 And then we wait for the sign that someone can see us We wait for the sign because science it's all about waiting for the sign silence Silence that's right It's not silence I saw the science there we go. We're live starting in three two This is Twists this week in science episode number 631 recorded on Wednesday August 9th 2017 how does your science grow? Hey everyone. I am dr. Kiki and tonight on this week in science We are going to fill your heads with learning bees and Tom Merritt, but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer It's the wrong disclaimer humans By far the most accomplished category of creature on the planet earth when it comes to certain things Harnessing multiplying and applying energy to do work humans are good at that They succeed at technology where other creatures seem uninclined to endeavor and this above all other actions They are most successful humans make tools and learned to fly Which is clever but only casually so when compared to a crow which can do both of these hands free humans domesticated cat and dog to be subservient companion species For whom the humans toil to provide food and shelter and pick up after Asking for nothing in return as if it is they in charge of the situation humans special effects and film and video seem fantastical feats until you see in real time and in reality The shape-shifting color changing cuttlefish's skill at illusion humans can tell tell a good tale Though there are better bards amongst the beluga termite mound architecture dwarfs Even the tallest skyscraper by scale and not even the fastest fast rapper can keep pace with a cookaburra And these are but a few examples humans are not nearly the all accomplishing planetary firsters They believe themselves to be they act as if all category of accomplishment belongs to them Simply because they refuse to invite any other species to the competition Though there is one accomplishment the humans have made that all the creatures of the earth are at once thankful and envious of This week in science Coming up next Happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge. I seek I want to know What's happening This week in science And a good science to you too Justin and Blair and Tom Merritt. Oh, hello Mind me. I just slipped it when you weren't like a dustin. Yeah, that's when you're not paying attention Tom Merritt comes over to join the podcast. That's right. Happy day of science everyone Welcome to another episode of this week in science today We have a fabulous show ahead if I do say so myself just looks wonderful We have lots of science news. I have new stories about dark matter Neutrinos and a reason to sleep as if you needed another one I love sleeping and We are joined by Tom Merritt who is going to talk with us about science and fiction In the same conversation It's gonna be fabulous and I will be introducing him a little bit more in just a few minutes But Justin, what did you bring for the show? I've got some ancient apes skull that's worth talking about and And How many doctors we're paid to prescribe opiates to people wait how many I guess more than on my two hands I'll add my feet toes in to and Blair. What is in the animal corner? I brought intelligent Indispensable incredible insects That's it. Okay. I thought you were gonna go somewhere else with that. All right. It's nice Because they're so incredible. They can take up the entire animal corner. There's a lot of them out there So it's pretty cool. Yeah biomass Dwarfs humanity. Yes, doesn't it though? Alright, the show is looking pretty good and everyone as we jump into our new favorite segment of the show I want to remind you that you can subscribe to twist the twist podcast on iTunes on the in the Google Play podcast portal on Stitcher in Spreaker and in tune in just search the interwebs Or you can just go to twist org and look for our RSS feed if that's what you're into You can find us on YouTube and Facebook look for this week in science Remember twist org though. It's where it all comes from now. It is time for What has science done for me? lately and We got a letter from Minion Fernando Lopez Harrow and Fernando wrote in to say Beside science my other passion in life has always been painting recently I've picked up my old oil paints and brushes and have profited of on hours upon hours of the soothing application of layers of paint in a Canvas letting my creativity unwind at the same time it got me thinking about how this activity was done in the past For instance pigments and dyes used to achieve Vibrant and intense hues that really stuck to the canvas were often obtained from rather hazardous materials Many well-known examples include lead for whites are snick for greens and mercury for reds Which were essential to obtain a long lasting hue, but were also Critically toxic and in most cases the reasons behind the debilitating conditions conditions were not even well understood And thus couldn't be cured nor could they be treated? Fortunately for artists today Toxicity is one of the main concerns in the production of modern supplies whether that's paint solvents lacquers or tools like It was science which led to the identification of these compounds as the culprits I lost as a culprit so such a diminished quality of life consequence of prolonged and improper exposure to Noxious substances moreover science has allowed both the discovery and the synthesis of less harmful alternatives than those compounds used in the past Today painting is for the most part a no longer life-threatening activity Which I can enjoy while listening to the reassuring and constant progress of science delivered by your amazing show. Thank you And this is Fernando Lopez Haro Uh Painting no longer a life-threatening pastime no longer a life-threatening Pastime no and he went on to say thank you for such an inspiring entertaining effort To inform and spread the word about the wonders of what humans are able to do through careful and methodical thought You make it seem like an easy task But making a podcast like yours is a feat that requires extensive amounts of consistency patience organization commitment and most of all passion Thanks for being an inspiration to myself as an aspiring scientist about to finish my undergraduate undergraduate studies as a chemical Chemical engineer and equal eager to pursue research-oriented opportunities out there Listening to you every week fuels my hope that humans are capable of changing our collective future through the power of science Keep up the good work greetings from Mexico Thank you Fernando Thank you so much. Yeah, and that's really good to know because I Paint but I just assumed it was all still highly toxic Not so toxic anymore. Thanks to science Fernando. Thank you so much for writing in and remember Everyone out there. We need you to write into us to let us know what science has done for you or does for you Week after week or what has it done lately leave its message on our Facebook page Facebook comm slash this weekend science and We want to fill this segment of the show with something from one of you Every single week so keep writing in so I can schedule reading your letters I do really appreciate this part of the show. Thank you so much and Now and now drum roll I'd like to introduce Tom Merritt. He's an award-winning independent tech podcaster And he's the host of regular tech news and information shows You may have heard his voice on sword and laser It's a science fiction and fantasy podcast and book club with Veronica Belmont He also every day of the week Monday through Friday puts out the daily tech news show daily, right? You get that every day Is that tech news? Yeah, covering the most important tech issues of the day with the smartest minds in technology He's got good friends. I tell you and he's also working on current geek with Scott Johnson Cord killers with Brian brushwood and he does top five for tech Republic and then Somewhere in there among all these podcasts and periscopes He writes books also Pretty awesome. This is why I listened to podcasts at two and a quarter speed I'm doing all this other stuff Which is funny when the show started because I've been listening to this week in science for years and years And I'm like, wow Justin's disclaimer seems a little longer than usual. It's good And then the music started and I was like, well the music seems a little You're at normal speed right now, this is real life normal speed I wonder how many people out there do listen to us at increased rates of listening, you know I bet it's a pretty good very different Yeah, I think I think I think there's just in order to make sure my stories are more clear in the future I'm going to talk like this for my portion and I'll have to go to three speed Yeah, I already feel like people tell me I talk way too fast. That's got to be out of control Yeah, Blair, you sound like a chipmunk. You have a lot of energy So Tom tell us a bit about about your different podcasts we've we I have been on The Daily Tech News show before and will be again shortly. Yeah, we'll be again soon. Yeah But what got you in I mean you started long time ago Working on the tech news. How did you get into doing this? Yeah? I mean the short answer is I was working at CNET in 2004 when podcasting was becoming a thing and I started it wasn't the only one but I was one of the people Agitating to do a CNET podcast one thing led to another and Molly Wood and myself We're doing a weekly ten minute tech podcast called buzz out loud which three months later had become a daily 40-minute tech podcast and After I left CNET I did a show called tech news today for twit and then after I left twit I started doing my own show Daily Tech News show. So I've been doing it ever since But why tech? I love you to it. I've always been into technology. I have always been fascinated with make computers in particular like making them do things one of the one of my earliest experiences was with the Ti 1999 for a doing basic programming and making Games happen and then I programmed software for my own computer baseball league on a Commodore 64 and then fast-forward through a lot of other things when I started working for ZDTV in 1999 I Was able to get into coverage of technology And and working on the website for that and one thing led to another and here I am It's just it's always fascinated me what you can do the things especially on the internet that have changed so that you don't need big Expensive equipment that you used to need when I was a kid you can do it with I mean It used to be a laptop or a desktop and now you can do it with a tiny little square piece of glass in your pocket Oh, yeah, I'm all I'm constantly amazed by these really fast computers that we have These computers that can take pictures and phone calls and they do it all and it's in your pocket So you're but you've all reporting on technology and constantly Seeing what's new and what's coming up. I find this for science sometimes you end up on like the bleeding edge of Discoveries the bleeding edge of the technology. How do you bring yourself back to relate to? What everybody wants to know about what's important? yeah, I do a couple of error corrections of my own biases in picking my stories one of them is to look at like Algorithmically generated lists like Google news or Reddit To also look at and we have our own subreddit for Daily Tech news show So I can get it straight from the listeners to also look at more of an editorially controlled thing like tech meme and Then just pay attention to the audience talk You know have have avenues for for the folks who are listening and watching the show to talk about what they're interested in and kind Of get a sense of what they respond to and and what causes them to think and talk and send emails and that sort of thing Yeah, what kind of things do people respond to the most like what kind of stories do they kind of go? Oh, that's exciting and interesting and I want to know more about that. It's usually two kinds of things It's a theoretical thing that hasn't been beaten to death, right? So one example was the trolley problem when we we started talking about the trolley problem as it relates to self-driving cars Which is how do you program the car to make the decision where it's going to kill somebody no matter what it does? And what are the ethics behind that and and what what is the proper way to develop that? And we had a lot of people really get into it doesn't matter They're never gonna they're gonna hit that problem and then other people like yes But even if it only happens one out of a thousand times and we need to plan for it So it's those highly theoretical things like that or Really super practical like I have this phone and it's broken. How can I fix it or you know what why? Is my? Device not doing the thing that I want to do should I get this particular smart speaker versus that one? By the way the the trolley problem has been soft In cars it has yeah, they'll just hit the brakes in both scenarios You're on that side of the argument and there was a lot of people that side of the argument like it's not a problem There isn't a problem there isn't a problem the car actually because the car is going to hit the brakes It's got four. They're all gonna have forward forward, but then what if the brakes fail? Right well then that breaks fail breaks fail and breaks fail it breaks fail and that's a left or right It won't it'll just the break that's got back up the emergency break This is like a week of DTS right here Yeah, but it won't it won't it just won't it's won't happen. Oh my goodness Well, that's the thing though. I think and I'm still picturing that moment with the self-driving car where I'm I'm I'm stuck in traffic because I'm the last one to adapt in any And so I'm still driving my car and I'm looking to the left and there's an empty car there taking little Johnny's they're gonna go pick up little Johnny from school And there's an empty car over here and they're gonna go pick up groceries at the store Because they put their order in online and the car just has to show up and they're gonna throw it in the trunk and the car In front of me is getting an oil change and the car over there is running errands And and I'm the only human left on the road and I'm in gridlock Everybody else's car is out there, too. Well, and you're in the humans the only lane That's the human drivers are allowed to be in the human lane If I get my own lane, then it's all worth it Then I'm not stuck in traffic and I can go but it's a shared lane. Sorry I Think I think it's interesting this really highlights how there are so many different Sides to conversations and so I think it's really wonderful to be able to have these conversations We have them all the time with our own audience about you know, what are the different perspectives? Some people are like, oh, I'd like Justin. I don't think there's a problem other people Yes, there is a problem. What was so other people are in between and it's just wonderful to see where or and to be able