 here but I am going to ask our audience if our audio sounds all right before we actually like dive dive in. So we'll just start talking and we're just going to make sure it's all good. Hey everybody out there we are getting ready to start. We're going to do audio test. I'm down in the studio. I've moved things around to try and get rid of some echoing that we had last week. Some clicky clicky noises. We're here and I'd love to oh flying out says it sounds great. Blair, Justin, can you guys speak? Testing one two red leather yellow leather. Red leather yellow leather. Where's that to the new one? Is Justin louder than that? No, I'm just the normal volume of me speaking. The more you turn me down the more I yell. So it just doesn't I'm going to make sure my volume is yellow yellow yellow yellow red yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow. Yes. Justin is loud says Ulysses. I would like all kinds of soft leather boots soft leather boots boots and cats and boots and cats and all over there sound good. I'm a bit quieter again says identity for again always I'm turning myself up a little bit. Let's see if this helps at all. And if I can be louder maybe that will fix it and then we have Serita will you say hello? How do I sound? Sounds good. All right. We're ready to go then we've got all the audio and I can take it all and I'll fix it in post at least as much as I can you know for what we've got. All right everybody five by five says Robert Bigelow. All right. Oh yes much better. Okay. That's a set it and forget it. I think there we go. And I think then that would make it time to begin the show. So starting recording in three, two, I forgot what I was going to say. This is twin episode something. It's the same. Recorded in something. No I need to look very quickly at Justin's. Okay. All right. Starting in three, two, this is twist this week in science episode number 668 recorded on Wednesday April 25th, 2018. Want some more science? Hey everybody I am Dr. Kiki and tonight on twist we're going to fill your heads with sweaty trees, stinky planets and male flute, male flute fries. No, but first disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. There are certain things in this world that you should keep in mind. Interesting things, exciting things, things that fill you with wonder, wonderful things to keep in mind when facing the difficult, the daunting or even the most monstrously monotonous of challenges. You need something that inspires you. And while that something may not inspire me and my something may not inspire you, we all live a little more electric lives when we find our somethings. And there is always a little something for everyone to be found here on this week in science coming up next. Got issues tonight. I'm sorry everybody. What's happening? What's happening this week in science? Good science to you Kiki and Blair. And it didn't work. My whole setup with music is going crazy tonight. And good science to you too Justin, Blair and everyone out there. I would love to welcome you to another episode of this week in science. We're back yet again to talk about all the science that we thought was fit to bring to the internets this week for our episode. Hey, I've got all sorts of really cool stories this week. I have stories about stinky planets while at least one particular stinky planet colliding galaxies and puffy galaxies. And we have an interview with the founder of S'more magazine. Back to that in a minute. Justin, what did you bring for the show tonight? I've got a burning desire for trees and GDT cells. Oh, and black holes. Super massive ones. Maybe everywhere. Everywhere. Blair, what is in the animal corner? Oh my goodness. After a very long hiatus, we have some invertebrate sex this evening. And then I have some flies blowing bubbles. Seriously? I'm looking forward to that one. Bubble blowing flies. We'll talk to you at 10. As we jump into the show, everyone, I want to remind everyone that we can. You can if you have not, you can subscribe to the Twist podcast. Everywhere good podcasts are found at the Apple podcast marketplace, the Google Play podcast portal. Sit your speaker tune in. You can find us on YouTube and Facebook. You can look for us this week in science, all those places, or just go to twist.org and you will find links there. All right. So now let's dive into the show. Everyone, I would like to introduce you to our guest this evening. Our guest is Dr. Sarita Menon. She got her PhD in cancer biology from the University of Iowa and spent several years working as a postdoctoral researcher and then as an adjunct faculty before making the jump from research to science education. She started a science enrichment program in the Houston area a few years back and last year launched her current endeavor, which is called S'more Magazine with a Kickstarter. Sarita, welcome to the show. Hi. I'm so glad to be here today. We're really glad that you could join us. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Okay. So you have a fascinating path and I was reading through various profiles of you online and in one, you describe yourself as a mompreneur. So I'd love to know what was your path from academia and your interest in science into this role as a business woman. So interest in science is something I always had. Growing up in India, science and engineering is something that's like ingrained into you as the path to a better life. You have to get a good education in science and engineering are the go-tos feel. So that was something, it was a no-brainer for me and I was always fascinated with biology and chemistry. So those were my favorite subjects. So science is always there. So the path to getting a PhD was kind of like, oh, time to get it. I just got done with my master's. What next? I guess a PhD. All right. I started applying to universities and you got a few offers and I'm like, I've never got on a plane before. This was 2001. So I've never got on a plane before. But here's an application accepted from the University of Iowa. Let me just hop on that plane, sit for 18 hours and end up in the cornfields of Iowa. I come from a pretty happening metropolitan city in India. So it was a very, that was kind of a, I wouldn't call it a culture shock, more like an environment shock for me. But it was an amazing time there. I learned a lot. It was a great experience. I got my PhD, had some fantastic mentors throughout my PhD postdoc training and research assistantship. But somewhere along there during, right after the postdoc, there comes a time when as you have to take, you have to choose a path, whether you're going to stay in academia, run a lab, be an independent investigator, apply for grants, get rejected and apply again. And just keep trying to get funding year in and year out in this current situation. And I did not see myself doing that. And so I had to take a decision and teaching was something, I think it was something that's always there in me, my parents, my mom was a teacher, my grandfather was a teacher. I guess I just got the teacher genes. So it was like, I got to go to teaching and I was pretty good at it if I would say so myself. So I like breaking down concepts to the simplest possible form because that's the way I understand it. And I realized a lot of, especially kids, that's the way they understand it. They love being taught to in that way. So, and so I was like, okay, there's science, I've always loved it, but I don't want to stay in the ivory towers, it's time to move out. But so the options were something related to university teaching, which I did, and then came this opportunity to get into a business, a science business. And that really excited me because I love interacting with people. So that's how it started. So and then S'more came later. Was that long enough? So that's how it got started. And I mean, I understand the educational aspect and, you know, especially the teaching, you know, with these enrichment programs where you're going in having these one-on-one or group experiences hands-on demonstrating scientific principles to kids. And, you know, you know that you're having an impact. What was it that brought you from this face-to-face interaction to finally saying, okay, I want to make a magazine? I mean, it's a big jump. It is. And for somebody who has no idea about how a magazine is even published. So it kind of started, it did not start out as an idea for a whole magazine. It started out as, oh, let's put out the simple science newsletter that would be very local. And we will just, you know, if there's any show or there's a free science event happening, we would feature it so everybody knows about it. And we just wanted more people to take an active interest in science. So we wanted to make science more public, more mainstream, just the understanding and the engagement. But over time, I was like, if I'm putting in that much effort, maybe I can make it regional. Oh, maybe I can have it circulated in the greater Texas area. And then I was like, why not just make it international? So, and then that question, why not? Anyway, putting it together. So I'm like, okay, let's just and then then we got into the real, okay, who are we making it for? What is the target demographic? And there were a few things that I was also looking into at that time. And I was really passionate about bringing more focus to the women's scientists because I have been in science, of women of color in science. So there were a lot of the problems or the challenges women of color face in academia. I was kind of in the middle of all that. So that awareness was there. And there was also this kind of it used to bother me a lot that we would read magazines about actresses and we would read magazines where singers and now even YouTubers are on magazine covers. But nobody's talking about these remarkable women who have made such amazing inventions and they're doing such breakthrough scientific research and, you know, they're all in scientific publication. Nobody in the mainstream mainstream really knows about them. So I'm like, why is that, right? It's it's time to really bring science out from the classrooms, from the universities, make it more mainstream and just get a general appreciation of the work and celebrate the people who are doing it. And so that kind of was the basis of the idea for the magazine. And then it really narrowed it down furthermore. I'm like, Hey, let's try to feature these women on the covers. That would be cool. And then I reached out to a few people and just the tremendous amount of response we got to that was like, Okay, I think this is going to go great. And that's pretty much how we got started. I love it. It's still unbelievable for me that I'm looking at something that is, you know, Oh, is that something we put together? We have a small team. It's not too big. We are still an indie magazine. So really, we put it all together ourselves. And the team is predominantly women in science. So we have science writers on the team and an amazing illustrator who we just put together. So it's and then we have freelance science writers who contribute articles. So we do get a lot of interest from science communicators who would like to feature be featured in the magazine, which is just amazing. I love hearing about all these and these are people I probably would never know about if it was not for small. So it's amazing how many people how many women I'm able to get in touch with and I'm just blown away by the amount of work. And it's just inspiring to me. So I just can't imagine how much it would be influencing a young girl reading this. So it brings me great joy. I'm very motivated to do this every day because of that. And is this is is this your main project at this point in time? At this point, yes, this is this is it is like that newborn baby that needs a lot of attention. Because and I'm the clueless parent is like, okay, you know, I'm listening to a lot of things. I'm reading. Okay, how do I publish a magazine? What goes where? And, you know, oh, I guess we need an art director. So it's it's it's a very big. It's a very steep learning curve, like we have to learn everything right away because the next issue is due right. So and I love the challenge of, you know, putting it all together, figuring out how this thing is going to come together. And so we're learning a lot at the same time. But it is each day is a new experience. And I love it. And is this is a kickstarter? Hello. Kiki's got some sort of audio issues. So I guess she said you did something you started some of this with a kickstarter? Yeah, because when we decided to get into it, of course, we would need some capital to get started, even though it was an indie magazine, you would still need to pay our writers and illustrators. And there's a basic cost that goes in to putting a magazine. And, and the other idea, it was an idea. And my market size or who I was asking, would this magazine be something you would buy? It was very small, just a few friends. And I was like, that's not enough market research. I need to know if I put my effort into it. Is this something that's going to catch on? Is this something that's going to be popular? So the idea for a kickstarter was also not only to generate that initial capital to get this thing going, but also to see what is the interest are people going to be excited about this? Is this something that's going to turn into a movement where we are now really celebrating, we're, we're talking about science icons, just as the way we talk about style icons or pop icons. So we wanted to be that media. And but we wanted to see whether there is that interest are people ready to embrace that kind of media. So and I'm happy to tell you that people were very, very excited about it. And we had a super successful Kickstarter campaign. And we reached our goal within a week. And then we went on to get a lot more. And so we are, we have, we have enough capital to get us through. And then once the Kickstarter was over, even after that, we are gaining subscribers at a very, very satisfactory rate. I like what I'm seeing, right? So we are nowhere like, you know, there yet. But there is definitely that interest and people like to read this. We get emails from parents, they take pictures of their young girls with our magazine in front of them. And you can't believe how much joy that brings to me because you're like, oh, my daughter is absolutely in love with this magazine. She