a little of a spec sexy spin on it. So the there is a new record holder for the world's longest Freshwater migration the Dorado catfish Goes about 7,200 miles It's about 11,600 kilometers Just to lay its eggs Wow. Yeah, so they go from Uh, the amazon river estuary to spawning areas in or near the andy's mountains Yeah, they do all that and then they die there. They don't return The newborn catfish go all the way back down And then all the way back up So this salmon is like the south amer- I mean this salmon this catfish is the south american salmon Yeah, which they're like Take that salmon I'll swim farther than you Seven thousand miles. That's right. Yeah, so that's uh just a couple of things that actually are Something to look at based on this besides just having a new record holder. This means that there is a extremely long Area over which these animals have to move through so just like you make salmon letters to get over Dams and other things. This is something that we might have to start looking at to get these catfish to where they need to go There are a lot of barriers and there could be more barriers that spring up into existence over the next decades trying to keep These catfish away from where they're trying to go so or not intentionally trying to keep them out But that could end up messing up their ability to get where they need to go So a migration that long means a lot of Workarounds on dams and other obstructions. Yeah Um And then one last thing that I wanted to talk about today Just because we we talked a lot this year. I think specifically already about how wrong we were about birds and a sense of smell Particularly birds of prey and their sense of smell and I loved kiki's explanation of why that happened, which was just that They're They're olfactory Clump of neurons were stuck to the brain case, right? But couldn't get loose they couldn't get loose. Yeah, the olfactory bulb came apart from the rest of the brain And so we never saw it and we said So I spent a lot of my career thinking that birds of prey Can't smell But now a new study in zoo biology has been looking at olfactory enrichment in birds of prey So now that we know that birds of prey. Yes can indeed smell. They have taken peppermint scent put it on Packages with food in it so that the birds of prey recognize peppermint smell as A precursor to food and then they can give these bird birds of prey peppermint scented sham packages with nothing inside that makes them Use their predator drive Break it apart all that good stuff birds of prey are something that's Are a group of animals that are very hard to give enrichment to they're not going to run on a wheel You can't let them Fly thousands of miles for migration because they're in captivity So you have to find a way to get these animals to move around and use natural behaviors So now that we know that they can indeed smell and also Can associate smell with things and that encourages them to explore new items based on that smell conditioning This could be a huge breakthrough in caring for captive birds of prey More sham science No, yes sham matings and sham packages All real science Here's a sham package Open it a shackage if you will Shamage so much shamage of hey, uh this last week, you know, um NASA also came out with some interesting new data They are releasing they have released preliminary results on their study of The year in space and how space flight stresses out the human body There are many different things that they have looked at but Um, basically they had Scott astronaut Scott kelly who spent 340 days on the international space station While his twin brother the twin Yeah stayed here on earth and so they've been analyzing samples that were taken from each twin before during and after the trip And the results are are preliminary results have been uh released They were released discussed at the annual investigators workshop for nasa's human research program in texas So They see differences They found taller. Well scott's telomeres were longer His levels of dna methylation were lower in comparison to his twin Um, a different team found differences in the micro biomes So scott's digestive tract had a major shift in the ratio of firmacutes to bacterial deities bacteria so Not really in overall diversity, but the two dominant bacterial groups kind of shifted in which one was more dominant Which is interesting. They don't really know why that would have happened and um In both of these differences that they've seen the stress of being like tied to a firecracker and launched into space and then being like I'm in space So far from all we got to do our dehydrated foods We're eating food out of a tube and pooping into one like that would possibly cause a little So yes, but anyway, um on these things measures return to pre fright pre flight levels Very soon after and back to earth. So things went back to normal. So telomeres back to normal bacteria back to normal Um, yeah, all that stuff, which is kind of interesting Uh, so questions now. What is going on with the gut bacteria in space? We don't know and what does that mean? Telomeres were longer is telomeres were longer Wow That doesn't seem right right you would think they should be shorter from the stress, right from the stress Or unaffected at all as I would think or unaffected right maybe being in such a controlled environment Means you're not eating garbage. You have to exercise, right? That's part of the deal. It's very regimented. It's very scheduled So maybe being on the schedule they were but yeah, I don't know Yeah, I don't know our bodies are cyclic in nature So maybe being on a regimented cycle had something to do it with it But I don't know the researchers who worked on that part susan bailey From colorado state university and port collin said that result was the