 We're going We're going everyone. We're live. We're here. I'm back. This is the live broadcast of the twis podcast And everything that you see here may or may not Not everything probably will end up in the final Podcast, but this is the live time. This is the warts and all time This is the science time. You guys ready for a good show? Mm-hmm Yeah, of course. Let's do this. Let's start this show in Starting the show in Already has bumper music I know I just like being creative with sound. It's it's enjoyable Oh Starting in three two This is Twist this week in science episode number 839 recorded on Wednesday, August 25th, 2021 Digging in the science soil. I Hope we come up with some good science seeds. I'm dr. Kiki and today We will fill your head with isolation food and microbes, but first Diss glamour disclaimer disclaimer It's approved the COVID vaccine gets government scientists seal of approval and now American's everywhere are finally rushing out to get vaccinated or so we hope In reality, there are enclaves of Americans who have been left out of understanding science They haven't been left out by science teachers or scientists or science news They have been willfully kept ignorant of science by ideology ideology that does not like what science has to say And so unbiased rational thought is assaulted relentlessly Conditioning minds to see science is fraudulent agenda-driven and even nefarious The desperate manner in which the unvaccinated now feel hospital beds to capacity is not they're doing alone It takes convincing Misinformation disinformation all-out assaults on the sense of self-preservation. These aren't stupid people They are people who have been lied to repeatedly continuously Generationally, they are victims of ideologies that lose power when exposed to reason That those credit that lose credibility when science is actually understood that punch holes and stained glass windows Every time there's another episode of this week in science coming up next Good science to you Kiki and Blair We are all here good science to you Justin and Blair and Everyone out there welcome to another episode of this week in science. We have a full show for you today not just Vaccines for everyone who would like them but science much much much science We have an interview this evening with doctor Noah Farrar and I'm going to continue to mispronounce his last name and I'm going to Apologize profusely throughout the show But we will be speaking with him about soil microbes and their place in Humanity sustainability and our world additionally, I have stories about the intersection of space and health Brains because brains are pretty awesome and Additionally some social Tourette's What do you have Justin? I've got American know-how gardens of terror cannibalistic papers and prison profits following policy And alliteration Blair what is in the animal corner alliteration, huh? I've got fat flies babbling bats and messed up monkeys There's a little ration corner It Still has this say it's still the same acronym it works. It totally works Everyone if you have not yet subscribed to this week in science You can easily find us all places podcasts are found as well as YouTube and Facebook. We are twist science on Twitch and on Twitter and Instagram are What is it our website? Yes, you can find all this information at our website twist TWIS.org and now we dive in to the science for the week. Okay, let's start with space and health and Oxygen Oxygen is the key to the interaction between these two supposedly very disparate areas of science This week it was reported that thanks to the COVID Pandemic hospitals are using Much more liquid oxygen than they usually do and this is causing Shortages of liquid oxygen that will affect the space industry The rockets that launch rely on liquid oxygen as a propellant And so they have limited supplies of this propellant and it will cause delays in many of the scheduled launches for SpaceX and probably ULA ULA ULA's CEO Tony Bruno He tweeted that they were having issues with their liquid nitrogen supplier Which is also important in the launching of rockets, but the liquid nitrogen supplier is busy busily using their liquid nitrogen to help Make more liquid oxygen because liquid nitrogen has a lower freezing point boiling point then liquid oxygen So as a result they use liquid liquid nitrogen to make what more liquid oxygen after they do fractionated distillation basically they take air and then they boil it to steam fractionate the different different Components of the air because each of them have different boiling points they each come out and you have liquid oxygen or gaseous oxygen that can then be turned into liquid oxygen if You have liquid nitrogen It's a very complex process not too complex, but you know I didn't understand it, but that's fine. Yeah, it's a complex enough process that this is a winning space Yeah, it's a manufacturing bottleneck and it could also affect public health not just in our hospitals But also with relation to water purification because many water purification systems rely on liquid oxygen for their processes This thing COVID it is the thing that brings together Various areas in the sciences that you never expected would be connected. Yeah, and not in a good way Yeah, no not in a good way either for sure Yeah anyway That's that's more fun than talking about. What's the what's the new name of the? The the the vaccine that the FDA just approved Comernati Comernity community community community. They say it is a combination of the name COVID-19 vaccine the term mRNA and is meant to sound like community Yeah, that is some good marketing speak if I have ever heard it But congratulations to Pfizer for being approved by the FDA and we hope that this New approval will lead many people to get vaccinated You know, it's like it's like I nobody knows at least I most people probably don't know the name of the pill That women take that prevents pregnancy happening. It's just the pill This is just the vaccine Well, you also don't know who made your flu shot either, right? You didn't say which flu shot did you get I don't know and I don't care But this is this is the one that's the vaccine. It's not that this vaccine to that vaccine It's the vaccine. There are many the vaccines though and Moderna has now Submitted all the paperwork necessary for their approval process with the FDA. So potentially there will be another ridiculous pharmaceutical name to remember in the future for Deciding which vaccine for COVID-19 you would like to take Justin. Tell me a story. Oh Okay. Oh, we did it We finally did it Congratulations America. Most of you believe in evolution now What do you say most do you mean like fifty one percent? Hey, it's most So It's it's actually they're saying according to this that it's gotten significantly Above the halfway mark This is a study based on a series of national opinion Surveys that were conducted over the last 35 years 1985 to 2010 they say there was a statistical dead heat between acceptance and rejection of evolution This is according to Lee researcher John D. Miller Institute of Social Research University of Michigan, but acceptance then surged Becoming the majority position in 2016 Examining the data over 35 years study consistently identified aspects that led to this difference aspects of education civic science learning Literacy taking college courses in science and having a college degree Were the strongest factors leading to acceptance of evolution And it says here that according to Mark Ackerman researcher at Michigan engineering Almost twice as many Americans held a college degree in 2018 as they did in 1988 That's great news It's hard to earn a college degree without acquiring at least a little respect for the success of science Yeah, many university programs have science for non majors courses that do cover a lot of this information I actually taught one of those by all biology for non majors way back when I was in grad school so the more the the rounding of education for people who are attending public institutions can be The the importance of that cannot be understated for potentially reaching this point But perhaps also the teaching of evolution in high schools has gotten better as well in schools generally Yeah But it is it is but here's the context that you also have to put this in There was an international a study in survey of 34 developed nations back in 2005 that Looked at the acceptance of evolution basically it's one question human beings as we know them today developed from earlier Species of animals do agree or disagree? It's kind of that simple And 2005 the only Country that scored lower than the United States out of 34 developed nations was turkey So even even as I'm congratulating ourselves Ah Yeah, it's still not doesn't feel like winning Many what is winning right? What is that? What is what is your definition of success? We have reached one goalpost here. We've hit a marker So now let's keep improving on this and iterating on what success means for the understanding and acceptance of the idea of evolution The theory of evolution with perhaps our general That was not to get lapped twice. Yeah Well, I think the other the other question that I have is if they actually do link causally link college education and understanding science in this way, right then you really have to address the institutional issues with access to college The how much it costs how different Demographics have it easier to access that education than others and I did that If that's really how we're educating people is based on something that is not offered to everyone equally. That's a problem Yeah Yeah, absolutely great. We've we've reached 54% And there's some in the middle it might be like Still don't know. I don't know there might be some in the middle of it Just a current study consistently identified religious fundamentalism is the strongest factor leading to the rejection of evolution go figure There's if you can believe it there is also a political divide Look at yeah, I do this liberal Democrats 83% Believe in evolution. I know like who's the 17% right? I Guess I guess there's something there's a a anyway. Here's a group Well, there is there's still people who maintain their religion who have Find it coincides with the rest of global democratic ideology. I suppose. Absolutely. It's also 34% of conservatives except evolution which is actually That's 8% improvement Over the years, so I'm curious what the age spread is It's not given here. Yeah, I think that would be interesting to see because also is some of this just that There's different generations that have different Percentages of the population now and did previous it could be and but it's also, you know If you look at that that percentage whatever it is is more likely to have a college education now, which is also like the vastly Yeah, that probably runs with right Yeah In terms of demographics and how people are affected by things Blair, you've got a study Related to fruit flies. Yes. Yes. I don't know after the last 18 or infinity months depending on how you want to calculate it You'll feel a little sluggish. Maybe were you not sleeping? Well, maybe were you eating like garbage? Maybe did you gain the quarantine? 15 does any of this apply to you? Well, it turns out some of this could apply to fruit flies Scientists have found that lone fruit flies quarantined in test tubes sleep too little and eat too much after only about one week of social isolation this is a new finding which aims to describe how chronic separation from groups Leads to changes in gene expression neural activity and behavior in fruit flies And so this provides one of the first robust animal models for studying the biological ramifications of loneliness This is from the laboratory of genetics at Rockefeller University Michael W. Young Who is a professor there? He found quote that loneliness has pathological Consequences connected to changes in a small group of neurons and we've begun to understand what those neurons are Doing so once again the fruit fly Drosophila is a great test subject because they are social creatures like us. They feed in groups They serenade one another they have mating rituals. They tussle and They After all this they sleep a lot they sleep around 16 hours a day They have a midday nap and then a full night's rest doesn't that sound nice And so in this study after seven days housed together these groups of varying sizes produce no anomalous behaviors Even if you had to cut off from the crowd they did fine So if you're paired up in quarantine if you want to draw those conclusions based on this fruit fly study Maybe you did better than someone who wasn't but when a single fly was entirely isolated the lonely fly eight more slept less and They found that this was a group of genes linked to Starvation expressed differently in the brains of low lonely flies and this is a small group of brain cells known as p2 neurons So they shut down the p2 neurons in some flies to see what would happen Kind of separate to see if this is what was happening in in this kind of social experiment The chronically isolated flies suppressed overeating and restored sleep if you shut down the p2 neurons But if you boosted the p2 neurons if they were also isolated It caused them to eat and sleep as if they had been alone for a full week So it was those neurons. They found the neurons responsible for this this behavior and um They went into whole other things they engineered theoretical flies to look at this further, but suffice it to say There's there's a good kind of Idea of why this happens at least in fruit flies could potentially lead to something that we see in ourselves One of the possibilities for why this happens evolutionarily, which is always my question, right? young said Professor young said that social isolation signals a degree of uncertainty about the future So if you are suddenly alone and you are supposed to be in a group of of whatever your species is There's a really good chance you're about to get eaten You're supposed to get even or you've been separated and you need to find your way to that group or a new group Or you don't have extra eyes to watch for out for predators Or you don't have extra eyes to forage for food and all that to means if you find food You've got to eat it and you can't let yourself sleep too long So I was going to say how interesting that it's starvation neurons and you know thinking about loneliness as social starvation, but if you take it to that evolutionary Explanation it's survival based. It's the uncertainty. It is the fact. Okay. I don't have anyone. When am I going to get food next? When am I going to find another? Conspecific another individual of my kind. I don't know so I need to take care of myself. I need to be alert Yeah, actually being love-starved Yes, and you know during the whole pandemic There were a bunch of studies that said that that a that good numbers of people were gaining weight and losing sleep Throughout it and they they a lot of the times it was attributed to anxiety or stress or uncertainty But where did yeah, where did that come from? Yes, so There was general stress and anxiety about the pandemic, but this shows that there might be a whole another piece which is an actual genetic source of some of this behavior Related to isolation so our social nature our social social nature are hardwired into who we are potentially Yeah Fascinating And along the lines of food Not starvation, but actually maybe how to get yourself to eat a little bit better. Some researchers have published in Nature Food their new evaluation of nutrition involving environmental Aspects so how how much water does food use what are the environmental impacts of the food that you're eating? So not just the nutritional health aspects, but