holds it and takes it to her bed. I wanted to share this magazine with few of my friends, but she will not let go of her copy. So I guess I'm going to buy a few more from you. I'm like, please do. So it's, it's amazing to see that response. And that really keeps me going. And it is very validating to see that this is a magazine that has, it's time has come. It's time we need to put more women role models. We need to make them more visible. So there are girls out there who are not really sure whether they love science, but they don't know what to do with that. They don't know what are the possibilities out there. But now she's seeing this amazing scientist in this super successful job. And she's like, that's who I want to be. Or another roboticist who was building robots to send them to Mars. And she's like, I want to do that. Right. So now girls are seeing possibilities. And I would say they are endless. So that's, that's kind of where we want more to be like reach every girl who feels like she may not be able to do it. But we want to tell them, you know, it's okay, you can do it. Just look at all these amazing women. They have done it. You can too. So and not just I'm sorry. Yes. Justin, go ahead. Oh, wait, right. When you say Justin, go ahead. All the things now it just I got fixed. Okay. I don't know what happened there. So I was I was going to ask though on the website looking through it says with the subscription to this magazine, it's not just either the print or the online version, you're also doing webinars. And you're making additional interactive content available. Yeah, I was that was something that came about quite recently. We started getting parents who were saying that oh, they love seeing the scientist on the cover. And she would just love to talk to them. And I was like, why not, you know, let me see what I can do. And we, we talked to Melissa was one of our scientists we featured on the cover. She was a marine biologist. And she was super excited. And she was like, this is this is great. I get to talk to somebody who's read about my work. And she will have questions for me. And I get to answer that what can be better than that. So we kind of pretty much just mediated that. So we are we are like the platform that brings amazing women in science and shows them to these girls and they have these questions and they get them answered right there. So this was this was something that came about as parents started reaching out to us and saying, Oh, this is great. And then so we are like, Okay, let's take this forward. Let's make this something that's an additional feature to our subscribers. And I'm very excited for this. We are already planning out who should we get next. So it's it's a lot of excitement there. Oh, I would be excited. Yeah, go ahead, Justin. What do you think that what do you think that those girls are are heading to if they've chosen this career of science? Do you think that it's going to be the same environment that you initially walked into when you were pursuing? Or do you think things have improved since? Oh, definitely, they have improved mainly because I think since the last year or so, there's a lot more emphasis on and there's there's a lot more empowerment going on. So that people are talking more about the need for empowering girls, making them feel like they belong in a certain field, they they need to believe in themselves. So there are a lot of movements, there are a lot of organizations that are hard at work to do that. And it makes me very happy to see that there is there's this movement that there are a lot of organizations that are part of it and that we are a part of it. So I like that. So it's definitely a very different environment than it was when I was starting out. So but, you know, considering how few women are currently there in tech and computer science, I would say, I like the way this movement is going, you know, we want more of these people, women in these fields and we want the young girls to feel like gender is not what is going to determine what I choose. If I like a field, I'm going to get into it. I'm not going to be hesitant and following computer science because I might be the only girl in that class. So that might be a complete non issue in the future. And that's what we hope for. And work like you're doing I think is very important that and to we we did the the Young Innovators Fair a while back. And there was a girl there who started her own computer programming class, because you're reminding me right now, that because there was the boy class and they were creating some sort of war, I don't know they were doing boy stuff with the programming, I guess. So she started her own girl programming club and too bad it had to be segregated. But it is it was a thing that caught on and she's like going off to university, but going back to the junior high school where she started this club and and it's continuing on. And there was, you know, at Young Innovators Fair, I think the girls outnumbered the boys and and those who were doing robotics and programming and showing up with their experiment. So so that kind of that that outreach that's going on is working. Yeah, I agree. I think there there used to be this notion that science is for the geeks and the nerds. And if you necessarily do not associate yourself with that crowd, then you probably are not into the science. You can't be hip and cool and yet be into robotics. It there was this sort of a mindset, which right now, science is being made cool. If you are if you are smart, you are cool. And for those of us tragically uncool, and that was the one thing we had that the rest of you didn't. Well, you've taken that now too. Yeah, I'm very excited because I mean, I just had this conversation the other day about, you know, there was a new documentary out called Jane about Jane Goodall, and it's uses uses this lost footage that was found from some of her her field work in Africa. And I think it's amazing. It's wonderful that this documentary has been made. But when you think about how many women, you know, you can name female scientists, right? Jane Goodall is the one maybe like iconic ones, like the ones who Yeah. And there's and I think what's happening right now is whereas before it was these huge male names who dominated this field, what we're seeing now is this massive wave of diversity. And all these women from many, many fields from computer science from robotics from biology, marine biology, chemistry, astrophysics, when you look on Twitter, and it is active with all these young women who want to talk about this amazing work they're doing and what they're learning. And I feel like there's, you know, where it used to be this slow trickle, there is just a tidal wave coming. And it's it's because of stuff like what you're doing. Thank you. And it's all it's all about representation. I mean, the as much as we try to tell kids, you can be whatever you want to be. Absolutely. And so the more they can see women in science. And the thing that I always come back to is that when I was a kid, I didn't really understand fully what science encompassed. And so really a place where you can see all the different fields of science and influences of science and science integrated into other fields. That's the thing that really I simultaneously wish I had, but I'm also super excited for this next generation to be equipped with that information and move forward. And that's another goal of SMORE is to bring science out of the classroom. For kids, it's always this Oh, there's a science test, there's a science test textbook, it stays in the school, but we want to bring it out. And there are a lot of other groups and organizations who are doing it. And that's amazing. So our idea is also to educate kids that science is everywhere around you. So never lose your sense of curiosity. Keep asking questions. You know, being in the kitchen is science, you know, fixing your seeing how your dad fixes his car might be a lesson. Hopefully, if he does it well, it might be a lesson. There are a lot of things that kids need to appreciate that there is a use of knowing all this information. It shows you how people with scientific literacy, how important that is. Our goal is not to raise the next generation of only scientists. I mean, that's not, you know, that's not really that's not going to happen. So but it's that general awareness of how so people who understand science, they think a certain way they know how to analyze data, they know when they look at something, they can question it, they can find sources on how to where to look and form their own opinions rather than just going with a herd mentality, right, just going with what everybody's saying. So I think that comes with a certain degree of scientific literacy. And that is important for everybody. So irrespective of if you're a, if you're a boy or a girl, if you are going to go to be a ballet dancer, if you're going to be a chef, if you are going to be a scientist, right, that that basic information is, is very important. And I think all kids, it would serve them well to be educated in science and know about how the world works. So that's another thing that we I like to emphasize as we are not a magazine just to raise scientists, it is for everybody. Are you including any articles about critical thinking, or is it mostly about the scientific process or particular types of science or certain findings? So right now, like I said, everything is a lot of things are still not really set in stone. We do like to incorporate things, maybe some things are not working, we would slowly, so we are going to make changes constantly because we're just a year old, there are a lot of things, it's a work in progress. But right now our main idea was let's simplify basic science topics, space and tech, just simple science in the news, all the technology, just put it out there in front of the kids in small bite size information, just enough to pique their interest. So somebody who was, who didn't think much about space, suddenly reads an article about how rockets actually go off into space and they are staged, they don't all go off and end up in the same, you know, three pieces. At the end, there's just the main engine, the rocket left, there's a lot more fuel tanks that get disposed along the way. So, but that is fascinating information, but somebody doesn't know that, but it piques their interest enough and the next thing you know, they're learning all about it. So our idea is not going deep, we are going right. So because I think kids need to know a lot of information before they can really hone in on what their true interests, where their true interests lie. So right now our content is science topics, but I love that you said these that about critical thinking and how to learn and how to analyze. Those I think would be a great webinar topic. So we are looking at a sort of series on scientific thinking and critical thinking. So those are things that are in my ideas list. I'm putting the ever-expanding ideas list. It's a tool I use with my own kids, it's sort of a moulinazrudin or a Mr. Noodle from Sesame Street where I will do things the wrong way intentionally and let them figure out the right way to do it. My kids might all just think I'm an idiot now, but I like sort of tricking them into critical thinking and getting them to figure out how to do something. There was a video on Facebook sometime back where the dad was I think he was teaching the kids the concept of coding, but he was telling them to write down the recipe for making a peanut butter jelly sandwich and he would follow exactly what that kids wrote down and it never ended up as it was hilarious, but I think those kids learned a lot of important lessons about coding. There's opportunities to learn everywhere. So one of the segments on this show we call what has science done for you lately and I'm just wondering from your perspective as we finish up this interview what has science done for you lately? So science for me lately has opened up this whole new world of people, women scientists that frankly I was not over I knew they were out there but I was not in touch with them but right now I am connected to them through Twitter, through our science magazine and I am just I read up on them and I'm just blown away by their contributions and their successes and their achievements and just how smart and vitty and funny they can be and like the world needs to see you and we are going to celebrate you we're going to put you on our covers and show you off so I love that science has brought me in touch with all these amazing personalities in science and technology and engineering, math they call it STEM now so. And then you can put arts in there and if you put in history or humanities you've got STEAM and there's a version but sports in it too. Yeah so that's the Bill Nye famously recently said yeah now it's just what we call school. Just education that's all. So Dr. Menon if you could let us know where can our listeners find out more information about SMORE if they are interested in it for their kids. So right now we are available online at www.smoremedicine.com and you know there's a subscribe button there is an option for print or digital or digital it's available through our app store, Android and Apple stores. Google play actually yeah that's the one. And you can always reach out to me my Twitter handle is Sarita underscore Menon and our SMORE magazine handle is at SMORE magazine but the A is missing after the G so it's M-A-G-Z-I-N-E and we are on Facebook we are on Instagram we are everywhere so it will be hard to miss us I mean it's very easy to reach out to us. We would love to hear from everybody about it and ideas, contacts. We've had a lot of people telling us oh have you featured her and she is amazing. I'm like oh I did not know about her let me read up it's amazing the kind of feedback I'm getting from people and they are putting me in touch with some remarkable women. I think this is just fabulous thank you so much for your time tonight Sarita it has been just just wonderful getting to speak with you about your experiences and what brought you into this endeavor of this new magazine SMORE and the hopes for where it will go thank you for your time. Thank you very much it was such a pleasure to talk to you all. Absolutely hope we hear from you again best of luck with the magazine I hope you get subscribers. Thank you bye. Bye