 Oh, that was a great shot to start on, Justin. Welcome everyone to this very obviously exciting episode of This Week in Science. This is our live podcast broadcast. Weekly Science News Discussion Curiosity Talk Show. And as you know, stuff like that, Yann and other things, maybe edited out by Rachel, but Rachel's the editor. So it's kind of up to Rachel what she takes out and what she doesn't. So who knows? Who knows? To be fair, to be fair, that countdown music that we have at the beginning of the show is it just happens to be the same thing I play when trying to get to sleep at night. And so it's just- My family listens, the boys in my house like to listen to this chill hop station. And there's one particular chill hop song that is also a wake-up alarm for the iPhone, I believe, or for Apple or whatever. And one morning it was playing all over the house or at least in kitchen through the Sonos system. And it kept playing the same little thing over and over and over again. And now every time I hear the song, it's like I get angry. Chill hop is not supposed to make you angry. You had one job to hop alarm. One job, but this is interesting social psychology and the impact of music on our emotions and our mental health. So many great questions about that out there. I don't know, I don't think we're talking about that today, but we have all sorts of stories that we're gonna be bringing up for the show tonight. Remember, right now is the time to click the likes and notifications and tell everybody else to start watching or listening because we are starting live as long as everybody's happy. Who is the audio? Is it us? Are we good? C'est du bon? C'est du bon. C'est du bon? Everything. Everything. C'est du bon? Everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. J'ai fou? No, I don't know the words. Not so chill, not so chill. So let us begin again. Some scratchiness in the audio. I don't know. That's, you sound good to me. Do I sound okay to you? I wonder if they can hear the bakery downstairs. Could be the bakery downstairs, I don't know. It's a little scratchy in the morning. Hey, Rachel, you're gonna do some post-processing. Uh-oh, unless that gets worse. It could be StreamYard because that is also the thing we're on the internet. Anyhow, yes, we're just gonna roll with it. You're listening to the solar flare. It could be, I seriously was worried about Eurovision getting canceled or taken off of the interwebs because of the power outage. The same kind of solar flare that hit 30 years ago, it took out the power grid in Sweden and Mamo Sweden was hosting Eurovision this year. I was waiting Saturday for Eurovision to not make it to America. I'm always the concerns that you could have for a solar flare. It must not be that dangerous because if Eurovision is the top of that list of things to worry about. But what it does tell me is that Sweden learned their lesson about infrastructure. They hardened it. They hardened it and not every other country has or as we say in the United States, every state is a little different. Oh, the grid. The grid is up. We are starting this show in three, two, this is twist. This week in science episode number 970, recorded on Wednesday, yes, it's recorded on Wednesday, May 15th, 2024. Solar flares make all the people look up. You could say that title to like the beat of a particular song. But anyway, I'm Dr. Kiki and today we will fill your head with space, beetle battles and orchestrics. But first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The following hour of programming is not going to sell you a product. There is no supplement we recommend you buy. No Wonder Beverage Broth or Pill. Nothing to put on your skin and your hair under your armpits. No glowing reviews of new gadgets, gizmos or apps. The style you have now is better than anything we could recommend for you. You will not save time, get more done, grow a bigger brain, feel better, live longer or have a more satisfying love life by buying anything from us. Just spending time thinking and learning along with us. We'll do all of that and more for free because nothing improves the human condition more dramatically than thinking and learning new things. And the only thing guaranteed to deliver out of this world results with nearly zero adverse side effects is this week in Science, coming up next. I've got the kind of mind I can't get enough. I want it in every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. Science to you, Kiki. And a good science to you too, Justin and everyone else out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week In Science. We are back again on a Wednesday night to talk about science and all the things that we thought were interesting to discuss with you. I kind of saw auroras. I forgot to look up on Friday night because I was watching the recording of the second semifinals for Eurovision. So I messed up there. But apparently we had really great auroras down in Oregon, all the way down to California. Incredible, like class four, class five maxed out, I think. Solar flare leading to incredible electron storms across the magnetosphere and our atmosphere, just amazing this past weekend. I did get to see, I took, but one of the things that was interesting is a lot of people were like, I went out, I don't think, I mean, it was just glow, it was whatever, but then they used their phones. Long exposure and the phone chips, the CCDs, were able to capture the pictures of the auroras, better than our eyes. So kind of neat, kind of interesting. Our eyes aren't that great. When it comes down to it, our brains are awesome, but we don't do long exposures as well as a timer on a lens on a chip on a camera. It's kind of unhelpful, with regular humiliation to have that. Yeah, but these solar storms, they keep going and there's some interesting stuff out there. It is the height of solar storm season. So I have some stories about some players. Is it just hitting outside of the planet? Like I haven't seen anything, I haven't noticed anything. Really, in Denmark? Yeah, yeah. Have you been outside? It hasn't been dark. Oh, no, I haven't been outside. That's probably why. Being outside after dark during the... I think it's still, we're like, yeah, we're far north, but we're also, I feel like it's hitting because of the tilt of the planet or something weird, like, and it does stay light a bit later here. But that's, yeah, I don't think it would just be all aurora borealis all the time. I didn't notice anything. Not all the time, but, you know, after dark in the Northern Hemisphere. You've been seeing stuff in L.A., you know, like you would think everybody would be in on that. All of them all over the place. Yeah, tonight on the show I have stories about some other flares, some dirty dirt, weaponized beetles, and shark food, and of course, as usual, thoughts about brains and possibly the internet. What do you have, Justin? I've got wrong-way astronomy, odder than Jesus, orcas uberalis, and you think you got it rough, right? Cave bear hunting in the Stone Age. Oh, yeah, nope. I would really prefer, I really, really prefer trying to just, you know, watch Eurovision over a VPN. Yeah. Yeah, it's kids today all the way back, but, you know, really, you're comparing yourself to people who did cave bear hunting with wooden spears, right? They're just like us. Might be better to be kids today. You know, there's like people magazine celebrities. They're just like us. We do have magazines now. It's like, early humans. They're just like us. Way rough. Except, wait, wait, wait. It's so good to be kids today. Yeah, much better to be kids these days. As we jump into the show, for all you entitled kids out there, just know how good you've got it. We are gonna remind you, I wanna remind you right now, that our show broadcasts live every Wednesday night, 8 p.m. Pacific Time on Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube, and you can find us by looking for this week in Science, Twist or Twist Science all over the place. A few variations out there. If you go to twist.org, that's our website where you can find show notes, links to stories, other stuff that's going on. But, you know, that's pretty much it, right? Now it's time for the science. All right, so I brought up the start of the show with the solar flares because the top story that I wanna start with tonight has to do kind of with flares in a way, but not from a star, from our galaxy. Yeah, just published in the Astrophysical Journal this last week, researchers have reported their discovery of huge, and this is from the title of the paper, huge magnetic toroids in the Milky Way Halo. Toroids, you said? Toroids, I say, yes. Oh my goodness, I'm going on as far as I can without admitting that I have no idea what a toroid is. And I'll just say, that's quite impressive to have huge toroids in your halo galactic halo. It's an asymmetric, geometric distribution of a magnetic field above and below the galactic plane. So there are reversals in the direction. So similarly to how we watch the eruptions from the surface of the sun, that those eruptions are often brought about by magnetic fields that come out and have these reversals and in the way that they erupt, they often cause a redistribution. And I guess it sends solar flares, so the energy from the sun out faster, pulsars, you know, not pulsars, but anyway. So the wobbliness within the magnetic field is what allows the solar flares to escape? Kind of, really? Yeah, yeah. And so there's the wobbliness. It's kind of like the magnetic field in our planet. We like to think that it's just like a magnet. We have our north and south pole and, you know, oh, it comes out the north and then the magnetic field goes around and it goes back in the south or, yeah. And whoop, it's just perfect. But we've come to realize that there are these weird little outbursts from places around the planet where the magnetic field is differently distributed. And so that it's similar to, because the iron core in the center of our planet is the source of that magnetic field, the dynamo for the magnetism that keeps it going. The sun doesn't have that iron core, but it has a whole bunch of stuff very tightly packed that are moving around and it is the source. The energy is the source of that magnetic field and it's not evenly distributed. Kind of like hard to predict, right? So these researchers were looking at our own galaxy and in the distribution of materials within the galaxy, they were looking using the 500 meter aperture spherical radio telescope and they looked at a bunch of pulsars. They were looking at the rotational magnetism of 634 pulsars at a bunch of different latitudes. Basically, it's hard for us to see along the galactic plane. So we have to look kind of off of it based on where we are located. And so they're looking at these Faraday rotation measures and getting an idea of what's going on, where, when, how. And in what they were looking at, they determined that there are some very interesting shapes that are coming from the galaxy. That there is magnetic energy kind of similar to the kind of thing that leads to the solar flares from our own sun, but from our galaxy. So I'm just thinking about, you know, we talk about the solar cycle and the solar flare and you know, oh, it comes and it goes and blah, blah. We know nothing about like the galaxy cycle. Is there, is there a change over a long period of time related to surges in magnetic activity from pulsars and other bodies within the galaxy related to the black hole at the center of the galaxy? All sorts of great things. But yeah, I think this is a very, just related to what we just experienced in the Northern Hemisphere. This is a very exciting, interesting discovery for our galaxy and we can relate to it a little bit better. I don't know how many satellites did our galaxy mess up recently? Who knows with these toroidal magnetic fields? I don't know, I don't know. But I like thinking about things at small scales and big scales and I think it's an interesting, you know, interesting comparison to try and kind of put these things into perspective. Yeah, it's a scale that I can't go up ahead. It's 100,000 light years across our galaxy. It's a little bit bigger than I can hold in my head and be like, oh. Yeah, so solar flares, they tossed a whole bunch of energetic articles from the sun. Oh, that was fun. Maybe Sweden didn't lose its electrical grid. It's great. Yeah. I wonder how that works. There are some devices nowadays for smart houses where you can plug into the power lines that come into your house. Kind of at the breaker box in your house to measure the energy that is coming in and how much different circuits in your house are using at certain times of the day. So you can kind of manage your energy usage better. And we were looking at our energy usage and it was really fascinating to watch during the solar storm compared to the days before when there had not been as much solar activity. And when the solar storm hit, there was a lot of, it shifted a lot. There was a lot of variability. You were recording it, basically. That's amazing. Through our breaker box. Yeah. Our power did not go out though and we were able to watch Eurovision and that made me happy. So. Made everything okay. It made everything okay. I don't know. I mean, baby Lasagna didn't win but I'm all right with Switzerland. Do you want to talk about space things? I don't know what the words you just said were before. Yes. So. In a story that is completely upending what I thought I knew about how things work in space. And continuing along, the galactic halo. Team of MRI team. Oh yeah, I have one more picture. So I'm going to do one