 Welcome everyone to another episode of This Week in Science. We're doing our live podcast broadcast right now for those of you who are just joining. And so you know, hit those likes and the buttons and the shares and all that stuff so we can get in there on the algorithms. And this is when we do the show live. So some of the stuff will be edited out for the podcast and for the KDBS radio show and other things and so on and so forth, but this is it. This is the thing. This is the now. This is it. It's go time. Welcome to the now. Welcome. You ready Blair? I'm ready, let's do it. Okay, let's get going. I would be a really great thing for me to do to get onto the right episode. There we go, show notes. Here we are. Beginning the show in three, two, this is twist. This week in science episode number 934 recorded on Wednesday, July 12th, 2023. Oh, I guess I forgot to do a title. Science needs no title. Science needs no title. Oh Kiki, what are we doing today? I thought I was trying to figure out a title earlier and then I completely spaced it. Follow the science threads. Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we will fill your heads with megalodon meals, snake support and stupid sexy spider mites, but first disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. This program, the following program makes no promises about the usefulness of the new thing. This program is not responsible for your experience of the new thing. Your choice to try the new thing is yours and yours alone. Any discussion of the new thing during the following program does not suggest promotion or support of the new thing. In fact, we really don't know why people keep going on about the new thing when there is still an old thing, except for the fact that the old thing isn't really exciting anymore and might actually be bad for people. Do we know if the new thing is bad for people? No, but we don't know that it isn't either. We really don't know anything about the new thing yet and wish people would stop going on about it already. Geez, don't people know it's time for This Week in Science coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I wanna learn everything new discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. Good science to you, Dr. Kiki and a good science to you too, Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We're back again to talk about science because that's what we do. It's in the title. It's a kind of self-explanatory, right? We've been doing it. We'll keep doing it. We're an old thing, but it's always a new thing every single week. I brought stories this week about megalodon minerals and minerals on Mars and silence. Silence, huh? That might be interesting. As long as it's not just airing, silence. That's pretty interesting stuff. Yeah, igol dead air, dead air. Okay, Blair, what's in the animal corner? I have rebellious birds and I have mites, the mites that you mentioned before and also some social snakes. I don't know. I have a lot. It was really hard to pick stories this week. There was a lot of really good science news this week. So you're getting a smattering of some animal news. I like the smattering and, you know, if anything else comes up and we're within our tight 90, you know, just bring it in. Pull it on in. Well, I'm glad you brought the megalodon because I didn't get to bring that. So that's perfect. That's why we have the more than one host and then do we share and it's off. Who gets to do this story? Okay. You put it in the show notes first, then you get to do it. Yes. All right, everyone. We are gonna jump into the show, Justin's out for the next few weeks and so it's just me and Blair so far. Keep pulling onto that. I wanna remind you that if you have not subscribed yet to This Week in Science, you can find us all places that podcasts are found. Look for This Week in Science. We are also known as TWIST, T-W-I-S. You can find us on Twitch, on Facebook and YouTube, streaming weekly, live at 8 p.m., Pacific Time-ish. And if you wanna find us on Twitch, Instagram, Universal Dawn and some other stuff out there, look for T-W-I-Science. TWIST Science is the username that you can look for if you don't just find us under TWIST or This Week in Science. Okay, all other things go to This Week in Science's website which is twist.org. All the things. It's time for the science. Yes, what do you got? All right, so I wanna start off the show with Martian Minerals. It's not Marvin the Martian. But organic minerals have been discovered in Zerro Crater on Mars. What do you think when you hear organic minerals? Organic molecules. That just means it's carbon, right? Yeah, that's the key that I was gonna... It might as well be graphite from a pencil. Exactly. Yep, there you go. So that's the take home of this story. And... Yeah, you hear the word organic. You're like, oh, there's life. No, it just means carbon-based. Chill. Chill, everybody, exactly. So if you're hearing about this organic matter on the surface of Mars, it's exciting because it gives us an idea about possible chemical processes that are going on related to aqueous processes. So processes that take place in water, right? So water, organic molecules, processes that are sometimes involved in the support of life or could have been involved in the development of life on this planet. But there's lots of chemical processes that occur within the geology of rocky bodies that involve water and water is the universal solvent, remember? So lots of dissolving and helping things bond to each other and break apart. Anyway, they have findings from the instrument called Sherlock. Yes, the scanning habitable environments with ramen and luminescence for organics and chemicals instrument on the Perseverance rover. So Perseverance is a rover that's been in the Gisero crater for a couple of years now. Perseverance has been touring around Gisero crater for quite a while, taking its sweet time to go around and look at the dirt on Mars. And the exciting aspect of this dirt on Mars and these crater floor analyses is that they've had a number of fluorescence detections of various different organic minerals, lots of things that could be very interesting for understanding the chemistry of the surface of Mars. What's interesting moving forward is that this may give us more information about the evolution of the planet itself and what Gisero crater was once thought to be, which was a watery in one's life. I think I really want to be in these NASA meetings where they're coming up with acronyms because I'm very curious how that works. Like you spend months, years, decades on something and at some point you say, okay, time for us to have the meeting to name this thing. Yeah. And how long does that take? Does that take an hour? Does that take months? Does that take? Oh, I bet it's a really long process. I bet these teams, these collaborations that come together because they have to put together the idea for the instruments to be included in the mission in the first place. And then at NASA votes on which instruments are going to be included. So these collaborations of researchers come together. Oh, look at Patrick Pecoraro says they do it reverse. Yes, obviously. So they came up with the name first. Well, I assume. No, they come up with the instrument first. What are we gonna do? Right, but then they say Sherlock and they go, what can we spell with Sherlock? What acronym? Exactly. Yes. It's definitely a stretch every time, which it's fine, I enjoy it. It's very enjoyable to kind of see what they've come up with linguistically, but I just think it's hilarious to think about all of these engineers working so hard on this crazy scientific venture. And then somewhere on their Outlook calendar is a meeting for acronym brainstorming. The naming acronym. Yeah. Yep. We're gonna brainstorm. We're gonna get this acronym, everybody. It's gonna have to be a really good one. Make sure that everybody is excited by it. Patrick Pecoraro, who works with NASA and is our chat room right now is moving forward in the chat and saying they did theirs forward making the acronym and the... Actually mean something? Yeah. Mean something and was booed because it wasn't any good. And then says most of the time it's off the cuff. That's... This is the insight you wanted, right, Blair? This is what you want to do. Yeah, that is helpful. I just... Done in the hallways or on teams. Yes, absolutely. Or over a beer, I would imagine. It's helpful. Oh my gosh. I wonder how many acronyms are written on napkins in the bar or the cafe. They must be. Oh my God. Well, anyway, back to the actual science world. It's not a watery crater. Anymore, it used to be. So it used to be submerged. They had as a shoreline and what we're seeing in a lot of the data that's coming from the various instruments that have been analyzing deposits and rocks that are being picked up by the rover. They're determining all sorts of stuff that it falls right in line with what we understand for watery shoreline environments and the aquatic chemistry that happens there. Yeah, at various depths. So this is right in line with that, but it doesn't mean there's life on Mars. It's just cool chemicals that are being discovered by a robot on a planet in our solar system that is not Earth. So that's always a very exciting thing. But anyway, cool stuff, perseverance and all of its instruments are still going on Mars. There's so much to learn about that surface. What do you wanna talk about Blair? Well, speaking of modern invention, researchers from Naturalis Biodiversity Center and Natural History Museum of Rotterdam, which I had to look up and was in the Netherlands. They found some very interesting innovation in bird nests. Specifically, Carrie and Crow and Eurasian Magpie have both built their nests out of anti-bird spikes. I love this story. This, oh, spiky birds using our anti-bird spikes. So they're automatic, okay. I definitely, you know, living near big cities. I bet a lot of people have seen a pigeon who found a way to perch on