 That music just gets me started ready to do this show. It's this week in science we're here to do our weekly science podcast broadcast and What you watch and hear over the next 90 minutes plus or minus some May not be what is in the podcast because there's editing at times Yes, but this is the live thing. So, you know sometimes Slips happen, but we try to avoid those because this is live and recorded. So, hello, everyone Eric Knapp is in a hotel room in Portland, Oregon. Hi, you're right down the street Welcome, welcome everyone. Are we ready to start this show? co-hosts Yeah, let's do it Let's do this Blair is a vampire Fire breath of a dragon. Oh dragon fire breath. Okay. There's a dragon. All right Starting this show in three two this is Twist this week in science episode number 873 recorded on Wednesday, April 27th, 2022 This show has teeth Hey everyone, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight we will fill your head with death regeneration and fear but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer Imagine a world without science not a world of yesterday, but a world of tomorrow World where all at once while everyone was sleeping the scientists and teachers of the world simply walked away But down their pipettes deleted their algorithms left their students to languish What then with the world of tomorrow look like if in a generation there was no math No biology no chemistry no logic no critical thinking being taught if research in every field Simply stopped. What then would the world look like five ten years? Global warming no longer talked about as sea levels rise and wildfires burn the next pandemic Just goes unchecked economies and ruin as hospitals Staffed by volunteers of untrained people are overrun The history of the planet in the hands of revisionists has always been authoritarian The environment according to industry spokespeople has never been cleaner the next generation Uneducated raised on propaganda unable to tell fact from fiction Data facts truth all replaced by spun narratives slick ad campaigns and well marketed conspiracy theories in short the world would devolve into what it nearly is today and the only thing keeping us from this dystopian vision of a not too distant future This week in science Coming up next It's to you Kiki and Blair and a good science to you to Justin Blair and everyone out there Welcome to another episode of this week in science. We're back again With all the science we made up all the science but a lot of the science well us Very well curated selection of the science from the past week that we all really enjoyed and we are so glad that you're here to join it with join with us to Discuss appreciate and find curiosity What did I bring for the show this week? I Brought stories about all your base snotbugs fear extinction and brainwaves What did you bring Justin? I've got cellular regeneration Death rates amongst children couple of couple of look back looks back at the COVID strategies attempts to curtail the virus spread and Apparently, I've also got oh an indigenous fire suppression recommendation going on in Canada and One more something too. What was the other was the last oh the one I haven't seen yet Microbe mega fires and microbes Mega fires and microbes That sounds like a children's book of mega fires and microbes Blair what is in the animal? Scorpions spiders perfect tits and Bloodworms what have you done? Don't know I'm really looking forward to this show the animal corner is full of all the good things creepy crawlies galore As we jump into the show, I want to remind you that if you are not yet subscribed You can find us all places podcasts are found pretty much and you can find us on YouTube Facebook and Twitch Where we broadcast weekly on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. Pacific time We are twist science on Twitch Twitter and Instagram everywhere else look for this week in science Our website is twist org. All right time for the science Do you remember that old song all your base are or I guess it was it was all your base are belong to us And there was like meme was an early internet It's like it was from a video game. Oh, it was a video game. Maybe that's what it was I thought you were gonna sing all your base are belong to us Also old but not as old Well all your base your bases RNA and DNA Bases have been found in meteorites that have landed on this planet Just published this week in nature communications researchers talked about their analysis of several space rocks and the Nucleobases that they were looking for adenine guanine cytosine thymine and uracil and These bases are important. Does anyone get you know why they're important? They make up the constituents of RNA and DNA Yes Make up the chains of DNA and RNA and they cross link with each other to make our our chromosomes and Yeah, we really would not have life without DNA and RNA, but where did DNA and RNA come from did it just? Start here on earth in the primordial soup Well, this result specifically suggests that that's not the case that that all of the Starting materials for the amino acids to create the proteins that work for life all life on earth That they exist in space There are there's and they were brought to earth by meteorites Okay, so I want to clarify life did not come from the meteors DNA did not come from the meteors. Yes. No just this individual piece of DNA. Oh These individual parts of DNA all the little pieces The adenine thymine uracil guanine cytosine all of these have now been found on meteorites So it doesn't mean life came from outer space But it does mean that potentially the building blocks building blocks came from outer space And it would not have been possible to have life without those building blocks that came Wait, yes No, does it mean that or does it mean that these those building blocks also exist in space or that natural occurring thing The building blocks the building blocks could exist in space. They are these these these meteors they fell to earth and They had been in space previously. They fell to earth containing these bases and They the the team has tried to figure out, you know, oh did this stuff just end up on these samples once it landed on the planet, but no they they think that the detected chemicals and the way they analyze them that it is compelling to support the hypothesis of Interplanetary origin for the building blocks of life. Okay, so they're also sure it's not just a segment of earth that cracked off and came back No, these are okay. Yeah. Well, okay, so Yes, so great questions actually so these Meteors are from bits of the solar system that are further out than earth and very unlikely to have come from within the solar system And then out of out to the outer solar solar system and then come back in again in that way Yeah, they come from a particular population of me of the asteroids Yeah, so anyway building blocks of life Came from the solar system could be further out in space Interplanetary in origin, but what this the big big point here is that if That earth had the right conditions at a certain point to allow all these building blocks to potentially Combine and create RNA and DNA and move forward into selling into cells and complex life And when we say that to like I was I was now having my head that It's not that the conditions were once right Conditions can still be right right now. It's just every niche as is Blair is often, you know Covering every niche of the thing that is totally Taking advantage of its biome and its little environment There's no more room earth is full you can't start scratch here anymore. There's no startup companies. It's all it's all big block Instead of that's very crowded already too, but Inside of big box stores. It's building block Organisms, okay, but the life Life formed here on this planet earth earth life is earth life We still don't have the evidence of panspermia, but this is potentially, you know, this is chemical panspermia molecular panspermia but Justin Do you have a story? Oh, I do, but I have to Look really quick to see What it is So this is a this is gonna be this is tough This is a tough story as it has to do with death rates among children. So just bear with me if you can So hypothetically if I were to tell you that sharks are the leasing leading cause of death in children Blair would immediately react. No, it isn't Slander. Yeah, yeah slander the sharks But they've been hard enough on their own leave them out of this If I was to tell you that that sharks are the leading cause of death in children You would be astounded that it is happening that often That it would be the leading cause and would probably stop letting your child play unattended in the ocean If I were to tell you that amusement rides Are the leading cause of death in children? Not only would you avoid them But you would probably wonder why they still exist at all, right If I say car accidents the leading cause of death in children Then you likely wonder what more we could be doing to make It's safer for kids riding in cars Which is a very fair thing to think about As accidents in cars are the number two reason for child death But the leading cause of child death and I have to asterisk this In the United States And already you know Exactly what I'm going to say Is guns Gun violence in the United States now kills more children than any other cause including car accidents and pediatricians Are sounding the alarm While uh healthcare providers are taught to recognize and treat many public health crises The opioid crisis heart attacks COVID-19 pandemic Violence related to firearms Is not always seen as a public health issue Analysis of recent data now available through the cdc Which is finally looking at gun violence in this way Clinical researchers from medical universities south carolina revealed that firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death among children under 19 They have also pointed out a large racial gap Uh because they're pointing out amongst black children That has already been the case for a few decades Uh the article recently published in the journal pediatrics Calls for physicians and other health care workers to recognize That this is an epidemiological Public health challenge crisis that needs to be addressed This is uh annie andrews md pediatrician Assistant professor at pediatrics at medical university of southern california. She says when I became a pediatrician Choosing that as her as her uh the field of medicine that she would Pursue going to I never thought that I would care for so many children who had been shot It's not something that you think about When considering being a pediatrician or what a pediatrician does But as a hospital-based doctor for the last 12 years I've seen it happen again and again and I started to get really worried about this so One of the things of course that they they point to this is basics that not everybody follows is that secure storage keeping guns locked and unloaded separate from the ammunition that can keep Younger children safe from accidental gunshots if they find a gun or handling it and then it goes off It's not loaded when they're playing with the triggers or if it's kept in storage Uh that reduces chances Also having it locked away without having teenagers access to it Apparently teenage gun suicides are sometimes very impulsive actions That uh they don't have access to the weapon people believe it wouldn't happen Anyway, there's an obvious need also for some violence intervention although I think that's I think it's a weird thing that whenever we're talking about guns In the united states with that asterix. Oh, we have to reduce the uh the violence in the streets and the things like this and the culture around violence or The the bad behaviors around gun ownership But the bottom line is Uh stored guns are safer than guns that aren't stored safely But no guns No No guns would mean no deaths by firearms And that's and that's the thing, you know, this is also it's also very frustrating. Uh, I think we were talking Last year there was a story that was pointing out that Domest amongst domestic violence Most women who are murdered by a gun It's a gun that was kept in their house Yeah, it's it's used by the their spots, you know, or their significant other Love and just to what happy like the Doesn't you don't need these guns people That there's other countries all the other countries. I don't think anybody Has got this many guns per capita Even those involved in active wars right now, I don't think there's the guns per capita that you would see in the united states Anyway, uh, it's terribly awful horrible story guns Get it us guns is the leading cause of violence in it. How is Leading cause of death amongst children. How is that not? The thing that you know, oh my goodness so Blair, you uh, you'll have to just press me on this Kiki, you know, well when when you have a child There is an industry of safety That it goes along with having a child which is How what how to have a crib what kind of crib you can have how it has to be designed Every can you know the ingredients that make up a bottle You get little things to latch cupboards and stick into the plug But is that because we're trying to keep babies safe or is that because there's money in it? It's because of both That's the thing right, but also let me remind you when it comes to child safety What happened with cobit? When when adults got vaccinated we went back to normal and the children went back to school Even though the children were not yet vaccinated and the kids were still unmasked and unvaccinated in such situations and yeah, so We're not necessarily We're not we don't as humans society lies all the time in the way that we should We don't follow the evidence In a logical manner Oh humans But the more evidence like this pops up The more there is potentially going to be a push as there has been to To regulate firearms More in the united states Yeah Blair tell me a story. Yes Um, well speaking of deadly things. Um, I wanted to tell you about scorpions. Yes, please. Um, so scorpions They're actually much more deadly than I realized so scorpions sting it more than a million people a year They kill more than three thousand Okay, well, that's not okay. First of all, that's not bad odds, but who's a lot of people who are getting where's Well, not not here in california. I'll tell you Um, but yes, there's there's lots of scorpions out there. There's there's so many um, but I just don't come across them in my day-to-day, but 3 000 people die a year So we were talking about sharks a second ago. That's like 10 people a year So scorpions is a lot more and usually the victims. Yeah, go ahead. Oh and and uh, and Entirely avoidable Without putting if you don't put your body in the ocean You have a zero chance of getting bitten by a shark Unless of course, of course the the sharks are raining from the sky And they just fall on you and bite you as they fall But this isn't about sharks. It's about scorpions scorpions scorpions so usually When people get get stung by a scorpion. They don't know what kind of scorpion got them people don't know Kinds