to highlight that in a in a public conversational way Yeah, and and kind of further that conversation and get people to to Decide what they think. I mean, I I think there's too little of that going on There's a lot of people out there wanting to tell you what you should think There are not enough people telling you the things you need to know to make up your own mind about what I couldn't agree more so do you think podcasting is helping to get all of us independent podcasters Do you think it's helping to get more of the make up your own mind? I mean, I would like to think my show and your show are doing that And I know there are other shows doing that but it's you know It's like a screwdriver. It is if people use our shows for good And it's great, but if they stab somebody with them, it's not so good. Ah, you were just stabbed by DTNS. Yeah Well, but that's the great thing about podcasting right is that we're not beholden to Large corporate sponsors in the same way TV shows are and so we can tell it exactly like it is and not worry about upsetting a lobbyist or an oil company or We would like to be conflicted with our stars, right wouldn't you love to go and flick I got another Monsanto story I know there's gonna be a hell to pay if I run with it. Let's run with it. Anyway, well, what's funny is I still I still have that conflict, but it's about the audience right because the audience funds my show So it's like, okay How do I approach this so that the audience will actually listen to what I'm saying because you know net neutrality is an example of this The recent Google memo is an example of this where there's people in your audience who are on both sides or three or four sides Of an issue. There's usually more than two and it's like I have to Present this in a way that everybody will at least listen to the conversation. I suppose there's a conversation there I just assume that everybody who's on the other side of net neutrality is on the take That's just my assumption. They've got they've got a stock that'll pay off with it or they're getting paid directly Listen to our episode on net neutrality because there's like 16 sides to net neutrality I can't picture them, but I'm you're right I'm gonna have to go find out what they are and that's why it's so great If you can't picture it yourself at least you can hear people voicing them and that brings you to the point where you say what? Oh, maybe I can think about this a little bit differently myself and you know, I find all the time. They're just between Me and Justin and Blair we have our own various perspectives on things and then we add another voice like Tom Merritt to it Then there's a whole Another ball of ear wax there. Yeah, two balls. I got yeah, and so Let's talk more about science science and technology. They kind of go hand-in-hand. Don't you think Tom? Yeah, absolutely. It's actually one of my favorite crossovers is when there is a story that I will hear I will do it on Daily Tech news show because I'm like, oh, this is a really cool angle of technology research That's happening. That's it. Maybe it's in the lab But it promises to be something good in the tech world down the road then I hear Anthony Carboni and Jeff Kanata You're making fun of it on we have concerns that I get like a really fun perspective And then it's a covered on this week in science and I get a whole new understanding of it because I hear your three Perspectives on it But I've brought a couple of those kinds of stories that we've talked about on DTNS awesome So let's hear them. What do you got at Columbia engineering published a study in the Journal of Neural Engineering Describing a system that combines a little mind reading with a little alternate artificial intelligence for hearing aids So one of the problems with hearing aids when you're in a loud room is that? Natural human ability to isolate a particular speaker is harder to do This system uses deep neural networks to separate the speakers before it even gets to the hearing aid to be able to say Okay, we think there's five people speaking and we think we know that this bit of audio is from that person This is a bit of audio is from that person Then they monitor the neural recordings of a person's brain to find out Which speaker they're trying to pay attention to they can tell with a little bit of you know electrodes on you Like okay, it seems like what they're trying to hear what they're trying to focus on is this part of the speech So the AI then says great amplify just that speaker To help that speaker stand out a little more That's amazing Because that's one of the issues especially with like the cocktail party effect where there's a din And they're all the different voices And maybe you want to talk to a person right across from you, but your hearing aid doesn't know that it's just Amplifies everything based on yeah, it's the it's normal amplification How far it is away from you and maybe the and maybe the the frequencies that are That are in that that person's speech So there are a bunch of different interesting things in here and that neural network Yeah, this is this is so this is an AI learning algorithm Right, so they do the typical deep learning thing and teach it how to recognize different speakers In order to then have it do that for the person who has the hearing aid They they aren't able in the in the lab. They weren't able to do it in a portable way yet But they've been able to do both pieces in ways that could be portable So the next step is to to put it all together in a package Yeah, so it seems like it seems like the framework should already be there in the brain We we evolved at one point from a from a junglish environment Uh in nature, you have to be paying attention to all the sounds around you Our brain actually does a very good job of deciphering a conversation in a crowded room Uh, but when it's interesting when the hearing deficit is there when the audios is not There for you to pick a part I can see how that framework would sort of be get a little bit lost have a harder time At sort of silencing the the peripheral Yeah, and as you get older it gets harder to pick those voices out of the din And when the hearing aid is just making the din louder It doesn't really help much. Yeah It's a it's a real dinner event conversation Dinner conversation. Yeah, and what's fascinating as well is that they're able I mean, this is something that has uh been ongoing is uh signal recognition in the brain So recognizing certain patterns of brain activity as being related to certain behavioral Uh construct certain needs or actions or wants. Uh, and so to be able to take The the neural data and reconstruct it in a way that can then be learned to match With the neural network so you can actually match The intent of the hearer With the voices of the speakers This is impressive stuff. I mean right now they probably have to walk around with a I don't know big boxes and computers and wires. Yeah They had to use an invasive electrocord a corticography recording From neurological subjects undergoing epilepsy surgery for the paper that they presented But they have been able to do just that part without tying it into the rest of the system Without being invasive So they they're hopeful that they can do it with an external electrode in the future It seems like this also would be something that could be helped just with something like the google goggles, right? Like Like it just recognizes what you're looking at it'd be terrible for eavesdropping when you're trying not to notice that you're being overheard But if you're staring at somebody And the google the goggles can pick it up and tell your tell your uh your hearing aid. Hey amplify that subject that might be uh It might be a way around trying to read the neurons for it. It's called auditory attention decoding is what they're trying to do Awesome. Well, I hope they're able to do it. And yeah, and if I mean we have there are those gaming headsets the eeg arrays that people are using for Using your mind to control games or for behavioral modifications to help you Uh to help you meditate for mindfulness and that kind of stuff, but they can also If they can also record Brain signals. Maybe it's just as easy as wearing a hat Or a a fascinator In the old term I do like a hat a hat or a fascinator. You do exactly Ed from kinetics says I'm okay with brain neural interface until they drill into your brain But you know Ed the next generation of drilling into your brain isn't that bad. They got this little ceramic It's like a tiny cork a tiny stopper that they can pop in there Uh, that's that can totally mesh with the skull material around it It's very subtle now. Even people won't even know you're wearing a brain implant. Oh, yeah No, that's gonna be the that's gonna be my old man moment when everybody's going to get their implant down at the apple store And I'm like, ah, I don't know if I want apple drilling into my brain Yeah, and in the future nobody's gonna be behind the back of their hands snickering it the size of your brain implant A whole new way to bully kids great No, no, it's gonna the future is so bright and this this news comes at a time also when When hearing aids themselves are potentially going to be easier for people to access and I know I'm waiting for a startup to disrupt The hearing aid world. Well, yeah, I mean by bipartisan congress I think it was 93 or 95 to one that they voted to to allow hearing aids without a prescription Over the county. Yeah, it's going. It's huge. That's going to change a lot. I mean, it's huge to get congress to agree on anything Right bipartisan support. You can do it guys. You can do it. Especially when it comes to health care Uh, but moving on from hearing You had a you had a fun sleep device We all like sleep because I mean obviously congress wasn't asleep at the wheel on this one And no one should be sleeping right now, but maybe you have a problem sleeping and you need to do research And you're like, oh, but I don't want to go and lay in a freaking machine For my sleep research. Well researchers at mit have developed an ai another ai that analyzes radio signals To measure sleep stages. So this is the exact opposite non-invasive entirely It's a little box kind of like a router It emits a low power radio wave kind of like a wi-fi router So if you've got a wi-fi router in your house, you've got almost exactly the same thing It just does a different thing with its radio waves than this box does This box analyzes the reflections of the radio waves and the key again was training a deep neural network to recognize What was respiration? What was pulse and what was just bouncing off the wall and tell the difference among all of that information In a test of 25 healthy volunteers The new technique using the box was 80 accurate Which may not sound that impressive to you, but that is comparable To an EEG monitored by specialists those specialists are only about 80 accurate This means sleep studies would need to be restricted to lab situations or special hotel rooms with people around you while you're trying to sleep But electrodes could just be attached. Uh, you wouldn't even have to have electrodes attached to your head. Sorry I mean you would just have this box um Electrical engineering and computer science professor and dina katabi led the study and she'll be presenting it Or is presenting it did present it today at the international conference on machine learning august 9th I think this is so cool. I mean we've been uh having reports for a while that we could use wi-fi and bluetooth potentially to see through walls Or for a certain amount for a certain amount of you know, maybe if you were if you were a spy you could Are interested in the activities of people in a certain location You could potentially use these radio frequency signals to be able to pick up the movements of people Or uh, their activities and we know that it's gotten sensitive enough that things like pulse Can be determined and so to actually take that technology and create something that is applicable to Not to to research but also that could potentially be Purchased by individuals to help them monitor their own sleep Without having to sleep on something or go into like you said a sleep lab I mean, I've never wanted to go in because I'm like, how could I sleep covered in all those wires? And what if I had to get up at night and go to the bathroom? I have problems sleeping. Here's what you do. Let's cover you in wires And put you in an MRI machine Hi sleeping. I just did a sleep test. Uh, not too long ago It was pretty uninvasive. There was one there was one thing that you you jam your finger into And it like gel collapses on it. It like holds it tight there. So it's checking your pulse, I guess throughout the night So they're not all as bad as they used to be it sounds like that's good No, and then there was one piece that I I taped up to my Chest and that was just kind of like it like it was it was a little janky There was wires around and I was connected to a box that was monitoring the thing But it wasn't like making noises or yeah, yeah Yeah, I did it at home. I didn't have to go anywhere. Right. I could be home for it Well, and that's the nice thing about this situation too is they could give you the box you take it home plug it in And that's it. That's all the setup nobody has to set it up for you And then it can it can record for nights on end and build up a bigger data profile of you Yeah, see and that was the thing too. I only got the device for one night and had to like return it right away Yeah, so so was that night a typical night or was that a rough night or was that a night where I got a less There's no way to talk well considering how much What are they called fit bits and apple watches can figure out just on your wrist in terms of your sleep cycle They can estimate when you're in REM sleep based on that I'm I'm not surprised it's making these these pretty big advances But I think it would be really cool if that's what it turned into right it was just your goper Or just just your fit bit would be able to do all of this sleep study work for you Then you could crowdsource sleep study information You could just add people could opt in via their their device on their wrist Well, you could do all kinds of motion study. I mean, I hadn't even thought about it going the other direction There's radio waves bouncing off of us all the time these days, right? If your fit bit could do what this box does and just read the radio waves bouncing around It could tell not just about sleep, but about motion and gait and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, although although to my Uh, my friend at work who who's been very proud of his his fitbit steps But is also a an italian descent I pointed out like every time you do this the thing thinks you're walking He's like no no no it tracks through gps. You have to actually move somewhere I'm like, okay So we did an experiment where he sat there and did this for a little while and then