 It's science time everyone. Are you ready for the science? We have got science news for you. This is this week in science and this is our regular broadcast of the podcast that we Publish that people can subscribe to you know, but you're watching live Which is awesome because the podcast gets edited and it doesn't have all the stuff in it So you get to see all the things so thank you for being here for all the science things We're ready to start this Yeah, yeah, everyone's ready. Okay, let us begin in three two This is Twist this week in science episode number 863 recorded on Wednesday, February 16th 2022 how to make a time crystal Hey there, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we will fill your heads with sex ed optimism and fatigue but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer Attention spans are crashing harder than an Olympic figure skater on a bobsled run or so the popular belief seems to be and in some ways It is true Attention spans most adults are likely much shorter than they used to be for a very simple reason We now have smart devices in ancient times before texting and smartphones If people had a question they had to either talk to somebody who might know the answer to that question or look it up in a book so say you have a question that comes up on Sunday you're talking with a friend and you're trying to figure a thing out and Oh, you can't figure out what the thing is with the name of the person is and you want to refer to Who was that guy who invented that thing with the books? You might have known the name of that guy once but now it escapes you and so it is Absolutely urgent that you find out who it was as quickly as possible. So let's look it up in a book Books by the way were like websites that had every single page printed out These pages were kept in a brick-and-mortar repository called the library They would have to physically visit during certain times of the day and now it's too late So let's call a friend calling a friend meant that the friend had to be home to hear that you were calling them The phone was usually attached to the wall of their actual domicile Usually in the kitchen or in the living room or somewhere like that Some of the high-tech humans back in ancient times had a recording device That would allow you to leave a message if they weren't home Then they would call you back often the next day But then you had to be home likewise or have one of those Recording devices and the whole conversation would go on like this for weeks. So Monday you leave the message. Hey Blair It's Justin. Who's the guy who invented the thing with the books? Totally can't remember and it's super urgent. Thanks. Bye Tuesday. You might get a message back. Hey Justin It's Blair. Do you mean the libraries? That's been Franklin. Hope that helps. Bye Wednesday Blair would get the message again from you. Hey Blair Justin. No, no, no, no the guy who invented books Thanks. Bye and then Saturday You would run into Kiki at the farmers market and ask her the same question in person She would say Gutenberg and we go. Oh, it was on the tip of my tongue Whatever that means then Saturday night you get a message on the answering machine again from Blair saying do you mean Gutenberg? But you wouldn't call her back because you already got the answer And then Sunday rolls around again. You see that buddy who you first had the conversation With him as soon as you see him you put out Gutenberg But now it's lost all context and reference. So a week's worth of attention was required to facilitate that one piece of lost information Whereas in today's world you would google it on your device Say oh Gutenberg. That's what I meant and then just move on to the next thing So while our attention spans may be shorter, so is the speed of our informational resolutions Which is why we are able to bring you a week's worth of science in just one hour here on this week in science Coming up next I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I want to learn discoveries that happen every day of the week There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know Science to you Kiki and Blair And the good science to you too Justin Blair and Everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of this week in science. We are so happy to be here To talk about science all the fun news that caught our eye from the past week Yeah, hey Justin next time you want to do a teleplay as your disclaimer and I have a part you can Only send me the script and I will participate I absolutely would have the only things I wrote it seconds before Oh, okay, so hot off the presses. I feel like this has history Oh everyone, thank you for joining us We do have the science and you know, we brought all the stuff in the scripts and out of the scripts I have stories about time crystals in the wild hearty fish And old brain clutter What do you have Justin? Uh, let's see. What did I bring today? I have got uh Microbiome and energy levels How to live longer and eat less? A new life form discovered by a spacecraft And just good news About hiv I hope it's really really good news Not just the just good news We'll see. Okay. What's in the animal corner? Oh my goodness. I have uh stabby birds and what was the oh, yes Optimistic animals, so that's good. Um, but I also brought a fun story about sex ed Sex ed and optimistic animals Things stabby go together. Oh, yes. I'm stab optimism and stabby birds Obviously go together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right We are all looking forward to these stories and more there's so much to talk about in the hour Yes, an hour Is it longer now? I don't know how long 150 of an hour. Exactly But if you are not yet subscribed to this week in science, you can find us all places that podcasts are found Look for this week in science We also stream weekly wednesday evenings 8 p.m. Pacific time on youtube twitch and facebook You can find us also as twist science on twitch twitter and instagram But all this stuff If you forget it just look for us on our website twist.org All right, let's dive in science time Jumping into the deep end of The pool except the pool Is like hard and it hurts when it's frozen because you know water does that sometimes it turns into a crystal When it gets dive into a frozen pool, don't dive into a frozen pool Just skate on it like those wonderful olympians who are doing their beautiful routines this time of year Okay, that was my weird intro to a story about time crystals Okay, okay Is that a real thing or is that from like a movie? Right. It sounds like it sounds like it's just a concept from science fiction or fantasy Time crystals. Oh, we gotta go get the time crystals from the Crystal palace to fuel that that's a bunch of tasks. This whole movie is gonna be a bunch of tasks It's gonna be amazing. It'll be a hit totally Yes, but time crystals are actually real. They were first suggested about I don't know almost 100 years ago now 75 at least Physicists have been trying to figure out. Okay, can we make time crystals and finally a few years back? Yes, indeed researchers were able to create time crystals But in a very specific kind of superconductor quantum situation Um, that isn't it's only in the laboratory can be created and it's not very useful for real world applications So like yes, so like crystals crystals are a particular regular pattern structure of atomic matter That you can it's like a lattice where the lattice has a predictable symmetry to it Okay Time and that is something that occurs in space Now a time crystal has the same kind of lattice like Symmetry within it that can be broken only it is in time Still i'm not getting a good idea what this is. I know. Yeah, it's it breaks the brain a little bit So the researchers who uh, who just published a story published a study about this Have been working on Creating time crystals that could be taken out of isolated situations Isolated conditions and actually work in the real world So in their work that they published in nature communications They have created a very small system in which they have a just a little square millimeter of space that's filled with gas and This gas is magnesium fluoride and there's a glass resonator within it and it gets hit by two laser beams And the two laser beams are tuned With temporal symmetry tuned to each other and so the frequency of the tones the frequency tones that these lasers are tuned to They have occasional Connection and so it's this resonance that happens that blips up at random. It's not really random It's a crystalline pattern pattern in time, which is so interesting Uh, but anyway, they use a resonator to achieve this connection that these lasers are able to create And really, I mean what we need to know is that a time crystal is Something that is physical again at the same time is a useful concept And it can be used once now that we've got this ability to create it in the wild out in the world not in like Subzero temperatures not under specific pressures. This is just like Out in the open it can be created Now it can be used for very specific uses like time keeping Very accurate time keeping because of the resonance that occurs within the glass within the within the laser and the resonance between the two of them the system as a whole is what's considered the crystal and That can be put into quantum computers It can be used in infusion to be able to accurately create the timing that's necessary to allow Fusion to occur on a particular pace to maintain sustainable fusion It can be used for even just Atomic instead of atomic clock clocks. We could use a time crystal potentially so Maybe one day our cell phones will have time crystals in them instead of just Instead of just gps units to connect us to satellites to figure out what time it is I have a time crystal watch. You mean the timex? Yeah. No, no, no time crystal Yeah So it's it's a it's a weird it's the weird concept is they're taking photons Of light. So it's a photonic system Yet at the same time it's the concept of time and so when you're thinking of something happening over time It's an oscillating system that changes over time And the fact that there is more than one atom present in the system allows for a bit of chaos in the way that the system interacts with itself And so because of that chaos it is able to create this Crystal and it is it's mind-bending mind. It's a difficult concept to get and i'm not getting it because i'm still getting a Cartoon because then i'm like well, I still think of it as resonating. It's just it's if I run over time Am I a time runner? Well, technically on some level. Yes, but uh, not in the way that it would be interesting So it doesn't mean the stories. It just means that I just don't get it Yeah, I need I need I need this is a this is when an infographic Can we get the time at the time crystal infographic, please? Can we get can we at least get somebody to write some analogies that will help me? Yeah so the IEEE an author At IEEE who wrote an article about time crystals back in December Charles Choi who we know also from live science and other other places. He's a great science writer Um, he says that a time crystal is a new kind of matter that bears an uncanny resemblance to a perpetual motion machine Its parts can theoretically move in a repeating cycle without consuming energy for eternity like a watch that runs forever without any batteries What's your watch time that we're close I was very very On point there. I'm just grabbing it now. No Well, because this is the thing like in any anything like in any system All we have is a box of words and we compare with another box of words You have some of those words to get more words. So if it's a new thing You don't have concepts the words All you have is the words and those words are related to other things But if it's a really a new thing that you haven't really conceptualized yet, it's just a bunch of words That's always how it is. Hello. I will be defending my thesis today. I have before you a bunch of words. Here we go Um, well kiki, I will say Um sounds like something fun is coming with time crystals and I'm excited to talk about it again later And maybe I'll understand more of it next time. That's exactly it So hopefully we'll get uh get people to talk about time crystals with us here on the show sometime this year So that we can learn more about them from people who work on the subject who maybe have the words um, we can make a three dimensional Uh graphic that explains it and in a graphic it explained, but this is a three dimensional representation actually This would be taking place in time Oh You you froze at a very opportune moment. Um, please don't edit that is all I have to say It was perfect. Oh my goodness. I love it Yes, okay great time crystals got it Time crystals. They are not just science fiction or fantasy They're not physical crystals, but they are new phases of matter They don't go on a warp core They know they do not Or they could help to make fusion possible. So they could go in a warp core Or a lightsaber Yeah new technology interesting technology. It's the exciting point about it is that The concept can now potentially be taken out of specialized laboratories with very specialized equipment And now potentially make it into other real world applications. I'll have one and that's exciting Well, maybe not right away, but soon All right Justin tell me You have some good news. Oh, yeah, just good news the news segment that really really really really really tries its hardest to bring you Just good news about a subject that is usually wrought with heart wrenching depressing reality Kind that makes you want to stay in bed for days hiding under your covers of total darkness wishing over and over again to the bad bad world We'll just go away HIV edition Oh, no just good news A woman undergoing treatment for both hiv and leukemia has been cured by researchers At new york presbyterian wheel Cornell medical center or so it seems 14 months After discontinuing antivirals. She is still testing negative for the hiv virus Only two other people have ever been cured of hiv infection Both were also suffering from leukemia. Those patients had a bone marrow transplant from another person Who carried this rare genetic mutation that is known to block hiv infections In this new case the woman received cord blood from a person with the same genetic mutation as the donor The bone marrow donor from the previous two cured patients She was also given blood stem cells from her first degree relative The stem cells were given to bolster the woman's immune system while the donated cord blood cells could become dominant in her system women Continue to take antiviral drugs to keep the hiv at bay for 37 months after the procedure until 14 months ago and she is now HIV free Why did it work? Well, they don't know Yeah, uh, the researchers think the cord blood cells might have the ability to adapt to the new environment and may contain stem cells That aid in the process the patient was female And of mixed race Which is important because most past studies involving efforts to treat or cure hiv have involved white males research Researchers say that cord blood is much easier to obtain than stem cells used in bone marrow transplants And