of scorpions. That's not I mean like in certain areas you could go. That was definitely a rattlesnake that bit me But in terms of scorpion, you're just like it was a scorpion. I don't know there's more than one kind And so the problem is Just learning because the picture that you've got got up there. I guess from this article Shows a scorpion that's the size ever slightly longer than a human hand that is very bravely being set next to it I've I've seen scorpions But the ones I've like I picture them as very tiny and we do have them in california Just tiny little well, we have them down south in california and to the east If we have in northern california, too Definitely in northern california as well. Yeah. Yeah, just not just directly in the bay area, but anyway You're a barely part of california. You're like you're like Surrender on this is a three sentence. Okay. Let's get back here. We are actually scorpions. Come on so People don't usually know what exact kind of scorpion got them. So doctors have to guess Do I use antivenom? What kind do I use? What other drugs do I use? Is this going to be deadly or is it just an inflammation? Because it can cause everything from just pain and numbness to muscle spasms drooling irregular heartbeat and even even death so In most cases doctors will We'll try to do what they can to kind of treat the symptoms but If they do decide to use antivenom, it's very costly and it has side effects antivenom can cause vomiting fever Rashes and even then even if you do administer the antivenom, sometimes people still die if they're allergic to the scorpion So all that to say Scorpion stings are a problem. The national university of ireland galway Combined the scientific literature for data on body and claw size of scorpions related to toxicity And uh, they looked at about 2,500 species of scorpions Or sorry, there are 2,500 species of scorpions. They looked at 36 species based on the available information So a very small number of the 2,500 species, but they were all um pretty Unrelated as far as scorpions go. So they felt like it was a really wide swath of scorpion Scorpions to pick from I guess And so they were they felt pretty confident in their findings and that it was applicable to the rest of scorpions what they found was that Um, the smaller the scorpion and the smaller the claws the more deadly the venom So they looked at these little walnut sized mexican scorpions send true rhodes Noxious as some of the smallest and the rock scorpion, which I think is what the picture is that kiki just showed Had a genie's granulot 2 Which is five times as large and they the rock scorpion Their venom is a mild irritant. That's the big guy Whereas the venom from the tinier scorpions can straight up send victims into shock Wow, and uh similarly slender of course the exact opposite of what you'd be afraid of you'd be afraid of the giant Scorpion bigger than your hand and a little cute one You'd be like, oh, I'll hold this one and then that's the one of course gets right Well, this is also true for spiders as a reminder tarantulas Um, a lot of their venom glands are so underdeveloped that if you get bit by a tarantula It might feel like a slight bee sting, but it's not gonna hurt you black widows teeny tiny can kill you Have you seen black widows in San Francisco? They're not teeny tiny So compared compared to a tarantula, they are teeny tiny. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um, not little And then there's the daddy long leg Spider, which is nothing really, which is but has very very it's a very Thin tiny spider if you think of it, but it's it's venom is very strong except it's its mouth isn't big enough But so yeah, so in both of these cases the scorpions and the spiders, which by the way are closely related This is an evolutionary trade-off They believe that when scorpions first appeared They were lied on big crab-like claws to attack prey But once they evolved a deadly sting, they didn't need the claws growing big claws We talked about this with lobsters. I believe in the past crabs. I don't remember but um, evolutionarily energetically very expensive to maintain a huge claw and so if It's better to stay small and you have other defenses then you don't really need the big claws So Why does this matter to humans? If you know the size of the scorpion that stung you that is helpful information to the doctors If this is truly an applicable study and the smaller the scorpion the stronger the sting then Size can help doctors treat you when you are stung So I'm I'm very curious like where this is that applicable because because one of the things I would assume is uh If I got bitten northern california or southern california Stung. Yes Stung stung. Thank you There's probably a couple of Right possible Where is it that they're like you have to like okay? Uh, it's the size of the thing What's the what coloration did it have like everywhere? It's hot like the tropics. Yeah The tropics like parts of south america parts of that. This is why I don't travel But it is it's body so it's body size, but it's also Um, you can also look at body size and the size of their Their claws their chelic array. Yeah. Yeah, so if you're stung by a scorpion delay Try to remember as much about it as you can how big was it? What color was it how big were their claws? This is all important. You don't need to know the species but You can give as much information as possible that can help them treat you Whether they'll know whether or not to worry. Yeah All right, I have a story Next that I wanted to chat about You may have been feeling little Sniffly recently some people are sniffly because they have caught colds other people are sniffly because of allergies But regardless this mucus production is a product of the immune system It's your inflammatory response It is the mucus membranes the response of the body trying to get rid of foreign Material get it out whether it's a bacteria a virus a particle Something that's in the air like pollen Your body just is like I am I am snotting now And the snot will carry will enclose this thing. I don't like and get rid of it Well, it turns out that there are some bacteria that like to get in your body your airways and Stimulate snot production with their toxins so that then they can eat your mucus And it makes them happy Geez snot bacteria and eyelash mites just hanging out at the Blair buffet, huh? That's right. That is right. Yeah, so these bacteria we've heard of them before pseudomonas aeruginosa is a an opportunistic pathogen so opportunistic being it takes opportunity. It's like, oh, I'm in your nose. What do I get to do? And it produces a toxin called last bee and this Causes an epithelial response where the epithelium Produces a compound called amphoregulin and that causes type 2 inflammation and mucin or snot production And so the researchers in this paper that is currently published in Immunity they they're calling this niche remodeling. So basically This bacteria is promoting colonization of your tissues By producing this toxin which makes the snot which they can eat and then they're like more of us And then there's more bacteria and more snot and it's better for the for the bacteria And it creates allergic sensitization And so these bacteria may actually be stimulating your immune response and making you More highly responsive to other allergens as well because they've just started that immune response So it's an interesting interesting I guess behavior Or it's that, you know, it's not not it's it's opportunity, right? This bacteria is like Oh snot. I like it. I'm going to eat it. It makes me happy And it just so happens that you produce it when I secret this toxin Everything Everything with DNAs food Everything So how do I how do I know if this is why I'm snotting and how do I get rid of them? Right, well, that's the that's the question, right? That's a different scientific answer, right? I mean there are They're the things that you can do constantly like a netty pot or No, but be careful because Water It has to be clean water That you have sanitized. Yes. Um or these nasal sprays are available Like if you boil the water it has to cool down for not boiling water in your nasal cavity. No, that's going to be a problem also Be careful how you use the netty pot Yeah, but there are you know, there are techniques, especially during allergy season or year round if that's the kind of thing that uh disturbs you Where you can Honey is antibacterial I don't know if that's a good idea necessarily Maybe medical grade honey that's been diluted with sand with with distilled water and I don't I'm not I'm not giving you medical advice right now I'm just telling you about this new thing. They found Oh god It's like one of those medical advice shows where they're like three kids so that we would do such a terrible job We would do an awful job We just start throwing stuff out there. Just following and speculating. Yeah, where did you start honey in your nose? What if we needed to cure what if we needed to cure our liver? What should we do then that's a great question Oh, well or uh just about anything else if we wanted to stay young forever as blairs are gracefully doing so far we will need our uh Yamanaka factors yamanaka factors are four count them one two three four cellular reprogramming molecules Which have been shown to slow the aging process and improve muscle tissue regeneration capacity in mice But these are already known sulk scientists used these yamanaka factors to see if they could increase liver size And improve liver function while extending health spans Of the mice The process involves Partially converting mature liver cells back to younger states to promote cell growth results of this study are published in cell reports And reveal that the use of reprogramming molecules Can in fact improve cell growth and lead to better tissue Regeneration in the livers of mice Quotey voice We are excited to make strides at repairing cells of damaged livers because someday approaches like this could be extended to Replacing the whole organ itself. So that is one of the authors one carlos Sua Belmont a professor at sulk's gene expression laboratory our findings Could lead to the development of new therapies for infection cancer genetic liver disease as well as metabolic diseases like nine alcoholic stepo hepatitis Uh, so kind of one of the interesting things in in this this story too is The way they went about this because people have been trying to use these factors these molecules to get generation going on tissues before One of the problems though is it sort of becomes a a stimulant for cellular growth Works great But it doesn't it doesn't come with the instructions of regulation So You can have Tumor formation you can have overgrowth. You can actually create a sort of form of cancer Or at least benign tumors That are cancer-like so you can get this this A little bit unrestricted growth what they did is they managed to find a nice balance there giving a small amount over I think just one day's worth of treatment and this is Toma oki ishita who's associate professor at waka yama medical university in japan, but who was working in the The this on this project as a postdoc Yama naka factors are truly a double-edged sword on the one hand They have the potential to enhance liver regeneration and damaged tissues But the downside is that they cause tumors. We were excited to find that our short-term induction protocol Has the good effects without the bad improved drainage regeneration and no cancer also in this they found That there was a gene top 2a that wasn't known before to be involved the mechanism Involved in the reprogramming And it was highly active immediately after they did the treatment So it's a it's an enzyme Top of some some rays 2a. It's an enzyme that helps break up and rejoin dna strands So they noticed that it was upregulated So they went and blocked it. They did another experiment where they had blocked that gene And they saw a 40 fold reduction in cellular reprogramming rates Leading to far fewer young yourselves. So not only are they have they found a an application or a protocol to use to stimulate regrowth of these livers That doesn't have the negative effects. They may have found another mechanism that is highly involved On the protein level in in Doing proper regeneration But yeah, you know, these are these sort of uh, little steps little steps along the way to science created evolution Where humans may one day be like, oh, I gotta go buy the doctor. Oh, what's going on? I gotta get my liver regenerated Right. Well, I mean our liver is so regenerative as it is Like you can have a little tiny bit of liver and it'll like grow back our liver is amazing But at the same time once you really damage it the you know, the The hepatitis and other aspects can it really is it You need liver transplants and people get those occasionally. Um This whole thing though, it's fascinating to me like number one as this gets developed What is going to be the trade-off of like how bad off you are For your, you know, your your liver damage before you're allowed to take this regenerative cocktail to regenerate your your liver Or secondarily now that they have this protein Is this going to be the a target that could be like, oh, well, I have a slight dysfunction in my liver because I drink every weekend too much and now I can just pop a pill after I You know after I have too many drinks and suddenly my liver's healthy like so, you know, I'm just wondering what the real Clinical application or even just over the counter, you know, what are we what are we going to be getting eventually? Be fantastic. I've I've thought it would be fantastic to have liver regeneration for years. This is This is great. But and they worked on that night when I was reading this, uh, I sort of thought well, that's that's a Soft target, you know, that's something that can already do some level of regeneration But what I think what I think away is like the fascinating part about this is these are things that are already taking place in the body On small scale small scale. Yep small scale. Like, ah, let's go repair These hundred cells over here. We need to regenerate this fix this dna and these this one bad cell Whatever it is on a very small scale. The body has the ability to do all sorts of amazing repair stuff But what we're doing then is saying, okay, we like to do a bigger scale. Let's do it again and again and again Yeah, let's do it really big And and so we're we're not so much Science isn't so much inventing A thing that the the body can't do on its own But but giving it access to do it on the like you said on the bigger scale Bigger that's what people want We're always like we want more and faster and cheaper. Let's do it Um In another really fantastic discovery of a new target researchers have just published their work in nature on discovering A mutation that's responsible for extreme lupus so studying a a young girl Back in 2016 a seven-year-old Spanish girl named Gabriella had symptoms of severe lupus and So they they coded her they they sequenced decoded her genome and they