checked it I was like, oh How many steps did he get just talking just talking just talking like this It was just adding them up each one of these was a was a was a step. It is exercise Yeah, when you're talking to the hands, but he I think he drives like maybe lost thousands of steps are there Well, it's yeah, it's just unfortunate the the arms, you know, they don't activate the cardiovascular system The same way that your legs do it's unfortunate All right, so moving on from sleep and exercise you can find Tom reporting on all of stuff like this gadgety science technology and also straight up tech The news with the big tech giants and what's going on them 18 core processors all that stuff, right At 18 core. Wow. Yeah Intel just announced one At the daily tech news show and if you're not listening to it, it's a great program With as as the intro said with amazing guests Yes, but I want to get to the science of your science fiction now tom I'm waving this book around for those of you who are listening to the podcast. Yes Your steps in with that book, I know In waving around Hey, wait, quit waving it. How will I know what the title of the book is if you keep looking at around? Oh, there we go pilot x And it is science fiction in the most wonderful hard to hard to address subject matter Time travel Fantastic cover. It's time travel. This is a wonderful. It's a wonderful book So tell me how did you go about figuring out the science? for your Fiction, yeah, so I mean first of all, this is definitely not hard science fiction This is very much on the space opera end of things as far as the story goes I just avoid a lot of the physics in it, but the actual Method of time travel I wanted to embrace Was based on the idea that if you could travel in time you couldn't change the past That space time is unitary and if I have gone back to 1965 and met my mom That's already happened. It's in my mom's experience and I can't go back and convince her not to have me or create paradoxes Like it's it's just it's just a unitary thing and we are we always privilege our point in time But from an like if you could be an outside perspective on time It would all just be a solid unit with everything having already happened But then what's the fun tom? That that was the that was the thing that I figured out. I'm like, okay. I set myself this challenge How can I tell a story? Right now. Here's here's my way of explaining it right now. You know That the planet's surface is Stable, right? Like if you just take this slice in time everything on the planet is where it is And it can be known and there's no real surprises if you can go through and look at the entire planet, but you can't You can't see beyond this little realm and even if you travel You can only still see a small part of the planet now blow that up to the entire universe with multiple civilizations Even if you can travel in time even if your entire civilization can travel in time As long as you have a limited lifespan and you're not immortal you can't visit every point in time So there are still surprises. There are still things that people are like Oh, I I I didn't know that this area of time existed and these events were happening here That's what caused this other thing to happen. And so on the grand scale The major plot point is that there is a dimensional war being fought In secret they're trying to hide it in places of spacetime that people never visit in eras and locations And then there's smaller things like this guy keeps showing up to invite My main character to a party, but it's too early in his timeline. He keeps getting it wrong So I love I really like this so in Counterpoint to say dr Who where he can go everywhere at any time and he regenerates so he is basically immortal He can know all of space and time and all of the species and in all parts of the universe and know everything about it Where is your character or the Your character your main character and also the individuals in it cannot Yeah, I mean even even the doctor shouldn't know everything in time and the universe is very big Um, but they break those rules all the time, right? I love dr. Who I love time travel stories Uh, I I love star trek and all of those time travel. They sometimes they annoy people I love them, but it still bugs me when they change things And it's it's a fair cop out It's both fair and a cop out to say Oh Called quantum alternate universe, right? This isn't the original timeline anymore. It's like, all right I guess you can get away with that, but I wanted to try to write a story where that the making that happen is Very energy intensive To to move to an alternate timeline would take way more energy than any civilization has And so let's talk about your ship and the ability of the ship that you've come up with To travel through time um Yeah, she I named her verity after Verity Lambert who worked on the original doctor who and and she is an ai who Uh, of course isn't a person and doesn't have a sense of humor Or does she or does she that's one of my favorite things she keeps saying things that could be taken as just flat delivery or Actually an attempt at a joke No, I I do it I played a lot with that with the ship I turned the ship into a character that that's pilot x's friend and and you know There might be a little more more interested there if there could have been Uh between an ai and a person and and certainly his closest companion and the ship Very often I had her say things That could be read two ways. I really tried To have almost everything she says says to be able to be read as flat emotionless logic Or the kind of thing someone very sardonic and satirical might say But if it comes out flat, yeah, you can't tell yeah But how does she how do I love the description of how of how can she how she can exist in any point in space She's a singularity was that oh right? Yeah, no the ship carries a singularity in it. Uh, so that's how he can store everything And and and of course verity has access to that singularity. So so she can she can see a lot more because of that Um, that that is definitely one of those things where the science probably doesn't bear very close scrutiny Um, you know, how do you keep that singularity accessible in the ship as it moves around through space and time? But but somehow they do that's that's as far as I get there Right, so you're not actually addressing the physics of the energy required to maintain a singularity or to actually I did kind of do a little hand waving of like the singularity doesn't actually move It's just their point of access that has to move So it's like a a wormhole entry that they keep having to create but the singularity itself is still where it always has What kind if you could imagine what kind of energy source They use for their time travel. I know you didn't really address it directly, but What do you think what do you think it could possibly be? Do you have any have any ideas? Yeah, so I'm tempted to be Snipe and and just make up a word because that's that's kind of it's like they found a source That is not inexhaustible because that's unbelievable, but is really efficient It's always tough. It's always tough because there's always like Going on and sci-fi and they're pulling out these weird materials. It's like wait. We have an elemental table already Like we like this is already the universe has already been broken down to its constituents There's not other different stuff just because you've gotten asteroid But and that's kind of why I avoided it because I didn't want to go down that rabbit hole But at the same time there is a pattern of us Figuring out how to use the materials that have always been around in a different way to get more energy out Yeah So it's it's florbium that they they've developed florbium Which is a derivative of of course of exium Which was discovered by the torrentians now extinct race And was mined out of carbon There we go Did you did you when you write do you come up with? The universe do you have a playbook or a bible that kind of describes things before you get started writing or do you just Kind of get just put it all out there I with with most of my books I start with little vignettes I think of the world before the story and so I with pilot x I wrote a sketch of pilot x Landing on the planet and people reacting to where he had been I wrote a sketch of his first flight And so I write all these little things to kind of get an idea of the characters in the world It's living in and I will start to build up. It's not quite a bible But it's a notepad of like oh these are the names of the major races and this is their characteristics And these are the characters and then when I go to actually sit down and create the entire story I've got that as a reference right and you can't just like walk into all of that on the first day Today we walk into a bizarre of all races Gathering together and we'll have to do a little backstory a little definition a little explanation Explain of all of these different kind of run into them one at a time along the way So that they have some sort of Lasting impact or you interact with them for a little while right well and what I did is I I created three races There's no humans in this there are three races One of them is very humanoid and the other two aren't and those are very well developed and explained and then there's some minor Side planets that get visited that that are that you you don't have to know their whole backstory There's you know, there's a a a monk planet and a pineapple planet and a trade planet When you say pineapple planet? Yes Pineapple planet there are no pineapples. They're pineapples just ricks like one There are no pineapples there anymore. No pineapples or just a coincidence that word means something completely different When you say it's the old saying the pineapple planet. There are no pineapples there Oh, yeah Yeah, the old saying of course. It's an old linden saying settled that okay I don't want to tell you player because it would actually spoil part of the Okay, I'll read the book. You should read the book Blair. It's okay. It's quite good I mean, I'll tell you afterwards if you don't hear about reading. I just don't want to spoil it for anybody else No, I definitely will read it. Uh, kiki. Maybe if we finish it by next week, I can get it from you Right, I have finished it. So yes, I can see you in real human space bring it to the eclipse. Hey, tom Are you going to the eclipse? I am not um, I'm very sad about this Because there is an unmovable event that I have to go to involving family that will prevent me but Right sounds like one of those moments some of it from la, but I won't get to go to one of those optimal spots Right, this sounds like one of those moments in time that cannot be changed. Yes fixed point time That's why you're avoiding it. Yeah I see The niece my niece is a fixed point in time Yes, you should write that in our card Thanks for making me miss the eclipse happy birthday You're a fixed point in time. Maybe someday you'll understand what that means Oh Give her the book and sign that inside Do you have any other books that you're thinking about do you do you constantly have little ideas? Are you writing constantly or is this kind of like a spurt thing? No, I'm I'm always writing something. Um, I've got four or five that I've self published at tom errod books.com And I've got one that I just sent out to my patreon I have a patreon for my writers particularly and I just sent one out about a colony ship That has lost power and it's so big that parts of the ship have devolved Into a more primitive society and so there's the challenges for the captain and the command crew to still run the ship And they actually have to turn science into a religion To keep the ship running Without being able to explain to the entire populace because they can't properly educate because they don't have enough power That's that's interesting. I mean that that's not hard to do. I mean we kind of see that People saying that a bit about people people making science a bit of dogma or they're the science fandom Kind of in the same way that people can be excited and and into new tech gadgets It's like they're excited about science and science is going to fix everything and it's wonderful and you just get There's so much emotion behind it as opposed to Understanding that it's a tool Yeah, well, it's you know, you don't really have to explain any scientific concepts for it to get somebody to be able to charge their iphone Like you just teach them how to plug stuff in and Remind them to do when this you're in here put this thing in here and when this little bar turns red That's when you want to make sure you've got it plugged in, right? And that's when somebody says hallelujah for love of science Yeah, well, so for for instance, not not to spoil. I just sent out the beta version to my patreon supporters to do a beta read of and one of the things that I have happened is They used to everyone would look through the telescope at the eventual Uh destination of the ship, but so many people have forgotten that they're actually even on a ship That now it's become a ritual to look at what they call the hope point and And they just they they sort of like well, let's keep the habit going without having to fight to explain what this is about So it's really fascinating about that too is you could create all the sort of different aspects of of a that you can see within a single religion Like there there could be some somewhere who are like worshiping the image of the captain Yeah, no the captain's men is the name of the priesthood in the book. Okay, beautiful. Perfect, right? Yeah, and others others may have like scientific devices that they've got up on an altar that nobody's allowed to touch because they've got the You can go through all of the oh, that's fun. I love it So that's the works where's your that's in the works on your patreon right now Yeah, that's at patreon.com slash ace detect ace detect aced tect Wow, good job. You remembered to have to spell that stupid name. I do I do I tweet to you all the time ace detect is also your twitter handle And we are going to move into Some more science stuff tom you're sticking around to talk with us about all this science. Yes Yeah, if you'll let me that'd be great. All right, so You want to rattle off really fast before we move into Blair's animal corner the places people can find you online, please Sure, uh, as you said twitter.com slash ace detect, but also, uh, tom merit dot com daily tech news show dot com And sorton laser dot com, uh, well that'll get you to either the things I do or get you to links to the other things I do Perfect So Blair Everyone, you know what time it is What a little corner And I want to hear about the animal. She's your girl Except for giant Pandas Yes Oh, Justin's not here. I was waiting for Justin to go what you got Blair. Oh, man I'm like, why why is so conditioned? I was waiting. Okay. So what I've got to start are counting bees So bees we've talked about this