 Did it is all being recorded everyone? We're here. Woohoo There's going woohoo in the chat room I'm just waiting to make sure that we get the signal from the Batcave that Everyone is hearing us and that we can move forward with our broadcast. Oh, there it is There's that wonderful signal and so starting in three two This is Twist this week in science episode number 687 recorded on Wednesday September 12th 2018 nature's tangled tree Hey, everyone. I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on this week in science We are going to fill your head with wolverines a sugar maker and tangled trees, but first Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer if you don't believe in evolution You are wrong And if you haven't replaced evolution with anything specific or supernatural or vague By choosing to go against all observations across all domains of science you have chosen to be wrong If you do believe in evolution Congratulations Though you are likely wrong as well not as wrong as someone who outright denies that life forms evolve But your understanding of what evolution means how it works how it's taken place over the past four billion years is Not likely a model that fits very well with how evolution has actually taken place on this planet But fear not you're not alone In fact, you've probably got a better grasp than Lamarck Darwin and Huxley had not that they were wrong You just happen to have been afforded an extra hundred plus years of more scientific insight and discovery to base your initial Impression on and tonight we will delve deeper into how evolution happens Where we've been in our search for answers and maybe where we are going all that and more head on This week in science coming up next I Science to you Kiki and Blair and the good science to you too Justin and Blair and Everyone out there welcome to another episode of this week in science. We are back again The gang's all here ready to talk about So thrilled this is one of my you know favorite evenings of the week the highlight of my week every week I most happily can say What do we have an in store for you tonight? Well, I have sugar and got some sugar for you Got new neurons. That's always good. And we have an interview with author David Kwaman Justin, what did you bring? Oh my gosh? I have got beer before there was farming. I've got elephant birds and ancient humans I've got the first human drawing and Human blood with mutant powers. What? All right, let's go with that and in the animal corner blaze It's Blair I Have a case of invertebrate kidnapping. I have confusing chemical mimicry and I have sharks in Blair's animal corner Okay All right, everyone it looks like we have sharks. No, we've got a great show lined up for you tonight and Before we move on though, I would like to remind you all that if you have not yet subscribed to the this week in science podcast It's easy to do so. We are all the places podcasts can be found Look for this week in science or you can easily find us at TWIS.org that's twist org That's pretty easy, but now it is time for our wonderful guest interview for the evening Our guest tonight is David Kwaman. He Has studied at both Yale and Oxford, which means he's really smart and he has spent his life writing Amazing and I will say amazing stories about nature evolution and man's Relationship to the natural world. He contributes to National Geographic Magazine and can claim to have been the sole author of one issue, which is a claim You can only aspire to in your dreams He wrote the song of the dodo monster of God the reluctant mr. Darwin spill over ebola the chimp in the river and a book about Yellowstone and most recently His book the tangled tree Which we are thrilled and honored to speak to him about tonight David. Welcome to the show. Thank you for Dr Kiki great to be with you Great to be with you twisters. What have I got? I've got horizontal gene transfer. I've got endosymbiosis I've got tangled trees. I've got transposons. I've got Lynn Margolis Carl woes. Oh my gosh You're teasing up a storm here. Yes. Let's go. Let's go. Yes all these things now All right, you have written about the natural world for years and I Decades and I first did become aware of your writing through the song of the dodo What is it that draws you? To write about the natural world like what what inspires you to keep writing amazing book after amazing book Well, I am deeply interested in evolution ecology conservation biological diversity on planet earth following brilliant scientists men and women through jungles and swamps getting my feet dirty seeing Komodo dragons running up cliff sides and learning about the mysteries of molecular biology as well as every other kind of biology me it's a I started as a As a fiction writer and then I gravitated into nonfiction and the natural sciences became a journalistic beat So I've been doing this now since about 1980 and I don't have a job But if I had a job, this would be the world's best job It would be could be yeah, but I don't have one I'm a freelancer I'm yeah, and I'm you have probably you have so many probably amazing stories from your experiences I was reading about one of your journeys Hiking a transect. Oh, oh, this was the greatest privilege of my life. I was asked back in 1999 by National Geographic to do a series of articles about a guy an American ecologist named Mike Fay who was going to walk 2000 miles across the Congo Basin doing a biological survey on a zigzag path off trail bushwhacking Just to identify what was there what were the biological hotspots and what were the places that were less crucial So I spent weeks walking with him. We walked in sandals and river shorts through swamps and jungles and and swam across Black lakes and I wrote three stories for National Geographic and it was and I had a wonderful Photographic partner great Nick Nichols Mike Fay was the explorer Nick Nichols was a photographer and I was the writer Great memories of that the mega transect. It was called so so the first thing that occurs to me is There's a guy who's who's willing a he knows that he can survive on a trip like this And he's gonna make this voyage and then they assigned to other people who may have no experience bushwhacking or surviving out in these kinds of conditions for like They was that was that a thing like did you have a lot to learn then or were you already prepared for a mission? Well, I yeah, it was not a random choice that they picked Nick Nichols as the photographer and me as the writer They picked us because we were they hoped the right people for this sort of a challenge We weren't as tough or as crazy as Mike Fay But we were close enough Approximation that they hoped we could hang with him at least for long sections of this walk He alone did the entire walk 456 days on the trail in the midst of central African forests without a hot shower Without sleeping under a roof and Doing great work Sensing what was there and I I walked for about eight weeks with him divided into about four stretches So, you know, 53 50 53 days, I think it was Which is nothing compared to him, but 53 days of bushwhacking through the Congo will Go give you a sense of the experience that'll give you the flavor of it I feel like I deserve a beer after an afternoon hike The greatest part part of the the greatest thing about this was that I learned to protect my feet by duct tape taping my feet every morning before I put my sandals on and left the tent I duct taped over all of my cuts and sores. I Mercure or I iodine everything and then I duck taped over them and I learned that was the way to survive walking in the Congo and then when Jane Goodall came to join us and She walked for an entire day to get into one of these sites and her feet were totally torn up From the cheap plastic sandals that she was walking in she turned to me she she calls me David Q She knows a number of David's. She's got a very complicated busy life Yeah, she calls me David Q and she says David Q. Would you duct tape my feet? So first of all, why aren't you wearing shoes? Because shoes fill with water and mud and because long pants can never be kept clean If you're if you're bush wiking across the Congo through swamps across streams, etc through mud It's very difficult to keep Socks dry. It's very difficult to keep Boots dry or have them high enough because sometimes you're in up to your waist or your armpits The easiest thing to keep clean and dry is skin Yeah, so you go ahead and let your skin Breathe and then you just repair your skin as necessary up to your armpits I mean, isn't there like there's no there's just points of no walking around something No, yeah, right. We yeah, we were because we were following Mike Faye's Sometimes you walk across a stream and it's a black water stream and you go in up to your waist you go in up to your armpits You come out the other side you walk through mud you come out with mud all over your feet and then gosentide blades and then you spray water over your feet to rinse them off and Sometimes you come to a lake and the lake is too deep So you swim across the lake and you fill your pack with your waterproof pack You fill it with air and close it tightly and you push it in front of you like Like a beach ball and you can you dog paddle through the mangroves and you get to the other side of this lake We had a great time. It was it was the greatest experience of my life Yeah, and but the bush whacking across Africa through the Congo I mean, this is a far cry from molecular genetics. Yes, and that's what made that's what made this book so difficult All right, so how did you come to this book? And yeah, and it explains some of your difficulties there well, so most of my books have been about ecology evolutionary biology Conservation and they've involved a lot of outdoor adventure like I've just described Now my book the song of the dodo, you know, it's about islands and evolution on island So you're walking around on Komodo and the Komodo dragon jumps out of the bushes and and runs up a cliffside and that You have some storytelling this book this book is about I hope this is a page turner and it's about a radical new history of life on earth But another way of saying it is that it's a history of molecular phylogenetics Oh my god a history of molecular phylogenetics. That sounds very dry the only jungles. I'm walking through our jungles of genomic data And that made this book Probably the riskiest and most ambitious that I've ever written not physically But intellectually and it all began in 2013 when I first read the phrase horizontal gene transfer And I said no That doesn't happen What we why we wait what genes do what? Yeah, genes move sideways across species boundaries From one kingdom to another No, that's I've got I've written enough books about evolution that I've got five reasons why that can't happen Yeah, and then I read into it further and I found yes, we now know from genomic data from from gene sequencing and and and uh bioinformatics High powered computer analysis and comparison of genomes that this is a thing this happens Horizontal gene transfer genes moving sideways from one great limb of the tree of life to another Yeah, and that's where it started. We've talked before on this show about the horizontal gene transfer that occurs between bacteria and So bacteria can um can get uh Antibiotic resistance because they get those genes from other bacteria that happen to have it instantly Which is amazing and and then the idea that you know plants also do this, but then like you said Between kingdoms, so you've got bacteria to plants fungi to plants and then Let's talk about between Into the animal kingdom Viruses dragging dna from other creatures into animals Viruses depositing their own dna in genomes including the human genome We could talk about the fact that we now know that eight percent of the human genome roughly is Excuse me. Yeah, no more boyings because I just closed my email program Eight percent of the human genome is viral dna From captured retroviruses that have come in sideways Not recently most of them, but over the last maybe hundred million years, but not down through the long linear sequence of animal evolution But sideways interrupting that lineage coming in retroviruses that have infected reproductive cells and therefore become Heritable Composing now eight percent of the human genome including some retrovirus genes that now perform in important functions in mammals and Pointedly in humans such as producing the membrane between the placenta and the fetus that makes human pregnancy Possible or successful human pregnancy possible It's a retro viral gene that has been repurposed acquired sideways So we might we might still be laying eggs If it weren't for a virus, right? Yes, exact might might as important because this is