found a single base variation And it was a change in the gene for t l r 7 t l r 7 has never been implicated in lupus before and It's a really important gene because It's not it might be the central signaling pathway in lupus. They say that T l r 7 it's otherwise known as toll like receptor 7 It is a pathogen detecting protein And so normally it's exposed on the surface of immune cells bumps into pathogens and says You're a pathogen and tells the immune system to attack a pathogen, but in this case with this mutation it uh It misidentifies cells within the body and so uh creates the it creates the issues of of auto immune disease And in this particular case because they've now discovered this particular mutation they altered the gene in mice When they had the mice start expressing lupus like symptoms and they also found this mutation in several other lupus patients when they went to look for it So now it's a target and it It's there's proof that this is You know, probably not the only mutation but a very important mutation in The cause of lupus and potentially other auto immune diseases like lupus Um, it also explains why most people who get lupus are women because T l r 7 is on the X chromosome And uh, this is where both copies of the gene are often they get expressed So when men get just one copy They won't have the expression of the uh of the disease phenotype So now who knows it's a path. It's a it's a link in the chain to the pathway That could lead to better treatments for people with lupus And that's just one of the one one little geez Yeah, one single nucleotide mutation like just one one little switch in a gene Yeah But it I mean, I think it's this kind of work This is the first time they've really discovered something this big and so it's a it's a huge discovery for for the field and maybe And it's interesting. We've talked the other aspect to this is that we talk about gain of function research in how we in Our genetic research when we try and figure out how viruses work or how to find treatments for viruses will often kind of give Proteins additional functions. So this gain of function by making changes in them this T l r 7 mutation is a natural gain of function variation This is like a switch that that is a a gain of function process that happens naturally within the body so Better just an interesting little little connection right there And maybe we will find more cures more treatments more targets When we look at these things down the road, this is this week in science Thank you so much for joining us for the show tonight. If you're enjoying the show, please tell a friend All right, Justin. Let's come back for this covid update. What do you have to tell us? Well, this is uh, these are look-backs. This isn't uh, this isn't current Um stuff going on with the pandemic that we're in. This is a look-back at the pandemic of yesterday that we're in last year That we're still in but we're looking at uh, uh This is a couple of studies I think it's april 2020 to june 2021 This is the time frame And it looked at eliminators versus mitigators classic struggle between the eliminator and mitigator Uh strategies of countering covid 19 Because they are the pandemic policy measures Implemented by countries that tried to control rather than eliminate covid 19 Are associated with slightly worse mental health and lower life evaluations According to these studies and this is published both are published. I think in the lancet public health journal Countries that aim to eliminate community transmission with their within their borders. Those are the eliminators Uh experienced fewer deaths And equivalent or better mental health trends during the pandemic than countries that aimed to control Rather than eliminate the transmission mitigators Governments around the world employed diverse strategies. You shoot a variety of guidelines. So They had to use 15 countries but also knowing that there's variation in how implementation took place amongst those 15 countries Uh Some countries really tried to eliminate down to a zero community transmission Other countries slowed it down With we had some lockdowns. There was some workplace business school closings social distancing wearing a face masks cancellation of public gatherings And public transport That was really sort of more of the mitigations though, right? So it says how this They so they wanted just they just focused on they weren't focused on what were just the health outcomes We wanted to know all of them out the health outcomes of these as much as possible So countries that were eliminators were australia, japan, singapore, south korea mitigators canada, denmark, finland, france, germany, italy, meadowlands norway, spain, sweden and the uk us was not part of the study, but definitely would have been in the mitigator camp yeah Sort of it's pretty interesting The findings uh basic findings here Mental health of people in countries that tried to mitigate the virus transmission were more impacted Then people who tried to eliminate so if you went to a hard lockdown, we're gonna get rid of travel Nobody go to work stay home. We're gonna time out People didn't people had better health outcomes mental health outcomes as a result of that Because they partly say Because it worked and people got to go back to more of a life as normal versus the mitigating countries Had such a long drawn out even though they weren't completely They weren't as restricted They had to do all this social distancing And elimination of events over time Everything was just drawn out I have a theory Um, perhaps It's specifically that if you're you were completely locked down you had no choice But if you were in the mitigation phase You had to make your own health decisions every day in everything that you did and the mental strain Yeah, huge mental load. It's constant anxiety and stress and guilt the whole time. This is why My in 2020 the first half Of the lockdown of 2020 I was actually happier with than the second half because in the first half you could do anything And there was no guilt to not doing anything And there was no guilt to doing what you had to do to get groceries every two or three weeks But the the second half you were suddenly allowed to do some things You're like it's been long enough since I did the last thing is this one say, you know, yeah Yeah, that's very observant because the length of lockdown and like everything closures Had no impact On mental health reporting Like that's what we're all doing No, like you say gilting no decision making no worry and stress over the different interactions It didn't matter the lockdown was uh Six weeks or three months It didn't increase in in negative mental health but the With some exceptions. So there's some there's some interesting outliers in this Let's see. Let me see if I can find this here. Uh Now this is on that lockdown had a significant relatively small adverse mental health effects While the experience of lockdown slightly lowered mental health scores across the study population females Were more likely to suffer mental health consequences than males Especially those between 20 and 29 years of age There were no significant effects for adolescents of either gender and no effects for younger males Meanwhile males aged 55 years and above Saw an improvement in their mental health scores during lockdown Interesting demographic Their family had to be with them They finally didn't have to go to work Or like already This is 55 and above. Maybe it's that maybe it's that like Oh, I don't have to interact with anybody I can stay home Work on my model painting Yeah, so moderately large effects were also found for females living in coupled households with dependent children They were more likely than any other group to face negative mental health outcomes Uh were males in coupled households with dependent children Or without children saw only modest negative outcomes So women in in in that situation having worse mental health outcomes Interestingly again, there was no negative effect of lockdown found amongst single mothers Which what does that tell you? Women are stressed out by their partners No, they were they were already doing it all I think yeah Is probably what that meant and they suddenly couldn't go to work Right, so you actually got to see your child if you're a single mother You're probably going to work at least 40 hours a week Yeah Or maybe you're a single mother and you you're now In lockdown you've decided to go be in lockdown with a family with your whole family and you're you don't you're not going to work And so you've got help with your child. Everybody's taking Responsibility there may yeah, they're all so so many interesting aspects here I just like I just like the idea that you know, this confirms a thing. I've always thought that Men and women who live together Uh, it's it's it's much harder on the woman Well, it's early on in the pandemic. I think we reported on a story study that Women were taking on the majority of child care duties. Yeah, uh, wow teleworking versus men So it's you know, they were expected to keep the clean house and take care of the children and cook the food and do All the things that we thought we left in the dust in the 1950s, but here it is again They called it like What did they call it? But it was like it was like the new 1950s the first six months of the pandemic when all of a sudden Women were expected to do all of these things in addition to working from home So but anyway and that show the uh, the justin plan Which we all know is a total lockdown of everything for six weeks where nobody goes out of the house and just waits until it's safe To go outside where the virus can be gone. We'd have actually had much less Uh negative much more positive mental health outcomes Let alone the health outcomes then even the strictest things employed Elsewhere except maybe china. Maybe i'm in the third terrier Yeah, there was another study that came out. I I thought that showed uh What was it? There's something that came out. Oh, I think it's actually your next story Based on what what would have happened in terms of deaths not just Not just so you know, yeah, there's and there's a few of them out there another one's like, you know the the Actually the less the less restrictive the ones that like the one that's the the mitigator one Actually created more governmental distrust in countries Then the then the ones that were like are going to lock down and wait till it goes past and then and then the The one you're talking about they sort of looked at a third strategy It's not really the mitigators strategy. It is a mitigation strategy. I guess it is. Yeah It's a very specific one where they This idea that you could just focus on The most vulnerable in society the elderly they're already sick and and isolate them in society And let everybody else continue To intermingle live our lives. Yeah Have our lives and get that herd immunity and basically they just did a bunch of modeling They they used I think london as the example But they made it a population of one million in their modeling and they ran all these scenarios Basically what they decided was even even in the most perfect Version of shielding the vulnerable Which they say also is impossible. Everything is leaky humans Wherever you are in that low risk high risk Whatever. Yeah, everything leaks. But even if you did the perfect one you would be overwhelming hospitals and In that million person model Leading to tens of thousands more deaths this the shielding or focused protection It's published in public library of science global public health. This is university of bath study said now now that that The a lot of people have thrown that out there is a thing we should have done But based on their modeling that would have been disastrous And some countries did try to do that and they did have very high death rates. And if we had Used those Yeah, but these there were a couple of studies early on in the pandemic that Were proactively trying to figure out what the best You know the best response to the pandemic would be in various countries and They they predicted all sorts of deaths and economic losses as a result of not locking down and not Doing as much mitigation as possible So we're seeing you surpass them all Yeah, we we've surpassed all Oh, good job everybody But as we move forward, we've got vaccines now and we have all sorts of other treatments and it turns out that there is a new mRNA vaccine potentially on the block researchers Or not researchers a vaccine company arcturus therapeutics of san diego Did a placebo placebo controlled trial of its candidate mRNA vaccine in more than 17 000 participants in vietnam It reported that the vaccine had 55 efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 and 95 efficacy against severe illness and death so was Was working on the same level as the other mRNA Vaccine basically at the same level of efficacy That does not sound as Against delta and omicron. Yeah, because it's because of the the newer variant and that's what it was That's what it was up against the interesting thing about this mRNA vaccine though is that it's not exactly like the others in that it is self amplifying so the This particular formulation is different from moderna's and fizer bio n-tex vaccines Those have mRNA that codes for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and then it gets into the cells and uses the cellular machinery to Create the antibodies to the spike protein So this happens also with this self amplifying mRNA, but the self amplifying mRNA has a little bit of code in it that says We're going to copy ourselves. And so once it gets into the cell its little particles Open up and it's copying instructions start copying and so it superpowers The amount of mRNA that ends up in your cells so that the mRNA lasts longer So that your body has a longer amount of time to create antibodies So number one you can have a lower dose vaccine. So each shot is a lower dose secondarily their formulation is freeze-dried and can be Can be stored in at room temperature So you don't need to have the special refrigeration to enable transport of this vaccine So there's still a lot of questions. Uh, and it has to go through very important. That was He can't trust refrigeration Well, plus when somebody asks you which vaccine you got you get to say arcturus Arcturus I'm still confused. Uh, maybe I've under uh, I've been overly Optimistic about my interpretation of numbers of efficacy and things I thought the mRNA vaccines that we had now were like 90 Percentage is against severe disease and death Just from that just you can still 50 50 chance of getting it even with yes. Yes well think about um, I heard on on npr this morning that 60 percent of uh The entire us has gotten coped 60 percent and So based on that number we know There's a very good number of people who've been vaccinated. So That would have to be the case Yeah, I'd hope so Yeah, but I just figured that was like being vaccinated Yeah being vaccinated is the thing that will give you better protection against future variants of the virus Being just infected without