 Click on the links and we're hanging out here waiting for things to go live Because that's what we do. Oh, hey, I think we're live Hello, everybody three two This is twist this week in science episode number 639 recorded on Wednesday, October 4th 2017 sciences all mail review Everyone i'm dr. Kiki and tonight on this week in science We are going to fill your heads with raccoons old people and herpes but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer We here at twist headquarters understand that sciencey news may not be for everyone stories here typically get begin with phrases like Recent research into filling the blank reveals or according to new fmri study on insert cephalopod here Or on earth fossil found a previously unknown fill-in thing you never heard of existing before Or even an interesting discovery from nasa just beyond the insert somewhere in space Only some people in our society want to hear stories like these So we don't do the show for everyone We do this Just for you Because you are one of us One of us who finds discoveries in science and not just informative but exciting and inspiring one of us Who revel in knowing thirst for more data hunger after every study for further research to be done And while the news world of large continues to pander to the popular pope keeping science news for our often people's peripheral You are one of us here to fill in the blanks of this weekend science Coming up next What's happening what's happening what's happening this week in science And a good science to you too justin blare and everyone out there welcome to another episode of this week in science We're back once again with all of our favorite stories from the week to talk about them to opinionate on them To really get into the science right We love it. We love it. And we're so glad that you're here with us So thank you for being here on tonight's show I have stories about nobel prizes The actual nobel prizes and oh, I didn't I didn't check my mail Yeah, it would be it would be a phone call. You would have gotten a phone call. It's not just a yeah Anyway crisper and clones. That's right. The clones are being edited and a tabby star update Justin, what do you have? I've got the modern humans older than we think And evidence of italian kelts That just doesn't even make sense Yeah It might never And that's it. Okay. And then moving on blare. What is in the animal corner this week? Oh, I have the four mentioned trash pandas. I have um free loading invertebrates and I have a british accent killer scientists Killer scientists. Yes. Oh my goodness. Is this going to be one of those new science channel documentaries? Yeah, it's Little did you know the scientists lurking around the corner? That's right Okay I can't wait to get into all these stories. It sounds like a lot of fun But before we do we have to jump into our new favorite segment of the show And I want to remind everybody also that you can subscribe to the twist podcast if you are not already In just about every rss feeder that's out there itunes the google play podcast portal stitcher Spreaker tune in just look for this week in science You can also find us on youtube and facebook if you want to watch us while we do this thing that we do Again, look for this week in science. You can also find links to everything and most recent episodes at twist.org Where also you can find A way to pre-order your annual Blair's animal corner twist calendar. They're available now So if you go to twist.org you can pre-order that right now But Here it goes We're ready for this weekend What has science done for me? lately Tom mccaig writes in to say in 2012. I was diagnosed with melanoma Even with treatment by early 2014. It had metastasized and the prognosis was bad After four treatments of yarvoi followed by 36 bi-weekly treatments of op-devo I have had a complete response No signs of the cancer for 10 months That's what science has done for me lately. That is awesome It is can't really beat that And we're glad that you're still with us and that you're here to write in and let us know how the treatments have been working for you And thanks science because seriously Science helps us keep people around and that's just awesome. Happy to have you with us tom Very much. Thank you so much for writing in with your story Anyone out there who wants to write in remember that you can leave us a message on our facebook page So just go look for this weekend science on facebook Facebook.com slash this weekend science Write in with your stories of what science has done for you lately I know they are many and varied and we want to hear from you and we want to read them every single week So keep them coming you guys. I'm loving this Is it time for science now we're gonna are we're gonna discuss this science this science thing that we love so much All right, so let's do the celebrating first Let's get the celebrations out of the way so we can get into the other things I would like to congratulate science's all male review And by that I mean the Nobel Prize winners this year Every single Nobel Prize recipient for science Is a man You know what kiki a white man at that Finally finally white men in science are getting their day in the sun. Am I right? You are right. I mean they are that's great And I'm not going to malign the discoveries that are being celebrated this year Just the gender and race of those who are making them. Yes Absolutely So the Nobel Prize in chemistry for 2017 has been awarded to Jacques Dubuchet Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for their development of a methodology using cryo electron microscopy to freeze biological