the environmental health aspects of as well And they've created this new framework that they're calling the the henny health and environmental nutritional index And in this they're able to classify different types of food as giving you more Life hours and being beneficial to your life Through nutrition and being good to the environment or being detrimental and taking away From the environment and in their assessment The u.s. Diet that they looked at 5,853 foods They ranged from losing 74 minutes to gaining 80 minutes per serving of food the These analyses indicated that substituting though. This is part of an interesting conversation about Meat and red meat Eating where everybody says if you eat less meat don't eat you know don't eat cows Don't eat the red meat if you eat less red meat. That's the best thing you can do for the environment and your health Well, they say it doesn't have to be an either or you eat it or you don't But they say substituting only 10 of daily caloric intake from beef and processed meats for fruits and nuts and vegetables and legumes and seafood Could give you up to 48 minutes per person per day of healthy living And um and a 33 reduction in your dietary carbon footprint just 10 less of those red meats a day if you were to substitute them This is never going to make it to food packaging because it's never it's too complicated No, you're gonna make it if you handed me a twinkie and that twinkie said like one hour of your life Be like i'm not eating this twinkie Yeah, it's going to take away your life and so they have um a wonderful assessment of You know these 5 000 some odd foods that they have uh determined hold on let me see if I can um get it Share as groups not the whole screen. Hold on. That's all my screen. See it everybody I'm going to share Just a window. Yes, everything's a little different now But uh, there are some foods that definitely reduce uh We give you many hours lost um and so foods like frankfurter sandwiches Not so good, but on our food pyramid. These are probably already not very or the food Web whatever we use nowadays. These are not recommended foods necessarily But some of the best things you can eat peanut butter and jam sandwiches Who knew really? Yeah My childhood staple My childhood staple just added so much to my life. I had no idea great all those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches We all ate as kids except for those of us who have peanut sensitivities Have added to our lives or or jelly aversion Yes Yeah, you could just have a peanut butter sandwich. It would probably be great This is this week in science. Thank you so much for being a part of this show We hope you're enjoying it and if you are share it with a friend today I would like to take this moment to introduce our guest for tonight. We are joined by dr Noah Ferrer and he is a professor in the ecology and evolutionary biology department And a fellow in the cooperative institute for research in environmental sciences at the university of colorado He's also the director of the center for microbial exploration his lab explores the distribution and roles of microscopic organisms In diverse environments and the relevance of microbes to the health and function of ecosystems plants and animals Dr. Ferrer, welcome to the show Hello, thanks for having me on the show Yeah, it's so great to have you here Now I've we've talked with many people about microbes through the years But I think the direction that your research takes is very interesting and specifically one paper that I do want to touch on today gets at Where there are no microbes, which is something that's very kind of this foreign idea But first I just love to know how did you get into microbes? What started your journey in exploration? Well, it's a good question because I don't think people You know kids don't grow up be like I want to study microbes Maybe now actually, I mean, I think if we've learned anything from this pandemic, it's that microbes are pretty damn important, right? I mean, I love studying microbes. I will say so my group looks at microbes in lots of environments including soil and on plants and microbes in our homes In the atmosphere and I think for me what's really fun about studying microbes is how little we don't know It's not very hard to find Really basic questions like for example, if you take us a tablespoon of soil from your garden What microbes are in there and what are they doing? There's unlimited questions even in that tablespoon of soil that we don't have the answers to So that's what makes it really fun Is it's not hard to find something that's potentially very important to study But for which we don't have a good understanding right And what what specifically though? How did you get into looking at microbes in the soil versus? You know a lot of people now are interested in our interaction Inside our bodies with microbes, you know the human the human microbe interaction, but what why why soils? uh Believe it or not soils are pretty fascinating And important Right, um and and often of course we take up a granary and we're walking around on the lawn We don't think about the soil underneath our feet But they're important for you know the health of ecosystems for human health directly and indirectly for growing crops that we of course For emissions of greenhouse gases the list goes on and on So you know soils are really central to a lot of ecosystems and inhabitants of those ecosystems So yeah, I started my graduate work I got really interested in soils and again for the same reason for microbes is that there's just so There's a lot of like unanswered questions that that the Basic things we don't understand about soils and who's living in the soil Yeah, so you you mentioned greenhouse gas emissions and the first thing that I think about there are The Siberian tundras or these other areas in the the far north that are warming and these ice icy frozen bits of soil that have been frozen for years and not active suddenly They have microbe activity activity again like this is this We did we expect that to happen like this is this is this crazy crazy effect of climate change Oh, yeah, and it's you know again, it you know, what's the extent of it? Um, how much methane and how much co2 is going to be released from these systems with warming and where you know It's not going to be evenly distributed. And what's the magnitude of it? You know, is it going to create a positive feedback loop right you get more co2 more methane coming out of these systems Which increases the global warming potential even more which then exacerbates temperature change Yeah, it's it's a stuff of nightmares really I yeah, no, I these are not my nightmares. I try not to have these These kinds of dreams, but it is but it is a reality so you mentioned the You know this different the differential between different locations. So cyber area, obviously it's got It was frozen. Did we expect there to be a lot of microbial activity when the tundra is thawed? um, and did we expect there to be life in that that frozen soil was there evidence prior that microbes could survive in cold frozen conditions for a long period of time Oh for sure. I mean in the tundra system, it's it's sound to us. It seems like a really rough place to live But to a microbe, it's great. Yes, it's cold But typically a lot of these touch as well as there's lots of organic matter So lots of things for microbes to eat. So as soon as the temperatures are right It may only be a few weeks a year when it's warm enough It's like Thanksgiving dinner, right? You know, they've got all this organic matter And they'll just like chow down and of course one product the microbes eating that organic matter and a tundra soil, for example is co2 and methane These are the these are the gases that some of the gases that were that were worried about So thinking about how the different microbes What they eat where they live the kind of limits to What environmental conditions they can exist in? Uh, what have you started looking at and what where did you start asking questions about that? Yeah, so my group has been looking at microbes and soils from all across the globe. We've worked in Peruvian amazon. We've worked in deserts. We've even worked in central park new york city the exotic locale And you know, not surprisingly there's different microbes. So we're really interested in What sort of what sort of microbes are living in these soils and then of course, what are they doing? How are they affecting us directly or indirectly and how they're affecting ecosystems? um So, yeah, we've looked in lots of systems and not surprisingly, you know microbes are everywhere and they're highly diverse again, you know, you can take a Tablespoon of soil and you've got thousands of different types of microorganisms in there most of which there's no name We don't have a species name for them. We know they're there, but we don't know what they're doing How they may be affecting plants or how they may be affecting us um, we just know that they're there And we just want one named after the show What you're bringing up is is actually really critical crucial information to have going forward because As the as this global temperature is changing as the areas where plants are growing now Maybe not habitable anymore. We don't just get to pick up the plants And reseed them elsewhere. We actually have to bring the microbial community of the soil with them Otherwise, they might not be able to sustain themselves Exactly. I mean, we know from a lot of research, for example on the gut microbiome That, you know, we're not made to live in a sterile environment You know, we're colonized by all sorts of microbes and those play a really important role in our health And the same is true for plants Right plants rely on a lot of those microbes on their leaves and in the soil around their roots To survive particularly under stressful conditions like drought or temperature Low temperatures, for example, there's increasing evidence that those microbes that are associated with plants are really important for the for the health of the plants How do you determine since we don't know all the microbes that are in that tablespoon of soil in a various location How do you actually go about determining who's there great question, so oftentimes not not exclusively but oftentimes we use DNA sequencing And this is the same exact DNA sequencing that's used in, you know, CSI shows, right? Or, you know, for human genome analyses The technology is actually the same and what we're doing is we're just, you know, extracting DNA from soil We're sequencing that DNA and we're going to say, oh, look, we found this type of microbe or this type of microbe And most of them, as I said, they don't have a name So I always find it funny when plant and animal biologists are like, it's not in this species. They're so excited I'm like, I'm excited when I find something that we do have a name for Right, you know, because most of them we don't have a name for We know, yes So when you're when you're throwing this blasting this stuff out though, I mean, is it uh Is it just sort of falling into these big broad families? Or is it is it stuff that's like is there stuff that's sort of outside That we really don't even have an origin story for Oh, usually we know, okay, it's related to these other things so we can say, okay It's in this phylum or in this class or in this order Um, that's definitely true for bacteria. So we we generally know You know who it's related to or we have an idea Um, I mean, there's always things that are like, okay Here's an entire phylum. So this broad grouping of bacteria and it's no member of this group has ever been described So then, you know, we we have the dna sequence for it and sometimes we can even reconstruct the whole genome But that's it. You know, we can't grow it in the lab We don't necessarily know exactly what it's doing and then of course there's viruses in soil And that's a whole nother ball game because there's lots of viruses that live in soil most of them infect bacteria Um, and that's really terra incognita You know, there's just a lot of viruses that we know nothing about what what are they doing in these environments Lots Bacteria phages, they're the they're the viruses that are going after the the microbes, right? That exactly. Yeah, not just us Yeah, not all microbes are bad. Yes, not all of them are some of them a lot of them a lot of them. They're very Interrelated and it's they have an ecological function and they're you know, they're they're they've they have Eeked out a niche for themselves Um, so we've got we've got these tablespoons of soil that you're going to pick it up You're doing dna sequencing sometimes being able to figure out species Sometimes not you've got genes potentially that can give you Functionality for what can can you find out what these microbes are doing in the different locations and kind of figure out ecological profiles of that? Exactly. Yeah, we can say okay. Well, it seems to have these genes So let's make some guess about this is how it's for lack of a better term making a living in that soil environment We also can say okay. We only tend to find these in You know tropical forest systems. We don't tend to see them in desert So they're probably not too tolerant to to dry conditions, right? You know stuff like that We can generate some hypotheses, but to really study that to really know, okay This is what this microbe eats. This is what it does. This is how it survives in its environment We often have need to grow it in the lab and that's challenging Most of the microbes in soil is very difficult to grow in the lab Microbes in general have been difficult. There are there are several that love laboratory conditions, but the majority do not Exactly. Yeah so along the lines of going from To dry conditions. I'm going to take us now to Antarctica, which is not It's dry in a lot of places. It doesn't have a lot of precipitation necessarily. It's a desert There's less than 10 inches of rain a year. It's a desert And so your team went to Antarctica And took a bunch of samples from different places. What was the what was the goal there? And then what did you find? Great question. Yes, it was about three years ago I had the opportunity to go with the team of other scientists to Look at the soils of Antarctica So we always think of Antarctica as being ice covered and of course a lot of Antarctica is ice covered But not all of it is so there's exposed areas particularly in the mountain ranges That have never been covered in ice for hundreds if not thousands of years and there's soil there Um, and that's what we were going after is trying to look at what sort of biology is going on in these soils of Antarctica And it was it. I will say it was an awesome adventure. It's my first time there and it was it was incredible And what did you end up? What did you end up finding? I mean, I I am jealous of the Antarctic adventure But I'm sure it was more than frozen very interesting Yeah, so we were working in a remote region of Antarctica in the transit Arctic mountains So Antarctica itself is remote and we were even in a remote area in Antarctica, right? So milling nowhere Camped on this glacier. We got to you know fly around and collect samples from all these environments that had basically never been visited before Um, and again, these are soils. So these are exposed. They're not glaciated They haven't been covered in ice in hundreds if not thousands of years and we collected about 250 samples Um, and then came back we put them on the slow boat all the way back because they had to stay frozen for for preservation And they actually went back on an icebreaker all the way to California And eventually they made it to to colorado in my lab and I