the procedure was much gentler to the patient than a typical bone marrow transplant would be Uh, both of the patients that were here to the hiv in the past. Those were men Both also suffered pretty severe side effects. Uh, I think mostly because bone marrow transplants are pretty invasive Extremely it wasn't all it it wasn't just that the bone marrow transplants were invasive. They had um autoimmune They had immune reactions. So they had because the host host versus graft disease correct But uh, yeah, the just mild symptoms and side effects put in this woman. So she's uh, you know Well recovered Really from from the procedure Uh, so yeah, that's it. Just good news. Somebody's been cured of hiv and the leukemia on the side bad Amazing on both face. Oh god, wait I just got there just good news and it was just good news For real. Yeah, I know I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. There's no, there's there's no dropping This is this is how he he he lures us in. Oh, no later And then he'll maybe do a few very nice just really just good news stories and then wait, wait, let me let me finish that story No, no You're good here. No, that was the end. That was the end of the story Good Yeah, that's amazing. I mean the we hope like this is she she hasn't shown any signs of hiv for several months Since the end of the treatment. So fingers crossed that it just stays that way, right? Let's Hope it stays that way, but it looks good Where is it time for some sex ed? Yes, uh, this is not only a part portion of the show about sex ed but also a Really segment Um, new york university a peer reviewed publication says federally funded sex education Are linked to a decline in teeth teen birth rates Really? So there's been lots of studies before but they were all correlative So this was an attempt to create a more causative relationship between sex ed programs and birth rates And so this was looking at a 20 year period It was a long-term assessment of the impact of comprehensive sex education in reducing teen birth rates by county So they were able to see um The that this comprehensive information on sex contraceptive and reproductive health Had a greater impact than the abstinence only programs Really? but also, um This was specifically capturing people's age their county of residence and Whether or not there were Funded government funded sex education programs provided two teens in their county And so they found after the first year of this funding teen Uh pregnancy rates dropped one and a half percent By the fifth year it dropped seven percent and it appeared to keep going So this is something where you know over time it gets better and better Who knows why maybe it's just because they get better at teaching it and better at distributing the information It could be that the community accepts it better over time because it's expected There could be any number of reasons why that is but ultimately sex education prevents teen pregnancy Yes, go ahead. Well, yeah There was uh, there was the reverse of this of course The reverse study the inverse study that's oh, yeah the state of tennessee at one point abolished sex education and then in The years to follow became the state with the highest rate of teen pregnancy, which Really? Yeah, so the the second story about sex ed that I brought that I think it kind of further illustrates this point Is about a meta analysis of peer reviewed publications looking at the STI and hiv risk reduction via Sex education that focuses on sexual pleasure and desire So this is you know For any of us that grew up in an area where we went to public school and we had sex ed That's not really part of the conversation. It's not at all Bolts sometimes, you know, I still went to school and we said they separated the boys and the girls, which is insane For so many reasons, but anyway um, so So not a lot of them talk about sexual desire or sexual pleasure But this shows that that can improve knowledge and attitudes around sex shocking as well as improved condom use compared to those that do not That totally makes sense to me if you're talking about The motivation behind sex that it's a lot easier to talk about ways to prevent infection and also pregnancy In the context of when you actually might be in the heat of the moment and wanting to have sex It it makes it it makes way more sense to me But so this is a meta analysis of research literature from 2005 to 2020 They found that incorporating pleasure into programs can have positive effects on attitudes and safer sex behavior and recommend And the recommendation is therefore to revisit sexual education and health intervention approaches that do not acknowledge sexual that sexual experiences can be pleasurable This is also like just thinking about if you think about um The the whole idea of consent and you think about uh being sexually healthy and not Being emotionally damaged from early sexual experiences and all these other things I could totally see this helping with that on the whole because also if you acknowledge sexual pleasure I'm thinking back to the dolphinans from a couple weeks ago. You acknowledge sexual pleasure on both sides That can change the whole dynamic of how young adults approach sex for the first time Well, if you're not approaching it from a position of guilt shame fear It changes Everything it changes the entire way that it is uh that it is approached. That sounds like it would ruin everything Yeah, so so I don't know if I don't know if it was like I think it was like some sort of a pilot program That they were trying out, but I recall in my junior high school Uh that we had For some weird reason to remember it being connected to home ec Or maybe it was just the same teacher as the home ec. This is it's kind of foggy But but I do recall it was boys and girls in the room sitting around a table And it was ask any question Sounds like someone that didn't have a lesson plan No, well, no, but it was it was it was designed to be uh like a reddit AMA before hoping question About why I've heard about this. Why do people talk about this thing? You know Honestly the only question I remember specifically Was somebody asked if if uh people ever dye their pubic hair And the teacher's like, yeah, actually that's that's something people do that is something people do and then And I was like Would they do it blue and that's all I remember. I don't remember. She answered me that was like That's the only thing I remember but it was it but it was uh, but it was delving into the things like what is Pleasurable versus what's painful stuff? What's the things you've heard about that are probably not true? What are the things that people are actually most likely to You know that sort of it was a little bit more than that separating thing that I always see in the movies where they're like This is the tube of where the baby comes out, you know, or the the super basic thing people get It's I so I I watch um the show big mouth And I know recently it's gotten much more into comedy and just absurdity But I feel like the first couple seasons Yeah was better sex ed than I ever received ever In my entire education and I found myself like standing up like screaming at the screen like so excited that And there was part of me that was like do I when I have kids do I need to show them this show like it just Yes, it talks about things in a way that is not taboo and also talks about pleasure and talks about all these other The motivations behind sex, which I think also, you know You could you could push back to our puritanical Upringing on the Mayflower and all these sorts of things, you know There's there's a deep seated kingshame in the american culture and that is a thing But getting away from all that, you know, yeah, we just we just watched guardians of the galaxy volume two part two and The there's a scene where they're talking about the making of babies and and drax Who's not that he doesn't joke. He's not into sexy time. He's like my father would tell us about how I how we how we were made Once in the midwinter every year and then he was like, oh earthlings have hang ups Yeah, yeah, yeah drax. You got it. Exactly. Yeah. So anyway science tells us Uh, we should be teaching our children about sex And we shouldn't ignore the fact that people have sex for pleasure when we do that So, you know, post valentine's day, there's a little nugget for everybody For me to you Thank you for bringing the love of love All right, we have let's see more stories moving on from sex ed. Let's move to fashion Move to left fashion Move to the right So, um, have you ever kind of wondered like, oh, I'm gonna be going to new york I wonder what the big fashion trends are like in different areas of the town Like maybe I need to pack certain clothes to fit in or I'm gonna move to a new city And how do I know if I'm gonna fit in and what's the fashion there and how does that all work? Or maybe You're just curious about how trends have changed even within subcultures or neighborhoods within areas over years Brooklyn has not always looked the same That is true. People have changed their clothing trends Well to answer this question researchers, uh At the cornell ann s bowers college of computing and information science Have uh have been working on an artificial intelligence underground map of fashion And for this artificial intelligence underground map of fashion, they have an algorithm That can recognize similar clothing styles and map them from social media To locate particular locations within cities which What they're interested in it for is the potential that you know, it can be a useful tool for visitors to an area For new residents, but realistically it can also be really Uh an amazing tool for anthropologists for people who study Humanity and the trends in humanity and the things that we're into over time And if this is if this kind of a tool this kind of an ai algorithm Can just start collecting information And save it for a few hundred years Anthropologists in the future are going to have and digital archaeologists They're going to have such an amazing treasure trove of information Oh boy My fashion choices are being judged everywhere I go everywhere. There's a camera Right. So if you when you're at an event or you're going to a certain place, you know, or you know, you live You know in a certain area and so the algorithm can kind of figure out This is where you are most of the time and it kind of will map you into the general trend But instead of just looking at Big just a whole city what they're looking at they're making it Neighborhood accurate So they have two human centered benchmark programs hood maps and open street map And they're polling Residents of cities in the study to be able to determine how accurate things are The groups underground mapping It better captured the sense of a neighborhood than Name existing methods and so they're able to give people insider knowledge of a city And they're calling it the underground mapping tool Yeah for cultural underground so it's neighborhoods they're interested about not actually like The parts of a city that work together to make up the whole Hmm Yeah, I can see how like the fashion industry would want to use that Definitely, I can see that would be sort of a you know, uh, like or or trend hunting, right? Like it's like, oh, there's that's happening. I didn't know about that. Oh Interview people, but yeah, now they can just do that. Uh, and it would have helped this department store that I worked for a zillion years ago That was based in chicago and did its buying And then sent out clothes to all of the stores throughout the united states And the thing that has always blew me away is we'd have this rack of prairie dresses Out here in california Oh, that was a thing for a while. Oh jeez. Nobody in california is gonna wear a prairie dress Oh, they're back there. They were in target last summer. Oh gosh Yeah, no now it's now it's the micro mini and the corset. It's all 90s now everybody At least that's what twitter tells me. So yeah and the bell bottoms I I really wonder why twitter wants me to know that it's micro mini season in I just don't understand that. Okay On fact about uh, denmark or on the fashion tip Nobody in this country will leave the house in sweatpants It's not a thing here at all. It would be just like, oh What is what are you sick? Yeah, what's wrong with that person? It used to be a thing here, but yeah, certainly Not a thing All right, let's talk about New things. Oh goodness. You have new things This is the big one. Uh an a novel life form Was found by a spacecraft but Life in outer space and life on another planet That's what we're looking for But it's not the most important criteria In fact, finding life on mars could be considered a disaster Uh, if the life we find is a little too related to life on earth if say We find signs of life on mars return that sample from mars from the martian surface back to earth And discover that the signal is actually coming from an organism Then we attempt to sequence the life form just in case and sure enough it has dna Just like on earth and oh gosh by golly g what were the chances? Excitement would be high as the analysis of the organisms dna is run through the public genomic database to discover It has a striking similarity to a specific strain of fungi Found here on earth when it's actually named after a researcher who studied fungi for 18 years whose university participated Uh in building the very craft that discovered the sample on mars Oh, really? Oh Oh So good at uh killing everything on those spaceships, but Thankfully so good, but never good enough Thankfully that didn't happen because it was discovered by the spacecraft adjacent to it in the assembly facility Uh, oh not in space. Oh, but it was a novel. It was a novel strain Found in the clean room. They named it after a longtime berkeley lab microbiologist, uh, tamas torok Torok berkeley lab affiliate scientist in the climate and ecosystem science division Decades of experience studying microbes in extreme environments With the specialty of focus and focus on studying those microbes That would show up In the clean rooms where they were assembling spacecraft so This new fungal strain shows the ability to produce a biofilm Which means it can attach to surfaces and survive cleaning protocols And the assembly facility where it was discovered The strain's ability to survive in the slow nutrient environment is of concern because these clean room facilities comply with nasa's robotic missions requirements and this is Something that's escaping the protocols Getting around it's getting by it. So kind of fun. Uh, scientists who's worked for decades on this Yeah, who's not I don't think he's I think he's retired Uh got this named after him Which is a great honor to have a, you know, fun guy huge offer. He's a fun guy for sure. Yeah Yeah, but uh, it also it presents it presents once again That issue of if we go there and if we discover life How do we know we didn't bring it and uh blare your point? Yeah, what if it escapes and uh manages to subsist upon mars And propagate and then that's the life on mars and then in the back of my mind It's like, uh, you know, why not? Like what if like what if the you know, what if the things go uh