speculative But the wonderful scientist French scientist named Thierry Hydemann who with his group working at an institute on the south side of paris have explored one of these genes a gene called Sinceton To syn c y t n c y t i n Sinceton to not as in Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Zoo, but with y's Sinceton to is this gene it comes from a retrovirus, but now it's in the human genome Creates this membrane between the placenta and the fetus Helps to carry nutrients into the fetus from the placenta helps to carry waste products out To the to the placenta from the fetus so the mother can get rid of them and probably also protects the fetus From the mother's immune system because of course the fetus is only 50 percent the mother's genome and the other 50 percent is this guy And therefore the mother's immune system would attack it probably this This magical membrane helps to protect it and that membrane Is created by a viral gene that formerly Created the envelope membrane in retroviruses. It was acquired It had been repurposed and now it has an essential function In humans and there are earlier versions of this different versions of this In other mammals, so it seems to it seems to be that there have been multiple acquisitions multiple infective events that brought this kind of envelope gene into the human genome and gradually allowed animals to figure out a way To nurture their offspring internally rather than laying eggs on the ground So this might be responsible or partly responsible For the evolution of mammals yeah without that Pretty much all mammals would be different. It's completely changed their Their adaptations for survival because they can move with that thing that they're carrying inside of them instead of Having to go back to a nest over and over. Yes. Yes a female can walk away from a predator taking her young with her Rather than leaving them there on the ground and hoping like a kill deer bird that oh if I go over here and make a bunch of Noise I can distract the predator. Yeah. Yeah. No, she can just say we're out of here offspring And me we're out of here. That's what yeah the evolution of mammals made possible probably a fairly important moment in the history of Of the tree of life Yeah, so very likely a rice trap first as a as a defect of some sort You know like i'm trying to imagine this transition Of now the egg isn't the shell maybe isn't forming And then you know things are different like if we were if we were diagnosing a human that was for whatever reason now Forming in a hard shelled egg inside and we see this is a disease. This is something we need to cope with and fix But allowing evolution to take its place turned Something that was egg laying into a mammal. Yes, but nobody knows just in what those stages were We don't have the data to resolve those questions those Very legitimate questions that you've just raised at least so far We don't have the data what we have are genomes Fully sequenced genomes that we can compare to one another and that's what my book is about the tangle tree is about the discovery that discerning the history of life the history of evolution could be done By sequencing genomes and comparing them one to another Francis Crick back in 1958 Sort of launched this idea and called it protein taxonomy His thought was not that you use genomes, but you might use proteins another form of long molecule Made up of these individual units and you could sequence the units the amino acids And then you could compare one protein like a hemoglobin protein in a horse to a hemoglobin protein in a human and you could see how long ago maybe it was that Humans and horses had diverged from each other that's sort of the your initial thing but then Then this whole story that I tell The idea of doing it with DNA and RNA Yeah, looking at it from the historical perspective. I mean we talk a lot about, you know, how Once upon a time and still to this day people insist on morphology for category And you go through the long history of the development of the the the tree of life and how Darwin changed The meaning of the tree of life and what that came to be and then molecular genetics right Yeah yet again And molecular phylogenetics using long molecules to discern phylogenetics discerning the shape Of the tree of life who's related to whom and how long ago did branches diverge? Yes Yeah, so to you as you are going through your process of you know researching this book writing this story and basically telling this history like what really Stood out to you as some of the or one of the most pivotal moments Well a couple of pivotal moments. I mean I started from the end. I started because I picked up the thread of this phenomenon Horizontal gene transfer in May in 2013. I'd never heard of it before Maybe I read a blog by ed yang. Have you ever had it? You probably know ed yang Yeah So it might have been one of ed yang's blogs and he mentioned this and then I said oh I got to read into that further and then I discovered a scientist named for do little who had written about this in review papers and then I discovered this Scientist Carl woes who launched this revolution in doing molecular phylogenetics using Molecular data to discern the tree of life and I went back to lynn margillus whom I knew Uh lynn margillus the great microbiologist of the second half of the 20th century and she She had been a morphologist also But a micro morphologist and she was making Important discoveries and rediscovering ideas like the idea of endosymbiosis That complex cells have become complex by swallowing bacteria and turning those bacteria into internal organs She revived that theory and propounded it for beginning in 67 for For a long time and people thought she was wacky thought she was crazy And then others came along with molecular data molecular methods and said well, let's check this using molecular Let's sequence the genome of a mitochondria And see whether it's looks like a bacterium or not So people like for do little did that and said she's right She's absolutely goddamn. Excuse me. Can she's right? And she's right about and she's right about chloroplasts and plants too. They are captured bacteria Endosymbiosis lineages have come together Branches on the tree of life have not just diverged but converged And that began this whole rethinking and then carl woes comes along and he invents a new method of of doing this and people follow his method and Then they discover horizontal gene transfer is going on all the time among bacteria And it's happening also amid animals and the tree of life becomes very very tangled. So crucial moments Lynn margillis 1967 Read re announces the idea of Endosymbiosis in this paper that gets rejected by 15 journals according to what Lynn says and eventually gets published in 1970. She publishes a book. She's out there. She's wonderful My god, Lynn margillis and then 1977 Carl woes hits the front page of the new york times above the fold with his discovery using his primitive genome sequencing method That there is in fact a kingdom of life that nobody knew about before the completely unknown Obscured kingdom of life. We thought everybody thought there were two great limbs on the tree of life Bacteria and everything else the two great kingdoms of life bacteria Which were simple cells no cell nuclei no internal organs no internal complexity And everything else the eukaryotes the true kernel Eukaryote coming from the greek true kernel because they have cell nuclei And they have internal organs like like mitochondria And came from the bacteria that were in the ranch back back to lin back to lin. Yeah Yeah, so so 77 woes hits the front page of the new york times You know andy warhol said that in the future everybody will be famous for 15 minutes woes gets his 15 minutes on the morning of november 3rd 1977 when the new york times has a picture of him sitting at his desk at the university of illinois in urbana And it's sport shirt with his feet in adidas sneakers up on his desk and they say Scientists discover a separate form of life resembling early life And that's this third form of life Which became known as the archaea Archea as an archaic as an archaeology old because we thought these creatures might Reflect the lineage of the oldest creatures on earth. They look like bacteria through a microscope Lynn margillus or any other microbiologists took them for bacteria But if you sequenced their genome suddenly you saw bingo these things are not bacteria They're very distinct from bacteria. And in fact, they're more closely related to us Humans animals plants fungi than they are to bacteria So he declared that they were a new form of life a third form of life And that was the beginning of this whole radical redrawing of the tree of life Yeah Oh go ahead Not rejecting darwin Not refuting darwin not falsifying darwin, but adding some very important things To the darwinian understanding of evolution that darwin And the neo darwinists of the 20th century the first two-thirds of the 20th century had no chance to to recognize Yeah, and now what we're sitting here looking at all of this molecular phylogenomic data And and saying well darwin was right. We know natural selection does work But we also know that you know in the human genome for example, we have multiple genes responsible for a particular trait So when a gene mutates, maybe it's silent for a really long time And so there are all these complex factors that work internally in terms of how rapid mutation occurs how it changes and then you've got the things Like this infectious heredity Infectious infective heredity joshua letterberg's Term for this. Yeah, because he was studying this among bacteria in the 1950s and he called it he and ester letterberg and Norton zinder called it infective heredity And now we know it occurs not just in bacteria, but in all forms of life but yes and And it tells us it reveals that yes natural selection is still The crucial thing the darwin the great darwinian mechanism for how species evolve and adapt But what's different radically different is the sources of the variation among populations upon which natural selection acts You mentioned kiki, you know, there's this incremental mutation DNA replicates as species reproduce themselves and DNA makes these little tiny mistakes And you know, it gets a letter wrong here and a letter wrong there And there are these incremental mutations that create variation among the individuals of a population And then there's competition and there's a survival of the fittest natural selection Allows the fittest random variants to survive All still true, but what's drastically new is that the sources of variation we now know Include not just these micro mutations these little incremental changes as dna copies itself, but whole Packages of dna that come slamming in sideways by horizontal gene transfer and present major new populate possibilities for natural selection to work on as with as you've said Bacteria acquiring antibiotic resistance that can acquire an entire gene for antibiotic resistance one strength, you know E. Coli can acquire a whole gene for resistance to erythromycin that may have evolved in Staphylococcus and then been transferred sideways And that happens in Yeah, all of these animals too. Yeah and all of this. I mean we question on this show I'm text messaging an email in the modern age That's nothing to the type of communication that is taking place in the bacterial level Communication, right? Yeah. Yeah, and we argue all the time on this show Um at the the macro level about what a species is right? We have subspecies and there's hybridization, you know, oh all of a sudden a species because of an ecological event suddenly these two Diverse populations are brought together and lo and behold they can breed and we thought they were separate species But they're not and so biologically behaviorally We have this I guess diffuseness to the definition of a species but what you're talking about adds even more This is yes, totally totally agree this and this is very important I mean anybody who has read a little bit about the way organisms are classified maybe knows that they're species genera family orders Classes kingdoms of life and those those are nested categories of how we organize Our knowledge our knowledge of life on earth. It's not the way life on earth organizes itself It's the way we organize our knowledge And we know that those larger categories kingdom phylum, you know order family Class family etc. So those are artificial human groupings for our convenience But when we look at it and but we tend to believe that species Is an actuality. It's a real category. It exists in nature But the closer you look at it the more you Have to admit and you realize that even the category of species has blurry lines