being vaccinated you have a higher probability of Of getting really sick and dying and then also getting sick again because you're not going to be as protected against future variants potentially Omicron Yeah future omicrons Omicrons and their babies the baby omicrons um, and then finally there's a retraction that we should all be aware of um earlier in The pandemic it was highly reported this paper that uh vitamin high doses of vitamin d are beneficial to people With covet 19 it was published in scientific reports. It has been retracted now as researchers uh reported That patients were not appropriately randomized and so the differences in the outcomes Couldn't be attributed to vitamin d therapy after all So back to the drawing board on that one, but it was um a highly highly cited paper It's been retracted. I'm very tempted to say like yeah, that didn't make sense I didn't believe that in the beginning, but then there was somebody could probably play me I'm like this is great news vitamin d is like, I don't remember what my take on it was at first But when I heard this one, I'm like Yeah, I don't know who this vitamin d industry Like there's got to be somebody I don't even know how you get vitamin d the industrial like when you're getting supplements And when they've added put put it into the milk where this comes from exactly It's got to be some big money in that because I feel like there's always a study In the peripheral saying how wonderful vitamin d is Just it's like what you hear about it more than the other vitamins So I kind of feel like there might be an industry push to make people take vitamin d I don't know. I don't know how much how much I don't know. I have no idea how much money I mean supplements are money, but This is this week in science We hope that we are a ray of sunshine A ray of science sunshine into your Curious world if you do enjoy the show, please head over to twist.org and click on our patreon link and help produce the show We rely on your donations to keep the show going week after week keep the equipment up and Keep our connections through the interwebs and all these things So very appreciate your support ten dollars and more Per month not even per week per month and we will thank you by name at the end of the show Thank you for your support. We really can't do this without you Okay, it is time if Blair's internet's working after you know all these days and weeks No, it's time for Blair's animal corner With Blair Maybe I can open the music Except for giant What you got Blair, I don't think I have internet is what I don't know. You're fine. You're very pixelated you look like a You look like a very cheap Video game watch anime character at the moment strange twist of fate. I think I had to turn my wi-fi on To make my internet work, even though I am hardwired, but regardless We're gonna try to get always turn off your video and then just go with audio and maybe I might I might do that just so you can hear me. Okay. Is that better? Sure. Oh, hold on. I'm gonna turn the wi-fi back off All right, I am hardwired. Yeah, everyone live show. Whoo-hoo internet Okay solar flare. So I want to talk to you about catapulting spiders Um, I'm very excited about it And I'm very sad that you can't see my face because I'm very very excited about it But um, so these are Uh phylopenella prominence hackled orb weavers And they like many orb weavers um Well, depending on if you're a male or female have a very interesting Uh methodology to mating so the females like to try to eat the males afterwards the males want to survive But they self-domain because you know, that's how you win life is by Spreading your genes. So it's it's it's a tough. It's a tough thing How do you how do you do that without getting eaten? and so um what researchers of hubei university in wuhan china bound Is that these spiders will catapult away from the females As soon as they are done mating They fling themselves away from their partners at up to 88 centimeters per second And I did do the math and that's about two miles per hour Which is pretty quick for a spider For a little spider coming from a dead stop for sure and so um What they found looking at 300 individuals Or sorry 155 individuals Successful matings. So actually it's about 310 individuals in 155 couples they All all of the males that survived Catapulted away to do so All the three males that didn't They were all eaten and then to test the study They prevented 30 of them from catapulting away. I don't know how And all 30 were eaten So that catapulting was essential to surviving reproduction Oh my gosh, so there's the catapulting you could also say say maybe slingshotting themselves Just getting away as quickly as possible Yes, they accelerated an average about 200 meters per second squared And as they soared through the air they spun 175 per second How many how many again 175 times per second Yeah, and so uh, what they found was that they they achieved this by folding the tibia metatarsis joint against the female And when released the way that spider like Actually hydraulic pressure. So the hydraulic pressure rapid expansion Uh the Kind of oh you're breaking up Great because since they don't have bones inside or muscles. It's all pressure based stuff Right, so it's hydraulics Yeah, so and this is um these these God, what are they called hackled orb weavers? They actually live the reason I said 300 before is they live in groups of up to 300 individuals in a web complex and so, um, there's a lot of Kind of negotiating and interconnected social situations that happen in these spiders. They are social spiders and so, um beyond that it could also count as a sort of Quality control for females. They don't know this yet. This is something they want to study next But is this a way the females are going? Oh, you didn't get away for you fast enough I'm not gonna use your charm I'm gonna go mate with somebody else So it could be an extra selection technique from the females as well Or the females just want to eat because they just expected a bunch of energy mating and they want to Um, they want a good energy boost for the babies. I don't know could be either Females definitely want an energy boost for the babies. I mean that's That's going to be important for you know, nutrients to support the eggs and to Make sure that they have a chance at survival. I mean, I thought that was Part of why they want to eat the males to begin with Give me my nourishment for my babies. That's right And I know also We lost you Blair Completely Oh, no, I could potentially mate with more The females could mate with more. Yeah The selective the selective nature too of the internet connection I don't get it. I pay for extra fancy fast internet. I don't get it Yeah, but you uh, you know It's the tubes are full of spiders. That's the problem The spiders they don't have enough catapulting males, obviously Um Next another one. Yes, you want to hear about a 75 year old great tits study Yes, I love the great tits. Yes. So this is As far as we know um This is the longest Study in um, oh gosh, I have to find the exact The exact wording the longest continuous study of an individually marked animal population In the world. This is a 75 year long study of great tits in Um oxfords living laboratory at wytham woods So this is it's special because it's not inside a lab It's out in the wild. They've been able to very specifically study these great tits Individually marking the animals And so through this they've been able to learn so much about these birds They've been able to release a bunch of studies But the one that this particular study or this particular Breaking news from this week is all about is about the fact that the start of the study in 1947 the Okay, I'm gonna need you to say that again Blair The first great tit hatchling of 1947 in this Area was on april 27th This year. Oh my goodness Just today I don't know do you I You're breaking up all over the place and they're such cute tits She's gone. Oh maybe if you Close up and turn off your router and return your router on Perhaps Yeah Up and flair is gone, but we are left with these cute little baby tits and they're just adorable Just adorable, but wow it did sound like an iss mission Oh We should have better. Yeah, we should have better signal. Hey Justin Yeah Yeah, do you want to talk about fire? Are you ready to talk about? Yeah, so there's a couple a couple of fire stories this week that uh I picked up just before the the show started One is actually sort of a continuation of a study I talked about It's a different study, but it's continuation of a theme that I've been talking about Which is uh indigenous stewardship Of lands We were talking a little while back about a population of caribou that an indigenous population has been resuscitating and and getting getting its numbers up. This is a university of british columbia study that looked at It it controlled fires controlled burns practices of indigenous peoples and saying that canada needs to rely more on those traditional burning uh activities To sustain the environment. This is actually a quote from dr. Amy cardinal christensen uh indigenous fire research scientists at canadian forest service cultural Oh Yeah What's happening on the show tonight? I think that you have been attacked by P air genosa Oh gosh. No, no No, no, there's no p air and my genosa uh So, uh, I was gonna try to quote something here we go cultural fire Is using fire on the landscape to achieve certain cultural objectives such as sustaining diverse animal life and plants that serve as medicine or food uh according to Amy cardinal christensen For example, certain berries tend to fruit prolifically following a fire Cultural fires are typically low intensity small scale burns that are community driven And practiced by indigenous firekeepers around the globe There's you know, I got once asked who who's going who has better knowledge of biology Uh, scientists who have studied biology uh With a phd or an indigenous person who's been you know living in this same biome for multi multi multi generations And it's a tough question because one is you think well one does understands our scientific shared knowledge of mechanism About how certain things work and the other one actually just knows That this bird eats this fruit and that if you like in this case if you do this controlled burn That fruit will grow more than there's no birds are going to be there in in greater population or whatever the thing is Uh, so there is this there is this scientific knowledge But there's also in a a cultural knowledge that can that can we can all be benefiting from And that's basically what the authors of this study were saying They're looking to knock down what barriers the british uh, not british the Uh crown territories, which is what the the candidate refers to these as that The indigenous people Land adjacent to the indigenous lands that still exist In canada on the indigenous lands controlled burnings are taking place and they're being successful the Adjacent lands that are controlled by the canadian government are not having the same results because They're not being managed Uh in the way that traditionally those lands have been managed for tens of thousands of years So they're they're making a push to knock down those barriers to allow the indigenous groups to take over more land Which again is a theme that we've talked about a bit on this show if you want to preserve lands if you want to preserve it Give it to the humans. Just turn that land over to the humans who've been doing that Successively for tens of thousands of years right and have a vested interest in the success of animal populations of the environmental health and that sort of thing Well, I think also the the call when you start thinking about it as the vested interest. It's not just necessarily a business interest where it's one company who wants one particular kind of wood in a tree for you know for their Wood for the for the for their logging that they do for selling wood for houses, you know It's there's much more resource use that's involved and the cultural aspects are They're deeper and so there's a lot more interest to maintaining the forest in a way that is sustainable Yeah, I mean even even if it yeah, even if it's not being Even if the resources aren't being used for something like logging like you're saying which which can devastate Yeah, and a biome The hands out like we made it illegal in california For indigenous tribes to do the controlled burning And what do we have now massive wildfires? Same thing in oregon. Yep made it illegal massive wildfires all these And so there's there's all these benefits that You know, how long have people been you know in california? Uh for the the federal government really been in control of california and I'd say it's maybe A hundred years of actual like having policies and involvement in that sort of thing It's very new to a territory to try to have understood how how all these interactions how all the interplay goes on In a biome And especially since most of it it's not done by even by scientists in the first place But by politicians and bureaucracies Yeah, I think the framing shift is Yeah, the framing shift from prescribed to cultural I think is just interesting in itself That's gonna have room for study for years And then the uh the last study I've got here is this is UC riverside researchers showing that fungi and bacteria That are able to survive redwood redwood forest mega fires Are microbial cousins that often increase in abundance after feeling the flames Fires of unprecedented size intensity called mega fires are becoming increasingly common again. This is because we made The management of forests by people who know how to manage it illegal The west climate change is also contributing rising temperatures earlier snowmelt's extended dry season When the forests are then most vulnerable for the burning Some ecosystems are adapted for less intense fires Little is known about how plants associated micro uh microbiomes respond to mega fires Particularly in california's charismatic redwood tanook forests Uh, this is quoting Sydney glasman ucr mycologist studies fungi lead study of the author lead uh study author It's not likely plants can recover from mega fires without beneficial fungi that supply roots with nutrients or bacteria that transform Extra carbon nitrogen into post fire soil understanding the moat microbes Is key to any restoration effort and it's sort of interesting because that kind of uh touches on what I was just talking about You got the scientist who who can understand the mechanisms in play You have the indigenous population that may not have known about this mechanism But knows what the result is if you do the control, right? yeah Yeah, in addition to examining mega fire effects on redwood forest microbes the study is unusual for another reason Soil samples were pulled from the same plots of land both before and immediately after The 2016 sobramus fire in monoray county get this Kind of data researcher would almost have to burn the plot themselves So it's it's tough to predict exactly where the There