 Hello everybody and welcome to the latest installment of this week in science and yes, we are coming in here a little bit later than even our usual lateness, because we've got a little bit of, you know, Justin on a cell phone this week, we're doing what we can. We're here you are here thank you for being here this is this week in science we're going to have a show now I just want to let all of you know as you hopefully do know by now that this is the live recording of our podcast. This is being broadcast and it's live so you know things happen like as being late and like I don't know we'll see what happens but some of those things may be edited from the final podcast so if you want to get the cleaned up edited version. The podcast it'll come out tomorrow. Yes, while we're doing this little preamble. Let's ask the audience if there's an echo because I'm afraid that the speaker and the microphone could be picking each other up, but I don't know if that's true. So when you talk, is there an echo. So far so good. I'm not hearing you are you hearing you don't hear anything either. Perfect. Cool cool. All right. We're all here. Yeah, let's do this show yeah. Make sure to give us the hearts and the likes and the thumbs up and all those things because that helps us get into the algorithms. Subscribe subscribe subscribe. We're going to go live now. And yeah, it's time we are live but I mean that we're going to actually start the recording time but I'll show begin. Right. Yes, seriousness. In all seriousness this show will begin in three. Two. This is twist this week in science episode number 906 recorded on Wednesday December 21st 2022. This week in science top 11 of 2022. Hey everyone I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we will fill your head with a list full of science. But first disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer time goes by so fast blink and you won't miss much it goes by slower than that. But as each day ends, another begins pretty much right away. Pace is relentless and in the world of science that relentless pace leads to an abundance of new discoveries. Each year we attempt to share with you the research highlights several hundred stories of science and goodness stuffed into a podcast stocking hung on every Wednesday with care. And every year around this time we pluck out 11 stories that we think are the most interesting of all. And remember the year that was is soon to be no more. That and a reminisce with us for a while here on this week in science coming up next. Good science you Kiki and Blair. And a good science to you to Justin Blair and everyone out there welcome to another episode of twist we are here actually not doing just another episode. This is one of our special holiday yearly endeavors into the year past. We are looking back at the year that we've just experienced so that we can all be reminded of some of those fun stories, the important stories. We're not going to talk about the boring stories but I mean we never do so let's get into it. Blair and Justin thank you so much for joining me once again for this very special auspicious occasion. It's this year in science. So this weekend. Isn't that a different show. I guess it's this show right now. Oh yeah. It's the episode. Yes, this is the episode before you and welcome everyone to this wonderful episode of this week in science. We hope that you are here with lots of holiday cheer to endeavor with us down memory lane. Now Justin. Why is it top 11 again. Well it used to be a top 10 but then we would get all these phone calls and emails people asking us what would have been the number 11. Was it this was it that everywhere was so curious so we added the 11 one on so that nobody would bother us. Although I have received a few emails asking what the 12th one would have been. So it seems to be an ongoing ongoing problem. We might have to add one cycle. We'll just keep adding more to the list here. Just every decade we'll add another one. We're just going to talk about all the stuff. There we go. I mean and really when we talk about our top stories and top in in science from the past year it's more of the top topics in science. Very rarely does it come down to just one particular finding because as we know science is built on the shoulders of giants. Right. Everything is a collaboration. Everything is based on what came before and so very often one study is not. It's great. That's awesome. But it's not necessarily the one thing that's going to change the world. There are other things that have happened. So really we're going to talk about a lot more than 11 stories. We're going to talk about 11 of our favorite big topics from the year. And so as we jump into the show here I do want to remind you all that if you are not yet subscribed to us as a podcast we are found all places podcasts are found just a look for this week in science or twist. You can also find us streaming live weekly Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ish Pacific time on Facebook, YouTube and Twitch. We are twist science on Twitch and Twitter and Instagram and now on mastodon but I don't remember what server I signed up for. So it's on there somewhere. Does that matter. Is it a bunch of little mastodons. It's a federated universe Justin we're learning as we go but yes we are now twist science on mastodon and you know if all this is just too much for you to remember right now just go to twist.org that's where our show notes are our links to past shows and subscriptions and all of our social media stuff. So are we ready to dig in. Let's do it. Yes. We will start the countdown at number 11. 11, 11, 11. 11. 11, 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. 11. I don't know if there were any great scientific breakthroughs that we were super blown away about. Just lots of bad news for the most part. We hit 420 parts per million in the atmosphere for carbon, fish are in trouble. Some fish are going to be okay, but lots of fish are in trouble. Birds are in trouble. Bugs are in trouble. We report on all that. The Siberian Peninsula is the hottest it's been for 7,000 years. Droughts, all sorts of stuff like that. There were a couple kind of silver lining things we've reported on the show. One is that Americans on the whole are excited about climate action and want to put climate action forward. The caveat was most Americans think most Americans don't want that. Yeah, that wasn't interesting, fine. But they thought their idea was unpopular. Yeah, we need to talk more about it. That probably is reflecting because it seems like a really important thing, but it's never in the news. It's not talked about on any of the cable national news networks. They almost don't mention it. We also reported this year that the president of the United States had a state of the Union. He mentioned climate change twice. We would have liked more. But hey, not that many years ago it wasn't discussed at all in the presidential debates for the entire presidential run. So there's definitely progress. But what we've learned is it's bad. We need to talk about it more. But as Kiki reported one week, we need to keep solutions in mind and give people hope because otherwise there's no point in fixing things. So hopefully we'll see some better news in the future. Guaranteed climate change will be talked about a lot next year. But hopefully we'll have some really cool solutions and some policy changes to talk about. But I always have to count on this because I don't want people to be too hopeful. I want to be hopeful to the point of thinking. So I have a handwritten sign in my office that says, it's good or sorry, it's real. It's bad. It's us. There's hope. Yeah. And I think that's the big trick here is trying to get news, big media to cover it in that way. Everybody knows it's here. Everybody wants to talk about it. We all agree about it. And what can we do about it? What are the big steps to take? What are the things that we're understanding about it? Like fossil fuel companies just, I think today there's a report that the first lawsuit going against propaganda spread by fossil fuel companies has been put into play. So really naming fossil fuel companies and their efforts to cause so disinformation and basically lead to the propaganda that has led us to be basically a couple of decades behind in our efforts to do anything. So because systems are working, scientists are working, technology is working, we're all doing this. We just got to keep doing it. Yeah. And we talk about it like it's a tomorrow problem. But more and more, the science reporting, it's a now and yesterday problem. We are seeing the effects now of climate change from 10, even 20 years ago. So yeah, I'm really hoping this is great news. I'd love to hear that there being some actual accountability. Here's hoping that climate change will be on the countdown next year with some really good progress. Yeah. And just keep in mind, last time we were, what did you say, 420 parts for whatever it was? Yeah. Mastodons were around, oh. There was no ice on the caps. Last time we were there. Yeah. That was megalodon, giant sharks. Yeah. And that number is 50% higher carbon in the atmosphere than before the industrial revolution, the 1900s. So we did this in 100 years basically. We can undo it. Look at the technology. Slow it down. It would be nice. I'll settle for slow it down. Tap the brakes, everyone. It's okay. It's all right. I actually get worse gas mileage when you do that. So we're just contributing. Unless, of course, you're using a Prius or a hybrid car where you're tapping the brakes, you're regenning your battery. So there you go. I want my regen brakes and better batteries. This is what we all need moving forward. Are we ready for moving forward down the countdown? Yes. One more. Yes. One more. Number ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Number ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Number ten. Yeah, I know. Last week, two weeks ago, I was like, we're not going to talk about the national ignition facility and fusion finding, and it's not going to be on our countdown. Blur to blur to blur, but okay, it's on the countdown as part of the category for big physics and the work that it's doing in coming into creating some really interesting findings and moving us forward as a society and hopefully promising us a better future, right? So national ignition facility, NIF, DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory facility achieved ignition this year and not just achieved ignition, but it, by a factor of ten, improved its ability to create a hot plasma that was ignited, that had fusion. And, well, and this was above 2021's standard, so we're getting there, we're moving forward, improvements on the lasers, improvements on the technology is going to lead us in the right direction and the fact that in a year, it was a times ten improvement in what they had achieved from last year that is substantial. So, good work, keep working, we're all waiting for our fusion. I want to, I'm waiting for the Europeans, not just, not just NIF, but the Europeans with their ETER and some of the other Tokamax and the Stellarators and others to come online. I'm waiting for all of you all to make it possible. In that kind of boring, but whatever, big, big physics news, large Hadron Collider, always one of our favorites, right, they're