I say near the end of this book that there are three categorical ideas that People have embraced the idea of species as discreet entities They are populations of individuals, but they have fixed memberships and they're separate from other such Entities the individual is a discreet entity. There's an individual dr. Kiki sanford charles robert darwin A brown dog named rufus individuals and and the third categorical is that the history of life is shaped like a tree Coming from a single origin branching diverging diverging diverging over time growing up creating diversity And now we know that those three categoricals species individual And tree are all wrong They're all there you go. So they're not too but but but don't get me don't mistake. They're not totally wrong They're just they're just not categorically right. They are not categorically right And in that sense, they are wrong It's gonna be like that. I think it has a scene from uh, princess bride. It was like, is he dead? Well, he's mostly dead So life is less of a tree and more of like a tangled ball of skit spaghetti or something like that It's something else. It's something else. Yes And the term I've come to and I don't know who who's coined it is the braided stream Uh, and it it's mostly applied, I guess to human evolution or hominin evolution Because all of those things that again we learned through morphology and the idea that there were distinct Hand ops and this relay race of becoming a modern human from from a species of human to another species of human Where we find that there's lots of interbreeding going on throughout the ancient hominin history And it's getting harder and harder to point to any one period of human evolution and say That's its own distinct completely removed from the rest of the hominins that were running around because now we know that Neanderthals bred back in with humans denisovans probably bred back in with modern humans And neanderthals Yeah, and and even chimpanzees bred back in with the human lineage after the divergence We know that from molecular phylogenetics Yeah, but this is even more radical. This is this is bacteria breeding back in With the animal lineage. This is viruses breeding back in with the human lineage And and so so so then the question is Viruses come up with this dna All right, so nobody nobody knows where viruses come from viruses are still a wonderful mystery They are there are ideas there are thoughts There was a story a few weeks or months ago that we were talking about where Some of the giant viruses were being seen to sort of create New series of genes that weren't present in In previous versions or in in related versions of these viruses so that they were actually doing a little bit of Unique gene creation with them as though they were there until themselves their own lab their own genetic laboratory Sort of creating places are the are the breeding ground of all genetic diversity I mean, that's what that's one. Okay. Okay. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here from dr. Kiki I didn't say it. She did I'm wondering though. I mean this she did This book, I mean you're bringing to the public eye and to the public mind these these Radical as it says the radical new history of life these radical new ideas That are you know really becoming the fabric Of our modern evolutionary thought and how we consider things I mean, do you think that there's a that this is the beginning of maybe a philosophical questioning You know if more people start thinking about this that it might raise I hope so I hope so. I mean, I've been talking to So audiences live audiences For the last month or so and I describe this stuff and people people say what I said in 2013 wait, what what? So I think I hope are rethinking at least of those three categoricals that I mentioned species individual and History of life. I mean and sort of the bottom line of this is a reaffirmation of That great dark truth of charles darwin, which I think of is the darkest of his truths Which is that we humans we humans are not separate from nature We're not this holy thing that sits apart from nature somewhere up in the sky above nature We're part of nature and darwin's work has radically Announced that but this stuff announces it even more challengingly and dizzyingly but it reaffirms that and it brings us back in to I think a position of humility and engagement with the rest of the natural world that is salubrious and crucial as we deal with the Our attempts to maintain a viable environment in situation for all kinds of creatures on this planet Yeah, all the creatures big and small and ourselves Among them So do you what do you consider yourself individual? How do you look at yourself now that you have this this knowledge and this new perspective on On the on the world. Well eight percent viral Uh, maybe three or four percent bacterial You know 80 percent animal Husband montanen Science writer Etc etc but I um And plus plus the microbiome plus those all all those other Critters that are living in us that are not part of our genome I you've probably talked at great length about the microbiome on the show with with ed yang and maybe carl zimmer and other people um All those other critters living within us. So we're these we're these walking ecosystems And we get to have a single name and we get to live for You know 70 or 80 or 90 years in this amazing place this amazing planet um And it's uh, I'm not going to say it's a miracle because I don't believe in miracles But it's the it's the evolutionary equivalent. It's this extraordinarily um gratifying Privilege to be part of this and to have what appears to be but isn't an individual identity for a while and walk around and say You know, hi, I'm kiki. I'm justin. I'm blare. I'm david. I'm blaze and It's nice to be on this planet Even while knowing that you are a chimera a composite of all these other things A mosaic a chimera. I am the matrix. Yeah. Yeah, but that said I also want to Want to just mention that this this book of mine. It's a yes It's a history of molecular phylogenetics, but also it's a bunch of storytelling It's I hope it's a page turner thing It's about this wonderful character named carl woes This wonderful character named lin margillus these other wonderful characters barbara mclintock fordoo little et cetera et cetera It's about mysteries solved and lives lived and challenges met Yes, I I think it is a page turner. I have been Reading it myself and quite enjoying it. I something that's different in very short chapters Which I was like wait, this is different You're just you've got these little little tidbits and you you go instead of having these massive tomes No, I think about the reader. I think, you know, what's the reader's attention span? What does the reader want does the reader want an explanation or a joke right now? I want I want that story and you do a wonderful job of bringing the scientists Uh into the story and exposing their humanity and how they uh, how they are going about Solving the mystery and so thank you for writing this book and thank you for joining us on the show tonight Is there thank you? For letting me talk with you tonight. This is great fun and I really appreciate it I really do love the the telling of Of the journey of the discovery um, it's one of those those things that that uh, I think the general public might just assume that scientific discovery Is a natural thing that just happens as more time goes by But it does take a lot of hard work and a lot of courage by people to go out and pioneer things to make these observations and to Gut-check themselves about what they actually have have have observed and push forward with that And and to to commit themselves to maybe even being somewhat Ostracized by their peers for doing so and it's it does take a level of courage and bravery And a lot of hard work that I think it's overlooked when we when we only are touching on the highlights of what has happened And the highlights of what we have learned It's it's a good reminder that Throughout history people that were really super right were often called wrong first Yeah for a long time sometimes. Yeah. Yeah They left at columbus They left at kinky freedman They left at lin margillus And they left at soupy sales And they were all right. They were all right. They were all right All right, where can people find you online if they are interested in learning more about you easy www david qualman.com my website I'm on twitter at david qualman There aren't that many science writers named david qualman I'm easy to find people will be able to find you your book the tangled tree a radical new history of life Once again, david, thank you so much for joining us tonight You are very welcome dr. Kiki and company and I'm sorry. I missed you while you were here in portland For that whiskey. Maybe I will catch up with you at uh n asw in washington dc. I had I had aitou fae at jakes aitou fae Yeah, jakes. Yeah jakes great crawdad place Anyway, thank you so very much Thank you Blair. Thank you. Justin. Yeah pleasure having you on Have a lovely evening Everyone out there. We are going to take a quick break. This is this weekend science And if you would like to stay tuned for science news, that's what's coming up next. We have I've got sugar There's some wolverines and uh blare has a human shield. No, you've got parasites I have I have a a kidnapped shield that is an invertebrate Okay, we'll we'll trust lots of unpack. Well, it's a lot to unpack. We'll work on that Everyone will be back in just a few moments. This is this weekend in science. Stay tuned for more Offices and patients are the only things I need Put on a pair of goggles and go looking for the things I couldn't see The answers lie somewhere within this scatter block time Hey everyone, thank you for joining us for another episode of this week in science We do appreciate your time and that you're spending it with us to enjoy the world of science with us Now we can't do this show without you I mean without you as an audience member but also without you as a supporter We need your help to maintain this show as currently we are Listener supported we do not take advertisers at this point in time So that we can give you the best show and we just want to do this for you So if you want to help support this week in science, how can you do that? 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Then support us at that ten dollar level every month. It's super easy Anyway twist org is the main place where all of this You can find all these things and And help us out keep us going help support us We can't do this without you We thank you so much for your support The methods of hypothesis impatience are the only thing time needed Go around a pair of goggles and go look at all the things I couldn't see And we're back with more this week in science. Yes, we are. Hey, you know what time it is Oh, is it time for our favorite part of the show? Yeah, time for this weekend. What has science done for me? All right, this week is a very short note from april robison april writes in to say Science has allowed me to be super extra and give my rescue puppy a doggie dna test I got to find out what he is made of Which isn't necessary, but is quite fun. That's true science is fun I did that once I did that once uh To your dog. Yes Yes This was this was a long long time ago. Uh, but it was uh, we could see the Um, you could see the little bit of collie was there maybe husky and and then it also turned out through the genetics That she is she was part of this right now I can't remember because it was a long time ago part this korean Uh breed of dog that was very specifically this green break which which was known for its intelligence and still have like Kind of like some of the same similar markings of a collie too. Uh, and the collie was in there as well, but it was uh It was pretty it was pretty fun. Is it the gindo? Yeah, I think that was it. Yeah I have never heard of that dog before. Wow. This was the most intelligent dog I've ever known and that's one of the things gindos are known for is being known for its fierce loyalty and brave nature Did you just look that up on the internet? Sure did It sounded like quotey voice No, you're looking things up April thank you so much for writing in I love the fact that we have these modern day Single nucleotide polymorphism testing services. They're not checking all the dna But they're checking these little bits and pieces and going how does that match up with this? How does it match up with that and does it match and does it match? And it's fun It's fun to find these things out and I especially when it comes to your own animals being able to find out Especially dogs and cats wait. We don't know so often they're muts and mixes and even when you think