more picture of this galactic halo because I forgot to show this one. So while you say, you can go on but I'm going to share this really cool picture here. Now I want to see the picture. Okay. Yeah. So there's the galactic halo. So you got the galaxy is there. There's a whole spinning galaxy in the middle. And the halo is like this fuzzy blob of like sort of outskirts, outer edges if you were of the galaxy. With our Milky Way galaxy. Okay. So I think I got this picture of this 100,000 light year across thing in my head. Pretty good. Then a team of MIT researchers, including several undergraduate students uncovered three of the oldest stars in the universe. Stars that formed between 12 to 13 billion years ago in the far flung distant far away, not back in not in the distant far away parts of our universe, mind you. But these stars they found are right there in that Milky Way's halo. Wait, what? What? Exactly. Okay. So like our universe, we're like looking at like 14 billion years, 14 and a half. I mean, and then if you. Yeah, depending on who you ask. Yeah. And if you account for extrapolation of space time moving apart and all that expansion, then maybe 25 billion years. But what in our own, what our galaxy isn't supposed to be that old? Yeah, the oldest stars that we see are usually in this range. And they're always like, oh, you're looking at a galaxy that formed 12 billion years ago or a star that's billions of years old out there in the faint distant regions of the universe. Super, super far away and long. Toward the beginning of time. Yeah. So these stars are here now in our, on the halo of our Milky Way. So what? They're, they're, they're nomads. They've been traveling. Yeah. So these are dubbed SAS stars for small, equated stellar system stars. And these ancient celestial bodies were once part of their own primitive galaxies before being captured by our own Milky Way as our Milky Way grew up. So today these, these are remaining as sort of the sole survivors of that original galaxy. Circling the outskirts of our current Milky Way. Yeah. Super fast speeds. Amazingly, this discovery took place in a classroom. They were analyzing data that was collected over years from the Magellan clay telescope. Oh, fun. The assignment was sort of an exercise for how to search for ancient stars. So, you know, this is the ones that we are normally talking about really ancient galaxies and what have you. Maybe almost too far away for, to do this analysis. You can do this on stars that you can get maybe a better view of. And so what you do is you look for particular features in the stellar spectrum, corresponding to specific wavelengths of light that correspond to particular abundance of specific elements. And in the early universe, it was mostly hydrogen and helium. It was very low abundance of other elements like strontium and barium. A lot of the heavy metals aren't going to be seen in the stars. So using these techniques in the class that they learned in the classroom, the students were combing through the star data of Magellan clay and eventually pinpointed three stars that hadn't been studied before but had super low elemental abundances that hinted at, that fit with at least, in ancient origin, like early days of the universe. So like, oh, okay, what is it? Because you wouldn't expect them to have certain elements because of the age and maybe the size. So they go, oh, okay, well, this mystery is pretty big but the mystery didn't end there because these ancient stars don't fit with the rest of the galaxy. The, that we're in, it's classroom full of investigative scientists decided, oh, hey, why don't we just not leave the mystery? Why don't we figure out why this doesn't make sense? I did some more digging this covered that there was something else about the stars that didn't make sense. They were going against the galactic flow. What? They were doing what is called the retrograde motion where a star planet is moving the wrong way around the world of the tracks, like a solar system or even a galaxy kind of forms the spinning hub. And so when they see something that's going the other direction, the only place you would expect to see that is if... It was captured and it's like, one of these kids is doing its own thing. In this case, it's an old star. Yeah, so this retrograde mystery combined with the ancient elemental makeup of the stars, mystery kind of actually helped pinpoint the solution to the mystery. The only place you would expect to see the spectral makeups is in a galaxy older than ours. And the only place you would expect to see stars that move in a direction against the flow of the rest of the galaxies, stars that move in the wrong direction is if they were part of a different galaxy. So most likely these stars are part of an ancient galaxy that got merged or absorbed or captured by our own at some point in our history. So they then even went further and looked at previously published research into Milky Way halo stars and looked through the composition of ones that had been studied that had low strontium and varying abundances. And they also discovered that those stars, 65 other stars that they found, were also going the wrong way. So what does that tell us? It tells us that our galaxy ran into another galaxy maybe or there was a lot going on and our little baby galaxy got stuck. Or what does it tell us? What's the bottom line? So part of it seems really weird. Like I thought the really old stuff was far away but why would all the old stuff be far away? Wouldn't everything be everywhere in the galaxy? Yes. Well, the idea is that it was because of expansion that the old stuff is far away and the newer stuff is closer and it just expanded, right? And everything, we are the center of the universe, right? I feel like, I feel like you are. I feel like I'm slightly, I'm slightly off center. Just ever so slightly. Has Justin gone retrograde? Yeah, it just means that like, yeah, of course, like the most ancient stars in the universe, they're also part of the Milky Way. I'm surprised that these stars last that long but I guess maybe if you don't have the heavy metals to burn off, then you can hang around longer? Or maybe, I mean, doesn't it depend on just how much stuff you have to burn? And if you're a candle with a big long wick and a lot of wax, you're gonna burn longer, right? Even against that galactic wind. So the other thing is then, you know, this actually is a fantastic opportunity now because normally we can tell that stars like this exist in super faint galaxies that we have captured in the far distant parts of the universe. Now it turns out we can study stars that likely make up those galaxies right here in our own backyard. Fantastic. Yeah, I mean, I think also on top of that, it's like, okay, we can look at the old stars closer and maybe look at a little more of the dynamics of their evolution and what makes this old stars tick? You know, it's like figuring out why certain humans live so long. You know, what's going on there? Oh, I know, they don't eat ice cream. That's what I heard. I don't know, if some of them drink lots of whiskey, I have no idea. Yeah, but not ice cream. No, that's, well, that's boring. I don't eat ice cream a lot either. I'm gonna live forever. But also the idea that the Big Bang or whatever led to the initiation of all of the first stars and the early stars and that then made way for the later galaxies, stars like our own. You know, what were the dynamics early on that would lead to them spreading out all over the place? You know, what kind of physical dynamics, like billiard, when you break billiard balls, right? That, you know, they would spread out all over the place and not just be like we were thinking, you know, have always kind of textbook considered, just they'd be the farthest away. You know, what else is there? The thing I was also thinking is that like, I didn't know that these stars would be, I didn't think a star would last 12, 13 billion years old or however old these are. That's in the range where these are 12, 13 billion. I didn't think a star could last that long. Also, because our own sun that I thought was like as good a sun as you could have was like, I think it's supposed to have like a eight billion year run or something like this. But maybe, you know, there's different dynamics. But what occurred to me is that like, if we captured an entire ancient galaxy, we could have captured 12, 13 billion year old planets. Yes. Are they just stars or are they solar systems? Yeah, what's out there? But if they are old stars and don't have the heavy metals and maybe they didn't gather them as they traveled through the universe, how could they have planets that would have all the things that would lead to the sci-fi, ancient alien civilizations? But these, like, these are really cool questions. Well, the problem with, the problem, you was it that showed the three? The three body problem? It's really a four body problem because they got a planet involved, but. There's a book. There's a book. It's hard to read. The thing is like. It takes motivation. It's more than a planet. You need an atmosphere. That turns out that's the tricky one. There's plenty of planets. There's plenty of water. There's plenty of elements for life. Apparently what we're finding is we find all these exoplanets out there in the galaxies. The really hard thing is atmosphere. And on that note, James Webb just spotted the, I think it's first rocky planet with an atmosphere. It doesn't necessarily mean that it is habitable or anything else. Ooh, I hit a light. That was like a bell ringing, but. A atmosphere out there. When? Well, Venus has a great atmosphere, but it's not great. Depends on who you are. Who you are. I think that this, it does answer a whole bunch of questions. So people in the chat, I think, thought I was asking about the age of our galaxy specifically. I mean, our own solar system is about four and a half billion years old. How old is the Milky Way galaxy beyond that? And then, what does that mean? And we are guesstimating the age of these stars by the comparison of elemental ratios. Which those might not be correct either. So it might not, but if it's so far, so good. It's interesting. Look, they're quite, I have many questions and I'm sure the astrophysicists and cosmologists do as well. I see you thinking. Well, I mean, because the idea is that those elements are all that could have been used to form stars in the early guys. That was the thing. And so when we saw that far, far away in what looked like early galaxies, oh, okay, that makes sense. This is all that was there to make up the elements. And then we see these stars and we can say, ah, they fit the early universe. There's a possibility that they're not that old and that the other elements burn off in time. Maybe they just got started in an area of the galaxy. They just got started in an area of our solar system or just space. I mean, they are going retrograde, which is, you know, they are not traveling in the way that our solar system. Right. Our galaxy even. Our galaxy. They're not from our galaxy. Yeah, but maybe they came from a part of space that just didn't have a lot going on. They're big questions. We need to get our faster than light space travel on everybody. But before we do that, now we can send robots. It's totally fine. And right now we have robots on Mars, which is great. And so these robots have been able to check out the ratios of isotopes in the sediment in Gale crater in Mars. And researchers looking at data coming from the Curiosity rover, just published in Nature Geosciences from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Copenhagen. They found that the photo dissociation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to carbon monoxide and then further reductions because you have, you know, basically think about like an oxidative stress reduction reduction that results in matter that has what's considered a carbon-13 isotopic content. And so when they measure the isotope ratio between carbon-13 and carbon-12, there's an abundance of carbon-13. And this is low compared to our own Earth's sedimentary matter. So they measured an abundance of 0.92% to about 0.99% and the Earth's is about 1.04%. So yeah, there's a little possible overlap and there's maybe some, you know, there's possible further measurements that could be, could remain. But based on what they have measured out of the atmosphere and this area, Gale crater, which we are like, there has been water there. This is a place where this carbon and the isotopes, we're looking at possible biological life evidence. But we need the evidence, right? So based on their analysis, they suggest that what we're pretty much looking at is the atmosphere breaking things up and UV radiation breaking carbon monoxide down and the fractionation that is in the upper atmospheres. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Fractionation. That's an awesome word. Fractionation. Yeah. Fractionation. That's a new word for me. Things get broken into fractions. But so in the atmosphere we have carbon monoxide saying it got reduced. It gets broken down into stuff like formaldehyde. Oh no, people don't like formaldehyde. But oh no, it's an organic compound that biological processes produce carboxylic acids. Also biological processes. Anyway, end result is, they think there's a lot of organic matter there, but they're not necessarily sure that it came from biological processes as opposed to UV and just other atmospheric and degradation processes. So where did the organic matter on Mars come from? Maybe we got to check it out. Fractionation. The fractionation of that carbon monoxide. Another great word. Fetalysis. This is why we have to just find actual fossils. Yeah. It turns out all the stuff that we thought would be special about life is just gone everywhere. Yeah. Anyway, carbon isotopes, different mechanisms that came probably not from actual life, but probably from sun fractionating everything. Oh no. But we can go back if we send our robots and we get Elon Musk to send his truck. This is my new, okay, my new idea is that the cyber truck is specifically not for people to drive. It's going to go to Mars and that he's actually trying to build a rover vehicle. I mean, why else would you build something right like that? But anyway, this is not science, but yeah. I have a confession to make. It's like the single-body, it's ugly, can't carry anything except maybe some research equipment. I have a confession to make. I absolutely love the look of it. You do not. I do. This is, this is. This might be the end of our relationship, Justin. No, this is what a kid of a certain age thinking the DeLorean was the most amazing car, what I thought cars of the future would look like when I was a child. This is exactly what I would have drawn. And I, when I saw that, I was like, oh, everybody's going to want that and love that. And then there's like people like, ah, I don't like it. I'm like, that's fine. At some point, there's going to be a bunch of these people or these used Tesla trucks that nobody wants. It's going to be great. And I'm going to be like, I'm going to have a fleet. I'm going to have a fleet of them. What was the car from the late 80s, 90s that was like a car truck? Well, there was the brat. Brad Pitt. There was like a movie and he was like, he turned and he was like... No, no, no, there was like the Azuzu brat. No. There was the Ranchero. No, people thought it was cooler than that. It was like longer, flat. It was like somebody took a sedan or a... I don't know. It was the worst. That was the other worst car ever in my mind. The Rancheros were... No. Stylin'. El Camino. El Camino. Yes. Thank you, Eric. Yeah. The El Camino. I would totally drive one of those. There's a certain link between the El Camino and the Cybertruck for me. And I think that that might be a reason that I have issues with it, but I don't know. I love the look of the Cybertruck. I've watched a couple of reviews where like none of the doors close all the way and it has problems. And it gets stuck in the snow. They'll figure that out. It's hard to start from scratch as an auto company. There's a lot of figuring out. But could you imagine if they put like the multiple directional like rover tires on it and it could drive all over and it's robotic and AI? Like it's going to Mars. I don't even have to do that. I don't even want it to be an electric car. I know. I just like the look of it. It's part of Musk's plan. I just think it looks cool. And I'm no fan of anything associated with the vehicle or any personalities associated with the vehicle or companies associated with the vehicle. I just think it's gorgeous. You said it was cool. But it also could be hot. Do you think it will be hot? I think it's hotter than Jesus. You know what else is hotter than Jesus? I don't know. Is that the name of a new reality show or something? Like it sounds like a dating show. Researchers have now found out that 23 was the hottest summer in the Northern Hemisphere in the past 2,000 years. Almost four degrees warmer than the coldest summer during that time period. What would Mark Twain have said? What would he say? Summer in San Francisco is hot and the hottest is ever. I'm sorry. I'm in a mood tonight. Mark Twain, not all of his quotes were as quotable as some of the famous ones. Some of them were just him kind of mumbling on about the weather in San Francisco. It's muggy today. That's a famous quote of Mark Twain. It's very muggy today, he was known to say. Summer in San Francisco is cold as the hottest day in hell. Back on track, back on track. Sorry, tell me a story. 2023, hottest year on record. Can we tell it's the hottest year on record? Because we have records that go all the way back to around 1850-ish. But that's not 2,000 years. How do we go back 2,000 years? Well, by using past climate information from tree rings. Tree rings can give us a clue into climate going back. Some of this is old trees. We can go back over 3,000 years. If we're looking at sequoias. Those are some of the oldest trees that, you know, they live for many, many, they can live for thousands of years of these trees. Beautiful trees, yes. But that's one data point in one place in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It's not good enough to tell us a global anything. But by also using archives of fossilized trees, we can also look at tree rings from the past as well. So they don't have to be a living tree. The great thing about the tree rings is you can read them if somebody has created a log that they've used to say support the foundations of a Roman house. Or something like that. You can actually still use or something that fell into a bog might be even better. Something preserved or possibly even petrified. Yeah, so there's all sorts of methods of acquiring these. But there's archives of this, these tree rings that can provide the context that have amily resolved absolutely dated information about past summer temperatures. And how do you know when the tree was? Well, what's amazing is they've gone through in these archives and these collections and matched up old fossilized tree rings to create a continuous map over the years. So in consulting this, yes, it looks like this is the hottest summer even allowing for the natural climate variations over hundreds of years. 2023 was still the hottest summer since the height of the Roman Empire exceeding the extremes of natural climate variability by half a degree. And it's not that things were even hotter that back then. It's just before that it's just sort of this is this is how far back we have a reliable point record at this point. It's not, it's not that, oh, but things were much hotter before the Roman days. No, that doesn't mean that it means it's about this is our window. But it's still the tree rings are still indicative of rain, moisture content, the ability to grow or not as they had to preserve their water or it was being, you know, the respiration was taking it away into the atmosphere. I think tree rings still are not like satellite data and that's one of the things, you know, people are, well, it's not satellite data, but we really, you know, we don't have satellite data that goes back Roman era. We don't. So we do have to use these indirect measures, but we can go back, you know, and look at not temperature necessarily or water that or the these indirect measures like carbon dioxide or carbon isotopes that are trapped in bubbles in in ice cores or in getting soil samples. There's all sorts of all sorts of ways, but this is one more piece of data, right? That's a specific measurement that agrees with a lot of the trends. The results are published in the journal Nature. Suggest also that at least for the northern hemisphere that what was it the Paris climate agreement something the accord. I wanted to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Has been breached, broken, zoomed past in the rear view, distant memory, party over, oops, out of time. We are, we are beyond that threshold. We are, but if Blair were here, she would remind us to talk about the fact that it's great that we have this data that's coming together to let us know what's happening, how quickly it's happening, where things are going, but there are a lot of engineers and scientists who are also working on solutions on looking at ways that aren't like, we're going to put our market stock stuff in a forest and oops, the forest burned down. Not just rearranging the, we're not, there's not just rearranging the deck chairs in solutions. We are actually trying to use technologies to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that is released, the amount of methane that's being released. NASA just picked its four missions that it's going to do primary tests on for measuring factors on Earth like methane emissions and two of them are going to end up receiving a bunch of funding to actually go into orbit around the planet and measure factors on the planet and keep track of what's going on. And measure it while it happens. Yes. Yeah, but the whole, yeah, the whole thing that the deck chairs are talking about, it's a big lie. Oh yeah, no, we've talked about it many times on the show. They've done as dedicated land to grow trees. And if you add up the land, it's more land than they have available to grow trees on. And yet that's, oh, we've done it and we pledged a thing. Wait, but you just said you're going to do it, but that doesn't mean you did it. No, no, no, but we pledged. We declared in a pledge that we would do it and that's the same thing. I feel like, no, I feel like I'm that kid who tried, I feel like I'm that kid who tried to sell chocolate bars around the neighborhood and people pledged a certain amount of money to buy chocolate bars. And then when I went to deliver, then yeah, I'd go to deliver the chocolate bars and they're like, oh, I don't have the money, I'm sorry. Oh no. Oh, don't. There might be a reason I'm not really a joiner in those kinds of efforts. I haven't really taught my child that he should go sell magazines or chocolates or want to buy some Girl Scout cookies? No. Anyway, I am an optimist and a realist. And I believe in humanity and our solutions. But you know, right now I might actually believe in tiger beetles even more. Tiger beetles. Tiger beetles. Tiger beetles are a cute little beetle. I mean, I don't know if you would think they were cute or not, but I think they're a cute little beetle. And they're the subject of a study that was just recently published in biology letters. Researchers realized that the the beetles were not being kind of normal when bats were around. And when bats were around with their echolocation and they're making noise, testing where all the insects were, the beetles respond with ultrasonic clicks. What? Yes. I thought they were just going to like hear it and just be like, OK, chill. I'm just waiting for the bats around. But they're sending a signal back at the bat. And when the bats change their echolocating signal, the beetles change as well. And the beetles are actually mimicking. So this is a kind of mimicry. We talk about mimic, like color mimicry, but this is acoustic mimicry. The beetles mimic a type of moth that makes this sound that is toxic to the bats. Yes. So these tiger beetles, they have advanced countermeasures. Great. They're like, ooh, the moths do this. They're bad for the bats. Ooh, bats don't like them. They make this sound. I'm going to learn how to do that. This is all, of course, not conscious thought. It's just, you know. Oh, don't assume it's not. Adaptation. Adaptation. We have that. When's the last time you were able to talk? We've had those conversations. I didn't have a great conversation with the last tiger beetle I stayed up late with. But these bats are really, they are locked. They are locked in a war of sound to predator-prey relationship with or against bats. They put, the researchers put these beetles into, it suspended them in areas where bats were and played the sounds of the bats. And let me see if I can play this for you. If I can get to the right screen. I'm going to share it for you and see if the audio works. So we have a, I don't know if you hear it, but it's kind of like a, it's a very high pitch. You hear that at all? Yeah. I heard that the first time I heard it. Yeah. And the second, it's got a, got a very different, interesting sound to it. And so this sound that the tiger beetles make, when it hears bat echolocation, it is made by its four wings and how it moves the wings because the wing, the four wings contact the hind wings. And because of the wings interacting, it creates these wing, these clicks from the beats of the wings. And it's doing this in response to hearing the bat. Yes. So that's conscious. It's, now it could be an instinctual, stimulant or reflex. Like somebody, like the laughing when they get tickled or something, it's just... Or yeah, or the kick you make when your knee gets, that tendon on your knee gets poked by a doctor. I don't know. But they're doing more research to confirm their mimicry hypothesis, but they think that this is one of the first known insect species to be actually mimicking something from like another, acoustically mimicking another species that is toxic. So this kind of, what they say, the nocturnal acoustic world is something that needs a lot more study. Yeah. Tiger beetles. They're my new favorite beetles. And they, yeah. Now they're going to do lots of studies on tiger beetles and find out how many of them can do this and which ones can do this. All right. Everybody from Australia in the chat right now, raise your hand. Everybody there? My Australian friends? I don't know. We made too much fun of the Australians. No, we have some. Anyway, they're not here right now, or at least they're not saying they're here because what Australians apparently eat lots of shark? I mean, I, yeah, well, look, sharks aren't fish, fish. They're fish, but they're not fish, fish. They're fish. They're fish. They're get the cartilaginous. Not all the way through. But anyway, sharks, they're pretty awesome. Lots of them are endangered. Sharks are great. And they get a bad rap for being hammerheads and jaws and I don't know, megalodon and all that kind of stuff. But researchers published in Marine and Fresh Water Research this month their study of looking at the sharks in the fish markets in a lot of areas in Australia and checking, as we've done sometimes, to see if the DNA matched the name on the labels. What do you think? Fishmongers, based on the history that we've like, you know, genetic sampling at stores and sushi restaurants and everything else and this long history of these stories, fishmongers are liars. I don't think they're liars, I think. They are just, or they can't tell the difference between the fish. Somebody along the way has decided that a fish is a certain kind of fish and that's what's being sold. Who knows whether it's the store, whether it's the fisherman, whether, you know, it's in a big crate of fish. It got all carved up and suddenly it is. Oh, that's even greater. You can't, you don't know, you've lost your source. You have no traceability of a food product. Look, I think, and I think it might be that nobody really wants to be a fishmonger. So nobody does it more than a couple months before like coming home every night. Fish can be delicious. And your spouse tells you, hey, you know, you need to either, we need to break up or you need to stop being a fishmonger. And so they quit. And so nobody in the fishmongering industry has more than six weeks of experience. And that might be why nobody can identify with this. Your speculation is very entertaining. Turns out that overfishing is really the big problem for the decline in fisheries around the world, not just sharks, but sharks. Yeah, they get overfished a lot. And so the question is, like other fish, are they the ones that you think they are if you're buying them at a fish shop in Australia? And the answer is probably not. 91 filets labeled as sharks, 70% were mislabeled. Nine comprised three species listed as threatened, the scalloped hammerhead, green-eye spur dog, and the school shark. Well, that's okay, I know. These two of those were being sold under the label Lake, which isn't even shark. 