before they understand numbers pretty well Even as early as 2009 we were able to deduce that they could do some basic arithmetic like 12 minus 3 equals 9 Which is amazing enough, but now a new piece of research Uh from university of melbourne Has found that bees understand the concept of zero So why would a bee need to understand zero? quest Yes, and so first of all I had to understand what it means to understand zero because I understand that nothing is less than something but that's not what understanding zero is understanding zero Is that zero is less than one One is less than two so to understand that to not say something versus nothing but to understand that is a numerical integer Less than one Okay, so it's an actual thing that could come one when you add one to it Right, right. So as it's a arithmetic Representation basically rather than just the lack of a thing So the way they researched this it's pretty interesting They they found first of all that bees do much better if they're punished for bad behavior as well as rewarded for good behavior, which Wow Is very interesting to me. So what they did is they had different platforms Bees were given a sweet sucrose solution as a reward for the right The right selection and on another platform. They were given a nasty tasting quinine solution Then that's the the wrong answer and what they found was that The bees associated a platform that had fewer shapes on it With the sweet rewards they had to pick the lesser than So six and four four and three, right? They had to pick the lesser number They did that about 80 of the time which is Right in line with the previous research that I was talking about where they were able to do some arithmetic But the next step of the test Was taking differently shaped objects to confirm that it's the number of shapes and not the size of stuff They did that at about the same success 80 percent And then they were given a choice between two or three shapes and zero shapes So three two or zero bees picked zero with around the same amount of accuracy Oh, I get it. And so if they didn't understand zero, they'd pick two because two is less than three Correct Yes, and then they did another experiment where they were trained in the same way But they had to choose to land on a platform with either zero or between one and six objects And they consistently chose zero But they were less accurate and took more time When the other option was one Rather than two three four five or six Which means they are making a numerical decision So you said 80 accuracy. That was the with the first experience. So they got a bee Yes Yeah, so because they they they messed up more when it was between one and zero Then when it was between six and zero means they were actually thinking about it like a number Hmm Yes, and because one the difference between one and zero is less Right than the difference between zero and two or zero and three Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah So this study shows that bee's comprehension of zero is actually similar to that of humans and primates done in previous trials But they haven't done a lot of trials on other animals other than primates on The recognition of zero So if bees can figure it out It's time for us to start looking in some other places in the animal kingdom as well And so that, you know, it's the question is, you know, what is this numerical ability Helping them with is it something to do with their navigation? Is it something to do with their foraging? Why would the Why would this numerical? Calculating ability makes sense for them to have Evolved. Yeah, so why would they need to know? That zero is less than one And not just When there's nothing Right I mean, maybe it's maybe it's possible. Maybe it has to do with pollen harvesting and having Quantities of pollen left in flowers Yeah Like that's like a hard thing to count. I wonder if it has I would think it has more to do it Well, I would wonder Oh burn I would wonder if it has more to do with Identifying how many other bees are like in an area like right? Ah, there's too many bees here already I should go where there's less bees because I then I'm more likely to find a flower that still has pollen I would wager I'm going way down in the stoicism logic for bees, but I would wager that knowing what zero is is a fundamental fundamental part of doing proper arithmetic We did math without zero for Thousand years did you? So bees are smarter than medieval europe is what you're saying just did medieval europe not have zero No, they borrowed it from uh from the middle east Yeah, arabic. I had no idea. Um, that's very interesting Dumb europeans. I don't know I think that even though but even the advanced math, right? Yeah to do advance, but maybe they didn't maybe the Maybe the europeans didn't have a zero that we can go back and look in the books For but maybe they you know, maybe they had They humans had a concept of zero. It was a concept of it. Yeah, even if there was no representation for it I'm sure right because you also have to be able to understand When weighing the best option for something if you have nothing or you have almost nothing Maybe neither is worth your time Maybe an important question maybe Maybe one thing I do love about this. I mean seriously. We're talking about Insects. This is a bee With a neural ganglia with a very limited number of neuron just a nerve ball not even a brain I remember in a philosophy course I took in college The idea of zero being You know batted around as one of the things that makes us human Oh sorry Another one bites the dust on that list more and more One of the things that connects us to the rest of nature Maybe Yes, well speaking of animals that we have shortchanged in the past in the invertebrate world I want to talk about cockroaches. What are cockroaches good for does anyone know? Um stepping on They let you know you're still walking on the sidewalk Turning into remote control robots. There is that that is for darn sure Getting a discounted rent Yes, that as well cleaning beneath the fridge So here's here's a really important one. It turns out cockroaches are for Cockroaches are the key to certain plants survival Really? How so? Oh, let me tell you so the azalea plant Monotro Pastram humili is a forest floor herb And they have a really weird way of growing So they first of all they completely rely on a fungus for nutrients And it's fleshy fruit fruit is the seed nutrients, right that either help The the seed to grow or more commonly fruit actually lures Kind of natural farmers propagators seed dispersers to eat the fruit and then poop out the seed later somewhere else with a nice little Fertilizer packet, right? So it has a fleshy fruit that has hundreds of seeds. It's a very small seed It's about a third of a centimeter And they have a hard seed coat When the fruit ripens the fruit drops to the ground the whole plant stock falls down sometimes The pulp is then at ground level But what's really weird is that the fruit has no scent It's a dull white color And it's inconspicuous against leaf litter And it's not sweet So this fruit it sounds like it's kind of failing at its job It has no reason for a vertebrate To come and eat it. This is where a cockroach comes in Hmm so the the forest cockroach Blotella nipponica, which is um Just a kind of a run-of-the-mill cockroach you'd find in a forest they Consistently in the study visited and consumed this pulp And then They pooped About three to ten hours later And each of these little pellets about one millimeter long Had about Three seeds in it. Hmm What's more the seeds were as viable As seeds removed directly from the pulp. So they were intact. They were able to grow And so these cockroaches it sounds like they are seed dispersers Wow Okay, so they're dispersing the seeds sometimes when seeds go through the digestive tracts of animals or invertebrates They become more likely to grow did they say whether or not there was an increased likelihood? It was about the same except that it helped them move So since it's three to ten hours later The cockroaches moved the seeds way farther than the seeds would get on their own. So that was the main Plus on this side is that they were able to kind of transport the little baby plants far away What's really interesting is that the fruit ripening period for this azalea plant coincides with the Eclosion period of the forest cockroach eclosion eclosion is when the Insect emerges from the pupil case Or hatches from the egg. So it's when they turn into adults And they're really hungry Yes, I bet they use some sorts of energy in their pupation And their transformation and now they're like i'm hungry Yeah, I could eat an azalea As far as we can tell This azalea plant is pretty much dependent on the forest cockroach Yeah, so they help with the abundance of the plant habitat they They exactly align with the life cycle of this azalea and the long Quote transit times or digestion times of the seeds through their gut Gives a really long distance dispersal Yeah, and so this is the first time ever that we've seen that cockroaches are seed dispersers But it's also the first time we've looked And There are about 4,600 cockroach species We've found so far on this planet. So the likelihood Yeah, that there are more is very high. So this reminded me actually of how a few months ago We found out that some mosquito species are pollinators Now cockroaches it turns out they also have a job. They're seed dispersers Well, these are outdoor cockroaches, right? Yes outdoor. Yes, but who knows Whoa, right cockroach on your kitchen floor is actually trying to Propagate a plant to your neighbor's backyard. Just moving the mold It's passing through man It just passing through man I didn't mean to sink. I was wondering about that Yeah, little joddy azalea seed just doing my job here. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. You wanted the sperm transplanted to the backyard, right? I'm taking care of that Hey, thanks little cockroach. Thanks. Go back to sleep. There we go. Your azaleas are so beautiful. What's your secret? Oh, yes, I just have thousand well first mind your step thousands of cockroaches I was just doing my job and then the foot came down. Oh, no Oh, I love that we've learned something good about cockroaches a reason to love cockroaches There may be more than one seed disperser among them. That's right So just next time you see one picture a little straw hat on their head a little spade in one of their hands There's little gardeners. That's right. And you know what it's time for us to take a moment I don't know. I was gonna where I was gonna go with that. We're gonna take a short break It's time for us to take a very short break. Stay tuned for more this week in science We'll be back in just a few moments with much more science news. Remember, I've got neutrons We've also got some dark matter. Justin brought something to talk about Stay tuned. This is this week in science Hey everybody, I hope you are enjoying the show Remember that if you are not subscribed to us, you can subscribe on itunes in the google play podcast portal Also on speaker and stitcher and tune in you can tell if you have an alexa You can tell your alexa to play this week in science and she will do it for you. 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They're these subatomic particles Little tiny things that are really hard to detect They just don't run into things because they're nothing bothers them nothing bother whizzing right now There are neutrinos whizzing through us past us through the floor Nothing bothers them they just pass right through most of the time without bumping into anything without colliding with anything We have these huge neutrino detectors Underground with these massive photo multipliers in the hopes That we can detect One of these collisions that if a neutrino bumps into an atom that that atom will be shaken up enough to Blow off some other particles and a little burst of light A photon And that that photon could then be photo multiplied and photo multiplied until they could measure it And say we saw a neutrino And learn about neutrinos which are very interesting Did you know there are flavors of neutrinos and I'm not talking about chocolate strawberry thin mint or peanut butter Tau and mule and Yeah Three different flavors and electrons Quarks have colors Some of the strange neutrinos have these moons and towels. It's it's a little bit of like losing the ability We have a differentiation of this thing that's already hard to explain to people We'll call it flavor. We'll call it color We're gonna we're just gonna try to tack on something that somebody could relate to Up down and strangely charming. Yes, it's strange and charming strangely charming. No Yes, so these electron muon tau neutrinos they also Jump back and forth. They they switch between types. They don't just stay An electron neutrino, especially if they bump if they collide with something and energy is released They're gonna switch into a different kind of neutrino and so they turn into these different flavors My favorite detector is the ice cube detector array. It's an Antarctica. It says kilometer big block of ice Antarctic ice the purest ice on the planet just about no no particles in it Just clear ice and they drilled a bunch of holes in there through put their photo detector arrays in it And they've been detecting neutrinos from the sun Trying to find out about The different flavors of neutrinos. Well 43 years ago Daniel Friedman a theoretical Physicist who's not the mass Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge back 43 years ago The year of my birth 1974 here. I am dating myself He described a theory That was just recently actually discovered to be true And it didn't take one of the giant detectors that we've built It actually took a detector that was quite small kind of the size of a coffee can And the exciting thing about this is they weren't actually seeing either This this theory of these neutrinos. It wasn't a collision It was a bump It was a little they describe it as if you rolled a ping pong ball ball at a bowling ball The kind of effect that would have on the bowling ball is what they were trying to measure But they were also shooting shooting bowling balls Or they were shooting cue balls at it. They weren't just waiting for cue balls to fall from the sun Yes, so it was in a lab where they actually create neutrinos As a spike in the punch here We're spiking the punch. Yes. And so The the members of this collaboration called the coherent collaboration Detected what is called coherent neutrinos scattering. They reported it in science And they used the spallation neutron source of Oak Ridge national laboratory in Tennessee And this is exactly what it's a neutron a neutrino source. They it's They create beams of neutrons And there are lots of neutrinos that come out of those beams as well And so they went around the building around the facility basically trying to find the best spot To catch the neutrinos