colliding particles constantly, huge amounts of data, massive experiments. It is kind of boring because once again this year, the LHC has said, darn it, there's nothing special, standard model, still doing its thing. That was a very recent finding this last year. Yeah, so there's apparently some gray area on the edges of some experiments that they thought might mean there's a different, the standard model isn't complete, it's not correct, there needs to be an adjustment to make room for these and then now after some really intense experimentation at the LHC, we needed to know we learned from Einstein and we should just stop. The standard model, that's where we are, that's it. But there are still other, the Gaia experiment had some data, there are other experiments looking at other things that are related to the Hubble constant and others that will potentially be giving us better information related to some of the more big scale cosmological aspects of what we're looking at physically. And then, you know, big physics but on a small scale, we had one of Blair's favorite stories this year, the black hole in a lab where researchers created a little teeny, teeny, tiny black hole that started having the little hairs of releasing energy and information just like they should be according to Hawking and other physicists' predictions. So amazing and awesome in the actual meaning of that word and also terrifying. But there's like a little baby black hole, it's not terrifying. We don't understand them yet, so like what are you gonna do? It's scary, you're doing a thing you don't fully understand in a lab. They understand it, it's fine, they tend to those black holes. Here's the analogy that you can use. A black hole works kind of like height. If it's really big, you have a reason to be afraid of being up so high. If, on the other hand, it's smaller than you, you have no reason to be afraid of that kind of height falling down into or onto or whatever. All right, it still makes me nervous, but I also I also am very much in favor of it. It's a very weird dichotomy. I am being torn apart from within because I'm like that's so amazing and it's so cool. Oh kind of spaghettified? Yes spaghettified, you can say that. You're being spaghettified. In addition to black holes, little tiny black holes, there was also the dead. This is the one that was debated as to the terminology and exactly how important it was, but I thought it was very interesting and wonderful advancement all the same because of the technology and the math working and it's really, you know, it's application as opposed to just theory. It's just showing that things are right, but the holographic worm holes. So using quantum computers to be able to create not a real wormhole. No, we don't have real wormholes, but these simulated holographic wormholes that have a lot of the properties in common with what we would expect a wormhole to have and some interesting outcomes to the experiment that had not been expected related to how the information was transferred from one end of the wormhole to the other. And speaking of spaghettification that there was a kind of tearing apart of or entropic factor related to information going in and then a more not logical, but less chaotic factor for the information coming out. So it was torn apart and then put back together kind of like an egg being unscramble and scrambled or scrambled and then unscramble and some aspects of these holographic wormholes. I've never tried it at home. No, I have not. Yes. Anyway, really interesting work. Amazing use of quantum computers to be able to advance our understanding of physics which this, I mean if we want to understand our universe, right, the theoretical physics being put into application, I mean it's still simulation in a computer, but maybe that's what we are anyway. So it all comes back home in the end. We're all gonna- The only problem I have with that, the only problem I have with that is it seems like an evolving theory because I remember, I'm old enough to remember that people thought, oh, what if we're all just on a telephone line and don't realize it? And before then they were like, oh, what if we're all just in a telegraph machine? You know, whatever the nervous you remember, you remember back that far. Wow, you get older every week, Justin. Yeah. Oh, what if the all of reality is just part of part of a clay tablet that somebody's written something on? Oh yeah, that's a theory. You know, it's definitely more convincing with the computer, but it's still just writing. It's all it is. It's still just writing right on the wall. Little, little shadows written on the wall, but I think we will move forward to our next topic from these amazing, incredible, physics applications and discoveries to number nine. Nine, nine, nine, microbiome. We love the microbiome. Why is it number nine, Justin? This is one, because there was a bunch of stories as they kind of almost, again, sort of like climate change and a lot of these things that keep showing up in abundance each year and or they just catch our attention perhaps. But the one thing that I thought was interesting is there was multiple stories. One at the beginning of the year and a completely different one right towards the end of the year and another one somewhere in between that were linking energy levels to your microflora. The very recent one where it's the mice and they looked at their genetics and they looked at every their diet, they looked at every possible angle and the only thing they could differentiate between the exercising vigorous mice and the lazy mice was that their microbiota was different and it's kind of nice that they that one looked through genome and everything else because there were a couple earlier ones that had connected it to, oh maybe this is affecting personality. Maybe it's affecting more outgoing personality or more reserved laid-back personality, which is one way of looking at it, but if it's energy levels, if it's ability to keep running on the treadmill, then there's a probiotic that we should all take to get off the couch when we need to. I love that. Get off the couch, take your bacteria, let's do it. I will also throw in my favorite microbiome story from this year which was linking being able to identify people who'd suffered concussions based on their microbiome. So it's, yeah, essentially their microbiome shifted if they had chronic concussions. That mind-brain connection is becoming much much more clear with every passing year. There was another one too where this wasn't microbiome but it was gut related. It was sensors in the gut that were reading different types of lipids or looking, one that looked for lipids and sugars and one that just looked for lipids. And they tricked these mice, sort of, I guess, tricked, but they had this tasteless water they could drink that had a lot of lipids in it and then they had another one that was really sweet that they liked and they eventually all moved to the lipid one and it turned out because the sensors in the gut were telling the brain this is the good stuff, this is what I'm getting rewarded with. So the taste for those lipids wasn't in the tongue. These mice were actually tasting the food and rating it from the gut and the brain knew all along but just never mentioned it to us. Sometimes though, like with artificial sweeteners, you might taste it sweet but then it's your gut which is one thing we determined this year that there are different pathways within the vagus that go from the gut to the brain that are related to the microbial responses of to these various sweeteners, real sugar artificial sweeteners and which pathways get activated by metabolites. So sometimes it's like oh your mouth is like oh it's sweet, that's great, let's start the sweet processes and then your gut goes mm-hmm, no. Still need more. It's faking on me. You tricked the tongue, you didn't trick the gut. The gut still wants you to go out and get some crispy crumb donuts. That's right. What else did microbes do? There was so much. Those are the ones I brought to talk about tonight. Oh, those are your big ones. You're like there were more. There were a lot more. Actually there were so many that at some point I think I stopped. I was like I can't do another microbiome story this week. I know there was a study on I think it was apes where comparatively looking at their microbiome and ours, it looks like we lost half of our microbiome when we moved to the city. Oh yeah, there was city versus rural was part of that. And there was also some involved in longevity too. Like people were living longer with different microbiomes. So we're going to find out that all of the secrets to a long and healthy life. Oh for sure, yeah. I have to deal with the gut. And I still think it's crazy that doctors, that medicine has not caught up and said let's get your blood panel and your microbiome so that we have a baseline on you. Nobody's ever looked at my microbiome to see what's going on there. It's true. So this was also the year that we interviewed Brynn Nelson about his book Flush and we talked about which is something that I think Blair was very excited to hear. That people who are lactose intolerant, that when you eat yogurt that contains the lactobacillus species of bacteria, you can eat cheesy things. So if you're eating yogurt that contains things that eat lactose, your microbiome is being populated for that moment. No. We must do these experiments. It's too high stakes. You have to be too high stakes. I'll get back to you. That'll be a resolution for 2023. I'll try it out. Oh my goodness. Okay, all right. Well, moving on from the microbiome, we will jump to number eight. AI, which stands for amazing impulse. No, so artificial intelligence. Of course. So there was a lot. There was a lot of AI this year. This was the year for AI. It exploded. First of all, there were art bots. So if you were on social media, if that's a thing that you enjoy, you saw lots of mid-journey and other AI programs creating art. It's still happening pretty well. We also had AI outperforming humans at things like detecting whale songs and picking up information people missed in other studies, detecting exoplanets with gravitational lensing, having it being better at protein folding, coming up with algorithms, just a lot of things, but also, ultimately, proved that it could kill everyone. Oh, jeez. What? No, I didn't. We basically fed it the information so that it could make a biochemical weapon if it wanted and essentially did. So there was also a study about the fact that AI has bad bedside manner, so there's more research that needs to be done about language choice with AI, which I'm not surprised about if you see those AI-generated scripts. It's very clear language is not the thing AI is great at yet. But yeah, AI was all over the place. And also, I will say anecdotally, a lot of my animal corner studies were, conclusions were drawn because of AI systems. So they might have done research out in the field, collected data, come back to the lab, and then used AI to process that data to come up with an actual finding. So pretty game-changing. And I will add a jump on here. Patrick Pecoraro is jumping into our chat and saying many times, let's not confuse artificial intelligence with machine learning. And so I think, actually, you're right on there, Patrick. And