Hell in a hand basket here on earth and we never do colonize there is no marsifest destiny We don't we don't get humans there And we did the space program ends and we all devolve And it's just nothing ever had that was the height of humanity Hey at least at least life has another shot If we leave some trace of it behind on another planet So there's part of that in back of my head. It's like, oh, why you if you found something that can survive a hostile environment Let it go life finds a way but not yet not yet because we still need to do the initial investigation to determine Uh, that there is no life before we start polluting it But you don't want to land on mars and have a nice squishy landing because it's just covered in a thick layer of mold I love this picture that you've got up there. By the way This is this is collecting for my it looks like some some what you call it Thermal venting It's thomas to rock who is the researcher who had the uh the fungi named after him Collecting field samples in the uzan caldera a volcanic environment located on the kumchatka Peninsula in the russian far east to find extremophiles And so that is the big question is whether okay, so something like this that is existing in a clean clean room It is an extremophile so if it can extreme extreme if it can exist Through the harsh environment of space through launch through entry through the atmosphere of another planet to get to The surface of another planet if it's extreme enough extreme Um, you know, what is that is that going to happen? Is that possibly going to be Is there going to be the contamination? and If there is we already have contaminated mars Just bring some tardigrades and be done with it I was going to throw in spacecraft at other rocks in this solar system before we were really thinking about this cross pollination idea Really good point really good and I think there's some admission that that's going to happen I I think the fear is that it it uh, it interrupts the mission of Sessing out life you make the scenario I presented where you go up you get the signal because they're not in that, you know yeah Being able to do the full spectrum of analysis perhaps But they get a signal that something organic is there and then they take all the trouble to bring it home again And it turns out it's the thing we brought there in the first place. It's enormous waste of time effort and money So we don't want anything. We don't want any noise in the system While we're out there doing our search while we're trying to figure out a new planet We don't want noise in the system Do no harm in that sense, but then if we want to colonize it do all the harm we want It's like Then the pendulum shifts. Well, then it's not if we can if we can rule out life I mean, it's almost it's almost in a sense to the progression of things It might even be easier if we don't find life then we can just go there and colonize not give it a second thought Uh, that might actually be the easier way if we do find life then we have to really Hand wrangle and struggle for a little bit about how long do we spend studying? the novel Native organisms it depends. It depends on how how much trouble we're in here on the our planet Yeah, so many interesting questions that is really cool and meanwhile on our own planet we are just Make it the uppity All sorts of little organisms so researchers at harvard Have their school of engineering are making fish Little teeny teeny tiny fish based on zebra fish, but they're making them out of human heart cells human cardiac muscle cells Yes, they have created these little Biodynamic biohybrid. I shouldn't say biodynamic because that's like a word that's used in farming which we're not talking about biohybrid fish They're a little bit machine a little bit human cardiac muscle cells and the muscle cells They have a pacemaker that they put in that gets it all going and then the muscle cells act on the fact that one side Is stimulated to contract and the other and while that side is contracting the other side is stretched Which makes it contract which stretches the other side which causes an oscillation back and forth and Why on earth would we be using? cardiac myocytes to create Little fish like So what what researchers are trial what do you have there jester? You have a that looks like a can opener a wine opener a wine bottle opener So what researchers are attempting to do in this effort? To make these little heart fish is actually learn how to build artificial hearts And so they've been building different structures for many years out of heart cells from different species And they've finally gotten to the point where they're like, all right We're using human cells to do this to get so we really understand how The cardiac myocytes work together and so by creating a system the researcher said he's like look You can create a lump of cells in a dish and call it a you can call it a What are they calling those things those balls of cells that are Organoid you can call it a cardiac organoid, but You're not you're still not it's still not a cardiac System it's really not the kind of system that's doing what a heart does it doesn't have the same kind of thing moving It isn't working the same way and so they're learning how the contraction and activation of these cardiac myocytes Works to see how they could potentially Integrate it into an artificial heart system one that would potentially last the lifetime of An artificial heart recipient and that is the situation here. So these biohybrid cardiac fish Once they get going they take a little while to get going and they last for about a hundred days And they actually get stronger when from from the minute they get activated to The first couple of weeks they get stronger and stronger and stronger and and then they just keep going They keep pump. They keep fishing fish fish fish fish. They keep swimming around Their movement is based on the movement of zebrafish and hopefully one day this will allow researchers to understand how to build a heart That is the most ridiculously brilliant Right That's just so ridiculous. You made a fish little fish swim thing But then you can just like basically put them in the tank and see how long they swim And you can determine how How robust your oh my gosh, how robust the system is and it's it's the muscle working together and The researchers were saying that now they can investigate meccano electrical signaling is a therapeutic target of heart rhythm management And for understanding pathophysiology and sinoatrial node dysfunctions and cardiac cardiac arrhythmias these little fish Can potentially help solve a whole bunch of human cardiac problems So So the hundred days is is that because the pacemaker runs out after a hundred days? Right, or maybe that's just how long the experiment went before they published it and they'll keep going. Yeah, here's here's where I'm getting confused They don't have a digestive system. It didn't have a battery Right Great. I'm assuming they're in a bath liquids that yeah, yeah, it's gonna be in a bath of fluid rich fluidity thing Right, but so so the not unlike what your head will one day float in. Yeah Hopefully for more than a hundred days, but so so that's what I'm thinking is that Something that lasts for a hundred days in a nice nutrient rich bath would do much better in a closed system with you know Getting a metabolism Yeah, right Because I mean it all depends on what broke down after the hundred days if the If the muscle fibers are breaking down if it if it pooped out, well, it's right If anything at all like it might just been we're gonna run this for a hundred days Yeah, and it could be you know, the system doesn't have all the stuff that would necessarily be there to fix Problems that we do know that cardiac myocytes once they get broken. They can't fix themselves. They're not good at doing that That's why we have a whole bunch of heart problems um, so Yeah, but the but what they're learning right now is very very valuable Yeah, from this little teeny tiny fish. Oh and Blair This is a very interesting point the biohybrid fish reached speeds and swimming efficacy That was similar to zebrafish in the wild somebody at this at this facility This this team somebody is too smart to just do one project. Yes I was saying the same thing So I was like, yeah, I'm gonna engineer this I'm also gonna I'm gonna make fish out of it Yeah, and I'm gonna time them and I'm gonna make them a good model of a fish just on the side Just on the side because I can't just do the one thing you can just have muscle fiber that twitched That's it. It'd be like I did it. It's a hard No, no you went way further. Yeah I'm gonna make it fish. What if this heart muscle was a fish already got fish races just insanely awesome I think this is my favorite story of the year This is someone who was rejected for ichthyology and was pushed into cardiology. It was like, you know what though the fish The fish are where my heart is This is one of those that I know we cared hiv at the beginning of the program But this is one that I think we need to keep for the end of the year Is like one of my top stories for the All right. Well, we we It's like me things very impressive. There's only one person we'll put it on the list This and then was the the driving fish was that this year last year that was this year also. Yeah, fish are killing it fish Oh, it's 2022 the year the fish the year the fish. I thought it was the year of the tiger. Come on Well, I gotta eat This though this is this week in science. This is the day the week The episode of this week in science that you've chosen to listen to thank you so much for joining us today If you are interested in joining us In the future, just know that we're here every single week. Please share us with a friend All right, let's come back. I really did not want to bring any covid news tonight Justin, can you tell us what's going on in denmark? So denmark opened up completely No masks Yeah, they still have testing, but if you test positive you can Basically still go out in public. They even getting rid of quarantining and everything and it's all out the window as endemic we're gonna roll with it uh, they started this a little while back and Cases and deaths Have surged Surprise. Yeah, surprise now People are looking at i'm doing this in the united states They want to point out something that is important Denmark has of the people who are uh considered vulnerable most vulnerable the elderly the immunocompromised they have 95 percent Have been vaccinated 90 percent of those have been vaccinated to the point of the booster Okay, this is a country with universal health care Where everyone Goes to the doctor without thinking twice about it if they need to because they're not going to get hit with a Life emerging bill that ruins their credit and their ability to progress within a capitalistic society Uh, those are big differences the united states had recently the weekly total of 2000 deaths a day which Let me see as it is if I put in the thing it is okay 365 times 2000 the current rate that's before everything everywhere is opened up by the way That is 730 000 dead people in one year If it and that's with the current level of masking You get rid of that and you get a surge and Oh my I didn't have I don't have a scientific on my Uh, don't do it It's I I read I read an article this week about endemic delusion Yes Yeah, so there's this the there's this this idea It's been sold to kind of people through. I don't know the media or so. I don't know But this idea it's like if we all just give up Like it'll be fine like it's you know if you if you are gonna get it you got it It's done And uh and in that in that article that you read there, it's uh, it's actually uh, it's a scripts Uh researcher who uh is actually from denmark who's like Yeah, I do not agree at all with what's going on in the homeland And you know the people who are coming out In favor of it tend to be politicians As is the same case in the united states. You're not getting a lot of people Who study This is the sort of thing coming out and saying this is a great idea You're getting You're getting people You're getting people who Who want the political will? Uh We have the you know, politically, but I think we all I think we have a combination of factors though We have a lot of people who have never wanted to get vaccinated or wear masks who've been fighting it Tooth and claw the entire time we now have people who have been vaccinated that their kids have been vaccinated And they want no more masks and they want things to go back to normal because they've done all the things So it's now we have a much larger group of people who are actually spread across lots of different belief systems, right different identities and ideologies who are now coming together the groups getting bigger and clamoring for this all to be over I mean, there's there's certainly a large group of people who have been perfect this whole pandemic and are sick of being good Well, everyone else isn't and has just gotten fed up with it and just said screw it. I'm going out Exactly and as daniel smith is saying in the chat the real problem that isn't being considered is more people catching it being means more chances for it to mutate and so this is why we keep Asking people to get vaccinated because if people are vaccinated then that's less of a place For it to enter and possibly mutate. We know that there are breakthrough cases And the the problem with this coronavirus is that that we've talked about before is that it's very likely already in so many animal populations that it's going to Disappear maybe into animal populations once we have a whole bunch of people large majority of the human population actually vaccinated and exposed So natural immunity and vaccine Vaccine triggered immunity That's gonna make everything go that go away. We'll have a nice lull for a while, right? And then it'll hide in the animals mutate in the animals And then come on back And then I think it's gonna be a new resurgence It'll be it'll be a little white. We'll have some time there, but there will be another variant things are it's happened before it will happen again I think it's gonna be bambi. We shot bambi's mother And bambi is gonna come back some years later sneeze on a hunter and wipe out the entire midwest but I but but it is absolutely, I mean it Normal is never going to be normal again Things are going to be different for a while and then it'll be a new time and it'll be a new What we used to consider normal say no, no don't say it. He almost did it Don't say it but see that's the problem. That's so it's what the status quo was bad before It's what led to the pandemic. We don't want it We don't want to go there again We don't want that But we also need to accept the various viewpoints and we need to we need to I don't I don't know that there's an easy way out of this the science is We the science we're learning more all the time But this is a mutating virus and it's changing as it goes And how do we keep a population of humans with wants and desires and fatigue and languishing Well, so I'm with something they get tired of right This is the thing that that I think is really hard for a lot of people to swallow and I have