they're purebred Are they You got to be careful though because once you have your dog's dna tested, you know, they can be easier implicated for a crime That's right. They could be you know, watch out Their cousins get tested and you know suddenly the dna traces back. Yep right there Or you know it fido's implicated in that robbery. Oh fido why? Why didn't you have to rob that bag? I didn't wonder where you got the sports car. That was on I wasn't expecting that fido. That was weird Right april. Thank you so much for giving us this fun little tangent to think about and yes I do agree science can make things like learning more about your dog So much fun Everyone out there if you have a little note if you have a longer note Send them to me. Tell me what science has done for you lately And we will read it in this portion of the show share it with everybody because I mean really If science is share is helping you and making your life awesome. What has it done for you? Is it making a Let's share. Let's let's celebrate this influence that science has You can go to the facebook page for this week in science, which is this week in science and Leave us a message or you can send me an email kirsten k i r s t e n at thisweekinscience.com Let's keep this portion of the show going. Can I make a special request? I made a request for a sonnet and we got one Yes, we made a request for a haiku and we got one So I'm I'm doubling down. I would like a what has science done for me lately Very short song email to dr Me wow What has science done for me lately? Yeah, we'll play it on the show. It's done for me lately Lately Thunderman, I know we have lots of talented listeners That would be fun or I love that great idea Blair It's a challenge challenge challenge who will accept the challenge Yeah, all right. The challenge right now is to talk about science Oh, yeah that Yeah, so we were talking about life and evolution In the interview before the break and one of the big questions about life is where did it come from You know, my own son is asking me this where did life come from mommy How did we get here and I'm like, I don't know We don't know and you know, I try and explain to him the whole RNA hypothesis and he's seven So he's like okay. He gets a lot though, but one of the big Big questions is the the basic building blocks Many of the basic building blocks of the materials that created everything are sugars And where did these sugars come from and we've been looking all over the universe We found big clouds of formaldehyde floating in outer space. We have found clouds of uh of of more complex sugars glyco aldehydes glissar aldehydes floating in space So here on earth, we're like, uh, what what? How do how do these sugars come to be and how do how do they remain persistent and how does this happen? And so um a long time ago, there was a russian chemist back in 1861 and he Figured out this chemical reaction called the formos reaction formos reaction formos is a sugar uh formaldehyde to uh a sugar and the formaldehyde reaction Occurs when formaldehyde is added to water and a base It's a formos reaction and it makes sugars The problem is if you leave it alone, then it gets turns into like a Tar everything continues to react and break down and it just is gross And not life sustaining or supporting if everything starts keeps reacting and breaking down It can't be a building block And so while the formos reaction has been this tantalizing idea It doesn't explain clouds of sugars in space It doesn't explain the existence of life here on the planet And so researchers are still searching for that chemical reaction that could explain the existence of these sugars Enter peter schreiner and his team at justus leibig university in germany And they have found a molecule hydroxymethylene Which is a really really reactive molecule That they showed to exist about a decade ago and they have now shown that without any solvents without water And in at temperatures near absolute zero, which would be the temperature in outer space If it if it comes near formaldehyde It will join with formaldehyde to create glyco aldehydes and glycer aldehydes sugars And these precursors can form ribose and other carbohydrates Without Turning into that black tar that was the problem. It is sustainable. It is Hydroxymethane is reactive enough, but then the products don't break down in that negative way So the question is now is this the molecule? Is this the precursor? Can this explain all the sugars The researchers say we believe that the reaction not requiring aqueous conditions is superior to anything that Has been suggested in the past. I call this carbohydrate formation in the absence of biosynthesis I love your kori voice This is like my very very stern kori voice my I am right kori voice Yeah, I've been saying on the show for probably years That I think in our lifetime will have a real Pretty solid Explanation for how life began and I cannot wait for that to be in a textbook Ready to go right handed to school children What I think it's happening this kind of a reaction, you know, they there's probably still more testing and Confirming that needs to happen. We need to find this molecule in space. We need to see This happening in space, but not just on space here on earth also, you know This is this this possibility. It could be how the building blocks get their start Yeah I don't know because I've I've never Lived in the cold of deep space That's the thing I think I mean It also seems though that you could You could possibly have much more limited Uh reactions in in space so that that anything that we're That we're trying to recreate Is similar conditions as we can create here on earth you know Could could have a completely different outcome When when things are spread out over a gaseous nebula of of space too so I don't know I don't I don't know that I don't know that it would you would end up with tarry balls in space But the interesting thing not requiring water so that these building blocks could form in space with the absence of water And then if the building blocks formed here on earth where there is water Does that mean that the next steps in the chemical processes that lead to the formation of you know, a little mud membrane bound RNA cells DNA cells, you know, is that is that what it takes? Yeah, that's exciting. I think it's interesting um, and then my other interest story for uh for today is new neurons in our ears Wait, I thought neurons belonged in the brain and just stay there all the time These are interneurons. These are these are neurons that uh that transmit information between the hair cells and other Neurons, they are called spiral ganglion neurons spiral ganglion cells and originally Looking at the inner ear of the cochlea and what cells connect to the hair cells connect to the brain all this stuff Originally We only thought that there were a couple type one and type two cells that connected in there But that was based on morphology what they looked like so going back again to this discussion from the interview morphology versus molecular investigation researchers at the carolinska institute in sweden Have looked at RNA in the cells of the ear and in doing so have discovered that there are not Is not just one type one neuron But three Wait three of just the type one three of just the type one And so they all serve with their different RNA profiles They all serve different functions, but what they seem to do is encode information about intensity So the strength of a sound the loudness of a sound, right? And the researchers now looking at this using this single cell RNA sequencing technique that they have used They can understand the auditory system better Maybe figure out drugs that can be used to treat things like tinnitus It's amazing And and I I didn't bring it so I won't go into it in any depth Uh, but was just reading something that came out this week about Uh, I say where mice were able to tune out the sound of their own pitter patter So that they could be more alert to Uh, so it's it's it's also it's it's reading intensity But there must be this feedback of identifying What that is and toning down certain intensities so that you can ignore certain sounds So that you can be more attuned to the the sounds that are then important And where does that prioritization take place? But also yeah, this is this does like you just said open up, uh, ton of pathways to treating ocular No, not what's what's here? What's your auditory problem auditory problems? Yeah, and you know your three neurons you have your your dr. Kiki and your shouty Blair and your Justin There's three kind of levels gotta be able to mix all three Yeah, and maybe they work maybe they work in one nation Maybe they work separately, but you know these neurons the way that they work We used to think it was just you know one neuron doing all the work But now it's these three different types potentially working working in concert and synchrony to help us You know focus on one person's voice in a loud cafe or at a party be able to filter out the background noise to be able to Focus on one particular thing These cells are probably involved in that and how and knowing that they're they have differences and that they're there and are different Is going to make a huge impact in our understanding Yeah, and there's there's always that my uh an initial reaction. I sort of get to uh finding out that things are much more complicated than we Thought before which is like, oh great. There goes everything we think we know but Really what happens is when you sort of clarify and can sort of break down Maybe a division of labor like you're suggesting between these uh, you you can actually simplify Your your inquiries into into things that you might be interested in it might actually create much more clarity By discovering these complexities then was there when you didn't know that that complexity existed Exactly Do you have a story Justin? Oh my gosh, I've got stories. Uh, what do you want to hear? What do you want to hear? I got all this. Okay. Here's what I'm gonna start with uh, just because uh, yeah, uh So I've got like three stories this week that sort of push back time points in history for them Uh, it's been we've been doing this over and over again. This is in Madagascar Strange and marvelous island off the eastern coast of Africa A land untouched by humans Till about three to four thousand years ago Or so we thought now the zoological society of london Is pushing back the date of humans arrival in the madagascar Back another 6,500 years 10,000 what do they know about humans? Exactly This is zoological society doing Making coming up with discoveries in human history Well, because this discovery is thanks to the missing toes of an elephant bird What? Snap So the elephant bird is Some old school megafauna fowl this at its time Was the biggest bird on planet earth and we think of the biggest bird that you can think of and you might think of Yeah, kind of big. It's about as tall as as a as a human Uh, probably weighs about as much I would imagine Now the elephant bird was 10 feet tall weighed over a thousand eggs Weight over a thousand you you froze for a second weight over a thousand pounds Weight over a thousand pounds had eggs the size of a human head Eggs which if you cracked one over a campfire would plop out about the volume of 12 dozen eggs Onto your campfire griddle which an ostrich egg is about three dozen eggs Yeah, so it's Much more many more eggs. Yes, uh So it's known that it went extinct about a thousand years ago And you know it overlapped with kind of the humans Uh, some of the the more recent the pin pointings of humans getting there So it looked like okay human hunters got there and they killed all the the elephant birds. That's what happened But uh, you know Now if you if you push back the history Uh To 10 000 years that's that's Almost, you know, it's 9 000-ish plus years of humans and elephant birds coexisting in Madagascar Then what becomes maybe more prominent is the idea that they were Uh, stricken by diseases when they became exposed to domesticated foul chickens That sort of did arrive more in that thousand year ago time frame And and weren't native to the island and may have introduced things that could transfer Illnesses that could transfer to the the larger farm, but the answer may still be uh, elusive So this is uh Yeah, they made observations of ancient elephant bird bones They revealed cut marks and depression fractures consistent with hunting and butchery by prehistoric humans They used radiocarbon dating techniques They were able to determine when the giant birds had been killed And that's what pushed the date way way back So what's also interesting is these bones are found uh initially back in 2009 in a marshy fossil Bone bed that