without getting the neutrons and other things And they found this hallway underground that was just kind of padded by concrete basically and They put their device in there and they measured it Over a long period of time and they measured a whole bunch of different 461 days worth of data 134 neutrino scattering events occurred Supporting this 43 year old hypothesis Finally, they're able to do it and the clincher here the big exciting thing here is that it was not as I said In a big neutrino detection facility the device that they came up with Could potentially lead to A portable neutrino detector. Does anyone know why a portable neutrino detector could potentially be important? Uh, can we take it in space? Could take it in space. Sure. It'd be easy to take to space But more practically you could maybe you know take it around to different nuclear facilities around the world Fukushima Drop one in the north korea Or is somebody trying to make nuclear weapons that shouldn't be here. I've got my portable briefcase neutrino detector Yeah, there'll be one at every airport. My milk jug says you're lying Yeah, and uh, so the the The article is very well received except by a team at max plonk institute for physics in munich germany where they're they've been trying to develop a Portable detector. They've been trying to detect Coherent scattering at nuclear reactors and the main researcher Stodolski leo stodolski says my colleagues and I have been going over this paper hoping to find something wrong with it But we haven't been able to find anything That's like the highest compliment, right? We really want you to be wrong But we can't figure out anyway Yeah, so the uh, this is a very exciting physics discovery in the physics community, but not just because it verifies an old hypothesis Which in itself is exciting, but because it potentially will lead to uh future technologies and applications Which is always very neat And then moving on from neutrinos. I got dark matter clumping. I got my neutrinos bumping in the dark matter What? Oh dark matter We always want to know exactly how much there is A lot Just if it is I've We know I said this on this week in science previously I think one of these days we're going to find out the dark matter and dark energy are not what everybody thinks it is It's going to be the new ether Yeah, a bit of it is I think I think we've got placeholders and then there's going to be a whole You know emerging properties from a set of things going on that we overlook that is a belief not an evidence based It absolutely go bring that to this week in opinions Well, that's that's part of that's part of what To do on this show is speculate around the fringes of the science And there is there is you know if they're good if this is going to be Dark matter it's something completely different than everything we've been pinning on it so far Well, then it's already heading in that direction and how we find out what it is Really is to have studies like this. Yeah, and the exciting thing here is that the dark matter Measurement that was just recently reported and made was made by the dark energy survey So the survey for dark energy just measured Dark matter. Yeah Yes, and it's a very actually very exciting Result this is a five-year project the dark energy survey and this august They are just going into their fifth year of data collection. They just released 10 papers corresponding to the first year of data collection What they've done is they've taken a picture a snapshot of The universe just a very thin sliver of it And they're going to be pouring over Uh pouring over the This sliver over the over the coming years In looking at this very slim thin sliver They have been using gravitational mapping gravitational lensing to accurately portray and represent the the galaxies within the sliver of space that they are have been looking at And it's the most accurate measurement that they've ever made and you know what it supports the idea that dark matter Makes up 26 percent of the universe Wait, that's all that's it dark matter makes up 26 percent of the universe And 70 percent is dark energy Yes And the exciting thing here the interesting part of what they've done is the way that they've looked at it. It's um they're looking at Current time There was the european space agencies orbiting plonk observatory That looked back at the clumpiness that occurred just after the big bang In the cosmic background radiation And they were able to take the measurements that they have currently And compare them to the measurements that the plonk Survey had and they were able to To actually see based on the original data from the plonk survey how the clumpiness Evolved Over the last 13 and a half billion years to now And they were able to actually do a comparison so it's it's Able they were able to to basically say this is what it looked like before we have this from the cosmic background radiation And now we know what it looks like so we can estimate what happened in between And so we can make estimates about the force Of dark matter on pulling every matter together and the force of dark energy trying to kind of pull everything apart And allow for the expansion of the universe So the two of these together Support this very simple version of the dark matter dark energy theory And joe zunts of the university of edinburgh who worked on the analysis of this said the moment we realized that our measurement matched the plonk result Which is within seven percent Was thrilling for the entire collaboration Something's there Some because they're this is this is detection by Looking at the effects, right? And so you say well if what we think is causing this effect Then this other effect should be this and then they look at that and they're like wow it turns out we were right Exactly We are our hypotheses about how these forces work and the and how the universe is how the the forces are dynamically Directing the evolution of the universe We were right. Yeah, we were on it And this is only the first year of this uh of this survey And so we have four more years of data one more year of data collection former years of data analysis to to come out And they're already the accuracy is unprecedented so this is a Very interesting thing the the dark energy survey team developed new ways To detect the tiny lensing distortions of galaxy images These are these are effects not even visible to the eye enabling revolutionary advances in understanding the cosmic signals And in the process they created the largest guide to spotting dark matter in the cosmos ever drawn And the new dark matter map is 10 times the size of one that was released by the dark energy survey in 2015 And it will eventually be three times the size Of what it is currently Yeah clumpiness in the universe. Thanks to dark matter Pretty fun. I thought it was pretty. I love dark matter dark matter We don't know exactly what you are yet, but we know where you are. Yeah Dark matter makes it sound like something though if they just said something We don't quite understand instead of dark matter every time. It's a branding problem Yeah, it is. No, it's not it says exactly what it is. It's dark matter. It's matter That's dark. But it might not be matter No, it is matter Probably matter Okay, yes, but we are at the early stages of this amazing discovery of something we don't completely understand dark slowy stuff and dark fasty stuff Doesn't that is cool. Yeah Yeah, that's not going to work for the branding at all Back to the drawing board Advertising team. Okay, Justin. What you got? So, uh, we all understand that we didn't evolve from chimpanzees But the chimpanzees and us humans share a common ancestor about six seven million years ago And we both evolved a bit since then we have a great deal of fossils to fill in the story of the changes that have taken place between ancient ape and man But there's not a whole lot known about the evolution Uh before that the common ancestor has uh before 10 million years We don't have a much of a picture of anything that led up to that now a discovery in kenya of a remarkably complete fossil ape skull Reveals with the common ancestor of all living apes and humans may have looked like this is just announced It's gonna be the august 10th, which is tomorrows addition to the scientific journal nature Uh, this belongs to an infant this skull that lived about 13 million years ago nicknamed lessee The fossil is the skull of an infant and it is the most complete extinct ape skull Known in the fossil record That is by itself And it would be worth talking about Uh, but this is of of this is of greater consequence here. So this is Initially it was found in 2014 by kenyan fossil hunter John the kusi and a 13 million year old rock lair the nap Puget napudet area which is It's like this volcanic Area it was a volcanic area 13 million years ago says here, uh A volcanic volcano nearby volcano buried the forest where the baby ape lived preserving the fossil and countless trees It also provided us with the critical volcanic minerals By which we were able to date the fossil says craig s feeble wreckers university new brunswick Many of the most informative parts of the skull are preserved inside the fossil. So to make them visible team used an extremely sensitive form of 3d x-ray imaging at the synchrotron facility in granobal France they were able to reveal We were able to reveal the brain cavity and inner ears And the unerupted adult teeth with their daily record of growth lines says paul taffora Of the european synchrotron radiation facility the quality of our images was so good that we could establish from the teeth That the infant was about one year four months old when it died The unerupted teeth inside the infant skull also indicated the specimen belonged to a new species nyan zappy thickus alesi is what they're calling it Uh comes from the dracana word for ancestor ales until now All nyan zappy thickus species Were only known from teeth and it was actually still a question about whether or not this was even an ape Importantly this is the this is john fliegel stony berk university quoting Importantly the cranium was fully developed Had fully has fully developed bony ear tubes important feature linking it with living apes today. Oh, that was Ellen miller wake first university alesi skull It's about the size of a lemon. I think you had a picture of it up there Ooh, and there they are hitting it with a laser that has nothing to do with the experiment. That was just for fun Yes, what do archaeologists do when they actually get into a lab they just shoot Skulls with green lasers. No with its notably small Now it looks most like a baby gibbon This gives the initial impression that this is an extinct gibbon Observes chris gilbert of hunter college new york however on our analysis shows that this appearance is not exclusively found in gibbons And it evolved multiple times among extinct apes monkeys and their relatives so That the uh, oh the species was not given like in the way it behaved those inner ear tubes The way they were balanced Inside the inner ear the balance the balance organ inside the inner ears, right? The way this thing was was placed these little ear tubes inner ear tubes where that was how it was articulated means that it probably wasn't Jumping around the trees like a gibbon. It wasn't very acrobatic in fact uh The inner ear of lessee shows that it would have had a much more cautious way of moving around Which is which is an important very important aspect of now understanding ape evolution It wasn't just swinging from the trees and then Down on the ground and hey, let's start trying to move about a little less Athletically it started to get motion sickness It would have and I don't want to go up there. I'm not riding the ride mom. No, this was already 13 million years ago trees Careful My gosh, I'm a gird in the chat room says tarzan would be really disappointed It's true. Tarzan would have a lot of you know nausea issues. I just can't get past the fact that it's a nyan ape Nyan Instead of nyan cat. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, so so yeah an important piece of ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient uh human and ape ancestry being revealed here In the most complete extinct ape skull ever found and it's 13 million years old. That's fantastic all by itself But again, yeah We weren't we weren't necessarily That that time in the trees that we keep referring back to Is starting to get to the point where maybe we just went to the trees for a little bit and then came back And like didn't hang out there much like realize it was something we tried on it was vacation It was it was just you know, hey, let's I see monkeys in the trees Let's remember a we kind of ape like a monkey like we're not that different Let's try this tree thing and after a while we're just Not for me. There's three things for the birds. Yeah, it's just a phase we were going there, right? Yeah There's so much that we can learn from these little tiny I mean these little tiny inner ear bones and that this The x-ray scanning could help with that also get into The head where you can't dig it out, but the x-rays let us know that those bony inner ear Pieces were in there and how they were situated. And so I mean that to me is the we could not have done this A hundred years ago, you know, we if we had found this skull a hundred years ago We could not have figured out these things about this This individual or this organism So ghost belation and x-rays and synchrotrons Yeah lasers And go lasers We love the lasers because they go Yeah Justin, did you did you see the story this this last week about farming talking about different ways that Humans have done things It had not doesn't have to do with going to the trees and then leaving but We have this idea that farming occurred basically in the Middle East and there was This was the bread basket the region that farming Became something we did about 10,000 years ago there's evidence from South America and other areas of Africa and the forests that people actually started burning Areas of vegetation about 50 or 60 thousand years ago to make room for habitation And from that point forward that farming actually got started in in forests in some regions Huh Yeah, so that was another thing this last week people we've been doing things longer than you think in some cases Yeah, those dates keep getting pushed back and back and back Yeah Oh, you know what I like pushing back and back and back the alarm clock in the morning Do I have to get up right now? Yeah, just push that back a little farther. I don't want to wake up yet Uh, but while I sleep, you know, do you ever wake up and remember your dreams? Not often always always sometimes, okay. Yeah, I'm hoping for that dream dvr. You talked her out on last week's episode Right to help. Yeah. Yeah They'd also might eliminate the need for therapy. You just watch that back. We're actually not Well instead of remembering our dreams in the morning there is evidence