had a graduate student that looked at them I'm like, let's start seeing what sort of microbes are living in this in this unique environment And I will say what he found was really surprising to me Um, and he found that was Knowing the suspense, can you just read about it? Not just kidding. Um What he found was that you know in about About a quarter of the samples there was no detectable DNA from microbes in there nothing And you know again, we've gone all over the world and there's microbes everywhere, right? Especially in soil, you know every soil we've looked at there's plenty of DNA plenty of microbes there So, of course, what did I say to him when he when he came back with those results my student nick first thing I said is something Exactly And of course he did because it was it was surprising to us and you know There was plenty of soils about 75 of the soils that we've tried to promote arca where there was all sorts of There's unique microbes and we found plenty of them in there But there was that 25 percent where we couldn't detect any DNA. So he went back to the lab Probably begrudgingly and cursing me under his breath And you know ran some additional analyses and we coupled it with a wide range of other analyses trying to grow them on petri plates Trying to measure how much ATP so microbes all produce ATP for energy So measuring the ATP in these soils and all the results were pretty consistent And that we couldn't detect any microbes in about 20 to 25 percent of samples Um from Antarctica and again, these are old soils. We've been forming in place for longer at the time They're not covered in a nice. So this was this was quite surprising to us And I do want to make it clear is we can't say they're sterile Because you can never prove a negative, right? There's always a chance there's some you didn't pick something up Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there could be some fungal spore that happened to drift in from from new zealand and land there And we just didn't pick but we couldn't detect anything Um using techniques that were specifically developed for these very low biomass types of environments So basically, you know, we we were bumping up that we think up against the limits of life You know conditions that were so rough That even microbes couldn't survive there That it's amazing to me that we would have a place on our planet when we talk all the time, you know In the in the news. It's always extremophile this and the ability of microbes to survive in So many places and we've have we have evidence of Of uh of microbes living on the exterior of the international space station or at least surviving in a spore form. So How is it how is it possible what what is the limit is it just temperature? Is it water? Is it ph What environmental aspect could possibly limit the growth factors? Well, what we think is happening is that those soils that we couldn't detect any microbes with no bacteria No fungi. No other microbes. It's sort of the unique combination. It's very cold. Obviously Antarctica don't need to tell any illiciters that um Very dry so some of these sites Based on looking at the geochemistry in the soil themselves They're probably never seen liquid water for hundreds of years So snow may fall on there, but it's so dry it just sublimates and never actually forms liquid water And the soils are also very very salty because they they'll accumulate Salt from the atmosphere, but because there's no liquid water those salts don't go anywhere They just stay there and over extended periods of time they accumulate So what we think is happening is it's like a hat trick, right? You've got cold salty and really dry and that combination Just makes makes it really difficult for microbes to live there So now there's there's two really good questions that was that was hovering above But it's also it's also it's probably the only like the best place that we've been talking about blare for a long time That might also be the best place to find a life that didn't originate with the rest of life If there's open niches right No, you go. Well, I think one thing that's super interesting is you know now that we think we're seeing sort of these limits of life Then the next question to me at least is okay. Well, who's able to survive right up to those limits, you know, what sort of unique Ways of making a living like how are these micro favors survive like right up at the limit of these challenging conditions Yeah, and so I am seeing two really good questions in the chat room right now. So one is So what's going to happen when the Antarctic heats up even just a little bit? Oh, that's a great question because One reason we wanted to study these systems is they are currently changing very rapidly So, you know, if we go back there five ten years from now It's highly likely that these systems will be different And to just to give one example, I said these systems are super dry like they haven't seen liquid water fire estimates in Dec many decades But you can imagine a little bit of warming on one or two days It's just enough for a little bit of that snow to melt and form liquid water And then all of a sudden you can remove some of the salts conditions are a little bit better and possibly Random spore that lands there might be able to grow a little bit So you can imagine even a few even a half a degree change in temperature could make this environment go from what we believe is currently uninhabited to Still not a great place to live potentially Inhabitable slightly better. Yeah, if something if something can can Can can make their way into that niche and make it their own they have no competition Yeah, right right for now For now, that's how the game works. The other question the chat room was about Mars We talk about the on the show all the time about how Nothing can ever be truly clean when we send it into space no matter how hard we try But if we know the limits of where at least Earth-bound microbes Can live maybe that can help Uh indicate if our microbes would be able to live on Mars for example Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I don't know anything about Mars and urban there But you know one one reason people do study soils in Antarctica is because it is believed to have some similarities to Soils there are soils on Mars including the cold temperatures The saltiness and particularly some toxic salts and the dryness So that's one reason people study Antarctica Um, I don't know what's on Mars. So I I I'm very hesitant to say okay. Well based on this results But we'll see if I'm right But I think one thing it does show is like, you know If we're going to use methods to try to detect life in Mars We should probably test them out in these environments first Because Antarctica is not that accessible but it's more accessible than Mars And so, you know, these are this is a night system for really detecting Or trying to see if we can detect microbes or other other life right You know sort the limits of habitability And as we get to the the limits of habitability, I'm I'm wondering how we can also use what we're learning in this Antarctic situation to I guess create clean rooms for NASA Can we can we take the conditions? In Antarctica and say okay, let's make it super cold. Let's make it dry. Let's suck all the humidity out of the air And see what happens. Can they kill everything on the surface of the next Mars rover? Yeah, I think this the scientists and engineers working on it would love those conditions I mean, I think you know one outcome is is, you know, there's always additional methods We could use to really try to detect very small numbers of cells and environment And so we could take some of the methods we've used in Antarctica And and we could apply them in fact they are being applied to clean room situations Where how do you because again, how do you prove the negative? How do you prove that there's nothing there and that's really hard? Um, because all of these methods have some limits of detection So, you know, and we're bumping up against that. So yeah, I mean just for we don't want to send microbe contaminated Stuff to Mars like that's not good. Um, so really refining those Justin is pro sending microbes to mars. He has no issue Mars the fest destiny. Yeah Well, he's pro bringing back the mammoths. He's pro filling all the niches with whatever you want No, no, the mammoth had a niche it should be it's not going to be that long anyway, but no like What what if this is our Our like we're talking about as if there's going to be this future generation Which I still hope there is that's going to terraform Mars and we'll have two planets Whatever everything just shuts down like say there's a global pandemic that uses all the oxygen. We can't launch rockets anymore What if what if Those microbes are the one thing that got to leave this planet and go to mars I don't know if I would limit too hard those Putting eggs and more baskets. I see I see what you're saying there. Yeah In terms of the topsoil and how how we're looking at these topsoil So we're looking at okay. Here are the limits to microbial life potentially Um, are you are you team bacteria team fungus? Are you if you were to? To expect a microbe of any kind to be the first that you would find After not having seen anything there. What do you think it would be? That's a good question. So I'll back up and say the term microbe is Not a very useful scientific term, right? It just means things that are small things that are small, right? so, you know, this includes viruses and includes Um, a protus like amoeba. It includes bacteria. It includes archaea. It includes fungi um, and I guess I would say don't underestimate the fungi Fungi are tough And some of these soils where we don't see any bacteria. We do see some fungi there So they're able to survive in the super cold dry salty environments. So my guess if I had to make a guess is The fungi are going to be the first ones there or or various few bacteria select few bacteria And you were talking about talking about the uh, some microbes are hard to to grow in a lab The one thing that's hard not to have grow at places You don't want it to is the fungi the fungi will show up in other experiments where that thing didn't even want to grow It's just oh, you have to be super careful With how you handle those spores because they will proliferate like crazy. Yeah, your home. It's filled with fungi filled Yes, when you're in your home breathing, you're just breathing in fungal spores all the time Woohoo. Yeah, I have heard I've heard fungal researchers who study infectious disease actually say that they're more worried about Uh, fungus in the future fungi fungal species as it gets warmer and we see different diseases emerge from Uh, from various places around the equator. They're more concerned about the fungal species than they are microbial Which I've always Thought to be very interesting and I think it's no, no, there's a huge intersection that uh between Understanding what's in the soil and how plants are going to interact and there's a lot of effort and biotech right now to try to develop sort of cocktails of microbes That you can match with plants to improve the health Uh of crops is there are there aspects of what you've been working on that kind of point to some of these things that the that look really promising Oh, yeah, so it's it is a great question, right? So in one sense we have the soils that have all this diversity Right, like nature has given us this amazing diversity of bacteria and fungi and viruses and then At the same time We need to grow more plants on less land to feed people, right? So it's an obvious thing. We're like, okay We already know that many plants use fungi and they use bacteria to to grow better And this is this almost all Nearly all plants that we know of you know have these symbiosis these interactions with microbes So then it's an obvious next next step to say, okay Can we add particular microbes to soil or to seeds or onto leaves? To make them resistant to disease Make the plants resistant to disease to make them grow better under drought or Or you know more resistant or or use less fertilizer for example And there's definitely some cases where that has been shown where people people been able to do that But it's a tough nut to crack for some of the same reasons I already mentioned that there's so much that's unknown And such a small subset can be grown in the lab It's really hard to test how a bacteria for example might affect plant growth If you can't grow it and add it to to plants or or like yeah, you've discovered these 20 microbes Will absolutely improve the health and resilience and the growth factors of this plant And so we're going to put these 20 into the soil with how many other competitors and how many interactions Right and just dumping it on there, you know, yeah, exactly. It may not necessarily grow It may not interact the way you want it to interact with with the plant I mean it's the same exact thing in in gut microbiome Right the same exact thing happens. How do we introduce the bacteria we want into our gut without having Negative effects and how do we actually show which microbes are beneficial? Yeah, according to all the the advertisements, it's just eat yogurt. You'll be fine Yeah, even though really you're doing what Justin talked about you're just throwing like five microbes into a Sea of a community like where you get out of here Yeah, there are some I there are some very interesting studies at play there But I wanted to talk very quickly before we before we finish our time together I also wanted to touch on your sourdough starter study that you recently did as a A head nod to so many of our listeners who have started making their own sourdough breads at home And this this falls in line with you know, the The people who also appreciate the year the yeast that ferment our beers who help with that help with our wines But um, what did you end up looking at with the your sourdough starter study? Yeah, so I will point out that I was just part of a larger team that studied sourdough So I was helping out with the study. Um, science is always collaborative, right? That's what makes it that's what makes it so fun But yeah, and I will also point out that we started the sourdough study before the pandemic We were not Not We were ahead of the curve exactly Um, and essentially this was this was really fun because it was a citizen science public science Community science, however, you want to call that study where we had people send Samples of their sourdough from all over the world actually most from the u.s. But from from all over the world and we use some of these same techniques that we use in soil um, you know DNA sequencing and other tools to look at the bacteria and fungi and primarily yeast of course in sourdough Um, to basically see what's out there and then we did some additional studies like does it matter What microbes in your sourdough doesn't matter for how quickly that sourdough rises and what sort of aromas are produced As your starter is is is is working Um, so it was a really fun project because you know, we got samples from all over and they often came with stories Right. Like oh this starter was gifted to me by my great-great-grandfather It's it's intergenerational that these cultures have been kept alive To produce the family bread. Yeah, these are heirlooms The cultures are the Yeah, they are the immortal jellyfish and how like jellyfish and sourdough starters. They never die It's Self-proliferating that's you it's all coming. Yeah, go ahead. I'm coming from the west coast I'm assuming that there were some stories about the san francisco starters because san francisco yeast and san francisco is in francisco is supposed to have special microbes in the air and