struggled with as well is If your workplace Wants you to go to work Why can't I go to the movies? Why is it okay to risk my health to go to work? But I am not allowed to risk my health For my mental health and my own enjoyment And I think that that is the problem that people across the political scientific All the spectrums are are now dealing with is that Is that society is trying to pick and choose when to be careful? And and and people are arbitrary and priorities are messed up So yeah, but the thing is they wanted everybody to go to work from the beginning because People who own the companies wanted to continue to make the money while they Were vaccinated not leaving their McMansions or whatever that's the problem if you're somebody you have to go Well, who am I to tell you that you can't go see your friends That's there it is a it is a huge disconnect In priorities and expectations and so it feels arbitrary to the common to just the average person And if it feels arbitrary then why follow rules? It was that whole you know joke that was going around on the cdc Very clear on that. Yeah when they changed their isolation guidelines because it felt arbitrary People were tweeting. Oh the cdc now says you can use the 10 second rule and so did the five second rule, right? It was actually based on real science based on the omicron variant and it's um And it's incubation timeline, but that was not communicated properly And so it felt arbitrary and so no one wanted to fall and it was actually wrong. So sure sure sure sure But the reasoning behind it was scientific, right? Yeah, that was there there was a reason Whether or not it should have come out the way it did when it did or if we should have stayed with the more conservative Two weeks because it would have saved lives in the long run no matter what yes, of course they should have But it was based on something that wasn't communicated properly and so it felt like nothing Yeah, so here's the here's the thing that I just I can't help pointing out and and I There was a point before omicron perhaps before even delta When the experts people who study viral disease spread and epi pandemicy stuff Pathogens in the leg we're saying hey What you have to worry out about even more than the immediate threat Is the ability for the thing to mutate into something else Yeah, now had we taken off the six weeks and just shut down society and just nobody left the house You're banging your drum. I know gotta get that out every time Still we could do it now uh They were right and so there's a lot of people like oh, we have no idea that omicron was gonna happen next You know actually we did and we told you about it and you were warned about it over and over again And they said this is why it's so important Aside from how you're handling the thing currently is that there can be guess what? omicron Isn't the end of the story now. No, there's even you know a second omicron variant and It there will be more but you know, we hope that we will be able to be Protected with vaccines that we will have treatments that we will be able to manage As we move forward Man, everyone's so burnt out. I feel like Everyone is very and I think would be welcome It would be welcome pandemic vacation. We're just all going to stay home from our jobs in our workplace Like hey, I'm going to disneyland. No, it's all close. You can't even go to the grocery store Here's your and it's like groceries for your six weeks. That is what we have all world governments agree to print their money As they usually do therefore it's just consistent Money's made up anyway. If you need more if you don't believe it before Look at all the bit things The crypto tip that's all make it up money and it's worth more than real money now. So Just everybody print money as usual Send it to everybody. Yeah, and just take six weeks off and we can have a Re-plan it again. Yeah But nobody listens to me, you know, I know I'm very quiet I know you need to be more assertive Yeah, uh, Eric would it is I think the unicorn variant that's going to destroy the planet Yes And on that note everyone, uh, we will end our covid segment This is this week in science and we hope that you are safe and healthy and happy And we thank you for joining us for another episode of our science news podcast If you're enjoying the show, please head over to twist org and click on our patreon link where you can choose Your level of support to help support this show in an ongoing fashion We do give you this show. We bring it to you produce it every week for your enjoyment We'll bring you the news And if you support us at ten dollars or more per month That's less than a cup of coffee a week probably Ten dollars a month and we will thank you by name at the end of the show Because really we can't do this without you. Thank you so much for your support All right, let's come on back now you here for a little section of the show With a few I don't know. It's noisy. There's a bunch of animals in it There's also knives this week. I don't know his player's animal corner With Blair. Ah, hold on a second. Somehow it's quiet She loves our creature Great and small By pet, millipet, no pet at all If you aren't here about the animal, she's your girl Except for giant panellists They've got up your tail What's up, Blair? I have peacocks Oh dear, they're loud. Yes Yes, they they are famous not just for being loud, but also for killing and eating snakes Wait, what? They're famous for killing snakes. And so um, I had no idea. Yes. Yes. And so Yes, yes Muzafar Ali Khan devoted his phd to investigating Exactly how peacocks can kill venomous snakes In pakistan where he grew up He actually had many neighbors who kept peacocks and so they were they kept them one of the reasons was to kill snakes And so under the supervision of michael ritchardson at the institute of biology They analyzed the molecular resistance against cobra venom In various birds and mammals and found differences So What kind of differences you ask i'm so glad that you asked they looked at several mammals that eat snakes first They looked at mongies mongooses The european hedgehog the honey badger Undetermined that only mammals that shared territory with snakes had evolved some sort of resistance makes sense The resistance made the snake venom less potent in their system by making talk The toxins unable to bind to the target in their body But what's specifically interesting about this it's you know, they're resistant to venom that makes sense They eat venomous things But what was interesting was that they found in the dna That they were not the same in all the animals the the dna markers that caused this adaptation were not consistent which means that the different animals evolved the resistance Each time independently there was not a common ancestor that already had resistance Which brings us to birds peacocks hawks eagles One of my favorites the secretary bird They are all known for killing snakes But when they looked at the dna None of them were even slightly resistant to venom Um There were no genetic markers towards venom resistance Not at all like they'd know so if they get bitten by a snake Lights out Do you want to know their theory of how they survived these venomous snakes? Venomers are actually uh Fang proof No, it's the stabby It's the stabbiness So birds all these birds. Yes of the birds. They're all very very good at attacking snakes They are Fast they have excellent vision. They have Heavily protected scaly legs. They're very smart. They're very quick. They're very agile And so it seems like there's no selective pressure For venom resistance. They're just too darn good at killing Snakes They don't need resistance because resistance is futile Yes, there you go. Uh, I guess resistance is redundant in this case But uh, yeah, they also use feathers to distract the snakes. They you know, they they know exactly where to peck at them Away from the fangs back in the neck. So all these things mean that This is all still a theory, but this is the theory of why They are able to Kill and eat venomous snakes. So a couple things about this. So first of all That means there is not some common vertebrate ancestor with Venom resistance, which would have been wild to figure out I would have guessed it would be a long shot, but I'm still not I'm still not convinced that that's not the case, but It would have to be venom resistance like back in the dinosaurs Yeah, no, I mean that's kind of almost what I mean though. Like I mean The the because it's it's odd that they had come up with resistance in different ways Which tells me it's not a sound looks like a co-vergent thing, but I think you also have to have maybe Uh building blocks for even if they come across differently Yeah, I don't know That that flexibility that plasticity to come up with venom resistance That's different, uh in different ways still kind of tells me that maybe there is an archaea and architecture For it somewhere In the way back even if it's not just resurfacing or Consistently that but yeah, so you have to keep in mind too though peacocks are from india Secretary birds are from africa eagles and hawks Europe the americas So they all kind of live in different places so if they are You also have to think about the timeline of the specific venom That there's not all venom is the same not all venom is the same in fact in a study many years ago I reported on um if you can identify even like Down to a few square miles of where a venomous snake is found that can help you develop a better antivenom so in um In israel where there were many, uh venomous snakes A bunch of types of rattlesnakes and and vipers and stuff They would say if you get bit by a snake try really hard to recover that snake and specifically take note of exactly where you were bit Geographically because that will impact the antivenom that you use So if if venom is so specific to a species to a location I don't think it's that surprising That the Method of resistance would be different. Okay, but the but then the right but then that the Whatever architecture was there That then applies that resistance is sort of where i'm getting at Sounds like that's a thing in common But then it also wouldn't that's the thing is it's not necessarily in common It's going to have to do with a very specific Location with a you know, okay, you're an animal In a particular space and there is a particular venomous creature that you have to be resistant to Curses Like your bird who flies all over the place and you like to eat snakes Yeah, but that's my point. I said that it is it is uh, it is emerging differently Because the venoms are different like I Okay, you have to take in the google and put it in india The main piece of this study though was looking at dna And the fact that the location in the dna the specific dna responsible for resistance Was not at all similar between the asian mongoose the european hedgehog and the african honey badger Means that they do not have the same evolutionary origin just for a co-virgin affect. Yeah so so convergent in the fact that it's resistance to venomous to venom, but it is Completely independent in the fact that it is totally different dna mechanism. That's what makes it convergent. Yes Yes, but it's also a really good example of how sometimes a behavioral tactic Can be effective enough that there's no need For a genetic physiological change, which I think is also the other piece of this that these birds Figured out and this could be convergent or it could have a common ancestor. There could be an entire Bird ancestor that has passed through genes that show it how to kill snakes with impunity, but ultimately the behavior Was was successful enough that there was no Um selective pressure to create venom resistance, which is very cool That's how that's how the opposite is going to happen in humans, of course. We're gonna have all these negative Negative pressures because at some point, you know at age 40 Many male many humans would just stop being able to hunt or find things would just go blind I just wouldn't be able to see anything. We need glasses now. We have everybody's glasses now I've needed glasses since I was eight. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but I mean like yeah, see you would have never made it Never never made it this far just because of glasses let alone glasses color vision All the things all the things We're gonna we're gonna have some fun outcomes if this experiment goes pretty well, that sounds optimistic. Justin. Yeah, look on the bright side, will you? um A study from oh speaking of israel from ben gurion university in the negev israel and that is in cooperation with the department of wildland resources Wanted to look at optimistic or pessimistic thinking in wild animals and how that impacts their behavior And also how it impacts their success actually And so they developed a computer model for animal foraging that considered valence dependent optimism bias Which is a lopsided learning process in which information about bad outcomes is discounted or ignored They showed that what gambling is all about. Yeah It's gamblers the ultimate optimists according to this study. So when when faced with decisions foraging animals that gave mental weight to positive outcomes had An on-the-ground caloric advantage more optimistic animals Did a better job they survived better they got more food They did better generally speaking in the game of survival in this simulation the fictional animal forager was equipped with partial knowledge of average foods food quality and travel time to new food sources Uh, they made ongoing decisions about whether to stay where they were or to return to previously exported areas Or to go into new ones. So yes, this is gambling for sure Every time the forager moved to a new patch It learned about that area it added that information to their mental library and then they moved on So optimism optimistic decision-making led to healthier circumstances and better access to food overall Even when it didn't reap food rewards in the short term rapid learning was beneficial Because if you continued to look further you'd find more good stuff And so animal mortality is driven by starvation generally speaking rather than predation So access to food is ultimately specifically for the animals that they study these kind of grazing animals foraging animals um that was The ultimate decider in success or failure is were you able to get access to food? As though animals that used extremely optimistic strategies Did better ones that used extremely pessimistic strategies Tended to die of starvation at a younger age than the other individuals in the sample during the in the computer program Yeah, look at that happy deer I know it's not actually happy, but it looks like a cartoon. I look so happy. Um, but so Grass are you eating? Very happy grass Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so what is it really that? Then how can I have optimistic foraging strategies and not starve? You know what this reminded me of the sunk cost fallacy. Yes, and it's kind of the opposite of that So if you are stuck in a situation where you're not getting what you need It is beneficial to be optimistic And take the plug It's you know, it's like in um in job hunting you on