that We can actually learn During certain stages of sleep So, you know that whole idea. Oh, I'm just gonna sleep on my textbook and hope that I'll learn it through osmosis Right. Well, that's not gonna happen That's not but what about a book on tape But a book on tape could potentially work based on evidence from a new study recently published in nature communications According to this study Highly selective memory processes are active during human sleep With intertwined episodes of facilitative and suppressive Plasticity, so what does this mean? They found these researchers found that during REM sleep light REM sleep and full on and and and full on REM REM sleep sounds that were played during those periods of time Were remembered or recalled better Upon waking when they were played again, they did little tests to determine whether or not people recalled these sounds or could learn them more easily and After REM sleep Was much more easy. However during deep non REM sleep During those deep sleep cycles There's something going on the brain that not only Doesn't remember but actually suppresses learning So if you were to play a book on tape tape to yourself You would need the device that tom talked about earlier that could tell when you're in REM sleep To turn it on and play it when you're in REM and then turn it off again When you're out of REM sleep Because if you were listening to information During non REM sleep, it would actually be harder to learn it Hmm what this this makes me worry This makes me worry that there's something else going on as far as like Like moving memories from short to long term or internalizing memories And if we we start playing books on tape while we're sleeping we mess with all the other stuff that happened during the day Yeah, that's true memory consolidation that that is a big function for sleep And there's a lot of research that does show that without sleep your memory is impaired that you don't learn things And so we don't really know What would happen if we were to play books on tape try to learn certain information While we are sleeping, you know, we don't want to be like neo in the matrix and go to sleep and learn kung fu during your REM sleep cycle Don't wear I know Maybe I do want to do that However, this study it didn't play Verbal books on tape. It was just sound exposure And they just used it was sounds so it wasn't anything specific to informational recall Um And so this is an implicit memory as opposed to an explicit memory. It's some something that uh, you don't really know Kind of how where you don't remember where and when and how you learned it, but then you just kind of know it Which could so I used to fall asleep. I used to fall asleep listening to language tapes It sounds like I don't know Are there certain words that you never can get right because they were during your non REM sleep Quick there speak french Uh, what do you want? I'm talking about uh, it's no What's your name now? Je veux pas De la nutrition Je veux pas de la science Is que tu as well That's what Wait, that's french Wait, then it doesn't work when I try to It obviously failed. I had no idea what any of you were saying so the uh, this one did And I've fallen asleep to plenty of french movies. So I have Oh, okay. So the interesting thing here, uh, you know, is not only could this be used for, you know for DIY Brain hackers who are trying to improve their performance on stuff, you know If you want to could you learn things in your sleep? Actually that is one question that this still Really needs to address more in detail but the uh, the obvious one is the learning suppression And what is going on in the neural patterns during different phases of sleep? And in which parts of the brain so in neural suppression like basically it's taking these signals that are being heard The sounds that came in whatever happened in the brain basically didn't keep the neurons at even keel It said if it told the neurons If you hear this sound again, you're not going to react Just do not react. Don't get excited if you hear this sound again and they and so There's something actively suppressing the the neural network that responds to whatever That sound is during that deep sleep. That is the stage of sleep that Justin was in when he was listening to his french films Yeah, it actually makes sense that now that I think about it because the the subtitles Uh Don't work their way in while you're sleeping No, they don't work. No, they do not Um, but another way that you could potentially improve your learning not just maybe through sleep And you're in hearing things in your REM sleep dietary restriction Hmm brain food not only this sounds less fun. It does sound a lot less fun I'm not excited about it. But not only does dietary restriction potentially extend your lifespan It also helps to improve learning and so researchers in a plus biology article this last week Wanted to find out if this increase in longevity and memory improvement if they were The result of the same mechanism or if there were separate mechanisms Long story short They pretty much found that they're separate Mechanisms, they're regulated separately and they found that a single amino acid metabolite this single amino acid metabolite by the name of Kynurenic acid This is a metabolic product product of l tryptophan Um is responsible for it so l tryptophan Creates is a kynurenic acid Kynurenic acid inhibits glutamate signaling and inhibiting glutamate signaling is not good for learning dampens learning so if you Don't have the kynurenic acid Then you have you don't and then you have the learning You don't have the learning. I mean, yes Yes, no, I'm getting confused If you don't have the kynurenic acid the glutamate Is going to be inhibited and therefore Is not going to be inhibited and then you're going to have learning that works better Sometimes these circular you want to reduce the kynurenic acid and when you're just Not eating as much you're not taking in as much kynurenic acid Exactly, especially if you're not eating as much of tryptophan l tryptophan containing foods So say turkey if you specifically want to reduce or improve your learning around Thanksgiving Wait, this explains so much about Thanksgiving dinner conversations It does right Yeah, but it's very interesting that this one metabolite improves Improves the learning and and it also has effects on other asp other pathways related to uh to memory and Includes signaling so So kiki, yeah What player need to eat to get smarter? You need to eat less Oh This is tough though because a lot of people go on these crazy diets to eat less and then they end up having Malnutrition problems because they're not taking in enough iodine or or you know, that's yeah, that's overall So, I mean if you're malnourishing yourself, then your entire system is not going to be firing less You have to eat less across the board in proportion not just cut out an entire category of food Yeah, you know and when you do the dietary restriction, you don't just cut it out. Yeah, you restrict it by You don't cut out all food. Yeah, and don't just Don't assume you're eating too much also You you may not be And you may yes, you may be Acting maybe doing it perfectly and this is just how intelligent you can be Yeah, so anyway dietary restriction of L tryptophan containing foods that could make you a little bit Smarter And I've never seen a really smart turkey. You may be smarter if you tell me there you go You'd be surprised Justin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we've got some they they can but if it rains, they'll drown looking up at the sky All right, Justin, you got you want you want to tell me another story? Uh, this is actually not as big as a story as it might first seem but four out of five doctors often agree about one form of treatment or another The fifth doctor, however The fifth doctor always recommends opioids Oh, no, what? I don't know. It's not quite that bad, but nearly one in five family medicine physicians One in 12 physicians overall Accepted payments from pharmaceutical companies related to opioids This is according to a new study out of boston medical centers rake and center for addiction medicine The first large-scale national study of industry payments involving opioids and suggests that pharmaceutical companies May have a stronger hold than previously known on how doctors prescribe the powerful drugs So, uh, this was they used Centers for Medicare and Medicaid service data research has identified 175,255 non-research opioid related payments to 68,177 physicians between august 2013 and december 2015 totaling over 46 billion dollars Payments are defined as transfers of value. So this could be sending the check to the physician For a reimbursement for travel a speaking consulting fee education meals Just be buying a sandwich. In fact, the average payment to physicians was 15 dollars With most receiving at least one per year. So that doesn't sound bad. What doctor is going to be swayed by 15 dollars That's like two sandwiches It's like a couple of them, right? The average payment to was only 15 dollars However, the top 1% of doctors collectively received more than 38 million dollars of the 46 million dollars That group averaged more than 2600 dollars in yearly payments during the study and so of course Some received much much more some received much much less And the question isn't and they didn't direct this specifically in this to how much they were prescribing That i'm sure is there in the data, but that's not what this is um This is the physician payments sunshine sunshine act which was Passed under the affordable care act in 2010 Requires drug companies to report all payments to physicians in the united states so Previous research suggests payments from drug companies may lead to increased prescribing by doctors for marketed medications Even when payments are of a low monetary value. So that 15 dollar sandwich Might be enough to sway a doctor. I guess Well, if humans are big, I mean human behavior, we we are swayed by reciprocity And this is something that psychologically works for us tit for tat The idea that if you do something nice for me, it could just it you probably use this in sales all the time Use giving somebody not maybe not even giving them money But giving them something nice. Oh, I'll do this for you here. You want this cup of coffee? And suddenly they feel a little bit more indebted to you. I should start doing that You don't get people coffee at the car dealership There's coffee there Step one Yeah, so the idea that even a small amount would not sway a doctor Even a relationship just just knowing somebody makes you less like well, you know what? Joe's really good I'll I'll prescribe his because I can prescribe two different things here. They're about the same thing I'll prescribe joe's thing because joe's always really nice to me. I need to buy me that sandwich that one time Yeah, and then he bought me a sandwich again. That's great. And then he bought me Let me be a deli Right, right. Well, this is and this is they write this is 46 million dollars just from opiate company Pharmaceutical really opiate related pharmaceutical. So this is that that $15 sandwich and that and that's why I wish this like this Data was explorable and exploding all over my screen so I could click on links and everything else It may be a $15 related to an opioid Conference that you spoke at or sandwich that you were given But how many other times have they come to see? And come calling and and on different subjects each time, but maybe You know each time. Hey, I saw your numbers on XYZ opiate is uh, kind of up. That's excellent. Keep it out. Keep killing the pain man We can't have people in pain out there and then probably giving little graphs on pain management and If uh, somebody's eyes are narrowed like this that means they're they're more pain than they're telling you So you should add this many pills to the next person. Who knows how we got into this mess But there are thousands of people dying every year now from this opiate Uh epidemic they're calling it now and it's it's become a health problem created by Well created by facilitated by physicians and drug companies and pharmaceutical companies who are now being sued by Counties like the county I live in We're creating this problem. Yeah Um other problems we got I have I have bad news and then I'm gonna end on some some good news Um other bad news other problems we have dead zones We think we talk about the dead zones every once in a while There's you there's an a specific northwest dead zone that sometimes comes up off the Oregon and california coast That's not the one not cell reception Not cell reception dead zone. No, I'm talking about dead zones in the ocean. These are areas of low oxygen And usually they're caused by stuff like agricultural runoff where you have a bunch of algae or small small critters that use up all the oxygen and then there's nothing there for the fish and so everything dies and Every year around this time. There's a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico And it goes up and down in how big it is but this year we had a lot of rain There was a lot of runoff from the agriculture and this year the researchers say They couldn't even finish measuring how big it is because They ran out of time and they had they had to take the boat in and they couldn't do it And so they're they're thinking it's about 50% larger than normal The average size of the dead zone over the last 31 years has been 14,037 square kilometers According to Nancy Rabelais a researcher at Louisiana State University And yeah, they they couldn't measure the entire extent of this year's dead zone because It's so big and so farming that algae out of there Yeah, this is most most likely based on runoff that's coming out through the Mississippi Mississippi river Outlet into the Gulf of Mexico, but there are others and the issue here is this is It could affect Gulf fisheries quite significantly. So we'll be affecting oysters and clams and the fishes Right and this this might be we often think about when we talk about Chlamydia climate change global warming We we often we often address it as though it's going to be weather That we notice or rising sea levels one of the one of the big things that's supposed to come along with this is as there's more melting of ice caps and more Hot and warmth of the ocean that we get more moisture in the atmosphere More moisture in the atmosphere means more rain more rain means more runoff and more runoff means more fertilizer In the waterways more fertilizer in the waterways is exactly what this Is the result of and that might be where where a lot of the world that's coastal because that's where a lot of people We have coastal Is we're going to notice it in our coastal Fish estuaries, they're going to have this problem We're going to have more and more of these dead zones and that might be the thing that we see Before Miami is is looking like Venice or Venice is looking like Atlantis We're