the anti-perching material. It happens, birds are resilient. They're gonna figure it out. But what's really interesting about this is that magpies, they actually make roofs on their nests to prevent other birds from stealing eggs to, you know, keep other birds away. So they usually use thorny plants for this. So when all of these developed cities put anti-bird spikes out, they went, perfect. And so there's a huge nest that was discovered in Antwerp in the courtyard of a hospital. A patient actually saw it and called it out. High up in the tree, magpies made a huge nest of about 1,500 metal spikes. They piled about 50 meters or 150 feet of anti-bird pins from the eaves of the hospital. And they did that to keep other birds away from their babies. So they found a way to do that. They also have found other magpies using things like barbed wire and knitting needles for similar use. And then they also found a bunch of crows that also did this. So this isn't a one-off. This really is just birds going, oh, I'll take that. I wanna know how. And using it for their own advantage. Have the researchers or other individuals watched these magpies get these anti-bird spikes off of the eaves of roofs? Because I'm imagining the time it would take, you know, with the beak prying centimeter by centimeter to get these things off. Yes, so to answer your question, not for all of these observed cases, but yes, some of them, they have watched them pull this stuff off and bring it over to their nest. So yeah, it's, I mean, there's no better deterrent of birds that are gonna eat your babies than an anti-bird deterrent. So magpies, you figured it out. Doing great. Yeah, I mean, there are all sorts of things that people put into the world that birds use. I love Shrikes using barbed wire. And I mean, they also use cacti spikes to spear their prey on. But barbed wire is one of them. Anything pokey, they're gonna use it. But this is a different level because they're actually, these spikes are attached to eaves. They're not like, they're supposed to last through weather. They're supposed to come off easily. They're like hammer and nail attached to these eaves. Yes, absolutely. And this is an extension of a previous study looking at artificial materials and animal structures in general, looking at things like face masks, plastic plants, condoms, fireworks, cocaine wraps, sunglasses, windshield wipers, all of these things. So this is not a surprising next step. It's just, it's not ironic. What is it? It's brilliant. It's rebellious, I guess the headline says. And I think that's accurate. It's rebellious. Rebellious, but beautiful. I mean, it's amazing that the birds were able, this is very consistent. It's not a mishmash of many different kinds of materials. It's not, oh, I'll go get a windshield wiper and some of these things and put it all together. They've specifically gone for the large number. It spikes all the way through. Yep. Yeah, which is, I can't imagine how comfy that is for the babies, you know, better than being eaten, I guess. Don't wanna be eaten, use spikes for your baby's nest. It's amazing. That is really amazing. I just want, I'd love to know with the study of these birds, you know, next, okay, they do this. So the question is, do they preferentially choose the spikes over other options? So if the birds are given multiple options, will they go and have they determined that this is the best thing? That's a great next step. Yes, I think that would be very interesting because then you'd kind of confirm like, this is the best version of this thing and I'm gonna use it. Yeah, I love it. I want the best version of my bird's nest. It's gonna be spiky. Yes. It's a full on kiki nest. Okay. So those bird's nests, they're made to sit in a tree and they're made to last and not fall out of a tree and tree limbs are moving all over the place when the wind blows. And so there's probably a certain amount of deformation that's built into the structure of bird nests. And you think humans would have similar ideas about their buildings, but it's a really more recently than historically that we've started to take deformation of the surface on which we put our buildings really into account. And so while we've been considering things like, I don't know, earthquakes, we haven't really considered the hazard that's lurking underneath the cities. Sandworlds. No, tremors. No, no, no, well, no, no. Underground climate change. Oh, that's different. Yeah, not tremors. These tremors could be caused by underground climate change, but published in communications engineering, researchers at Northwestern have been investigating the city of Chicago, Windy City and the temperature of underground structures, as well as the deformation of the soils around the city and at the deformation of the earth with the changing temperatures. And in this study, what they are reporting is that these underground structures, so transportation systems, parking garages, basements, all these things, they can capture heat that's emitted by the city because they're concrete and usually part of above ground structures, even though you go into them and they feel relatively cool being underground, they're still warmer than the surrounding ground. And so they add to the heat island effect of the cities. And in adding to the heat island effect, they also influence increased temperatures in the ground. And those increased temperatures in the ground lead to further shrinkage of the soils, of the dirt of those surfaces and deformation that comes along with it. And over the course of a year, there can be significant amounts of surface deformation in the ground in which cities are built. Enough deformation that older cities with older buildings may not with the stresses of climate change as they're coming and the increased temperatures as carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere and in the oceans, this is gonna lead to more and more deformation and possibly problems with our buildings if they haven't been built to take that into account. All right, which they haven't, I'm sure. Which, right, well, that's the key. Older buildings really have not been built to take that into account, but newer buildings and newer areas due to a certain extent. Some of the recommendations from the study are that cities should take the underground climate change into account, not just for how it is gonna impact soils, but maybe for future harnessing of that heat and that the heat in the soil could be used for heating in the winter for geothermal purposes or what other sustainable ways could that heat be applied to creating energy or being used for various purposes that could be good instead of just bad and heating things up. So I guess my other question is what, can you do anything to slow down the deformation when you have buildings that aren't adapted for it already? More green spaces. The concrete itself is part of the heating and so the parking garages, parking areas, buildings that are- World concrete. Concrete! Comparisons between areas that were underground parking garages that were under parks versus under concrete or streets or buildings, the ones under parks, the ground did not get as hot and did not experience as much deformation. Interesting. Yeah, and I think this is interesting just in addition to the subsidence from groundwater use, which is the other aspect of this as we use more and more groundwater and we don't have fresh water replacing it as much through the normal processes, cause we're using so much, that's causing deformation. And then it's also not gonna be as wet in environment, so not as cool, on and on and on, you can see how the feedback loops might work. I mean, that's always kind of, that's the pro con of a climate solution to a new problem that is something that we're trying to get people to do anyway. It's like, will this make it more likely that people want more green spaces or is that already a lost cause when we have to figure something else out? Right. But hey, I mean, if you got a flat surface, put some grass and trees on it. I don't think it's that big of a deal. It looks good. It reduces heating, heat islands in general. More oxygen is a good thing. It's just put it everywhere. Every flat surface should either have a solar panel or greenery on it. One of those two things. Yep. I agree. Rotoloria, the researcher who in this study says based on our computer simulations, we've shown that ground deformations can be so severe that they will lead to problems for the performance of civil infrastructure. It's not like a building will suddenly collapse. Things are sinking very slowly. The consequences for serviceability of structures and infrastructures can be very bad, but it takes a long time to see them. It's very likely that underground climate change has already caused cracks and excessive foundation settlements that we didn't associate with this phenomenon because we weren't aware of it. So just beyond normal amounts of deformation and subsidence. Yeah. The silent impact of underground climate change. You didn't even know about it. Let's see, Blair, you wanna talk about, did you have another study you wanted to talk about? Oh, I do, yes. Hey, I'm here to tell you for the millionth time that same-sex sexual behavior is normal in nature. That's pretty much this whole study. Yes. But I'll get into it. This is an observation of wild Rhesus macaques. It was over three years, and they looked at behavior. They also looked at genetic makeup of these individuals because they had 236 males within a colony of 1700 Rhesus macaques. They lived in the wild freely on the tropical island of Cayo, Santiago, Puerto Rico and they were able to do genetic analysis as well because they have pedigree records going all the way back to 1956. So all of that to say, just by observing these monkeys in the wild, they could figure out a lot going on with monkeys' behavior, but also who's related to whom, so is certain behavior genetically linked or not? Well, they found, you'll never