average if you get a new job Even if you're it's a quote-unquote lateral move you make I think it's 15 percent more Every time that you leave your job. So It's a very well kept secret out there, but it's true so That means that taking the plunge being optimistic Jumping to something new is beneficial to us as well. So that's actually a really good example of this theory in practice, but it takes optimistic thinking to think okay I'm gonna fit in in my new workplace. I'm gonna like my new job. My boss isn't gonna be terrible like All of these things you have really have to be optimistic to want to Take try something new. Yeah, because there there also is a chance you're gonna go and it's gonna suck And if that new job is bad, then you have to try again That's ultimately what this strategy means, right is keep trying the new things until you find good stuff As you could you could apply this this to dating as well If you're dating if you're in the dating pool, right? It's it's good to know though that like this comes from very solid ecological behavioral principles where that this is animals Making these choices survive versus animals that don't they're gonna die Starvation so what this model is telling us is you want to balance your known territory Whatever metaphor you want to apply that to balance your known territory with the time and energy devoted to exploring new resources So you want to devote time to the things that you know are beneficial But make sure you set aside time to try new things because you will find Something beneficial to you if you keep looking So it's What the researchers say because so funny is optimism is a mental glitch That offers an evolutionary advantage when dealing with limited information Spurring exploration and allowing for adaptations to changing environments Next time I see somebody who's being unreasonably optimistic. I'm gonna be I'm gonna tell them to put their put their mental glitch away No, I won't this mental glitch is gonna make me live forever So anyway, it's it's very interesting to consider when you apply it to humans That's not what the study was about but it also is really important to know When studying ecology and working in animal conservation If you know The strategies that will be most effective then you can help kind of predict where the winners of an of a population Will go and how they will act and so if you know that exploration is beneficial and you build a new shopping mall next to a wildlife refuge And there's more Car strikes in the in the parking lot of that new shopping mall. I'm just making this up but ultimately if you do that, then you know that you are actually Probably weeding out the most optimistic individuals in a population and that could have a negative impact on overall population help Oh, that's a Gosh, that's a huge addition Yeah So yeah, so there I mean, there's a lot that you can kind of apply with this information based on a computer model, but Yeah Optimism interesting. It could be a good thing Very big insights for optimism All right, Justin. I'm optimistic that you can tell us something Energetic keep us beat from being fatigued. Maybe. Oh, yeah, that's a good intro to the next story that I've got Clarkson University researchers found a correlative link between a small sample size of humans Energy levels and their gut microbiome associate professor of physical physical therapy Ali Bullyani and his team searched the microbiome for associations between microflora and self-reported personality traits or mood ratings of mental energy mental fatigue physical energy and physical fatigue they had The former they had 20 participants Assessed in the by survey the gut microbiome and metabolome Which is the actual Enzymes and what have a molecules that are being produced by the gut micro uh gut microbiome They were determined. There was RNA analysis as well as untargeted Metabolomic analysis Found some interesting things in here Bacterioed dettes 45 percent the most prominent phyla Was only negatively correlated with physical fatigue So I guess that means if it wasn't there You would see physical Fatigue more highly rated second most predominant was Butyl rate producing phyla Firmacutus And it has the traits that one is kind of interesting So bacteria anaerostipis I'm very slow at pronouncing pronunciating these names, but it was positively correlated With mental energy And negatively with mental fatigue and physical fatigue respectively So that's kind of an interesting one I got this one that's That is there when people have mental energy And is sort of disappearing When they have mental fatigue report physical fatigue Diet sort of influences this too because they were also tracking these people's diet One food groups in particular processed meat was correlated with All four of the moods positively with mental fatigue And physical fatigue negatively with mental energy and physical energy. And that's the one that had the Firmacutus genus Hodomania that was correlated with the processed meats is the only one that it's just very specifically correlated So It's sort of interesting because I've been mocking nutritionists not mocking them Have you heartedly? We know the microbiome is influenced by by diet and fiber and there's all sorts of interactions there Of course, but I've been mocking the nutritionists because they've written all these books You can put a whole bookcase together books written on nutrition before they knew anything about the microbiome and how it is Right Yeah, so then you're like, ah, okay throw all that knowledge away and start over But you can't actually build off because now you're seeing This is why Correlated to microflora in some cases now the rest of them they weren't but this is one specific one that they found Was correlated in the sample, but it's really interesting because this is starting to get into that field of What is a healthy productive or Hacked the microbiome Now you might hack it So you've got mental energy and you don't have any physical Fatigue and you get you're going you're going and then it turns out that leads to some awful disease Down the road that we don't even know about But so it's a small sample size. They only had 20 individuals in this But they are now seeking funding to do a much larger More robust study because the the initial correlations and this is a follow-up to other studies that this group has done So that looks like they're kind of on the right track there Uh, I'm really I'm really curious about I would love to see this a large study of the story take place because We know that there are hormonal influences I personally just went and had a conversation with a doctor today about and was told that dietary fiber Can influence estrogen levels and that if you Increase your fiber dietary fiber intake. You actually reduce estrogen reabsorption in the colon so it can actually Reduce estrogen dominance in women who have an estrogen dominance problem. So there are Dietary things that nobody talks about unless they know these things and What is the mechanism that I know there are some enzymes involved liver enzymes related to the fiber and all But if fiber is the factor, there's probably micro a microbiome A microbial interaction there as well. And so what is that and how does that all work? So We we have we're start we have these loose pieces We know iron deficiency affects energy and brain fog in women We know up and and everybody Progesterone can influence testosterone can you know all these things? But they can also also be influenced by diet And so what is the The middle piece how does how do the microbes play into it? And I think that's a really interesting question and this is why this study I think was also very interesting and again. Yeah, like you're saying the bigger study when they get more data Is actually going to be probably more revealing and more interesting even Uh, is that you're starting here with the correlative and this is when correlative science is not bad No, it gives you a place to start. It's giving you a starting point It's a place But if you do then okay, so then you've narrowed it down to like Say it it tracks and processed meat Stays tracked to this one microbe that got microbe that tends to flourish Now you can study that one gut microbe and see okay. What are in its interactions? What molecules is it producing? How do those molecules once produce interact with the larger system? And now you're starting to get mechanism the causal things and then then you can actually like if you need a Drug treatment or a drug blocker or just a dietary recommendation. That's actually backed up all the way through the So it leads to all these things that you're right. This is uh, but the other thing you could do is just stop eating No, no, no you can't just stop eating Uh turns out People who eat 14 percent more have reduced healthy lifespans Oh caloric restriction. Okay. Yeah, they did a caloric restriction study improves. They found it improves metabolic And immune responses that help determine both how long a person lives And how many years of good health they will enjoy while they're having this longer life Uh two years of modest calorie restriction reprogrammed the pathways and fat cells That help regulate the way mitochondria generate energy. How insane is that? That is I mean that is hacking Yeah, two years of in this case humans. This is not a mice study. This is not a mouse study. This is a humans study uh, yeah, it uh Uh, repeat that it reprogrammed the pathways and fat cells that help regulate the way mitochondria Generates energy the body's anti inflammatory responses and potentially the longevity of the person is according to eric revusin phd associate director for clinical science at pennington biomedical research center in other words quotey voice here in other words calorie restriction rewires many of the metabolic and immune responses that boost lifespan and health span They went for this isn't completely correlative because they did a little bit of identifying here Uh as I go down here, they found Where is it a activating factor acetyl hydrolase? It was uh reducing it produces health benefits included the lower age related inflammation improve metabolic health so even found a specific thing that was taking place and the The thymus I didn't even know what a thymus is but apparently we have one it makes T cells Yes. Oh, yeah, that's what the T cells come from is the thymus Yeah, so it says here. This is quoting again Revusin as people age their thymus this is Shrink and produce fewer T cells as a result older people have a harder time fighting off infections in certain cancers calorie restriction helps prevent the thymus from shrinking So the person generates more T cells. They really found quite a bit of It's important because a person doesn't uh in addition to improving immunity and increasing T cells is associated with ability to burn Stores of fatty acids for energy And then you don't if you if a person doesn't build that fuel Then you get the thing where it's building up in organs And the muscles the livers and the heart and leading to insulin resistance obesity Diabetes all the rest of it. So it's really kind of a critical system to keep going as long as possible and it's Most proficient way. So there's that I'd like to age healthily. I'd like to you know, live long and prosper, right not Have my immune system give up on me before I'm ready What's the other thing this is this is one of those things though that like Justin mentioned before there might be something down the road You don't know, right? So there there's other things with calorie restriction that you also need to look for as well Nope. Nope, you don't Uh, so they they did do another study. There's a second No, you're right. There's a second study Where they in mice where they reduced the calories by 40 percent. So they didn't do that to the humans Uh, they got the down to 40 percent Uh, and there were negative effects in growth and reproductive viability Uh, they still got health benefits for being otherwise healthy Longevity wise, but they had because they had gone down so far they had You're right. Absolutely other ramifications took place This reminds me of the time when I had that I was doing my own study with a domestic cat That uh, I had almost gotten the cat I cut the food in half every day And and I was I had almost trained this cat to live without needing food And then a diet of natural causes Justin Experiment was almost no almost I'd almost gotten to the No trains not to need. Okay. That's what I made. I made up the cat. Don't send the emails It was a terrible made-up story But the mouse 40 percent reduction Uh, saw the health benefit side of it that they were seeing in the humans with just 14 percent But had other consequences because of the drastic Uh, I would say reduction in calorie intake Yeah, the wasn't there there's also one compound this PLA 2g 7 That uh, they have identified as a potential target For people who don't necessarily want to do the caloric restriction Yeah, so that might be a target for for uh, making the immune system stronger Yeah, if you maybe if you just can add it to the Or reducing it, I guess if you could find a way to knock it out, which you know knocking out an enzyme is actually somewhat Somewhat easy thing you just build a thing that it could lock into but doesn't have any other function And you should be able to sort of sponge up Uh enzymes to some extent Sponge the enzymes up. Yes, that sounds like amazing therapy and science We have created the enzyme sponge that will sponge the enzymes And you would live forever This is this week in science. I'm dr. Kiki and I have a couple of stories left I hope that you're interested in hearing about cluttered old brains cluttered old brains A research study out. Well, it's a review study in trends and cognitive science Sciences has been looking into the idea that As you get older you have a lot more stuff In your brain than people who are younger because you've been around for a lot longer And so you're you've had that's got a lot more stuff rattling up in your brain And there's this difference between wisdom and knowledge and you know, how can this information be used and how can the information benefit So there's we also find that as we get older memories kind of go into decline. We have a harder time accessing words Memories remember that one time or the name of that band or I forgot and you know, you have have these moments senior moments that people talk about well It could be that the brain and the memory process of older people is cluttered but I prefer that and this was Suggested in the study that we should call it enriched or elaborated or even overloaded Is that like 10 to 20 years of science news, uh from Exactly, I don't remember which story was told which week exactly But what has been discovered is that uh as people are remembering things I'm trying to make things In begin so that I can put them up on the screen as as people are remembering things younger people are much more focused in the way that they Target information and they're able to Forget things that are irrelevant. They can leave things out of that memory They don't make connections to it and they're just a their memory stays focused on the