exact opposite of what they thought was going to happen Yeah, of course And the fact that then the telomeres got they they got chopped off again after he came back to earth Oh, they did. Yeah, they went back to normal length. They went back to what though? I didn't Think that they could do that right See, I was gonna say now we just have to see who dies first, but But if their telomeres went back to the normal length Yeah Wow. Yeah, and so then um So dna methylation we know is epigenetics and it it changes the way that genes get expressed in dna and methylation decreased in scots dna So the wrapping of certain segments binding it up so that genes don't get expressed basically It decreased when he was in flight increased in mark over the same period on earth and then When scott came back to earth Levels for both men returned close to pre-flight levels Which again is weird. They went opposite and then came back to the same For this methylation when they came back when they were reunited Huh, so, yeah, and it felt so good. So so uh longer two mirrors in space. So good Yeah Tential longer life in space right I mean based on I mean that one That hypothesis right and just connect to everything else that's happening in space, but yeah Yeah, um did both twins qualify to be astronauts or did only one go through the process Think of both astronauts. Yeah I think they are both astronauts Yeah, that's a really good question. I just that would definitely Be a lot of extra variables if they weren't both astronauts because I think they're both astronauts Okay, that's that's great. Wow. How fascinating. Yeah, but he stayed on earth Right, his brother went to space. Yeah Huh Yeah, so yeah interesting. There are many factors to be considered and discussed I don't know how mark lived his life if he lived it as if you were on the ISS while on Eating food out of twin brothers up there. He's probably stressed also Everything about leaving the planet to me is stressful though, like So you're not excited to go to mars. It sounds like some people might be excited and feel adventurous and inspired I to me the whole concept is terrifying It's just I don't want to be in a little capsule looking that far away from where I have to go to get home I don't even like being on like in an airport waiting to go fly Let alone You know that explains it Yeah It's the whole that whole process of traveling far from home is so stressful. It's not that you don't know where the gate is I've learned something about you today. You just don't want to go I don't want to get on a plane. That's too far above although. I like the view I do like the view if I'm going to space. I need a window seat I'll stare back at the earth the whole time. I think they're all I'm gonna have to make sure it's still there my final story for the night How many times have you guys watched a a movie or a tv show where Somebody's looking at video footage or a photograph of something that happened. Usually it's like a crime thriller or something and The actors are looking at you. Oh, they noticed something and they ask the person to Zoom in Enhance. Yes Oh my god, you know and We can only zoom in so much based on the resolution of images that you know from the cameras that and The lenses and the lighting situation. There's only so much we can do, right? Yeah, but now now google has done it again Google is doing it again google brain has created software That interpolates information so that you can basically Zoom in on things to figure out What is there they there are to They use neural networks two neural networks within this software One is a conditioning network that tries to map the source image like if you have 64 source pixels an eight by eight Eight by eight square, right? The conditioning network maps that source image against other high resolution images and then it According to this arse technical article down says it down sizes other high res images to eight by eight And tries to make a match so the conditioning network is trying to fit the data, right? Then there's another network called the prior network and it uses an implementation of something called pixel cnn that Works with the original image to add high resolution details into the original eight by eight image so you've got One part of the network trying to match things and another trying to build things and they work together to Figure out what things are so that and then for no explainable reason. There's like hands and arms in every picture No, not hands and arms, but This image is starting the the program is starting to be capable of recognizing things like eyebrows eyes Lips on faces and images being able to identify The software is able to identify aspects of furniture in rooms to be able to start putting rooms together There are many it's not perfect. It's definitely not perfect but this is a step on the road to potentially taking data and It's very fuzzy data and turning it into Something more accurate the question here though the big question that is raised is This is an art of the images that are produced by this software Are artificial images? They are not the original image. This is A made-up picture based on what the software thinks is there and so potentially in future real crimes that occur if a detective is using this google brain technology to be able to Enhance an area of a crime scene to be able to see somebody's face on a video display It could display Incorrect information We have we have a low resolution image of the trader the mole within our ranks Oh, really? You have it's low resolution It's no problem. Yes, we're gonna put it through a computer and though we're Here at a time we'll get a high resolution image of that low resolution image And then we'll be able to identify the perpetrator Okay, well, I I I guess I still have time click it's done Oh, no it's oh It's steven accounting Oh, that's that's so I always suspected him because he kind of Exactly But just it sort of looks like it's it's also refreshing to know that we finally got the mole within the organization Oh What no, I mean it's great that we have this technology now Hmm. Yeah, but so now not just the NSA can do this. I'm like fat. I was saying in the chat room Now we all can Now we all can use image enhancement to find out who was lurking outside your house at 3 a.m Oh, look it was queen nefertiti No And we have have we hit that that was my last story. Are we done? Did we do it? I think so We have done it. Okay, everyone. 