will be a burn class and said it sounds like maybe they had been just sampling This this forest anyway, and then the fires happened and went Let's go back take a look. Let's take a look. Yeah opportun opportunistic scientism 70 decline in number of microbes species Uh, and yet they were surprised that some yeast and bacteria in land only survived the fire but increased in in abundance so What sort of makes sense, you know, it's sort of like taking an antibiotic if you think of it that way it knocks out Uh, almost everything but if anything isn't getting knocked out It now has no competition It now has nothing preying on it or fighting With their competing with it for those resources and it it can sort of blossom Yeah so massive increase in a fungal category for heat resistant bassi dio Ascus yeast which is able to grade different compounds of wood this is this is like this is This is part of the part of the life cycle of the forest is to have these fires and of course, yeah, we as we've also learned over these years there are microbes and fungi in the soil that are beneficial to the growth of plants One of those things we I think it's a long time ago. We talked about soil microbiomes in this in this, uh In in the frame of invasive plants the ones that start to take over Aren't just invading like the plant is very prolific and it keeps growing places But it's actually the bacterial the the microbiome of that soil That is spreading that is then allowing the plant to take over from right from a species Yeah, so after a fire a big mega fire you've got these species that they're like that was great and then they They start making the soil Better for the plants to the first plants the primary ones which come in which are basically invasive The ones that come in first after a fire are like the quick growing They're able to take over Yeah, that's and is it this is an end to say but it's something that uh, it was a Uh research I'd read some some time ago about native Plants in california They're more fire resistant than than most plants the the flowers like california wildflower wildflowers are more resistant to fire uh and heat than Than most so california has been a fire state Going back. It's not completely a new thing. Yeah, these mega fires aren't just a global warming thing. This is also Uh just the way that california has always been Yeah, but it's good to understand this succession how it how it works and You know, like you said the microbiome aspect of it how that how that actually works We've got a Blair back so Hey, you want to go back here Yeah, yeah, we can hop back into the animal corner for a second here Um, so I was just starting to tell you About the longest continuous study of an individually marked animal population in the world Yes, and so that was the great tit in university of oxford's living laboratory at wythem woods So The sentence I tried to say over and over again is When the study started in 1947 the first egg hatched on april 27th This year in 2022 75 years later the first great tit egg hatched March 28th So it's a whole month earlier Yeah, we talked before about birds being you know a week or two weeks different as a result of climate changes And temperature differences, but a month That's that's a lot. Yeah, and I'm sorry. I I said the wrong word had not hatched counted The first egg was counted. So the first egg was Laid ish based on their daily checks, right? So it's it's still very important. Yes So Blair, yes, uh, what would be the implications? Why should we be concerned? I aren't that the the egg shows up a month early Right. So, um Good question Hopefully I try to only ask The good questions I try to leave the bad questions off the table and bring Only that I'm just stalling in case you needed it. But no, she doesn't need it. I'm just waiting to speak um, so Hopefully this study will continue for another 75 years And we can figure out exactly what the impacts are now what what we do know about great tits for the last 75 years Of the study is that the timing of when they lay their eggs is influenced by many things climate It's a big one social interactions health and behavior of trees And so all these things together relate to the timing of when they laid their eggs Now if the climate tells them one thing and the tree is telling them something else This could be deadly if the climate is telling them one thing And the other tits are acting differently. That could be a problem If they're acting one way and bugs aren't coming out yet because it's not Warm enough yet. There's all sorts of things that can happen if you get kind of Asynchronized with your normal schedule The the tits were the perfect Subject for this long-term study because they take well to nest boxes. They breed at high density So you don't have to walk all over the place checking on your birds. They don't travel far from where they're born So you get a kind of consistent cohort over many generations And they cope well with being monitored by scientists. They can get grabbed and very delicately selected And they can be tagged with little leg rings and it won't impact their breeding or their Their health in other ways For other birds, they they're very sensitive and if you do that they can mess up their whole year or life So this is this is a situation where they're a perfect study for that Um, and so they looked at breeding data from 1209 fixed location next boxes That's a lot of locations over many years And a study this duration is built on hundreds of people at least tens if not hundreds of publications And so, uh, this has been something that's been kind of handed through many generations And it will continue hopefully to be handed through because it's important for us to assess the changes That that climate change are pushing on to animal species Because not just are the tits affected, but what do the what did those birds affect around them in the ecosystem? This is all really important. So, um climate change can have effects on all sorts of biological systems And in this example birds are adjusting their behavior and reproduction decisions But that can also, um change the circumstances of other living things around them So the next step of research is to combine measures of timing of the trees with data on insects And apply those to the birds. So that's exactly what you were talking about. Justin is how Are the trees and the insects reacting? Are they reacting at the same rate to climate changes of the birds? Spoiler probably not. And so how does that impact everybody? But a whole month Can you imagine a whole month difference? That's huge. It's massive and I I question whether or not they are On track with the insects and the and the plants and the other things it's yeah Hard to imagine that they and other species are keeping Synchronized things are probably becoming unsynchronized as we as we move forward Yeah, and that would be that that would be the fear, right? Yeah, but I think I think that then there is some Uh, I think there is some logic in the way that world exists And the way that the things within the nature Tag the climate For their interactions tagging the climate for when the tree is going to blossom Uh tagging climate for temperatures being when when insects will breed or when when the the birds will start laying eggs If they're synchronizing to the same touchstone If they're synchronizing to the the same north star of climate Then we should be okay Right, but the problem is how adaptable and how flexible are those timelines? Yeah, how quickly that's the problem Different and different and the touchstone Yeah bond differently. Yeah, which Maybe they're all responding to climate change and the chain and and the changes that are happening But maybe they are responding at different rates. Maybe they are responding differently. And so you're you're going to see It it's not going to match up. It's not going to be this beautiful everything stepping in in time It's going to be messy because that's biology and this is not It's not a terrarium that you're you know fixing and making it work. It's Yeah, well in the in the case of it's the terrarium I left in the hot window in the kitchen on a summer day except that I think I would imagine that there is enough of a rogue A rogue winter that goes longer than it normally does that that it's not going to I guess I don't think you will you can see a one-year collapse Of a no, no, it's multi-year because of the trends and that's what we're seeing is that over years and years 75 you have you have boosts in populations You have reductions in populations But over time because of the change you're seeing species not able to keep up with the rapidity of the changing climate And that's the problem is it climate is changing too quickly it's the thing that I often think about is When randomly you get a hot spell in january and then a bunch of trees flower all at once and release pollen in january Like it's april You go was that your whole shot for the year Because you're in trouble then Yeah, or it's the we just had a bunch of snow very late snow here in the pacific northwest and it froze a whole bunch of cherry blossoms plants that had started their whole spring thing they got it Because it was spring and they were ready to go and then the late winter hit But I I wanted to add that the like the last thing for this Um is that as the climate is changing very quickly the the climate doesn't care about Species in particular and so some species are going to adapt and do great and they're generalists And they're going to find new food sources and maybe they'll even do better But other species are not and they're going to just be like oh like Blair said earlier I can't handle it. You know, and they're just they're going to die And that is how it marches forward And that will have huge impacts on other animals plants biomes and humans Depending Yeah, what about blood worms? Oh, yes, let's talk about blood worms Did you know that blood worms have fang like jaws made of protein melanin and copper? No, I wasn't really aware of blood worms. I thought this was a whole thing fangs Copper fangs the the concentration of copper in their jaws is not found elsewhere in the animal kingdom So it is stealing copper from them and set up the copper inverters and things yeah, so Yes, so the confusion here and the thing that scientists have had a really hard time figuring out is Where do they get this copper from? How do they synthesize it? How do they turn it into teeth? Like it's just nothing that there is a precedent for in the animal kingdom I'm just really concerned about worms with these sharp teeth I mean, it's like it's like a toothed sand worm except it's after blood I like the idea that the first the first to reach copper technology on the planet is a blood worm Yes, so blood worms they only make their jaws once in their life That's not like they lose teeth over time or anything like that They need to be strong and tough enough to last for their entire lifetime, which is five years They bite prey they puncture straight through an exoskeleton sometimes and they inject venom that paralyzes their victims They have venom and pepper fangs. Yes. Yes. Wow Yes, the co-author of the study Herbert Waite said quote. They are very disagreeable worms and that they are ill-tempered and easily provoked Frankie worms with teeth and venom. Oh, it's getting better and better. Yes, this is from UC Santa Barbara and uh Herbert Waite continues to say when they encounter another worm they usually fight using their copper jaws as weapons So what they found was that they are actually pulling copper from marine sediments to form their jaws They begin with a protein precursor Which recruits copper to concentrate itself into a vicious protein rich liquid that is high in copper And phase separates from water The protein uses the copper to catalyze the conversion of the amino acid derivative into melanin um, and then Uh, my notes moved Uh, they could then combine with protein giving the jaw mechanical properties that resemble manufactured metals Yeah, biological metallurgy Wow Yes, so this worm is able to Yeah, they're able to synthesize a material That you you can't really do in a lab in order to do in a lab. I mean you could but it would be extremely complicated It would involve different procedures apparatus solvents temperatures to get to this point It is a complicated thing to do in a lab But this worm is just pulling copper straight out of the sediments making teeth So the hope is that this will provide a better understanding of how blood worms conduct This processing to streamline parts production um for industry Of course always comes back to how can you synthesize the copper like the blood worm does? Yeah, exactly. Can we take that can we take that methodology or that process and simplify it or Put it into a manufacturing system Can we make that work? But in the meantime also just you know venom injecting teeth made out of copper from marine sediments in a blood worm. What? Cranky blood worms I gotta look up because I want to avoid Uh blood worms blood worms Yeah, where where are these oh wait fish food? Are those the little tiny worms that you get in the frozen blocks that you put in the aquarium? And your oh, yeah, crazy. Yeah, those are blood worms. Yep And they have these little copper teeth. I did not put that together. I don't think they can bite through human skin. I would guess but They're little tiny things Yeah, although um another study now. I'm just googling blood worm and it does where yet everywhere that um Sometimes the venom can cause a reaction similar to a bee sting depending on the species so So the big maybe I don't know if the size Relationship holds for worms the way it does for scorpions and spiders little tiny blood worms with copper teeth might be more dangerous Now i'm looking is that the same thing that you put it in an aquarium? So yeah, so the Yeah, they'll always be fish food to me. Yeah, so it sounds like Uh Yeah, where's their genus in this study? Um, yeah, so it's a it's a large genus. I think so I would guess that the ones we feed to fish are are small Yeah, glycera dibranchiata is what this study was on I'll I'll bring it to the the after show. Well, I'll do a little bit more blood worm research Yeah, let's let's dig into blood worms in the after show sounds like a They're analysts. This is all I know so far Digestive digestif This is this weekend science. Thank you for tuning in tonight. We just have a few more stories to go I have some brainy stories for us as I love to do at the end of the show bring you stories That stimulate your brain about the brain. Um new research just published Out of the tokyo university of science researchers have been using a mouse model to study fear extinction Now this isn't like evolution and extinction It is getting rid of fearful memories and it would be A very important thing to be able to do has been under study To treat people with post traumatic stress disorder to help remove Fearful responses that occur in an out of place situation These researchers in tokyo have just published their work in The frontiers in