had a large concentration of ancient animal remains And it was thought this is just a condition where a lot of animals fell into a martian died Yeah, it was a quicksand Now that they're seeing Some of these bones that are being finally analyzed showing signs of butchery They may need to revisit this entire site as a possible Ancient human habitat habitat site. Yeah, that might be a trash pile Yeah This might be a hunting ground or where they where they bring everything back to chop it up and cook it or the compost You know, or maybe it was a combination. Maybe it was uh something a trap of some kind and also You know, if it smelled enticing to carnivorous animals, you know, they'd go go get stuck in there But then it'd also be a nice little compost pile Right, right. So there's there's a bunch of possibilities. They need to go and reinvestigate. What's also interesting Is that the peoples who are in Madagascar? today Aren't going to be related to the peoples who were there over 10,000 years ago These people we know migrated there two to four thousand years ago These ancient are humans We don't know anything about other than we're pretty sure they have no relation Uh to the peoples who that who showed up later so So this could be this could be a little bit of a window into those peoples and their habits I'm not too surprised to hear that people might have come to Madagascar more than once because One of the theories for how lemurs happened Is that a prosimian took a raft? So That sounds like a okay. How did the lemurs happen a prosimian took a raft? Yeah. Yeah It's you know, it's like why the chicken crossed the road. It's no it's um One of the theories is that you know the the predecessor to all primates Took a raft to Madagascar and didn't evolve any further because there were no large predators because there's not really There my understanding is there's not really a great fossil record for Predecessors to lemurs on Madagascar which makes them think That they came there, right? So if lemurs can hop a raft to Madagascar certainly Ancestors to humans could hop a raft to Madagascar or or maybe walk there or maybe walk there Uh, you're talking if you're going back far enough you're talking about enough ice age Affects to you to make that a Potentially walkable or you know, it's not it's not a long trip How long ago was it there was a a period of time where the sea level was like 120 meters below where it is now like it was Absolutely very highly significant difference, but yeah, I don't remember when that was Yeah, then you were talking more than 20 Ish thousand years ago. So so, you know at the I don't have I don't know when lemurs got to Madagascar it says here that the That's part of how they had been pegging human Uh human existence there. They know that there were giant lemurs and giant tortoises that became extinct Within the last thousand years. Yeah, quite a bit before that. That was about 50 billion years ago Yeah, uh, they they think that lemurs fusa and most Madagascar mammals got there via natural rafts Yeah, wait 50 million could play tectonics that they're now you're talking a really long time scale, right? Maybe that was Madagascar then 50 million. No, there was still water 50 million. Where was Madagascar? I don't know. Yeah Now I need to see one of those maps Oh science. Oh science and the changing plates What else you got Justin? Uh, okay. There's another one. Uh, what came first beer or bread? Good question. They both used yeast. We found out that cheese came first last week Right, we did bread bread got pushed back like 7 000 years, right? I I thought it would be four thousand years Right because that's how people stayed hydrated Oh, yeah, you know, you have water that accidentally gets in with your wheat With the yeast in there and oh look, what's this? How come I feel so funny? Okay, I'll give you another one then. What came first? Uh, beer or farming? Oh Beer Farming Beer came first and actually we figured out uh, bread came before farming too Farming of wheat seems to have shown up as a result of being dedicated to beer And bread and what's interesting about the story is this is taking place with the Natufian people Who are the ones that pushed back our understanding of the earliest bread? Uh, it's the same it's the same place the same peoples turns out they had beer the same time they had bread It's kind of hard to tell which one of those came first now beer cheese Sorry, it sounds like they had the making They had the makings for a wonderful diet. Yeah for a wonderful pub. Yeah, their pub was right Beer cheese bread and beer And then they had a pub and then people said maybe we should have a farm since we have a pub yeah Yeah, it says uh beer findings from this natufian site in east jordan Could be from 11 700 to 13 700 years ago That beer though Yeah Maybe not the beer that we're accustomed to You don't say so, huh? Yeah, it was most likely a multi-grain thing where they just sort of threw a bunch in It was probably more porridgey Yeah, I was gonna say fermented oatmeal Right, you know, but Am I first sort of reaction because they got a lot of this from residues Right, uh recovered from uh from stuff my first reaction to this was well You found the oldest Fermented something in the place where we just found out They had been making bread 11 000 to 15 000 years ago So could it just be an accident? That's what I was wondering also bleak in the chat room says just rotted stuff Right, right, so They they actually dug quite a bit deeper as scientists tend to do so They had uh let's see so The researchers believe that the natufians used a three stage brewing process First starch of wheat or barley would be turned into malt. That's just letting grains germinate in water Then it would be drained dried stored then the malt would be mashed and heated And then it would be left to ferment with the airborne wild yeast They went through and tried to do a sort of reenactment and in their reenactment they They did everything from pounding grains and grinding and doing all the stuff and they found The traces left on the ancient stone mortars that they would find Closely resembled their own lab experiments of pounding and crushing grain seeds So it looks like Yeah, it looks like a lot of their their recreations matched What they were finding in the field was also interesting Is that they they found they they believe that this was sort of ritual beer use Because they they would find the beer making components the brewing uh equipment Your grave sites Yeah, so ritual Yeah, so they were you know, you'd lose somebody You'd bury them awake And then yeah, you would take a little bit but you'd have a a porogy beer wake for them afterwards And this is the researchers who were involved in this Let me uh, let me go You know assessor names professor li liu of stanford and uh The doctoral student jiang wang Have uh, we've probably talked about them on the show before back in 2015. They were looking at 5 000 year old bruise in china and and in following brewing and they're the The techniques that they've they've used in the discoveries that they've made they they've turned their attention to this site and Maybe yet another another discovery pushing back brewing by thousands of years I love it again, you know looking at the molecular aspects looking at uh these little traces left over But seriously, what do you do for your research? I study the archaeological evidence of beer Awesome, let's go read and and I've got one more pushing back story. Okay before we get to the corner way back We'll get there black this is uh, uh humans Had been the earliest originators of art For a long time We created the first artwork the planet had ever seen and then it turned out that the artistically impressive ancient human cave paintings in spain Were made 24 000 years before humans had arrived in spain And all credit went to neanderthals Which which meant that which meant that they beat us in artwork also by 20 something thousand years Uh, so but now now we're back in the game Scientists are pointing to the blambos cave in the southern Cape of South Africa A drawing which consists of just three red lines crossed hatch with six separate lines Was intentionally drawn on a smooth rock flake about 73 000 years ago That's 9 000 years ish before the cave paintings So we're first again And they you know, how do we know these little markings are Actually intentional and not just some sort of natural formation Well, they used microscopes and electron microscopes And they confirmed the lines were applied to the stone Uh, also at the same site there were There were uh other artifacts of symbolic tinkering Shell beads covered with ochre the engravings of abstract part patterns on on things that kind of resembled the drawing They think the drawing was part of a larger Uh piece of artwork and that this is just the surviving fragment that they found And and they believe it was drawn on by an ochre crayon And and while this is amazing to truly reestablish the long human history with crayons And I I do hate to be an art critic ever But it's nothing like the post-neobiomorphic stone age Representational perspective work of the neanderthal cave artists. I'm sorry. Let's be clear These humans were making zigzags with crayons Which you could call it drawing if you want, but I have a five-year-old Who can do much more realism with a crayon than they were doing in this cave, right? Much better skills in my five-year-old than they had and they were still maybe they're they're just more into Russianism or abstracts, you know it's It could be very complex They were 30 000 years of art school away from even understanding the basics of what neander artists Of the day were putting out cave after cave open It's just like those white canvases you see at your local MoMA. Do you just don't understand it? Maybe all we're seeing this isn't necessarily, you know, the Important art of the time. Maybe these are just the doodles the notepads I do a lot of patterns like that on my right pads during This is this is the this is the equivalent of the The marks left by the teenager when listening to the parent or the teacher drone on about something The the image if you can't see it It it does look a lot like when my five-year-old tries to draw the letter m And just never knows when to stop Chris cross Chris cross is it m's is it x's oh look there's lines crossing that way. Yeah, this is That definitely looks very deliberate though. Absolutely deliberate. Yeah And and actually if you're just Engravings there's I think something that even dates back to like 500 000 years that they have found At a different location where they could find what looked like intentional zigzag marks Carved into a shell It is it is no buffalo but it is But it but it's it's important and it's 73 000 years old. So this is cool Pretty cool Taking it back. Oh, and it was it was discovered uh Uh by researchers at wit wit water sinned Am I saying this right? I always mess this up, uh, which is the same people who are the same university out of which This study is going on into home in the bleddy Oh fascinating Very cool Doing some good work there Oh That was some good work We're moving into the next segment of the show where there's lots of good work coming out of the animal kingdom blazes animal corner Blaze And What you got Blair? Yeah, it's Blair um I missed it. I should have ah All right. Well, let's start with a case of kidnapping Oh, jeez. Okay. I like a good story. Yes This is a case of Like This is the case of invertebrate kidnapping If you've ever heard of pteropods It starts with the p pteropods Right, they are what uh the aquarium I used to work at called the potato chips of the sea If you're a salmon or many other animals in the ocean, you can't have just one You're popping little pteropods all day. They're uh the base of the of a lot of different food Chains in the ocean and they're extremely important and the reason I've heard of them before is because they are affected pretty heavily by ocean acidification But this story isn't about that. This story is about a case of kidnapping of pteropods so in this study there was um There were some videos captured of Other invertebrates of amphipods, which are like little shrimpies Grabbing pteropods as they moved through the ocean So pteropods they aside from apparently being delicious They have to do something about that or they would be eaten all the time They actually produce chemical deterrents to ward off predators And so it looks like amphipods are actually grabbing these guys to kind of spray the chemical deterrence and use that benefit for themselves The reason we think this is probably not a symbiotic relationship and probably a case of kidnapping Is that the pteropods are grabbed in such a way that they