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But how can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop one hour a week? This week in science is coming your way. You better just listen to what we say, and if you learn anything from the words that we've said, then please just remember it's all in this week in science. This week in science. Reach the end of our show for another show number 605. We did it. No hippies hippos. Hippos. Hippos. I have so many hippos in this room. Look, here's another hippo. Oh, there's another hippo. You've got a lot of hippos. I don't think I have any hippos. There's two more hippos. Oh, cute little hippos. There's more. I can find more hippos. I have lots. I have poppers. You have poppers? Yeah. You know, the things are, they're little twisties of paper and rocks and gunpowder in them. You throw them in the clean fun. There's another hippo. Great fun when you've got a child. Let's play with poppers. So many hippos. You're collecting more hippos. Well, people give me hippos. Because it's kind of your thing. Yeah. Because when you work at a zoo, everyone wants to know what your favorite animal is, and then it's all that, which I'm not going to complain. I'm going to get you squirrel and panda things. How dare you? People have also started doing that because that's funny. Put it up with many hippos or many pandas, not as many squirrels yet. A couple of squirrels, mostly pandas. Yeah. Gross. They're cute little squirrely teeth and they're cute little squirrely tails. Cute. That's the word for it. Squirrels are cute. I like rats, Rob. I don't like tree rats. Let's see what he said. Tree rats. Yeah. The tree. Yes. What was Mike? Yeah. So we missed the snow entirely. There's no snow here. It's just been raining, raining, raining. They closed schools in Marin County because of rain yesterday. Wait, what? Because of rain? Yeah. Now that's silly. Yeah. Apparently it cost flooding and the wind was really high. So trees were coming down. Yeah. You don't want people getting hurt. And in the Marin area, there are some roads that do get completely submerged. Like there can be, the flooding can be kind of bad. Yeah. Which makes it hard to get to school. The road, if the one road into the school is flooded. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, somebody canceled their, their field trip for tomorrow because the superintendent called off all field trips that cross bridges in Marin County. All right. No bridges. Okay. It's windy and raining. Yeah. Yeah. This thing. Six inches of snow. Hot rod. Oh, I'm hoping my fingers are crossed that we have hit the end of the snow season here. In the Portland area. And I'm hoping for even more rain. I actually got really disappointed today. Did you see the news? Oh, you got disappointed. Did you see the news about Lake Tahoe? Getting some. I'm sorry. I interrupted you, Justin. What was it? Lake Tahoe. Let's see. One second. Water. 8.7 billion gallons of water in two days. Pretty good. 8.7 billion gallons. It's a big lake. It's a lot of gallons. Two days. And 7 billion. So that's 8,700 million gallons. And since January 1st, the lake has gained over 40 billion gallons. It's a lot of water. So cool. A lot of water for Tahoe, which was going dry. It was real low. It was really low. The fish were like. So. So I got disappointed because they had this like. Vacuum suction. We call some pumping company come out and remove the lake in the parking lot here. Which was fun. I was having a blast driving through because the water would like shoot up on both sides. It was like an adventure ride at Disneyland. This week from all the flooding in the parking lot. And so. I'm kind of sad it's gone because it was like, you know, a thing me and the kids looked forward to every day. It was like driving through and watching the water like. Go off up into the round the car. It was it was kind of a blast. Do you think that displaced any amphibians when they took that away? No, I don't. We don't have amphibians in Davis. We used to be washing them. We used to be absolutely washing them. I remember as a kid dodging them on my bicycle on the way to school. And then something happened. Don't know. Maybe it was the implementation of the wetlands and lots of birds being around that gobble them up. Maybe it was something being introduced into the irrigation around the farms. Nobody seems to really know. The exact answer to this. But we are no longer a wash. Not that there aren't any ever anywhere, but you never I have not seen one. And a decade. Interesting. And they used to be like, like it was like sign of the apocalypse. Like it almost seemed like it was raining. So they're, yeah, they're indicator species. So when they disappear, that means water quality changes. But I wonder water quality. But I think also there was a huge wetlands that was literally put next door that that got that should be good for amphibians. Well, they might be there to breed lots of birds. It's also a lot of food. That should all be good. That should that should compensate that should more than compensate for the existence of prejudice. They come egrets. There's egrets. Yeah. There's