it's a very special place for sourdough Yeah, and no offense to anyone from san francisco I will say, you know There was a a chat among because this was a large team effort So we were trying to come up with a title for the paper and I was like we should call it San francisco, you're not that special But that that got that got vetoed But you know, we didn't see like oh if you look in the day area in san francisco all of a sudden We see different sourdough starters I'm sure there's some magic to the san francisco sourdough starter But it's not necessarily in the types of microbes that are in the in the sourdough starter But there are there is a lot of variations the starters aren't all the same It doesn't it just doesn't follow some, you know geography It's not like oh new york sourdough starters are different than california And then we get this big, you know piece between who's sourdough I mean, there's a lot of variation a lot of it's probably determined by what's in your home Where you got your starter from what you feed your starter and the list goes on what temperature that starter Is exposed to and so there's many factors But there's a lot of variation and not all start sourdough starters are the same There's a lot of differences in terms of How quickly it rises and the the aroma is the compounds that are produced As as the sourdough matures I think it's wonderful. I I love this in this interaction between our culture culture quote-unquote and the sourdough cultures and how they can potentially tell stories about human history and human interaction with these microbes and with our own built environments And you know where we've been and maybe tell tell it tell a much deeper richer story about you know through our food And specifically that that in our built Because these are off like people keep these yeast cultures in their refrigerators How many generations back Before you don't have a refrigerator Like how are these how are these cultures kept alive in the cellars most likely some place some you know So there's also like a different environment that they were that they were even Raised in to be into this intergenerational Storytelling and we've sort of changed that so that's also got a factor in maybe the bread is just not good Maybe we all have terrible bread today. We just don't know it I Just think it's great that people have these microbial ecosystems in their homes They're almost like pets, right? You know some people you can have named names for their starter, right? Mine has a name. Yeah, it's beautiful, right? You know, it's like it's like taking the pet rock to the to the next level I mean, I think it's just great and the fact that they're you know distributed around to family and friends It's just great These microbes have figured out these yeast have figured out one of the best survival strategies how to use people to Enhance their spread across the globe I mean talk about a smart species. They're piggybacking on human behavior. This is amazing Margo would never do that to me Margo would never use you in that way. All right Blair go the mother dough Dr. Ferrer, thank you for joining us tonight. I'd love to know as a last question If you have anything else about your research or a take-home message that you would like Our audience to know about the microbial world around us Oh, there's just so many mysteries So one one thing is there's so many mysteries That are waiting to be to be solved and also just that not all microbes are bad I know they've gotten bad reputation recently for good reason But they're not all bad. Some of them most of them are probably innocuous. Some of them are beneficial directly and directly to us and we're just at the point. We're starting to explore that more detail how we could use microbes to improve our lives and It's going to be a lot of fun. There's a lot more exciting discoveries to come Well, I'm glad that you are a science cheerleader out there and helping The next generation Learn about my microbes as a as a career and giving them a role model of someone else Of someone who's interested in this area, so they maybe look ahead and say I want to study microbes someday This is what I want to do The bugs in the soil, but not the one with legs Thank you so much for joining us tonight. It's been really wonderful getting to hear about your work Oh, thank you. It was a pleasure And can people find you anywhere online? Yeah, I'm on twitter or fortunately my name is unique enough that nothing else pops up, but yeah Yeah, on twitter is probably the easiest Okay, fantastic Thanks again. Have a wonderful night Thank you. Bye. Bye That might be the first time some of our listeners have heard that there can be uh bad microbes You think On this show? Yeah, this show covers a lot of the positives of what microbes can do for us Yeah, there are some outliers. You gotta hear about them somewhere else You know, I hope I can't wait for you know, the the microbe movie to come out It's going to be the good the bad and the innocuous Anyway This is this week in science We hope that you enjoyed the first half of this week in science and our interview with dr Noah furrer And if you are appreciating the show, please take a moment to head over to twist.org and click on the patreon link there It'll take you to the patreon community for twists where you will have a chance to choose your level of support to support twists on a monthly basis and help us continue to bring science and interviews like this to you and to other people every week We really can't do this without you. Thank you for your support And we're gonna come on back right now. This is this week in science, but you know what time it is What time is time? for Blair's animal corner What you got Blair? I have babbling baby bats Yes babbling in children is part of learning human speech It's key to developing careful control over vocal cords and all of the kind of vocal gymnastics that we do to make human language And so this new study published in science this week indicates that the same is true for greater sack wing bats Sacko tarix bilaniata Which are native to central america Um co-author Miriam Knorr's child behavioral ecologist at the museum of natural history in berlin Says quote human infants seem to babble on the one hand to interact with their caregivers But they also do that when they're completely alone seemingly have seemingly happily just exploring their voice And that's the same That our bats were doing So in this study, this is in Costa Rica and Panama in 2015 and 2016 They looked at 20 baby bats and they were recorded in the wild These bats in particular are forest bats which made it easier to study them. They didn't have to stay in a cave full full of bat guano and Try to hone in on a on a cacophony of bats. They because it was the forest they could kind of just identify some babies and and mic them up and uh, these Uh, these bats they start babbling at about three weeks after birth They babble for about seven to ten weeks until they're weaned And during this period they spend around 30 of their days babbling That is a lot of time with sessions lasting on average about seven minutes, but one bat Babbled for a full 43 minute Which is so long Be especially considering that normal bat communication that it barely scrapes the limit It only lasts a few seconds So it's very it's very quick and uh, what's really cool is they took these vocalizations that they recorded They converted them into images called spectrograms And the syllables what what they consider syllables in the babbling had very specific shapes So they could kind of distinguish them and pair them. They analyzed more than 55 000 syllables And they found universal characteristics of babbling in human Infants and in the bats So there were things like repetition of the same sound over ba ba ba ba A lack of meaning and then also that the sounds followed a certain rhythm Here's the other thing that's really cool The researchers also found that some young bats learned fairly early a six syllable song That is used by males to mark their territory and attract females So this is one of the first things they picked up probably equivalent You know a baby learning how to say da da or no or something like that And so the pups listen to the adult males and then they imitate that song back So it's you can see to the naked eater But to adult bats it's nonsense. Um, and so these pups listen and then they imitate this short And for males that would make sense because they have to group and sing that song females also Would imitate and learn the male song As babies but would not then turn around and make that sound as an adult So the suggestion is that this is part of their cognitive growth Where they learn meaning and so they could be babbling this this back to form this song Because that's still really important For their sexual selection later in life. So they have to understand the meaning behind this six syllable song And of course to this point like Earl is always included in these sorts of studies Very few other species babble only some birds some marmosets Perhaps some dolphins or beluga whales come on now It probably most animals babble and we just haven't found out yet That's actually sounds like a lot of animals if as you start listing it Yeah Yeah, so it's there's a lot. Yeah Yeah, and it's all like that list is animals that have social structures and Have complicated vocal cues. So of course, you know, if this is how this is how our brain develops speech It can't be that different in specie in other species that use vocalizations complex vocalization So I'm sure if we started to look further we find more and more species that do this I wonder though, so we talk about this in the babbling. It's these repeated syllables. It's repeated phrases. It's the you know, the also Uh, just kind of playing with different sounds and looping them together and seeing how they fit together You know, just and babies are going to follow those kinds of sounds and and make them themselves um, but I wonder If in some animals say like cats where cats exist in the wild in prides where there's small groups But they do communicate yet not necessarily in the same phrase and syllable type way that we expect, you know that the it's a roar or it's uh you know, if there's something even More finely a more a finer resolution of detail in the babble. It just that's in the sound itself Yeah, well and cats are a weird case too because they mute they for the benefit of humans So that's all they meow for the benefit of humans. They don't That's not something right that they do in the wild to communicate with one another so I don't know like that's meow at each other They meow for each other when one is downstairs and one is upstairs Well, I'll see if I can find the study, but I think we reported on a show that I don't believe it. You don't believe it. Okay. Well, that's a whole other story. I'm pulling a Justin now I don't believe it. Well, that's fair. You're gonna disbelieve stuff I actually disbelieve the thing that you just said kiki About baby's understanding or being attracted I hear parents doing that all the time There are studies that suggest that babies like that kind of vocalization better than No kid talks like this adults seem like compelled to speak in that in that voice Yeah, there are also studies that show that the more you speak to a baby in complete sentences Like an adult the quicker they develop speech It's it's you know, it's it's complicated. The human brain is very complicated. It's not black and white, but there is a whole um movement called talk read sing which is about Talking reading and singing to your baby from the moment it's born and it is because it does help with the development of language so it's Anyway, very very interesting In the and we've seen in birds this babbling is thought to be practice for the songs as well Trying out different sounds seeing how they work putting them together in different ways You know, but it's interesting to hear that bats do this as well. They don't just Squeak at each other. They squeak sentences potentially Yeah, and I think that they keep babbling Yeah, the thing that's really interesting about it too is that I think, you know, I kind of glossed over it but they do this To kind of have communication moment with adult bats But they also do it when they're alone and that's such an important piece Because then they are kind of just exploring their vocal cords and do Yeah, and it's and you I've seen it in infants Being a father many times Is is there is this sort of right before full speech? There's usually this period of talking in babble sentences Where they're going through all of the motions of a full conversation by vocal And there's not really words and then suddenly they're talking with the full sentence It's like a very weird. Did you just ask me how my day was? Yeah It's kind of like that, but there is this like There's this sort of Decision or something that clicks that's trying to put that whole word language thing into into a functional As opposed to just a practice Uh, and it comes out as this sort of blither blather For a while and then then it then it's like it clicks in and they're often talking And then they just don't stop Yeah, they don't and here we are today still talking Yeah, yeah Speaking of talking let's Move on to talk about some monkeys. Yeah, you got it. So, uh, I have a study about Acting under pressure and performing under pressure and how that can be sometimes difficult For monkeys. This is from Carnegie Mellon University And they found the the kind of the liner notes here are that like humans Rhesus macaques can choke when facing a high-stakes situation. That's not choke. Like you didn't chew your food, right? That's choke like you mess up like when you parallel park Every day and it's easy. You're not even paying attention. But when someone's in the car with you In the car that you're parallel parking in front of You have to do it five times and then you give up And leave So it's about choking under pressure, right? Yeah, are you talking from personal experience? Not not at all not at all not at all Um prior research along with anecdotal evidence suggests that humans are prone at times to choking when faced with a high pressure situation Which in in that one case is just social pressure But in other times have real world stakes And so this is a series of experiments of the group of rhesus macaques They trained three rhesus monkeys. So these were just three and In the study that the test case was fall due to animal welfare rules. So this is a preliminary study This It is something to be considered that it's just three monkeys, but they trained these three monkeys to engage in difficult virtual reaching tasks on a computer screen And they they knew beforehand the desired treat was available if they got it, right? The researchers then set up four scenarios for the monkeys small medium large And jackpot and as the tests are more difficult the rewards grew larger And each monkey was tested 10 times They found that all of them worked harder to get the treats that were higher value as they moved up in difficulty And the rewards Got bigger and they were they were rewarded as was appropriate. But when it came time for the jackpot monkeys failed miserably Both the speed and accuracy declined between 10 and 25 percent of the time And that prevented the monkeys from receiving their jackpot They also noticed noted that the experience of choking did not appear to change strategies over time They didn't go. Okay. Next time I'm going to do this differently It would do it. They would make the mistakes again and again and again So this is again a very preliminary study, but it does appear to show that what we consider choking failing when the stakes are high