behavioral neuroscience and they're looking at a compound called knt 127 It sounds just like a scary research drug that you would have like in I don't know some end of the world video game But knt 127 has been shown to Help mice get over fear conditioning and so in the behavioral experiments they did with this With this compound what they do is they get the mice into An area with a shock plate and they are conditioned with a mild electrical shock to Basically come to fear a certain place in an arena and the conditioned fear response Unfortunately is freezing mice don't fight or flight they freeze when they when they have fear and this Question though they've they've shown that they are able to condition a fear response in mice and then give them the compound and The compound causes the forgetting Of that conditioned fear response so the mice could then again go in the arena And not have any fear of potentially getting shocked So there's it removes that that association How does it work though? Where does it work in the brain? The researchers had a drug that they had no clue how it worked Which is actually like a lot of things that we put into our bodies antidepressants How do they work? No, we know a little bit about them, but the exact mechanisms Are a little uncertain so, uh, these researchers Injected Several brain regions the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala the hippocampus the pre-limbic and Infra-limbic regions of the medial prefrontal cortex separately while they were re-exposing mice to their fear conditioned Stimulus and what they found is there are two areas that they applied it to the Amygdala and the infra-limbic sub regions Were specifically involved in Extinguishing that fear response. And so what they've discovered is that this compound selectively Interacts with dopaminergic not dopaminergic. I'm sorry de-opioid antagonist receptors so the opioid system Which is a natural system within within the brain of receptors for Pain and inflammation and this knt127 specifically when it connects with these opioid receptors In the amygdala, which is we know an area of the brain responsible for our fear responses uh that The knt127 will get rid of the fear responses. So now we know where it's acting Which receptors it's acting on in the mouse brain And hopefully they'll be taking this successful mouse drug and transferring it to uh human trials very soon So that's super important because like you're saying the amygdala is That that primitive brain. I always like to refer to it as it's primitive part of the brain That we don't have control of it's part of the brain that thinks the brain is control is in control of us All right, it's part of the brain. It's like I need to tell this Stupid bag of mostly water what to do What to be afraid of and how to be how afraid to be and and if there's a problem there where it's not turning off Where it's too dialed up. Yep There's nothing you can do about it But to go on drugs because you're gonna panic and fear and stress and all of these things so being able to Tackle that part of the brain. That's huge Yeah, yeah, it would be and to be able to potentially use A compound like this. It's very specific to the area of the brain that it works in and Can be used along with a therapeutic Mean so you've got a therapist and you have the application of the drug to help you Have exposure therapy to get over your your post traumatic stress disorder It could really change people's lives Moving forward. So it's also just interesting Some areas of the little tiny areas of your midbrain are responsible for These fearful memories and others are not quite as involved, which is pretty interesting this specific areas But how do they all connect together and what do they do? We've talked before about like the synchronization waves that Happen within the brain and how you have like the firing and the wiring of Neurons together in the brain to create memories But it all happens within this greater context of Synchronized oscillations within the brain these greater brain waves We've got our beta waves delta waves alpha waves all these different kinds of waves That set the neurons to particular states To be firing or not firing receptive or not receptive the news study out this week researchers have been trying to Figure out how they could come up with computational methods to describe What's going on in the brain better than the methods that we've got right now And right now most of the neural networks that we have That we're making assumptions on they are just like neurons turn on neurons turn off and they're like these single connections and it's not as complex and it hasn't been able to incorporate these these waves Of brain activation that occur in different areas of the brain like for example in working memory You have these circular Oscillations of brain waves that kind of go That's the sound I hear in my head all the time They whirl around in your head and Researchers have been trying to figure out. Wow. What is you know? Why is this circular oscillation happening in that area? whereas other areas like the visual cortex have more of a Parallel waves or more of like a a single direction Wave of activity through the brain and then you have like the overall kind of like the tides the overall brain waves that occur and so These researchers have given the analogy now that our brain is like an ocean with all of the waves that are interacting And they're trying to come up with the complicated math to describe how it all works So that they can create simulations that are more accurate that may eventually Be able to be applied to future artificial intelligence systems and so Yeah, this group out of the salk institute. They have been Really this way of the nervous system of the brain parsing information It's not just a light switch on light switch off. It's not just neuron on neuron off Your brain's going or not that there are these interacting waves That there is they have interference patterns And they can be additive or destructive and it it so they're describing it very much much more so Like waves in an ocean so your brain it's like an ocean And that swirly bit you were talking about it's like a gyre filled with garbage in your brain No, it's like the phone number you're trying to remember catches the garbage Just keeps it's like when you have you're having anxiety or you're just rethinking the same garbage or it's like the specific garbage patch The plastic islands. Yeah, but you can imagine like with working memories with working memory That's like you're trying to keep something in your mind. So it is like a gyre It's like you're trying to keep that thought in your head You're trying to remember something like a phone number an address or you know, whatever it is You're working on and so it's good that you have a gyre there To keep the thought there keep the activation there as opposed to there goes where'd it go? I don't know the tide took it out And then finally adding on to this idea of our brain as a notion that uh, the salk institute researchers have been modeling A group at mit out of the pickover institute have been also looking at these Wave interactions, but in the in the instance of the use of anesthesia And so they just published a paper in the journal of cognitive neuroscience in which they studied a compound called propa fall, which is used very very often for anesthesia Knocks people out. You lose consciousness. Um, and the question is how does it work? We know that different anesthesias work differently, but This was a different way of looking at what was actually happening And the researchers were able through Through an eight by eight electrode array in which they were looking at an area of the brain They were able to check out the What these waves a traveling wave? moving through the visual system and what ended up Happening and so With this little square eight by eight array of electrodes in this small little area of brain just trying to pick up a stimulus they observed the normal activity of the brain Injected the propa fall and they then observed A wave of deactivation That pushed The activation that had been in an area out of the area And so they saw in a larger sense That these the propa fall like in an ocean just kind of came in and got into the waves and Took down the wave activity interfered with the normal wave activity and knocked it all down so it was um The propa fall created a different situation to to change The activation of the brain and so yeah, you might be going. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah the brain It's active or it's not active, right? The propa fall knocks it out. Of course. It's just like an anesthetic Of course, it's going to knock it out, but it's not that it knocked it out It's the way in which it was knocked out that it's not again like a light switch that it is a traveling wave Of of deactivation through the brain and so So these researchers are saying that the rhythms we associate with higher cognition are drastically altered by propa fall the beta traveling waves Seen during wakefulness are pushed aside redirected by delta traveling waves that have been altered and made more powerful by the anesthetic The deltas come through like a bull in a china shop And delta activity is uh the kind of activity that you have in your brain more often when you're sleeping Uh beta activity is you're wakeful fast moving waves and the delta activity or the is the big slow moving Stuff and so the delta bull in a china shop of pro propa fall comes through and says It's my turn So the question now is They want to look at other anesthesia and anesthetics that are being used to try and determine whether or not these slow frequency delta waves are Are traveling in the same way When you use different types of anesthesia Is it always the same? Is it different? How do these waves inter interfere or add? to influence consciousness itself huh yeah anyway Neat delta waves are increasing. I think right now uh-huh The bull in the china shop of the clock that says it's getting later Very much a burden and bull Under this tree smell this flower. Yeah Look at some pictures of brain waves I like brain waves They're wonderful We have made it to the end of another show. It took us a little while to get here But we are here and we are so glad that you stayed with us until the very end Thank you for joining us for another episode of this week in science I do want to Thank a few people who are important for making this show happen time for shout outs shout outs to Oh, I put things in the wrong places again. Do do do do let me get in the right place I don't know if I can la la la la la la. Let me just shut things down Do you want an app? I have so many windows. It's just ridiculous so edit edit edit There's an eclipse coming right? Is that the problem? Always There's always maybe I don't know what it is Shout outs to Fada, thank you so much for your help with show notes and social media Couldn't do this without you identity for thank you for recording the show Gord and arnaur and others who help keep the chat room Happy and kind. Thank you for being here and doing that and rachel Thank you for your editing and other assistance and many. Thanks to our patreon sponsors Thank you, too. Teresa smith james chauffer richard badge. Kent north coke rich north coat rick loveman pier velezarb ralfi figaro John rataswamy carl cornfield karin tozzi woody. I'm s chris woosniak. Dave bun bagard chef's dad Hal snider john donathan styles a.k.a. Don stylo John lee alecoff and matty parent goreff charmer raggan don mondes steven alberon Dear all my shacks do pollock andrew swanson fredes 104 sky luke paul ronovitch kevin reardon noodles jack brian karrington matt base shonanina lamb john mckay john mckay greg riley marquesson flow gene telea steve leesman a.k.a Zima ken haze howard tan christopher rabendane of pierce and richard brendan minnish johnny gridley rummy day Flying out christopher drier rdm greg briggs john atwood riddy garcia dave wilkinson rodney lewis paul philip shankard Sue duster chasen old stave neighbor eric nappy. Oh kevin parochan erin luthy steven bell bob calder marjorie paul disney david summerly patrick pecker raro tony steele and jason roberts Thank you for all of your support of twist on patreon And if you are interested in supporting us on patreon head over to twist.org and click that patreon link On next week's show wait We have an extra special interview next week Which i hope that you'll be able to join us for next friday may 6th at 11 a.m Pacific time with dr. Gregory fourth on the hobbits of flores Homo floreansis Yeah But what do we do most wednesdays? Justin, uh, well, we will we'll also be back from the regular show wednesday 8 p.m Pacific time broadcasting live from our youtube and facebook channels and from twist.org slash live Hey, do you want to listen to us as a podcast? Maybe while you make some chocolate sourdough breads since you got sick of all the normal sourdough You made during lockdown just search for this week in science for podcasts are found if you enjoyed the show get your friends to subscribe as well for More information on anything you've heard here today show notes links to stories are available on our website www.twist.org You can contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com Justin at twist minion at gmail.com or me blair at blairbaz at twist.org Just be sure to put twist Twis in the subject line or your email will be catapulted away from some orb weaver spiders Which is good, but it will also be away from us and we will never read them You can also hit us up on the tesla where we are at twist science at dr Kiki at jackson fly and at blairs menazery We love your feedback if there's a topic you'd like us to cover or address a suggestion for an ear view It comes to you in the night. Please let us know We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news And if you've learned anything from the show remember It's all in your head This week in science This week in science This week in science is the end of the world. So I'm setting up shop got my banner on furrow It says the scientist is in I'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to start the robots with a simple device I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand And a little costume is a couple of grand This week science is coming your way So everybody listen to what I say I use the scientific method for all that it's worth and I'll broadcast my opinion all over the air Because it's this week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be Hi everybody, thank you for joining us for another episode. It's now the after show You have made it to the after show Blair. You made it. You fixed your Oh, man It just decided to stop going when I turned it off. I did a quick speed test and it was uh downloading it to mbps to to to It was worse It was worse than that hotel room that I was in a couple weeks ago. So I restarted the router it took 10 minutes But then it was back to 900. I was like great. Okay, whatever it took I guess Uh Sometimes they just need to be I don't know