like lots of those, which is awesome. But that's interesting. That's I wonder though, is something changed with water treatment? It's possible to because it is. I mean, literally they were in town, you know, I mean, they were like bouncing off of people's lawns and you'd have to bike right around them or try to avoid the flattened ones that the last get it. But there was like, but it was like all over the sidewalks. It was kind. Were they salamanders or new? No, no, these are like toads. Oh, little toads, little, little toads. Oh, God. Interesting. It might have been Kittred then. I don't know the meaning of the word. Kittred fungus. It basically makes their skin disintegrated and fall off. And it, yeah, it kills frogs and toads like really, really, really fast. It doesn't affect tadpoles, but tadpoles can carry it. So they, so they, you know, infect each other in these ponds and then they grow up and then the Kittred shows itself and they all die. Yeah. Fonuses. Jacksonville, you seem to say nobody seems to know like you feel somebody knows. No, that, that's, that's, that's how. I bet people do know. He goes and I'm not saying, I don't, I'm not saying I know why, but, but you people know. You people know why that is. You people know why it is that that's happening. I bet they know. I bet they know. But what's interesting is like, you know, this town's population has such a high turnover. It's, it's like a big transient town. Because of the college. Because of the university. I think most people who are here are transients. They're either going to visit and get their education leave or they've just shown up to teach or they've, you know, like, or they've taken another teaching job somewhere else or whatever it is. There's a lot of turnover except for some like really like, you know, persistent townies such as myself. I don't think there's a lot of people even remember that the reason that we built a toad tunnel under an underpass under a roadway, which is now just a habitat for rats. There was, there's a reason that we have a toad tunnel in this town despite the fact that we have no toads. The salamander. We've got no toads. Yeah. The salamander tunnels at Stanford have been really successful. If you've got salamanders and toads, they can work very well. If you've killed them with agricultural runoff and funguses and other things. Then it just becomes a rat super highway. That's right. I'm waiting for the rats to get around. Oh man. I'm tired again. I teach my child how to sleep. Oh, look at the empathy bled. Empathy on. Empathy on. That's right. It means I care about you, Kiki. That's true. I love you. I had like, I remember the end of like, what am I? I had a wacky dream last night. Want to hear it? Tell us about your dream Kiki. Yeah. It was very wacky. I don't remember who I was with, but I was with a bunch of people. And we were in a building. And then we found out, I was like, we were doing something fun. It was like having, we were having a party or something as fun, but then we turned, we found out that there was gas in the house and that it was going to catch on fire. But then it wasn't just that it was going to catch on fire. That we tried to get away from it, but it just, it was this massive explosion. In gulfed, in fire, all of us burned, but then we became fire beings. Wow. And we took the fire into ourselves. I never have fun dreams like that with Supernatural in it. And then I got to be ran around with my fire friends. That's so cool. That's pretty intense. Yeah. It was very intense. And then, and then there was somebody trying to catch us and put us in a cage because we were, because we were fire. I was, I was, I had a dream last night that I was shopping before, like some minutes before what I knew was to be some sort of apocalyptic event. Like I was, I was shopping for like all the things like, okay, we need lots of like a shopping carts. I had, it means that had some cohorts and we had shopping carts full of like water and like we needed a shovel and you know, some building supplies and some way to clean water. Like, and then we were like pretty much had everything on the list and we're ready to go up on to the counter, but I'm like, we still got like five minutes. Like, I don't know that I actually have enough on the card to cover all this. So let's, let's just like mill about and act like we're still shopping until this thing happens that shuts down the electrical grid and everybody panics and runs away and heads to the hills. Like this whole like the stall a little bit. Either my prediction was slightly off or we just, we're just, we were too efficient. Two efficient in shopping. For the apocalypse. For the apocalypse. Is that the name of your autobiography, Justin? Shopping for the apocalypse. Oh, that's a great one. That is fantastic. That's a great prepper guide right there. Shopping for the apocalypse. 10 easy steps. Flint. Flint would be something. Should definitely buy. Oh, I have that. I have some, I can't remember the, it's not just a regular Flint though. It's like, sulfur dioxide or something. No, it's phosphorus. I have a phosphorus Flint thing that starts a little mini phosphorus fire. Nice. And then a Leatherman. I would definitely want a Leatherman. I have a Gerber, but yeah. Yeah. I got one of those. Super tool. I broke my Leatherman. So I have to get a new one. That's, I feel like that's a pretty hardcore statement. I broke my Leatherman. I wore it up. Actually, and it, wherever I was there, I did, I did grab a couple of shotguns because I don't have any. I was like, I might need to protect myself from bears. Well, Grizzlies. Right. In a school. I might need to protect myself from Grizzlies in a school. In a school. Yeah. Cause that's something we have to worry about. Oh, which I love the fact the school is like, actually bears are a problem, but we do not have guns at school. Thank you very much. Didn't they say they're like, yeah, we just put up a fence and we keep an eye out. Yeah. That's really not like, we bring the school bell and bring the children in if, you know, one is sighted somewhere in there. That's pretty much how you deal with that. Yeah. I mean, we think that equal opportunity is important, but bears are not allowed to enroll in our school. So that kind of takes care of that. Thanks to the quick action of lunch, Lady Bernice, we're going to be having bear meat all this week. Make sure you pick the shot out of it. Yeah. Pick through before you chew. Oh my goodness. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I don't want to think about things. I know. I know Bleak. Those are those are the statistics that our government doesn't let people study. Yeah. Blake, love your kids. Love your guns. Which do you love more? Yeah. Yeah. That's an important thing. Do you hate bears more than you love your children? Fear them. I fear bears about the same as I fear my children. Do you fear the unknown more than you love your children? That's what it is. I don't want to turn down this political road though. I like guns. I like going and shooting guns at a shooting range or at a place that's specially set up for target shooting. Although I'm a little bit excited about... Not in the house. Donald's what's a tiny hands is threat of defunding California. Because I feel like that means we don't have to pay federal tax anymore. And we actually give a lot more money than we take from the federal government. If California were to... I mean, seriously, if they were to say they were going to do that, then California would be like, all right, we're out. Peace. We got our own food. We got Hollywood. We got our own trades. We're good. So here's the thing. If you look at the red state, blue state map across the country, those that take more money from the federal government than they give to it, it's... Those that give more to the federal government than they receive in dollar benefits are the blue states. With a few exceptions somewhere in there, that's the same map as the electoral map. That is freaking irony and hilarity. Yeah. Yeah. It's very true. I think that's hilarious. He goes to deep on California. Oh, my God. I love this whole state's rights thing. California, Uber, Alice, you know? Yeah. The only problem is... Here we come. The only problem is the seating from the nation is it does hand the rest of it over to the bastards. But I love my state. I'm so happy that the state I'm in is the state I'm in and the state going forward. San Francisco. San Francisco, by the way. What state are you in? You're a little animated. Let me tell you, I had a big nap. I had a three-hour nap right before the show today. It was unplanned, but unavoidable. San Francisco is now talking about free community college. Oh, yeah, yeah. That already happened. Yeah, starting in the fall. City College of San Francisco is free. That is so cool. With available grants for lower income free tuition students to pay for books. Thank you, San Francisco, the shining light. So, yeah, all of these blue states with their liberal policies and their heavy regulations and their amazing economies as a result of that have been keeping the federal government afloat. We live in... It's not even just... There's dystopia, but there's also this ironic... Oh, there's an unfounded sense of authority in terms of like, all right, California, take this. Oh, but okay. Well, there's also something hilarious that happened because one of the first things they wanted to do, which I alluded to in the disclaimers, they were actually talking about selling off 33 million acres of public land. Right. Yep. Yes. And like some of the first people that complained were the constituents who were like, no, I've been feeding my cattle on government land for free for 40 years. I don't want to actually have to buy the land and maintain it or have any sort of responsibility. No, like this is... Oh, this is a certain point when... The ideology based on fake facts is going to run into reality. I don't know when or if that'll happen. There's just a disconnect between what's supposed to be priorities and what now they're trying to do. Like, if your priority is for states' rights, then you can't federally illegalize things. Stop overthinking this. Everybody who's involved in politics, except for maybe two people, is a lawyer. And I'm not condemning lawyer-isming broadly, but your job is to take on your client's point of view and fight for it vigorously, litigate vigorously, defend it vigorously, regardless of what's fair, who's guilty, what's in the best interest of society. So I don't... And I think that's why, honestly, politicians have a lot of politicians on one side of the political spectrum have a negative view or believe that global warming might just be fake part of some of gender. They might actually believe that because everybody around them, who they associate with, whose personalities they take on through playing with them each and every day. Because they played with them from preschool. Since preschool on. Working in an industry where the facts actually don't matter, it's the agenda and how you can position it that counts. Everything made up in the facts don't matter. It's like who minds anyway. So what they consider professionals are a bunch of people who work with spinning and arguing regardless of facts or past a fact or despite the fact. Versus professionals who are only working with the facts as they find them. And they probably just conceptually, cognitively don't understand that somebody could take on a job where they just follow facts. Because what if the facts don't lead where you want them to, then you have