Is not simply a human trait And it's not just it's not just you parallel parking or it's not just me or Oh monkey see monkey do See no evil hear no evil Speak no evil one of them can't handle the pressure guaranteed One of them with someone You know and different people do do differently different individuals probably different Monkeys monkey individuals do differently on different days given hormone levels or environmental pressures or you know distress levels from prior interactions that are probably Lots of lots of things that go into Choking under pressure or a monkey monkeys I'm not going to choke under pressure. I'm going to ask you right now Do you like this weekend science? We love bringing it to you. Thank you for being here right now If you really like that like this weekend science Consider heading over to twist.org and clicking our zazzle link and picking up some of our merchandise We've got some great hats and mugs and t-shirts I got a beach towel that I'm very happy with Just this last weekend. So The zazzle site for twist.org Highly recommended Please head over there today and support twists and get your merchandise fix Heading on back right now Justin What do you have for us? Crop farmers home gardeners and vegetarians have this in common They all don't like insects that eat their plants Fair enough. Yeah So predator insects that feed on the bugs that eat plants emit odors that the bugs that eat plants can smell And it changes their behavior. It can even change their physiology So that they can attempt to avoid being eaten Researchers now report they have developed a way to bottle the smell of fear produced by predators To repel and disrupt destructive insects naturally without the need for harsh substances. This is uh says Quotey voice Sarah Herman PHA projects principal investigator It's not uncommon to use our senses to avoid risky situations If a building was on fire we humans could use our senses of sight and smell to detect the threat There is evidence for such behavioral responses to risk across taxa that suggest prey organisms can detect predation threats But the mechanisms for detection aren't very well understood, especially with insects One one of the things that's pointed out aphids highly destructive right aphids they show up in mass They can destroy crops. They're all over the roses. They can attack the tomatoes to go everywhere Uh They have the ability to transmit path plant pathogens too from one plant to the other so they can even be a vector for for plant problems They happen to be a favorite food of ladybugs Which gardeners like will buy like frozen ladybugs that they put out into the yard Most of those ladybugs by the way as soon as they come alive, they're pre-programmed to go traveling They always want to leave wherever they start to go So so as long as every one of your neighbors is doing this you'll have ladybugs But uh the researchers showed that they could use the smell of ladybugs And to expose them to the odor cues given off by ladybugs that would cause aphids to slow their reproduction rates And even increase their ability or their tendency to grow wings Something that they would need to then Avoid the threat by leaving the plant that they had had found So the team was set up uh and the experiment also then to to try to isolate the specific Components the chemical components within these odors That are actually doing the the pest repelling and They had to they hooked up the antenna of live aphids to an electro antenna graham That's a thing Now we know an electro antenna graham an eag machine expose them to individual odor preferences emitted to see which compounds they detected And once the compounds were identified the team set out to create a special order blend that could be then used as an essential oil diffuser That will spread the scent over time across say a garden a crop field Something of a much larger context So that's the next step, but they definitely identified some of the components within the scent of a ladybug That caused that struck fear into the hearts of aphids This is how batman villains happen Wait, what? Scarecrow, this is his whole deal The smell of fear. Yeah Yeah, so what's really amazing about this is uh uh high school girlfriends stepfather gosh Kept winning awards at the yolo county fair for his produce that he grew in his backyard And his secret Which I think it's safe to share now. No, you can't was that he would collect bugs from the yard Grind them up into one of those little containers and then spray that All onto the plants fascinating now to him it was a warning This is where plant where this is where bugs come to die is on my plants and to create the fear But it could have been the mixed smells of the it could have been the mixed smell of the predators in there Predator bugs in there as well As the as the past or could be the scent of dead pests that were scared, but he was actually Intentionally using the olfactory of the insects to scare them off It's either the sense of fear or the scent of death, right that yeah two things. They're always fun to speaking of the death 14 for 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue He sailed from Spain to India Or so he thought actually it was off by about 9 000 miles It actually landed in the Caribbean Where he almost immediately enslaved the native populations put them into labor camps that worked people to death Sent them back to spain as slaves. There was mass murder rape torture And before it was over it amounted to the largest genocide the world has ever experienced All this in the name of the holy trinity His words not mine Word of what taking place world did reach the old world and got some mixed reviews. They're doing what? To the people they found there All was then seemingly forgiven because the stories emerged about what was happening in the new world Before the heavy hand of the holy warriors that arrived and brought civilization Was that the natives were engaged in cannibalism Oh my gosh Now of course, whatever needs to be done Turns out that was not true however a paper and scientific reports January 2020 Made some claims about cannibals migrating into the Caribbean circa 800 ad And now a group of researchers who more heavily research these things in this region Have come out and rebuked the paper they're saying that the basically this is There's plenty of evidence that you can see within a record through the archaeological record historians anthropologists archaeologists can all look through these records And not find a single trace of evidence evidence that should exist That should be findable Is not there Geovus and nine colleagues joined forces to challenge the paper's findings Including florida state university of st. Leopard the university organ scott-fitts patrick the professor and associate director of research at the museum of natural and cultural history They say they were disconcerted About the revitalization of cannibalistic narrative Which is not only disingenuous and hurtful to indigenous groups. It's absolutely not true There is uh, so they have also published And scientific reports their rebuke Of what they say was a poorly put together Piece of work and and you know, this is this is also this is a long-standing thing throughout a lot of not just Caribbean But a lot of South America we've talked about it before Because the conquistadors who were murdering raping pillaging and slaving We're reporting that the natives were engaged in barbaric human sacrifice Archaeologists who would then find what would anywhere else in the world Be called be called a graveyard We're identifying it as a site where ritualistic sacrifice took place meal prep Yeah, the evidence The body arrangements the all ages You cross different ages of the family relatedness Always ignored which would identify as a cemetery anywhere else in the world and southern central america would be identified as a site of ritualistic human sacrifice, so these things These things still Are with us and hard to get rid of but no the Caribbean's in the Caribbean. They weren't cannibals although I did which is too bad because in the pirates of the Caribbean I do like the fact that they were going to eat the chief But jack escapes and then make the new chief the dog and then you realize Oh, wait, now they're gonna eat the dog. Okay New data. This is new story last story of the night What for you? My uh, sorry my last story of the night. Thank you. Uh new data shows political donations From companies like core civic and the geo group are influencing policy makers to support legislation criminalizing undocumented immigrants. I talked a little bit last week or mentioned I think in the disclaimer you got to look for the profit margin behind some policies to understand why they're So entrenched in certain ideologies These two companies core civic the geo group operate more than 200 private incarceration facilities nationwide Detaining thousands and just in the five facilities they have in new mexico where this research was Originating from researchers Lauren calling wood from the university in mexico jason almoren from california state university northridge and rachel torris from James madison university looked at the relationship between congressional bill making And the private prison industry lobbying And they couldn't find any links between policy making and private prison contributions to campaigns Just kidding. They found direct links between them. Of course. That's what I would think. Yeah Their article co-sponsoring and cashing in us house members support for punitive immigration policy and financial payoffs from the private prison industry So what we're talking about is a four billion dollar a year industry That Only increases with the more people that you incarcerate and could put into that prison system Every so this is billions of dollars at stake private prison industry Of course has this interest in making sure more people can get pushed into jail For their business to succeed Interesting the researchers found private prison companies tend to make large political donations after House members co-sponsor punitive immigration legislation. That is the private prison industry is sending money to legislators as a reward For supporting immigration policies that put people into their prisons They found they also increased the financial payoff For members of congress Who faced more severe political risks by supporting the legislation? And according to the data these politicians are more often turning to co-sponsorship Or group sponsorship of these policies so as not to be singled out for the political Political costs for for supporting these policies Making it look like it was just a consensus thing that was taken Hmm So anyway, when you look at the when you look at some of these policies, uh, know that there's real human suffering going on, you know, it's uh We aren't and also we just to be clear. We a lot of this. We're not just talking about people being incarcerated Who snuck into a country? We're talking about people who could have been born here and we're also talking about people who sought asylum Mm-hmm Who have found their way into these detention centers? As opposed to being accepted or turned away so Uh, be wary. There is money behind the policy that is making that is amplifying Uh, I can't even say it's amplifying in ideology. It's it's just Okay, I'm gonna stop It supports an ideology and we need scientific research sometimes social scientific research data investigation to be able to Put these trails together This is political science social sciences tells us the story of who we are right now Why we're here what we're doing and maybe what we need to do to change So that we don't do this more in the future But let's talk about change in terms of brain organoids Hmm Yes So brain organoids are these wonderful little tiny balls of cells that are composed of neural tissue nerves neurons And not neural tissue the supportive cells that are astrocytes and not necessarily What is considered the neural tissue in our central nervous system? These balls of of neural cells and their supportive cells grow from induced pluripotent stem cells to become A complex neural tissue that can be used by researchers to investigate the development of the human brain And this is great because you can't just go into a person's head And open it up every five weeks to say what you're doing right now, right? We don't do that. I mean you could It's frowned upon Indeed so researchers have been developing these organoids and the News to date has been very interesting and some people are Scared from time to time of the implications of what this means. Oh brains in a dish many brains all this But they're not far enough advanced to have cognitive thought. They're not far enough advanced To be a fully capable brain and if they were a fully capable brain in a dish They're not really connected to anything else usually So last week I wasn't here And there was a cool study that came out that I'm going to get to in just one second But this study out from this week researchers at the Eli and Edith Broad Center regenerative medicine and stem cell research at UCLA have Have been able to grow brain organoids from stem cells of from people who have a neurological disorder that's called ret syndrome and in growing these brain organoids With normal cells, they're able to see waves of electrical activity Connecting the cells and there are patterns and fluctuations in the electrical activity through the developmental stages of the brain and so they've come to understand what normal quote-unquote activation of these little mini brains is and in this study that they published in Nature Neuroscience now with these ret syndrome Mini brains produced from these from these cells that have disorders Everything looks fine on the outside and this is part of the issue ret disorder everything looks structurally fine But functionally there is misfiring and misconnection and so there it it is disordered electrically And so the the communication in the brain doesn't happen the way that it Should and in this they were able to actually see the disordered nature of the That the ret syndrome actually causes as the brain cells as these organoids were developing And what they're saying is this this really implies that what we're going to be able to do is take Cells from people with different disorders and really be able to investigate the neurological underpinnings of where Disorders go wrong What happens even if something looks structurally fine? What's going on electrically? What's going on with respect to ion channels? Molecularly that is disrupting the signaling within a brain And potentially because you've got these brains in a dish You can try out all sorts of drugs and possible treatments to be able to see if they will work and in this particular study They did test a new drug that is in development on these brain cells And it corrected the electrical activity in these mini brains in the dish So it gives evidence that this one particular drug that's being developed might be A promising direction to put more resources toward Which is pretty cool, but then last week like I was going to say, you know, I said normally those brains in the dish They're not really connected to anything. Yeah, I noticed that It's like she's onto something I put little pins in the conversation that I come back to at certain points Uh, well the researchers who published in cell stem cell last week they developed brain organoids and in their in in their title they say Functional integrated bilateral optic vesicles So what does that mean? They developed brain organoids with eyes or eyes They developed brain organoids using information from previous studies showing that they could move backwards and through stem