They can't move at all. They can't move their wings. They can't move their feet. They are unable to feed Yes, they're trapped. They're trapped. So amphipods are also popular food items think about how much People love to eat shrimp. They're very popular prey for fish and seabirds This was a discovery where By just taking pictures and video they saw amphipods carrying something unusual on their backs And upon closer inspection they realized it was pteropods. They have U us researchers actually had already found this back in 1990 But only for high Antarctic coastal waters and not for the open Ocean which is what they found in this and they found enough cases that they think this is a pretty normal occurrence They found it in two different species of amphipods And They were carrying different species of pteropods Their sample size is too small to say for sure whether it's a species specific pairing But that's what they found but it was only a few cases So it's really hard to say for sure that they're that specific So Cod ice fishes and other predators were in fact deterred by chemicals That the pteropods were producing as they're being carried and when amphipods take those pteropods hostage The amphipods are not affected by the poison But these other animals ice fish and others are Are they they avoid them because they don't taste good So their original thought was that perhaps the pteropod benefits in some way from saving energy by being carried Maybe they don't have to swim and so it's not so bad But they actually found since the amphipod uses both Uh actually two not all but two pairs of their legs to keep the gastropods on their back They're completely unable to move around hunt gather food anything. So they call that Call that kidnapping The reason this is so interesting besides just a really unusual kind of species parrot and that I've never really heard of before Is as one of the lead author states Quote We're probably overlooking numerous such associations between species because they are no longer visible after net Sampling which makes sense if you're sampling from the Antarctic and you're just using some sort of net or trawl When you pull something up a lot of things might fall apart or not be displayed as you anticipated quote continues in the future We will hopefully be able to use suitable underwater technologies with high definition cameras To investigate even the smallest life forms in their habitat This will provide insights into the numerous exciting mysteries of inter specific interactions Which have so far remained hidden for biologists But which undoubtedly play an important role in predator-prey relationships in the ocean So these are two little itty bitty invertebrates that are Being used or using one another in a way that could affect Dynamics ecosystems food webs in a way. We had no idea Yeah Amazing I mean I'm and looking at some of these pictures of these animals like you said the amphipods are like shrimp And so they've got the the hard carapace. They've got the the ex exoskeleton, but the The pteropods many of them, especially like one of the species in the study of the clione lemona Lemacina Antarctica It's a sea butterfly and these look like little angels in the water. They've got a little round Head what looks like a head part and then what appear to be Translucent wings and there and so they use these these wing type appendages to propel themselves through the water but they don't have that That protection otherwise They move through the through the water column differently from the amphipods and so I'm yeah, I wonder I wonder what else is going on there Absolutely, and it only makes you wonder especially in Places that we haven't explored very much under the under the water I talk all the time about how yes space lots of cool things to discover So much still to discover Underwater on our own planet that especially in the Antarctic, especially in the deep sea There are places that we need to explore with more than just nets Because there are interactions going on that we can't capture by pulling things up to where we are So that's very interesting. Yeah another invertebrate relationship That's quite unusual Involves digger bees from hapro Habro poda with beetles That trick them These these digger bees into Taking care of their larva So this is a study out of uc davis. What what? Uh, hey davis listening on the radio So Oh, I got excited. Um So this study is looking at the larva of mellow franciscanus beetles They the larva lure male digger bees With chemical signals mimicking female sex pheromones little larva Pretending to be female bees these beetle larva also known as Triangulans attach themselves to the males. Oh no transfer to female bees during copulation double oh no, and then hit your ride back to the nest where Triple oh no they feed on bee eggs and provisions and emerge as adult beetles the following winter So they have a pretty sweet deal, but the poor digger bees Not so great This study looked at how there were male bees of different species Of of of diggers Um, they found that they were attracted to local parasite larva More than larva from distant locales. So the their fake female sex pheromones are location specific They tailor their pheromone mimicking blends to the pheromones of their local hosts and The larval aggregation that's signed to speak for where the larva hang out They they adapted their location to a perching height equal to the patrolling height of local male bees So not only are the pheromones Species or location specific But the place where they hit your ride is specific to where the bees hang out in that area So this is a case speaking of evolution of rapid evolution via local adaptation so The it's difficult to parse out here whether it's species specific Or whether it's location specific But the what we know for sure is that it's definitely From this study it there is a location correlation Say that five times fast, right the location correlation location correlation Yes, so this is this is very interesting for a bunch of reasons, but of course at the very basic level This is a good reminder that species interactions Can be very intricate and specific to specific areas and what i'm thinking about with this It's things like climate change when one species moves Because maybe they're herbivores and they're following a plant species that has moved and then their parasites Don't move. That's good for that animal. That's not being parasited parasitized Anymore, but it could be bad for the ecosystem and the parasite. Yes So it's this whole thing about Species interactions or even a slight geographical shift could mean a huge change in ecosystems And when we're talking about insects, I mean, this is this is huge. We've had stories about Uh flowers on or plants on top of mountains that are changing their distribution as a result of climate change And the melting glaciers and all the things And so and bees are having to forage elsewhere having to find different plants for their foraging having to figure things out and so Yeah, yeah, so in this case if the bigger bees moved elsewhere, these beetles would be in dire straits There's an interesting link on the noa n o a site, which is also a good place to look at Hurricane satellite imagery if you're interested in that sort of thing right about now But they've got an interesting They're their their main web page has a few global warming links One is a sort of Ascii scientist bit and the other one is a map of showing where where in america in the united states spring is showing up earlier Than it normally does and it's a whites why it's not evenly Uh dispersed it's it's a sort of interesting map because it's Of course related as well to weather patterns Yeah, but it is showing it's showing this huge swath through the united states where spring seems to be showing up earlier each year And of course, this is also what can dramatically affect if bird migration is being placed The insects aren't there or the flowers aren't there or the flowers are already there and they're past the stage where the insect would want to Or the bird would want it's that whole Yeah, and that's that's a very good nation if the pollinators aren't there Then the plants don't get to reproduce and Yeah, and then the frogs and the log and the toad and the hole and whatever Yeah, so in this case I was talking about a geographic shift But there might be a temporal shift that could cause a problem with this parasite and Post-relationship that we wouldn't anticipate. Maybe these bees adjust to a new flowering cycle, but the beetles is not Absolutely. And what was interesting about that too is like we we think of incremental change As how we will experience the coming effects of global warming But when you when you see how large a territory Is being affected by this temperature change you realize Oh gosh, that's gonna happen a lot of places a lot faster than incremental The increments are much smaller When you hit those dominoes it might take five minutes You get to get the end, but there's all those other dominoes along the way I guess you're right Yeah, beetle tree me. There we go Yes, I will end the animal corner just because we're in the second half of the show With time to do quick Yes, my very quick story Is how I'm gonna finish up the animal corner. It's a bit of hope For your wednesday evening or whenever you're listening to this. It's about sharks Sharks as we know have a pr problem. People are terrified of them unnecessarily I could go on and on about how more people are killed every year by cows and sharks blah blah blah anyway This is an interesting study looking at people who have participated in shark ecotourism programs They surveyed 547 participants And they wanted to see this is an oahu hawaii They looked at participants knowledge of attitudes towards sharks and their intention to engage with shark conservation projects before and after They compared those with 488 members of the public who had not been in shark ecotourism So this is a decent size study before taking part in shark ecotourism The people who had signed up people who are going to these shark Programs were generally more environmentally minded more knowledgeable about sharks and had more positive attitudes towards sharks That makes sense. You're probably not going to jump in a shark cage if you're terrified of sharks 71 a participants had positive attitudes towards sharks before the tour with only 45 of the general public So a lot more however Even though they were more Interested in sharks and the sharks were less vilified before the ecotourism program afterwards Participants had significantly more knowledge of the ecological role of sharks and a more favorable attitudes towards them There was a 39 percent increase in knowledge And 97 percent of participants who had negative attitudes changed their minds to a positive one 97 percent So ultimately these programs had a significant positive effect on people's intentions to engage in shark conservation behavior And so they were not just preaching to the choir or preaching to the converted It did improve perception and potentially help sharks, but the kind of Disclaimer on this is that there are still legitimate concerns about forms of shark tourism And whether it is a good one or a bad one ecological impacts public safety How they chum if they chum? So you still want to do your homework and make sure that if you want to promote or go on a shark ecotourism Experience you should make sure it's a good one that it's accredited or vouched for by other organizations that you trust, but ultimately um The this is not a surprise to me a person who's in environmental education because generally speaking the more you know About animals and the more time you spend with them the more you care about them More you care about them the more you do to help them. That's the whole basis of I don't know my entire life's work So like it's not super surprising, but it's really good to see that even sharks this animal that's very polarizing People are getting a positive impact from spending time with them and learning about them Although I do still think that you give cows a bad rap They're fine. They're just they're just not as dumb as everyone thinks is the thing the cows and the squirrels Yeah, but but true. But the exposure also very often not just it's not just the getting people to care about things That also is reducing fear. Oh, yeah, absolutely Education and knowledge reduce the figure of the unknown because it's no longer Unknown Yeah, I mean I take snakes into classrooms all the time and it usually happens with high schoolers that they're terrified of them They like want to go to the other end of the room and if I can coach them into finally touching the snake They're all tense. They're really scared