molecules mid stride to be able to portray them in action at atomic resolution So that we can get a picture of what the things that make up ourselves And that make up the things inside our set the things of the things inside ourselves Actually look at look like and how they work. We have gotten to see ion channels In action as a result of cryo electron microscopy It took biochemistry to places. It never was able to go before we have an inside view of the structure of potential targets for drug treatments We have an inside view of the lock and key mechanisms that are in place in our ribosomes Like there's so much that electron microscopy and this this methodology has allowed us to do It really is deserving of this celebration The researchers for this from the Nobel prize org website Jacques Dubuchet says Explains how the technique of water vitrification that he came up with has allowed us to observe Biomolecules like Zika and Salmonella in their natural state. He says if you have them a nice the molecules like fish are dead Joachim Frank says Normally my dog wakes me early in the morning, but today it was the Nobel Prize I don't know how it felt to be receiving the Stockholm phone call Must be nice. Yeah, and Richard Henderson says it's opened up a previously unapproachable area of structural biology on his on his part in the discovery The prize in physics for 2017 It really isn't a secret We've been talking about the four discoveries that have been made over the last couple of years In great detail. It was something that on this show over a decade We debated as to whether or not they would be discovered But this award in physics this year has gone to Rainer Weiss And the other half jointly to Barry C bearish and kip s thorn For their decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves Rainer Rainer Weiss He came up with the idea back in the 1970s originally and He explains why measuring the effect of gravitational waves is so very hard to achieve. He says Space is enormously stiff. You can't squish it Barry C bearish talked about the LIGO detector and The size of the actual signal that they detected the very first time says the actual size of the signal Was about one thousandth the size of a proton One thousand that's not even a measurement. What is that? One thousandth of a proton wiggled and this detector detected it and we went black holes have merged We know things now. It's it's the scale of this is is mind-boggling kip s thorn says Huge discoveries are really the result of giant collaborations and this is a point that many people have been bringing up recently and a point that again I was kind of alluding to as with the all-male review joke at the beginning of Discussing this story is that really Big experiments like the gravitational wave detector LIGO and Virgo together the papers That are published on on these discoveries. The first paper had hundreds of contributors You know, these are huge team efforts and in chemistry as well all of these discoveries Are step by step team efforts. It's not one person. It's everyone in the lab You look at any paper. There are multiple authors on most papers that are published um The primary author the last author is the one who usually gets they're the head of the lab the one who Got the funding to make it happen. They've been working probably the longest and so they get the spoils of uh of Of history, but science really is the result of these collaborations and if not a collaboration then multiple discoveries occurring In a fashion that allows understanding to take place The final award I wanted to talk about tonight is the prize for physiology and medicine This was awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall Michael Ross bash and michael w young for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms Controlling the circadian rhythm And so jeffrey c. Hall praised the role of the fruit fly And he says the key fourth awardee here is the little fly Michael young said that he took on the mystery of circadian rhythms because he just thought it was a terrific problem And then michael ross bash says when he was awakened by the stock home telephone call He says my wife said start breathing The this one is particularly interesting because it was the discovery of multiple clock work mechanisms in cells of the fruit fly initially the initially the clock that was That was discovered There were genes that were discovered that they named period and then a second gene group that was called Let's see if I can find it here that was called tim or uh Yeah, tim the period gene and oh timeless It's abbreviated tim so period and timeless work together in a cyclic manner To give us our 24 hour cycles And not just us this has been discovered in plants in yeast in worms across across this yeah fruit flies across the spectrum of life And many other discoveries have come out of this as a result of these these genes regulate everything about life Where is the teeny tiny Nobel Prize? For the great great great great grandson of the fruit fly in the study Yes, so No women won an award this year this year. There's always next year. Yes And according to the bad astronomy blog over on sci-fi wire phil plate He says that the nomination list for this prize is embargoed for 50 years So we can only look at data up to 1966 And if you look at the list up to 1966, there were around 2,500 well over 2,500 nominations to men and only 98 To women so until until 1966 women were barely nominated for any of these awards If I am I'm going to suggest that the last 50 years is going to show an improvement in that I'm going to suggest that the last 50 