thank you so much everyone out there once again the magazine website is smormagazine.com if you are interested. We are going to take a short break so this might be a chance to get up and stretch a little bit or you know just stay where you are because we will be back with more stories. I've got space I've got colliding galaxies I've got a stinky planet I think Justin's got some I've got some colliding galaxies and some uh wetty trees wetty trees and and Blair has oh the all of those invertebrates and their sex and also some flies blowing bubbles and flies blowing bubbles we will be back in just a few moments with more This Week in Science. Hey everyone thank you so much for listening to the show or if you're watching right now thank you for watching and possibly for bearing with me I have a new set up here yet again and I've got things in different places and so there are a few bumps and hiccups along the way but you know what they'll be edited out for the podcast but those of you who are watching live get to enjoy and laugh with me at uh at the progress anyway progress is being made thanks to you all of you out there thank you so much for your support of twist over the years and currently without you we could not do all the things that we do and how could you help us out oh how how I ask I feel like I should start a Dr. Seuss story right about now how how how how well let me tell you head on over to twist.org twis.org and you can find out even more ways to help twist first off you can subscribe if there's there's a big orange subscribe button on our web page click on that subscribe button it will give you links for 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done for me and right now i would like to read a letter from ed god was and i know i did not say your name exactly right and i apologize for that is it french god was god was god was ed edward thank you for writing in he says hello twist team i've really been enjoying your what has science done for me segment and i thought i would share my own story a little over a year ago my wife and i mentioned to my three-year-old son's pediatrician he had been experiencing headaches when waking up from his naps she suggested we see a neurologist just to rule things out the neurologist said it probably wasn't a big deal but scheduled an MRI for us just to again rule things out the MRI revealed a brain tumor a specific type of tumor is called a cranioforengioma it's really rare non-cancerous tumor that is most often most often diagnosed in children it impacts the pituitary and optic nerves and among other things and over the next several weeks we had a flurry of appointments eventually we found ourselves in the ER and then the ICU awaiting his surgery due to the tumors progression shortly after that he underwent neurosurgery to remove the tumor his neurosurgeon and her team were able to remove most of the tumor he has no neurological or site impairments but the tumor calcified his pituitary which has an incredibly important job he spent the better part of two weeks in the hospital recovering from his surgery and he is now on a number of daily medications to replace what his pituitary would normally do and we will be starting growth hormone injections soon we still have monitoring MRIs to check for regrowth and to manage his condition with medications and keep an eye on him but the thing is he's now a normal four-year-old boy he doesn't experience headaches like he used to he goes to school and after school activities has friends plays with lego and everything that a normal four-year-old would do awesome truth be told he went to a summer camp several weeks after his surgery and was running around blowing bubbles and running in sprinklers with his friends you can't even see his craniotomy scar anymore no one even knows about his ordeal unless we tell them to everyone he's just like every other four-year-old it amazes me that medical science has advanced to such a point where my son could have a very normal life despite needing to have such a critical part of his brain removed less than a hundred years ago he would have suffered immeasurably and probably wouldn't have seen adulthood we owe his life to a huge team of medical professionals from his pediatrician to his neurosurgeon to his neuro oncologist and endocrinologist all of the amazing nurses support staff and the summation of modern medical knowledge all this gave us our little boy back and for that we are profoundly grateful i know my story is a little long and it's okay if you guys don't use it or its entirety in the show i just wanted to add my pile my story to the pile keep up the great work ed gabois oh my gosh yeah yeah yeah this one was a doozy this a ed your family has been through an amazing ordeal and it is it is miraculous it's amazing what science and medicine are able to do today thank you for sharing ed yeah thank you for sharing and we wish the best to your family and to your son and i i hope i know he grows up to be a wonderful a wonderful man just like you i hope you share twist with him as he gets older too yeah yeah oh man isn't that what every parent would want for a child with unexpected complications would be to just be a normal kid how how fantastic if you have a story like this that doesn't have a happy ending please don't share it i could barely make it oh that was hard that was really hard just to just to hear the ordeal thankfully it has a happy ending there does have a happy ending thanks to science yeah anyone out there who would like to share their story with us about what science has done for you lately send me an email kirsten k i r s t e n at thisweekinscience.com you can also send us a message on our facebook page which is facebook.com slash this week in science we got to keep this show this part of the story going right let's keep it going we need you to help us do that more stories more inspiration everyone please now on to the science huh yeah and we're going to follow up that that story with something stinky yes stinky stinky and the media has been having a field day with this because how can you not urinous stinks oh don't talk about it like that and i'm going to pronounce the name of urinous that's not how you say that planet correctly that's the correct pronunciation actually it is are you sure oh it's it's up and double checked because i think people mispronounce it all the time just in attempts not to say it's right right name i just think that i was worried about my terminology choices before we started the show thank here we go here we go so jumping in the april 23rd issue of nature astronomy has a study this week's nature astronomy has a study study using data from the gemini north telescope it's an eight meter telescope that has looked at infrared light from urinous this scope the gemini north telescope is on hawaii's mauna keya mauna keya volcano and in looking at the infrared light and the spectroscopic signature of this light researchers were able to determine the composition of the cloud tops of this distant planet in our solar system and they found hydrogen sulfide hydrogen sulfide is the compound which gives eggs their stinky odor yes in stink bombs yes hydrogen sulfide the eggy stinky smell um yes hydrogen sulfide so if you were to go to urinous and if you were able to take take off your helmet and actually or be able to breathe in the air of its cloud tops the cloud tops in its atmosphere it would stink like like gas like like farts it would okay no longer veiled i see no not veiled at all oh my god uh but the the research has a sense of humor yeah the universe does sometimes it's just it's uncanny the sense of humor that comes out yes uh researchers have said this is a actually a very interesting study they've been debating the composition of the clouds of urinous ever since four years or two passed by and took images of the uh the cloud tops and the debate has been whether hydrogen sulfide or ammonia dominate those clouds but there was no real evidence researcher uh named urwin yes a researcher named urwin he said that now thanks to improved hydrogen sulfide absorption line data and the wonderful gemini spectra we have the fingerprint which caught the culprit and so these spectroscopic absorption lines and this is where gas absorbs some of the infrared light reflected from uh that's from reflected sunlight um it's especially weak and challenging to detect and this gemini data allowed them to actually detect it the cloud decks form through condensation similarly to here on earth and it locks away the cloud forming gas and deep internal reservoirs that are away that that are beneath the levels that we can normally see with our telescopes another researcher says that only a tiny amount remains above the clouds as a saturated vapor and this is why it's so challenging to capture the signatures of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide above the cloud decks of urinous the superior capabilities this is their sale their salesmanship for this telescope the superior capabilities of gemini are what finally gave us the lucky break yes so telescope helping them to identify this specific stink of urinous moving on to some then we move on to some some more spacey news i've got i've got some ancient collisions a collision course this is a collision that's happening no it happened like 12 and a half billion years ago over 12 and a half billion years ago researchers found the signature of uh of light far back that uh that indicated that there were particular types of galaxies that are known as starburst galaxies and the starburst galaxies are areas where there's a lot of star formation happening and they took a look at this area of space and the red shift of the light or whether or not it was moving away from or towards earth and so they realized oh it's moving very far away this area is not very large it's maybe three times the size of our own galaxy that's big in my book it's big but in terms of what they're looking at and what they found is pretty impressive what they ended up publishing this week in the magazine the journal nature is something that's called a proto cluster they found 14 galaxies on collision courses with each other they're they're coming together and it is so long ago it's at the edge of our universe it is only mere billions mere billions of years after the formation of the universe so what they're seeing these relatively large rapidly star forming so really active galaxies turning into this proto cluster means that today i mean this happened so long ago that what they are seeing now with these galaxies all attracted to each other and coming into collide with each other will probably be is probably the largest superstructure in our gal in our universe today but what they're looking at is so long ago you know because it's the light that's just reaching us now right they're looking at this happening like 12.8 billion years ago and and it's just a prediction of what what's to come but it's also they don't understand how it could be happening because it's so soon after the formation of the universe that there shouldn't be galaxies this large there so the question is where did those big galaxies come from to be able to form this proto cluster that would eventually be a giant super cluster in our universe where did they come from they don't know well maybe the the universe is like a pac-man map and they ran off the edge of the other side and so they're banging into each other back at the beginning right i solved it you solved it that's what that's what we go um physicist at Dalhousie University in Halifax Canada Scott Chapman he told the LA Times that there are huge energetics involved in this like 10 000 supernova going off at a time quite literally and so these supernova new nove are going off and forming new stars creating new elements they're making stars a thousand times faster than the milky way is currently producing stars and it's all of this these 14 galaxies that they that are supernovaing and creating stars and it's just massive light show it's in a space that's only three times bigger than our galaxy and when you consider everything that's packed into that space and what's happening in that space nobody really understands how it's there Chapman says we don't know how it's possible we don't know how you get those 14 galaxies right down in the center of the proto cluster at such an early time well yeah maybe the uh maybe the universe was a lot more crowded in the early days in some some areas of space yeah so researchers are currently trying to figure out in yeah in are there specific areas of space where there were where these stars were forming much earlier than we thought you know because they would have formed fairly these galaxies would have formed fairly far apart and then come together to create the proto cluster and and so how did that happen the researchers are going back to the drawing table back to the books to try and figure out where their models of the early universe may be off yeah to figure this out and then in terms of just galaxies and what they do as they evolve over time another study out this week in nature astronomy researchers at the University of Sydney have determined by looking from with data from the Anglo-Australian Telescope at Citing Spring Observatory in Australia looking at all sorts of 3d measurements of galaxies across the board different kinds of galaxies so pinwheel galaxies like our own versus any other types of shapes ages and they started looking at okay the shape of the galaxy versus the color of the stars and the color of the stars in the galaxies are an indication of how old the galaxies are so galaxies with bluer stars are younger and as stars age they turn into a more red color and so galaxies with more red stars in them are thought to be older and so they started inferring the the shape and the or actually the trying to find a link between the shape and the age of the stars within the galaxies and the age of the galaxies themselves and they determined that it nearly all galaxies are squashed spheres is what they say so like just like a pancake in space a squashed sphere like our flat earth you say no dear like a flat galaxy and the younger the galaxy the galaxy stars are the more squashed it is but then the older they get the puffier they get so it's kind of like you know people as you get older your metabolism slows down and you get a little puffy gain a little weight yeah