guess, most males were behaviorally bisexual. Variation in same-sex activity also, by the way, is heritable, so there's that. So because it's heritable, that means there should be an evolutionary underpinning. There should be an advantage to same-sex behavior. Otherwise, it wouldn't be conserved unless it was linked to something else, right? So they found that in these 236 males, 72% of them engaged in same-sex mounting, only 46% of them engaged in different sex mounting. So quite common. The same-sex behavior in males was also correlated with coalitionary bonds, sorry, coalitionary bonds, which means that those that engaged in the same-sex behavior were more likely to back each other up in conflicts. It created camaraderie, and that provided an advantage in the group. They also found that males that engaged in same-sex behavior were more successful in reproducing. So it actually refuted the idea that same-sex behavior is deleterious, evolutionarily. I think that's great, yeah. They were actually reproducing. And they reproduced more successfully. Yes, and that might also be because they had these coalitionary bonds. So they had kind of backup when they were competing for females. They found overall that the same-sex behavior was 6.4% heritable, which doesn't sound like a lot, except that that is a similar percentage to other heritable behaviors in primates like grooming and sociality. So it actually is a significant number. And so this is the first evidence that they found of a genetic link to primate same-sex behavior outside of humans. So of course there's a bunch of things that you could talk about from here. You could draw correlations to human behavior and all these sorts of things. But basically the bottom line is same-sex behavior is prevalent throughout the animal kingdom, through out. And it can't be deleterious because it wouldn't exist. In fact, it's probably advantageous because it continues in all types of life. So it's something that the more we look at it, the more this is backed up over and over and over. It is a natural occurrence. In fact, it's seeming like most animals that we look at are bisexual, which seems pretty normal. It's just sex is part of social behavior. It doesn't need to, it's just another interaction between two individuals. So if that is a way that they take care of some of their social bonding and they have social benefits from it, then there you go. So anyway, just another study, throw it on the pile. Same-sex behavior is normal. Everybody chill out. Thank you. Good night. I think this is just another example of there's a judgment and fear of things that we don't really understand or that are not able to be controlled in a particular way. People like to make things a very certain way. Like, okay, this is how it's going to all fit into the box. And then we're just creating the box and we didn't pay attention to what was happening before we made the box and we don't know what else is going on and now we're learning more about it. And so, yeah. Yeah, what's one of the most common things you hear from people who take issue with same-sex behavior in humans, they say it's not natural. Well, actually, it's very natural. Very. They're... So, it's, you know, just look at our primate brethren. They're doing it and they're benefiting from it. So... I think they're, you know, that they go on, the big points there also are, this is going on. A lot of those individuals and who cares, but they're going on and being reproductively successful. But then additionally, there are other studies that suggest this kind of behavior is great for social bonds. And for when you have these groups of social animals, it just makes the whole group more socially cohesive and less prone to violence and aggression. Everybody gets along a little bit better. You know, you've got lots of also suggestions that there are behavioral explanations that relate to kind of similar to the grandmother hypothesis or the sibling hypothesis, but these are other individuals that are aunts and uncles and relatives and share in the success of the group in total, you know. And they're different strokes. It's all natural. It's all natural, man. Yeah. Speaking of natural, some things are naturally dead now. Let's talk about Megalodon. Very dead, yeah. Very long time dead, millions of years dead. Atotus Megalodon, you know, the shark ancestor that brought us such blockbuster hits as the Meg. And I think the Meg too, I don't know. Yeah, I think there's a Meg too. Would you let me just clarify? Askegi said, they're dead. They're dead. The Megalodon is not currently swimming in our oceans. It's dead. His big old shark ancestor been dead for a long time. It was really, really big and that's why we think it's cool. And Shark Week is coming up here and so somebody's probably gonna go on and on on some reality television about Megalodon, but just nope, they're dead. Anyway, publishing in the International Journal Historical Biology, researchers have recently analyzed little tiny scales that were found in the vicinity of jawbone, teeth and vertebrae. And the exciting part about this is that they've really never analyzed this kind of a tiny structure related to Megalodon before. In fact, a lot of Megalodon's natural history has been assumed based on the structure of the jaws and the vertebrae. So ideas like Megalodon being endothermic or what is the endothermic? Yes, heat inside of itself, which is warm-blooded, which is part of the idea is that Megalodon was very, very large and was warm-blooded because it was always out there chasing its prey. It was looking at those big vertebrae and it was eating all the time and it had to be warm-blooded or hot-blooded to go after its prey all the time. So this big 20 meter or so large, dead shark ancestor, they used to think that that's what's going on, but based on this new study of what are called placoid scales, which are these little tiny, tiny scales. They're like two scales, they're two scales. It's what makes them like sand papery, yeah. And looking at it, what they determined is that sharks and other predators that do lots of fast swimming and are constantly fast swimming have tooth scales, have placoid scales that are more structured for fast swimming. And so it's basically like race cars that have a smoothness about them that'll allow for better water flow so that they don't use as much energy. It's like, you know, the really cool swimsuits that they're giving to Olympic swimmers and stuff now. Maybe you have since been made illegal at the Olympics, I think. Possibly. I don't remember. But the final determination from looking at these placoid scales is that Megalodon was an average swimmer that Megalodon kind of toodled around, wasn't really fast, and maybe went really fast every once in a while during a chase after prey. But that hot body temperature is most likely for digesting the big prey. So kind of like anacondas and other big snakes that don't move around quickly very much, but they have these big prey and they rest and digest for a very long time that Megalodon might have been just like that and that the digestion or what they call visceral food processing was the more important part. See, this is where I get frustrated with the endotherm conversation with dinosaurs and then also with the Megalodon is that maybe I'm just being a fuddy-deady, but... You're a fuddy-deady, Blair. Blair, younger than me. Fuddy-deady, in a sense. In my opinion, an endotherm is somebody who, like their metabolism works crazy faster as compared to ectotherms because they are self-sustaining this warmer body temperature, but some of these dinosaurs and also the Megalodon that they claim are endothermic are basically just like, they're so big that their heat conservation is better and so their temperature range is not as big as an ectotherm and so this is where I get frustrated because I feel like endotherm versus ectothermic is like a basic descriptor of how their metabolism works as opposed to- I put it too much more nuanced. Right, as opposed to whether they cool down a lot or not. And so I always want more of that information which we can't get from fossils is the problem. Basically from fossils, you just know, oh, well, they didn't get that cold. Basically is what we know. So they're endothermic. Well, but how, what was the mechanism by which they are staying warm? Is there something internally happening that is regulating their temperature? They are burning more energy to do it or are they just warm? Because they're big. Yeah, maybe it on apparently was warm because it was big and maybe it helped with digestion and that was a part of that and that's why it was so big. Big prey, big digesting, but yeah. Just a warm shark. That's not an endothermic animal. Sorry. I just feel like you're taking away the point of those terms. The point of those terms is that they metabolize food differently. They have different energy requirements and their entire metabolic process is different. It takes more water. They have to find more food, all this stuff. And so I'm not surprised to hear that this guy wasn't fast because he just had good temperature conservation because he was huge. His surface area to mass ratio was such that he didn't cool down. Yeah. But I love the idea. It's kind of like T-Rex was this terrible predator. Yes. And now we're like, oh, T-Rex was like a scavenger, maybe ran around a little bit but was more stompy than Runny, right? Yeah. He was like a vulture. He was like a turkey vulture. Quite a big head. Now this is something else that's coming out. We've got Megalodon. Oh, fearsome, shark predator and fast and don't know. Kind of average, just big. I mean, you don't want him to bite you, but it's... Who is it? Jason Statham or Vin Diesel? I can never, it's Jason Statham, right? Jason Statham. He's just like, I love it. It's a great movie. Great movie. Sorry, don't come at me, internet. I just feel like now he's chugging along in his boat. He's like, thunk. Oh, I ran into the Meg. The Meg