years has shown an increase in involvement of women in science and publishing Crucial papers to research and I'm going to suggest that some 50 years from now We will see that this year there were many women nominated However, the discoveries that they decided to award this year were product were these very important discoveries That just happened to be awarded to men And I predict that as we move forward through the next 50 years Many more Nobel prizes will be awarded to women And to to people of color The diversity is going to go up because diversity in science is going up Yep, it has no place to go but up and to get better Also true Yeah, I mean I I always I think I've done this before but I've sort of put this in in the light of something like title nine Where where if you're going to talk about uh adult athletes Um who are competing, you know, even you look at the olympics is a great example before title nine. There weren't very many female olympians and it took uh generation of women who are doing sports and starting in the in the you know and in schools early on to For there to be enough female athletes in this country to be competing For in the olympics and I think the last time around the women brought back a few more medals than the men So it's just sort of one of those things women were for a long time sort of lacked out of academia at the higher levels We're talking about this one study where this this whole thing that the proof of this has been discovered, you know, and the initial Uh hypothesis was in what 1977? So this is a generation Long project that's being awarded and it's coming from a time back when there weren't as many women in science with access to this so so the the idea that you know It's still it's yeah, it's in the pipeline and that's exactly right. It's in the pipeline And as bleak says in the chat room tune in to twist in 50 years to find out Um and okay, we've this is this has been some awesome celebratory science. So I'm I It's wonderful that we have made such discoveries These discoveries will be the shoulders that future discoveries stand upon But now let's talk about clone editing Oh, okay. Yeah, the chinese are at it again They were one of the first teams to report using gene editing using the crisper cast 9 technology to edit genetic mutations that were Deleterious and hereditary to use early embryos to use crisper cast 9 to go in and cut out Bad genes and to try and repair these deleterious mutations It kind of worked but it kind of didn't and since then we have um shukrat metallopov here at ohhsu in oregon Who has shown his methodology of using the crisper editing technique on early embryos was very successful potentially and it's still a little bit controversial and under Under just debate in the scientific community and what else is science for than healthy debate But the chinese have published a new study in the journal protein and cell not only have they used gene editing they have Basically created clones to do it. They created uh, they wanted to fix A recessive hereditary disorder. So if you know anything about the way genetics works Dominant mutations only need one copy of the mutation to be expressed and to to show themselves recessive traits however They need two copies one copy on each chromosome To actually show themselves in the individual To do that though, it's very hard to find individuals for their research that actually had these double recessive mutations to get around that They developed embryonic clones from some patients skin cells They found people who had this hereditary disorder called beta thalassemia It's a blood disorder and Is can be really terrible And they had some patients used their skin cells created Clones of these individuals. So all the cells would basically be the exact same as the original individuals Created these little early embryos. They don't let them go grow past 14 days And then they used an updated version of crisper that goes in and instead of cutting out a gene It goes in and clips out just one little base pair. So we know dna RNAs made up of guanine, adenine, cytosine thymine Right, so and uracil But instead of taking the whole gene that's like att agcc, you know, whatever that combination of letters is It goes in and looks for the one specific mutation the point mutation That has gone wrong that has changed the gene and the protein goes in fixes that one little thing And they actually had reasonable success. It wasn't great eight out of 20 cloned embryos They were able to convert A g a guanine that wasn't supposed to be there into an adenine In either one or both copies of the gene and in doing that would make this recessive trait not be expressed One of the issues with this though as well Is that they did have a problem with mosaic mosaicism mosaicism mosaics Which means these individuals these little embryos these little balls of cells Not every cell in the early embryos Took up the editing in the same way and so some of them got edited some cells Had both copies edited some cells had one copy edited and so Depending on the cell you may or may not have expression of This deleterious trait Huh, so it's not this isn't it's a slam dunk for the chinese for sure but It's a very interesting interesting Potential for future avenues for therapy of this disorder beta thalassemia and other inherited diseases and it does show this That this interesting fixing of point mutations most human Disorders are caused by point mutations And not big gene problems Most of them are just single point mutations. And so this technique This is a proof of concept That they might be working in the right direction So