man. It's just I think I just restarted a couple days ago too. I think It's been getting old. It's also been really windy. I don't know Is it new or old? The router itself is just over a year old. It's not that old The modem Or sorry, it is a it's a modem slash router. It's just okay I'll one piece just over a year old. Okay. I mean sometimes they go bad really fast Well, I think I can get a new one for free So maybe I'll ask um Because I I I did the thing that I'm sure everyone's gonna tisk tisk, but just out of sheer laziness I'm paying five dollars a month to use my internet companies modem And I think that means I can trade it in Periodically for free. Yes So I should do that because it yeah, it has been messing up lately Strange, but it has been more than it had previously. It's yeah, and it it doesn't ever mess up when we're watching tv Like it it just only happens now Well, maybe part of it also is the way that it's Uh kind of going in and out um Because if there's buffering when you're watching tv then I'll get in there Yeah Gaurav, did you get my take on elon musk's purchase of twitter? No Why would I talk about that? Hey, what do you think? What do I think I like your parrot? I'm Considering he's not done. He needs a little bit more of a chest, but um, I'm considering this being The calendar this year. I just have to figure out how to take some good photo lego animals. That'd be awesome. Yeah Oh my god, I love it. I bought a big bucket of lego That sounds fun. Yeah, I'm just I'm trying I'm trying You are trying something new That's the word I was looking for new something new Oh, what is new novelty? I know I was talking to someone recently And they were like have you repeated yet? No No, I think I'm gonna have to soon I'm trying to stretch it out to year 10. You're 10. I'm gonna repeat a bunch of stuff that I did Oh, that's like a different style. That's my plan. Yeah, cool. We'll see. Yeah, just as you see potentially my My method for this year Turn on your microphone. Yeah Yeah, I like it Oh, that's clever. Well, we'll see but then I have to decide like Do I want to put it in front of the background or just put it in real life? And take a photo of him in the forest Interesting. I was thinking you would create a phantasmagorical diorama type type things, you know Yeah, diorama box thing where you created a little a little scene And you were in I don't know what But the other problem is like I don't have a good camera Like, I'm just gonna use my, I mean, iPhone cameras are pretty good now. It's a pretty darn good camera. I feel like cameras are pretty awesome. Yeah. And if you get like a couple of lights. It just comes down to lighting. Yeah. You just need to play with your lighting and ask you for it. The camera, the camera will take care of itself. Yeah, that's fine. It'll be high enough quality, or you can find somebody who's a photo master. That's true. To help you take the photos when it all comes down to it. You could have a photo shoot day. Yes. Yeah, exactly. That'd be super fun. But it would be pretty fun as shadow boxes for Patreon sponsors too. Oh, yeah. A real, real piece of sculpture. Yeah. Blair, I need you to tell everybody about your terrible, no good, awful morning. It was, it was at about 1.30. This morning. I woke up from a nightmare. Sadie was concerned someone might be in the front of the house. And so she ran, she like goofed and like jumped off the bed and ran to the door and started nosing the door and wanted to see what was in the living room. I'm like, okay. So I said like super groggly. I was like, okay, Sadie, let's go see what's in the, like I know there's nothing out there. But I was like, I'll show her and then she'll be satisfied and go to bed, right? So, okay, say let's go. And I like go to get off the bed, but I had no idea I was right, I was right on the edge of the bed. Already on the edge. And so also I had somehow twisted the sheets around my legs. So I was restrained like a mummy. And so I face planted into the side table and hit the deck completely fell down on the ground onto my bad arm and bad knee. And I just kind of was like, cause I got, I got struck in the face. Like I fully, I slammed my face into a table. So I kind of like shook it off, rolled out of the sheet. Like made sure nothing was broken. Like rubbed my face. It's like, okay, I'm not bleeding. Okay. Walked out front. Dog walked around. Saw there was nothing. When we're back to bed. You went back to bed. I had to like wrestle the sheets and blankets back onto the bed. Then I went back to sleep. Now when I woke up, I will tell you, I was all the way. So Brian's not here at night, right? He's at work, but I was all the way on his pillow, like almost to the other side of the bed. Cause in my sleep, I was like, gotta get away from the edge. So that kind of a, that's a rude awakening. That kind of, I mean, that's like way, that is like just too many errors at once. You're not awake yet. And you're, you're at your face. And I think I can say with certainty that is the first time I've ever fallen off of the bed in my sleep. Have either of you ever fallen off your bed before? I don't think it's ever happened. No. No. Yeah. I was apparently, I, sorry. I also, right before Brian went to work, it sounds like I had a nightmare where I thought somebody was hovering over me. So it was just a rough night. Oh Blair, you gotta, it's okay. You're safe. You're probably rashing around to get yourself so tangled. Yeah. I had a similar experience actually, like two, three nights ago. I'm on the eighth floor. You fell out of the window? No. I was on the eighth floor. But I, I sleep with the window open because Denmark is such a warm country. But there was, there was somebody eight floors down who was like walking around. It sounded like somebody, but I woke up because it sounded like somebody was in the room pacing back and forth. And so I like, like in my dream, I'm like, ah, there's somebody walking around the room. Who's walking around the room? Nope. Nobody should be walking around the room right now. Like, and then I woke up and could still hear it, even though I can't see it. But the sound, the way it traveled up eight floors into the room sounded like there was somebody wander, it was like pacing in the room. And I could still hear it when I woke up and there was nothing there. And so I immediately thought, I should look outside the window and see where the sound is coming from. Somebody was just pacing back and forth, eight floors down. But the sound like was enough to make it sound like it was coming from inside the house. It came from inside the house. That's never a good feeling, you know, when you're sleeping to be thinking that, you have an intruder in your home. No. Luckily, I do have the best alarm system, which is the dog, but that does mean that when she gets spooked, I'm like, all right, let's check it out. Is that really the best? It is. It is because- From the story you just told, the reason you face planted into the night- No, but- It's because of the dog. After so long, it basically went off. For the one time that this happened, I've woken up probably 50 or 100 times where I thought I heard something. And I'm like, well, the dog doesn't care. I'm fine. And that's great. Is it like if you wake up and you're like, is that coming from this house? Did I dream? Or is that really happening? And the dog's like totally sleeping next to me. I'm like, okay, all's good. Back to sleep. Yeah. I always check my cats because they get spooked. And so if the cats are spooked, then I'm spooked. But if the cats are super chill, I'm like, oh, there's nothing to be worried about. Do they both sleep in your bedroom? Yes. That's cute. They both do. And both of them, Stella likes to- she'll come up and she purrs right in my face and starts nudging me and starts nudging the blankets. And so then I have to lift up the blankets and she crawls under the blankets and curls up behind my knees while I sleep. Yeah. Super. And she's down there. She's purrs. And then I fall asleep again. And then she's, I don't know. She's just down there until she crawls her way out. And then I usually find her on top of the bed. And then usually it's Stella behind my knees under the blankets and Cappy on the other side of my legs, but on top of the blankets. So I'm locked in place by the cats. And where's Marshall? Oh, he sleeps in a different room. It is. It's a happy marriage, I tell you. He likes to stay up later than I do. And yeah, so he's up doing things. And I'm like, don't come in here with your light on your phone and interrupt my sleep. Don't you do that. Just go in that room. Sleep over there. And then I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, go in that room, sleep over there. Good night Eric-nappe. Hope you're enjoying Portland. You are off by one time zone. One hour different. It's one of my favorite far-菜 comics. This woman's sitting in a chair. There's a door. And it's these two dogs sitting, sitting talking to each other at least once, talking. talking. And one dog says the other. You want to have some fun Fred? Watch. I'm going to go over and stare and growl at the closet door. Please, that would spook me. Yeah, if you Google Farside Dogs Closet Door. I love that one. I love Farside. Kai's super into Farside comics. Man, there used to be that great exhibit at the Cal Academy. Yeah, I forgot about that. So good. Yeah. There's a Farside exhibit at Cal Academy. Oh, I missed it. Yes. Mm hmm. In the 90s. Yeah, a long time ago. It was so good. Before you were born? I think I was gonna say before you were born, Blair. I don't think it was in Northern California. No, no, I was on school field trips at that time at the Cal Academy. No. Yes. What was I going? Oh, going back to Twitter. Justin, the end of the show where you said to hit us up on the Tesla. Oh, did I? I caught that. It's very hard to keep track. What's even going on anymore? Everything is just a plaything in the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Well, I actually think that story is kind of fun. For one one just one just perfect moment. I think it's gonna happen is that I think that once Elon is there in control, I think a certain former president don't want to name names is gonna be allowed back on and we'll resume that chaos. Uh huh. But what I love about that is that his lackeys have one actually step down from being a congressman to run this truth social or whatever it's called. Oh, right. That hasn't got it. Yeah. Which which I think uh yeah uh and it's been talked about. Trim doesn't even know the name of this but you know he's fundraised people fundraised off of this in his name. People invested their their lives into making this thing a thing and he's just not even gonna use it. He's just gonna go on the Twitter and it's just be dead immediately. I think that's kind of funny. Oh gosh. Uh yeah. I think if I was the richest person in the world, I would I could find a lot of better uses for multibillions of dollars even if it isn't that big of a percentage of my income. I think I could find a better thing to do. How about education? How about how about you subsidize Teslas so people can afford them? Yeah. I think uh so much better. My ideas are different than those. Those are great ideas. Uh but I would definitely start Science Island. I would definitely start Science Island. So, when the next pandemic comes, uh I have a community that does not need to engage with the outside world at all. There you go. Yeah, pretty pretty crazy. Windmills, solar panels, renewable energy and green, organic farming. I don't know about buying up a dangerous species habitat, you know, in his native South Africa. I might do wind turbines but wind mills, I think there's probably wind turbines. That's what I mean. It was just a word. It was a word. What's mean thing? Wind power. Power generation from the the wind currents. It's all dumb. Somebody has too much money. I wish it was me. Speak to him now. That's all. It means. Hey everybody in the chat. If you had that much money, forty four billion, the richest man in the world, what would you do? Would you go to Mars? Would you um help education? Would you just buy everybody a house? Would you um what a good idea? What would you do? Would you invest in sustainable technology? I have a homeless problem. What would you do? Hey Kiki. What? Here's the here's the big question. Uh would you just hoard it? Would you sit on it like a pile of gold like? Forgive student debt maybe. Okay. Uh what? Scholarships. That's it. If Elon wanted to buy twists. Okay and then you've got you got some money that you can then do all these one of one of these wonderful projects. The things in the real world. Does that mean I would sell you and Blair? Yes. Well, no actually we would. We would both be immediately replaced. Yes. That is true. My robot. This would cover electric vehicles, whatever the space company uh is and you know uh would have a big uh social media footprint on uh the Twitter first or wherever but we'd all be gone and and we'd have to sign a thing that said we're not science communicators anymore. Uh what would that price be? I bet it's not as high as we would like it to be but as long as there's given the the constant anger and just all the things I mean I don't know. Yeah. I could I could go out to pasture pretty easily. I don't think it would be that much. The show has been a revenue source to begin with. Yeah. So there's also this weird part of me that's like in fact if anything if anything maintaining the schedule of doing this show has cost tremendous amounts of money in terms of uh tailoring the work life or around to some extent because we can't just like every time somebody wants to change a shift or change the job or something is like okay now you work uh you know Wednesday evening no I can't because when I got hired I told you I could never work those days. Whatever the thing is uh I think I'd still do it. I think I'd say that I don't need your yeah because I also but in my head they're gonna offer me like five hundred dollars. And then I was like I didn't know. What what are you? Five Dr. People? No like you don't have to be a bunch of magnitudes before I'd be like okay. Now I'll think about it. That'd be like house money right? It can't just be. It would have to be house money. One hundred percent. House and retirement money. But even then uh what am I gonna do in my house? Oh hey it's Wednesday. What am I gonna do in my house? I got my I got my little house studio set up and now I there's no nobody to talk to anymore. Except all the people on the internet who you can talk to about all the things except. Have you have you met them? Have you met them? Because I like I've tried to interact with other people beyond the two of you and I find it very dissatisfied. Yeah. Uh generally speaking it's not that I don't like things about people but in terms of the conversations they they quickly leave the subject of science. They just completely want to talk about other things and it's I find it very annoying. And you go why why do you want to talk about something else? The heck is wrong with you. Stay