what we are looking at in all of this stuff is machine learning. There are algorithms. They're given a big data set. And the algorithms then go about figuring things out. And so this is machine learning. This is not... Technically. Tech, technically. It's machine learning. There's natural language learning processes. There's various aspects of how it's approached. Well, I think it gets more foggy when you look at things where the program makes strange jumps, like creating a biochemical weapon when given information on how to cure disease. Well, this is a company that only does machine learning algorithms to come up with helpful compounds that can be used in medicine. And they got invited to do a talk about how AI could be turned against this. What's the evil side? What's the dark side of it? And they didn't really realize why they were being invited. So they go, well, let's see if we can take all of the buffers off and actually see if we can have our system if our algorithms would tell us how to hurt somebody. And it came up with all the known nerve agents that have been outlawed and banned from war. And it came up with a bunch of ones that we haven't discovered yet. And it did it really quickly. Very quickly. They move really fast. I mean, this year was the year that AlphaFold and also another research organization's open access protein folding where they were able to create very accurate protein confirmations, the folding confirmations for many, many proteins or removed not just from proteins, but to other parts of RNA, DNA, other aspects of the cell and how they're put together. This year was the year that not only on the bad side, there was an antibiotic that was created by artificial intelligence. So it came up, AI, machine learning, came up with a whole bunch of, well, really bad things for humanity very quickly, nerve agents to kill us. But it also came up with antibiotics that would potentially help save our lives. So there's the good side. There's the bad side. And this is, I think, where we have to be looking at this technology moving forward with all of our faculties as humans towards creativity, towards intelligence, towards what we expect from computers. The algorithms are just going to get smarter. They're going to collect more and more data. The more data they have, the better their predictions can be. Right? Yeah, maybe we will have a sentient computer by 2045 or 2060 or whenever it is that various people have predicted that we'll have super intelligent artificial intelligences. But at this point in time, we have some really cool machine learning algorithms that are doing some neat stuff and they're giving us an opportunity to take a look down the road at where things are going to go. And do science faster too. And do science faster. Yeah. Very, very good point. Yes. And also maybe know what to wear when you go to Soho. Oh, yes. I didn't talk about that one. Oh, man. Yeah, AI machine learning system basically was fed a bunch of fashion information was able to give suggestions on what to wear. What should you wear if you're going to Paris? What should you wear if you're going to Soho? I would not trust. It's probably nothing that's in my closet anyway. We will just keep on moving on. Have we talked machine learning AI out? Talked it out. Okay, we're going to be creative on our own. We don't need AI. I actually tried to ask ChatGPT if it would predict the top 11 science discoveries of 2022 for me. And it said it couldn't because its information only went up to 2021. So it could not help me. It's learning library wouldn't help it make predictions. I was sad. I thought that would be kind of a fun way to start this show. But maybe next year. 2021 against our 2021. See how accurate it was. We'll check it. We'll check it. Number seven. Let's talk about brains and brain organoids. Oh, the neuron and brain research. Little tiny baby brains in dishes doing so many very interesting things. This year, researchers got neurons in a dish that they created. They called it dish brain. That's what they do. They called it dish brain and it plays pong. They got a little tiny brain in a dish to play a very simple computer game, which in itself is very interesting. That means that that little brain organoid, those little neurons, could take the input of the stimuli, correlate various aspects of what needed to be output, and then try to, I don't know, play the game, move the little thingy. What is it? I don't know, the paddle? I didn't get to start and have a paddle. It didn't have hands. So it didn't have hands. It was just a brain. It was all nerves and electricity. But yeah, that one I thought was a very interesting application of what we've learned so far. And just the basics of neural networks, of the needs of neurons, and the potential for networks of neurons to work together, wire together, fire together, and engage in an activity that is external to itself. It's the basics of neurons. This is the basics of an organism needing to respond and create multiple cells that work together to respond to external stimuli in a way that is beneficial to the organism. What is the thing that it needs to do? What is it being programmed to do? And this was just dish brain, plan pong. But this is the basics. It's so great. And then researchers also this year took brain organoids and implanted them into rat brains. And it was just fine and nothing weird happened. And I think that's the interesting aspect of this particular study is that we're like, oh, it's going to be some weird Frankenstein monster or something odd's going to happen. The neurons from the brain organoid aren't going to connect well or they'll connect too well and the mouse will be too smart. And it's going to talk. Right, right. It's if we put human cells in a mouse brain. What is that going to give the mouse in terms of abilities? But what we saw is that these neurons, this brain organoid, it wasn't just neurons, but actually other supportive cells as well that go along with the neurons. And it was a hybrid brain. The neurons interfaced, everything worked well. And this could be the doorway that is needed and will be used in the future to be able to test therapies for human brain disorders. Because we can't test all the therapies in humans for human brain disorders, but we have lots of mouse models, but they're not the same as mouse models. But if we can put human brain organoids within mouse brains, then this could lead to a better testing arena. But they're so small. They're so small. But still, if you can target therapies and you can see if they impact behavior if negatively or beneficially, then that's going to be something that will lead you in a direction that could lead to a new treatment. Or away from something that you don't want to waste millions of dollars in research money on. Yeah. I think that's inching towards the best model. Of course, the best model is going to be when we have a rat that has a completely human brain. And it says, hey Justin, how's it going? He'll be able to write that. He doesn't have vocal cords like ours. So it's just, you know, he'll have to write us a note. Press the keys. Press the keys on the keyboard. Yes. No thumbs. We'll see. It could get there. But yeah, brain organoids are moving a pace. They are really, I don't know. They're really getting us to a place where we will be able to study a lot of the disorders of the brain without needing to slice open brains to get there. So that this is really good news for a lot of research that we want to do moving forward. Are we ready for number six? Yeah, hit it. Number six. I'm not a number. I am a free man. Six. Number six, ancient humans. There was a tremendous amount of stuff coming from, again, this year, from ancient humans. We got a whole lot of ancient genomes, eight to 10,000 years old, from South America that kind of gave a picture of the populating of South America. Also added a couple of mysteries because there was one of those hints that there was Oceania, sort of a closely related genes to Aborigines even. So then that was on that northeast coast of South America and nowhere else. So there's big puzzling questioning things going on still about the populating of America and South America. We had, we got older, the current modern humans. We now date back more than 30,000 years older than we were before. And I kind of like that story because it was a great lesson in how we do dating because we had tracked that there's this layer of ash from a volcanic ash. So it came from the volcano over there, right? And so everything we know, we could figure it out when that thing had erupted because it's everywhere. And so we've got this idea. It's less than 200,000 years because the bones are right down there. Well, turned out they've now gotten to the point where they can analyze that volcanic ash and tell which volcano it actually came from. And it wasn't the one that was nearby. It was one much further away that had a much bigger eruption, a lot longer, 30,000 years earlier. So now they realize, okay, so that also pushes the date of everything they've dated based off of that, including some current modern humans from back in the day. And it's sort of interesting too because then, you know, when we start pushing that date back to more than 200,000 years, there's outlier data that no longer is outlier data elsewhere. So we know the Denisovan Cave, right? So that's where we got the little finger bone of the first Denisovan. Well, there's also Neanderthal DNA that we've gotten from that cave. And that Neanderthal DNA had a big puzzle because it looked like there was some current modern human admixture to some of it. The problem was it dated to 200,000 years ago before current modern humans existed, let alone North Africa. So now, but now that we have, see then that the date got pushed into one and now the other one that was this outlier isn't an outlier anymore. Now there's 30,000 years for that one same individual to have gone wandering up North to Siberia. Which 30,000 years, that's a long time. Plenty of time. Plenty of time. How do you even live that long? We had some of the earliest cooking and fishing that was found in Israel in a site. There was I think the oldest, the oldest current modern human remains to be found in Spain. So everything, it's always the bigger story when it pushes back the date. Well, I have to remember we're also collecting all sorts of ancient human data along the way, filian, culture, diet, genomics, spread of language and humanity and art. So another, it's always a good year for ancient humans. It has been for a while. Always a good year now that we're looking back at them. I mean, for a long time it was nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And I feel like with the modern technologies that are enabling us to look more deeply at some of these sites and the fossil remains and the, like you mentioned, the dating technologies, the various ways we're looking at DNA evidence, RNA, lots of stuff. We're going back further with more resolution than we have before. And we're, I mean, in the last decade, we're talking about whole new arms. We're talking about a tree, the braided stream and all these things. Yeah. So it's very braided stream too because we're also now talking, there's tremendous amounts of Homo erectus-like, Neanderthal, Denisovan-like, a whole array of ancient humans being discovered in China. And how do they fit in? So even within the braided stream, one of the things we have to start keeping in mind is something like Homo erectus that was around for much, much longer than humans are, diversified. They went everywhere and they diversified everywhere. So the Homo erectus-type ancient humans are different in Western China than they are down in Indonesia, than they are down in Levant or down in Africa or up in Europe. They're different everywhere. And so the whole idea of pegging humans as a one that's been obliterated in just the last few years. It's so recent and I love that we're talking about it so much. And yeah, I'm glad you bring all these stories to the show with so much insight. Oh my goodness. All right. Well, we have talked from number 11 to number six and it is time for us to take a quick break. This is This Week in Science. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode, our top 11 of 2022. We are halfway through the list and it's time for us to continue down to number one. So we will jump on back right now after I remind you that if you want to head over to twist.org and get yourself a Twist Blair's Animal Corner calendar, it is available now. You can hover twist.org, click on the calendar links. You can purchase a calendar through Zazzle Physically or you can also purchase a PDF download that you can print yourself or take the images and put them on your computer and all that kind of fun stuff. The PDF download has some pretty fun science holidays included. You can do both also. Get them both. All right. This show, we already have Patrick in this show. We're going to 11. That's right. We're going to number one. We are. We are going to start at number five right now. Number five. Five is all about eDNA, which stands for Electronic DNA. You know, you open up your computer. No, no. You got nail. You got DNA. No. Check it. It's an electronic. No. Oh, sorry. No, no, no, no. It's environmental DNA. Of course. I've just been with you. Anyway, there were lots of good stories about eDNA this year. The one that I usually run over that we've talked about for years now is in water, just like what kind of fish is around and you can pull out the water and you can check the DNA just floating in the water and because fish pee and shed skin and do all sorts of stuff in the water, it's just in there, right? But things went a little crazier this year. A couple of my favorite environmental DNA stories is that if you just take an air sample from a zoo, you can get most of the animals in the area. It's very aerosolized. But for sure, my favorite eDNA story from this year is that most tea contains bug DNA. Yes. Not necessarily bugs, although probably a little bit of bugs. It just, there could be environmental DNA because they chomped on the leaf and they left some saliva behind or they frassed on the leaf. I'll say frassed because it's less gross, right? It's bug poop. Or just exoskeleton flakes or whatever. Essentially, researchers can take environmental DNA from tea and draw conclusions about where the tea came from or if they know where the tea came from, what bugs are in the area, which is very cool. You could probably also have information about how insecticides are working in certain areas and how that's impacting the crop and what's going on. There's a lot that can be done with eDNA. Where tea is being grown, it's also being, it's being dried, typically outdoors. So before you drink any tea, you should really boil it in water to sanitize it. Oh, wait a second, Justin. That's what we do anyway. Also, I don't know if this counts as eDNA, but I threw it in here anyway. There was a whole study about using leeches to understand the biodiversity that the leech came from because they draw blood from a bunch of different animals and so they can actually pull DNA from the blood, from the guts of the leech to figure out what animals are in the area. You could consider that environmental DNA, I think, because you're not testing the animal, you're testing the stomach of another animal that didn't actually eat that animal completely, so it's just kind of like what's the cocktail they got rolling around in the leech tummy. And I know, Justin, you were excited to talk about this too. Did you have any to add? Just that we've conservatively, at least, I think, gone back now two million years and collected DNA. The last record was one million years. It was from a mammoth bone found in Siberia, found in permafrostacea, and we managed to extract some DNA from that ancient beast and reconstructed a bit. Now with environmental DNA, we've at least doubled that, and we didn't get one thing. We got a mastodon, we got crabs, we got reindeer, we got hundreds and hundreds of plants. We have an entire biome that we managed to rebuild. And this was from an ice core or what? So it's from a soil core. So there's a fjord up there on the north part of Greenland that had gotten, you know, the tide goes in now, drops down sediment and did that over a couple million years. And then the ice came down on, you know, got covered in ice and then it was stuck under that frost. So it was super cold, no oxygen, but the real thing, the thing they think that actually managed to keep this DNA preserved is the amount of quartz in the soil. So quartz has a charge, DNA has a charge, and by the DNA bonding to the surface of the quartz, it preserved it chemically. So it didn't break down like it normally would. And so the story's kind of fun because they've had this soil core for I think a decade or almost two decades. And every time they had a new technique, they would try it out in the core and get nothing. And then, you know, time to go by and they've got some new techniques and they test it out on this core and get nothing. And then, you know, and it went on, I think, four or five, six times. And then finally, with the latest round of innovation and really brandy thing, and they managed to do the extraction. And so there's that wonderful glimpse, the furthest back glimpse we've really gotten into animals and plants. And really, I think those are the amazing parts of this story. Isn't actually the collection of it in one of the more hostile environments on the earth? And it's not even the information that they ended up with as amazing as that is. It's the fact that they were able to reconstruct so many genomes starting with mere fragments. And that's one of those, you know, go into the power of machine learning or algorithms being able to assist. That is not something you can do by hand. It took people 10, you know, a decade and a billion dollars to piece together the human genome that way. I was just thinking about that sitting in high school biology and watching this video about how they're so close. They're almost done. They've been at it so long. I think that news came out again this year, which they were like, oh, we really finally finished it this year. Really got a little bit more accurate. Yeah. Well, I mean, the truth is you can do that with pretty darn good accuracy in 48 hours, an entire human genome. I think with the Oxford nanopore, it might even be quicker than 48 hours. But sequencing a gene itself is no longer the biggest obstacle. But in this scenario, when all you have are little tiny chips cut up fragments from across the whole biome that have all donated something to this mix to be able to take that and reconstruct, just goes to show all of the... That's why we went and sequenced the genome of a crab or of a reindeer or all these other creatures that we may not plan on doing a whole lot of experimentation on. But now we can see when it belongs to that family and when it doesn't, when it belongs to something else, when it belongs to a particular type of plant, little bits of that code when they match up to nothing else, then we know we've got something that's a match there. But that whole process was just really fascinating to me. Ancient EDNA, new DE DNA, current air DNA, blood DNA, T DNA, and ancient. Now let's move on to number four. The cause of MS? Do we know? Yes, it was reported this year that scientists have linked the Epstein-Barr virus with causing multiple sclerosis. Now, this isn't an absolute 100% knock it out of the park finding. And of course, this is science. So there are many individuals who debate this. And of course, this autoimmune disease, multiple sclerosis may have other causes related to different viruses. But in this particular study, researchers after a two decade study found that Epstein-Barr viral infection is the leading cause. The leading cause, not just correlated necessarily, but actually causing the virus. We know Epstein-Barr virus causes mononucleosis. If somebody can avoid it until adolescence or adulthood, you're more likely to get the mononucleosis. A lot of kids get it. And some people are genetically predisposed to have certain reactions. And it depends on environment. It depends on all sorts of stuff that are going on. But they certainly we've been informed of that like through this latest pandemic. I think everybody's aware. We can all get the same virus. And have different outcomes. Very different reactions and outcomes. Yeah. But it's very fascinating. It's like being able to, years ago, be able to start vaccinating for HPV and suddenly have a reduction in a number of different cancers. Not just one cancer, but a number of different cancers. Not just in women, but also in men. Things that we didn't know were linked, but that were virally being caused because of interactions between viruses and our immune system. Viruses and bacteria and our immune system. We are learning so much. And like you're mentioning, Justin, COVID-19 has been in the background of everything this year. The foreground for many of us still. It is the ongoing pandemic that has never ended, but it has also allowed us to dig even deeper into viruses as the causes of disease. Looking at SARS-CoV-2 as a cause of long COVID, for instance. We're looking at all sorts of things in a different light. Chronic, what is it? Chronic, when you're tired. Fatigue. Thank you. Chronic fatigue syndrome and many others which had been linked to, you know, but people have been fighting really, really working really hard to say there are viruses involved and we don't know exactly how. And there's something happening here. You know, now there's a little bit more going on. So I think that it's not just that we're seeing this year, this particular study that really targeted Epstein Bar and found it to be incredibly highly linked to the cause of multiple sclerosis. It's that we're looking at viruses across the board in a new way. And if we continue to do that, it's going to benefit us all as a society and a story. Moving on to number three. Three, three, three, three. Is all about one of my favorite things to talk about, regenerative medicine. Oh, is it now? Yes, because we have found all sorts of ways that I may work to live forever this year. That's right. Some of them won't affect me directly, like the ability to make synthetic embryos. Although that was mind boggling, basically make an embryo with a beating heart without an egg or a sperm. So that happened. Also, a dead pig was made, basically, it sells, or sorry, its organs were kind of reinvigorated after it was dead. So then there's this whole question about what is dead and also, you