cells create retinal Retinal cells with retinal pathways, but that weren't connected to any brain And they realized okay. Well to understand how the connections happen the retina usually is An extension of the brain. So what if we take the stem cells and just Tell them to produce retinal cells And so they got it to work and their brain cells These little stem cells grew into little mini brains with eyes that responded to light So cute This is very cute Yeah, so this allows again It's interesting because of the functional aspect. So we've got again once again one of the strengths in biological research is structure and function and so here we can see the structure how the connections occur through development Up to 60 days. So this is a very long period of of cellular Development here and can get a real picture of how things change structurally and functionally in the brain organoid and the visual system as it develops But it's not alive. It doesn't mean that we're going to be creating little people anytime soon. This is just The question of what type is and consciousness and awareness. These are all very different questions but from just The research perspective of what these advancements will allow the questions that will be allowed to be investigated Yeah, and you know if consciousness is achieved in a dish Then you know, we've really narrowed down what consciousness is, right? We really then we can really we can really point to and go, aha Now we figured it out But it's it's also like to the first story that you were talking about there You know the the the red syndrome and everything being sort of Structurally intact If you just google small cluster of neurons that that that It's like it's a bazillion stories of things being discovered To be controlled by just a small cluster of neurons controlling sleep diet Agent but whatever it is. This is just a small cluster of neurons that have the job to run huge body-wide systems or life-wise systems And like you can make it that whole the those waves their propagation and everything could just come down to a tiny cluster of neurons that aren't Communicating properly or not acting properly It's such we think of this brain too and such all of these massive connections that are going on in there But a lot of the actual work is done In a very small business Sort of grassroots effort Little little group of neurons group over here a little group over here Everyone's got their own thing that they're doing. Oh, we can maybe we can coordinate. That's cool. Yeah Yeah, everyone's got their own plans But if you can get them coordinated, maybe you can make a person walk There you go And then my last story for the night has to do with Tourette syndrome but not really having Tourette syndrome but having Tourette like syndrome and having it kind of caused by social media which is What I found just absolutely Fascinating in this study The researchers publishing in this in this advanced article In we get to where in brain they are They are positing or they are positing that Because of the stress in modern society and our connectedness through social media and video and audio platforms So like youtube or tiktok that people are able to connect and And there are behavioral memes that begin to spread as a result of this connection and they they have They have started suggesting a specific term that they are calling mass social media induced Illness in which they and others have reported People coming in with functional Tourette like symptoms such the tics cursing or Slashing out or throwing objects But they don't actually have a Tourette's diagnosis and in fact they can track in germany A spate of cases that all come from one particular youtuber who does have Tourette's But has a tendency to potentially in their words see it seems to overplay The actual symptoms of the Tourette's in favor and and and sensationalizes them For youtube ratings and popularity and what's happened is other youngsters teenagers are picking up the tics Is it working? What are his legs like? What is the revenue he's got on his stream? Should we be doing this? Yeah, right? No, no This really just sounds like someone Rocking back and forth on their porch yelling about those young kids and their loud music like So it just kind of sounds like somebody like This is just something that is that is part of being young now Is experiencing social media and and the The things that you see on social media you repeat Absolutely, but the repetitions that are happening are leading to individuals Going in for to get diagnoses or but not necessarily getting diagnosed by an expert in Tourette's and so as a result Say at their high schools or in there they're not having to Do pe anymore or they're getting out of things that they don't want to do they're using it as an excuse to get out of activities Where it's so it's a very it's a fascinating phenomenon um and That they they are concerned that it is going to do a disservice to people who actually have Tourette's and sent and and actually suffer from these symptoms in that It's it's being co-opted By by people and potentially this but this is a social media induced illness And we can consider it as a mental illness not a disorder like Tourette's but the And what they're can what they're hypothesizing is that it is the the stress of modern society the covid pandemic all sorts of things and having to seek attention on social media get attention Having an identity crisis like we've never had an opportunity to have before because of social media that it's leading to people Seeing these things and since they are exposed to them potentially Falling into patterns of expressing these behaviors Themselves even though they don't have the illness, but there there is an illness that's involved here, but it's not the diagnosed Tourette's Interesting it's fascinating. I've been I've read this paper a couple of times skimmed through it a few times And I'm I'm not completely 100 sold on it But the psychology that is here is just fascinating It's how do we know it's it's an illness and it's not just that people that teens that like need social interaction and socialization spent 18 months at home on tiktok And so they they became Less this is gonna sound so gross, but like less socialized like basically they didn't have somebody going like You're being too loud Right inside voices keep some thoughts you're not supposed to express keep them in your head Yeah, that's an interesting idea too. I don't know not exactly related Uh, but this is the story I didn't bring tonight Out of the Aston university says the use of swear words has declined more than 25 percent in the uk Since the 1990s according to research And I was gonna curse and make I was gonna bring up multiple epithets, but this is a family friendly podcast But apparently apparently the british are cursing less And that's that's what one of the things i'm throwing out there is like was the last generation heavy metal and swearing and this generation is Weird tiktok I haven't heard it quite as much I do recall As a youth and I don't know if it's the same with youth today. I recall quite a few people Using what do you call it an epithet epithet epithet every Like third word. Yeah, like some that was like almost like they was like all the words that they had Yeah, and you don't really hear but and then again i'm also much older I hang out with a different crowd now that might be also why I haven't heard it anymore I don't know I have to find some young people See if they know any curse words Well, maybe our listeners can bring us the young people I know the words I don't understand. I know find us some young people If you're watching or listening right now I think we made it. Have we done it? Uh-huh Yeah, we have Finished this episode of this weekend science another episode down another week of the year has passed many more science stories have flowed into your brains I would like to thank People who helped twist. Thank you too Fada, thank you so much for your help with show notes and with social media Helping spread those memes. Hopefully not Tourette's likes and symptoms to our followers Thank you to identity four for recording the show. Thank you to our moderators our lord gourd on so many others Thank you for keeping things safe in our chat rooms Thank you also to rachel. Thank you for editing the show. I really appreciate the work that you're doing and Thank you to Our patreon sponsors Thank you. Pierre Velazarb, Ralphie Figueroa, John Ratnaswamy, Carl Kornfeld, Melanie Stigman, DeKramsta, Karen Tauzy, Woody M.S. I'm J. Bassett, Chris Wozniak, Dave Bunn, Baygard Shepstad, Hal Snyder, Donathan Styles, aka Don Stilo, John Lee, Allie Coffin, Maddie Perengar, Sharma Shubru, Don Mundus, Stephen Albarone, Darryl Myshak, Stoupolic, Andrew Swanson, Fredas 104, Sky Luke, Paul Ronevich, Kevin Reardon, Noodles, Jack, Brian Carrington, Matt Bass, Joshua Fury, Sean and Nina Lam, John McKee, Greg Riley, Mark Hessenflow Hessenflow? Yes, Hessenflow. 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Yeah, that'll be Wednesday, 8 p.m. Pacific time, on YouTube, Facebook, channels, as well as the website twist.org slash live. Yeah. And if you want to listen to us as a podcast, maybe on a long drive somewhere beautiful, just search for this week in science for podcasts are found. If you enjoyed the show, get your friends to subscribe as well. For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes and links to stories will be available on our website, www.twist.org. And you can also sign up for our newsletter. You can also contact us directly email Kirsten at kirsten at this week in science.com, Justin at twist minion at gmail.com or me Blair at Blair Baz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist, T, W, I, S in that subject line or your email will be spam filtered into the deep, cold, dry, Antarctic wasteland and we'll never find it. It won't even be able to survive because nothing can apparently. Nothing survives there. Nothing lives there. 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You better just listen to what we say and if you learn anything from the words that we've said then please just remember it's all in your hands. This weekend science. My cat Cappy is just looking at me like what are you doing here? I think now you're meowing at me. I'm trying to find the show in which we talked about cat study. I will figure it out. I'll find it. I will find it. Find the episode in which we spoke about the cats meowing to the humans. I think they need more data. Perhaps. Perhaps. Those look great. I love the art that you've been coming up with. Thanks. What are we going to do? Are we going to do stop action movies with this? Yeah, I know, right? Here, I haven't finished this one yet. I love it. Hey, Rogue Runner, what's up? No, no. Oh, emu. Is it going to be a whole body? No. Just a head. Oh, that's a very cute. I like the emu. Yeah, anyway, and then you have a Tony frog mouth that I have. So I finished all the animals. Now I'm just painting the background. So I have one, two, three. I have six. Six. Do we have a calendar cover? I haven't done it yet. Okay. I want to put a link up. Yeah, I can do a placeholder image, probably. You're totally right. Why don't I just... Hmm. It's time to start ordering calendars. You're right. Because you were planning ahead for... The end of the year. I know. I was ahead of schedule. You were right. And then I got a new job. Yeah. And then I moved. And then I had to plan a wedding. And then stop, start, and then stop, and then start again. So... Yeah. You... You should finish the calendar stuff before you get into... Yeah. No, no. For sure. No. It'll be done really soon, I think. Okay. Another year wasted, right, Gorov? Yeah. You want another calendar? You want to try again? See if a calendar is helpful next year. Yeah. No. He was coming to you like, I'm doing all these things this year. Oh, yeah. That was not... It has not been wasted. This year has been full of things for Blair. That's a good question in the chat room if I've been using the MCR with glasses. So I can't really use them while I do art because they make things darker. So if I'm inside, it's really hard to use them, even the indoors ones. So I don't use them for that. So there is a chance that you might get one of these and be like, why is the sky purple? That is possible. We'll find out. Only the future will tell. Only the future. Yeah. No, I hope to have these done. I've already... Hopefully for Rachel to put in a calendar and check the dates for... Right. Oh, Justin's back. I'm really hoping that we can do that because I feel like that delays my process by several weeks. Right. But if she can do that, I can have all the art to her pretty soon, I think, like within a couple of weeks. Oh, awesome. Yeah, that would definitely potentially speed it up. Yeah. Justin, you missed my show and tell. You're muted. Did you see the Keep It Go comment? Oh yeah, the Enchroma glasses. Are you using... No, I just talked about it. Yeah. No, I'm not using them because it makes it too dark if I'm indoors. They need one that's like fully clear somehow. I don't even know how that would work. Probably magic. Garov wants to know if I've been to Antarctica or was that New Zealand? Both incorrect. No, I went to the Arctic Circle. The very bottom... I just barely touched the Arctic Circle. Just barely. It's a true chill is where I went. I on the other hand have been to the northernmost village in Greenland. But you were far above the Arctic. Weren't you when you went to the Tivity Top of Canada? Churchill. I went to Churchill. If you look at the... Let's see if I can pull up a map of the Arctic Circle. We should be able to... That's got to be up there. Let's see. The Arctic Circle... Here we go. This is what I wanted to look at. Okay. Here, let me share my screen which I can just do since I have power. Power. Here... The Arctic Circle... You can see it's like... There's a circle that's a latitude and a line. Okay. But the Earth's not clean and pretty like that. Really, they pay attention to what the Arctic Ocean is. I was in... I'm going to pause my screen share for a second because I never can tell when you Google Image search things. You never know what's going to actually pop up. Just get the Google Maps. She was somewhere extreme, Gaurav. It wasn't as snowy as it was. Winston Churchill, that's not what I want. Just use Google Maps. Oh my God, you're right. You're so right about that. Churchill Drive, get out of here. No! It's like... It's found a bar in San Francisco named Churchill. Of course it's going to look local. Just zoom out on the map and then zoom back in. Like every Churchill possible. Alright, hold on. Let's see if I can internet. Okay, so... I'm going to zoom out now. Oh God. My computer's like, why are you trying to still do things right now? So Hudson Bay, if you go back to this... Oh, you weren't that... I see, you were at the internet thing there. So this is Hudson Bay, right here. Okay, and so I was right here. Now, according to the latitudinal line of the Arctic Circle, I was not in the Arctic Circle. However, I was in the Arctic Ocean watershed. So this is where drawing lines on maps doesn't really work. So all of Hudson Bay freezes over for part of the year. This is why Churchill's like the polar bear capital of the world is because Hudson Bay freezes over and they use that to hunt seal basically. So the ice on the Hudson is Y here. So where does the Arctic begin and end? And so we have... Manitoba. And so this is Hudson Bay down here. There's still a lot of Canada to the north, exactly, Eric. There's still a lot of Canada left. So then let's put where I was in. Put where I was in at the Google Maps. Okay, let's look. Yeah. A-A-N-A-A-Q. Stop. That's not real. Well, there's