that's pretty exciting the chinese are going for it It's very exciting very exciting. We'll see that they uh the beta thalassemia is actually a recessive disorder that Is a big problem in china and so it's a very important Disorder for them to go after at this point in time But you know what? Let's not talk about this point in time Let's take it back Back at the time machine to win We were chimpanzees And we had Herpes we had herpes when we were chimpanzees. Well, we were never chimpanzees. We weren't we just shared a common ancestor Thank you for clarification. Yes Anyway, our common ancestor The common ancestor we had with chimpanzees had herpes cold sores Herpes simplex virus one and gentle to herpes herpes simplex virus two We split off From that early ancestor the chimpanzees got lucky and they kept on carrying Both types of herpes type one and type two. It's held on to both of them. That's the lucky part But our ancestor our ancestor that split off We only took herpes simplex virus one with us We lost the genital herpes for a while. There's some Something happened, right? This is about seven million years ago but then About three to one and a half million years ago Genital herpes came back. We got it back. And so these researchers from Cambridge and oxford Publishing in virus evolution this week I think they they looked back in time to figure out How it jumped back. Where did the genital herpes come from? We lost it and then we got it back and how did that happen? Basically, they think that there was A bipedal hominin called parenthropus boisei Oh boiseis boiseis. That's right. Yeah, parenthropus boisei scavenged Chimp meat was a scavenger probably eight chimp meat that was infected with herpes simplex virus two Thus probably contracting That's how they're telling it anyway selves. Yes Um, it could have been Through open sores that the that the meat may have or the the blood from this this carcass may have gotten into some kind of infection An open sore that the the individual had it's probably happened multiple times at this point in time and then There was contact close contact between boisei and homo erectus And It was at that point that boisei gave General herpes back to homo erectus by way of a hug by way of a hug This is why you need to have a conversation with your Partner even if they're a different species about their sexual history. It's just important. It is important Yes Researchers from uh, they have there's some great comments from the researchers um, senior author dr. Charlotte holdcroft from Cambridge's department of archaeology says herpes infect everything from her from humans to coral with each species having its own Specific set of viruses for these viruses to jump species barriers. They need a lucky genetic mutation combined with significant fluid exchange In the case of early hominins this means through consumption Or intercourse Possibly Could be both I mean, it could have been also that homo erectus being a scavenger scavenged Dead infected parenthrapus boisei carcasses as well. I mean there's this could have been a Very interesting chain Of jumping jumping Jumping It's yeah, there's no no There's another kind of herpes that when you work with primates you have to be really careful careful about it's called herpes b And that stuff they carry it doesn't really affect them But just from like a splash into your eyeball or something like that You can get into your body and it can basically eat your brain and you die in like 48 hours I don't want that That's terrifying herpes is a scary thing Oh my goodness. Terrifying Yes, and additionally holdcroft goes on to say once herpes simplex virus 2 gains entry to a species It stays easily transferred from mother to baby as well as through blood saliva and sex Herpes simplex virus 2 is ideally suited to low density populations The genital herpes virus would have crept across africa the way it creeps down nerve endings in our sex organs Slowly but surely Yeah, so this team is going to their next step. You always wonder what the next step is right? They are Looking at looking at climate change and genetics and timing of things. They were able to tease out this story But they think they can do the same thing to figure out Things like where humans got pubic lice That's their next Yes, because obviously that's your next that's natural progression. It's a mystery of an ancient disease Really? We don't know where it came from a modern yet ancient disease Yeah, because we call it crabs, but it's actually a lice That is very specific It's an it is it is it is an organism that is very specific to its environment Puget lice do not they're not the same as head lice They are different different species So but we have them I think in common with gorillas Yes, and so they this is it's thought that pubic lice were were introduced Similarly to the herpes simplex virus 2 via an intermediate hominin from ancestral gorillas Over 3 million years ago I wonder if somebody was wearing gorilla skin or something like that. No, look look you stop Just quick trying to come up with different ways that this could have happened And let me tell you it wasn't 3 million years ago either. Okay Look, we one thing that we have been learning about uh early hominin history is that they Had sex with each other a lot and as we know Not every species a species that's a little bit distinct can Mate and reproduce which means they were mating even when reproduction wasn't taking place We have plenty of examples where reproduction did take place in different degrees That does not mean they stopped having sex when oh if we can't have kids Then forget