know, yikes. But this is also why we have to give the what is death anyway, organoids. Yes, Bob. And then you give the pig a human brain, then you kill it and bring it back. So you can talk to it after and it can tell you what the other side is like. Perfect. Yeah. So essentially, this is not the horror story. It sounds like, but it does mean that there are lots of ways to keep organs healthy longer, which is really what this is about. Speaking of that, there was a human that received a pig heart transplant. That went better than expected. They did not survive the year, but they survived longer than their outlook was prior to the transplant. So it was a net gain of time, and it went better than anticipated, but still a lot to do there. And then also, we had lots of animals regrowing things, axolotls, as always kind of the poster child for regeneration. They regrow parts of their brains after injuries. There were studies looking at how we can kind of harness that ourselves. And then also, there's a study where- It's the hydra. The hydra can regenerate its whole head. Right. Yes. Then they even need to take the head off and they'll just make a new one. Yeah. Yeah, too bad they're not real. Anyway. No, no, no. There's something that is real that's called a hydra. Called a hydra, but it's related to jellyfish. It's not- Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it's not a head. It doesn't have a head. It has a head. Anyway. And then also, don't try to animal corner the animal corner, all right? Anyway. Also, there's a study about frog legs where they were able to stimulate regrowth of some amputated legs and a frog, which is so cool. Yeah. It sounds like there's lots of good stuff on the way. We'll be able to keep organs alive longer. We're further on the path to regenerating limbs and brain cells. Brain cells are really the thing, man. Like, obviously it would be great to be able to regrow a finger or an arm or a leg, but regrowing brain cells, that's the top of the list because that's like, you know, brain deterioration as you age. Wouldn't it be great if you could just regrow parts of your brain? Yeah. Yeah. You know what? And it could be a good term because I think there's people out there who want to get rid of memories. Yep. Yeah. Eternal sunshine style. I get it. Well, I don't necessarily mean it like that, but PTSD and, you know, really, I guess that's an amygdala frontal cortex connection issue too. But, you know, like if somebody was like, hey, you know, your brain's starting to deteriorate there, Justin, if we get rid of a bunch of your memories, we can put in some new brain and regenerate it. And you'll have a very well-functioning brain, but you'll have to lose a bunch of your memories. That would be tough. Do you want to be a new person? Do you want to potential? Yeah. Yeah. Just grow more on top. Just a little more on the top for me. It depends. Yeah. It would very much depend on where that it's, you know, you have to learn to re-walk or re-talk. That might be something I'd be willing to take on. More so than not remembering. I'm not a brainchild from the tick. That's all I want. That's right. Just cheer face. Carve your name into the moon. There's so many cool things going. Regenerative synthetic biology. Regenerative stuff is so neat. Just being able to take things that are getting older and regenerate them. Can we someday, someday have new limbs? Can we fix our brains? Can we get rid of the organ transplantation problems that we have? Can we actually have organs for people? Like, what can we do with people get close to death? Can we help them? Myelin sheaths. Can we regrow that? Can we regrow bone when there's osteoporosis going on? This would all be amazing. Yes. We're getting there. We're getting there. So many good things. Do you want my 300th birthday on twist episode 10,000? I can't wait to hear the stories that we've got then. Moving to a number two. Wow. We're already at number two. This was a big year for curing cancer on HIV. There was a kind of earlier on the year there was a woman who was completely cured of HIV with an umbilical cord treatment, stem cell type therapy. When we hear about these things, you're going to say, oh gosh, well, maybe, maybe there's, well, and then there was another story about the fourth person who was cured of HIV with a different technique. We had a couple of different cancer treatments, one in mice, one in rats. One was an embedded drug system that was working basically on its own, then taking down tumors. We had a sound therapy one where they could actually go in with this high power concentrated and disrupt and break up tumors without doing surgery, without cutting into the animal at all. And then, of course, we've had a number of different, there was one, not just a couple of weeks ago, where they had this drug combination that was putting leukemia patients into undetectable remission. They couldn't detect the disease in like 85% of the patients. And that kind of thing is amazing because that's in people. That's not mice, it's not rats, even though the mouse and rat stuff is like getting us forward. But this is like the first year that I think we've had multiple findings of remission or no cancer found in humans with different studies. Yeah, we had some success early on with the CAR-T therapies. Those were making it disappear and almost giving an immunity to certain types of cancer. But they were, they're very expensive, but they were also initially had this couple of percent chance of going completely haywire and killing the patient. So you want to cure that doesn't have a chance of killing you, that's always preferable. And that seems to be what we're getting. You know, H-I, putting H-I-B into complete remission, putting cancers into complete remission. And there's another one in here that I don't remember that this one, this was the coli cancer. I don't remember that one. Yeah, rectal cancer. Yeah, four patients all went into remission from immunotherapy treatment. Yeah, so four for four. It's a small sample size, but still again, in humans, if you're one of those four or someone who knows one of those four, you are thrilled. So we, and these are, these are faced, you know, once you're in the human trials, like these H-I-B and a couple of these cancer ones we've talked about, we're in two heading into three, maybe at three heading into treatment that you can get from your doctor. You're getting, you're getting this research to that point now where there's going to be certain cancers that we take off of the, the, the, the table for death that we take off. If you get this, you won't have to live with it and it's not going to be the thing that kills you. And that's huge. And so it's 2022. Yeah. We started doing this show back a long time ago, KTBS, 90.3 FM, Davis, college radio, 22 years ago that we started really, maybe a little bit more than that, but I'm not counting. Who's counting? 22 is enough. But so many, so many shows who reported on possibilities for potential cures for cancer. We reported on gold nano dots, gold nano particles that were being used to be embedded into tumors that could then be used for ultrasound to heat tumors from inside using sound to vibrate the, the gold particles. It was 20 years ago and that was like early research into this stuff. And now we're seeing very specific ultrasound being used, hyper focused ultrasound being used to disrupt tumors. We are seeing humans having what I'm, I'm now seeing is called Ned, no evidence of disease. We've got to keep up. It's not remission anymore. It's no evidence of disease. Thank you, Shubru. We are seeing this in humans, in people based on research that's been gone ongoing for two decades. And you know, in the early 2000s, it was, oh yeah cure for cancer. Every interview we had, five or 10 years, five or 10 years, we'll have a cure for cancer. Nobody was really talking about the, oh, well, what is cancer? Yeah, a bunch of different diseases cancer cancer. What are you talking about? Yeah, cured in which stage and all absolutely. And so I think that our conversations have become more nuanced. I think that the way we're looking at it as, as people is a lot more nuanced, you know, the scientists working on it obviously were in deep in their particular niche of what they were studying. But I think that what we've seen over the last two decades, like, I don't know, this is amazing. This year was great. Cancer HIV. I mean, we grew up during the HIV pandemic. And this is, I'm so excited about all this and where it's going. No cures yet, but we're there. We're getting there. We're getting there. So many things. It's amazing. Yes. Okay. And this is one of those things too. Like, this is the last one. There's 30 million people who actively have HIV currently on the planet. So there's 30 million people who need this research to keep going. Yep. And there's like three who have been cured so far. But yeah, it's a five, five. Oh, okay. For those two people and the people that know those two people, it's a big difference. You're right. You're right. Are we ready for number one? Is it time? Let's hear number one. Number one, one, one, one, one, one, one. Number one. Did everyone guess what this was going to be? Do you know what this is? This is the one year where we didn't even argue about it at all. Not at all. And we have debated a previous year. It's like, what's going to go where and which one can be and who, who is it? What's it? It's NASA. NASA takes home the number one spot this year. NASA, James Webb Space Telescope. We've been waiting for that one for over 15 years. That one is such a long time in the coming. And, you know, over the last year or so, debates about its name put to the side. You know, let's just talk about the science. Let's talk about the fact that this multi-billion-dollar space telescope, the successor and co-habitor of space with Hubble at this point in time. It unfurled. It did all the things it was supposed to do. It had so many ways it was going to go wrong. Webb won. Webb won the year. Webb started bringing us new images of things in ways that we just didn't expect. And it also brought, of course, new controversies within the world of astrophysics and cosmology. And what does this mean? And what does that mean? And what does its data mean? And can we look deeper? So there is so much more that's going to be coming. Webb was amazing. We also actually returned to the moon, kind of. We got Artemis launched, which I was convinced it wasn't going to happen. Artemis launched. The Orion mission went around the moon and it came back safely. Everything was good. Yeah, the only problem with that story is it's like sure of getting really excited about walking to the corner store when, for the last decade, we've been launching all kinds of things to Mars, much further away. We're landing. We got robots running around on Mars and we're like, hey, we just walked to the corner of the moon over there and back. It doesn't hold. It didn't get me. I'm like kind of surprised that it was even such a big story. I mean, I get it. This is for future human exploration and it's the test run. Yeah, exactly. This is the first step. It's like the phase one, phase two trial. You get the thing launched. You show that it works and then you go, okay, now we can put people on it and then we're going to take people to the moon and we'll land