target And older people are better at doing this earlier in the day But as you get older and as days go on Other memories and other networks and other things that connect Conceptually from other memories of different things they start connecting to the thing the thing that you might be trying to remember So the memories become as they say cluttered Mmm And so what this is is actually this brain this mental process as we age it's a As people age the brains lose the ability to focus attention on specific things But I appreciate this study Because even though older adults show reduced suppression And or deletion of information that's not relevant to a present task They're able to make connections This study mentions the fact that older people are able to make connections that younger people can't And this comes back to the idea of wisdom versus just knowledge that because of these networks because of these supposedly irrelevant connections connections can be made by people who have had more memories more thoughts more knowledge put into their brain because If there's more in there to pull from So it's there's there are there are two different You know, there are benefits to having a cluttered brain Things might get lost in the shuffle your filing system might be a little bit difficult To to get through and find things in but the stuff is still in there so you can get it So if I have a disorganized mind as a young person Is that gonna make my even worse as you get older? I have no idea. Or is it just gonna seem normal? It's just right. Like I don't that's kind of like my oh my No, the impression is like oh gosh. Yeah having all that clutter and all those weird Conditions and things not being very organized. Hey, that's how your brain's always been Justin. Oh, that means we'll be just fine or Or it'll get worse Oh Don't know I don't know Yeah, so anyway, these these researchers say that they argue that older and younger adult memories Contain similar target features. We're remembering the same stuff But older adults memories contain more non target features and so Are enhanced For cluttered with excessive information Oh man, it's I wonder if any of it is also because you kind of have your Your you're running task list in your brain all the time That's taking up processing power and the older you get the more responsibilities that you have and the more things You're constantly thinking about and the less you can focus on the memories that you have in your brain So I think this is something that I don't know that anybody has really Taken into account in these kinds of studies I mean these kinds of studies, you know, they're they give you it's in a lab situation They say remember this word. Don't remember this word, you know, they they give you lists of things or num or numbers or You read a story and you're supposed to pull certain things out of the story But I don't know that it does it it's always Just separated by age and not necessarily by how many responsibilities You have That are potentially competing for your attention in this particular moment. Yeah, right What's your current stress and anxiety level? Great Yeah, I think that's a good question to bring in I think my mind only saves annotations That's Sort of side notes in there and that's it Just post it stuck to the wall It's kind of a little bit like a couple lines highlighted Something underlined stress or it can go I'm pretty sure that my brain is uh, Basically like any desk or filing cabinet that I've ever had. It's just there's the stuff is all still there I haven't thrown anything out But you know, there's paper shoved in every crack in crevice and it's yeah, it's all over the place So mine mine is covered in doodles so Doodle brain I love it. I love it. My last story has to do with multiple sclerosis A study at the University of Zurich and unix lmu clinicum hospital Have looked at mono zygotic twins To identify the influence of environment and genetics in cases of multiple sclerosis and in doing that They've been able to tease apart factors that uh, nobody has really teased apart before so in uh, having these mono zygotic twins, which are identical twins That's the okay. Yeah, that's the real twins. Not the real like real twins identical twins roommates Yeah These identical twins in uh, in the situation they One Twin in the pair had come down with multiple sclerosis and the other had not and so they look to see what kind of factors conveyed the difference between the twins in order to figure out, you know, what's going on genetically and what's going on environmentally because uh What we know is that if one of the twins got multiple sclerosis then the genetic basis is there In both of them. So what was it that allowed for the triggering of the genes that lead to the autoimmune disorder? That then that the one twin suffers from so what they were able to pull out from this is uh, they they were looking at the immune profiles and They were able to identify proteins in the immune cells of the sick twin in each case and decode the totality of all the genes that are switched on in the cells according to one of the researchers and it was also added that uh as they That they obtain as much information as currently technically possible from these valuable samples And they had all algorithms and artificial intelligence to get insights from it So what they determined is that there were hyperactive cytokine receptors so the the bodies the immune cells Were hyperactive to certain cytokines and that led to increased activation of T cells in the blood of the patients with multiple sclerosis And these T cells we just talked about they come from the thymus But they are more likely to migrate into the central nervous system and cause damage there than other cells additionally, these T cells were They they were naive they were like they had been just recently activated So they were like some kind of almost a stem cell T cell but not quite So they were like these baby T cells. They hadn't quite developed Into fully functional T cells. So there's something Something odd about that particular aspect of the cytokine initiation of this particular group of T cells that go on to affect the immune system and evade the normal checks and balances and What the researchers say is that in finding this particular group of these naive not fully functional T cells Um, they say that they they think they might have discovered the cellular big bang of ms here precursor cells that give rise to disease causing T cells Which can be very exciting And so they will be doing further study of these of these twins looking to determine more factors related to um What's happening in the immune systems and the differences Between the the twins to figure out exactly what happens Yeah, it's it's the the thing worth remembering always when we're talking about it a perfect example here too is that the the genome Is basically the building materials. It's the it's the home depot full of stuff That the body can use and then yeah things in the environment can determine sometimes What actually gets pulled off of the shelf? Yeah, and it's not it's not a it's not a blueprint in and of itself So much as just all the stuff you're going to get to work with and then Yeah, depends on on which which shelf things get pulled down from So get activated or Turned on turned off Yeah, so um as you know previous studies recently have suggested that uh viruses like epstein bar Are highly implicated in Triggering multiple sclerosis. We've even seen that uh sars-cov-2 Is triggering currently some cases of multiple multiple sclerosis um the The method like the the mechanism by which that happens why certain people genetically are Predisposed and what leads to that happening? How does it now now we have this new piece? Okay, there's this cytokine hyperactivity this you know, it's something the virus comes in and somehow It's triggering a particular thing that's making these new kind these These naive T cells that caused the problem. So What is the what is the pathway there? How is that happening and once we start really figuring that out? We might be able to Stop it Get those things out of there. They cut it out T cells. Yeah, stop it yeah so Exciting news. Yeah, it's very exciting. I you know It's always exciting To find new answers, but we know that the complexity of the world there are still so many questions I love a twin study because It removes so many confounding variables Yeah, just so many Yeah Oh, you're exactly the same genetically, but you decided to do different. Oh great. Okay And in many cases you were raised in the same house. So you have the same external factors growing up and Yeah, it's a great It's a scientist's dream. How come we oh, I guess we do I was gonna say how come we don't how come we don't hear about Like a bunch of twin mouse studies and I realized like oh, yeah, it's because all of the mouse studies are twins Yeah, they come in letters, but yeah, it's even like I think about the The astronauts one went to The space station one didn't you got to see all the differences. It's awesome. It's it's it's a perfect control for so many Uncontrollable factors in studying humans. Yeah More twins Maybe maybe I don't know. Maybe I don't know Here, I don't know. I'm so yeah, I know That's a terrible thing to respond to people. That's a tough one. Oh my goodness. We can't even imagine one is enough Tunk diaper fallacy thing, you know Oh the diapers never end But this show Is coming to an end. Thank you for joining us for another episode of this week in science. We're so glad that you Came with us on this scientific adventure of this week And I would really love to thank a few people. Thank you. 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It says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to sell their robots with a simple device I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand and all it'll cost you is a couple of grand This week science is coming your way So everybody listen to what I say I use the scientific method for all that it's worth and i'll broadcast my opinion all over the air Because it's this week in science This week in science This week in science Science This week in science This week in science Science Science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That what I say may not represent your views, but I've done We did it The end of this show I'm getting You know, you know Why it's not like we had a two hour show Wait The way we did Um, I don't know if you're going to edit out that whole COVID section, but if you do I might think I think you should release it on the patreon Okay, that's a good idea. Yeah, I was thinking of I was actually thinking of cutting the COVID section Makes sense because it wasn't there were no studies in it, but yeah But it was still it was a very interesting conversation and I think that releasing that on the patreon would be cool because then A good number of people would still hear it Yeah, that's a good idea I will do that Yeah The patreons the patreons will get it It's just an off check you got a baby Probably Sorry, I started yawning It means that I care about you Yawning Yes The jazz for the yawns Identity force travels went well Very good Very good So I I checked my twitter as I often do at the end of the show to see if anyone engaged with me on the twitterverse And not a wolf, which is a very good twitter that I fall Said so you can say oh, I'm so burned out or oh, I have brain fog but not I can feel the ever slowing pulse of our world as it lay dying It may never again feel the warmth of the sun Gonna try maybe it's my mattress next time and see how that goes Yup, yup, yup agreed Good night Fonda Sorry I made you yawn, Paul I did it to you too again You said the word yawn Everybody's yawning now Yawn That is an acronym standing for you are wanting nap Yes That makes a lot of sense Good night Fonda, have a good night Yes Ooh interesting question I really get passed by yawning What is the most 80s sounding song? Probably like what is it safety dance I think That's a good one I probably think that because of the Futureama episode with an 80s guy and he sings it multiple times I love that your whole like view of the 80s is from Futureama I was just like what is the most synthesizer song I can think of oh I guess that one But also like I don't know The 80s was great that's when with Casio keyboard, some hair gel and a little bit of writing A 40 year old man could get on stage and speak lyrics You wouldn't even have to sing them Just speak them out and you're a rockstar Those days they need to come back I'm ready, I've got the hair going The 90s instead Aha take on me that is a good one Oh I love that song When I first learned how to drive I had a mix CD that I made When you first learned to drive you had a CD Which like to you guys makes you feel makes you sound young But to other people I talked to makes me sound very old Technology can get you quick Yeah it can really get you quick And the first song was take on me and I would have blasted and rolled down all the windows to my parents' Buick sentry With the bench seats where mom and dad may be watching yes I did fit 10 high schools people into that car Wow And we were singing take on me and drive it through the sun So that song though is funny because my now 14 years old at the time though was like singing it out And I'm like how did you hear did you hear that on the radio I was just like what's radio Never mind What's radio It is kind of cool how digital format it makes all era music accessible at once You don't have to tune into a station that's going to just play the thing you can go and search and get the you know We can't play it though you can't play it on the thing Oh Yeah Shooting at the walls of heart Bang bang I am a warrior That's a good one That's a good one What was the one I was thinking oh It was my first Yeah shimmy I was more into the punk things too I think if there was anything glaring out of my First automobiles tape deck Yeah It would have been Listen this one had both it had the tape deck and the cd player And it was aftermarket Okay I was gonna ask was that cd No it was aftermarket yeah The car was like a 1991 I want to say Madness A house In the middle of the street A house That one I didn't know that song No I know that song no I was looking up when rock lobster came out because I That was an 80's song but it's 70's Oingo boingo was great You know I actually didn't listen to oingo boingo at all However I went to an uh oh oh gosh Irvine I went to an oingo boingo concert and it was the first time I'd ever heard them It was really good It was a fun time Super fun Girls just want to have fun Cindy Lauper Of course There's so many good ones I wonder yeah it's hard to say The 80's had a whole bunch of different styles to them It certainly did It wasn't just one thing It was like the origin of punk right? Was it like late 70's early 80's Yes You had glam bands And you had you know the hair bands And you had girl rock stars David Bowie Yes Also started in the 70's but you know But still lots of 80's Oh no he's 80's stuff In the 60's late 60's If you hear the urra like the first David Bowie It is I think he's doing like crooner stuff a little bit Pop croonery It's not anything