your work cut out for you. That's when your experience and your skill comes into play when the facts don't end up and then you work your way around. No, no, no. There's actually people in field called science that seek just the facts and follow them. Whether their client be guilty or innocent, whether their client get what they want at the end or don't. No matter who's paying for the study. Who's paying for it? Yeah. They're just going to follow the evidence portion of it, the fact portion of it, wherever it leads and ignore anything that isn't those things. Right? I bet they actually can't fathom that. Like somebody must be paying them to say this. Somebody must want them to say that. They're defending a client because everybody thinks like lawyers. Right? No. No. Actually, a lot of most of us know. And that's why lawyers, to an extent, do get a bad rap. Because there's a lot of inherent BS that is required in that profession. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like... That's so called profession. When I was a child and I, you know, there's that trope of salesman being liars. Right? Which is true. And just like salesmen are liars, salesmen are liars. They lie for a living. They're professional liars. Do you remember Pee Wee Herman? Yes, yes. The door-to-door salesman. I was always that way when the traveling salesman came in and was like, Don't let him in. Don't let him in. And then, so both of my parents have spent time as salesman. And so I would go to their like trade show and work in the booth as a teenager. And I'd have to stand there and be like, Yes, this $150 wholesale beaded bag with a butterfly on it. That's the size of a deck of cards. Yes, you should buy six of these for your store. And this was not cut out for it in any way. Because they would be like, You're young. Would you carry this bag? I'll be over there. It's interesting because it's not just lying. It's a lot more intricate than that. It's a skill. It's not as simple as just standing there and lying. And again, it's a spin. So you don't have to lie to be a good salesman, but you have to be able to make someone feel a certain way about a certain thing, right? It's along similar lines. And it's because we live in this capitalist environment that it's kind of our default, right? As a lifelong professional salesperson. Yeah. I can tell you too. It's some people need to lie to sell. I've heard people lie to sell. It's always awkward. And what I do is, you know, there's an element of product knowledge in what I do, which is presentation and making it show business, making the showing of information exciting is sometimes enough that you don't have to mislead somebody or try to influence them, but just show enthusiasm. That's contagious because that personality, oh my gosh, it's all down to the three-year-olds in preschool. Your personality about your excitement and your wanting to engage and show things that the product does can be contagious. And sometimes that's enough. However, there's also an element of somebody can do analysis to paralysis on what the decision is that they want. What they really need is somebody to give them, they're on the edge of making a decision. Just need a little nudge, little nudge. Somebody to create a little urgency. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but also there's the whole art of answering the question you wish they asked, right? That I'm not going to... There's people that are going to go to that. So when they ask you, would you carry this beaded bag? You can say, oh, this is one of our best sellers. And that may be true. And I'm not answering the question you asked. I'm answering the question that I actually have the right answer for. Or I could be saying, oh, well, I saw Paris Hilton carrying this one the other day or whatever. That happens every once in a while with an odd color of a vehicle that is put out. And somebody's like, would you buy a car that color? Right? Yeah. But you don't... And the answer is no. Right. Right? But if I did, gosh, that would make it easy to find in a parking lot, wouldn't it? Wow. That bright neon green is going to make you much more visible on the road, much less likely to get rear-ended. Yeah. You find that there's got to be a benefit of having a neon orange car. There has to be something. Yeah. If you get stuck in the snow, you're going to get spotted right away where somebody driving the white automobile will be left there for weeks. Yeah. Not to mention I'm so happy that hybrid cars are taking off. But this way yours will be different from everyone else's. Exactly. So, you know, and people will ask like interior exterior color questions and then so you find it, then you're not... But yeah, you're not necessarily being dishonest. You're also being honest for somebody else's opinion other than your own, maybe. Because somebody does love that purse. And if you know why they love that purse, you can tell them why some people say this purse makes you look more sophisticated. Right? You can tell them what some people like about it, even if you can't freaking stand it. But I think that's different than saying, you know, too many trees depletes the oxygen on the planet. Right, right. There's a way to do these things without just being a... Misreading and lying. I mean, you can say it's more important that we have a hospital there than that we have a forest, right? And that's a conversation that you can have. To say we don't need those trees. Yeah. You know, like there's... That's why when people just bring alternative facts, when they bring in just falsities into the conversation, it's difficult to have a productive conversation because there's no way to debate it. Because if they're just going to say the sky is green, how can you have a real conversation? Well, but yeah. Facts like