on the moon. We'll have a new rover on the moon. We'll start doing science on the moon. Oh, maybe we'll build a, maybe we will have a place where we will let people live on the moon. Maybe we will have a spaceport on the moon. Maybe we will use it as a launch pad to the rest of the solar system. This is the beginning of our next steps back out into space as people. It'll be a billionaires resort planet. Probably. I don't want to talk about that right and then it'll affect the tides because we're going to put too much mass on the moon. No, it's not. We take enough off the earth already. We're losing water. We're doing, it's all sorts of issues going on. Anyway, the big thing beyond that at the end of the year that NASA knocked out of the park. I mean, it's seriously like 18 holes of golf in the solar system. And then it's like, we're going to do a hole in one. And the golf ball is not just going to do a hole in one, but it's also going to shoot down to the core of the earth and spew out the other side. And you know, anyway, dart the dart mission to push an asteroid. We did it. We shoved dimorphous dimorphos. We shoved shoved a little moonlet of a an asteroid. And in our shoving, we shoved it so hard that we could see just how much we pushed. There was a multi-thousand kilometer tail off of dimorphous after the event. And the idea is very, very positive for our opportunities in the future of being able to push threatening asteroids, you know, to act a little like I could protect myself. We could do something here. This is the year the movie Don't Look Up came out. No, this is, I know NASA plans this way in advance, but it does feel like very interesting timing. When the movie came out, we were like, oh, no. Oh, don't worry about it. We got a dart. Oh, no, we're working on this. We're actually working on it. Perfect timing. Yeah. So it was just a little moonlet, but it's a little moonlet with mass. And what we will learn from what our shove did to its trajectory around didymus, its asteroid, and how its orbit changes. And there's a lot of data still to be reported on, but it's looking very promising. It was really, really a great, great effort. And I shouldn't be talking about this on the show like this because I'm made, there's very good chance I'm just misremembering this or misheard this. But I think that tail that we're seeing from it, we must have hit that hard or something, or things could just break up in space because I heard there was like millions of tons of debris that got chefed off of it, shelled off of it, that came off of them. Tons. Yeah, that was the massive tail. Yeah, tons of debris. Yeah, we hit it hard. Yeah, that wasn't just a little soft nudge, like a lot comes up, lands, and then a little get out of my solar system. No, we, it was ramming speed right there. We slammed into that thing. Ramming speed! Oh, humans, we really know how to throw our weight around in this little solar system of ours. Yeah, it is. Can we fix it with a explosion? Well, we can fix it with a rocket. Yes, a little shove. Yeah. So James Webb, Dart, all the work on Mars, all of the effort with Artemis and the Orion mission. NASA has really been knocking it out of the park again with some amazing, amazing efforts, discoveries. And this is, I think, the exciting thing and why it's really number one is that what NASA is doing is the place where science and engineering meet, where you have the best engineering making the best science possible. And because Webb is where it is, we are going to be learning so much more about our universe because Dart was so successful. We are going to be potentially more protected in the future because Artemis was successful. Maybe humans will be back on the moon sooner rather than later. So I see a lot of hope here. With that James Webb, too, the thing that I guess I didn't realize was going to be so impactful was its ability to look at exoplanets or to look at really distant planets and get information out. I knew that it was going to get some deep looks, some galactic looks that it might be finding exoplanets. But being able to, the kind of data it's getting from exoplanets is telling us about atmosphere on them. I mean, that's just, that's all in completely new level of detail that we're getting for what other, what other planets are going to look like. And then, of course, it means that's an accelerated search for life. Are we alone? Are we not? More water worlds? Yeah, we're going to be able to, and Blair, like you said, a story that we did not cover on this top 11 countdown. One that was your favorite was the panspermia evidence where now we have shown that RNA and DNA are spontaneously formed on meteorites. That's right. Found them all over the place. Found RNA and DNA all over the place. And so it's stuff like Webb, and the way Webb looks at signatures, chemical signatures in atmospheres and around stars will be able to see these signatures much more easily. I think, isn't it just RNA? I don't think it's DNA. Oh, and DNA. It was both, yeah. Both. RNA and DNA, yes. So are we sending it out there? Is it coming from out, out there to us? Is that where we came from? Can't wait to find out. I'm so excited. Must watch twists next year. I think actually the more exciting thing is that yeah, this is chemical components, meaning physics being the same everywhere in the universe, standard model applying everywhere in the universe. And in chemistry, yeah. Chemistry is not applying. Chemistry applying, if it all applies, then it's everywhere. It can be any planet that has the right conditions or a range of conditions that could work, will work, and probably have. Because it happens so, our one example that we've studied up close is this planet. And it happens so quickly after the forming of this planet. So quickly. That we are either the exception or the rule. Or the rule. And if we're the rule, there's a lot of us out there. And if we're the exception, there's still a lot of us just speaking. Because there's a lot of planets. So speaking of things that are going to be interesting moving forward. Okay, we've finished number one. We're going to be moving into some other fun science stories that we want to talk about just beyond this. But we've basically finished our countdown here. But in big physics kind of stuff, we are going to be looking at LIGO and its co-telescope constituents around the world. They're going to be not just looking at black holes, but because, you know, black holes when they merge, they create a rippling in the fabric of space time. LIGO is going to be used to test the hypothesis that if there are other life forms out there with greater technologies that are potentially using big warp drives and things like that to move through space, then if they're there, here's the hypothesis, right? If they are there, then they would likely be causing a signature on space time. And so they're going signatures. Star Trek is real. Yes, they're looking for warp signature. So instead of triangulating on the ringing of a bell in one particular place in space time, they will be looking to see if there are moving signatures across space time, which would be indicative of something like a warp drive or other very large influence on space time. We're using our technology to be investigating these so sci-fi things. I mean, okay, we're looking into the future now, but anyway. But this is This Week in Science and we've finished our top 11 countdown and we are thank you. We are thank you. We are thankful that you have joined us for this show so far. Remember, if you had to twist.org, you can support us on Patreon. You can also click on the Blair's Animal Corner calendar links and you can buy a physical calendar or you can buy a printed yourself PDF calendar. Beautiful, beautiful Lego animals and backgrounds and such great stuff. Head over to twist.org, get yourself a calendar for 2023 and support twist. You can also support us on Patreon. We appreciate all of your support because we are listener supported. So thank you for all of your support. We can't do it without you. We're going to come back because you always want to know about those other stories, right? What are some of the stories from the last year that we were like, I love that story, but it's not quite on the list? What was 13? What was 14? What was whatever? Blair, tell us what were your favorites, your MVPs from 2023 in the Animal Corner. Oh, well, my MVP in general for the Animal Corner this year is spiders. Now I know we talk about spiders a lot. And how much you don't like them, but you like them. In general, I both do not like them in my personal space, particularly near my face, but I also love them from afar and love spider science. Very strange relationship I have in my brain. Anyway, they did so many things this year. We found out that spiders sleep and they'll nap and they'll snooze. We found out that spiders catapult away from the males catapult away from females to avoid getting eaten, which was amazing. We found out that they could hear sounds just in the open air through their webs. Their webs will resonate to be able to read them, almost like guitar strings. We found out they can curl leaves to form their own little homes or hats. So it's kind of like tool use. And the one that is particularly terrifying is that they, we've talked about spiders hunting in groups before as like, oh, did you know some spiders hunting groups? There's a lot of spiders hunting groups enough that there are different strategies in the spider canon of how to hunt in groups and that they all kind of have these different strategies depending on where they live and the type of things that they eat and all these kinds of things. So spiders all over the place, there were even more. There was one about taking, making an artificially created spider silk that could be used as a nerve sheath for healing nerves and in your body. There was another one about spiders dancing and how the quality of their dancing impacts their mating success, but also their kind of energy level impacts their dance. It was a whole crazy thing. Anyway, search spider on twist.org. Browse through these. It's all amazing. The newly trending topic in Blair's Animal Corner that started this year. Yes. Cliteruses. We started and ended the year talking about them. We, I did. In January, we found out that dolphins have cliteruses and that it seems like there, there is an element of sexual pleasure for female dolphins, go fig. Then we have the basically the exact same story for snakes in December. Just was that last week? It was like last week. Yeah. So I think, you know, and in both of them, I kind of lamented how this isn't studied male pleasure in copulation is studied because it's all about spreading the seed. And this is the whole kind of narrative, right? And then so, so the female side of things hasn't really been looked at, but then like, why did these structures exist? And why would they only exist at humans and not at anyone else? And so the fact that they were found in two completely different groups of animals, mammals and reptiles, and the fact that both of them showed similar kind of indication of potential for sexual pleasure and that there would be an evolutionary benefit to that, you're going to see more of this. And I will report on it when it happens, I guarantee you. Blair, are you, are you saying that we will