on. Just buy out for five hundred million. I don't know. I could never leave all these people. Everyone in the chat room, everyone in our discord could never leave. I can't quit you. Yeah, don't don't cancel your Patreon yet. Gaurav. We still need you. Let's see. People in the chat room said what would they do with their money? Fnord says we need to go to Mars. We must conquer space or we're doomed. So Dicky would not sit on the money because it would just lose value. It's very very true. You gotta use it. Here's what I would do. It's only valuable if you use it. Here's what I would do. If we got if we got a uh we said we got a huge amount of money for twist. I would and this is just me but I'm not the one in charge. Just you know I'm just trying to just so you know but if it was up to me I would split it with the Patreon. Split it with all the patrons. In my mind that's the owner of the show. Right? This is this is this is our financial backing is our audience and so if we're gonna sell the show the Patrons should get a big piece of that. You're wonderful. Yes. Let's see. I'm also saying this without any chance of it happening right now. So it's like it's very easy. I'll talk. Very hypothetical. Very generous with money you don't have and will not be coming in. Very easy to be generous. Now talk to me later and I'm like what's uh you know I didn't even realize we had patrons. I don't know what you're talking about. What's going on? What? Who? Where? And I start of course then I immediately start talking without unclenching my teeth. I start talking like there's not a been hard money. Because that's what you know I'll be I'd become the picture of what I thought a rich person uh looked like when I was five. Mr. Howl from Gilligan's Island. I would. Yes. Yes. Yes. Lovely darling. We're going to. Oh, that's wonderful. Started trust. You started trust and let other people figure out what to do with it. Oh, I love that. No, I'm already on record. I would start Science Island by a big piece of property. Uh do some uh sustainable housing and farming and invite smart people to to come and live there for free and to kind of live there and teach other people. Yes. Create a create the idealized collective. The idealized green community village with high technology. Science Island Village Collective. Science Science on and uh yeah and throw concerts and talks that were vetted. I'm like that's it. Ah, David Nevin. Thank you so much for enjoying the show. I don't know what I would do without twist either. What would I do? You know, listen to what I talk with science. How many old episodes of twists are there? 500 million. Yeah, there's there's I think 720 something. There's there's like well, there's about five years worth of episodes or six years of worth of episodes prior to the podcast and then the podcast is like another 17 years. Oh gosh. And I made up. I mean, I estimated because we didn't start counting the episodes and so I just did you know 52 times whatever or I think it had like 51 times whatever just based on the assumption that we I might even I don't know. Yeah, I just did little math to be like, I think this is how many episodes we've done when I decided that I wanted to start counting which is I think the most fun aspect of the numbering of the show that people never ask about. It's like we're episode 873. Maybe. Yeah. Something like that. Oh my goodness. That is thousands and thousands of hours of these conversations in the universe. Hours of these conversations for sure. Derek Schmidt wants to move into the science collective, the twist collective. Yeah. I like it. Come on down. We'll be talking about science. And we'll we'll run experiments like we'll we'll have it set up so there's no guns and then we'll track how many gun decks. No guns and nobody will shoot each other. We will have no guns allowed and we'll just try to track how many deaths by gun there are and see if it correlates in any way to the lack of firearms. Oh. Yeah. Identity four. Oh my gosh. Identity four is the answer to what he would do with all the money if he had all the monies. I would fill his football stadium all the way up with SpaghettiOs and pay athletes to do swimming races in it. Call it Noodle Olympics. Noodle Olympics. In parentheses, don't give me money. Oh my god. I want to give you all the money. You get all the money. Derek Schmidt's asking what episode did Blair join? I don't know but actually the three fifty six is the answer. Three fifty six. I'd be more curious to know when Blair's father joined the listener. Oh. Yeah. So that was the precursor. Yeah. Come on. Well, he started listening as soon as this show popped up in the top science podcast in the brand new iTunes podcast app. That was before apps really. It was just Apple iTunes podcast. So he started listening five or six in the in the podcast app when he had an iPod touch. That was a while ago. So podcast app year. Is that? No. Release. Those are the words perhaps. 2012. No, that can't be right. No, I'm not on the show. Derek was a listener. We were Kiki was putting out the word that we needed like an intern for the show. Somebody help out on the show. Yeah. And Blair's father who was a listener of the show at the time. I don't know if he still listens to the show at the time told his daughter who turned out to be Blair and we're like oh there's Blair. We've been looking everywhere for Blair. Your dad must have started in like 2011. Yeah. Or 2010. Or ten. I bet it was ten. I think he was telling me about the show for a while before I actually listened. I was like yeah, yeah, I'll get around to it. Well, it's so yeah. So it was 2010. We were doing really great. But then I had Kai and I went on I went on a three month hiatus and I wasn't paying attention to the the twist feed and so it got broken in there for a while and we lost people. Then I fixed the feed and then we got people back and I don't know. Yeah. So I wonder if your dad came in before or after Kai. I think there was a lot of because you had Kai was not even a year old yet when I started. Yeah. So I think it was before. I think it was before you went out on maturity. Something like that. Yeah, he just listened Derek Schmidt. He was not on the show. But he is on the show every week. It's true. It's true. Yeah. So that you know I hadn't really thought about it in those terms but that that's how much of a listener sponsored show we are. We got we got one of our listeners first born children. I'm second born. I had not thought about it in terms of a Patreon. Yeah. Contribution to the show. Blair, you're the best donation ever. Yes. Fantastic. Very good. I bet he's asleep. I bet he's not watching anymore. If he is, I'll get a text but I think they're both in bed. They always start the night watching the show on Wednesdays and then I'll hear a couple days later. I didn't make it to the Animal Court this week. I'll listen to it. They definitely wouldn't have this week. No, no, no, no. When was the first show ever that was in 2000? Yeah, 2000 I think is what we talked about before. I think it was 99 though. You had a tape. You had a cassette somewhere. It's got an eight on it. It has episode one. I have a cassette. I have a cassette tape of the first episodes. I think it was 1999. I don't know when April, April 13, April 18. I don't remember. Don't tell. You weren't even here. You were. Is it on our Wikipedia page? Yeah, I hadn't been born yet. I need to get the cassette tape. It's somewhere upstairs. Take a picture of it. So at least I'll have a picture. Carbon David's cassette. I'm going to put another call out. Our Wikipedia page needs help. It does. It's old now, isn't it? Oh, it's gone. Oh, we're not even in Wikipedia anymore? No. What? It's gone. We got removed. We got removed. Somebody's got to fix it. So you still have a Wikipedia page. Somebody, can't we just do it? No, no, no, no. Wikipedia has verified editors now, which I know we have some listening. I know that. But yeah, somebody get us our Wikipedia page back, please. But it needs help. I mean, yeah. I've used it as reference material before. Yeah. I wonder when it was taken down. I feel like I used it less than a year ago. Archive, wait. No, that's just the old website. Yeah, I wonder. I mean, it would be awesome to get back into Wikipedia, because it definitely used to be in there. Yeah. Somebody authority controlled it. Maybe. Yeah. Dang. Um, was it actually in Wikipedia? Was this week in science was actually in Wikipedia? Yeah. Yeah, I've linked to it before. Yeah, it was very bare bones, but it had some information on it, for sure. Yeah, it would be great to get it back in there, especially because this is the longest running science podcast. In the world, in history, ever. As far as I'm aware, I don't know of anybody else. Oh, you're right. Yeah, who had it podcast. No, they had it. They didn't even, they didn't have a podcast category exactly. We, we in the iTunes, we were under like health and fitness, because they didn't have a science category. They were not, they did not anticipate, right? The explosion of things to come completely there. But yeah, we were in the like health and fitness section, informational audio section of the iTunes directories, when we first got put in there in like 2005-ish 2006, something like that. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, we started the show in 1999. The podcast itself, we started putting, yeah, files up on the internet in two MP3s, I think, was 2003, 2002, 2003, when we started putting stuff on the internet. Excuse me. And then it was 2005 that we started the RSS feed just before Science Friday. Wow. Pretty sure just before Science Friday. And, and we've covered way more stories. You think? Way more. I don't know. No, I know so. And in fact, in fact, I know this because it's been determined that the person who has talked about the most stories in a broadcast format of a science nature on the planet in the history of civilization is Kiki. Oh, really? Yeah, that's true. That would be nice if it were true. I mean, between this Dr. Kiki's Science Hour and... But wait, what do you mean there are others? How many weekly science, okay, well, the thing with Science Friday is, and Science Friday has been around for a long time and been doing radio over a long time and all this sort of thing, but... But just Fridays. Two or three. We're just writing. Two or three stories. Maybe four. They know because they'll do like, they will do a story and have somebody like talk about it for a long time. And they have this, this tight hour, half hour or whatever the show is. I think it's just under an hour. An unbridled amount of time available to us as we... Here in our approaching hour three. But I'd say you probably have consistently brought... Two stories. Five or five stories a week. Six, seven, eight. Maybe six times. And then there were... Oh, and that's not even counting. Like the way we used to end the show wasn't all of this housekeeping stuff that we do now. You know, find us here, look over there, because those things didn't exist yet. We look for us on social media when it gets invented. What Kiki would do is she would collect eight, 10 stories that we didn't go into any depth on. And just scientists found this, scientists found out. Look over here, there's a research study over there. There's one under the table that nobody noticed. And it would do a rapid fire. Rapid fire. Some other interesting stuff for people to go into. I've tried all sorts of things. Your Wikipedia page, they're not sure quite when you were born. Good. Which is very funny. What do they say? They're like, she could be... It's two different years with a slash. What? I won't say the years, you can decide to... Could be this year or that year. Nobody knows. The narrator says she knows. It'd be funny if they weren't years next to each other. It's like, she was either born in 1974 or 1982. Sure, I was born in 90. Yeah, great. You're younger than me, that's great. I'm younger than Blair, that's right. I don't know if he's still there. Aaron Lohr caught the slightly pregnant paws in the story. For the first story of the night I did. Yeah, that was... I think Aaron Lohr took off a while ago. Oh yeah, yeah, the pediatrician thing. I know, I almost interrupted you with that. I was like, stop. But I was inspired by this news blooper. It's a terrible thing, but they're looking for the suspect. We're looking... They're trying to find the suspect in the robbery or whatever. A woman 35 feet tall. So she should totally be easy to find if there's a woman 35 feet tall. 35 feet tall, yeah. Yeah, it totally be. Yeah, Science Friday has a Wikipedia page. Yes, that makes sense. I don't know what happened to ours. I think we got taken down by the anti-science cabal of... No, I bet just that we didn't have enough hits. Yeah, probably. Did they take you out of there for none of it? You know what? Yeah, I mean, they check a lot and they have... If they decide whether it's important enough to be in. Next time they ask me for the three dollars? Say no. I'm like, you know what? You must back in. You know what? I don't think you guys are getting enough hits for my three dollars. I'm gonna say no this time. They're looking for a woman 35 feet tall. Scene wearing. Wait, 35 with a woman. That should be very... All right. Blair needs to go to bed and not wake up at 1 in the morning with her face in the bedside table. That would be preferable. I'm gonna go... Say good morning, Justin. Good morning, Justin. Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of TWIS, and we will be back again next week, Wednesday, 8 p.m. Pacific Time, and put it on your calendar, 11 a.m. Pacific Time. Next Friday, May 6th, for a special interview. Justin, you want to join? Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out 11... Wait, what time is it? 11 a.m. Are you eight hours ahead? Nine. Nine. So it would be eight at night. Totally doable. All right. Well, I might send you informations. Can we always do this show then? It sounds like way more reasonable. Send me the information too. I may or may not be working for home that day. If I am, I can take my lunch early. That'd be great. Okay, cool. But... Yeah, I will... I'll make sure it's in the next video. I'll make sure it's in the next video. That's a no. Why did you do this? Are you contemplating some sort of working home fraud? Is that why you did the air quote? No, because I won't actively be eating. But it'll be my lunch. Lunch. You can do whatever you want during your lunch. Yeah. Yeah, I almost never had lunch during lunch. Yeah. Like, that's such a weird shit. Well, see, Ed, when I'm at the office, I have to now because I have to go sit in a room and close the door to be able to eat my lunch because I have to wear a mask in the office. So it's... I can't eat at my desk because I have to be wearing a mask. Okay, say good night, Blair. I already did. Good night, everyone. Thank you again for joining us. We do appreciate you being here. We do hope that you'll be safe and happy and well and curious until next week. Save us. Save it for us, your curiosity. I'm ending this broadcast now.