likely to see these sorts of things progressing at an accelerated pace first Yeah, well, it's the you know, it's the idea we've got in coral reefs. We've got the the dead zones in coral reefs where they Kind of seem to die off when they get burned In when the water gets too hot sometimes they come back and they're able to come back and very often It's a yearly thing where they kind of die away because the water's hot But then there's enough of the organisms around that it comes back every year But maybe this happens enough times or if it's a large enough extent suddenly the area does not come back or it doesn't come back to the same extent and it causes a a A slippery slope effect that leads us downhill. So hopefully that's not what's happening, but I don't know It's it's self-accelerating too For instance, for instance, where you are is that the town is city of roses. Is that also a name for portland? It is okay One of the things that they have to do in portland to make those roses grow Is they have to fertilize the heck out of everything much heavier than you have to do in the central valley Even because it rains so much the soil is drained Of of all of those plant nutrients. So the more it rains the more you have to fertilize The more you have to fertilize the more run-off there is because there's more rain and less fishes Slippery is the saddest story of if you give a mouse a cookie ever Is it really it really is I don't like this story if you if you yeah Oh Okay, who wants a job? There's a couple of job offers another one Yeah, there's a there's a job in china To run the world's largest telescope China built the world's largest radio telescope. It is a 500 meter aperture spherical telescope It's also called the fast telescope, you know 500 meter aperture spherical telescope It's twice as large as the erasibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico And these telescopes are used to collect radio waves from sources like pulsars black holes aliens I don't know. They're also used for filming movies like contact But according to Yeah, but according to the south china morning post They're looking for somebody to run it china doesn't have Any astronomers experienced enough to run a facility of this size and complexity So they're looking for people from the western world. They're publishing in western journals Trying to find astronomers that can do it So why don't I believe that for a second? How can that possibly be true? If you have the following The following experience qualifications Maybe you can go work in china and make 1.2 million dollars a year The candidate must have at least 20 years of previous experience in the field Must have taken a leading role in large-scale radio telescope project with extensive managerial experience And also hold a professorship or equally senior position in a world-class research institute or university Getting applicants Yeah, no, this is getting so narrow Also, the applicant must be named bob peterson Yes, your first name must be neil. Your last name must be de grassy and Wait a sec Yeah, according to this just ask the man Yes, according to this ars tectetica article an astronomer from the giant majelin telescope in chile said there are probably only about 40 or so astronomers in the entire world who would qualify for such a job And they say hi to me and even for 1.2 million dollars. They don't necessarily want to go to china right food Yes, good food Yeah, I don't know. So anyway, you can get a job In china running the fast Telescope or maybe you can get a job working for nasa as the planetary protection officer Oh Are you ready? Yes, do I get to choose my own customers one provided to me? Well, this uh, this job This job requisition went out last week and a lot of people were very excited about the the men in black possibilities, um, however, this doesn't really have anything to do with men in black really the the planetary protection officer would be responsible for, uh Ensuring sterility procedures when we are going to other planets so that we don't infect other planets with our own bacteria also in uh in protection procedures to Uh, isolate any foreign objects so that we don't get infected by things from other planets Um, anyway, there was an effectant officer is what it sounds like Yeah, it's the highly qualified disinfectant officer I'm technically in janitorial for nasa This is that conversation with the with the the real guy who's really bad at talking to the the the suicide He's on he's on he's in charge of uh, people who are going to commit suicide. He's the first responder to that But he's really bad at it. So after you know, he's like, yeah, well He's about people who are committing suicide as they always jump jumpers always jump. You never talk them down You try you go out there, but You just they're always gonna jump like like that's an impossible job though It's impossible. Let's disinfect something nasa's proven over and over again is absolutely impossible every clean room They've had they we've discovered a new extremophile in another clean room. Look at that So that's actually a great job because you just be like eh extremophiles. What are you gonna do? I think it's a little cheerier than your example I think so It's not some from some movie where the guy's just like Like and the kids are playing he's like, hey, I'm gonna put a fork in your eye. You know, but like he's just an awful guy It's Oh, yeah And to bring it back up here at the end of the show as we end the show nasa got a letter from a nine-year-old Name jack who was interested in applying for the position. He said dear nasa My name is jack davis and I would like to apply for the planetary protection officer job I may be nine But I think I would be fit for the job One of the reasons is my sister says I am an alien Also, I have seen almost all the space And alien movies I can see I have also seen the show marvel agents of shield and hope to see the movie I am great at video games I am young so I can learn to think like an alien Sincerely jack davis guardian of the galaxy fourth grade And nasa responded nasa wrote back the director of the planetary science division the The director jim green wrote back and said dear jack I hear you are a guardian of the galaxy and that you're interested in being a nasa planetary protection officer. That's great Our planetary protection officer position is really cool and is very important work It's about protecting earth from tiny microbes when we bring back samples from the moon Asteroids and mars. It's also about protecting other planets and moons from our germs as we responsibly explore the solar system We are always looking for bright future scientists and engineers to help us So I hope you will study hard and do well in school. We hope to see you here at nasa one of these days So you're saying there's a chance Damn NASA you're so cool nasa responding to kids letters. I love it. I think that's I mean This is a great example of wonderful engagement science communication nasa did a wonderful job of communicating the role of the position and I think it's an inspiring letter. I think I hope it's the kind of thing that jack is going to take with him What if jack's sister is right? What if he's an alien? I've got to stop properly formatting my letters to nasa Write it with your left hand Yeah, right of my left hand and do it in pencil. This is for crayon And then tell them you're nine and in fourth grade. I might do it on that really large ruled paper This is how I have I have a four-year-old in a in a fifth grader Maybe I could just work through them as proxy. Yeah, that's your scribes That's right. Just get them to transcribe things for you and then sign their names Or you could just get them to write what they'd like to do nasa. My dad would be really great with the job. Yeah Oh my goodness. All right, you guys, I think we've done it. We've made it to the end Come another show Thank you tom A pleasure as always and my only disappointment in ever being on this week in science is now. I've already heard the episode Yes It's always weird to go back and listen to yourself. So yeah at two and a quarter speed I might have to try that actually Oh my goodness and everyone out there everyone in the chat room fata and brandon and identity for And everyone else who helps us out on twist. Thank you so much Thank you for joining us this evening. Thank you for being a part of the show and to our patrons I would like to say thank you To paul disney jibberton lattermore john rataswamy richard ony miss byron lee eo kevin parochan jacklyn boister tyron fong Andy gro keith corcel jake jones jarls ferrell's chris clark richard charlene henry prine hedrick john gridley steven bickle Kevin rails back ulysses ag kins dave fraudel james randall paul calder mark mezara's a dire trainer 84 leila marshal clark larry garcia randy mazuka tony steele jarl donyago steve debel louis smith paul harden kyle washington gray goofman time jump for 319 xp daryl lambert who are in sarang alex wilson jason schneiderman dave neighbor jason dozier matthew litwin eric nap jason roberts rich reporter roddy david wiley avard astin sir frank indelic christopher rapin dania pierson paul stanton david brenden minnish dale bryant todd northcut arlene moss bill cursey ben rothick darwin hannon rudie garcia felix alvarez bryan hone orly radio bryan kondren mark nathan recohexitor mitch neves flying out john crocker christopher drier ardy i'm shawada david wilkinson steve mishinsky rick ramus gary swinsburg phil nadeau braxton howard salkind sam matt setter emigrenier philip schane james bobson curt larson stefan insama honey moss mountain sloth jim drapo jason oldes james alec dodia lumilama joe wheeler dugle cambell craig porter adam mishkan erin luthan marjorie david summary tyler harrison in colombo Ahmed thank you for all your support on patreon and if you are interested in supporting us You can find information at patreon.com slash this week in science Remember you can help us out simply by telling your friends about twist. 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I never hear this part of the show I know this is a part of the show. It doesn't show up on the podcast Also, I didn't realize that haiku that comes in the night and apple market placey are not the way it's written in the script Oh, yeah, the script is the script is wrong. It's just a guide. But you do it every week I know it is the script, but it's not in the script Right, it's crazy Spicy in the scientists and yet I can't do it without the script I absolutely Reading the script. Yeah, and I'm paraphrasing the parts that are written wrong But if I don't have it there, I'm like, oh, what is it? Email addresses or something I'm supposed to say now So funny spicy in the scientists That's a cool group of scientists there uncomfortable So tom I have to admit that I no longer read What I've lost it I like can't like I just don't read anymore. You're not like they're going to be an Audio there's an audio book. Yeah. Nice. Okay, cool It's really well done. Uh, the the guy kevin who does the narration is amazing Beautiful, okay nice I'd like to read an audio book. I know. I mean do the voice for I would love to do that. I want to do Just tell me kiki. Tell me where and when I can get you in front of a microphone again And we can do some more feedback recording. You want to do more jack feedback? I love to do are you are we gonna are you gonna do that? Are we gonna do that? Didn't you lose all of the last one? What happened? The last one was we did it in the studio and it was that was with blaire was there and it was just completely There was static in the machine And the recording didn't go through and I knew to test it when we were there and I was convinced everything was fine and it wasn't Uh, there is still what I just don't like editing. There's still one that needs to be edited halfway But I there is a dynamic I have that sounds like similar to what you've got going on in your book Which so jack has this uh my main character is like a noir detective. He's okay I like it. He's like a philip marlowe sam spade pulled right out of the johnny dollar stuff Um, and his sidekick through much of it is an android Who's always uh got a little bit of a crush on him and trying to convince him that android can be more than just Right robot side. Okay at one point to escape Uh escape imprisonment. She hides her ai within his ship and it's the only time they don't get along He just cannot stand the fact that like You know, he's not just directing orders and then taking control. She's like has not just Asay in things but now can override his decisions everything She's the ship and until he gets her out of the ship. He's just completely can't stand her. Oh, that's so cool Have you ever read uh, becky chambers long way to a small angry planet? No, that sounds cool. So the at the How to not spoil um Is there an audio version because if not, I won't ever come across. No, there's a really good audio version Uh, and it's a really good story and there's an ai character That has a major transformation happen, which is then followed in the sequel to the book That's big enough But like the ai is a background character in long way to a small angry planet But the sequel is she is a main she is the main character of the story Yeah, and actually the one that's the one that's still somewhere in this computer wanting me to go back and edit the other half Uh is is centered around the character after coming back out of the ship again. Yeah, it's the Sounds cool. I want to hear it I've got the I got one version of it. It's got I got a version with time travel too You might you might you might be right up the alley. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Love me a time travel story Uh, we just do any of the minions have the link to that because I don't know if I could ever find it again That's what the minions do for you every time you look for it. I don't know where I don't know I think Yeah But but I don't I can't write like descriptive anything I can't walk into a room and tell you what's in there in writing Uh Yeah, I have issues with that too. I love I love dialogue. I love radio plays. So I did everything I just it's just the dialogue everything's told through dialogue with No, no narration. I'm getting better at describing people And things but I'm still not very good about setting scenes But then I've had some people tell me that's good because American authors Especially often spend way too much time telling you like the dirt in the corner Right and and that's one of the kind of nice things about the radio plays is that You have full production The value that your brain can produce for it Yeah It's based on the sounds there are sound effects or it's based on the things that the characters say kind of Yeah, the tone of voice. Yeah The nuance I've for a long time. I've wanted to just do like a really Serial Oriented not serial the podcast but like, you know old-fashioned sit timey old play me serial sci-fi Yeah, audio story like just ongoing story and I know that plenty of other people do that, but it just sounds fun Yeah, so that's that's what this is That's what this is the thing that the thing that kept it from from being something that I could I've written Uh a half dozen episodes of this thing Doing all of the recording and then the editing afterwards is the thing I found out don't have Existence it's in the more characters the more editing Yes Oh my gosh, gourd is funny, but I need to know how thick the dust on the carpet in the dark The unimportant room to the left of the main character is It was a velvety dust Strengths got got the links for you immediately. Oh, wow. Do you have strengths way to go strengths? Yep Strengths was check those out and listen to those. It's a leisure there. Um, they're kind of campy bad gateway Oh Okay, let's go to uh This this is the This is the sound cloud that should work web archive. Oh, I got it right here One of them works Yeah, they both the jack feed up one. That was just just that first time I clicked it. I reloaded and it's fine now. All right, cool Weird identity for you should write music for sci-fi radio plays That would be good And this one does Radio plays I like it. This one solves the paradox of time travel. I think much in the way that you were describing Um In that in that you you are creating your past You're you're setting up the past. Yeah We never really learned what the character's main real name is spoiler alert, but he's At the end of going back and trying to stop Something bad from happening. He ends up giving himself his own name and identity There are a lot of similarities between our two stories because pilot x Is not his name throughout the entire book His name changes based on his occupation because a london culture your first name is what you do Yeah, and you keep your last name And and and yeah, there is a there is a there's another part too where like There's a character who who's who turns to him Because he has to solve a problem with with a that's gone wrong in the timeline or you know, they have it It's a time traveling cruise ship every once in a while a cruise ship goes missing. So they call him to go help him out And he has no idea what the guy's talking about when they when they meet in this it's because this is the first time It's like what do you mean? You're you're always the guy that we go to but yeah, yeah Never done this before No, I did I did a big where a guy has his final meeting with pilot x before pilot x has had his final meeting with him Yeah, that's great. Yeah, tiny. Why me wibbly wobbly can get kind of confusing Yeah, you have to keep track of it So you don't get your timelines confused. Yeah So so yeah, yeah, if you listen to that you'll probably find we came to a couple of uh similar conclusions and and had a handle the The awkwardness of time traveling. Yeah, I like the same people. Oh, it's cool. I can't wait to listen It's gonna be awesome. Oh, what was I oh, what was I gonna say? and kiki plays uh The robot character Betty bot I'm the ship the robot Betty bot Because I can speak like I imagine a robot would speak Just enough personality. That's right just enough But not a lot Yeah, and yet you can kind of tell you can kind of tell what that this was done a really long time ago Is that was very drum and bass at the time? Yeah, that's right That is hilarious Oh, what was I what was I going to talk about? I was gonna say something something maybe think about something And I completely forgot it. Hello memory. Maybe I should sleep on it. I don't remember what you're gonna say either I know yeah, why Things so good good point from far to there. Yeah, you got to come on the show more often. This is always a good time Oh, yeah, this is fun really fun. I I love being on the show with you guys I talk to you all the time while you're doing your show. You just don't hear me usually Now do you talk back to us at two and a half time speed as well? Yes You have to to get in the word in edgewise I meant it was it was very two things were weird One is the music all sounds really slow and the other thing is I'm not jogging or driving my dog around Which is usually what I'm doing when I'm listening Wait, your dog's got it made Take him out for drives. Okay. See we just got her so we take her to this dog Duggy daycare place so she can learn to socialize. So I'm usually driving her there back. Okay You're going on long drives with my dog. Yes She loves it though. She does love cars Not our other dog or other dog. He's older. So he doesn't have to go learn socialize and he hates cars anyway He just freezes in the back seat till it's over. Oh Poor guy Let me out. Why is this thing moving? I wasn't sure he was gonna make it when we moved When I moved down from san rafael to la I was like, this is gonna be this is gonna be bad news. So you're Just gonna have to buckle up. He was fine. He just didn't move and then once we stopped it gave him breaks He was totally normal outside the car Oh my goodness, um What do we have? Oh business stuff, um Oh, did you get the emails that the girl said you didn't get I got the email Yeah, I don't know what's going on with my email. I'm trying to fix that because I've got a delivery S&T P server issue that I think I know how to fix now That I yeah, because I got a delivery delay from you Today from something I sent to Okay, maybe you want to resend it Yes, hope I I'm working on getting the email I can send emails. It's receiving them that seems to be the problem So it's the SM it's the receiving smtp server because I would like to send emails under my this we can science email from gmail as opposed to using anyway I'm fixing it. Um, I got that email. We are going to be going to denver colorado in november for the entomological society of america meeting Yes, yes cockroaches talk about cockroaches and we'll have to fly in on sunday the fifth of november Yeah sunday the fifth our show is scheduled for monday the sixth kind of midday And then we can go home either monday or monday night or tuesday. I was thinking we'd come home tuesday Perfect. So depending on what you want how it'll work for you, but uh block off the fifth sixth and seventh Done and done for that um So I was talking with the uh, mariland stem fest again They wanted us they they were wondering if we could maybe come back this year if they found the money and I said we were already scheduled So, uh, they asked if potentially we should start talking about putting it on the calendar for next year so Oh, because it's right during this entomological conference. Yeah, so 2018 November-ish we might go back to Baltimore great if you guys want to do that um Then what was the other thing? Oh eras from new york city wanted to know if we wanted to do the stem fest in new york city I do and and that is between the third To 13th somewhere between the third to 13th of january great so Hey listen, I'm gonna jump out of here But thank you guys again for having me. Oh, and then Every time tom and I are trying to plan things right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah We're making plans for things and you guys potentially if we can make this work. I don't know how we'll make it work, but um Tom and I are we are we calling it podpocalypse? Or are we good? That is our working title. Yeah Title podpocalypse will have one live podcast event up here in portland And one live podcast event down in los angeles And then tom will come up here and if you guys can come up here, that would be awesome but up here we'll try and get luria and um I have another guy paul and maybe there are a bunch of other podcasters here in the portland area And we'll see who we can bring in Yeah, the podcast up here and we'll have an event Yeah, but I don't know tom your card press to find some in la. I mean there's I know He's just like can I step out my front door? Oh, well you say that Well, there's a comedy podcast. Oh, that's true. Yeah Uh, but canada and anthony carbony. I'm gonna talk to them Uh for we have concerns. Yeah, I know anthony carbony. So yeah And jeff jeff and I have already been talking about it. So Um, so yeah, and I think they'll yeah, I think we'll be able to find some some other folks on this end too Yeah, so it's in very early stages I reached out to luria, but haven't heard back. So I'm gonna poke her again That sounds super fun Yeah, yeah, I think it could be a lot of fun and then I think it's gonna be really really cool I think it's gonna be great and then friday I'm on uh on daily tech news show daily tech news show. Yeah That's great. I figure out I gotta keep my eyes peeled on the science What science will I bring? Yeah I'm well controlled cockroaches I do love them so much. Have you talked did you talk about the uh the chip? uh To heal wounds with a with a chip No, you get that story. I think that came out like uh yesterday Maybe but it's an interesting one Yeah, because the science stuff on dts s will sometimes get shoved to the side if there's a bunch of like Like this week we had the google memo and you know this other You know intel announcement. So it kind of depends. I don't always Those stories kind of add flavor. They don't always make it in so yeah, but that doesn't mean we can't add them Later as long as we're not too old I don't think it's still within the week. It's fine. It's from this week. Yeah, so I think that'd be good I think it came out uh tuesday Yesterday no monday came out monday cool. I think we're within the week. So I think it would be oh, yeah, that's totally fine So maybe that story And then I'll look for I'll look for a couple of others I think that was good Yeah, we just need one main one that we can talk You know for 10 minutes about And then the other stuff is just quick quick hits Yeah One main one. Hey you guys if you're going to the eclipse don't stare at the sun Well, no the chip thing Sounds like that could be a main one actually Yes, the chip possibly we should definitely tell people not to stare at the sun. No, that's always good. Well, we can remind people, right? Yeah good advice I try to have good advice And you guys if you're going to amazon to buy your solar eclipse glasses Do not buy the ones that have the blue and the red lenses Yeah, I'm serious. Don't buy the ones that give away for free at the movie theater either. Yeah. No, don't not those either It will not make the eclipse 3d No No No, did you did you guys see that though on amazon? There were people selling the um There are people selling the 3d glasses Because kids today have never seen paper 3d glasses that were red and uh blue and so they don't know what they're they are So they're like, oh, yeah, they're paper. That's probably eclipse glasses Ah kids today. They keep out the red and the blue light In one eye Yeah, oh my goodness All right, everybody Tom if you want to go you can I think yeah, I should probably Get upstairs at the end of our years. We're at the end of our end I have a couple of other like just quick things to make sure we're on the same page for saying yes to new york or Whatever and that kind of stuff. So I'll let you guys get to it. Yes Thanks, Tom talking to you. Yeah, you too. Thank you That was Tom Merritt everyone. He's just wonderful He's always fun to talk. All right. He's just he's a he's a he's a quick thinker quick talker He's quick on his feet internet is deteriorating. Is that yeah? Oh, no, okay. That's what your note was You can't hear me I can't it comes and goes All right, the whole show was perfect, but I'll listen Okay, I that's good. It's the end. I will send email um to both of you new york Sometime in the third to the 13th of january Great, so we'll put that would that be possible? Justin Uh say it again. Where are we going? You want to go to new york and do stemfest in new york again? Uh when january january 2018 Sure Sure We won't do any red eyes. How does that sound? I'll splurge and buy us a whole another night Really? Okay Now we're talking Yeah, we'll get the flight thing figured. I just need to learn how to sleep on a plane. Yeah Yeah, no gotta be away No, I can't either. I'm always Burned out by the time what time is it at six in the morning? Why am I awake right now? I was awake all night long I hardly slept Yeah, okay, so january stemfest new york city We love that November denver colorado. I think we should talk with dav fridel about setting up a meetup or something Denver off to tell him that I want to tour the uh celestial seasonings factory. Oh wait You already did that. I already did that. You've already done it. Yes All right, so we've got that. Um I'm gonna see blare you blare email me I guess when you know like your details for when you're going to be driving up for the eclipse Okay, yeah, because they said that they won't they won't place people together unless they arrive together Exactly, and we've got another group who are arriving on saturday Okay for the eclipse. So um, yeah, so I have to coordinate Okay, you're arriving on friday, right? I could Okay, I don't know. I'm arriving on friday great We'll figure it out. Yeah, okay great Yes, I will I will text you and or email you Yeah, okay, perfect. Um, so we've got that You're coming up and then is there anything else that's going on? Um Oh, yeah, if you guys didn't know the white rabbit project from netflix with carrie and grant and Tori They used to be on myth busters They're going on tour and they're going to be doing a live tour, which I think would be fun if you check it out down the rabbit hole. I think it's what it's called down the rabbit hole live Will probably be in san francisco They're coming to portland Very cool. I can't wait to see them. Um, and then Um rose city comic con I just Confirmed that I will be on a speaking on a panel Nice on science in the media on rose city comic con Justin's out of here. He hung up just left. He just left. He's like enough. I'm done I was just trying to get I'm trying to get through the business items. Geez Guys calendar Yes um pre-orders Yeah, I started doing them. Yeah That's right. I was trying to get you the cover Yeah, I have I have the cover in black and white. Do you want to swap it out for the color one later? Sure Okay, then I can send that to you Friday That's good That sounds great. Um And have you watched the expanse yet or started reading it? No, when is that? In two weeks Okay, I'll get right on it That was the thing I forgot that I wanted to remind Justin about I need him to watch the expanse How many seasons is it too? Three two, okay. I might not get to three. No, but just if you could watch one season I mean just to get an idea of what it's all about I'll definitely do it. Ask One season Sounds like a plan. Yeah, you guys out there white rabbit project Check that out calendars will be pre-ordering soon and two weeks We'll be interviewing Daniel Abraham and ty frank for The authors of the expanse so Business Now we can rest. Thank you. Thank you Thanks everybody for watching really appreciate you joining us once again, and we will see you next week