see more cliteruses? Yes, we will. Twist. Yeah. Yeah. We certainly can. And those high school teachers out there that play our show, this is biology. This is real science. I'm using the scientific words. This is important to learn. It is. Yeah. No, because my first question is, is this convergent? Or is this? Right. And it seems like a copulatory organ, a copulatory organ, we do not think is convergent. We think that has an evolutionary ancestor that kind of way in common, way back there. And if also, recognize that clitoris is in terms of embryonic development, the same structure as a penis means it is likely to have the same origin. So this is kind of one of those things that's like, yeah, that would certainly make sense, but nobody studied it because for some reason, female pleasure in sex is taboo, and it's not talked about. And it's like, is it even there, even in humans? And so it's, you know, it's a whole, I can't wait for this to open up a little more. And I want to learn all about it. It hasn't been in doubt if it was there in humans. Uh, I mean, not by scientists. I think you're talking about something in the air. I don't even know if it's taboo to talk about the G spot. That's what I think that's the one that people are always like, is that a real thing or not? Right? No, it's both. It's both. But this all stems from a lack of study into female anatomy, into like even the female psyche and various aspects of female reproduction because of who the scientists are, who's been allowed to play and the questions that have been asked. So this is absolutely. Yeah. And it's all, you know, if, if I may say the flamboyant thing, it's based in misogyny people. It's based in this idea that like women are vessels to, to grow humans. And that's the deal. Right. And so like, you need to divest that from the situation and recognize that there, there's the potential for evolutionary benefits to pleasure on both sides, not just a vessel. The egg is also selfish and needs to be tended to. So those are bold words there, Blair. The egg is selfish. It is. It's a lot of, a lot of resources. The animals with eggs are born with all the eggs. That's it. You got your eggs. It's got to be selfish. Anyway. So Clitoris is, you'll hear more about that, hopefully in 2023, fingers, fingers, toes and legs crossed. Anyway. And the last thing I wanted to mention was unhinged robots. This was a very strange year for weird use of robotics. And I'm using robotics very loosely. So don't yell at me in the chat room. But I am including one thing in this kind of conversation, which is neck robotics, which is such a good story of dead spiders and injecting them with air to open up their legs and then use them to slowly, gently close and pick things up that are very fragile. Will we need to use this? Doubtful. However, proof of concept maintained. Also, there was a robotic tentacle made that looks like spaghetti that you could pick up again, fragile things with or things that are weirdly shaped. Bizarre. But the tentacle robots, oh yeah, Kiki showing the neck robotics right now of the spiders. They were able to put air and inject air to mess with the hydraulics of the legs. They could pick stuff up. Rust, truly deranged. I really want that in like that next kid grabber toy at the local arcade. Do you need the dead spider for that? Or can you recreate the hydraulics that are spider legs? I think you can. Who knows? Anyway. Yeah, but it's funner to use a spider. Yeah. So then there was the crazy spaghetti tentacles that were robots also for picking things up. Lots of pressure on picking things up this year. And then the last thing, the thing Justin actually wanted to be the number one story of the year. This is the only thing I would have put ahead of NASA. Because I think it is when NASA is like we went around the moon, but we're going to put a man on the moon next time around. This is a version of going on the moon. This is a feat as big as landing a man on the moon. And of course Justin is talking about the goldfish that could drive a car. Not a normal car. It was a tank with wheels. And so they taught this goldfish how to, where they swam in the tank to steer this little tank on wheels, this little goldfish car, this automobile tank. This fish is driving the tank. There's nobody with remote control. Yeah, he's driving it. Is steering this. Yeah, if we get the moon rover, you got this fish rover now. This to me is the biggest, really is the biggest story of the year. And Fada's saying he thinks it's a Ig Nobel prize worthy. And I would say it's not because it's actually a more serious thing. It's a proof of concept that it's silly on the surface, but I think is really cool in a lot of layers. So you're proving that a goldfish can figure this out, first of all. Second of all, that it can indicate preference of where it wants to go and adjust. But then third of all, that they were able to invent this thing that could interface with a fish. So yeah, it is possible to make technology so user friendly, literally a fish could use it. Yeah. So no excuses for your complicated user interface. And I love it. It's a screen compare and they're all he's like, no, you don't need to do any of that. If the fish can drive a car, then it's all the rest of this. The self driving car should be here to yesterday. Well, maybe it was. Well, the self driving fish car would be a remote control that the humans were driving. So that's not quite right. You want like, I don't know if you've seen Star Trek Discovery, but they have these like these particles that you just kind of move your hands around and it steers the spaceship. That's really what you're talking about because that's what the goldfish is doing. I want to go that way. Yeah, basically goes that way. Yeah. Anyway. So yeah, the fish butt car. Yeah, it's a breakthrough. I think it seems silly on the surface, but it's scientifically it's pretty cool. Who else can we put into little vehicles and just send them places? Fish bots. Oh, good gracious. I think we've done it. Do we have anything else that we want to add to the list of 2022? We did not include COVID. We didn't include everybody had it. Yeah, everyone had it. It's over apparently, but then there's still places in the red tier right now. So it's clearly not over. But but vaccines happened, boosters happened. And this is not really, you know, we figured out it wasn't engineered in a lab. All good stuff. We realized we should wear masks, but then we didn't make people. So that's great. Justin, what were you going to add on? No, I was just, it's nothing comment. I was just going to say that the fish car shows shows, you know, you always get like, who got credit for landing on the moon? A bunch of pilots. Well, this this fish car shows you how big of a difference you can have between pilot intelligence and the engineers that made the craft. There can be you live it again. Don't don't down talk fish intelligence now. I mean 2022 is another year of animal cognition and animal intelligence in which we saw all sorts of cool things. We didn't talk about bees playing, which I love that story so much. I loved it. Corvids and their and different J species and their intelligence apes. And there was a there was so much. Lots of lots of animals communicating through sound that we didn't know about before. Yeah. Just because we couldn't hear it because our hearing is not good. The world is becoming apparent to us as we ask the right questions. Yeah. But I do think that we have gotten to the end of our show. Oh yeah, Paul Disney. The next step is to get some slime mold to pilot a spaceship to the moon. That there we go there. That's the watch. We got the slime mold watch. So we're on our way. We do have the slime mold watch. You're right. Slime mold that tells time. Okay, everyone, we did it. We've counted down all the top stories of 2022, according to us and our review of the year. And yes, Patrick Pecoraro. No, we are not very choosy and specific. We like to be broad and grassy because you know, that's what life is. There's so many big picture things going on. And that's where our future is as well. If you have issues with it, take it up with us on Mastodon because we don't know where it is. Go find Twist Science on Mastodon. They always end up being these little categories now because we do over 600 stories a year now. Yeah. Yeah. So many stories. Yeah. You run with these themes that it's like, okay, we're going to say, yeah, like microbiome was a dozen studies that really caught our eye at some point during the year. So that's how come that's a category and not something else, I guess. And like I said at the beginning of the show, very rarely is it a single study that changes the direction of science. Well, and we don't want to just re-report a single story. We already did that. We'd rather give you the liner notes on like 50 to go look at later. So you're welcome. You're welcome. We reviewed your year for you. All this happened and more. Thank you for being here through 2022 with us. It has been quite a year, another amazing year. And I feel so lucky to have shared it with all of you. You know, every week, no matter how down I am or whatever, whenever I have the chance to come here and talk about science, it reminds me of all the thoughtful, compassionate, incredible people that are out there in the world that are doing work to feed our curiosity and to help us understand this little blue rock where we live. So it's all about being with you all every week, except for next week, because we're going to be taking a break. Anyway, shout outs to... I'd love to say thank you to Fada for all your help on show notes and on the social medias. Thank you for helping with all that. Gord, Arn-Lor, thank you for helping to keep our chat rooms nice places to hang out. Identity 4, thank you for recording the show. And Rachel, thank you for editing the show. And as always, of course, I must thank above and beyond our Patreon sponsors. Thank you too. Derek Schmidt, Don Munda, Steven Albron, Darryl Meyshack, Stu Pollock, Andrew Swanson, Fred S104, Sky Luke, Paul Ronevich, Kevin Reardon, Noodles Jack, Brian Carrington, David E. Youngblood, Gru and Bob, John McKee, Greg Riley, Marc Hesonflow, Steve Leesman, aka Zima, Ken Hayes, Christopher Wrapp and Dana Pearson, Richard Brendan, Minesh, John Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Jelony Gridley, Remy Day, Flying Out, Christopher Dreyer, Greg Briggs, John Atwood, Rudy Garcia, Dave Wilkinson, Rodney Lewis, Paul Rick, Remus, Phillip Shane, Kurt Larson, Craig Landon, Sue Doster, Jason Olds, Dave Neighbor, Eric Knapp, EO, Adam Mishkan, Kevin Parachan, Aaron Luthon, Steve DeBell, Bob Carlder, Marjorie Paul Disney, David Simmerly, Patrick Peccaro, Tony Steele, and Jason Roberts. Thank you all for all of your support on Patreon. Did I put the wrong things on the screen? Yeah. I didn't know how to break it to you, midstream. All the names. This is the video thing. You got the secret notes, everybody. That's it. We shared the show notes. Oh, oh. Shared the show notes. Oh my gosh. Now they know we use yellow. Oh my goodness. Because it's a bright color and it grabs your attention. It makes you realize that you should be moving forward in the show. But anyway, thank you everyone for your support on Patreon. We really can't do this without you. So if you watching the show right