doesn't do anything. No, he don't care. Meg don't care. They're not full. Thanks, bud. Maybe I'll go down. Okay. Okay. Oh my gosh. Well, if you're too alone around in your boat and you just bumped into twists, thanks for bumping in and staying for a while. We're gonna hang out here, talk about a bit more science and we hope that you enjoy this show some more. We've got some more stories coming in the second half of the show right now. And right before we just get back to the show, I wanna remind you that if you love the show, make sure to hit the like buttons, share, tell your friends about it. We are not a secret to be kept. I mean, if you saw the Meg, you would tell people. So you see twists and you tell people, okay? That's just how it works. And then if you are loving twists and you really wanna help us keep doing what we're doing, please head over to twist.org, click on our Patreon link and support us in a financial manner, monthly basis, $10 and more a month. And we will thank you by name at the end of the show. There's some fun stickers and other things that come in the mail. And we just really can't do it without you. Thank you so much for your support. All right, time to come back to the show for real right now with that wonderful, wonderful part of the show that we always love. Blair's Animal Corner with Blair. Small. Biped, milliped, no pet at all. If you wanna hear about this animal, she's your bro. Except for giant pandas and squirrels. What you got, Blair? I have a story about spider mites. And before you get upset. Stupid, sexy spider mites. I wanna tell you kind of the headline of the story, but then I need to explain it. Cause just the headline sounds upsetting. Male spider mites. I'm sitting here laughing right now, Blair. Male spider mites, guard and then actively strip off the skin of premature female spider mites that are soon to molt, to make them accessible for mating sooner. So this is a study out of the University of Vienna, Austria. And let me just put some clarifications on that sentence real quick. So first of all, spider mites don't have skin. They have an exoskeleton. There we go. So let's chill on that for a second. They're not ripping the skin off of a female spider mite. Okay. So they have an exoskeleton. They go through molts. That is a normal part of their behavior. And when they are in between stages from when they are not sexually mature to when they are sexually mature, they have to molt their exoskeleton so that they have the reproductive opening accessible. So already this should sound a little less scary because they're already gonna molt the skin. Okay. They just do it a little prematurely so that they can get access to the females. But it really comes down to maximizing reproductive success because this all happens very quickly actually. So this kind of mating competition is very intense for spider mites. The first copulation partner of a female is the one that sires all of the offspring. And by all of the offspring, I actually mean about half of the offspring because males only sire daughters, sons arise from unfertilized eggs. So their chromosomal structure is very different for us. So because they have this one and done kind of scenario, the males will guard premature females for hours before the females molt. So also hours. They're not ripping the molt off days or weeks early. It's a matter of hours. So then for about one or two hours before molting the females have this silvery appearance because there's air that fills the gap in between the old exoskeleton and the new one. And so also it's pretty much ready. It's not painful for the female as far as we can guess because it's got this gas exchange in between. And it's not totally the exoskeleton isn't still part of her skin, right? She has a secondary exoskeleton underneath that that's pretty much ready to go. Sometimes the males will drum with their four legs on the females that might stimulate the females to initiate the molting process. It might help crack. Hey you, hey you. Yeah. It's like, I don't know. It almost feels like you're sorry, is this way too gross? Hopefully no one's eating, but like it almost feels like if you like pull the peeling skin off of your significant other after a sunburn, it's almost like that. It's not that I've ever done that. Anyway. No, how about instead of that disgusting image? How about the glue that you used to put on your hand in elementary school and then peel it off, right? After it dried. We can always bring it back to pimple popping too, I suppose. But anyway. Anyway, once this, the exoskeleton that's ready to go in the trash starts to crack, the male will become really active and he'll pull on the hind part of the old skin with his petty palps until it's removed from the female. They actually start from the genital opening side on the underside of the tip of her abdomen. And pretty much as soon as that is exposed, he's ready to go. He needs to fertilize those eggs. Females that are undressed by a male first get that hind part taken off first, but females that are allowed to molt on their own will pull from the front. So this is something that is, it is different. It's not automatically gonna come off from the front, but it's more kind of just like, they gotta get down to business as quick as possible because somebody else could sneak in there. And so I brought this story for a couple of reasons. One was that I thought it was very sensationalized the way it was described. It sounded like this horror story, but it really is, it's not that. But I also think it is a very cool reproductive strategy that I think needs more study. And so actually these researchers want to look at a few things in the future. One, they wanna look at this with their calling undressing behavior in more detail to figure out whether fighting males are different from sneaker males. So these also have different profiles of males. So do they all kind of have similar strategies for undressing females or can sneakers get in there after the male does all the hard work? Is this complicated? But also what happens when a male is in the process of undressing a female and there is suddenly a rival? Does he stop undressing the female to fight off the male? Do they both try to undress the female at the same time? Does she get frustrated and leave? Like, what happens? So it seems like in kind of in a vacuum, it's very easy to see what he's up to and why he's up to that. But sometimes when you have kind of a whole ecosystem. Yeah, you have more going on. You have competition going on too. Yeah, I think that's the competition aspect. And then also the female aspect, why is the female hanging out there in the first place? Is she like, hey, thanks. I wanted to get rid of that and you're helping. That was itchy. Thank you for taking that off. I couldn't get that by myself. Thanks a lot. Yeah, what's happening there? Yeah, that's another really good question too, is that's something else they wanted to look at was, is there any correlation between the fitness of a male and their ability to get this behavior done? So is it beneficial to the female to have a kind of, I don't know what you could say, like pushy or aggressive or eager individual do this behavior? Is there a benefit to the female and to her offspring? Well, the female's not doing anything to get rid of the exoskeleton. The male's doing all the work. So is the female metabolically benefiting? Great question. Yeah. Because she's saving energy that would be otherwise used and that energy could possibly go to more successful eggs. Or are there other aspects of it? Yeah. And is the male's ability to get this done associated with other genetic benefits? Right. Where does it come from? How does this, yeah. Are there, like you said, are there some who do this all the time? Are there other males who never do? Are there females who put up with this? Are females who are like, go away? Are these family genetic lineages? Most likely. But why? Yeah, what are the benefits? Yeah, yeah. So anyway. Okay, now you're getting from stupid sexy spider mites to... Rattlesnake buddies. Danger noodles. Yes. Cute danger noodles that need a friend. No, no, no, no. They need a snake as a friend, not me. Don't worry. So social buffering. I believe we've talked about this even pretty recently with rats on the show. But that's when a creature's stress level decreases because of the presence of a companion. Is it moral support? Is there insurance going on? Is it a chemical exchange? Great question. That's still being studied very widely in mammals and in birds. But it's not well studied in reptiles. And so this study that was released this week is the first evidence of social buffering in reptiles and specifically rattlesnakes. So they found that when two snakes were together and experienced a stressful situation, they could buffer each other's stress response much like what happens to us when we endure a stressful event together or the rats in particular, right? And so they did that by measuring heart rate. So what they did is they had 25 wild-caught Southern Pacific rattlesnakes in three scenarios. One where the snakes were alone, one in the presence of a rope that serves as an animate control object. So that was their, like, do you just need another noodle-shaped thing or is it actually a snake? And one where the snakes were in the presence of a same-sex companion. Then they outfitted the snakes with electrodes near their hearts and attached the sensors to a heart rate monitor. They then placed the snakes in a bucket. So the bucket actually is not the stressful experience. That's the calming one. That is a dark and closed environment so they get to chill in there. After an adjustment period of 20 minutes, probably having a nice snooze, the snakes were artificially disturbed. Rattle the bucket. Yeah, shake the bucket. They then measured the snake's heart rate increase from baseline, the time it took for their heart rate to return to normal, and the time they spent rattling because