that the last climate summit, the climatologists engaged in a massacre of innocent people, or like there's some stuff that's just like, no, you're lying. The murder rate in the United States is over 30% now. You just made that up. That's not... That's just lying. I think perhaps one of the problems actually that we're having with our current administration is that they're not a lawyer. They don't understand the subtleties of sales or spread. Right. And that they're used to saying, whatever they want, this is going to be the most fantastic, fabulous... They're just used to ginning up over... I don't know what the word is. I'm becoming a vocabulary lover. There is a thing that you're actually not supposed to do it in real estate, but where you over-embellish or over-exaggerate the potential of something. Hyperbalize? Is that what you're talking about? I don't even know if I have this. But you see it all the time. Rare gem, fixer-upper, diamond in the rough property, just looking for a little TLC from the next owner. There's a bit of that that goes on. Like euphemisms? Even though the back half of the house is fire damaged and the front half all has mold. Right. There's more than just a little diamond in the rough. But I think maybe that's the problem that we're seeing in this current administration is the fact that it's not a lawyer who's like, I need the choice words that cut just along the edges. Instead of calling it a fixer-upper, they're going best property you've ever seen. Ever seen. You're an idiot if you don't buy it. A king would want to live here. Yeah. This is actually selling for a hundred thousandth of the price it should be just because I'm such a good guy. Like it's just so it's just the fact that it's never had to stand up to a critical audience also makes you think, like if I was a billionaire, I think I'd be, I think I could last two years. I think I would make it two years before I was a full-blown narcissist. Right. For somebody who's had a lifetime as an elite wealthy person, I think it's impossible even. Like I don't even blame genetics or personality traits. I think it's just at some point becomes impossible not to become a narcissist. If you're engaged in the business where everybody around you is paid by you and paid well by you and their careers are based on you, your entire feedback loop is going to be of assumed personalities of false personas of positive feedback. And you don't have that really if you've lived and worked as a lawyer because you're going up against an opposition. You're going up against a judge who might go against. You're going up against a whole lot of factors that might not the results might not always go your way. So you get a thick skin. You get, okay, I'll try better next time. Lost that round. This one I went too far. I get it. I'll come back. I'll retool. But if you've only been told yes for pretty much your whole life, how could you help but become a complete narcissist? And what happens in a narcissistic personality is anything that is contrary to the view you have of yourself becomes a threat. And that's what we're seeing. Everything that's like a protest or a ruling against becomes a personal assault, personal threat. That's why all news is fake. So-called judges. We got like everything is like going after Nordstroms because they think they're attacking his daughter because everything becomes a personal threat and he's reacting violently and hostily towards it in order to preserve that image. And I think if you take the DMSO of narcissistic personality traits and compare that to everything we're going to see from this president, I bet they match up. So just like verse for verse in that psychological profile is what we're going to see. And anybody who's been through any sort of fire of even being a lawyer, it's a great example. You win cases, you lose cases, is going to have developed a thick skin and probably wouldn't have been able to make it that far. So maybe actually I'm defending lawyers as being really good for politics because at least we wouldn't have ended up with this. Well, the thing about law too is that there are rules for discourse. Right. Yes, let's follow the laws and have the rules for discourse. Rules for discourse. Can we have a conversation based on facts? That would be great. Like that's the thing about all of this. And let's just have a conversation. Let's have a conversation about facts. And if you don't have the facts to back up your position and I have facts that refute your position and back up my position, then maybe you should reconsider your position. Or vice versa. Yeah. Or look, if you're trying to find a reason to support something, you can't make up facts. You have to find things that actually exist. It's kind of like we were talking about before. You can't cut down trees saying that trees are bad for you. You can cut down trees and say we need this space for a hospital. Right. But you can't need it for something important. If you want to cut down trees, come up with a reason to do that that is based on actual factual things. Unless you're a narcissist. Unless you're a narcissist, in which case facts don't matter unless somebody presents them to you in opposition. And then that person is threatening your view of yourself and therefore that person is a threat and they're only doing it to bring you down. Okay, but here's the thing. I gotta Google it. I would like to talk about just not, this is going down a negative pathway. I don't think so. Yeah, kind of. In my mind. Preparation. I'm tired. I'm tired right now. But I feel like we should be trying to have more conversations with people around us. Going out into our neighborhoods, making conversation with people at the grocery store, at the library, at the post office, talking with people about day to day things, making