now feel like you would love to support the show, head over to twist.org and click on the Patreon link and help us keep the show going throughout 2023 and into the further future. Help us get to 1,000 episodes. Let's do it. We hit 900 this year. Let's go up to 1,000. And oh yeah, on next week's show, Justin. Well, next week's show, we don't have a show, but the show after that. A week after that, we'll be back, both the two shows, one Wednesday, 8 p.m. Pacific time, another one at 5 a.m. Central European time. It's the same show. You can join us on YouTube. We got Facebook. And we're also always here at twist.org slash live. Oh, also that'll be our prediction show. When we come back. Yes, 2023, the first week of January. Join us as we predict the future of science. Looking forward into 2023 and also looking backwards to see how we did about predicting 2022. I looked and I didn't do well. Anyway, do you want to listen to us as a podcast? Maybe listen to some old episodes about some of the things we talked about today while we take the week off next week? Just search for This Week in Science if our podcasts are found. If you enjoyed this show, get your friends to subscribe as well. For any information on the stories that you heard here today, to go and read the papers yourself, even the links to the stories are available on our website, www.twist.org, where you can also sign up for something called a newsletter. Yeah, you can also contact us directly. Email Kiki at Kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistminion at gmail.com, or me Blair at BlairBaz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist T-W-I-S in the subject line, or your email will be spam-filtered into a previous year and we'll never find it again. You can also hit us up on the mastodon. Is it a mastodon or a mammoth? What is it called? Mastodon. Universal Mastodon. Where we are at twist science, if you still say at, we'll figure it out. We'll have the young people figure it out. Where we are at twist science, and that's it. We love your feedback if there's a topic you'd like us to cover or address, a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes during the night, please let us know. Did we all drop Twitter, and I missed it? Twitter dropped Twitter. Didn't you hear? Twitter stopped using Twitter. Anyway, it's also at twist science, at Dr. Kiki, at Jackson Fly, and at Blair's Menagerie. I'm still there sometimes, so if you want to tweet at me, we'll be back here in a couple weeks, and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember. It's all in your head. I'm gonna sell my advice, show them how to stop their robots with a simple device. I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand, and all is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say, I use the scientific. This week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, science. I've got one disclaimer, and it shouldn't be news. That's what I say may not represent your views, but I've done the calculations, and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just that understand that we're not trying to thrive. Yeah, very easy when you go to twist.org. What is that the noise it makes when you go to twist.org? Calendar noises, the calendar noises. They say bye now. Thank you everyone for joining us for another episode of twist. I think we have done many, many, many, many, many, many, top 11 countdowns now. It's great to have another one under our belts. Click on those links everyone. Get your 2023 twist calendar digital download or on Zazzle physical calendar. Our show is not scripted. I mean there's little scriptings, but still. Still. How is everything Blair? We made it. We made it. We made it through another episode of twist. The sleepiest day of the year today. It is. I didn't mention that at all. Yeah, happy solstice. Indeed. It is the 21st, and I've been looking forward to it. I'm like, I gotta say something about the solstice. And of course, I didn't. I love the solstice because it's so good. The darkest, longest night. And of course, it's like at the same time that here in the Northern Hemisphere, North America, there's a bomb cyclone going off and places are colder than they've ever been and freezing. Winter solstice. It's literally the reason for the season. Can we start getting warmer now? Yes, officially tomorrow. Yes, let's tomorrow start getting some longer days. Some different. Oh, you're sick, Fada. I'm so sorry. Get a good night's sleep. Yes, Paul Disney, you're not doing well. You're cold and it's dark. I know you want a nap. Everybody want everybody. Everybody should just go to bed. Oh, we've got a Justin. Oh, I removed him. Sorry. You and I will fight each other. He's on. He's on. He's off. He's not. He's off. Everyone, yes. So, Justin, people were asking earlier in the show, why you weren't wearing a t-shirt? Well, I'm not wearing a t-shirt. They were very confused by the collar. Oh, it's just cold. I believe they called you dapper or something like that. Oh, thank you. So, I'm just dressed a little more warmly right now because the heater in this motel when I'm staying out sounds like people are drilling through the wall. Oh, gosh. So, I have to kind of like, good night's sleep where I shiver all night or is it a good night's sleep where a droning drilling sound is all night. Sounds like a great choice. Yeah, usually what I do is I crank it up and then leave and go do stuff and then come back and just turn it off and it's fine. Yeah, smart. I forgot to do that earlier. Well, it would have been loud during the show. Oh, and I had to have it after the show, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's a little chillier in here than other days. So, it's going to apparently get down to 19 degrees here in Portland tonight. That's cold. Wow. Yeah, Paul Disney is saying it's 24 degrees in Seattle right now. We're actually a little bit colder here in Portland at the moment, but I know that it's 41 here. I shouldn't be complaining at all. Oh, yeah, low of 38 here. Of course, the room is set to 41. There's the difference. Yeah, we have people who are in northeast Washington and other states who are going to be getting really cold over the next couple of days as it gets into single digits, maybe negative temperatures. And so, I hope everyone is able to stay warm, that your power stays on, that you've got all you need in terms of holiday warmth over great days. Yeah, great time to get, you know, some years maybe, you know, giving a gift of a scarf isn't as appreciated as others. It would be appreciated. Yeah, good stocking stuff for this year. Socks, hats, scarves, yes. Well, the other thing I'll say too is like, this is a good reminder that when it gets really cold, people burn wood a lot. And if there's not a lot of precipitation to go with that cold, then air quality can go down the toilet. So that's what's happening right now, where I am, is that it's been a spare the air day, like every day this week, and the air quality has been an AQI of like 80, which for the middle of winter is pretty high. And it's because everyone's burning their fires. And for my house, that's true. My house heats up better if I light a fire than if I turn on the heat. Weird. Yeah, that is weird. Well, I don't have central air, so I just have the wall units. So those are great with your stand in front of them. Yeah, perfect if you're standing in front of them. With the fire or the oven, those two things heat up the whole house. But yeah, that's something to keep in mind. Check and see if it's a spare the air day where you live. And don't use your oven to heat your house. Copperman Oxnide is a real thing. No, don't do that either. And this is a side note. I hope it wasn't too much going on during the show, but I keep hearing that clicking. Yeah, it's gone a little bit. It wasn't on and off. Only a couple of times. Yeah. Yeah, it happened for a little bit where I hoped that it would stop. And then I muted your mic other times. And then you started muting your mic. And so it was, it was fine. It doesn't seem, I don't think it's my mic. I don't think it's this end. I could be wrong, but I think it's the mic because it's whenever I'm talking or Keith is talking, I feel like it's happening. And so I think it's exactly what you were asking before if there was an echo. It's not an echo. It's sound camps. It's noise canceling the echoes, but it's turning into these little clips. So I think if you have headphones next time, it'll be fine. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, I do have access to some headphones that would work on this except then it also needs to be plugged in. So I don't know how to do that. You have split. If you go to that big scary door with all the windows and people all dress the same. No, you don't. No, you don't. Go to the internet. The internet is the place. You could do that too. I just always am afraid of my Apple product catching on fire when I use cheapo versions of things. Have you noticed that? If you use like a super off brand charger, sometimes your phone or the charger itself will get crazy hot. Yes. So anchor is a anchor is a pretty good brand. But yeah, it happens a lot. 11 in Anchorage. Wow. That's just probably going to get colder too, Eric. Stay warm. Stay warm, everyone. Eric, I demand to know how often do you see moose? I'm waiting. I really want to see a moose in the wild before I die. I really want to do that. Not up close, but close enough. Close enough. I saw elk up close, close enough on my road trip. That was really fun. We saw a bunch of Roosevelt elk. They're so cool. They're beautiful. Where was that road trip? Was it up the coast? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's this one area north of Humboldt County, just north of it. This is your leaving, where there's a big community of them. And I had never noticed it when I was on this trip. And I saw the sign and I went, oh, that's a joke. It has never been any elk. Oh yeah, elk meadow. Yeah. 100 yards later, they were like all over the side of the road. Oh, wow. That was very wrong. But I lived up in that area south of there for years. You got to go just a tiny bit more north. Just a little bit north and they're all over the place. Yeah. We don't want to mess with the town. We just want to be up here, hang out in Fern Canyon. All right, why didn't we do it? Fern Canyon. Yeah. I think we did it. We did it. Recap for another great year of twist in our next show, which is not next week, of course, if we're really right. Say happy new year, Justin. Happy new year, Justin. I hope you all. Yeah. Say happy new year, Blair. Happy new year, Blair. Happy new year to you, Kiki. Oh, happy new year, everyone. Merry Christmas. Happy solstice. Happy, I don't know, Festivus Krampus, whatever it is that you enjoy to celebrate over the next couple of weeks. Please take advantage of the opportunity to think about all of your time and our amazing opportunities here on this planet in this life. And we will see you in the new year with our predictions. I hope that you have a wonderful next two weeks. All of you have a really great time. I hope to see you online. But yes, Merry Christmas and a happy new year. We'll see you in the new year. Thank you for joining us once again for our top 11 countdown. We can't do this without you. Thank you so much for joining us. Good night.