they don't know exactly where the puffiness comes from but they think it has to do with you know traumatic merging of galaxies together or if one galaxy flies through another galaxy that that may change the dynamics of the galaxy around enough to spread it out a bit and to change the orbital activity of the stars around the central the central black hole in these in these galaxies so for now and part of the reason why part of the reason why it might be every time you have galaxies merging you you also have supermassive black holes that are joining and they don't necessarily go into the the other ones supermassive black hole more likely they orbit right the galaxy so so when we have these 14 galaxies you're talking about you know whatever galaxies they merge with before plus their own supermassive black holes now either merging together or getting into orbits with each other and so yeah the dynamics so could be a lot different in fact there's a new study published by the astrophysical journal letters researchers from a university washington uh it's a university washington institute the astrophysic de peri and university college london got together and they're predicting that galaxies about the size of the milky way should host several supermassive black holes meaning that our own galaxy should be hosting several supermassive black holes huh interesting because that's really interesting because there was this there was a study a couple of weeks ago that it wasn't they determined not supermassive black holes but that there are like many black holes around around the the main central black hole so these wouldn't be around the main central and because they're not around the main central which is where the hub of of stars are being pulled in and gases are swarming around and these little mini backhills are they could be going around anywhere and be completely invisible until you've happened to train a telescope and maybe see some of that background lensing effect uh they do kindly throw in uh an analysis of the chances that our solar system or that our sun could be affected by one of these supermassive black holes they say it's probably gonna happen once every hundred billion years or so which is like eight or nine times the age of the universe like once every eight or nine universes up till now really likely but uh because they're outside they can be outside of the the sort of disc even which then would lead into what's usually like the puffiness over time the more mergers these things might not be in that flattened pancake portion even but could be circulating outside and beyond that uh without all that accretion of dust and things around them they were taking up or spitting out they're basically invisible so so now they got to figure out how to pinpoint them how to how to find them because they're black holes yes they're dark you got to you got to do the gravitational lensing or nothing really that's uh that's all you get then yeah oh we need yes more more light benders more more light vendors justin you want to talk about sweaty trees okay yeah this is uh this is the story that's uh california may have found a solution to future drought conditions oh yes get rid of the trees uh wait we need those there it turns out there are just two dang many trees in the sierra nevada forest no no yes this is a huge problem what yeah so i know my first thought was too like okay so to get more water we destroy things that create ecosystems and produce oxygen like this sounds like yeah problem with the one problem but this is uh according to scientists affiliated with the national science foundation southern sierra critical zone observatory they say turns out trees use a lot of water uh they perspire soaking up water stored in the ground expelling it is vapor into the atmosphere in your process uh known as evapotranspiration we've got we've got sweaty trees and and we don't get access to that water again until it goes somewhere else and falls down again as rainfall okay quick counterpoint okay um temperature regulation so if you get rid of the transpiration and you get rid of a lot of the trees that increases temperature on those areas which might then affect drought as well so it sounds like uh it sounds sensible but sensible isn't always right and that's sort of the point of the study because i had the exact same sort of reaction to this like this is sort of non-sensitok uh what they did though is okay so so we have this fantastic system of forest management including a quick response forest firefighting service and for the last oh mo almost a century we've gotten increasingly better at preventing wildfires in the sierra now we had during the drought a lot of wildfires that kind of uh took over for a while um and it turns out the water tables increased significantly so what what there's what there's kind of the explanation here is that that because we've controlled wildfires the forests are sort of overgrown the normal cycle of wildfire that would normally cut through big sections of forest and then have sparse growth and actually some you know pine trees and stuff actually are designed for a fire for them to reproduce um they're they're sort of built for that that that fire season um it the over growing can be affecting even its own water table because then you can have other plant life that's fighting for for survival other fauna that's fighting for survival because of the lowered amount of water taken up by all these trees which normally wouldn't be there because normally they would have these clearing sessions uh cody voice this is richard eutrick director of nsf cz o program uh forest wildfires are often considered disasters but fire is part of healthy forest ecosystems by thinning out trees fires can reduce water stress and forests and ease water shortages during droughts and by reducing the water used by plants more rainfall flows into the rivers and accumulates in groundwater so they found out that over the period of 1990-2008 fire thin forests saved 3.7 billion gallons of water annually in california's king river basin and 17 billion that's with a b gallons of water a year in the american river basin uh water that would have otherwise they say been lost through evapotranspiration so because of the wildfires that we've had sort of in the recent decades forest thinning increased and they could see um they could see the results from that as well so what they're sort of also saying and here's here's sort of the thing is they need about 10 billion ish dollars the u.s forest service says to handle restoration work in california uh but if they use if they use that that that funds to also be doing thinning of sections of forests and and use that as part of the restoration management uh they could actually save the state more money and water produced than it would cost them to do the effective work uh very unintuitive that connection between less trees and increased watershed and you're looking at the forest not just for the trees that are there but for the trees that wouldn't be there if we weren't messing with it constantly yeah i think that may it makes sense and i understand that we definitely know that forest fires are there's a sweet spot with them and that it's a part of nature but we also know that there's a lot of ecosystems where natural forest fires are burning out of control because of drought so that's another side to this is that if we have reduced rainfall and we're trying to do controlled fires we have to be very careful because they are burning out of control farther and faster than we are used to so there's that side of it right but it's also are they burning because there's more trees there and there's less natural fire no fires in previous seasons and now that no this is actually due to climate change and due to drought this is a study that that we've talked about on the show before is that in in in normal natural fire circumstances in forests they're burning out of control because of climate change so that's just something that also has to be considered in this but i think the surface temperature is something that it looks like they didn't look at in this study and that would be something that i would be interested to look at as well because yeah like i said transpiration has a huge impact on surface temperature and whereas they might be taking water from us they might also be reducing the impact of climate change on these landscapes by by larger forests so anytime you mess with an ecosystem right there are pros and cons and i think that this needs more study before we can say definitively that in that more controlled burns are the right way to go i mean and maybe what it means is they're going to actually cut down more trees maybe it's not controlled burns maybe it's going in and thinning through selective logging they actually have referred to it as mechanical thinning which i'm assuming it could be chainsaws yeah as opposed to chemical yeah well but then if that's the case then they're not going to pop open pine cones with heat so that's a problem yeah but at at this point it's just making me think about the fine line of managing or thinking that we can manage ecosystems do we really know enough and understand enough to think that okay we're going to thin it just enough to get just enough water in the water table and we're going to balance the evapotranspiration for the water cycle to be putting water into the air which is part of a natural cycle of water going down and then coming back out and getting back out into the atmosphere and like Blair was talking about of natural cooling also of increasing water vapor in the air which can lead to clouds to reflect sunlight you know there but they don't fall here in California which is the problem right but you can't think about just california and globally it's a cycle man cycles don't connect bro i think in this case what they're talking about talking about what they're proposing is mitigating the effects of human mitigation right yeah i think the the damage we've done with our conservation work yeah and i think what this study actually is saying it's a mea culpa it's like oh we didn't manage it quite right so now we're gonna have to manage it a little differently but this this is the case in point that you have to test for multiple factors before you assume that certain things are going to be better for an environment like you know introducing toads to eat an introduced beetle you have to look at the potential consequences before you do what you think may be saving an environment yep you know what i think it's time to do what time is it i think it's time for blair's animal corner what you got blair i have the solution to climate change oh my god you always been all this time talking about what we're doing it rests in males oh males yes the solution man let me explain just in a big head here i know well excuse me so let's talk about natural selection and climate change this is a study from queen mary university of london and they wanted to look at sexual selection as a potential buffer against climate change so what they did is they took indian meal moths plodia inter punctella they established a male based sex ratio population that would be three males for every female they called that strong competition amongst males and then a female based sex ratio of one male for every three females weak competition then they gradually increased the temperature that they were reared at by two degrees celsius every other generation it's a pretty big jump in temperature as the temperature increased beyond the normal range for the mods they showed declines in the number of eggs produced per female and also in the survival of offspring to adulthood as you might expect this is an unhealthy temperature for them less eggs less survival however the populations kept with a male based sex ratio were more resilient to increasing temperatures they found production of offspring and survival rates were affected but significantly less so than the female biased populations they extended the study by comparing females who are also who are allowed to choose their mates with females who are only given a single option so this is kind of a micro version of those populations and they found that when females were able to choose their male they also laid more eggs and had better offspring survival in increased temperatures so this means that competitive mating systems help augment selection for let's say less picky genes in relation to temperature change and so that creates better survival more eggs all from this competition of genes in um in this climate change scenario so this sexual selection is creating a buffer so at first when i read this i was kind of like well duh but right it's an interesting point because it's not just in a population selection will will find life finds a way you know but this this is specifically male dominated in this case so and and they do think that this could be extrapolated to to most animal species with male competition and female selection so the idea is that when females are selecting for males in within a species the more males you have the the better chance that the female has to make a selection of a male that has the better gene so the question is first of all how are the females identifying which male has the kind of temperature flexibility in his genes or is it just a numbers game does it just mean that because there's more options some of them are surviving um but my other question is what does this mean for temperature dependent sex-determinated determined species so like turtles for example where warmer temperatures create more females so now we're going to have a female bias system where there's more female competition where male biases provide buffers for climate change that's a problem so if we know that but this is the good news of this right if we know that then that's an opportunity for conservationists to step in no and when they're when they are hold on hold on and when they are already trying to even out the gender ratios for these species where this is happening now maybe they're going to try to bias slightly towards the male so that they can push that temperature dependent sex-determined range up in response to climate change here's an idea here's an idea maybe that sex-determined gender ratio has worked in the past maybe it's there for a reason in that species i mean maybe that in that species so so so justin for example in turtles