it, right? No, they were all all hominins have always been having sex with each other all the time And and even those that like borealis that That borealis is is kind of more on the ape side than anything that we would consider human Yes, right kind of grilly Um, uh, so so this is there was a time when you know, gorilla Uh, uh, homo safety like homo. Yeah, it wasn't that far away really yet. It did all look good And that's what happened. There was a lot of hominin sex taking place. That's like a game of telephone, but uh a little bit different Yeah, that's why we they now call they don't call it like direct ancestral links going back They now call it a braided stream Which means lots of disparate hominins were having sex and some were successful in reproducing Which would then go on reproducing you can't tell what's really this from that at some point And that's how we ended up with people because of sex It is What a moral story I mean, you can't take that away from us, right? This is how the people come from Sex Basic answer. Yeah, and speaking of which this is this week in science. Justin Let's move into your story, which I think is pretty related to this Yeah, uh says here Modern humans are a lot older than we think this is an amazing discovery Uh discovery of a 2000 year old South African child Wow And while that story would be even more interesting if we had in fact discovered a child that was alive and 2000 years old the remains of this child who lived 2000 years ago Before there was much migration from northern to southern Africa. He was a south african child after all, uh gives us a decent genetic clock to gauge the emergence of modern man based on the findings We may be uh about a hundred thousand years older than we had believed This is marlies lombard professor of the stone age archaeology the university of yohannesburg Initiated a collaboration with the geneticists from upsola university in sweden and the university of water sand Who put together a team of experts at upsola? Laboratory they reconstructed the full genome of the belito bay child Together with the genomes of six other individuals from the koala zulu Natal who lived between 300 and 300 years ago three Stone age individuals who lived between 23 and 1800 years ago were found to be genetically related to descendants the coast sands group living in southern africa today so Very much the same direct ancestry Uh the remains of other four individuals who lived 500 to 300 years ago during the iron age Were genetically related more to present day south africans of west african descent Because the boy from beleta was of hunter gather descent living a time before Migrants further north in africa reached southern shores His dna could be used to estimate the split between modern humans and earlier human groups as occurring between 350 and 260 thousand years ago Okay, i'm i'm missing something. I don't understand how you get from a 2000 year old remain Remains of a human to a 200 000 year old um Of the emergence of man Right, so you have these one of the sort of wonderful things Uh about about africa is that it's really big And the groups of people there going back in time were relatively small So you have very isolated groups who were isolated for a very long time And what they were doing is comparing the genetic changes over time In this one child to those uh of disparate groups from elsewhere and they could backtrack sort of genetic Uh, I guess the point in the in the going back in the family branch where those two were of one ancestor Hmm All right, and and that number came out to be between 260 and 350 thousand years ago Of two disparate groups of modern humans, right? Well now Yeah, that that estimate coincides with the floors bad skull who was a contemporary Of homo naledi that relatively recent addition to the hominid family So according to this it now seems that at least two or three homo species are occupied southern african landscape during this time Which also represents the early phases of the middle stone age says lombard when the researchers involved Uh pulling it all together to fossil ancient dna and archaeological records of africa Indicate that the transition from archaic to modern humans might not have occurred in only one place in africa instead Regions including southern and northern africa probably played significant role So it's also I guess it sort of points out because the uh northern africans and southern africans Sort of diverged that long ago 350 250 thousand years ago It also might indicate that uh the emergence of homo sapiens was occurring in multiple spots around africa at that time as well I think it's just amazing to think about all the different uh, I mean we used to think it was almost this straight line, right? and That didn't make sense But now we're actually finding the fossil records. We're finding the genetic evidence To support like you said this braided rope these multiple lineages these different groups of hominids I think it's just fantastic and it goes back longer than we thought previously Yeah, I mean the idea of the old All this all this all this advancement our development into who we are as humans homo sapiens These things it's got an earlier start the further back we push it push it the more more sense it starts to make Of course, even though that's that's pretty dramatically far back Uh, there were still already neanderthals and and and europe and and say very I mean they were neanderthals were already roaming around all of all of europe and in much of asia probably as well and then sovans and then those People everywhere there are people everywhere. That's great People