the supermarket. So that's good. Yeah, it's got a supermarket. Come on. That's just a lot of white, huh? Yeah. Just ice and rock. Not really much soil. For the first rain in whatever part of Greenland that had ever been. It wasn't that. It rained quite a bit. So you were here and I was here. Okay. So I've got the Twist Explore for this north badge. You do. Yeah, you absolutely do. Because this is all Greenland here. Oh gosh. I'm way up there on that thing. I'm way up next to... That's why there was so many elves. I was wondering... I kept seeing elves. Well, they can walk on snow. Here you are. You're right there. So you're way closer to the pole than I was. Yeah, that's very neat. Do you see any polar bears though? No, but it was... It freaked me out. We went on this hike up towards this glacier and everyone else kind of turned back at some point and I was like, I'm just going to go on a little bit further. I want to get to the top of this thing. Because this is my one chance to be an ice explorer or whatever. So I kept going and I think it was just after the rest of the party was out of sight that I started to be like what if I see a polar bear? There's nobody to run faster than. Yeah. I know everywhere we went in Churchill we had bear guards. Yeah, we did. And they went back with or the one person who had bear spray or something. I don't know what they had. The bear guards like, you're good. You're on your own. I'm out of here. Yeah. There are about 2,500 bears in West Greenland. Yeah. Thankfully I did not encounter one because I would have just been eating it. Yeah, probably. That simple. Yeah. I told you this is one of my favorite things about Churchill is that everyone leaves their front doors unlocked and their car is unlocked. So that if there's a bear you can just jump into the closest place. Yeah. Car or house. Just like, hello. There's a bear outside. May I stay here? Who's been the furthest south? That's definitely not me. I've not ever left the northern hemisphere. I don't know why I have left the northern hemisphere. I would guess Israel would probably be the furthest south. There, you're probably the winner there. Maybe. That's a good question. It would be. It's sometimes hard to compare Europe to America though because we have it all messed up. Yeah. London is as far north as Juneau, Alaska. So our side-by-side map comparison in our brains is off. I'm going to look at the latitude of Jerusalem so I can see. It might be like north of L.A. I'm definitely looking because so let's see. Did you know that Reno is the biggest little city in the world? That it's west of Los Angeles? That it's west, yes. It's west of Los Angeles. That's wild. That doesn't make any sense. Or is it Tahoe? So it's 31 degrees 47 minutes north. So now I should look at like San Diego. Right, that's what would make sense. Sure. 32.71 degrees north. So Jerusalem by a hair. Wait, no it's further north, isn't it? No, Jerusalem is 31 and San Diego is 32. Oh, 31, I thought it was 48. But I did go to a lot in Israel which is the southern most. I've been to south. I've been down to, yeah, Baja Mexico. Yeah, I've been to Mexico. So that's I've been to what is it, right, Cabo San Lucas. Oh, yeah, you're the furthest south thing because I think I went to like Sanada which is like the town south of Tijuana. Okay, yeah, so it looks like 29 degrees north is the farthest south I've gone. So what, you think Cabo is the farthest south? Yeah, I think that's it. That's 22.8. There you go. 20 degrees further. Gets the badge for the furthest south explored, not very far actually. We'll take a road trip. Yeah, we do. Yeah. I say we go to New Zealand. Yes. We just nail that one altogether. I would like to do that. Do you think customs would find out if I put several kiwis in my bag? I think the fresh fruit is not allowed. Yeah, not the fresh fruit though. The ridiculous bird. You're giving up the, okay, your alibi's done. I read that kiwis if they were probably baggage was fine, so I brought them. Oh, it was the fruit, not the bird. Yeah, probably both. Both are probably not allowed. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, well, New Zealand had one case of COVID and they shut everything down and they're still getting Delta spread. Yeah, they're having a lot of spread right now. It's that bad. Delta variant. Yeah, they have a lot. I mean, I hope they've vaccinated a lot of their population now, but I think, I mean, because a lot of their population is completely unexposed. They have just a very nice population, so spread is going to be potentially a lot worse than other places that have seen the earlier variants unless they're vaccinated. If they're highly vaccinated, then that would control for that. I thought they were one of the most vaccinated. I think they are. They're like the example of doing everything right. Yeah, there was some point in the early in the pandemic, there was also a correlation to having a female leader, president, prime minister, whatever it is, and having the highest vaccination rates. Something about women in leadership correlating to greater vaccination rates. They're 37% of their population has one dose. 20% has fully vaccinated. That's not very much at all. That's terrible. That is potentially why it's spreading so quickly. Well, because they spent the last year not socially distancing, not shutting down their economy, because they locked down really early in the lockdown. But then a bunch of Americans came to visit. No, don't just believe it on us. I feel like I should. Other countries involved in this as well. It's the come Florida flu. Just call it what it is. I read an article about what's happening in Israel right now, even though they're the highest population, they let their guard down so they allowed people to unmask and start gathering in large gatherings because they were highly vaccinated. Over 70% of the population in Israel is twice shot with the Pfizer vaccine. But also really early. But apparently during that time period Israelis went out of the country and they hadn't been vaccinated and they came back. And they brought the Delta variant back with them. Very similar story. From their out of country vacations. Very similar story in Denmark. Denmark was also one of these poster childs for locking down early, locking down quickly, mass testing everywhere you go. They lagged on vaccines because they invested in the vaccines that they ultimately didn't use. They had to wait until Pfizer and Moderna became available. So they kind of lagged on vaccination. But they had shut down so early and had so few cases compared to just Sweden to the north, Germany to the south, whatever. The neighbors were way worse comparable against any country they were doing great. The problem also came because Danes get like 20 weeks of vacation a year or something. They get like intense amounts compared to the rest of the world of vacation. And people traveled. Because people from Denmark were allowed in because they weren't considered a hotspot. So they could go to anywhere pretty much except the states. And then they went home and once summer vacation season ended, the spike happened. The surge happened. Because of course, exactly the same as you're describing about what took place in Israel took place in Denmark. But isn't that what happened also at the first one of the first waves was it was like, oh, we're doing great and then like all the people in UK, they're like let's go have our French Riviera vacation or let's go to Ibiza or and they went away to all these other places and they spread the virus and they also picked up the virus and they brought it back and so it's just we keep repeating these patterns. They're like, oh, everything's great and I'm going to travel someplace else and like Hawaii Hawaii is swimming in the virus right now because of tourists. They've been so isolated for so long. Yeah. Yeah. People I don't understand how that happened even because they've been so strict about vaccinations or forced quarantine upon arrival. Yeah. I'm very surprised that that happened. Yeah, they had there's actually the only place that I could get rapid testing when I did when I was flying to Denmark. Was Hawaii was was was the San Francisco airport had rapid testing that was specifically designed for flying to Hawaii. You had to do the rapid test to take any flight to Hawaii. So they had rapid testing available and so I went and did that test to get on the other flight to go which is known to be inaccurate. It's it's rapid testing is good for screening large populations but it's not really accurate for it's great for screening large populations that are known to have high viral load and high case numbers. Not great for identifying individual infections. Rapid testing is not great and we keep it's no but what we keep doing is going we're going to use it to say whether this individual has COVID and people like go by the gospel so I was exposed I was negative that means I don't have it and then they don't isolate. It's like the test is this get out of jail free card and they think that even though they were exposed they don't have to do the period of time of isolation which they really should be doing. Which they still do and the other thing too is that that are there are also multiple versions of the rapid test. There's some that are just antibody and then there's some that are. There's degrees within that and what isn't reliable. What's still the biggest news actually out of this week when it comes to FDA approval is whether it's because of a liability thing or whatever the mechanism that unlocks this ability the pentagon has declared that all service people will be mandatory vaccinated. Businesses can now mandate which is kind of weird because some entities were already doing this. UC University system was already mandating vaccines for everybody who's going to be there some schools have been sort of doing this for the teaching staff but because it's FDA approved whatever that is unlocked there are now mandates on vaccination. Including by the way guests staying at several different Trump hotels must show proof of vaccination in order to stay there let alone work there. Trump has recommended vaccination. It's got to have your freedoms. I get that. Unless you're coming to my hotel then you'd have to forget your freedoms. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Schools are starting next week in Portland. Our case numbers are increasing. Hospitalizations are increasing. I have a dashboard open on my laptop every day looking at the numbers to see how they're going for next week to see whether or not I'm actually going to send my child to school on the first day. But one of the things that they have required is for all employees of Portland public school system to be vaccinated if they are student facing. I think they have the same thing for their students as well. But it's vaccinated or weekly tests. I think it should be vaccinated and weekly tests. At this point now it has to be both. Vaccinated and this or in there is really bothering me. So in California you and all public schools statewide but I know at least in the Bay Area vaccinations are required. You can file for a religious or medical exemption but it's not guaranteed that you'll get it. And then you have to test weekly. But they're taking a much harder stance on no testing is not an option you have to just get the vaccine but the problem is that unless you're acquiring the students coming to school to show that their parents have been vaccinated or anyone living in their home has been vaccinated then they can still carry something into the school. Hey you know what would have been fun? A system of contact tracing. Wouldn't that have been fun? It seems like we have thrown that out the window. Which is also funny because in the Bay Area now they're starting to ask for vax cards or stuff like that but they've completely abandoned the contact tracing. They've stopped. Yeah the only problem with the vaccine card too is that I can't always be wearing a backpack that the thing can fit in. Maybe it's on your phone. It's massive. Digital. Is there a digital version? I heard there was going to be a California digital version. There is. Just google California vaccination card and you can get a QR code and you can take a picture of it with your phone and you can have it. No no no no it's a QR code that you get. But is it tied to that silly piece of paper we were handed? It's tied to your medical record. Okay that's better. So the state of California theoretically has record of your vaccination so all you put in is your name and your birthday I think and it's like oh yeah it looks like here you got so they said for me you got the Johnson & Johnson on March whatever and I was like yep that's right and then I got to take a screenshot of the QR code and that's that. But I also do have a picture of my card in my phone too. Yeah I just have a picture of my card. I just have to remember next time I travel not just remember what month it was in when did I get my vaccine so I can actually find it in my photos. I have a favorite in mine. Yeah I got a favorite. Favorite. Yeah it's very wild that the contact tracing is out the window also that like the CDC guidance says that if you catch COVID like if you're asymptomatic you have a positive test but you've also been vaccinated you don't have to isolate at all which based on our current scientific knowledge of the Delta variant is bunk also according to the CDC they still define close contact as 15 minutes which it's much shorter now. Yeah the Delta variant is like a second. Yeah and I understand why it's because if they define close contact in one second we'd have to shut down everything again. Hey but only for two months and then we'd be done forever. Yeah and maybe with a lot of other diseases as well. Yeah yeah I you know what but there is that there is we wouldn't really be able to shut everything everything down because we still have essential services. No we can shut those down. You have hospitals, you have surgeries, you have accidents, you have heart attacks. There should be no accidents there should be no heart attacks are you kidding me? Nobody's going to treat them because here's the thing wait wait wait wait hear me out they're already not getting treated because they cannot be responded to because of the levels of COVID like that is already a thing. Well I can tell you you know again this is also like my opinion of what I heard now like second or third hand but my understanding based on the knowledge of the hospital that someone I care about is connected to is that there were a lot more beds available at the height of the shutdown than there currently are which I think is kind of the point right is that like people were afraid to go to the hospital for my fingers infected I'm anxious like there's just less of that because people were scared of the hospital and they were told to stay at home and for good reason that was out of the UK 11% of people who contracted COVID in the first round got it through the hospital it went to the hospital for other reasons and then ended up but now the hospitals have now have better containment procedures better ways to deal with people who are infected we understand it's airborne and so hospitals are dealing with it differently now than they were in the very beginning they have areas of the hospital operated from other areas of the hospital people are less likely to contract it at the hospital than they were previously we now have vaccines there are other things that are going on that we didn't have previously it's constantly shifting environment what I've been hearing has been working really well it's two months two months it just knocks the thing right out you don't have to shut down hospitals completely