they are they not their natural occurring ratio is 50 50 but as a result of climate change it is skewing more and more and more female that is the problem so the reason that conservationists are stepping in is they're trying to bring the ratio back to the natural percentage because what's happening is females are not finding males they're not laying fertile eggs so if they now know that a male bias potentially could help them adjust quicker to climate change this could actually potentially help conservation programs so i'm just for a conversation point here for a second i mean when is there no competition for mates uh well so there's isn't there always haven't we talked about the factor that there's there's always going to be yeah some amount of choosiness right in females and even if there are a large number of males there's sometimes the dominant ones and then the more beta males or you know this is in a moth species i mean it's a moth you have you have some that give off more pheromone and some that give off less pheromone right you know there's a spectrum of of whatever signal they they give off but you know the females are there's always going to be competition i would imagine so it's it's also a question of the type of competition so there's different species where females mate with every single male they come across and it all gets sorted out internally right that may or may not have an impact as a result of climate change right so this was just based on a i'm going to pick one and mate with him and it is that one and when there are more males there is a higher probability that a female is going to make a good choice right because there will be more i mean we're talking about population uh gene frequency within a population so this adaptability to temperature change they are going to just be more of those males available in the population right so that increases the chances right so that was the initial study where they had these big populations of the moths but the second iteration of the study where they just took a single female and put them with one male or put them with multiple males they overall found more eggs and better survival as a result of that which means potentially there might actually be some selection for the ability to survive in that new climate somewhere in there potentially i wonder what they are selecting for and then and then i still want to say this is insects this is a moth and the idea that these researchers are saying that this is going to oh a competitive species with these competitive mating systems across the animal kingdom come on yes so their their exact quote was our results indicate that these competitive mating systems can play an important role in determining response to new environments whereas species where there is less competition for mates are likely to be less able to adapt to new conditions which is basically all that you said which is just there's there's more likelihood to express new genes if there's more competition so that's i agree with you i think that it's it's not it's not an indicator of response to climate change as a result of mate competition across genera that's not what what we saw here but we saw is a reason to examine that in other things and to see if we can ultimately what i see is an opportunity to identify what could help resilience in other species what could help resilience yes i i foresee this as the next reality reality tv show we put one female woman on an island with three oh no we're not mobs how do we adapt to climate change but here's another study about an invertebrate and how they're exactly like us perhaps or not at all a new study found that male fruit flies find copulation and specifically ejaculation to be inherently rewarding it showed that the rewarding nature of ejaculation is conserved and they were able to figure this out by actually isolating the act of ejaculation as separate from copulation this is really interesting the methodology here is what got me about this story so they genetically engineered fruit flies so that they could activate particular neurons with light okay so optogenetics we're dealing with right yes they used flies where the neurons expressing the neuropeptide corazonin crz could be switched on by exposure to red light earlier studies showed that crz neurons in flies in their abdomen trigger the release of sperm and seminal fluid so by shining this red light on them they could make ejaculation happen with nothing else going on hopefully there was a little warning yeah i know laid down some paper towels or something but uh they they they were able to then isolate the reward associated with ejaculation away from everything else so they wanted to see what parts of the mating process were the rewarding thing that fruit flies were following when they were they were seeking out this behavior was it the pheromones was it the the actions that males performed was it the very last step of mating which was the ejaculation and so they used an arena they call it in which one side emitted red light to trigger this optogenetic activation of the crz neurons and therefore ejaculation and then they had a non red light area it was just normal seriously a red light yeah yes red light you know and yeah sense of humor here for sure and tracked where male flies wanted to spend their time they found that the flies showed a strong preference for the red light which means that going in there and having that response was in itself a rewarding experience then they were like oh no was was it just the red light did they just like red light is that the thing so instead next they trained the flies to associate red light and ejaculation with a particular odor then they tested whether the flies preferred the scent that reminded them of that past experience of ejaculation and they did so after a few days they repeated the activation the fruit fly of males had high levels of neuropeptide f in their brains which is what the males who actually got to mate with females also had in their brains when those males were given the choice between liquid food this is where it gets crazy and liquid food spiked with alcohol they preferred the non-alcoholic food but control flies that did not experience ejaculation they liked the alcohol they wanted the alcohol so they were they were looking for a response from the reward center is the idea here so they say our study suggests that the state of the animal i.e. undergoing successful mating or being rejected affects the motivation to consume drug rewards which is kind a little bit of a stretch but an analogy for reward states can be proposed in which a high reward state is illustrated by a full reservoir and a low state by an empty reservoir one can speculate that vulnerability to addiction is related to the size of the reservoir that needs to be filled or to different sensitivity to changes in the reward level so they're saying because they had not experienced the reward centers as a result of ejaculation they were craving this reward center to be filled with something else and so they filled that hole within themselves with alcohol alcohol yes so so according to these researchers addiction is a hole that cannot be filled well it sounds like it can be yeah it just seems it what what i saw as an over overlying i mean this is an extreme extrapolation this also anthropomorphism to the max but it kind of sounds like this idea that um that that depression comes almost from a state of a lack of rewards or of malfunctioning in the reward center and so you chase for all these as you know so you can you can see how this could be extrapolated into this this idea that people seek the the response in their brain as a result of drugs or alcohol because they are lacking other reward responses in other parts of their life so that's kind of the the leap you could make from this but but just in the in the real science here we found that not just the active mating but actually the completion the the kind of the goal there is to move your dna right and to to propagate new life and and pass on your genes and so apparently the the active mating the reward doesn't come until you you have completed that goal right just why fruit fly if i was a fruit fly i would need that last bit to get the reward the reward response in my brain because that's the reason yeah let's let's remove let's remove logic completely from our our human brains for a moment and realize that we enjoy orgasming despite any form of plea preplanned thought or reasoning it's it's one of those mechanisms that's in the brain that creates life replicating absolutely yeah i know that we're too dumb to be in charge of our heart beating it knows that our breaths need to be going on their own cycle without us consciously putting in any effort into it we when we get hungry we're we're stuck with a little pain a little little irritation that makes us want to go and devour something um these aren't things that's like you know i haven't eaten in three days gosh it's really slept my life no your brain your body what your brain will create pain and anxieties and stressors and it will reward for doing its bidding so the orgasm i think is likely going to be across the animal kingdom as one of those mechanisms that the brain uses to control the body and to get it to to to do its will you know yeah and we can and we can continue to to think that we are more complex than a fruit fly what we do we hack it you know something's a jacket twice a day the researchers here are indicating that there are extreme similarities in the reward centers of a fruit fly and other animals even mammals and so they're they're seeing a lot of parallels here in this study two related studies that have been done with shall we say quote unquote higher life forms and so they think that this could be a door opening to further studies on this and potentially this could lead us to some really good science that could help some people who knows absolutely and i do know that there have been there there are psychotherapy hypotheses being put forward in this way for human drug addiction treatment that it's not treating the addiction per se but treating the psychological lack that somebody has that they can't find satisfaction in life without seeking these other substances that then have a negative impact on their life eventually so is there is there something else that can be uh that can be a replacement three versions of self donations of orgasms every night i think that's yeah well actually that's what i was gonna say is that is that people don't want to talk about it because it's taboo or it's funny but sexual health and mental health there's a link there and yeah and that's something that needs to be explored and i understand that it can be taboo in a lot of ways and people don't want to talk about it in an open forum but this is exactly why this is why sex ed and health ed and mental health are all kind of inextricably linked and it might need some more focus and it's an interesting point now there are there's an it's an interesting question as to what's going to happen in areas of the world where there is a big population difference between the sexes so china and india for instance have a huge problem where they have a generation with way more men than women and many of those men they're not finding companionship they are not finding other people and so how is that how are they going to satisfy that aspect of the of the human psyche so there are some very interesting questions about what's going to happen socially culturally in these countries where the sex ratio is so dramatically tilted yeah so these are these all come this all ties into some very interesting questions you bring it up you know public public health so said all this stuff it does tie in together what so much that fruit flies can teach us yes absolutely um and i i have one last quick and adorable or perhaps a really gross story about the latrine blow fly oh they're a beautiful little fly that lives in dead things yeah or in latrines yes in latrines but they are actually famous as part of forensic science so they pop up in cadavers and in dead animals at a very specific time after death and so they're they're actually kind of a smoking gun when people are trying to date dead bodies that they discover so the latrine blow fly hangs out in these corpses often and something that we learned if you read uh mary ritch's book stiff i think was the one where you hear all about what it what happens to a decomposing body actually it's really hot in there and so um the latrine blow fly has an adorable little adaptation uh we sweat dogs pant other animals anoint they lick all over so that there's evaporative cooling these guys they blow bubbles out of their stomach juices oh so cute yeah so they blow bubbles out of their mouth with with their stomach juices and then they suck them back in so as fluid moves out evaporation occurs it lowers the fluid temperature then the fly moves the cooled droplet back in cooling off the body temperature to the fly they when they readjust the cool droplet they lowered their body temperature by um up to a whole degree Celsius wow yeah so the flies also blew more bubbles as air temperature increased but fewer in humid surroundings because if it's moist out and they're blowing little water droplets out of their mouth they won't have evaporative cooling so they adjust to the outside temperature and humidity but this is a neat little adaptation for them to do some evaporative cooling wow so yeah it's similar to humid parts of the world where it's hard to get cool uh they they have to change their tactic in that situation yeah yeah that's how they keep cooling those cadavers they just blow adorable little bubbles out of stomach acid so cute so cute and adorable so adorable nope no nope not gross actually super gross thanks for that thanks a lot um some really cool news as we come into the quick science stories at the end of the show um researchers at UC Berkeley have visualized the structure of telomerase do you know what that means do you know what do you know what this means they visualized I can make my shoelace caps last longer well maybe it will lead to intelligently designed drugs that will allow people researchers to make drugs that will then fix your telomeres yes and let them last longer that's right that's right I want to live forever so the structure of telomerase actually nobody's known exactly what it