people everywhere all over the planet and now we're one people Because of sex That's what we learned because we had so much sex it turned all those different groups into one I think we have to change the uh title of tonight's episode to Because sex And on that note everyone do you know what time it is? It's time for lairs animal corner I was gonna say blairs invertebrate sex corner. Uh, I don't have that though Our creature Except for giant I wish I had gotten the memo I don't have any invertebrate sex, but I do have The story of the crow and the pitcher are you familiar With asop's fable of the crow and the pitcher. Oh, yeah So there's a thirsty crow comes upon a pitcher with water at the bottom, but it's too far down It's beyond the reach of his beak So he tries to push it over can't do it He then drops pebbles in one by one until the water rises to the top because of displacement, right And the morals there are that uh, let's see thoughtful. This is better than brute strength That necessity is the mother of invention And that where there's a will there's a way well asop just probably saw a crow do that and was like, oh, this is cool Exactly So this is something that actually crows have been doing for a long time and asop most likely did that is the The the kind of the hypothesis here is that asop watched this happen and That this is kind of just It was it was an example of animal ingenuity, right? Why haven't crows ever gotten the Nobel Prize? Great question. This is actually this was a study or an observational study that it's i'm just it was just Describing i'm not yeah. In fact, uh, I I did a little research I found some some evidence that perhaps pliny the elder is the earliest to find this behavior in real life corvettes But we're not here to talk about crows because we know they're smart We've talked about them a million times on this show instead. I want to talk about raccoons trash pandas trash pandas raccoons Yes, so a group of us scientists led by the university of wyoming Have decided to do this picture test on raccoons so first disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer eight raccoons all in captivity were the ones for this experiment So definitely no matter what I say next More study is needed So the research team they wanted to see if raccoons would be able to drop stones into clear tubes of water to retrieve floating marshmallows They found that the raccoons um similar to studies of non corvid birds that they've done before Did not just walk in and immediately go. Oh, this is how to do this and drop stones into the tube Instead they had to kind of train the raccoons how to do this They did that by balancing the stones on the rim of the tube And raccoons as they kind of walked around would accidentally knock one in and then go. Oh the The water went up. Maybe I should do that again And then they would do it again and again until they could get to the marshmallows So then that taught them stones falling into the tube brought the marshmallow closer So that's definitely it's a different level of ingenuity than they were hoping for During the training seven of the eight interacted with the stones Four raccoons retrieved the marshmallows after accidentally knocking stones in the water two of the four Got the marshmallow and then learned on their own to pick the stones up off the ground and drop them into the water to Get a reward. So only two out of the initial eight Then after accidentally doing this decided. Oh next time I'm going to go ahead and pick up this stone over here And put it in the water. So only two of the eight um, and then a third raccoon Surprised the scientist by inventing an entirely new method for solving the problem She found a way despite their their uh, their attempt to weigh it down to overturn the entire heavy tube To get to the marshmallows, which is classic raccoon in my opinion I'm not going to do your study. I'm going to just do what I want to Yeah, there's a very complicated looking latch on top of this I think if I take a running start from the roof, uh, the eve of the roof I could land on this thing and just pummel it down the road Let me do it that way. Yeah So then the other kind of part of this experiment, which kind of didn't have any conclusive results Was that they wanted to have different objects that the raccoons could drop in things that float versus things that sink Bigger things versus smaller things heavier things versus lighter things because this is all going to displace water differently And they they didn't see anything too interesting or conclusive in that except that Uh, they performed differently than birds or human children did in this trial So they couldn't conclusively say whether the raccoons understood If they had problem solving abilities from this, but they did say that they acted very differently than birds and humans so They found that raccoons could be innovative in many parts of the task But that they had fewer They had fewer fewer successful Experiments with it But they also do say that the raccoons had fewer opportunities And fewer kind of different variables than in previous studies. So they want to do more of course um And they think that if the raccoons familiarized themselves with it with the stones the tube the whole setup That it would come a lot quicker to them after after familiarization If you think about a raccoon in your trash can no matter how many different ways you try to To kind of uh latch down that lid they will find a way to open up your trash can and get to your trash That's because they're very familiar with that apparatus, right? so They they say that their study