that's one of the few things you could keep open but you could for example shut down grocery stores because you just tell people to stock up ahead of time yeah we give them we have a start date that's maybe four weeks out maybe six weeks out we need to get enough toilet paper filling your garage enough cliff bars, bottled water and I'm talking about my own what else are my essentials cans of tuna cans of tuna and a lot of ranch dressing some bread I'll be fine for two months you put ranch on your tuna oh yeah and garlic powder and fry in some onions red onions of course and a lot of dill weed just pour that stuff in some saltine crackers crunch those in as well mix it all up real good oh my are you doing there Blair the ranch ranch is the base if you can't get ranch just a healthy serving of sour cream big glob of sour cream in there I'll do it too the sour cream with the dill I mean that's getting that's like kind of the sour cream herring fresh garlic if you want I go quick I go with the garlic powder spring onions you can absolutely throw those in you're losing listeners like crazy the chat room is saying yum throwing in some spring onions they're with me no the ranch is out of control no the ranch is absolutely unacceptable you do mayo and horseradish is what you put in your tuna mayo why do you want to make it taste like egg ugh mayo forget mayo horseradish who puts horseradish in tuna what are you talking about I think you what you think is your norm Blair turns out to be a great outlier for a taste I don't think so I think it's a cultural affinity yeah sure whatever horseradish mayonnaise god ranch your culture is mayonnaise good well that's okay no my culture is horseradish actually if I'm making tuna I put mustard in it what now actually I use a deli mustard once you take that concoction you do the bread with the mustard and then you're perfect cut up some cheese a little bit of cheese I'm going to start a cheddar pull over the fried onions that's a good flavor I'm starting a quitter pull people are like tuna should I do a shouty Blair or is normal me whoever by the way Western Americans you have the best tuna if you like tuna and you go anywhere else in the world you'll be disappointed except maybe Japan Pacific tuna if you don't like tuna California if you go anywhere else in the world the tuna is even worse that's how it works that's the heaviest thing I've brought when I've traveled to Denmark is cans of tuna because that chunky albacore caught Pacific Northwest tuna you do not find it there you get tuna I can't have tuna Scandinavia I don't even know what part of the fish that comes from what was the oh gosh mackerel and tomato sauce that's their tuna so what are you saying ranch and garlic powder ranch garlic red onions fried I can't fit all that in this poll what do you put on it you've got to put the dillweed in it no I'm not writing dillweed in it dillweed is essential that's an essential ingredient you have to put dill in tuna it's that pickle what do you put on it just mustard spices dill mustard and dill dill is the must you gotta put that in all of them mayonnaise and horseradish peanut butter tuna that's just disgusting joy specialist is like stop it I can't even you spelled wait tuna wrong it's T-O-O-N-A which is why it doesn't have to come from a fish tuna I like tuna oh the no tuna option yeah that would be Marshall for sure oh Costco that's the brand the Costco tuna that is like the topist shelf as a tuna connoisseur that is the topist shelf canned tuna what you can get is that Kirkland Costco brand Albuquerque tuna best that you can money can buy okay there's the poll everybody puts mayo I don't like putting mayo in my tuna I don't put mayo on anything no I just do mustard I do like celery for some crunch oh yeah that's another side ingredient that works very well in there this is too difficult the whole point of tuna is to make it quick and easy no because you have an experience of proper tuna sandwich that's why no of course I have but I also like it's diminishing returns for me the longer time you spend on a can of tuna it's not equivalent to the times like you don't gain equivalent increases in taste well you do very minimal additional input because the majority of the time in preparing tuna is just positioning your fingers so that when you squeeze the can top down and to extract the water I hope you're not using oil extract the water none of the tuna juice the most time you spend is just getting it right so that when you squeeze down on the lid that's been cut open you don't get any tuna juice on your fingers that's where the majority of your time investment actually occurs in the tuna sandwich it's just extracting the juices without getting it on you beyond that it's just all free time okay so the one thing that I think is like blasphemy is putting eggs in your tuna salad like why would you use your egg salad and your tuna salad they are separate can I tell you it sounded like a good idea I tried it I didn't like it which just goes to reinforce the no mayo because that's an egg base it just does not belong yes but you can do egg salad with mustard also of course it's so good yeah it's so good but the tuna it's like two different worlds it's like what chicken in the sea and chicken in the land shouldn't be the same chicken it doesn't belong together totally agree don't make a surf and turf tuna egg salad sandwich no I've actually tried and I was actually I was baffled that I didn't like it because you would think two good things also I one time tried to do a great taste I one time tried to dairy my coffee oh what have you done oh I'm just showing you that mayo and horseradish is currently at 100% oh well that's because you voted for it and nobody else has gone into the poll player no three people have voted for it oh yeah you're just you're just trolling the polling body how many times did you vote for it just one just so I could see the result hold on I gotta I need to find you on here so okay I put it in the chat audience this has just turned into a popularity contest so vote for the twist member you like the most I shouldn't have done that, it's probably not me it's not gonna be me that's the thing I shouldn't have I put that out there like yeah this will work and then I realized immediately it's like no it's gonna backfire I'm gonna share this I'm gonna stick okay we need your vote if anybody thinks none of the above that's basically a vote for Justin well you can't pick there's no none of the above no there's no none of the above that's also a Justin vote because he believes in none of the above as well it's only politician I should have been one alright not a politician I should have been a I should have been a defense lawyer I feel like I can like talk in word oh no never mind I'll be terrible at that I like our and Laura's response that's funny wait I voted for it wait the weirdest weirdest thing I weirdest backfire thing I ever tried that seemed like it would be two good things together and was like the worst thing ever was I was working at movie theater and I got a coffee and I thought I wonder if the butter from the popcorn for the you put on the popcorn like if I could have like a buttery coffee with that same like mmm like like savory popcorn you think the savory like coffee like I put those two together I'd be awesome and and it became this oily film on the top of the coffee and they were disgusting Lee horrible together it was like the worst the worst decision so I found a study that I didn't bring to the show tonight but that I tweeted about because I thought it was funny and I had to tweet about it but researchers decided to find out how buttermilk enemas contain medicinal herbs would help obese people lose weight I think this is where I leave you I think this is where herbal buttermilk enemas I think this is where iron planet earth partways anyway that's an interesting the internet and science it give it too much ooh Anthony but Kara says wasabi which is basically horseradish it is you're right wasabi mayo and dill you're splitting the difference there I see you gotta pick one splitting see mine doesn't have dill and it should have dill because that's like my other main ingredient it's probably more dill than garlic powder well that's not what you said though you said ranch and garlic powder then you're like oh and dill oh and onions and saltines and yeah it's a medley you know what this is not how you make a twitter poll no Justin who said Justin needs to quit whining let's see did we get more votes we got more votes this is a popularity contest I wonder who won Justin doesn't like the popularity contest I would like you to like it the way I like it wait did you remove your vote I've won a few did you just take your vote away Justin oh did I it's now zero it was at least where'd it go oh 8.3% it's rigged we got more votes than there were voters or more whatever the thing is I do like this poll because I don't think there's any one completely correct answer stop the count we should have stopped the count yes good good good oh I totally get like the Trump supporters now not liking outcome of an election it's like yeah oh I totally get I'm like oh this is all fake none of this happened stop the count it's rigged we need a recount check the votes alright the big steal or whatever our lord if Justin quits whining about things well Justin still exists oh gosh what would be left are we sure there's even flesh and blood behind I have mustard in mind too I have basically all the ingredients yeah that's what I'm saying but the ranch I'm sorry the ranch is the stopper for me what is ranch do you know what ranch is yeah it's I mean it depends it's not the stuff that comes in a bottle no it's not what bottle are you buying I don't know what you've got what do you use what do you use I don't I make my own from scratch okay what are you putting it no you use hidden valley giant container I'm curious if there's any dairy in it actually it's sour cream salt, onion, food starch, sugar garlic, spices, maltodextrin buttermilk speaking of dextrose buttermilk, lactic acid natural artificial flavors calcium, lactate, guar gum dythodium, inocinate and guanilate calcium steroid you can also just use sour cream yeah the closest thing to milk in there is some buttermilk but it's ingredient number one two three four five six seven so it's there's not a lot no it starts with buttermilk I don't know what you're reading no the ingredients are in order of use are they on a package yeah oh yeah yeah yeah if you're reading a straight ingredient not just a list of what's in there no no if you're reading it off of a package if you're just reading a list of ingredients then no it's okay so here's hidden belly ranch so I think maybe I was looking at something like the packet too this is even different so vegetable oil is the first thing hey water is the second ingredient perfect that's like ooh what are you against water now sugar is the third ingredient you gotta have sugar and salt then non-fat buttermilk oh Justin is it non-fat oh now I feel robbed Justin do you want to know what comes next in the ingredient list because it's egg yolks mister I don't want to put eggs on my tuna oh my god I'll never enjoy a tuna sandwich again thank you good oh man no gross my my younger daughter my younger daughter will just eat tuna raw she'll just like a cat out of the can she'll just don't need anything no thanks that one is part jaguar that one is part jaguar I need protein that one is like I need to go and hunt things later I eat this whole can of tuna and go hunt stuff in the backyard it is weird that like you know like people talk about cats dragging in like dead mice or birds that they catch out there your daughter does the same thing it's very weird interesting and she dips them in ranch no do you remember when dipping pizza in ranch was a thing is that still a thing it's still a very awesome thing and they like still serve pizza with a side of ranch do they still do that yes you have to ask for it but here's my opinion on that since nobody asked is it has to be bad pizza dip bad pizza like fast food style pizza like not artisan pizza in ranch and it's like very good but if you're getting like good like legitimate pizza place pizza I would never do getting good pizza place pizza you should put it in good legitimate ranch dressing and not the cheap stuff it's cheap I would never dip it in hit valley ranch oh god I would not do anything I'm sorry I hope we're not someday sponsored by hidden valley because do they even have like what is the I don't even know what their motto is I feel like I'm almost going to do the valley it's a giant like hidden valley like there's some like weird poxy song that they're trying to put with it I think their valley is it's time to ranch out with me nope that's incorrect so apparently a bunch of people have made chicken bacon ranch pizza and it's a combination of ranch dressing chicken and crumbled bacon oh that sounds good so if you need to really ranch up your pizza you can make a whole pizza ranch I don't care what's in ranch dressing it's just perfect it's just the most aside from straight sour cream I would actually usually go straight sour cream over a ranch if it was readily available I go through about a 16 ounce then your ranch bi-weekly I think really? not ranch not ranch sorry sour cream that's more acceptable I go through 16 ounce daisy it's gotta be daisy though forget the other one we're really doing the product placement today huh you know what and in my case the anti product placement even in Oregon I'm a fan of all the Tillamook products I love the Tillamook cheese I only buy Tillamook cheese I don't know that they even make it Tillamook butter I used to buy I used to exclusively buy the butter that was made in Humboldt County but I don't know where they fill out the shelf or something I don't see them as much anymore and now it's just just in somebody else voted for the ranch just FYI thank you it's a pity vote I'll accept it thank you very much I appreciate not wanting to see somebody just completely beaten to a pulp in a popularity contest thank you good good and mayo and mustard appear to be close to neck and neck I guess it's here it's which condiment do you prefer are you a mayo or a mustard it's the dill that's when I'm not the mustard I'm telling you it's the combo of the dill and the mustard oh what not as good as ranch alright have we played through the the tuna salad war I think this battle has just begun however I'll update everyone later the tuna salad war we have 20 votes already so encourage your friends and family bread versus tortilla tortilla totally it's so good holy bread toasted how about a nice ciabatta no I will a dark marble rye the marble rye is the best one that's the best one but I will also take a slice of my homemade sourdough I need it open face homemade sourdough that's so nice you could make a sourdough rye yes I have not tried that yet pita that's a good one I like pita but yeah the Russian rye is the best alright say good night Blair I need a Russian store to go buy bread from I'm going to go good night Blair say good night Justin good night Justin good good night good night good night everyone I'm glad I was able to come back this week my holiday turned into a family emergency but it's all good it's all good I'm here and I'm looking forward to being back again next week and I want everyone to stay well I want everyone to work on getting through every day the best way that they know how let's appreciate the world and be curious about it and about the people who live in it we can all do better by asking more questions thank you for joining us for another episode of the show we hope we'll see you again next week wait I'm using the wrong mouse too many mice's bye