rattling is what rattlesnakes do when they're scared. They're saying, get away from me, please. I'm dangerous. I'm a dangerous noodle. I will bite you, but I don't want to. I don't want to. You're too big to eat, but I will. So the presence of a snake companion reduced the change in heart rate of snakes significantly. This was universal across the sex of the snake, whether they were males or females, from populations that overwinder individually or communally. So whether they were a particularly social population or a solitary one, there was no difference in either of those cases. It just was that if there was another snake there, they calmed down faster. So what this tells us to probably very few people's surprise is that reptiles have social buffering, too. So- And a rope is not gonna- A rope isn't gonna cut it. A rope is not gonna cut it. And just because an animal appears to be fairly solitary does not mean that they cannot take a calming presence of another individual. And I think also this is a good reminder for how we do laboratory experiments on animals in general, again. Do you have stressed out animals that you could make otherwise calm, quicker with companions? And if you are not doing that, are you giving them elevated stress levels for longer than normal that could mess up your science experiment? Not that many researchers are using rattlesnakes for their experiments, but as a more general sense, I agree with that. Right, so yeah, so this is definitely preliminary because as I mentioned, this was the first time that social buffering was looked at in reptiles, but now is the time to look at who else does it. Chances are everybody. And then you can start to kind of extrapolate from there. Yeah, so I'm gonna get the question though is social animals, yes, that social buffering probably makes a huge difference. But my question is, how often are rattlesnakes found in their group settings? How often do they hibernate or do they stay below ground as individuals? I don't know about enough about rattlesnake ecology. Other, just know that growing up the Diamondback, the Western rattler rattlesnake in California made me fearful of the foothills and the French cameraman house. Yes, don't mess with them. So yes, there's populations that hang out together. There's populations that are solitary. Also, by the way, snakes can eat other snakes. So I think it's very interesting that none of these individuals ate each other as a result of stress. So I think that's very intriguing. But yes, I think that this is proof that rattlesnakes, hey, rattlesnakes are just like us. No, that's not right. No, rattlesnakes have kind of the social element, even if they are not a gregarious species. And so that we need to take that kind of lens to animals that we don't consider social more often to see what they're up to and how they are impacted by each other. There's also the question back to what we were talking about before. How are they calming each other down? Yeah, just contact. Is it chemical? Is it contact? Is it something else? It could be any number of, it could be the heart rates or a feedback loop to each other since snakes feel so much vibration, right? Is there some sort of tactile response? Or are they communicating in a way that we don't know? Because we don't know everything there is to know about how snakes can do it. Nobody knows, but rattlesnakes actually purr. They could. Like kittens, you know. They could create a sound that we can't hear and we have no idea. We have no clue. We haven't studied it, right? Yeah. So yeah, there's a lot to be looked at here, but in the meantime, I just know that rattlesnakes benefit from a buddy. Yeah. And I, yeah, I'll take back my comment on, I mean, not completely, but most animals need other individuals for reproduction and some, there's gotta be some aspect of social, sociality at some point in their lives. So I guess the question is, when they're stressed, especially in human environments, what's their optimal situation? What calms them down? Well, and I think, I take your point, Kiki. I mean, in animals that, and a lot of animals that are solitary, the presence of another individual could actually be a stressor. So if that's the case, especially if they're looking at same sex individuals, then that could mean, you know, it's a competing male, for example, or it could be a competing female for resources or any number of things. Then why would their presence be calming and would it always be calming or does it depend on the situation? So, no, I think that's a really important distinction to make is what makes this different? And if you're super stressed, does none of it matter? And you're just like, oh my God, hold me, I'm scared. I'm just so stressed out. And I know you're stressed out too, but none of us should be in this situation. Well, and then my question becomes, like, does it have to be the same species or can you be stressed with another species, different snakes or like a mouse and a rat? Or a hamster. Or a duck and a finch. I don't know. What are the parameters on this? Where does social buffering exist? There's a lot of studies to be done. So, you're that graduate students, get on it, social buffering experience. All the animals, try various combinations. And just know, hey, what do you do? I stress out animals and then try to calm them down. That's great research. Yep. I'm an animal stress factor. That's what I do. All right, this is This Week in Science and I have a few more stories to go before the end of the show. I'm gonna talk about some brain stuff. Did you hear that? I mean, I heard myself say brain stuff. I know, but did you hear, before you said that and the kind of around you saying brain stuff? Like that? Oh, this is that silence you were talking about before. Yeah, did you hear the silence? Oh my God. Yeah, Kiki, I heard the silence. What's up? What's up? Okay, so researchers are very interested in how the brain processes sound and how that leads to our perception of sound. So the idea being that if you're in an environment listening to things, right? Our ears and the nerves attached to the hair cells in our ears are being activated when sound waves are passing by them. But when sound waves are not passing by them, the nerves aren't being activated, right? And it's that differential between active and inactive and various frequency of waves and all that that allow us to perceive sound and know when there is sound versus not. But these researchers at Johns Hopkins University were interested, and this is I guess a puzzlement to philosophers going back years and years, centuries even, is whether or not the brain perceives silence. Does the brain, is it the absence of sound or is the brain perceiving the silence? Oh man, are we gonna have another philosophical conversation about zero now? Is that what this is? This is where we're going. What is no sound? Okay. So this published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers based their research on auditory illusions. And there is an auditory illusion that they was one of their specific, the instances that they were testing. And it is this idea of... What was the, what was it? I lost the name of the auditory illusion. Aha, one is more illusion. That's what it is. So what it's called is the one is more illusion. And in past studies of this auditory illusion, they use one long auditory recording versus two shorter auditory recordings to see if people can perceive which one is longer. The reality is they're both the same length, but when there's no break in the middle of the sounds, people think that one long sound is longer than two sounds that are broken up. Huh, yeah. So the timing and the auditory perception of sound in that way is very interesting. So they wanted to see whether silence worked the same way. And so this is what they're now dubbing. The one silence is more illusion. And so we're gonna listen to it right now. And in this, researchers had people listen to like cafe noises, train stations, lots of sounds that gave the perception of being surrounded by a lot of sound. Right, like after I have to share my screen so you can hear this sound as we're moving forward. So the, can you hear the sound? Okay. We're being immersed in this noise. And you're gonna hear two sequences of silence, one after the other. The screep silence is separated by a brief sound versus a single continuous silence. Equance one. One, two. Which sequence seemed longer? The second one. Yes, well, they were both the same, but or the second one was longer. But in the research, they found that the majority of times people, it did seem longer to me too actually with the break in between. But the researchers showed over and over again that when there were breaks between the audio tracks, people experienced the illusion that one long silence was longer than the two broken silences. Is that our ears or is that the fact that we're all anxious? Well, as a, you know, audio podcaster, yes, the anxiety of hearing dead air. Yeah. Like what's happening? Oh my gosh. The compulsion to fill dead space is definitely part and silence being awkward and all this. I think that's the part that's hard for me to parse out is if you do self-reporting, that's kind of the problem, right? Is you have the social implication of silence that could mess with your results a little bit. Well, I think if you've got noise like that and it suddenly goes to silence, you're either like, what just happened to the cafe? Did it just get blown up? Or you're like, did my iPod break? Right? Oh, did I pause my Spotify? Or did I lose my hearing out of nowhere? Right? Silence out of nowhere. That's gotta be bad. That's what I would think. But the researchers said that the silences did lead to this illusion effect and there's at least one thing that we hear that isn't a sound and that's the silence that happens when sounds go away, the kinds of illusions and effects that look like they're unique to the auditory processes of a sound, we also get them with