looks like for forever it's been guessed at what it what it looks like but now researchers have actually been able to figure out the structure of this telomerase enzyme which which cuts out the end of the telomeres and makes them shorter and knowing the structure of telomerase will allow the designing of drugs to affect diseases related to telomerase or potentially lead to drugs for aging so the researchers say the best previous images of human telomerase only had a resolution of 30 angstroms we were able to get about seven to eight angstroms resolution using cryo electron microscopy when I got to the point where I could see all the subunits we had 11 protein subunits in total it was a moment of wow wow this is how they all fit together I love science and the wow moment science and the wow moment is pretty awesome so drugs for aging they may be on the way thanks to UC Berkeley scientists and their their cryo electron imaging what they're doing there and then if you've ever wondered you know how a kid how kids can just get up and run and play and they seem to have all this energy and their their muscles don't seem to get as tired they contain a supernova right they don't they don't see they don't seem to have the same problem with muscle soreness afterwards either right after a long run or kids just have this I don't know this behavioral elasticity that adults who don't train as endurance athletes don't have right normal adult you're like I gotta sit down the kids are still bing bing bing bouncing off the walls and I think I've told the story before I will I will bounce off the walls with my kids I will run around the playground and quit like like under their age and I can do it at even at my tender age of 45 but then you hurt but the next day the recovery part is the next day I am a frozen plank of muscles that refuse to obey commands and they're up and running around again like nothing happened yes and so this in a study that was published in the frontiers in physiology exercise physiology this last week it published on the 24th of April some French researchers and French French and Australian researchers they looked at 12 kids pre pubertal so before they had reached puberty not trained in a sport pre pubertal pre puberty yes I didn't know pre pubertal was the word now that's 12 they looked at they looked at 12 in or 13 endurance male athletes and 12 men who don't train in anything so the kids and the untrained men they were chosen for doing a less than four hours of activity a week and the endurance athletes these are competitive male athletes who train regularly and they tested them on an endurance test and a strength test and they looked at various aspects of oxygen uptake heart rate blood lactate concentration which is a measure of the metabolites that the muscle is using and what's left over after aerobic exercise they found out that kids basically are on par with endurance athletes there's something about kids muscles they do not build up lactate they recover more quickly their their vo2 their oxygen uptake recovers more quickly after exercise then then adults who don't train kids something about the physiology of children they are on par with endurance athletes who train on purpose I would I would chalk this up to uh to our our ancestral upbringing you know uh to keep stride for stride with the adults when running nomadically after game and the hunting gathering times of the yesteryear I bet children had to be pretty athletic well the slow ones they got picked off so well and that's right so so maybe this is some aspect of childhood survival right yeah election yeah and then when once you're 45 or whatever uh yeah we don't really you know Justin you're kind of slowing down the pack the uh yeah yeah we didn't make it to 45 back then morning and run all day but yeah you can't remember every other day it seems you're like telling us we should camp here for another night I don't know if yeah that's why you are a man at 13 because you only lived 30 yeah well science says kids actually are that good kids they're better than you don't tell them never live it down they will never live it down and I think that does it for me and the stories Justin do you have any more stories last story by recent research or recent research by researchers has revealed the mechanism that regulates our body heat and protects us against cold shock and it is those gd t cells gamma delta t cells are usually found at barrier sites in the body to guard the body from infection but in this current study scientists found a special population that lives inside brown fat cells so the discovery so what they did was they took them basically took these out of mice they took these t cells that they found in the brown fat cells and the brown fat cells is that is that brown is the fat cells that burn a lot of your fat stores energy your brown fat cells actually burn it up to create body heat and to expel energy right it's the it's the part that's using energy so they took these gd t cells out of the brown fat cells and in mice and the mice were like shivering at room temperature when they put them into a cold temperature which they normally would be able to handle they died this is professor lynch uh this is uh oh let me this is associate professor in in immunology at trinity college dublin lydia lynch saying surprisingly we found that the immune cells and fat respond to cold temperatures they play an integral part in regulating thermogenesis by turning on the burning of white fat or by stimulating the conversion of white fat into brown fat which then generates the heat required to keep us warm in the cold this heat generation happens when the lipids and the white fat are burned up and when this occurs weight loss is the biggest side effect so aside from figuring out what that which uh will allow us to live longer and that which we need for our mental health we may have also found a way to be skinny in the future i just want more gd t cells so i i'm not always cold yeah that's i i'm wondering i'm wondering if uh you know the stereotype that women are always colder than men wonder if they have black coma black coma anymore it's california okay then i'm just i just am cold all the time yeah i'm always cold give me some t cells some gd t cells give me those gd t cells right now i'll stop yelling into the mic because uh yeah those gd t cells they're listening or whatever gives them and takes them away it's listening we want them and conversely there are people who have the opposite need um which is they are they're burning through too many cells or too much of their energy too quickly which can happen with some uh immuno depressed uh syndromes and such so so that there there may be also a need for folks who who want to be gaining weight and want to be able to maintain their weight as if as we may actually need to do is we uh decide to live longer sometimes maintaining a healthy body weight can actually become an issue much much later in life than you are now flair but you may actually you know want less of these gd t cells at some point right to keep the body fat on you yeah we'll just manage the ecosystem you know just manage it that's right what could go wrong what could go wrong well if you're listening to twist i hope nothing has gone wrong for you this evening or day wherever you are because it's science everyone we had a great show tonight we have come to the end of our show i hope nobody's shivering i hope you're all nice and toasty warm i hope you've got some gd t cells i hope you've got an eye on your telomerase i hope that you're not i don't know not on on urinus anyway we're done with the show we had a wonderful show great interview with dr sarita menon from smore magazine once again want to thank her and let everyone know smore magazine dot com is where you can go for more information about that it's time for shout outs and thank yous thank you to identity for for recording the show thank you to brandon for simulcasting to facebook thank you to fata for help with show notes on youtube and also with social media and thank you to everyone out there who is in our chat room the chat room that uh is connected with this show and also the youtube chat room and over on facebook hi there thanks for watching live and thanks for being part of the conversation and now i'd like to thank our patreon sponsors thank you to paul disney jibberton latimore richard onamis ken haze harris and prathers charlene davidson henry joshua fury andy gross steve debbel alex wilson tony steele ed dire craig landon john ratna swami mark mazzaro's jack gary matthew litwin jason roberts bill k bill bob calder time jumper 319 kyle washington eric nap richard brian kondren shon brian sarah chavis jacklyn boyster richard porter artyom rick ramis paul john mckay jason olds brian 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Kiki, why is your cursor so huge? Why is my cursor so huge? Is it huge? Oh, it's gigantic. That's funny. Probably because everything's giant. I've got this, I've got a massive screen that I'm working off of in front of me. And so it's pretty funny because I haven't, I haven't figured out how I can manage the windows within it really well. And I guess it's showing off my cursor as being huge humongous cursor curses. noodles wants to know which is better PayPal or Patreon? It depends. Patreon did not end up adding all of the like the weird charges that they were talking about doing back in December. So it's half one, you know, PayPal has its normal percentage that it takes off of every transaction. But PayPal has the same thing has a percentage they remove as well for their for the platform fees. So you know, it's it's up to you. It is up to you which one you prefer. I mean, exactly. Patreon has kickbacks at various levels. Like if you supported a level that I say your name on the show, then I say your name on the show, I don't read off the PayPal donors. But you know, if people on PayPal really asked me for it, I would probably add their names to the list too. Because I just want to say thank you to people who help support the show. That's really the key. But some people don't like Patreon. So they preferred the PayPal thing. And for some people, the credit cards with PayPal are easier. So it's really, it's really up to you. So I don't know. But it's also if you're if you're looking for a one time or recurring, they're recurring PayPal. But if you're doing a one time, it sounds like PayPal is probably the one. Yeah, one time donation, PayPal is probably the way to go recurring donation, Patreon. And you can, you know, there's it's a little community kind of thing. And I send little notes out every once in a while. And it's usually every long while and I need to be better at managing the community. I need to be better at managing my own time. This is the struggle. My struggle in my life is it's an email. It's like an email mailer that you send out. Well, no, it's like in the in the Patreon, the feed, the feed. Well, I put out, I can send messages, I can send emails through Patreon to donors, to supporters. I can also send, put messages on the Patreon feed. I can make posts and messages that go out to the public. I can also specify them for people who pledge at certain levels or at all the levels. Like one of the things I do right now is I put our audio files, I've made a Patreon RSS feed. So and I make that available to supporters. And so you know, if you don't want to download the normal twists RSS feed, and you want to go through Patreon, you can you can download it there. If you are supporting us. So does that mean you are looking for silly content for the Patreon people? Yes. Okay. I didn't know that. I'll put that on my back burner. Yes. And maybe I can give you, maybe I can give you the login information. Patreon now has this. I'm just opening it for the first time. I'd rather you bet all of my musings. I'm just thinking about an occasional blog post or something like that that I could write that you could just send out to everybody. Just like, there's something fun sciency that happened to me today or something like that. And it could be the beginning of our of a newsletter. Yeah, newsletter stuff. That's something that I could say that I'm going to work on. See if it happens or not. But I would also want you to look at it first. So I'll I'll try to send you some stuff. That's fun. Yeah, that would be fun. But I was going to say this. So this new Patreon app, they have this lens app, and it's supposed to make it a lot easier for creators to talk with their patrons. Yeah, so it's like it allows I think it allows you to do things like, you know, record a video or do, you know, do stuff like take a picture and put a post up from your phone. So if you're on the go. Yeah, I have yet to play with it. So I just downloaded just downloaded it. And I need to need to remember what my login information is so that I can actually log in. Oh, yeah. Oh, identity for newsletter, right? I know where that ends up. Twisted magazine. Hi, Patreon level, I would have to say, you have to be getting a good amount of money in here to actually put out a magazine. Yeah, that's a lot of man hours or woman hours. They would be all woman hours. All woman hours. Fair enough to say dedicated to that. Actually, actually, I take that back. I feel like a blog post is something you would absolutely do writing thing like I was already thinking tonight because I missed two stories. One that was just breaking in the one that I saw on Twitter and I haven't really read it. Having to do with footprints, two different stories this week about ancient footprints that were found. Oh, yeah, I can't believe the sloth that you didn't do the sloth. I didn't do the one with the sloth, but there was another one that was that's that's also interesting because it's three and a half million years old and it's showing a bipedal ancestor or cousin. Yeah, that was that. So there's there's like a water like but and then we had the one that was up like in the British Columbia little aisle, like it would be kind of sort of fun to do a just footprints. I was thinking like do a segment or a thing that was just on the footprints of humanity. What those with those different footprints have told us, you know, there's lots of fun stuff that that could be done in an extra long day. Right? An extra long day. Add a little more time and then we will do it. We actually, we actually, I mean, we don't really need