70% were mislabeled, and the proportion of mislabeling was greater in takeaways compared with fish markets and wholesalers. So it's not just that the mislabeling is taking place. It's also that consumers, if fish, sharks, et cetera, are being, you know, if they think they're buying one thing that they think is sustainable, but it turns out it's mislabeled, they are inadvertently contributing to the overfishing of populations that are endangered. And, you know, what do you do? Stop eating flake. Stop eating the sharks. I think they need to start arresting fish markets. For fraud. Mislabeling. Reliable information is lacking, certainly. Yeah, and it's a food product, so that's kind of terrifying, isn't it? That we're going to have... You think you're buying cod, but suddenly you find out it's crab, oh, you have a shellfish allergy, no. And it came from different waters and it's a different species than you thought. Yeah. And the reason we don't know is, oh, well, we didn't catch it. And somebody else said it was, and so we said, good enough. Let's hand it off to you. Like, that's not a food chain. That's a... What is it? A surprise? Food surprise? Food surprise! That's not... Honestly, I don't think I would go to the meat counter, the seafood counter, whatever counter, and to say, surprise me! I don't like some meat in a bag. Can you be more specific? I just want to meet surprise. That's like spam, I don't know. Cook it up however it is. Ew. We hope that you are listening to Twists or watching Twists, however it is, wherever you are and enjoying our show. We're here every Wednesday at PM Pacific Time to talk about all of the science stuff we think that's interesting. If you enjoy this show, please head to twist.org. That's the website where you can find show notes and links to the podcast and you can subscribe to the podcast and also find all sorts of other things related to the show, like our Patreon account link. If you head over to Patreon through twist.org, you can support us in an ongoing fashion. $10 and more per month will get you a thank you by name at the end of the show. $15 more, you get some stickers and a thank you, there's t-shirts after that, there's all sorts of stuff. I'd love to say your name. I want to add your name to the list at the end of the show. It's a month. If you want to get on that list, head over there and do that Patreon. We just appreciate your support in helping us keep this going. The other way is to head to Zazzle. Zazzle is our merchandise store where you can find t-shirts, you can find sweatshirts. I'm wearing my twist sweatshirt tonight's little zip-up hoodie. Oops, I'm going to undo my headphones. It's got art by Blair, who is hoping to come back and join the show and test out whether or not she can come back on a few episodes here in the future. Fingers crossed, we're looking forward to that, but it would be great to get Blair's Animal Corner back on the show. It would be fantastic. But she does a lot of the art. She's made the calendars, she's got some incredible stuff that have created t-shirts and pillows all sorts of merchandise that a certain part of those proceeds come back to help keep this show going. So, if you want to help us out, head to Patreon, head to Zazzle, head to twist.org, subscribe, get your friends to subscribe, share with a friend today, whatever you can do, all the help that you can give, we appreciate. We thank you for your support. We really can't do this without you. And why would we want to? It would be like me sitting here talking to myself without Justin or you or sad state of affairs when I'm standing in my basement alone staring into a camera talking to myself. Yet here I am. And so are you, and thank you so much for joining us. Schnaggo was saying that a big problem with walleye in Minnesota, bongers were selling perch as walleye. Yeah, Aussies have butcher shops that display roue steaks in the window, but I mean kangaroo is literally it's farmed, ranched for meat in some areas, so that's not too far off the path. I mean, I think that would be a dangerous ranching job to get into. I mean, bulls and cattle can get fairly large, but yeah. We had chickens once when I was growing up and I, um, dogs to carry that, and I just never could go back. Poor chickens. And here I am talking to myself because Justin said he needs five minutes and he didn't have a heart out, so I'm waiting for him to come back because he's supposed to start the next stories in the show, so I'm kind of like doing the show flow right now. So Rachel, I do hope that you will edit most of this monologue out because it's not really a necessary part of the show. I think this is the part of the show where I lose all of the audience. Haha. Oh yeah, don't name your chickens or other farm animals. Yeah, if you have farm animals you don't name them, don't get attached. You don't do that with your research animals, either scientists. Unless, of course, you're going to just have them forever. That's great. Then you can name them. But it's fine. Thanks, John. I'm doing okay. Continuing to talk. I did get to see some solar flares out there. Identity Four shared a picture of some solar flares from up in Washington area. The lights are so beautiful. One of my goals is to go back to Iceland and see some Aurora in Iceland or maybe Norway, maybe Staden is good. Did anyone out there watch Eurovision this weekend? Any fans of Baby Lasagna or perhaps Oh, what was the other used used from the Netherlands who got he got in trouble, got kicked out. There's a whole thing going on there. Is your microphone coming back? Justin, there you are. You're talking about Eurovision again. I was monologuing. You can't. If anybody has watched this show for multiple years, you know that I had a Burning Man obsession for a very long time. This is true. In recent more than the last 10 years it's been Eurovision. This is true. It's my yearly joy. I was living in Europe and I hadn't even heard of Eurovision until you were talking about it. And you missed it. I'm going to share all of the most amazing Eurovision songs with everyone. Switzerland's song is very good. I like it. Finland, oh my gosh. Finland was great too. Croatia was Baby Lasagna. Finland was good. I'm usually pro Norway, but I didn't like Norway this year. I don't even know how they got through the finals. Anyway, now I'm going to say and we're coming back from the break now and Justin, do you have some science for us? I do. The Orcas are at it again, it seems. A group of Orca attacked and sank a 50 foot long sailing yacht just this Sunday. Two people had to be rescued from the waters near the Strait of Gibraltar. That's where they kind of hang out. That's like the spot. There are particular outlets from harbors where the Orcas are there and if you're leaving at the wrong time they'll get you. They occasionally migrate up from that Strait up the coast of Spain even to France and also have been known to harass boats there. Hundreds and hundreds of incidents now, but I still I got to pause for a second. I got to go back for a second because two people had to be rescued from this 50 foot long sailing yacht. Is that a normal size crew for a 50 foot sailing yacht? Two people? It can be. Yeah, I mean you have automated, you can have automated jib stays and things like there are jib stays. Isn't there still manual rigging and hoisting? Somebody needs to steer? I have no idea. What if one of them can't cook? What if neither of them can cook? What if they just had a motor and they're like we look cute on our 50 foot yacht with sails that aren't working in our motor. You can go out to people. People do this a lot. It's totally doable. Go get yourself a few issues of latitude 28 and great sailing magazine. Great community of people. 50 foot yacht. I know nothing about sailing. Did they just save two people? What happened to the others? Or I guess it could just be two people were on a 50 foot sailing yacht. I just don't understand how that works. It's possible. You might be asking the right questions but I'm just going to go with this was a couple of people who are doing their life trip there and the orcas got them. But this sink it. A lot of times they get harassed. They get turned around more and more often. They get sucked. The rudders or the crops or whatever the things are. The keels. Anyway, the incident was yet another event emerging phenomenon of orca attacks that has researchers stumped and in the hundreds and hundreds more than 500 of these encounters have been recorded. So far there are two main hypotheses regarding the baffling behavior. One is that it is just a fad. It's a thing the orcas are into right now but since it has no immediate survival benefit to these marine mammals they might just give it up as quickly as they started it. The researchers are pointing to orcas in the Pacific Northwest where there was a group that famously spent the summer of 1987 sporting dead salmon on their heads as a fashion statement perhaps. But that one wasn't that is different because there are the fish eaters and the mammal eaters in the Pacific Northwest and they're two completely different populations and the fish eaters are local or it's the other way around the mammal eaters they travel up to Alaska and come back down they're like more migratory or nomadic but they're completely different groups. Sporting dead salmon on their heads that one season and to be fair fashion did get weird in the 80s like if you didn't live it you have no idea how weird it really happened but it was it was like it was strange in the 80s especially in the late 80s it got really weird with the fashion so maybe they were just trying to participate. The other of them had a big girl's hair so they're like oh I just put a salmon on my head school of salmon you know they try things right they're smart social animals it might have been working to bait other things I don't know I have no idea but the other main hypothesis of this boat attacking fad if it's a fad it extends from past negative encounters with boats boats can there can be boat strikes there can be fishermen there's reports that people are competing competing for food sources attacking that people have thrown dynamite into the water to scare off mammals because they will attack the tuna that they already have caught that they're fishing the Iberian orca population is critically endangered their migration routes put their members in the path of many of these fishing vessels military vessels recreational vessels that are zipping through the straits of Gibraltar and this highly intelligent creature could be exhibiting territorial defense behaviors. I think that's likely but it's just one idea while researchers caution against attributing malicious intent to these animals vengeance for past ill met encounters with boats and the humans aboard has been speculated so regardless of the reason regardless of the reason this is happening this guy who wouldn't know the starboard side from his own porthole is firmly on team orca just just don't go in the water that's theirs stay out of their way let's take down over 50 that's pretty intense like I've seen there's a ton of videos you can find on the on the YouTubes where some of these encounters have been caught there's like ramming activities there's coming up inviting the rudders the steering things and the boats and they're kind of aggressive and then they just kind of go away they almost look like they're at play except the ramming has to kind of I mean it's kind of hurt the sailors there's talk among the sailors about it seeming much more organized and that more and more often it seems less like random ramming and that they do specifically go after the keel which is