local connections within the neighborhood to strengthen local community on Facebook. Don't attack people. I got called a snowflake today, but I engaged in the conversation the entirely wrong way. I didn't ask questions. I didn't try to address the person's concerns. I just started debunking the claims immediately. And so that got the guys back up. So, you know, there are ways to go about conversating, that allow conversation to happen a little bit more easily. And I think not if we can ask questions, find out where people are coming from, then potentially we can find out something that we have in common. You know, if people are worried about, you know, like we're talking about guns earlier in the chat room, find out, yeah, you know what, you must be really, are you, are you just really afraid? I mean, do you like guns because you like having them or are you really afraid that someone's going to break into your house? Are you afraid for your, for your own safety? You know, and start the conversation that way and like find out if it's about safety. You know, because we all want to be safe in a certain way, but we want to be safe in different ways. I want to be safe by getting people out of poverty and providing education for everyone. That's how I feel like more of us are going to be safe. But that's me. I keep saying, I keep saying DSMO. It's just DSM. That's why I keep making that mistake. Okay. This is Wikipedia. Associated features of narcissistic personality disorder. Are you ready? Tell me if this, tell me. This is going to take like two minutes, but tell me if you can't have somebody in mind as I read this. Narcissistic personality disorder. People with narcissistic personality disorder tend to exaggerate their skills and accomplishments as well as their level of intimacy with people they consider to be of high status. Their sense of superiority may cause them to monopolize conversations and to become impatient or disdainful when others talk about themselves. In the course of a conversation, they may purposefully or unknowingly disparage or devalue the other person by overemphasizing their own success when they're aware that their statements have hurt someone else. They tend to react with contempt and to view it as a sign of weakness. When their own ego is wounded by a real or perceived criticism, their anger can be disproportionate to the situation, but typically their actions and responses are deliberate and calculated. Despite occasional flare-ups of insecurity, their self-image is primarily stable, i.e. overinflated. To the extent that people are pathologically narcissistic, they can be controlling, blaming, self-absorbed, and tolerant of others' views, unaware of others' needs, the effects of their behavior on others, and an insistent that others see them as they wish to be seen, narcissistically individuals use various strategies to protect the self at the expense of others. They tend to devalue, and they often respond to threatening feedback with anger and hostility. Since the fragile ego of individuals with NPD is hypersensitive to perceived criticism or defeat, they're prone to feelings of shame, humiliation, worthlessness over minor even imagined incidents. They usually mask these feelings from others with feigned humility, isolating socially or then they react with outbursts of rage, defiance, or by seeking revenge. The merging of the self-inflated concept and the actual self is seen in the inherent grandiosity of narcissistic personality disorder, also inherent in this process, or the defense mechanisms of denial, idealization, and devaluation. According to the DSM-5, many highly successful individuals display personality traits that might be considered narcissistic. Only when these traits are inflexible, maladaptive, and persisting, and cause significant functional impairment or subjective distress do they constitute narcissistic personality disorder. Although overconfidence tends to make individuals with NPD ambitious, does not necessarily lead to success and high achievement professionally. These individuals may be unwilling to compete or may refuse to take any risks in order to avoid appearing like a failure. In addition, their inability to tolerate setbacks, disagreements, or criticism, along with lack of empathy, make it difficult for such individuals to work cooperatively with others or to maintain long-term professional relationships with superiors and colleagues. Imagine if they don't have superiors and colleagues. Sound familiar? Yikes! We are armchair psychologists, and it is not okay to make psychological diagnoses of individuals who you only see through representations. Don't try to work, people, but this one kind of fits. The emperor wears these clothes. I'm not going to... You don't have to. I just have to. You don't have to. And this is why I don't want this conversation to go on anymore. We can have these conversations individually. Then say goodnight, Kiki. We're going to go away now. No more politics and no more. We're going to lose audience. We're going to lose people. There was people left a long time ago. I missed off day one. I don't think so. I don't know. This kind of conversation is how we really lose people and how we really turn people off. Because you're attacking. It's attacking. It's not having a conversation. So, you've got an idea. You ranted on it. It's yours. I will talk with you about it at some point on Facebook in a private conversation. Okay. Well, then I will... In that case, I will say, goodnight, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Everyone who's still with us, thank you so much for watching this evening. Thanks for hanging around. I hope you enjoyed the science of the show. We'll be back next week with more Science National Hippo Day next Wednesday. It's going to be amazing.