and you'll kind of see this moment where once they touch the snake Nothing's really changed, but they touched it and they didn't die. I guess they kind of relax a little bit Their shoulders go down. They ask questions about the snake afterwards It's a very clear shift from this moment of mysticism and fear to this interest and curiosity And I think that fear is is uh, it's human Uh generated And not something you need about the animal itself. My my youngest Well, except for snakes and spiders. They're We did we did research on that. Yeah, we talked about the research. Yeah, my youngest She would always approach snakes and spiders Not a problem and tell her older sister told her that they were scary and then was scared of them But before that no fear My last stories for the night I get a bunch of quick ones. I want to run through Researchers looked at urine from dolphins And what they found is gotta be difficult Right collecting urine samples from dolphins This is studied in the journal of american geophysical union these researchers from the college of charleston and chicago zoological society Determined that there are phthalates In the dolphin urine. What does that mean? Plastic byproducts in the urine of dolphins is a surprise No, not necessarily. Do we know what it means for dolphins? No, we do not. We just know that This is in their system and is These the plastics are in their system We know that phthalates have reproductive effects in humans at certain levels so the question now is That happening in dolphins as well Are their reproductive issues resulting from the plastics they're swimming in Where and when how were these dolphins Collected these aren't captive dolphins send them. These aren't like these are wild dolphins No, these were wild dolphins. And so this is wild dolphin urine Wild dolphin urine. Yeah, we don't know the health effects. We don't know what it means for their reproductive Systems, we don't know what it means for the downstream population effects Because this is because this is the first time anyone has started looking at these questions. So now we know But phthalates are there So That's all we know now. We know to look further. So it's the beginning of a journey into the world of wild dolphin urine Beyond that researchers have been looking for ordinary matters In the universe there's been a question of where's all the matter? What's the matter with the matter? I and there was a story I reported on a wild back some astronomers taking various pictures of the of bright stars and galaxies in the universe pairs of galaxies that were close to each other and Kind of layering them on top of each other so that they could image and increase the signal on the hot gases in between the galaxies enabling them to Come up with hey, we found all of the missing matter. It's not really missing. It's just not in stars It's not in the galaxies in the planets. It's in between. It's in the hot gas Well, there was a question is that the accuracy of this system and whether or not there was a bit of noise in there so other researchers used a different tact in which They looked at In a paper that was just published they looked at Signals from a quasar a very distant quasar and it's a this is a spinning star that basically acts like a lighthouse and the the light energy that comes out from this spinning quasar illuminates the space around it and so they looked at the space that's illuminated by the quasar low and behold missing matter and They they looked at not a hydrogen signal, which you would expect but they looked at an oxygen signal to do this because various chemical interactions that would strip electrons out of the way from from hydrogen making it not signable so anyway Oxygen became a tracer that they were able to look at illuminated in the gas by this quasar And their numbers corroborate the findings from the previous study that I reported on missing missing matter It's in the space between us our spaces. It's in the it's in the tendrils and the Spaces Yes, it's in between. It's hot gas. It's dust. It's stuff. It's out there. It's not missing anymore. We found it another space story researchers in 2017 with the breakthrough listen project reported on 21 repeating light pulses fast radio bursts They're like looking at this particular dwarf galaxy frb 121102 And these fast radio bursts occurred within one hour There was an amazing amount and researchers like what what would be doing that? Why would that happen and this this Dwarf galaxy has this repeating signal that happens it keeps happening And so they don't understand they think maybe because you know, why not aliens and so Yeah, it could be a neutron star also This particular star is about three billion light years from earth So not anywhere close to us But researchers wanted to take another look at that data and really see what was going on So they threw artificial intelligence at it the researchers at university of california berkeley seddy research center used machine learning and applied it to the data set and They found Even more light flashes not one not two 72 additional light flashes from the from whatever this source is. Okay. I give now it's aliens Yeah, 93 fast radio bursts from a single source within the span Of an hour on that day and yeah, nobody knows what they are. Nobody knows what it's from It's just it's in a galaxy far far away And then my final story for the evening Wait, that's the end of the story. That was like i'm like i'm like on the edge of my chair Wanting to know how this ends and you're like, and I still don't know what's going on No, that's really the end of it. Oh my god. That's really they don't know what's going on But the exciting thing actually is the application of machine learning techniques Applying them to the data set and uncovering these previously undiscovered signals Yeah deeper mysteries always more exciting than a result The mystery continues and finally my last story Have you ever been hypnotized watching drops of hot water? Gitter across the surface of a very oh drops of water skitter across the surface of a very hot cast iron pan No, have you ever dripped water on a pan and just watch those drips of water do a little dance across the surface and wondered How do they do that? You haven't Seen it I'm totally calling you blaze from now on That's that's how I that's how I used to do my dishes All right, so this effect of the droplets of water skittering across the surface of a hot pan It's called the laden frost effect And this doesn't only happen on the surface of hot pans. It happens other places, but this uh effect researchers Have been looking at for a while and they're like, oh these drops of water. What's going on and they showed before That what happens is because of the heat and it's water There's a little little bit of steam that builds up under the drops Allowing them to levitate almost Kind of like a hockey puck over ice or those those They're hockey too those those stones that slide across that one particular Lake and oh, yeah Yes, kind of like that. So anyway These the the drops of water there's a little bit of steam underneath them But that doesn't explain the dance and the movement and why they're directed in certain ways Over the certain the surface of the pan and so some researchers decided that they needed to of course get up close and personal with drops of water on a hot pan and they injected Water drops with little glass beads So they could see what was happening inside of the water drops And what they found is that there are all sorts of little currents and eddies Inside a single drop of water and those currents and eddies they flow as the Droplet evaporates over the surface of the water and at first it's very chaotic Not very ordered the glass beads that are dropped into the water move Conveyed by these different eddies bouncing from one eddy to another maybe rotating around the droplet of water And so there's they're finding that there's this very dynamic Interior to that little drop of water that's skittering over its levitator of steam over that hot pan, but eventually Those chaotic eddies turn into a sustained flow In one particular direction and that sustained flow is what can drive the droplet of water to like just basically drive across the hot pan And it this is insane. It's pretty intense. Let me tell you So the image that's there of this droplet Uh, it starts out as though it was rendered by by Van Gogh's Starry night starry night, right? And then it turns into jupiter It's really fascinating and it's spinning and spinning and spinning and so potentially looking at this Maybe it could tell us about jupiter's atmosphere. Maybe it could tell us about it's got bands I mean, this looks like a plan. Look if you told me Hey, look we got some we got some footage of a planet That's a gash. You plant gashes planet with with bands on it that's spinning fast. I'd be like wow They actually have footage of an exoplanet. How amazing is that because that's what that looks like I would not have imagined that was a drop of water, but it's a drop of water Wow, that is and so there They uh, they found this imbalance inside that it causes it to move in the same Direction and that's like it's like a miniature tidal wave that moves the droplet in the direction of that flow And um, it rolls them toward a cooler part of the heated surface The results suggest that maybe This kind of movement could be used to control a device and lead to new self-propelled devices Wait a second. Wait a second. Could this be operating with like a kinetic energy? Like a gyroscope Maybe That's so wild At that level that would be insane. It would be insane. Yes. So there's very exciting stuff Going on in those little droplets. Yes drops of quick silver drops of water little tiny jupiter in your pan That's right. It's very interesting stuff. Super exciting and that's my last story. Did you have one? Um, I got one more blood. Yeah, what's going on wolverine? The mutant Marvel comic book character with the superpower of being able to rapidly heal. Yes He's thinking about that's a really good superpower So He's in the fight with the super bad guy and then he gets hurt. He gets injured He grimaces But in the next panel He's fine again the next frame of the comic all healed up ready to go do more super mutiny mayhem turns out We all have the same ability as wolverine We're just a lot slower at it, right takes us longer to get like we we get cut we heal up to That's not really, you know, it's just the time frame which makes it a superpower So we get cut wound heals itself. It takes a little time. We get the blood platelets They go in there and they kind of create the A scaffolding a scab skin comes in skin cells close the wound before long we've got a healed Uh a healed wound maybe a little scar at the end A little a little trophy of the entropic event But that process might be somewhat stranger Then we initially thought this is uh The out of the research out of the oslo university hospital led by emma long and steep Alboa Oh, I said boa it's not They performed experiments on wound free skin cells That were put into contact with blood the result The skin cells again wound free no cuts The skin cells started to move and grow Together in the same direction as soon as blood was introduced to them Indicating somehow blood is signaling skin or skin is looking for blood as the signal to start a healing process Separate from everything else This is pretty wild Yeah, I mean I had understood, you know, there's histamines and like you scratch your skin and there's a release to histamines and there's various things In you know inflammation factors in the skin that respond to a wound What is inflammation? It's an increased blood flow, right? Right, but this is beyond that this is this is something that's in the blood itself that we don't know about yet And the blood but it's also a reaction in the skin. So they They did a couple little narrowing downs of the experiment. They introduced blood to sort of disparate The skin cells and they found they sort of moved randomly In in their reaction, but then they would add blood to a more connected group of skin cells and they found that they moved In coordinated in a coordinated way and sort of moved in unison They could they could get these these skin cells To span micro and even millimeter length Distances and their migrations. So this was There was something about there's something of an awareness within the skin cells And I say awareness for me totally non-consciousness Uh But there's a trigger within the skin cells that's looking for blood as it's as it's go time Time to do the healing mechanism Separate from anything else. So let me ask you this could it does it have to be my own blood? Okay, there's an immune response if it's not your own blood