You're talking about like early 70's Tom Waits too Where he's just singing And you're like who's this Yeah I walked down the aisle to a Tom Waits song And you'd never know it was a Tom Waits song I would You would I would The first David Bowie album Was 1967 Yes So close Close to the 70's What about Tommy Boy Tom Waits was probably late 70's right? Oh 80's 80's was his first No that's not right Stevie Wonder Hard to talk if I was not his first Well Tom Waits is also one of those guys He's like oh yeah Tom Waits He must have been rocking it out there With the beat generation back in the 40's That's when he was No closing time was 1973 I knew it Yeah there we go Closing time I just love it all I just love it all Closing time He's due for another one Yes His last one was in 2011 He's been doing A lot of soundtracks And like Musical scores Oh yeah Orphans isn't on this list either Which was later Got an old list Wait wait Was Big in Japan Oh that's mule variations That's like 2002 or something I could look it up I'm too old to remember what year things came out Too much Oh yeah Orphans was in 2006 No way Take my breath away Anyway What about total eclipse of the heart When was that Oh yeah definitely 83 Total eclipse of the heart Have you ever looked up what What The number one song Was on your birth Have you ever looked it up No That's one of those questions That those data Scratchers try and use To suck your personal information Into their systems It is Turn around Oh yeah I've looked this up before Yes I know if Rick Loveman is reminding me That if we have commercial music on It goes to the musician To the artist I haven't I think it clicks in after a few seconds Yeah it's like I thought it was 17 seconds But that seems too long Oh man I loved Boomtown Rats Daniel Yount Oh my goodness That was That was one of my favorites Loved Boomtown Rats I see another one I looked up Fishbone when they were around And that was also the 80s Loved Fishbone That's one of those bands else I don't think I've heard They have a very Sax in their band Ah that's why No they're not jazz They're like rock and rolly You put a saxophone An accordion Bagpipes You talking about Tom Waits again? How'd we get back on him? Except for Tom Waits Tom Waits can get away with murder So the 80s Was the 80s The 80s was still Corey Haim And Corey Feldman and Lost Boys And the soundtrack for Lost Boys Was like That had the saxophone song Blair To the Lost Boys The saxophone song Actually this is a blind spot for me I don't think you've ever seen this movie What? Okay homework Homework homework homework You need to see this movie This is Required viewing material Corey's home I'm trying to think Of what the earliest Soundtrack to a movie That I remember going like Oh that's a great song Outside of the movie I think it was Young Guns Young Guns Is it Bon Jovi? I think so Because it wasn't John Wasn't he in that No he was not in the movie Wasn't But he was in the video Because it had the MTV The music video Show was on the TV And he's all over the video And then they show clips from the movie Young Guns that was That was all the dudes That was all the The rat pack of the day or whatever they would be called That was all the dudes I'm not familiar with that one either You have to watch that movie too It's actually pretty interesting because They actually did a pretty good job Of telling the story of Billy the Kid It was a good movie And it's in the modern era Is that It's a western But it was like All the The hot young 80s actors New Diamond Phillips Isn't that movie And then one of the Sheen kids One of those guys Or both of them who knows Actually both of them That's Charlie Sheen They were both there I don't remember Charlie Sheen in that though I don't remember the movie that well I don't remember the soundtrack And I remember the soundtrack And I remember the shot of them all Doing all the Walk together Where they're all the characters And they're all looking off I just checked And you're right It was John Bon Jovi Blaze of Glory John Bon Jovi John Bon Jovi It's not who I thought It's that thing too It's my fish costume for next year What was it? 12 Years a Slave That movie That movie 12 Years a Slave Didn't see the movie, missed the movie But I heard Steve McQueen directed it And I'm like I didn't even know he was still alive And let alone made that movie Like it seemed so disparate That Steve McQueen, the old action hero Car driving Muscle car made that movie And it turns out no It's just a British director named Steve McQueen Completely never knew Okay But this is one of those things Yeah, no, but this is one of those things That got solved immediately With the smart device Which If not for the smart device I'd have just gone the whole rest of my life Thinking The old muscle car action hero from the 60s and 70s and whatever Went on to direct The 12 Years a Slave I just would have assumed that's Because that's the name that they said was the director And that's the only other connotation I had So yeah, sometimes it's nice to have The thing you were like That's really interesting I had no idea Why, I see It's a different thing with the same name It's actually not this uncommon The name you might think Yeah What was the song Oh Blade Runner is a fantastic movie It was a really fantastic movie Talk about the Talk about the The David Bowie Blade Runner Talk about the David Bowie ability To do anything Through himself Wow One of my favorite Movies, Labyrinth David Bowie I liked it, it was the one Where it says it just called The Man That Felt Earth He's like, it's kind of a convoluted Yeah, the Man That Felt Earth Back when The writer, the director And everybody involved In making a movie Might have been experimenting A lot It's a movie that It's about, I guess, an alien Who comes down and Collects a bunch of wealth And I think he's trying to get home again Because he's got this family That you see these little clips of And they're like, he's living in this little Thomas Jerome Newton Played by David Bowie is an alien Who has come to Earth in search of water To save his home planet A lawyer, Oliver Farnsworth Played by Buck Henry Thomas uses his knowledge of advanced technology To create profitable inventions While developing a method to transport Water, Thomas meets Mary Lou Since Candy Clark A quiet hotel clerk And begins to fall in love with her Just as he is ready to leave Earth Thomas is Intercepted by the US government And his entire planet is threatened Yeah And it Don't remember how exactly it ends Because I think it just sort of Ends slightly psychedelic They're just like, okay, well, we spent Five months making a movie Let's put an ending on it And be done It's sort of how I remember Listen, I feel like For a long time Movies weren't that worried about the ending No We're just like an expression They were like, I think that's enough Yeah So it is very easy to point it out Because there was All movies Sort of followed Pretty basic Formulas For a long time And then they just completely stopped And then they started right back up again To the point now where it's all now the same movie So I'm confused All the same movie Steven Ranges said there's a Blade Runner Three that's coming out Yeah, I've heard that's Being worked on So is it based on What Well, because one was a remake They had the movie and then they re-did the movie Basically No, I mean they did It was a very like the reboot Of the Star Wars is it was like a treatment Of a very similar plot Yes, that is true It was a new movie, okay It was in the future, right Okay, so was the second movie So the first one was based off The book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick But then I'm seeing that there are Two There are more Blade Runner books There's like a whole series written by Somebody named K. W. Jeter Which makes me very Concerned About the The direction of a series I mean, unless it's a series of books And they're good I just I find I had no idea Oh, she's bringing up David Lynch Yeah, David Lynch Of David Lynch Masterful And I need to re-see Lost Highway All I can remember from Lost Highway Is the like Extremely long intro where you just see The highway at night and it's like You're a car going down the center With the lines coming down the middle Because I remember driving through a desert once Like that, very much, like that When I saw that, it was like made such a big Impressions on me, it was like, I know exactly What this feels like I don't remember the movie at all I just remember the sort of intro Footage Dude, okay So I searched Blade Runner 3 So It was leaked in January of this year That Blade Runner 3 is in development That would be weird Because the first movie The first movie didn't do well in theaters It became kind of a cult thing later And the second one didn't do very well In theaters either So that's interesting But I just think it's funny that I googled Like Blade Runner 3 or whatever And then in the suggested Questions in Google It's being adapted for TV Is Deckard a replicant or not Is the dog in Blade Runner 2049 real How old is Harrison Ford So So you said something very Interesting I thought there You said it didn't do very well in theaters When did it come out Are you saying Blade Runner came out before theaters No, no, not the first one Not the first one Not the first one Yeah, 82 it came out But you want to know in 2049 What was that? 2017 Yeah, I was going to say 2017 or 18 No, you can't blame the pandemic So what I'm thinking of Is No, I was thinking about how things stream Now This is a new thing It was pre-streaming But it was Okay I remember because Brian bought the DVD So Because I did not see that in the theater I saw that streaming I have to tell you, I liked the movie overall But it was too dang long It was so long So I just watched Avengers Endgame again recently And that movie is 3 hours and 15 minutes And for me personally It goes by really fast So it's just But Blade Runner Blade Runner 2049 was an interesting movie I enjoyed it But it's 2 hours and 43 minutes long And it felt like 4 hours It felt so long The pacing kind of matched The first movie Which Is very slow and deliberate It takes its time But the original movie wasn't 2 hours And 45 minutes long I feel like it was a weird mismatch Where it was very slow And deliberate But it was also almost 3 hours long And by the end I was like Are we done? Yeah That's funny That's good I liked it I didn't regret my time in the theater I will probably watch it again But I wasn't itching To buy the DVD I just watched The Benicio del Toro Remake Of It's on Netflix right now I wonder If you can get it in Denmark Justin, you'd probably really like it Because it's like old kind of It's got like a noir Detective kind of feel Or a noir thriller Is he the He's Sent out to Keep these people in this house While They go in it's the kind of Converter story What? No I don't know what this one is No, not Benicio What's the guy's name? Benicio del Toro's name Is Benicio del Toro See this isn't again Another example of And a week later After asking everybody Who's that actor who's not Benicio del Toro You would finally come to the answer And then get back to this next week I'll get back to you next week I'll tell you next week What I was thinking of Very good Benicio del Toro movie One of the streaming Available Thanks 12 Monkeys is a good movie Why is that not showing up Oh well I'll figure it out later But it's one that I thought That you would like Especially I Ended up thinking that it was Kind of slow But it was There was a lot of tension Just the pace that Justin could handle Guillermo del Toro Yes The wrong del Toro Yes Guillermo del Toro movies On I swear it's on Netflix Maybe it's not on Netflix What's it called Eric You're keeping me in the dark here Noir Here it is Nightmare Alley I heard about that I think you Justin I think you'll enjoy it a lot It's very Noir Very good acting But Yeah It sets everything up Everything is very carefully set up I like that Best Greenplay Adapted from a book Is LA Confidential Favorite movies to watch I read the book after And the book is different And goes into much more detail And kind of changes the characters around When you get to the screenplay But the screenplay if you watch that movie Thinking about the writing that goes into it There is not a Wasted shot Phrase scene They packed that movie Full of bare essentials of what is like A 400 page book Down into a movie It is artful Yes Nowadays they'd make it three movies Yeah no they would And actually I wouldn't have minded that Because The book is intensely Better But it gets it all across Now I want to watch movies Can we just have like I just I love Hanging out and watching movies That's one of my favorite things to do You could lie between a movie A good movie marathon I still have to finish Don't look up I got an hour I got an hour into it And I couldn't get any further Man you know what It's over I think you got to keep the tension going Or it's just not going to be It's going to be like I don't know I was just angry at everybody I got to go I got up and walked around a couple times While I was watching it I was like I can't I will say that It also happened when I was watching Nightmare Alley I walked around Until I was behind the couch And I crouched down And I was like Looking, watching the movie Holding onto the couch pillows From behind the couch It was a lot of tension I'm glad that we have Streaming at home Because that does not go over well In theaters One thing I have to say about that movie though I feel like That was as much as that Is like my favorite movie of the year Good night Mike I had this really strange Impression and I don't know That anybody would back me up on it That DiCaprio Was as good as an actor As he is I felt like he was doing an impression Of one of the kids from the Big Bang show That main character There were some scenes I was just like He's impersonating The character Not the actor But the character that the other actor Did for that whole series He's pretending to be that guy In some of the scenes he even looks Like him to the point where I was just That's a little weird That's a little strange Like even mannerism Some of it was just a little Little Turn off on a movie As soon as I realize I'm in a car chasing I'm like Forget it I love car chasing I understand I've seen enough of them But I recommend that if you are in a car chase You don't necessarily just Get out because that could Lead to you hitting the pavement Too hard Movies now that's all car chasing They just said hey let's get rid of all the plot In the storyline, the character development All that and let's just have a bunch of cars Are you talking about Fast & Fury is 27? Yeah Fast 9 when you're here, your family All of Garden Yeah, oh jeez Stop My goodness There's so much fun creativity out there I love stories I think somebody Mentioned Hitchcock I think it would be pretty funny to do a live Tweet of the birds with you My goodness, that would be funny I'm a huge Hitchcock fan I've watched everything I've watched the TV series Multiple times through The whole series Yes, the TV series You want to get to Hitchcock Get a little bit of that Hitchcock magic In every single one of those episodes That was a