your money. What we really need you to do is take a few hours out of the week or if you've got an hour that you're not doing anything with this one day and just send it to us. Send us your time. That would really help a lot. I'd like I would like the money to pay for things as well. Noodles. Thank you so much for for donating on PayPal. And if you join on Patreon, thank you. Just on your post. Thank you. Yeah. Ulysses. What if somebody finds your cards? No, no, that's Ed saying to Ulysses. Oh, Ed uses the cards are uses the oh wait, the last pass vault. Last pass is great. And there's another one as well that what do I use? Can't even pass. There it is. What's it called? It's called something. It's got a key. Key pass. Pass something. I don't know. Graphical says the key pass or last pass. Yeah, I don't think I have I have I have all these devices that remember my passwords. So I never have to. And then something happens on one of them. Yeah, that I happen to be on and it's not there. Yeah. And I reset the password and then I realize, oh gosh, every other device in my existence, I'm going to now have to go through this again. Because now I have to try to auto log me in and it'll be wrong and to be like, you're not you. And I'm like, I just have the other device. Yeah, see, that's what I just wrote in this chat room too. I just let my computer store them. And when my computer updates, I have to recover and reset them all. Yes. That's yep. I used to write them down. I used to have a file. I used to do all sorts of nah, nah, nah, who needs it? I know who I am. I know all my like security questions. So yes. And so does that hacker too. Nah, man, they don't know my first street name or my first model of car or what my high school math. No. Because that car's old enough. Because she's gonna say yes, here on the show. It's not old enough to be my first car. And it just so rude. No, I've seen your car. It's not rude. But hey, mine's no exception. I actually have now I have one of those those emergency battery jumpers plugged into my my my power outlet in the car. So it's always trickle charging when I drive. So the odd every other month or once a month depending when my car battery just fails. There's some sort of there's some sort of like I can I've I've been charging the thing and so then I can jump it and then it'll be happy again for a while. And then it's this. So I'm I'm in the same boat. I'm not my car runs fine. It just has a rust hole in the hatch. My actually favorite thing about your car is that the clock runs fast. Oh, it doesn't it? It not just it runs fast. Yeah, it gate it runs. It's in a different universe. It's in a space time continuum somehow where that's an odd one gain three minutes and the next day it'll gain seven and the next day one digital clock that couldn't tell time. No, I'm just I think maybe maybe it's being triggered by by by gamma rays by cosmic rays. The electronics are being does look like it's been through a radioactive. All right. I'm stuck with it a while here. So I gotta gotta make it work. Robert Bigelos says his clock just seems to run fast in his car because the car is relativity. I gotta make pepper last two more years. So sweet pepper. He was pepper pepper. Oh, pepper. Oh, pepper. I'm gonna start closing some windows here. Oh, I just saw. Alison Coffin who is a neuroscientist who studies hearing at the University of Washington Vancouver. She just posted in Twitter this evening. An interesting study. There is a study that suggests one of the risky behaviors connected with drinking at concerts is hearing loss because you're more likely to stand close to speakers when you drink too much because you're drink. That's funny. Being drunk can lead to hearing loss because being drunk can lead to a lot of bad decisions. Bad decisions in general. That's right. Yes. I love science Twitter. Science Twitter. Oh, gosh, I wonder. I wonder if I can show you pictures of Kai's science experiment. Yeah. I'm just wondering, possible. Kai's been doing we did a microbiology experiment. Oh, yeah. There it goes. I'm gonna gross you out. You ready? Are you ready? This is the gross out time. So we did a science experiment comparing family bacteria. Nice. Yes. And so okay, we have the plates. These we have Oh, nope. I don't want to go that way. I want to go that way. So this was Kai's plate. And the kind of white area. That was this is the quadrant that contained the nasal sample from inside the nose. And then we have the sample the quadrant above it is the that was his the iPad that he uses. Oh, yucky. This bottom left quadrant was his finger. Uh huh. And then the top left quadrant was from the toothbrush. Ah, yuck. Yes. And then so that was his and then this is biology. This is normal. Yeah. Yeah. This is Marshall's tray. So he had a very kind of similar looking white nasal sample. He had his his his iPhone had a few different bacterial colonies, a couple that look similar, but a couple of kind of different ones. And then bottom left was his finger very monocultural. I thought that was pretty interesting that it didn't seem to have a lot he didn't seem to have a lot of diversity on his finger. And then his toothbrush again, huh? Mono monoculture like there's not a lot of bacteria in there. But there's bacteria but just not a lot of diversity again. So that's Marshall. And then here's me. Oh, this was this was my nose. Bottom left. Totally different. Totally different. My my phone, my Android phone, a little bit of bacteria, not too much. My finger, lots of diversity. What? And then my toothbrush. So looking at it like I was thinking, mine is very different for Marshall's. But I think more similar to Kai's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know. I thought Kai's nose seemed yeah. Yeah. So I thought it was just really interesting looking at the the the differences of you know, and and then trying to figure out like how we can explain it. And then we did just a random, a random sampling where we had what was it this we had the TV remote control. We was a TV remote control. The front door knob, which is brass, which is kind of antibacterial. This was a light switch in the kitchen looks very much like the finger bacteria. Yeah, it looks like fingers. And then our cat, Stella, what did you swab on her? We just swabbed her, just put a on her back in her fur. Her fur. That's very interesting fur. Yeah. So anyway, I thought I thought it was very interesting. And one thing that again, you know, even though our devices had bacteria on them, they were still were not as dirty as our fingers. Yeah, which is not what the the studies that we've reported on have said, they've said that they're like dirtier than a toilet seat. But yeah. Um, yeah, maybe you have a very clean device household. Possibly. Yeah. So anyway, those are our bacteria. And that's been and we're playing with bacteria here in our house. It's pretty fun. I'm constantly taking my phone and like rubbing things. Like, let me rub that off. I'm just getting my germs all over my clothes, wiping it off, cleaning it off constantly. Yes, I'm sure my phone swab was very different when I was a zookeeper than now. Yeah. Right. Probably. Yeah. Well, I had an Otterbox I had like the super protective iPhone case that I left in my locker when I was you left an Otter in a box in your locker. So yeah, so I would change my phone case in between being at work and leaving because yeah, like I'm sure there was poop splash hitting my phone all the time. Yeah. So you yeah. Gross. Yeah. Still still I'm sure a lot of it transferred. Because you know, you like you change and you touched your belt that was also splattered with poop and then pick up your phone and then, you know, it's unavoidable. But yeah, and our cat's an indoor cat. So I'm sure, you know, she's just got our germs and we've got her germs because she doesn't go anywhere else. Yeah. Ulysses is asking how did I get the Petrie trays and how did I get it to grow? It was pretty easy. Actually, there's a good friend of ours for Kai's birthday. He ordered a Steve Spangler science kit for Kai. And this was in last month's science kit. But if you were interested in doing something like this yourself there, you just go online to like an educational website, where teachers can buy supplies and you can buy kits like these you can buy a set of Petrie dishes, you can buy the nutritional base, which is agar, A G A R is how it's spelled. And it usually contains a certain certain set of nutrients to keep bacteria alive. And so what something that was interesting that I didn't think about prior to kind of tweeting about this the other day yesterday I tweeted I was like, Oh, look at our picture is there any microbiologists want to identify bacteria? And one person got back to me and said, What kind of new what kind of agar do you have? What kind of it's going to determine what can speaking of the cats. Yeah. And so the nutrients in the agar determine what can grow. And so, and I was like, I have no idea this came out of a kit. So I didn't control it. But it's agar and Petrie dishes are not hard to come by. And the methodology is pretty simple to sample bacteria and let it grow. So it's a it's very it's a fun process to kind of and kind of take a look at it and see, see how much is there what kind of diversity is there. Or, you know, if you can figure out what species are there, or at least genuses, like somebody pointed out on Twitter last night was cool. Someone like pointed an arrow at one little clump of bacteria and they were like, Oh, it looks like you've got bacillus. I'm like, Yay, disease causing bacteria. Actually, it'd be fun to take everything under the microscope and see if the morphology of the colonies, you know, just as it looks similar, is it the same thing was put into the microscope and let's find out. Let's find out. Exactly. Yeah. So that's the next step. So the dishes are there still. We haven't thrown them away yet. Got to get pull out a microscope and see what we can see. See what we can see. I hope I didn't hope I didn't gross you all out too much. I mean, it's science. Come on. That was not the grossest thing we talked about today. So no, I was actually I was actually streaking. Restreaking plates. I was doing that today as a as a control step to look for contaminate if there's a contamination to go back and look at if it was present at stage. That's cool. That's cool. Yeah, what's the and then probably one of my favorite things to do too, because it's it's like he said, very easy. And when you've got a whole big stack of them, it's very meditative. There's like a little Zen art to the squiggly lines that you lay down there. And there are so many microbiologists. I just made up a word, but there are tons of microbiologists who actually streak their plates with certain bacteria in certain designs and they create art, you know, they make they make images out of bacteria. And that's fun. Super. Oh, I've got to I've got to rabble a plan to come up with something like that. Yes, make the twist logo and bacteria. The head of lab will be like, what is going on here? Why does it just keep saying twist and down over here, then you do a big up and down squiggly line. And then I like to do a little dot for isolation effect. And then one more last big squiggly streak at the end. It's perfect. Yeah, that's perfect. Um, let's see. So I'm not going to be here next week. That's right. Yeah, I mean, we just need a new run sheet. And then are you I'll make a new run sheet. I leave town on Tuesday, midday. Will you be textable? I should be. Okay. Just in case I have a great part about location or I'm going to be at in Monterey, big California. So close. So close yet so far. It's always for me, but it's right next to her left. I'm very excited. And you guys this, this meeting that I'm going to I'm going to be honest and say this meeting has given has has ratcheted up my imposter syndrome. Oh, no, no, I am have been invited to go to a workshop. It's one of several workshops that the Cavley Institute is is organizing to get a view of the landscape of science communication and the challenges facing scientists and science communicators of all sorts and to look at potential directions to go for solutions to be able to direct the Cavley Institute maybe in and other funding organizations in how they fund science communication projects in the future in the solutions that they want driven forward. I'm going to be sitting in a workshop with a number of people from across the country who I respect very much in the science communication field. And I am very excited to be going. And I know that it is a it's a huge it's it's huge that I get to go to this and I'm very excited. But it's one of those moments where you look at the list of attendees and go I'm on this list. Wow. Before Kirsten, I think I've pointed this out. I know this is a human thing though. This is a critical person all the time. And this I'm just being this is my honest human love the honesty but I am I'm somewhat revolted by the the abject humility. There is not a human being on this earth who is reported on more science stories than you ever in the history of planet Earth. There is another human being that is brought to the public more science stories directly than Kirsten Sanford. So so I get like, you know, indulging yourself in a little bit of this humility glow. But serious, you've brought more science and probably half the people coming. So I have I've done I've done a lot. Yeah, it's true. And I know and this this is the, you know, the this is the issue with this, the psychological thing where you doubt, even though I know what I have done in my life. It's like, really? But was that it was that? Was that okay? It's okay. I gotta work harder. Gotta do more. And I think I think one of the lessons though, that we've learned in this twist track, is that we're still doing it and we're still doing it right. And and I'm still enjoying doing enjoying it. But I mean, there's been a lot of like, oh my gosh, Al Gore is creating this channel, they're gonna be talking about science and we're not part of it. How is that even possible? But then it and then the shows that I watched and I was like, Oh, really, they're doing like, some sort of like glossy production value with very little content. Again, I'm saying again. Wow, that's also missing the mark of just sitting down and having a conversation about science. So I mean, you know, there's well, there's