Right, well, but if you get the right type of blood, yeah, what if I got the right type of blood? Yes, and then and then filled up a bathtub full of it so that you could rejuvenate all of your skin cells Yeah, I don't know where this is going I really I really like the phrase blood regulated skin dynamics. Yeah I kind of find that an enjoyable phrase. Yes, I'm going into my blood regulated Uh, dynamics submersion. I'll see you in an hour Right. Well, you ask about the you know, bath of blood or whatever. I mean, there's a sensationalized article in the pop culture media today about Ah drinking young people's blood is the tonic for Fighting aging. Oh, no, you know, we've done those studies before but I mean this is something You don't drink it. You get out transfusion. Come on people get it right. Get it right. Make you barf But maybe yeah, maybe you just need to cut yourself and lie in a bath of blood. No Bloodletting see we thought they were wrong turns out they were right. This is going dark places so professor Uh, professor boat we uh, one may speculate based on our data cell migration is also activated in situations of the interaction with blood We may also speculate that our skin cells are much more active and dynamic than previously thought and that blood regulated skin dynamics occurs in many different situations But there's a there's a interesting independence there I think where the the reaction is Is very localized to the wound. It's not the brain It's not a whole complex number of chemicals that need to go seek out like one of the Pictures that I have is this weird blood cell, which blood cells are very weird They have uh, you know with little legs walking down a vein and then looking sort of probing around for And then finding a cut or a break and then sort of plastering itself And the in the hole to stop it Yeah, it's fascinating though this the connectivity between the cells and the the blood I mean whatever's in the blood. I mean there's energy in the blood. There's oxygen in the blood blood removes Metabolites to clean up an area and make cells work better. I mean the blood is making the skin cells want to move Be dynamic want to heal want to stop it from escaping yeah Makes me want to move it make me move it and we're going to Move it right to the end of our show. We have hit all the stories that were in our rundown Didn't drop a single one. It's been a long show, but oh so good tonight. 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katherine matthews from oceana this next week and i'm very looking very much looking forward to talking with her about using scientific evidence to manage our ocean habitats better and uh and talk to her about uh the the organization she works for you find out a lot more all right everyone next week wednesday evening eight p.m pacific time we're going to talk about the oceans be there if you can twist.org slash live but if you can't make it it's all right because we are on the internet you can find past episodes at twist.org or at our youtube channel just look for this week in science thank you for enjoying the show twist is also available as a podcast just google this week in science in your itunes directory or if you have a mobile type device you can look for twist the number four droid app in your android marketplace or simply this week in science and anything apple market placey looking for more information on anything you've heard here today you can find show notes on our website 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And we have come to the end of our show. Don't you know, don't you know, yeah. Oh, you are the sugars in space, research, old scratch. I'll get you a link. Just you wait a second. I'll stop screen sharing. Just you wait a moment and I will get you that research. Because I have links. I have links in my rundown, links in my rundown. What are you looking for? An article about the space sugars for old scratch in the YouTube chat. So here is the link. The link. There's a pop sigh explanation link. And then there is the paper. Here is the paper. Eckart et ol gas phase sugar formation using hydroxy methylene as a reactive formaldehyde isomer. OK, so I have a proposal. OK, first 2019 Blair's animal corner calendar is being colored and is coming soon. She has a cover. I have a cover, which means we can take pre-orders. We can take pre-orders. We can make this happen. Yes. Send me a picture. I'll make an order form. People can make pre-orders. And then when Blair has finished the calendar, we can mail them to you. So I am very close to being done with the line drawings. But I still have quite a bit of coloring to do. But it'll get done. I'm not concerned. It'll get done. Yeah. Just some books on tape. So it'll be ready by October? I would say November. November-ish. As long as it's before the end of the year. No, no. It'll be. My hope is we make the order. We make the mass order at the beginning of November. Because most people commit to the next calendar before the year ends. Yes. So that's why the pre-order would be nice. We'd know how many to order. You know, calendar ordering is like Christmas. It's coming sooner every year. It's true. You've really got to get in there. You think so, but then, yeah, then we don't. I have to make it. It's so much work. It is a lot of work. It's the whole work that I'm doing. So I'm suggesting it should be heard. Yes, it's all those frigging dots. Oh, my goodness. Those dots. So I have a suggestion. And now you have a proposal. Yes, OK. My proposal is that we do my unboxing. But I know that you want it to be a separate video. So we would have to tell our web chat to sit tight and terminate this video and start a new one. Wait, say again? We can do that. OK. Did it arrive? It arrived at a Marshall. Oh, my gosh. And you haven't opened it? No. I've been waiting like a good girl. OK. So I don't know that I necessarily subscribe to this. I think that there should be an outdoor natural light. No, I agree. But also, they say that, so a couple things. So one thing, the longer you wear them, the more effective they are. Second thing, the idea is I'll explain a little bit of my background with colorblindness. I will unbox it, show everyone what's inside, and then everyone will need to stay tuned for an upcoming video of me trying them on outside. Wait. And running around and looking at colors. How do you already make that video if you're just now unboxing? I get it. That's what I'm saying. Do an unboxing video right now. OK. So I kind of, see, I want to be there live. It's the thing. I know it's rough. I want to be there live. It's just too hard. It's too hard. It's too hard. We can't be there. I mean, that's the question is, how would I do a hangout? I guess I could do a hangout outside. I guess it's not possible. Do you have the internet? Yeah. I mean, I guess, yeah, I could just use cell service. Could use your phone as a Wi-Fi. Yeah. Yeah, I could do that. So yeah, we could do that on like Sunday or something. But I would like to do the unboxing separate. Hot rod. Open it. Open it. Yeah, I know. It's been so long. There is like, I would want to do this next week. Yeah, Bleak just realized what it is. It is color blindness glasses. Yes, it is. I would want to do the initial unboxing. This is my desire to see. Live on the show. Knowing that it won't be full of fact. And then making you put that this is so cool. Making you put them away and tell us Sunday or the next day. I don't have to be there for that, right? Where you go outside and we have the Blair short going out into the world on a sunny day with the glasses on. Yes. But I feel like the unboxing should be putting them on and getting an initial indoor reaction. That's how I feel about it. Ed says we should make the video a short that goes to Patreon contributors first. Oh, that's a good one. I also think that you should definitely get accustomed to the glasses before you finish coloring in the calendar. No, then there'll be like a really clear. It'll be really clear. Like these were before and these were after. Well, actually, I don't know that it would be. I actually don't know that it would be because I think you've done an excellent job thus far. I would be very interested, though, in the Blair's Animal Corner and Chroma calendar. So I wonder if my choices, if my color choices would be more subtle if I could see colors better. Because I feel like I pick the very bright and more different colors. You'll be surprised. Because I can tell they're different. Yeah, I hear you. The contrast element of it is what you're kind of talking about. And I think that's going to be interesting. So here's the question, Blair. If you do the unboxing tonight and we get to see it and you put the glasses on for a second, they are in your face and then we turn off the video or you take the glasses off. Will you really be able to not wear those glasses again until tomorrow? Yes. Yes? Yeah, I feel like Blair would win the marshmallow test on me every time. I'm all over them. It's not going to be like no contest. All right, so. If you stack up like four or five marshmallows, I'd be sitting there having eaten the first one and being like, OK, how long does this study really need to go on? Like, she already won. Can I go home now? I want to go home right now. Yeah, I'm very good at it. Ever since I was a kid, I was very good at what is it called? Delayed gratification. Yeah, I was always very good at it. I still don't know what that means. Still haven't encountered it. OK, so is there yeah, we can do that tonight. We can do that. I can start next week. Tonight's way too soon. I'm sorry, Blair. I am teasing. Yes, I would want to see it right now. I can start a new Hangout and a new, a new live video. Yeah, why would we have to start a new? I don't understand. But so we can finish our Hangout now. And then we will do it will be Blair talking about the the Enchroma only. So we have a short. So it's Blair talking about her color blindness. We were talking with her about her color blindness and she does an unboxing. Yeah, and then we turn it off and we're done for the night. So so if we don't have anything else to talk about, then I'll I'll turn off. We'll turn off this Hangout and start a new one. All right. Unless you don't you don't want to be a part of it, Justin. No, no, no, I'm fine with that. I'm just Blair's going to hate me for saying this, but I would much rather start a show. With the unboxing. We're not going to do that. All right, then. Shutter down, start it up. Let's get is anybody as many as you with this? How many I'm going to go check. I'm going to go. Minions in the chat room. I know, Fada, it's been a long night. How many of you actually want to see the unboxing right now? All of them. I don't see any. No, I got no responses. And I waited no time to for them to collapse. You did it. That's right. Fada's like, are we doing it tonight? Someone named Ashley 39389100 says open the box. Gord says yes. Identity says yes. Oh, yeah, we got it. Gord is here to see this. Yes, of course. Leaks says yes. Noodles, everybody. Oh, Ed is the only one Ed's the only one Ed's right there. Would you I had gratification. I assumed it said I can't wait, but I can wait. I can wait. He's with you. I actually can't because. But this is just the beginning and there will be another video short that will be all of that we will will do the video short and we'll give that to Patreon first and then. But we'll also would we'll do an interview with the Enchroma people and show some of the video of Blair during a twist episode episode of White Light Zone. We're going to be a beholder where they start to unwrap. It's like just be prepared for. It may not be what you expect. All right, everybody. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So is there any other news we have another interview next week? Give me one minute. I'll be right back. Are you going to hang up? You don't need to just hang up. Why do you need to? Because I'm just going to invite you to a new hangout. OK, got you. OK. Now I'm just going to invite you to a new hangout. I'm thinking we were going to continue with this one. No, hang out. Everybody else have to rejoin a thing. The chat. Everybody ready for this? Yeah, we'll share a new link. It'll be fine. Chatroom has to refresh that it's not that hard. They know what to do. I think they can figure it out. I just want to make sure we have no other business calendars on it's going to be coming. You have the cover I can make the preorder link. And that's pretty much it. We've got a show next week. All right, everybody. Thank you for joining us for this week in science. We're going to have an unboxing video. So we're hanging up now and come look for us in the next live video that will be starting in about a minute. OK, stopping broadcast.