the part of the boat that keeps it going topsy-turvy in the ocean keeps it balanced and the rudder and then if they can put any kind of hole in the hull then that's great too but they specifically go after the more vulnerable parts of the boats and it's like they're learning and the early reports I recall were a lot of them they were they were literally turning the boats around they would keep ramming one end until the boat was facing the other direction and going back go back to port just go back and so now I guess they've moved on to like okay well we gave them a warning we tried to give them a good warning to just go back they didn't listen now we're going to start sinking them and yeah if it seems organized like these are organized hunters and you know like we talked about last week on the show the little tiny parrotlets the green bootyed parrotlets or whatever you know we're in when food was a little competition for mates they were more willing to take on step kids if there was lots of competition for resources and by babies you're out right and I think people are this way too chimpanzees so many social animals become more aggressive and more directed in their aggression when there's competition and if it's competition for resources for territory you know and we're talking about these intelligent social animals that we really don't understand who their populations are dwindling and we're out there with our boats ramming them taking their fish who knows we need more scientists to get in the water with the orcas and do tests and team orca team orca whatever they decide to do I'm on their side I wonder what they're doing check check mate where are they going what about the bears tell me about the cave bears so yeah this is going last week this is a total kids today story whenever these kids today we're all kids today because they it turns out okay so there's evidence that they've previously found this is a long while back 20 years plus years ago I think it's German university too big in it anyway I can't pronounce it don't you live like in the Scandinavia area now come on you're supposed to know how to say these things Germanic has its own sounds I know they are like dialects are difficult I can't hear half of this because you didn't grow up during that period of time before your brain turned to glass like a dozen extra vowels anyway about 20 years ago they found a stone spear tip embedded in a cave bear vertebrae which was the evidence that early humans in Europe had hunted this bear this evidence placed this bear hunted around 29,000 years ago so this is in the timeframe of early current modern human and they started looking over the last couple decades they started more closely examining other cave bear remains and fossils that they would find examined hundreds of cave bear bones looking for evidence that humans had potentially made a kill and it looked for signs of carcass stripping to remove fur and flesh at sight after sight researchers found similar patterns slice marks on paw bones and skulls where hides would have to be cut free bones cracked open to extract marrow some of it is you know you could think there's another predator a bear doing this but the scrapes on long bones showing that they were carefully and thoroughly stripped of each and every last scrap of meat all matches human activity with stone tools and when did the what's the earliest beginnings of these findings 300,000 years is when this shows up in the record this is then pre-current modern human this is even pushing back on like is that even can that even be Neanderthal that's kind of early even for Neanderthals is the 300,000 what else could have been running around but that would be very early Neanderthal activity going on there this is a very old practice and so then what were they hunting with the only thing they found is that close to this range is some wooden spears that they think are early Neanderthal and so they would have had to take on cave bears with wooden spears and they would be throwing them maybe close up I don't know and you want to do this this sounds like again a great reality show let's try to hunt the cave bear and be hotter than Jesus in the earliest caves bones was made by Neanderthals and their immediate predecessor Homo heidelbergensis were often found intermingled with untouched cave bear bones a sign that plenty of these bears died natural deaths as well that may mean that they were only occasionally hunting them not routinely but starting 40,000 years ago things changed almost all the cave bear bones and caves occupied by modern humans were modified suggesting hunting became more systematic that sounds like the current modern way of doing things I don't just hunt bears sometimes let's go get all of them let's get rid of them let's drive them all off of a cliff which there's not a lot of like major predator animals in Europe and I think that the early current modern humans when they got to Europe decided hey you know what would be great as if we didn't have any big predator animals anywhere where we just got rid of them all cause what's the only thing like a cave is a nice shelter you're kind of safe from the elements but the bears are in there but then the bears come in and they ruin everything they got the sticks because you have to poke the bears out of the caves but the bears are big and and there was a the glacial maximum there was a cold spell that began about 27,000 years ago and it lasted a mere 7,000 years no time at all cave bears apparently became a tempting target one animals could dependably be found in caves hibernated so they were there and they were probably sleeping which actually makes the whole picture of the cave bear hunt of early men a little less dramatic when you're stabbing a sleeping bear I mean they're going to wake up so then you got that all to deal with but still you'd get a good that aggression is probably a good reason why we don't have pet bears instead of pet dogs okay we need to go in with a couple of buddies on the count of three wait wait wait question what's three what do you mean oh we haven't invented numbers yet hey hang on ah it's too late too late for you so there's that but then there's also oh puny humans there's also the reverse way that it could happen which is that because of the cold humans took up a refuge in caves which is also a place that bears would seek out when they were ready to like hey it's too cold out here even for a bear I'm going to go into that cave and take shelter myself and then find a bunch of sleeping humans so this is also this could it could go either way and everybody's hungry because it's winter time so nobody's going to be nice and share the cave and everyone's going to be aggressive and then everybody's dead awesome by ten thousand years ago it says the last of the ferocious herbivores these weren't even meeting bears herbivores we talk about the vicious meeting bears but like bears really do like to eat the nuts, the berries, the honey comb, the termites you know, the insectivorous and herbivores they're not obligate carnivores I wouldn't have suspected that for these bears because even in the Americas the dominant bear species the short-nosed bear the face bear, whatever it was was a big game hunter but it wasn't until the younger driest when the big game went away that you see all these bears turning to berries and fish before then they were like we'll take on anything, I'm a bear I'll eat what I want then when the big animals disappeared they were like I need a backup I think this kind of gets it that the conversations we always have when Blair is on the show about what's the difference between endotherm and anectotherm what's the difference between cows will eat meat deer will eat meat a lot of species are generalists when they need to eat something if there is food they will eat it so there are certain species that are adapted to be better predators and to be like cats we know they need certain benefits and they are obligate carnivores but a majority of species are going to be much more they're generalists it's salmon season we're going to eat all the salmon the deer are having babies I'm going to go get that deer right now because I can and I'm a big short-faced bear they're also fast they're fast I'm so glad my ancestors survived with their wooden sticks it's the second time you mentioned this Blair person remind me again who is this she would be baby talking during this part of the show I got a message from her possibly that she might want to drag coming back at some point in the end of the month maybe oh that would be so cool she wants to do an experiment or something I don't know talk about the animals like the bears I would like to talk I'm going to add a quick story on to your cave bear hunter story and it comes back to a story that we've talked about previously in 2023 there was a study in which the researchers surveyed as this is stated in the abstract paper I am looking at right now ethnographically known foragers and found that women hunt in 79% of foraging societies with big game hunting occurring in 33% and so based on this analysis of foraging societies and whatever they were like boof ladies been hunting for a long time and so the authors of that study question the existence of gender division of labor all together these new this paper that has just been published in evolution in human behavior is a reaction to that study and I just you know there's a lot of questions right now about misinformation disinformation and this is the kind of paper and process that is how the scientific literature really should play out this is the drama one research group says we looked at it this way and we think this thing which is that women and men throughout time have been equally hunting and gathering and doing all the things and this group of researchers have come back and said aha today we think that you were biased in how you looked at the data that you did not use empirical evidence there's other evidence that contradicts what you have to say I mean not completely but you made a very very big conclusion that we don't agree with so they think that now that now they had a myopic focus on hunting and it diminishes the value of contributions that take different forms and downplays the tradeoffs foragers of both sexes routinely face and they caution against ethnographic revisionism that projects westernized conceptions of labor that go down to foraging societies but that's how we've always done it yeah so I remember this study because I'm here on the show yeah that's why I'm bringing it up because I'm like wow okay other researchers are like we think you did it wrong I'm curious to what they're pointing out because I'm remembering from that study that there was caveats to it there were there were caveats which is when it came to big game hunting it was almost entirely male dominated but that there was a lot of smaller game hunting that groups of women were doing so it was some weird thing that women tended to hunt with dogs more like going out with dogs to assist in the hunting but that would also make sense for small game maybe but there was a lot of nuance in that way that they presented that information with this study yes the overall take on it would be men and women hunted there's no difference in the sexes but in that paper itself there were a lot of differences nuances yes pointed out so I guess if you read the headline and you would say like oh you're the headline yeah but still there was a lot of range and region and specific stuff and yeah yeah so anyway I just wanted to bring this study up because it's interesting that it's a new published article that's coming out that argues that the way that they did their analysis was biased they looked at a societal level and not at a more individual level what they call a they provide no evidence that they conducted a paragraph level analysis I don't know what that is for ethnographic research but anyway they say that the analysis is not replicable so the question is now can somebody else replicate the findings and they say that the women's hunting was coded as a binary variable recorded as present or absent there was no minimum threshold for inclusion and that overall the estimate of 79% women being involved in hunting is substantially higher than previous quantitative assessments of 7% and so because of such a giant difference between these numbers they think that the original authors they say it's worthwhile to consider selection bias which may be possible but I I enjoy the research battle right this is the thing it's it's like a rap battle except not as entertaining but possibly entertaining if you look at it the right way I'm just putting myself in the shoes of a hunter of oldie times and passing by a giant bush of berries and go oh those look good but too bad there's not a woman around to pick them I can't I won't forage I can't I don't know how or you know being out and seeing going out to pick berries as a woman and seeing a sleeping cave bear and going too bad there's not a man around to kill I would not poke it with a stick or throw rocks at it it's actually been the wise choice but I think the idea that when when you were living in a hunting foraging society meaning that's what you did to survive all of the time that you would pass up meals because of some sort of cultural preference like I don't buy that at all either but we have you know a comment from YouTube about the research battle cognitive bias at its finest great work by the challenging team and so you know this is what it's about is let's look critically at the research at the data at the analysis and and let's critique it and let's