there's there's that in the back of your mind though, keep it there. Don't let go of it. Let that let that be the thing that you know, walking into that room, that you've been where these people are contemplating going. Yeah, it was like the science talk conference. It was it was a lot of people who were like science communication. That sounds like a thing that maybe I should be doing. Maybe I should go hear about that. And it's something that is really hard for a lot of people to fathom and especially a lot of people who are entrenched in the scientific community have have a have a hard time fathoming kind of even how to baseline attack it. So it's pretty cool that that it's something that you have devoted so much of your life to. But it's I mean, it comes back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the show about representation and seeing yourself in science. And if it's if it's the fact that it's a woman, if it's the fact that it's a normal person, not some uptight person in a bow tie, if it's the fact that we're talking about it. No, I'm saying that the cartoon, I'm saying the cartoon of a man with glasses and a bow tie in a lab coat. This is like the stereotypical scientist, right? So like, this idea that we're just having these normal conversations and and and sometimes they're big and sometimes they're small and sometimes they're silly and sometimes they're serious and it's just and sometimes fly ejaculation can get you to talking about, you know, bigger human issues. Yeah. That's something that that I think is not prevalent. Yeah. And it's what I absolutely love about doing this show. There's just us talking about things that we find interesting and other people, you know what? They they also find it interesting. And that's great. But I would enjoy this conversation either way. Yep. Yeah, but part of it, like you mentioned, the, you know, people from the scientific community who go, Oh, this science communication, maybe I should be doing that. Yeah, that's part of it is we also help scientists communicate. We give them a forum, we get to interview them, we get to talk with them and be like, Okay, and then Justin can go, I got a crazy idea. Yeah. What about that? Sometimes quite sensible. Sometimes they are quite sensible. Yes. Yeah. So that's really exciting, though, Kiki. I'm so happy. I can't hear more about it. I can't either. I am. I'm very excited about this. I'm gonna have gonna have so many wonderful geeky conversations about science communication over a couple of days next week. It's gonna be awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome. And maybe maybe partnerships and collaborations will come of it. Who knows? New friendships, maybe interviews for the show. Who knows? Maybe just, you know, a glass of bourbon. You know, I'd like you to I'd like you to do as a producer, captain, my captain of the show. Can we reach out to the Yahoo News people? Because they've got a section in their like, you can look at the news of politics, world news, local news, sports news, you can look at science. And I guarantee you, Uranus Stinks made it. Oh, sure. Probably nothing else for like three weeks has been posted in that section. And like, my dad sends me Yahoo News articles all the time that are science. That's all of them. Well, it's all it's from it. It's often something that we reported on the show three months ago. Yeah. Like, oh, yeah, we talked about that. There was some cell phone driving while cell phone multitasking study that we reported on. And like three months later, it was I was in Los Angeles, and it was a, you know, front page blurb to a section B story. Was it but it was months and months later. So like the speed at which we can get the information out. But it's just like they're not doing there. They're just collecting stories from other places. Yeah, I'm looking at their science. They're not very many of them. I think yeah, like not very many of them even like if you look at it, there's not even like, no, not even that much of of they're there. Well, Yahoo is kind of gone its way out. Yeah. So that's what I was gonna say, Justin, I don't want to offend you. It's a very it's a very old long running web portal, you know, it's not where the email are getting their news. It's not an email. That's not even a Yahoo account. It's an account from some like pack my bell. Oh, yeah, I still have an SBC global account. That like got bought by somebody who got bought by somebody else and is now part of this conglomerate thing. But my email is now through Yahoo. Yeah, I got it. Yeah. Robert Bigelow that is my favorite whiskey. Blanton says good stuff there. Three rocks advice. Oh, it's perfect. Speaking of imposter syndrome. Imposter. I'm speaking tomorrow at the taste and science event. And I'm assuming that someone wants to hear about my life for 15 minutes. They do because you're interesting. But I worked really hard on a presentation that's basically just a bunch of really silly pictures of me and my various stages of larval metamorphosis to where I am today. And it should be interesting. The person going on before me is talking about what is it fun guy research. The fungus among us. Yes. So, um, yeah, I'm excited. It's gonna be very interesting. I had a great you're gonna have so much fun. Yeah, I have to bring some twist swag that I find. According to the Wikipedia, imposter syndrome, also known as imposter phenomenon, broad syndrome or the imposter experience is a psychological pattern in which people doubt their accomplishments and have a persistent often internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. Correct. That's ridiculous. Because you know, I haven't been actually doing this show for as long as I know you haven't been on the TV a bunch of times or anything. Yeah, I guess it's all kind of like compared to what like, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, that's probably part of it. But that's like, that's part of my thing, right? Is that like, I'm going to this event that historically has been all about research. And, you know, those scientists wearing lab coats and goggles, you know, and they have been after me for a year to talk at one of these events. And I keep saying no, because I'm not one of those people. And eventually I gave in and here I am. So we'll see, we'll see how it goes. So gonna be very unconventional. So I actually work in a place where people wear the goggles, the gloves and the lab coats. Yeah. Oh, where were you working before this? And I'm like, well, I was God salesman. And they look what? Like, yeah, I don't really know what is the opposite of imposter syndrome? That's what I want to do. Overcompensation. No, really, I bypassed the whole like getting an education thing and just came to work. Next year from working in the cars. Oh, my God, that's great. Oh, man. I love it. I absolutely love it. I love that you, you know, you've liked science for so long, but you never, never, you know, thought you would or never got into the career and you just kind of going in your sales summer job was in the research lab. Yeah. And I love it. And I had this is one of those things where I did you do a test. You take a test, wash your dryers. You take a test and then they place you in what your self thing evaluation test, things you like, things you'd be interested in. I took the test, turned it in and I ended up with this job. You don't pick the job. They, they send you to this job. And like, I don't know, somewhere like 10th grade, maybe something like that. And so yeah, I should have just, you know, I loved it. It was a great job. I should have figured out right then and there that that's what I wanted to do. You should have. But you didn't. It took a long path. You took a long wandering life path. And you're still taking it. I don't know. I think, you know, you not having, you know, it's not having the set path of, Oh, I'm going to do this. And then I'm going to end up doing this and knowing this, what you want to do in life. Like, it's allowed you so many different experiences that other people haven't had, you know, and won't ever had have. I mean, you with your carney experience, you with like going to LA and trying to do script writing, you like being a salesman from, you know, working at Sears to working in the car in the car industry, you know, working as a radio DJ as a as a science talk show host, working as a, what did you, you opened a clothing store. You've worked and, you know, for the years that I've known you, you have done and tried so many things that other people would just be like, I can't do that. I gotta stick to my path. And you're like, you know what that's called? Yeah, science, science, trial and error, trial and error, finding the things. Yeah. I love it. I just thought I wasn't very interested in anything. Well, there you go. Get boring. That's also part of it. That's also part of it. Hey, Robert Bigelow is asking, does Jackson Fly remind anyone of Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Malcolm in Jurassic Park? I've made that. Strangers I've met on the street. Ask if there's actual immediate familial relationship there. Yes, this is, this is definitely a something that has come up before, Robert, a few times. I hear there, there's been that there's been good art on this on this in the past. Didn't somebody make images of you? You and Jeff Goldblum? Yeah, hot rod says, yeah, that's why we call Justin Jeff all the time. Okay. Robert, your first job was at a marine biology research station at the Pine Key in the Florida Keys. Cool. Hey, strengths, maybe I should interview, we should interview my ambialic. That'd be fun. Why not? Hey, blossom. Well, she's she's an anti vaxxer, which is what I wrote in the chat room. But I don't think she is an anti she's not an anti vaxxer. She's not anti vaccination. She did make a few comments that I can kind of understand, but she's not anti vax. That is a, I think it is misrepresentation. Hey, did we get sent? I think I mean, I'd love I mean, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I remember reading a pretty in depth interview with her about it. But I could be wrong. King of interviews. Did we ever get the I contain multitudes book? Did anybody ever send that to us? No, we should. We should have gotten it. Yeah, should have. I found it on my lonesome. We've Oh, yeah, the books. We have to have to interview. Yeah, I know him. So I could probably know I know him. So I could probably reach out and get him. I want to go look him up. And it turns out I've been following him for a really long time on Twitter. Yeah, or the other way around. I've met him. I've met him. He's a cool guy. Yeah, he's very, very nice. He's a very nice, but and funny person. That's that's the thing I got from this book is aside from being really well written and very informative and very nice person. He was there's some fantastic humor throughout. Somebody I would love to have on the show. Yeah, okay. All right. I need to make a list of people that I need to send an email to and schedule interviews. Make the top three, Ed Young. All three of them. Okay, sounds good. The show week after next, we're going to have Karen Bondar back on the show. She has written a book called Wild Moms and she was on the show previously. I think she came on this one. It might have been just on Dr. Kiki Science Hour. She was on the show during our 24 or 22 hour. Oh, wow. A thon. She came on the show for a little while during that and talked with us about stuff. My challenge or end of the world show. Yes. Yes. Twist McGuiden. Twist McGuiden. She was part of the Twist McGuiden show. Yeah, she's a biologist. She does a lot of TV video work, but her original book, her first book she wrote, was Wild Sex. All about sex in the animal kingdom. This one is Wild Moms. All about motherhood in the animal kingdom. I think it'll be a good interview. Blair, get your animal mom questions at on for two weeks from now. The night. Right before Mother's Day. Apropo timing. Yes. So, yeah, I have to put that in our rundown, but that's coming up and I'd love to, yeah, I want to get more interviews scheduled. So, if you have ideas, email me or tweet to me and I'll see what I can do. I want to try and get, yes, there it is, Ed from Connecticut. Just put the link up there in the chat room. Wild Moms on Amazon. That just sounds bad. But yeah, so I just got a direct message from Comcast that heads up over night to night. There is scheduled maintenance registered for your area from 12am until 5am. So, I have an hour until I lose internet for the rest of the night. So, I should probably go and do the bed thing. I mean, who needs, I just, I mean, I could be on for another hour. We could be on for another hour. You should rest up, Blair, because you have to go tomorrow night. I know. I had an eight-hour teen training on Sunday. I had to do some sort of speaking thing yesterday. And then I spoke at a convening at work today. And then I was speaking, I spoke tonight. I was speaking tomorrow. I'm starting to feel a little bit of an itch right here. I'm speaking. Oh, and I have an eight-hour teen training on Saturday also. There you go. It's April. This is what April is like in my life. I'm starting a new thing at work tomorrow. I don't really understand it. From what I understand, we're going to be putting sequins on some jeans. I don't know. I'm looking forward. Yeah, bedazzling. Bedazzling. Yeah, that's what I think I'm doing. Do you get to use the nanopore? No, not tomorrow. I'm using a next-seq and a my-seq. Cool. Cool. Gene sequencing. That's awesome. Have a good time doing that. It's just fun. It's actually not a whole lot of doing. It's a lot of sort of like prepping the meal and then taking it. It's like doing all the prep work for meal and then taking a TV dinner and sticking it in the microwave. It's not a whole lot of flipping of jeans to be done while it's actually working. Still sounds like fun. New skills. New skills. To pay those bills. New skills to pay those bills. That's right. All right, everybody. We are going to head out for the night. Thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. We don't hope that you have a great week. Come back next week for Justin and Blair ruling the show. Yeah, that should be fun. Keep up with us on the social medias in the meantime because that's where we will be keeping up with you. Yeah, that's right. Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. Take care.