silences, suggesting we really do hear absences of sound too. And I think it's great they did all these experiments and they came up with this new kind of auditory illusion thing, showed that silence illusions work the same as auditory illusions, but why did they not do fMRI recording of the brain? That's exactly what I was wondering, yeah. Happening with the brain waves, the perception of sound. It's okay, this is the psychological perception, but what is actually happening? What's going on there? Absolutely, I'd have to see that because otherwise it's too subjective. And who's to say that it isn't the way the brain is set up for positive feedback and inhibitory feedback, that the inhibition related to sound or however it's set up for the perception within the neural nets that are involved in that, that the absence of sound isn't just another trigger for your brain to perceive potentially a different concern for your attention to be shifted. Yes, yes, absolutely. Anyway, I like this study, I think it's fun, I think it gets, it's fun that people are still finding ways to trick the brain and work with the brain and discover potential answers to these old philosophical questions, but I want them to dig deeper. Is zero a number? I don't know. It's the absence of things. Absence. Is it a number? What is zero flair? What is nothing? Is silence a sound? Does this information really matter? Is this useless or useful information? I mean, that's a whole nother question. Oh my. What would you trade for all this information? Even knowing it's completely useless. What would you trade? I know, would it be the cost of a graduate degree? Oh, been there done that. Okay. Mom, dad, $200,000 in debt, but I'll tell you what, I studied the sound of silence. They're like, wait, never come back. Don't come back again, you don't yet know. Go find yourself a job and pay that off. All right, but considering what people are willing to trade for information, researchers just publishing in the proceedings of the Royal Society be this last week have determined that people are willing to trade pain for useless information. Useless? Useless. Not useful. Useless. People like information so much that we will undergo pain to receive information, even if it's not gonna help us whatsoever. I need examples. Please tell me, this study has some examples. This study is so great. So it comes originally from some work by this researcher in the 2010s involving macaque monkeys. They had macaque monkeys and they got rewards of water to do a task. Mm, water. Yeah, mm, water. And so these researchers, originally they found that the macaques were willing to give up some amount of their water reward, but that was in return for aspects of the computer task that didn't actually change the outcome. Nothing changed no matter what. And so this new study came from the researcher looking at this and going, I wonder what about what people would do? And so these experiments involved asking people to, well, he did some experiments earlier involving small amounts of money and physical effort. So, okay, we're gonna let you do this thing and you invest a little bit of money or you do like a squeeze a handhold thing. And it's not gonna impact the outcome of a lottery in the end, but you would be given information that would tell you about the lottery outcomes and about what's happening. It's not gonna change the outcome whatsoever. And then you found that people would give up amounts of money and would give up or would do more work to find out about the lottery outcome even though it wouldn't change it whatsoever. And so then he said, how far will people go? And so that's where the pain came in. In this experiment, he burned people. So it's a hot, painful stimulus on their arm that was from a low amount of heat to like a burning sensation, amount of heat that people could get. Turn the pain up to find out about the outcomes of a coin flip. And so if they knew what was gonna happen in the next coin flips, people were willing to increase the heat and take more pain, even though it didn't change the outcomes of the trials. At the lowest settings, they endured the heat about 75% of the trials and then in nearly half of the trials, participants accepted the most severe level of pain. Wow. And what was the stakes of the coin flip? I don't, it was just... Just knowing how the coin flip was going to turn out. Like it's not, there's zero stakes. It was basically, we're gonna do a coin flip. You bet on what's gonna happen. We're gonna see what happens in this coin flip. Do you wanna know how it's gonna come out? Do you wanna know something? Do you not wanna know? I mean, I'll tell you, but you have to get burned. A lot of people, the researchers think is that people really, really want to get rid of uncertainty and that getting rid of uncertainty is worth pain, even though it's not going to have any personal benefit whatsoever. I think I need the information to be more benign. I need it to be like, will you be burned to find out whether Tom Holland cuts his bread diagonally or straight across? Well, I mean, this is gonna open up some really interesting, like this is what we can do. So we go and we find a bunch of TikToks, things that celebrities are doing, right? And then we show them to volunteers. And we say, okay, do you wanna know what Tom Holland's gonna do to the bread? Yeah. If you let us burn you. How much do you wanna know? We'll tell you how it's gonna be before, we'll tell you the ending before you watch the video. Right. Yes, this is what I need. I need things that are more ridiculous. Right, but this is just, you know, this is psychology they're trying to do because it's very basic. Yeah. The coin flip is too close to gambling. Even if there's no actual benefit, it plays on a weird human impulse to gamble that I feel like it needs to be more silly, like, yeah. Like, do you know what the population of Sacramento is? I gotta burn you. Just random stuff that has no influence on your life whatsoever. Yeah. No influence. But anyway, do you wanna know what my next story is gonna be? Not enough to be burned. Oh, come on. But yes, I would like to know what your next story is. Yeah. I think it's really amazing though that people can't change the outcome, but people will undergo pain, not just loss of money, not just doing work, but pain. I know I made a joke in the chat room. Example one, Twitter. I actually think it's pretty accurate because the way social media is designed is to basically make you feel terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, hit of dopamine. Terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, hit of dopamine. And you keep scrolling. It's playing on the same impulse to withstand pain, gain information. I wanna know. I wanna know. I wanna know. I don't. Yeah, so it is interesting that I actually think that's kind of a relevant analogy. I don't know, anyway. It is. Now that you bring it up, I think that's a very relevant analogy. Yeah. How many other things in our lives do we withstand just for information? Just for information. Even though it won't change the outcome. No. Last story is we head into the very end of the show and heading here on the West Coast of the United States towards bedtime. Where are you going? Yeah, it's time to sleep almost. I love closing the show on sleepy stories. I'm really sorry if you are listening to this or watching this in the morning. So, sorry, not sorry. But researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have published new research in Cell Reports Medicine on how sleep impacts blood sugar regulation. So for years and years and years, it's been known that sleep issues are related to diabetes and other blood sugar and insulin regulation issues. But the link has been very unclear. Nobody has known exactly what's going on there. We also know from lots of studies that sleep and deep sleep brain waves have been implicated in these brain waves being coordinated with the non-rapid eye movement parts of sleep that the coordination of the brain waves has strengthened the hippocampus, leads to memory consolidation. There's lots of great aspects of these deep sleep brain waves. So in this study, they specifically at the Walker Center for Human Sleep Science, they specifically looked at what was happening with these deep sleep brain waves, the non-rapid eye movement part of sleep, the brain activation of what are called spindles in the brain during that NREM sleep and how that coordinated with the deep sleep brain waves and then how that coordinated with other physiological factors. So what they saw moving from the brain and down is that individuals that had highly coordinated deep sleep brain waves and the NREM sleep oscillations also with the brain spindles, they had really good decrease in heart rate, so a calming of the parasympathetic nervous system, a calming effect decrease in heart rate that was like a resetting of insulin regulation. And the next day, people had better insulin regulation when if they had had those really coordinated brain waves and sleep oscillations. So sleep oscillations really good for your brain, for not just your brain, but for your body for managing insulin. So the question is exactly how is that going on and it's what they think is happening is that the coordination with the deep sleep brain waves triggers the parasympathetic or like the vagal nervous response. And so this calming reaction along the body by the decreasing of heart rate has other vagal stimulation that is involved in the resetting for the insulin sensitivity. So somehow in there as the vagus system is calmed down. It's like, okay, hit the calm down button. Everything reset. Insulin sensitivity will be better. You're gonna be good today. So how do I make sure I get my slow oscillations in? Right, so this is really good sleep quality. It doesn't matter how long you sleep overall. So they didn't find anything related to age, weight, duration of sleep. The only thing it was was this the entrainment of these oscillations. And so that is going to be fully going through a complete sleep cycle. So making sure that you are not being interrupted partway through that you're getting uninterrupted sleep. So things like sleep apnea are also going to interrupt this because you're going to be constantly interrupting the ability of the brain to relax and of the body to relax. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, that is the eternal question, right? How do you actually get to the point where you're able to have the really good quality sleep that allows you to have these deep sleep slow wave oscillations. You have to sleep for at least an hour and a half. Yeah. You have to go through one whole cycle. Well, that's about what I'm getting in a row these days. So that's good. Yeah. You get about an hour and a half, so that'll do it. I also have my air purifier on. I have a humidifier pointed at my face and I have a fan on because I'm hot. So you've got air circulation. You've got the moisture so you can breathe. And then you've got the white noise which should get rid of all other noises in your environment. You just need to wear a sleep mask? No. You could wear a sleep mask too. I could. No light to make sure. You're out. Yeah. Hmm. Well, I mean, add it to the list of things that sleep helps with. It's, I just keep thinking about the bears, the hibernating bears that completely regrow sections of skin with no scar tissue from essentially good quality sleep. So sleep is pretty regenerative. It's pretty important. It's a bummer. It's a third of our lives, but you know. We need it. Regenerative sleep is essential. And I think this is, you know, the mechanism specifically about how the parasympathetic reset button actually changes the insulin sensitivity and sets it up for the next day to make sure it's, you know, working well. How that happens, what the real mechanism's happening, you know, at the molecular level, they're not there yet, but this is just more evidence related to getting good sleep. Yeah. So make sure that we're not stressing you out before bedtime about getting good sleep, because you... Well, this is what I'm gonna put a quick plug-in for Rest. As someone who's not sleeping very well, Rest is also restorative. It is not as restorative as sleep, but there have been lots of studies that have shown us there are restorative benefits to Rest. So even if you're in bed and you're lying awake and you're going, oh my God, I can't sleep. This is terrible. I'm killing myself. Lying in bed in the dark is restorative. It's better than not. So cut yourself a break, please. Yeah, everybody, cut yourself a break. This is what we all need to do. Oh, yes, that's a great point to close this show on. And hey, if you stop stressing out about the sleep you're not getting, you might actually be able to go to sleep. So... All right, helpful how to help your life advice from Blair and Twiss. Cut yourself a break, get some rest. We hope you sleep well. We've done it. Have we done it, Blair? We've made it to the end of the stories. Yes, I think we have. Come to the end. Tight 90, everyone. Let's wrap this up. It's time for me to say thank you to all of you for listening, for watching, chat room. Thank you so much for your chats and your comments and all the things that you've been saying on Discord and in all the chatty places, YouTube, Facebook and Twitch. I see you. Vada, thank you so much for all of your help with show notes and with social media. We're gonna figure out the social media landscape at some point. I don't know. I just have to figure itself out first. I think word of mouth, everybody. You need that information. Go talk to people. And Gord, Arnaud, others, thank you so much for your help in the chat rooms. Making sure everything is happy and peaceful in those chat rooms. Funny as well. And Rachel, thank you for your help editing the show identity four. Thank you for your help recording the show. And now, I'd love to say thank you to our Patreon sponsors. Thank you to Craig Potts, Mary Gertz, Teresa Smith, Richard Badge, Ken Northcote, Rick Gloveman, George Chorus, Pierre Velazad, John Wattoswamy, Karl Kornfeld, Chris Wozniak, Vegard, Chefstad, Hal Snyder, Donovan Styles, aka Don Stilo, Ali Coffin, Reagan, Don Mundes, P.I.G, Stephen Albarone, Darryl Meischach, Stu Pollock, Andrew Swanson, Frennus 104, Sky Luke, Paul Roenevich, Kevin Gruden, Noodles Jack, Brian Carrington, David E. Youngblood, Sean Clarence, Lam, John McKee, Greg Riley, Marqueson Flow, Steve Leesman, aka Zima, Ken Hayes, Howard Tan, Christopher Wrappen, Richard Brendan, Minnish, Johnny Gridley, Chemi Dave, G. 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For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes and links to stories will be available on our website. That's at www.twist.org, T-W-I-S. O-R-G. And you can sign up for a newsletter that might exist someday. Who knows? I love our newsletter. I think our newsletter is amazing Blair. It's just- It comes out once every five years. Once every amount of time. Dear, you can contact us directly, email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistminion at gmail.com or Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org. Make sure you put twists in the subject line so email doesn't get spam filtered into a bucket of rattlesnakes trying to be cozy when they're all stressed out. Yeah, you can't reach in there and get those emails. That's not gonna happen. You can also find us on various social media. I don't know. It's- We're at just science at Dr. Kegee at Jackson Fly and at Blair's Menagerie on Twitter. But if I am being honest- And other places. It's broken. Anyway, we exist other places too. So just go to twist.org and find us or email us and start there. We'll give you that. If there's a topic you'd like us to cover or address or a suggestion for an interview or a haiku that comes to you in the night, please let us know. And we will be back here again next week. And we hope that you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything at all from the show tonight, remember... It's all in your head. This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science It's the end of the world So I'm setting up a shop Got my banner unfurled It says the scientist is in I'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to stop the robots With a simple device I'll reverse global warming With a wave of my hands And all is coming your way So everybody listen To what I say I use the scientific This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science Science Science Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science Science Science Science Science I've got one disclaimer And it shouldn't be news That what I say May not represent your views But I've done the calculations And I've got a plan You're muted It's... You don't understand It's the after show Okay I can be muted in the after show Let's fine Sound of silence Da-dare Da-dare Da-dare Da-dare Da-dare Da-dare Da-dare Da-dare So you want threads? Or are we all excited about threads? Oh my goodness No, I don't think I will. So funny. It's like the whole bandwagon. I was like, what am I doing here? It was really boring. Are you on threads? I checked it out. Yeah. It's my Instagram because of the Instagram. I wanted to see what was happening to be aware of it. And and Twist has an Instagram. So yeah. So they make it very easy. We go and just download the threads up and they make it super easy, which is why it's so immediately easy, popular. And everybody likes it. You know, they've got that covered. They also have the, you know, invasion of privacy and selling of data and standard. It's I'm just sad about Twitter because it was this one place where I got snarky memes, celebrities acting crazy, actual news, entertainment news and my friends. Yeah, all the things. It's scientists. You could talk to scientists. It's about the history. You could talk to actual scientists and they would reply to you. And just like it was such it was my favorite platform for so long, I would actually scroll Twitter. I wouldn't really do that to a lot of the other platforms. And it's just broken. It's completely broken. It's broken. And I don't know. I'm I'm just sad because it was this cool thing. And we can't have nice things. It was the one that I really cared about. Oh, right, it was. Yeah, you had the platform where your great aunt said questionable things. You had the platform where celebrities posted pictures of their food. But then you had this other platform that was like actually interesting and this amazing like buffet of different things. And yeah, the analytics were good. I didn't see hate speech on there. I didn't see Nazis. I didn't see like if you're if you're right, if your settings were right and you like stuck with the right topics, it was a very nice place to be. But now it's like now it won't let me tweet for whatever reason. You only get 600 tweets unless you pay and that includes ads. Oh, and not just to see 600 tweets. Not just, yeah, no, just that goes so fast. And not to mention, I was really upset when they started putting ads in when you would click on a tweet to read through the comments on the tweet, like ads read comments. Yeah, they put ads in the comments. Then you're like, OK, I can't tell what I'm looking at anymore. And now the analytics are all over the place. They make no sense. They don't explain why things trend so you think somebody's dead, even though they're not like trending is also inaccurate. It's just I know. Hey, someone on Facebook gave us a like. That's awesome. We got a thumbs up on Facebook. That's cool. Facebook. Yeah, give us thumbs up on YouTube. And yeah, that's it. Thanks, John Hogan. That's awesome. I see that like there. I see you liking us. Yeah, I don't know. So the big question now is, especially as. I don't know, look at priorities and how do I want to spend my time and what do we want to do? You know, right? And I was originally I got to stay in touch with social media. So I know what the information, you know, right? Like we were talking about I got to put up with all of it so that I can know what's happening. But then just to be in touch with people, right? And to tell people about science and to tell people about this week in science. And I have to do it. And I felt like it was part of the work. But now it's become so. Diffracted, you know, there's just so many outlets and so many different places and there's different communities on each space. And yeah, it's time to get involved like into any of these communities. You can't just jump on and be like, hey, everybody, hi, I'm here, you know. Yeah, well, and not to mention, if you're not going to pay extra. Or is anyone going to see what you're doing at all? Right. If you don't pay extra, right? Yeah. I mean, it's really funny because at one point in time, I was like, I would pay for Twitter, but then they would and broke it. And now I don't want to pay for Twitter. Like if they had asked me to pay for it a few years back, I probably would have paid because it was so useful. Yeah. OK, I'll support that. That's great. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, all the different places will see what happens. Everyone's declaring Red's a winner. I don't know about that yet, but it's been around for like less than a week or something. And the thing is when it comes down to it, do I care? That's the other question. That is the question that I'm getting at, right? Do I care? Can I still connect with people? Can I find ways to keep up with people? Do I need the information that much? Am I getting into a phase of my life where I'm totally fine sitting on a swing in my backyard watching birds? Yeah, are we there now? I mean, it was really sad at first when I stopped logging into Twitter, but then there was also this moment where I was like, oh, hey, I'm not spending time on that anymore. That's kind of cool. Exactly. I'm not doing that anymore. Oh, look at this time I have to do other things. I'm going to clean my house. I'm going to build shelves. I'm going to do things. Yeah, exactly. John Hogan is asking about mastodon. I like mastodon. I think I think it's great. But again, it's to distribute distributed. The server-federated aspect, they have like a big feed that throws a bunch of things together. But I like it, but then I found it limiting because of the server basis, the way that it works in the whole federated aspect. I get it. And maybe with Blue Sky trying to create kind of a domain basis where you can have your username be a domain. So basically you go by a domain and that can be your Blue Sky handle. So it's like a what it's like the new web. So instead of a website, you have you can have this. I don't I don't know. It's all it's all very confusing in my brain. And again, do I care? Yeah, yeah, I'm still working that out. But I think mastodon is great. I love the way that people interact there for the large part depends on the server, depends on the community on each server. Yeah, but there is that aspect of. People being able to, you know, silo themselves a little bit more completely than they had been just on Twitter. I think that's I've never been an early adopter of any of these things. I'm kind of letting them fight it out. And when we figure out where this is going, then I'll decide. Exactly, yes, that figure later. Yeah, yeah, nobody needs to make up their mind yet. But no, I did want to tweet something as shouty Blair today. And I was like, Oh, oh. You could you could do it on threads. I could, I suppose. But it would be associated with my Instagram then, right? I don't want that. Yeah, I mean, you could make a new account, but you'd have to find people. This already sounds like too much work. Work is like Twitter is you could just broadcast. People would find you if they. It's going to be that way. Whatever neighborhood you're in, you'll find your neighborhood. We'll see who wins and then I'll decide. Who will win? Yeah. Twelve platforms enter. Yeah, I'm not looking to buy a bunch of laser discs, you know, it's. Oh, man, that's where we are right now. Exactly. Betamax versus VHS CDs versus later laser discs versus. Yeah, Blu-ray versus DVD, right? Like just let it settle. Let it settle. Figure out what it's going to be. I know, then I'll address it. Yeah, I don't know. I think in the meantime, though, that means we have to figure out how to go back to the time before Internet to figure out, like, how people used to tell people about things. Well, unfortunately, I feel like I am right now. Is a newsletter. So there's that. Can we get an intern just to make our newsletter? Right here. Just put that together. That's all that would be very helpful. Oh, one thing I had looked into, I think, thought I was saying good night. He was very excited about us hitting a tight 90 tonight. Our discord is popping with his celebratory gifts. Yes, I saw that. And yes, I know people are yet again arguing gift versus GIF because they don't have them in blue sky and threads has them. And oh, my God, everybody. But anyway, yeah, the was I get to say that something for newsletters, wordpress has a plug in, apparently, so that you can host it on your domain and not do something like Substack or Mailchimp, but you could. And because it's. Cappy Stella, are you under the sofa? What's happening there? I'm hearing these clawing noises coming from under my sofa. But I don't see a cat. The cat's doing something. But yeah, so wordpress has what another science communicator posted about being a really great alternative to stuff like Substack, which makes me happy because I hadn't I don't like the whole. I'm going to put our stuff and rely on this other provider to make it work. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, Mailchimp for now, we can still use that. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, it just definitely takes some doing. Yeah. Yes, it does. Time bought real consideration. Do we have any other not show news or any other science stuff that you wanted to talk about this week? No, I think just any more updates. I'm planning on hanging on till Justin gets back. Yay. And then from there, by year all the way. We'll see how it goes. We'll see. I mean, maybe you can save it for what week would that be? Wednesday, August 9th. Wednesday, August 9th or the 16th at about 9 p.m. Pacific time, because that would be exciting. Oh, you want my water to break on air is what you're saying. Got it. It would be exciting. I mean, we're talking reality television. There's a writer's strike right now. We don't have the content really without the writers working for us. If it hasn't happened by then, I don't know how I'm going to do the show, though, because I will be. So immobile, and I won't be able to say four words without gasping for air. I think at that point, so we'll see. Oh, I know. I'm making a joke. I know. Yes, no, I'm planning on hanging in until Justin gets back. I'll let you know if that changes, but after that, it's all going to depend on how how how large and in charge this baby is getting in my business. Because earlier today, I think he was doing a handstand. You and kicking you in the lungs. Yeah, I could feel it all. So you really are pushing on all of the walls of my uterus right now. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. I know you're in there and I appreciate you letting me know you're in there. And also, I appreciate that you're getting your yoga in, little man. But no, thank you. We want the we want the happy moving little child. Yeah, just keep keep it up. Yeah. Yes, Paul, Paul. I want the drama and intrigue. It's true. You know, that's what the that's what the ratings are all about. Yeah. And Eric is is going to miss the show on the ninth. So yeah, if you're going to have anything drop that like the second or the sixteenth would be great. OK, great. OK. No, no, the second would be great. I wouldn't lie in the second. I mean, if you can schedule it seven a.m. on August 1st. Oh, OK. But because that's my birthday. I know. But it depends how. Oh, you want him to come out at seven a.m. Yes. OK, got it. OK. Yeah. And then you could be like, Kiki, you guys have exactly the same birthday and time. Yes. That's great. I love it. Well, yeah, that'll put us right when Justin gets back, actually. Yeah, it would. So which would be just fine. OK. All right. And then it would be just in time. Just in time. Oh, did I do that? I did that. Yeah. John Hogan, what do I think about the background radiation 26 billion years instead of 13 billion? I don't know enough about it to be the expert. But from what I have read other experts writing about is that this is a wonderful mathematical theory. There's zero. There's really not much experimental proof and it gets rid of a bunch of factors. And that's neat and exciting. But until there is more data behind it, that we really can't say much and all the experts I know are like, well, it's another theory or idea out there in theoretical physics. And so he's put it out in the literature and perhaps it will be supported. Perhaps it will not. But it's out there for people to beat against until it is broken or supported one way or the other. But yeah, at this point in time, everybody's still going to say that the universe is almost 14 billion years old, not it's it's just a lot of billions. It's a lot of billions. I mean, yeah, the way that the math works out for this theory is interesting. Yeah, it's neat stuff. Anyway, ha, ha, you're welcome, Eric. Grown, hee hee, Blair. Yes, go to bed. I will. Good night, Kiki. Ah, good night, Kiki. Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Good night, listeners. Good night, everyone. Have a wonderful night. Have a wonderful week. We hope that you stay healthy. Stay happy. Stay safe. Scythe, that's not a word. Scythe, I don't know. Stay silent unless you want to talk, then talk. Do whatever you want to do, whatever. Listen to the silence. Stay curious and stay lucky. Thank you all. We'll see you next week.