say hey I see these it got published so went through peer review but we think what you did could like you didn't do it right so what needs to be done better is another group going to go and do it again will the original group redo their analysis is what will come here of this and you know and I do not believe that this group of researchers in their new paper is simply bringing this up because they don't want there to be a change to the traditional view of men hunters women foragers you know I don't think that's it I think it is actually it is a fair statistical statistical and also methodological critique we'll see and I do appreciate I do appreciate the drama of it all no I appreciate the these types of back and forth there's actually very little of it in science for the volume of the papers that do get published on you know the thousands of papers that are getting published today in this current environment which is very little there's very little of a conversation going on back and forth there used to be used to be that was it it was at the journals where there wasn't any papers now we have social media and we have actually there's a lot of the conversation happening on the preprint side because people are publishing ahead of peer review getting the comments and then going back and fixing what they did before they even go into peer review so I think that what we're seeing in the journals is not necessarily like as dramatic all the time as it kind of used to be but it's fun to look through like science or nature or the big ones and see the snarky comebacks that researchers have to certain papers after it it's fun it's like you know science soap operas yeah we'll see where that goes but we yeah anyway the brain it's flexible how do we take in so much information without just being completely overwhelmed all the time by forgetting a lot a lot of forgetting we do a lot of forgetting but also the brain is a filter and the neurons or there are multiple filters in the way that the neurons are connected within the brain and how they interact with each other and there are multiple layers of interaction and how they how they work and send certain signals down the line to become you know part of our behaviors or part of our learning of the world and in this paper that was just published in Cell Neuron researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have taken a look at neurons and this is kind of coming from a neuronal network physics like kind of way but it's like alright there was a long time ago researchers were like every neuron is like linearly connected to other neurons and so it's like a straight path but if that were how everything worked the brain and our behaviors wouldn't work the way that they do so for a long time people have been like we think that there's more going on there so there's got to be each cell has to have more than one function there has to be multifunctional activity in neurons and maybe they're actually like in these which we've seen in a lot of studies there's ensembles and networks and so what you have is not just different neurotransmitters but you also have different inputs and outputs and so you have different levels of stuff that lead to selectivity of action and so the authors of this paper have argued that the property that the flexibility of neurons that allow us to not succumb to the chaos of the universe is something called mixed selectivity and in this mixed selectivity it is pretty much that instead of being linear where it's like neuron to neuron to neuron where it's like photon to eye to visual cortex and then you're from your eye then maybe it goes too slow not doing enough stuff not connecting with enough things you could never multitask I could not be you know deciding to share a screen at the same time while I'm having this conversation with you and trying to do this show there's a lot of input going on here so how does the neuron react to all of these what they would call statistically independent variables and there are some neurons that are like no no I only do one thing I like faces that's it that's all I respond to just a handful that are doing spatial yeah so there's some dedicated neurons yes but the majority of neurons seem to have this what they call a mixed selectivity so you have context and you also have different cues you have different neurotransmitters you have a lot of stuff going on and so it's like all of this stuff interacting and what they say is the activity can potentially be expressed as a weighted sum of the different variables that are impacting it and this is actually more accurate as to the neurons that they measured in the brain and they did some experiments with some rats in a cage and we're able to find that yes there are these specific neurons that are more likely to be you know multifactorial they respond to lots of different things they match and they are the sum of these things you know these rats are probably better at shopping at IKEA than I am so the question now is is this cellular mixed selectivity an important aspect of you know maybe different architecture of the brain for ADHD for autism is it something that we can be looking at for how neurons interact and which areas of the brain and which neurons are more likely to have this mixed selectivity which ones are going to be more linear in action and can we potentially genetically modify some can we use this understanding to help high level cognitive function in the brain right now Kiki is demonstrating how the chaos of the universe the information can be filtered through various channels in the brain to come up with order I said words and put pictures on the screen did I make sense this is what I'm saying you're demonstrating how all these possibilities and it's now filtering through different logic channels of a brain all which apparently I'm learning are illusions that are based on how your neuronal construct may happen to be but can reveal actual truths about the chaotic universe surrounding amazing demonstration and so then from what you just said you know how does this play into also so neurotransmitters and receptors so when we talk about psychedelics and people talk about the way that they feel like the filters on the brain have been altered when you take psychedelics LSD mushrooms other compounds and a lot of times they're acting on different serotonergic receptors they are acting on dopaminergic receptors and that that's changing the input and output of neurons and so that weighted sum of activity of neurons is going to get changed and as a callback to earlier in the show you can actually get a what is it a time exposure through your eyes where images will remain what is it the trails from certain psychedelics so I've experienced like light will stay in your vision persistence of vision maybe you can see there were more realists without the phone I don't know we'll have to do a poll darn it I missed my chance yeah this isn't necessarily like this is so crazy new but it is a new specific step in understanding the mechanisms that lead our brain to creating order out of many many stimulatory inputs that come into it how do we actually act like people when everything is crazy that's partially how weighted sums dude that's right mixed selectivity man what's going on in your neurons yeah you know they choose to be friends and they're like yeah let's mix it up a little okay you need those options you need those brain options when you go stick a sleeping bear with a big stick you need a lot of options right after maybe some would have been handy before you did it but now you really need them yeah okay speaking of options nowadays everybody's got so many options that they don't need to go out and poke sticks poke bears with sticks anymore because they're like scrolling on their phones it's like what do I want to watch on Netflix what do I want to do here I'm going to watch twist yeah that's a great option but there's been a lot of talk about the negative influence of the internet on mental health people who spend more time on the haven't we heard the there's a negative influence your child should not have any more than 5 days of screen time a month I don't know yeah but you know don't do the internet it will make you sad you know there's all the studies anyway I am it's a bit of hyperbole a survey just out of more than 2.4 million people suggests maybe not being it's not always bad the internet is good sometimes and actually for a lot of people it boosts their measures of well-being yeah there you go yeah so the concerns that we really that this study really brought out is that it's how people are using the internet and whether or not the use of the internet is bringing them life satisfaction and sense of purpose whether it's you know involved in those aspects of positively influencing mental health so if your best friend and you have a relationship where you get each other when they send you that reel from Instagram and you're like oh I get what you I understand what you're feeling right now suddenly you have a connection with that person but you've been on the internet that was it but it didn't take you out of that was actually good for your relationships it like they brought you together and so this research actually suggests that was published in technology mind and behavior that a lot of the studies have only really come from a handful of English speaking countries also mainly focused on young people and in this they looked at data from the world it's from the Gallup world poll and they looked at eight measures of well-being annually from 2006 to 2021 people aged 15 and above in 168 countries interviewed them through phone or in-person interviews and they also controlled for different factors influencing their personal welfare mental health internet use income employment status education and health problems etc on average people have who have internet access score 8% higher on measures of satisfaction with their lives positive experiences and contentment with their social life as compared to people who don't have access to the web so there's benefits out there what they did see which is related specifically to news about mental health and young individuals is that women aged 15 to 24 who reported having used the internet in the past week were on average less happy with where they live they don't know why that's not something that was addressed in the study with other people than other individuals their age who didn't use the internet so if they in the last week had used the internet they were less satisfied less happy so perhaps that's because of social yeah it's a hard time of life but also you're doing a lot of life comparisons like where am I at 15 oh somebody else is doing their best life already at 15 oh I'm way behind the game of life I'm trying to catch up now before the teens I don't think anybody thinks about that and then after you're like I don't care what other people do yeah peer pressure and the wanting to fit in and you know keep up with the Joneses and especially in this current climate when the Joneses are AI bots producing content on social media to the point where it's not even other people that you're comparing to or it's people who have created a false persona where everything is you know they've taken 500 photos to get the one photo they post they're not really on a beach someplace they just I don't know put a truckload of sand in their living room um with a green screen you know there's so many things and we think we're comparing ourselves against reality when what we are doing is seeing seeing what people want you to see you know yeah people put on it out there like this image of everything's happy in my life it's all good it's great I'm on vacation yeah I think overall I think overall the internet is uh I think it was better I feel like it was better well okay let's not no let's not go don't go back to the old days went back when the internet was better back when he had the BB forums and yeah we had AOL messenger and and the thing is I think the reason I think it was better is because it was clunky and it was all people's uh making stuff people were making stuff websites it was people's and it means maybe some of the information was less credible uh that might be possible too there wasn't certainly wasn't as much access to scientific information as there is now there was more more play and creativity and now it's more business business business it's so uh corporate like and then and then everything wants to feed me a cookie with 200 vendors like why do you need 200 people I just want a chocolate chip cookie come on look at the chocolate chip cookie recipe I kind of need that many people oh I I'm yeah when I go to websites I'm either like reject all cookies or I'm gonna I actually take this I'm starting to take the time more often to be like I just I just if saying no to the cookies reduces the functionality of the website then maybe I'll accept your cookie but I see that list of turn off this turn off this turn off this then you just turn off the website you know what I don't even really need to go there that bad that's what I do that too there's other websites bye do I need to be here no no I don't need to be here bye goodbye well if anyone out there thinks that our website asks for too much stuff I don't even know I think it's like a plugin so uh if I if you go to our website and it asks for cookies and all this and then we go there it's like I know actually like really let me know because I you know I want to make sure everybody's happy and I yeah anyway if you if you give me information about you it's because you want to and we will crack you anyway you know like