television show That he did for I don't know how many seasons Was it like the Twilight Zone And that it was like independent episodes Or was it Yes, they were all independent episodes And he would come out He MC'd it and he'd do something Yeah, I remember that In between And then there'd be commercials And he'd come back with a commercial And then they'd go back to the show Can you imagine You're such an epic director That you have your own theme song As a director That's bonkers That is Well, you know I could say there's a lot that have that I would say that you could Play the cue The music from Curb And you know Larry David's going to walk out on the stage And you just know it Yeah, but he also stars in it Yeah So like he's No, but no, Hitchcock never starred In his movies In his TV show Yeah, he had He always had cameos Like he would like walk on screen He didn't star in his movies He wasn't the face of his movies So it's more like I don't know You have It's a very unusual Relationship for a writer Director to have a theme song When the movies aren't connected In any way, they completely stand Alone, it's just very It's very unusual What you're thinking of came from the TV show Though I think I think that's what that's from Is it? You're thinking about the intro of the TV show And then he would have this Sort of almost The silhouette No, that was in his movies too The silhouette was the title It was after the title card It was like, you know how it would say New Line Cinema now or whatever So it was one of the cards before The movie Worth the end But yes, it was definitely there That was in the TV show If you watch The Birds The silhouette thing is a thing I might have been out of it Maybe someone in the chat room Can fact check me on that Yeah, I think he's quite Possibly the Greatest Director-Writer For Tension His ability to understand How To Create tension in the audience Yeah, that's the TV show Maybe Blair's never seen the movies No, I've seen I've seen quite a few movies And the other thing I love about his movies Tight 25 minutes long That's the other thing I love about his movies Short movies No, no, no You know who else is good at Building tension? Kubrick Very good His movies make me anxious But then there's also like There's different kinds of tension That Where you the audience Know what's coming But none of the actors know And then there's the other kind of tension Where the actors kind of have an idea Of what's happening and then you as the audience Are waiting to find out what it is Trying to catch up to them And then there's the kind of tension Where all the birds on the planet Have gone insane It's a very, yeah It's a very specific And also You're obsessed with Bodega Bay It's nice in Bodega Bay It is I like the Bodega Bay Bodega Bay is wonderful One movie I Like in recent years I enjoyed that had Like the fun kind of The actors know what happened Or some of the actors know what happened But not all of them do Knives out So good Just so well done I did the thing in the height of the pandemic When you could rent an entire movie theater For your own party or whatever This is after vaccines But still things were pretty tight And we We had All of our parents Both sets of parents for I think it's for Mother's Day We all watched Knives Out The six of us in an empty movie theater Yeah, it was great But yeah, that's great There's a new Knives Out coming out I've heard that It'll never be as good Now it's going to follow the formula In some way Yeah It won't be as surprising Or I'll just wait until everybody tells me It was better than the first And then I'll see it Just going with low expectations Even if it's good But hang on It's sort of like how all the Whatever, Oceans 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, whatever Movies, that's a heist movie Right All of them are good Because it's okay We'll do a heist movie Alright, there we go, let's do a heist movie You're doing a who done it A house room full of people That's not a new idea No, certainly not There's a million ways to perform it right And if you have good writers You should be able to come up with another who done it That's just fine It's not like what's the name Agatha Christie I wrote one murder mystery And now the genre's over Never, dude So there's that Poro movie coming out And I think it's already gotten some early reviews And they've been pretty bad I mean, you can do them wrong, sure Yeah Whatever, anyway If it's a Poro movie And it doesn't have that original actor guy Who was doing the Poro movies I don't know if it would be pretty hard Unless It's Kenneth Branha Branha Kenneth Branha Branha AKA Gilderoy Lockhart Death on the Nile Is that the one that's coming out? Yeah There's Gal Gadot in it And a bunch of people What's the worst movie you think you've seen recently? Oh I saw Red Notice Yeah, I was going to say Red Notice I didn't see that That one It's so bad It's really not good For the first 20 minutes I was like, they might be able to turn this And then it was just kind of like Oh no It was all about I think the Ryan Reynolds Kind of Improv joking Kind of his jokingness But yeah He makes an excellent Deadpool I just wish he would be something else besides Deadpool In other movies He has been He's so stuck on this one particular character now Because he's done Some really interesting Different work He found one he liked And now he's just that character always Yeah Because he's that character in real life Like if you see his social media Where he interacts with Hugh Jackman It's the same character Wait Chippendale Rescue Rangers No Steven Raine No It was so odd I think it's for adults The new Chippendale movie I really think it is It's going to be kid friendly But I think it is for The parents Because like Because I saw It really feels like It's for the people who watched Rescue Rangers when they were a kid It's not for today's children It will be They've done that a lot With Scooby-Doo and other things They've made the movies for the kids But it's not for the kids really Yeah Little too often I'm unsure about it But I'll see it I will see it I was hoping it was going to be an actual reboot Of Rescue Rangers Because they rebooted DuckTales It's so good But they cancelled it And I'm so sad about it David Tennant is Scrooge McDuck in it Oh wow Danny Pooty and Bobby Moynihan And Ben Schwartz are Huey Dewey and Louie And then What's her name Kate McCuchy is Who? Webby Are you familiar with Garfunkel and Oates? Oh yeah Yes It's a really good cast They're so good But they cancelled the show And I'm so mad at Disney for cancelling it And then they were like Okay sounds decent John Mulaney and Andy Samberg Are they just now announcing stuff Out of their first pitch meeting? Pretty much Like what if we did this Announce it Oh absolutely Oh yeah we should do that later Yeah And so I thought it was just going to be a reboot like that And I got all excited And then it's this weird movie I don't know My least favorite movie that I saw recently Was The Tomorrow War That Oh you're right that was so bad Oh my god you're right And it was just like So convoluted and just Bad There were so many plot holes I could not get over it I didn't understand The problem is I understood That they were just like oh okay and here's a problem Let's just ignore it Okay and then oh well Isn't this too much of a coincidence Yeah let's just ignore it And oh so how do we end this Just Ignore it What drove me nuts was They pulled the main character Out of the past Into the future To study the aliens And then they sent him Back in time With the cure And then they were like oh snap We don't We need to use it right now And it's like no but okay So first of all You could have 28 years to do the Science You don't have to send him to the future To send samples back It's been 28 years Doing the science The Tomorrow War I don't know if you saw it Oh yeah Okay so It's like they remember how time works sometimes But they forget that it goes the slow way Martin McFly comes back in The DeLorean instead of like Three days earlier to warn Doc He comes back 10 minutes And only has time to hand him a note Ah Doc all out You know But my problem with that movie Too is they tried to hit All of the scenarios That you would see in a good movie And said hey let's do a Father-daughter relationship Check let's do a Husband and wife issues check Check let's lose The mother Check okay let's have So stop And then because then you ended up With going to the Future running into the daughter And then needing the father to go To the place and the father And son are fighting No stop it You You could have made The movie without trying to include Those things Checking boxes and the movie Would have been better and yes All of the plot holes Yes all the why did you And like why are we taking What's the point of taking These people to the Future aren't they We have them now can we go back In time can we just You're now convinced Gord To watch the tomorrow war It's so worth it Just grab a nice Get a nice beverage get a nice Something to eat I don't know Just reward yourself in some way This is how I get through Bad films is I like you know Find a way to call out the things That are bad about them in some way Drinking game you know Watch it with somebody where you Can pause and be like okay What the hell just happens And the reason that one is I Definitely have seen worse Completely worse things The the thing is though That usually a Badly written movie Badly produced is a badly produced Movie it's a badly shot movie It's really badly edited movie It's a bad everything and you can Tell pretty quick oh this is a bad Movie the problem with tomorrow Wars is it looks like a good Movie it has Animation that's phenomenal Good movie animation It has all of the things a Real good movie could have But then all of the things That engage you with that are Awful and that's where this is Yeah Just make a bad movie you could tell Okay I'm gonna watch a bad movie I Can tell because they edited this One scene with 40 edits because They never got the shot right Oh Steven Rain is saying Movie three rambunctious pos Podcasters must save earth from Evil in space and I think that is The plot of moonfall actually Oh interesting Except it's one rambunctious Podcaster played by jack black And gord we got we got Somebody beat us to the punch we had the idea On show live of Of a space program Capturing an asteroid And wanting to bring it to earth and then Have people put either paying to have Land there or paying not to have it land near Them and it's a little bit of a Don't look up now it's gonna look like Yeah totally yeah Yeah so gord Gord says don't pay attention to Time travel time travel mechanics But the problem is that when They set very specific mechanics Which is you can go 28 years In the future you'll be there for a week and then You're coming right back here and you can bring Things with you Just based on that Alone It's just very funny to me that they were like We're gonna send you to the future for seven days And in those seven days you have to do The science and figure out the thing Instead of remembering That you could bring it back bring it back It's been 28 years Getting ready For what's getting ready for the Science Also when you When you open the pan doors Box of time traveling And start future time traveling Like this and actually this is a This is the premise This is entirely the premise of my Jack feedback story Was that he creates an army Of him right he goes back in time A day a day a day and just collects himself And it's like get on the ship and He goes back a day get on the ship I'll go back an hour get that guy Put him on and he creates this whole army Of him to go and fight this Because he's planets getting attacked And they don't have a military So he creates one of himself By going back increments of time And kidnapping himself and making him Recruiting himself to go join the sink They could have done that in that Movie too which is instead of Take those okay so you took everybody Tuesday and you sent them into the future Hey why don't you jump Back to Monday When everyone was still here And send them to him on Monday And then Send them all about here Sunday And grab all those same people And send them to the future too Or you could just keep doing it Justin have you seen Bender's Big Score The first Futurama movie Because that happens Exactly in it with The benders There's a scene in Futurama Where there's a scene In Futurama where they're going Through some kind of Nope Nope no It's not Futurama at all It's The Minions movie That's what it is It's the Minions movie And they're watching Something and it's like There's a scientist who's showing off All of his time travel stuff And he's got all of his time People himself that he's gone And collected and they're all there Working together And then one of them does something And kills himself and then they go Oh no that's the first one And then they all died They all disappear and that's really funny I thought it was well done Yeah very good That first Futurama movie Actually is some of the best Treatment of time travel I've ever seen That's awesome Because they talk about When there's Time travel duplicates Self-correcting paradox That kills one of them basically So you can't And then They actually Show how things that happened in the past That were part of a time travel story Went Into What happened in a way that made sense So it was like the Mobius strip existed And all this kind of stuff So they did a really good job In my opinion of that In games since I brought that up before They do a pretty good job of explaining Time travel in that one as well There's still some problems with it But Since they talk about timelines It kind of fixes it So the past is the past The future is the future when you go back in time That's part of your future And if you change anything That creates a new timeline It's like you're off the track It makes the most sense Timelines branching realities Yeah That's the only way it makes sense And if you've seen Loki That you can see that Like a bit more They delve into that a bit more I liked that a lot actually I liked Loki a lot That was great. That was my favorite of the Marvel shows I think I got halfway through Hawkeye I didn't finish Hawkeye yet I like that it's cute Yeah The Winter Soldier Falcon Winter Soldier one was It was fine but it was like It was a little more of a slog It felt very normal Like very pedestrian It was like You gave me WandaVision and Loki And now I have this Agreed It's like a crime fighting duo Military crime fighting duo Yeah Kurt Russell Sun in it Looking like the old man from Up That's right No sudden move That was the Benicio del Toro movie I saw recently That was good It's on one of the streaming things Okay well speaking of timelines Yes It's time Say good night Blair Good night Blair Say good night Justin Good night Justin Good morning Justin I usually remember it's late Slash early Good Good night Kiki Good night everyone Thank you for joining us For another episode of TWIS We have had so much fun What fun music and movies and Cultural conversations After the science thing was done Have a wonderful day Have a wonderful night Stay healthy Stay curious We'll see you again next week