we want to make sure you're doing all right you know have somebody looking at you want to make sure everybody's doing all right out there and yet um it does depend I think on how people use the internet if you are doom scrolling I mean the word doom in doom scroll kind of implies there's a negative negativity there right it's the misinformation and it's also it's also escapist it's also become a really big problem escapism I think is fine but it is the doom scrolling escapism into the worlds of misinformation that then people take out into the actual meat space world and try to apply these are the things that these are the bad that the internet that we knew these are a few of my least favorite things they make the internet so bad everybody we can use the internet in wonderful ways and we really need to be a part of addressing how the internet evolves moving forward especially in this age of AI and there are many organizations and a lot of effort in trying to get people in congress involved in this process of determining how we're going to deal with artificial intelligence as it respects with respect to content production video audio text all the stuff how is it going to be used what are we going to is it already out of the box or do we trust the big corporations to regulate themselves right no exactly so anyway I hope somebody recorded at least six seconds of my voice so that they can create their own science podcast that sounds just like me you know it's kind of funny though they could you know it's kind of funny when you think about it what are the corporations complaining about 20 years ago oh the internet people are sampling music and downloading music for free and they're taking all this content and they're just taking it and now the corporations like hey we can use AI to sample all this creator content that's out there already and create our own content based on it that is then we can trademark because they put it out there we can sample it for free I mean some people they've been sampling it so I can sample it derivative works right everybody we're going to sample you now lawyers are going to be busy and rolling in it for so long but they're going to be AI lawyers all the lawyers are going to be out of work because at some point they're already doing it they don't really need lawyers once you have them and as we're saying AI and yes as we're saying AI I do want to let everyone know yet again that I mean the algorithms that are based off of large language models natural language models learning models that are based off of like clustered probability statistics and can be very biased and are probably already biased we react with them and then humans have weird inputs that are probably going to bias it even more so yeah let's get real everyone thank you for joining us for twist it's been a really nice time tonight talking with you and I hope that we made you 8% happier tonight at least because you spent time with us on the internet and for those of you who are of the female persuasion and 15 to 24 years old I hope that this did not make you less happy or satisfied in your life I hope we brought you that 8% of satisfaction I don't think we were doing that I know I know who did it oh what it's your birthday happy birthday this is Pamela this is Pamela is the the symbol is it really I'm waiting for the response Rachel can get edited out if they say anyway we are glad to make your birthday even better it is time for us to get going anybody else who had a birthday today happy birthday anyone happy birthday yesterday tomorrow congratulations on another successful orbit around the sun let's keep it going let's do oh this is tea okay hey tea congratulations on another year around our solar solar plasma ball anyway I think I need to close this show now and I'm trying to find my show notes that I think I closed what did I do with my notes I put them I put them all away they're gone I was done with this show a while ago apparently thank you for listening we hope you enjoyed the show shout outs to fada for his help with social media and show notes gord for manning the chat room id4 for recording the show Rachel for your amazing assistance and I'd like to thank our patreon for your generous support and those patreon sponsors are Alan Viola Erin Anathema I gotta change the screen so I can see it Arthur Kepler Craig Potts Mary Gertz Teresa Smith Richard Badge Bob Coles Kenton Northcote George Chorus Vera Velazade Ratna Swamy Chris Wozniak Porfar P.I.G Andrew Swanson Kevin Reardon Brian Carrington Sean Clarence Mark Hesplow Ken Hayes Howard Tan Richard Brendan Johnny Gridley We're almost to a birthday Remy Day Gverton Lattimore Dave Wilkins Rodney Lewis Kurt Larson Craig Landon Sue Duster Jason Olds Adam Mishkon Aaron Luthin Bob Calder Marjorie Paul Disney David Simmerly Patrick Pecoraro Tony Steele Thank you one and all for supporting us on patreon and if anyone of you who are not already supporting us on patreon would like to go to twittertwist.org and click on the patreon button it'll take you to the patreon community and you can choose your level of support and I'll be able to read your name and that would be pretty awesome next week's show We'll be back Wednesday 8pm pacific time and 5am Thursday central european time live from our twitch, youtube and facebook channels Yes and if you want to listen to us as a podcast we have a video because we're so pretty just search for this week in science wherever podcasts are found if you enjoyed the show get your friends to subscribe to for more information on anything you've heard here today show notes and links to the stories will be available on our website www.twist.org we won't even make you sign up for the newsletter but we ask you to because it would be nice but anyway we love your feedback as well so if there's a topic you want us to cover address or suggestion for an interview someone else to add to the fun of the show please let us know find one of our social media accounts you can send an email just put twist in the subject line so your email doesn't get spin filtered into a winter hibernation cave bear cave and then stabbed by ancient humans with a wooden stick that's how the internet works people 8% less happy we look forward to discussing science with you again next week and if you learned anything from this show remember it's all in your head so i'm setting up shop got my banner unfurled it says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice show them how to stop the robot with a simple device i'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hands coming your way so everybody listen to what i say i use the scientific method for all the broadcast science science this week in science this week in science this week in science science i've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what i say what i say may not represent your views and usually doesn't because it's our views and who knows what your views are i really don't represent you i just appreciate you as an audience it's the after show now oh everybody needs to align their views now this isn't how propaganda science propaganda works you too shall think in terms of science reality we really are cosmos is a chaos within you that your brain turns into logical zeroes and ones into logical formats that are an illusion that yet can reveal truth what is a logical format what is that like an agvorbus or mp4 h264 so what i'm still trying to figure out is why i can't edit up odf but oh you need layers what do you have adobe with the you can't just edit you need something with layers if you want to edit it sometimes if you have the adobe acrobat or whatever it has an editing thing that you might be able to go in and delete out specific things but why is it that it's like better to print a pdf but it's easier to write in the document can't they make the documents it's a compressed data format for like more printable one more step anyway it depends on what you're doing i mean if it's just words on a page then it's like dot doc or whatever but then there's always like here here's a document we want you to fill out oh cool what is it oh it's a pdf oh that'll make it impossible to work with thank you oh no you're supposed to have a subscription to a very large corporate entity that doesn't update their software actually to update their software just to make you i don't know just to make it so that software breaks with whatever os you're using i think i don't know this is what's wrong with the internet today oh my god what is wrong with the internet today hang on yeah hi hi i would love to be the it dude who's in charge of the entire internet and he's like you know what we're gonna do we're just gonna wipe the server reboot we're gonna re upload the operating system start over my day when you google the word gave you a definition of the word nowadays it tries to get you to buy something associated with the word oh my god cori doctoro is the best word which i'm not gonna say because it has the s word in the middle of it but it's great word that has to do with the fact that lots of good social platforms and software and all sorts of stuff that we've used for years and years and years eventually they got bought out by venture and private equity and other stuff and then that's the downward spiral of profits over actual quality product and consumer and user experience actually it's the after show and shitification it's the best word it's honestly one of my favorite words i think it explains so much in just one word yeah it's bowing it's twitter starliner spaceship i feel like it's like the lego dude like the lego movie twitter everything is awesome we're part of a team yeah eventually he rebuilt his spaceship and he was able to fly the spaceship but yeah bowing apparently cannot but they can launch for nasa with a crew on it and eric nap is saying and i agree with this 100% there is a way it's several years ago video Simone who was she started out on youtube as like the weird robot engineer she'd make these weird robots that would put lipstick on her face and stuff she took a tesla model 3 and converted it into a truck and it is so much better nobody's gonna get me off the tesla truck i love everything about the way it looks now i hear it's not a great offroad vehicle you know what i hope they put it on spaceship and then it goes to mars and then they get it to mars and then it gets stuck in a sand dune on mars so he's using some very specific lego character neurons right now these ones might be dedicated this is like 13 years of having a child and like those neurons only remember child pop culture but those movies were made for the parents not for the children so true shubu get a video i want to see a video of your wine and cyber truck experience i think it sounds like it's an accident waiting to happen but it could be amazing so please share some video that would be incredible it would be awesome what disney you have some old workshop peg board from simon that's very cool you say somehow i am suspicious she called it truckla which i think was the best name instead of tesla truckla yay thank you shubu in the name of science and i'm putting it on screen right now so you are on record recorded in the aftershow truckla looks pretty awesome did you just look it up it kinda looks like the old alchemy it does i like it i actually saw it it's cooler than the old style priest that somebody had done the same thing too it had a really small pickup bed too that's very cool why don't they make this i have different aesthetical tastes than the other humans and that's what i've discovered as well i think part of i understand i don't like the same things as lots of other people that's okay my brain works differently i probably think a lot about things that other people don't think about that's okay it's totally fine it makes you you makes me me it's fine oh vw did have a small pickup based on the rabbit that was cute have you seen that one that was a funny one cat stop attacking my couch i know you're being cute stop it i don't recall that cat me my cat is attacking the back of my couch why aren't you a child no my cat she's acting like a she's being crazy the thing her tail is all big okay now it's coming back the pegboard came in an envelope and you don't remember why or how the thing is kind of cool are you sure you didn't order the pegboard from alibaba are you sure it's the moans it's a little too squarish for me the thing that's what i'd like to be honest probably it's still a childhood dream of owning a delorean watch back to the future 20 times in the theaters i probably just want a delorean i think you do it's probably it they were good cars though they were terrible cars i would never buy or own a car at this point that's not a japanese car like a long time ago that became the it's still the same quality and owning and putting all that money and having a reliable transportation by a japanese car however i will say i might drive an unreliable delorean around because it wouldn't be for the driving it would just be for the opening the doors and maybe taking the hood off and making it look like it had a food processor in the engine oh eric nap come on it's hashtag sorry not sorry i appreciate that one forgot i haven't got one i got one and look oh my gosh it's hard to see who's in there is that a lego marty mcfly and the doc it's a playmobil it's a spock spock marty it's a new it's a new cake on it come here i'm a crazy kitty there it kept time oh stainless steel jessen has a delorean i have a cat yes mc that's awesome did anyone get one of the popcorn buckets from dune anyone did you talk about are you doing some like are you doing some hobbyist collecting all of a sudden with the remaining time on the show i'm trying to track down you were talking about the delorean you got the little delorean you'd get your thing and then shuber says something about amc the amc and then i was thinking about the popcorn buckets that they were selling it was a special offer at certain theaters for dune when dune just came out so this is not amc i know it's dmc it's the delorean motor company it was its own motor company that made one car that can promise more cars and improvements but unlike where elon musk people stopped believing the delorean motor company where was going to deliver on its promises and stopped funding them whereas tesla and its self-driving cars didn't use to get funding despite producing nothing after year after year of promises because there's a whole master plan that involves going to space putting the cybertruck on mars and then uploading elon's consciousness into the car to drive around mars forever and i think that humanity is just hoping we're waiting for that day no i'm kidding i send no bad vibes to anyone ever are you playing with your delorean now spock and marty are going on an adventure spock doesn't know anything about gigawatts 21 gigawatts and his hair is just too neatly quaffed i mean spock doesn't even have a cowlick like you i see the lack of response i got the wheels up i can fly now i got the wheels up now the wheels are up now they can take off into time and space like sands through the hourglass is it spock and marty is it spock and morty oh shoo marty mcfly morty that's the rick and morty based on doc and marty exactly but spock and marty spock and morty which one would be better mork and mendy mork and mendy that needs to come back you're right nanu nanu live long prosper nanu prosper nanu prosper you're not even looking i'm looking to see if i've got a more toys elon so last week we talked about the ethics in the future of neural implants and implantable technologies and what happens when they stop updating software and you just have old defunct technology in your head or somewhere the next day there was a report in the paper that the first person to have neural link implanted that it stopped working it was a big thing anyway at least it's just a little implant it's not like that remember back in the early days when fella got a floppy disk drive installed in his head that took up a lot of space and he didn't even find the what anyway the neural link patients fine the thing just they didn't want to be in his brain anymore and yes TSA they got it back to working but it's got issues anyway but i thought it was the timing after talking about it on the show was interesting i will say no more you are the voice of reason thing is as you age you can upgrade all the technology around you but if you are the old tech it's a problem i think we need to all know how to use the new tech we should train everybody did they try to turn it off and turn it back on again did they unplug it and plug it back in basically they did but yeah i don't want to be the person who's always asking my grandson can you program the vcr for me there are certain things i definitely will probably not keep up with but at the same time i feel like we should all do our best to keep up with the technology that is impacting not just the stuff that we are using for cooking refrigerators or televisions or whatever but especially the stuff that is impacting how we consume information whether we can trust that information or not i think that is going to be a big big part of i don't know like digital public health digital hygiene as you get older you gotta learn how to keep your brain clean everybody mental floss yeah little mental floss i think that that's the thing that we're all going to have to do as we get older you don't have to know how to do everything but just kind of keep up with it so you know what's going on so nobody steals your password and gets in your bank account what no too a fake don't tell anybody anything everything is a scam trust no one speak to no one or on the phone nothing good comes from the phone strangers on the phone are danger don't talk to people is a thing on the phone okay so what's the the internet there is a new app that somebody decided to send me a press release about it's an app where they use people's location to connect people so they can meet each other and have and connect doesn't that everything never heard of this one before that's amazing i think there was one like that and then it stopped working it got bought by something else and it went away and now they're trying it again somebody else everything old is new again don't give your digital information and never turn on your location information on your phone come on unless you're like literally trying to drive somewhere and you need your gps and you really want to never let apps have your geographic location do not do four square do not do whatever this other app is that i'm not going to name everybody's it's like they're like track me take all me information i'm going to post on the internet and that's free content for you nobody pay me anything and that's great and i'll pay you ten dollars well it's a test and ground so that they can apply it in authoritarian countries track me this is all this is you know we decided the other day that cats actually there's a kai was telling me about some new meme gift like something where like there's this new chinese product that feed it's an automatic cat and it takes pictures of your cat when it's coming out what is it it feeds the cat food but then it takes pictures of the cat and then posts them to the internet for you yeah so there's all these funny pictures of cats taken by these things but we were talking about it and i decided that it's really a plot they're using the cats they're sleeper cells cats and weather balloons conspiracy everyone do you know how old the internet is they're going to they're going to activate the cats one of these days do you know how old the internet is do you know how old it is it's many decades old yeah do you know how long a cat lives not that many decades not that many decades do you know that most of the cats that you see on the internet are dead i know they're all most of them are dead cats dead cat means that's what it is it's all dead cat means on the internet you can live forever on a fake beach that's from a truckload of sand that you put in your living room in front of a green screen that shows my cybertruck handling driving through sand no problem not an issue not getting stuck why do i get so much catnip at the door every morning from amazon yeah the cats are using the internet while i sleep oh shoebrew enter cat communications this is hilarious almost in trouble at school what would you do half a pound of cat funny big production out of serious trouble mr. reduction yeah really i'm like i had no idea it was illegal because you know you look at it and it looks like a big bag of what was illegal at the time but it was cat i had no you had no idea i had no idea at all and they're like well this guy we're gonna have to they had the police could have been dried parsley could have been so many things oh my gosh they just assumed they assumed because it was me for some reason they thought i would be up to no good do you ever be up to no good i don't why i never ever and you know getting the school liaison officer involved and the principal and the vice principal and the district supervisor came down and mr. Jackson we're gonna have to call your parents bigger trouble than that in the middle of a class and everything and i was like sorry i just didn't know that you know the catnip that i couldn't bring catnips catnip was the contraband like catnip like yeah oh you're saying it's catnip uh huh why do you have this much catnip it's pet stores on the way on the way to school this is why you don't like cats this explains everything and then they were like they didn't know they were like whoa we're gonna go test it i'm like how how are you gonna test it don't tell me you guys are gonna go and smoke some catnip hey my goodness firecracker mr. Jackson well it was you know actually it started out you know you were being provocative isn't that the word well why am i getting blamed actually what i had done was a perfectly natural normal thing which is buying catnip see what you could get away with no no no eventually but it wasn't until there was like a break i think it was a lunch break or morning break or something like that between classes i was taking stuff out for the locker backpack and taking other stuff in and i took this out and somebody was like whoa and i was like oh yeah it does kind of look like that huh and then them and walking around with and then i saw one of the adult type teacher people and so i put it in my pocket and quickly walked away and then they found me and so i'm in the class not looking guilty and they're like they all came in with this concerning faces and i'm like okay so i'm reaching in and i take out my latch key or a kid key oh yeah because that's what yours was with latch keys i take out my duct tape wallet with my two dollars in it thin little thing and put that down still like this i'm going to pat down and they're like oh that's all i got and they're like whoa what about that pocket like i had forgotten but they noticed that there was a a big bulge and uh davis's metal shop class i took this thing out and dropped it down on the table i was like oh yeah and that's when i was like mr. jackson there was a lot of trouble mr. denver dallas davis's eyes got really big and he's like oh he looked at me like you've done it now and the other kids were like whoa he's in a big trouble now and everybody was but to be fair this wasn't even the first time that you did anything like this it was their bias that had created the whole thing their assumption of guilt you know that this story is it's a psychological profile of you for your entire life i can't remember if this was before or after bringing the non-alcoholic beers to school i think this is the thing that gave the idea for bringing non-alcoholic beer to school probably which was really funny because me and my friend we walked we had to walk for we realized it nobody noticed we could have just brought beer to school and been drinking in the quad at lunch like nobody's noticing we had to walk around to get noticed before you tried we had to try that one the first one was kind of innocent at the beginning this one was like we were trying and it was like we could just get away with this like this is too easy probably the beer at the time though like if it was a green glass bottle it might have looked at the time there were like green 7up bottles and it might have just looked like it was a glass bottle but there were more glass bottles but there were more glass bottles then so like you would drink out there were more sodas and other things i'm just saying but yeah it was just kind of but it wasn't catnip but every time you do one of these things there's an announcement at the school the next day it's like attention students that you know today we will be having an event on the quad today's lunch will be this and catnip is no longer allowed on school premises like there will be these little fragments that people are like what what was that what are they talking about catnip for apparently they don't want to hear so the thing that i did in high school was they had put in we were in like farm country and it was i think this was my junior year so it was like 91 maybe 1991 anyway they were starting to put some rules into place where you couldn't wear bandanas because bandanas were notified that you were in a gang yeah which is so funny because the central valley there turned into cartel land oh yeah absolutely but i came to school one day this is me little missy anti-authoritarian i came to school in my purple lavender bandana wrapped around my hair and i got called into the office for wearing a lavender bandana tied around my head and they asked me why i was wearing it well to hold my hair back it's just it's just for holding my hair back yeah so first of all miss you're getting it wrong you have to choose either the red or the blue to be affiliated with the gang you're doing it all wrong and it's bad my parents got called i got kicked out of school for a day and they made an even firmer statement about no bandanas in the school i succeeded like you got catnip banned i made sure that my little central california country school allowed no bandanas especially not lavender ones which i still have and i wear occasionally because i like it i don't i don't do anything like that anymore i just do a podcast sometimes i gotta go i gotta go i do too it's night time and it's past sleeping you know i'm tired i don't even know what time it is over there but let's see if it's a four hour show oh my gosh it's like eleven o'clock at night there yeah i'm tired i've been i've been stifling yawns for a little bit and it was a very good energy energy week for me tonight so i was like but now i'm like i'm gonna crash and i just kicked my cat and that wasn't nice okay oh cappy you're okay i love you yeah she's fine it wasn't hard she still loves me goodnight everyone good morning justin have a wonderful day have a great night sleep or be awake drink coffee or water or tea or other beverages whatever you like stay healthy stay safe don't wear lavender bandanas in your high school and don't bring a ziplock baggie of catnip if that's not really allowed wherever you are everyone be safe do what's right do what is thoroughly right be curious and be lucky see you next week goodnight