demonstrates captive raccoons are able to solve novel problems And that they approach classic tests of animal cognition in diverse and exciting ways They can't wait to see what they do next Yeah, so all in all not super conclusive of a study other than to say that they are They are very They have a very different way of going about solving problems than some of the other animals that we've studied in these kinds of problem-solving experiments previously Which makes sense because they're urbanized animals. They are they are in a really specific Uh kind of environment where problem solving It's hard for me to believe that that they don't have intense problem-solving abilities because you need to Yeah to live in the big city, right? Not only do they live in this in an urban environment beyond that they're generalists and they are social animals They they live in groups. They usually, you know, the parents are very close in closely involved with raising their young So there's probably some amount of skill transfer that goes on Between generations So you've got generational inheritance of skills Um, and then they're generalists like rats and crows and pigeons These animals succeed Raccoon they're succeeding in the urban environment because they're able to solve problems Right, but the the one of the things One of the things that the lead researchers did mention that I will just say kind of as a last thought is to try to parse out the difference between intelligence and problem-solving And exploratory behavior with extremely dexterous pause Which is a good point So I've been trying to teach my cats how to use one of my one of my cats likes to scarf and barf So I'm trying to stop that from happening, right? So I've bought this little ball device that I can put the food into and then open up So little holes are available and then teach the cats that if they knock the ball around it It's a food fallout and then they can feed themselves and play at the same time Sounds great. One of my cats Has figured it out The other cat refuses The first cat Is more exploratory and is is bolder is more of an outgoing personality type cat And so I wonder if the personality types Have played into their exploratory behavior and there are each each exclusive ability To understand and and do this task that I've said for them Absolutely. Yeah, and I would argue that that is one of the reasons that I respect and uh Not fear but definitely am wary of raccoons when I come across one at maybe 4 30 or 5 o'clock in the morning on my street It's because of the boldness And that exactly is the thing that um That can make raccoons extremely successful Despite potentially a lack of intelligence or um problem solving which is with this whole So that's that's kind of the question, right? Is maybe maybe raccoons are just bold and stupid So it's not even that it's maybe they're just they're they're much more likely to pick up strange things and put them down in new places Yeah, right. So which is a good question Is if you're if you're an animal with something akin to thumbs not quite thumbs But if you're able to pick things up really easily move them around push them down push them into things If you're more dexterous and you're also not afraid Are you more likely to find solutions to problems stumble across them? perhaps by chance And an interesting question Increases probabilities. Yeah, also a statistic. I just made up on the spot eight out of 10 Attic hauntings Are actually raccoons. Yeah, probably the other the other two the other two are pigeons and or bats Most likely possums Could be possums None of them are giant spiders. Okay, so There we go I'm not talking about giant spiders. No. What do you have now? I want to talk about tsunamis so Tsunamis are front of mind today and lately Tsunamis are devastating to humans and human spaces affected by them But they're also a phenomenon that requires study Because they change things drastically very quickly And I wanted to highlight a recent study that was looking at a side of tsunamis that perhaps has not gotten a whole lot of um Of attention previously and that's looking actually at the 2011 tsunami from japan and Stowaways that move because of that tsunami And what I mean by that are invertebrates hitching a ride on debris And crossing the pacific ocean. That's a long trip Finally finally we can find a silver lining for plastics in the ocean Interesting you say that justin What are stowaways but another word for? invasive species Right yet another reason why plastics in the ocean are bad. Bam. Okay, so Nearly 300 species have appeared on the shores of hawaii in the u.s. West coast attached to tsunami debris um according to biologists from the smithsonian environmental research center at williams college they looked at a bunch of different debris that has washed up from 2012 to 2017 And they found that there were about 289 living species on tsunami debris origin from japan They're far more that are That escaped their notice in their survey And while arrivals have slowed down they have still Not yet stopped the team is still finding new species when the study period ended in 2017 So the the interesting thing is that most of these coastal organisms they can't survive at open sea So they normally could not survive this long One to six year journey across the pacific ocean This is a new opportunity because of plastic because of storm debris like docks and ships they Create a very slow moving but stable Platform for these things to move on mollusks like mussels were the most frequently found of all invertebrate groups worms hydroids Crestations bryozoans These are all animals that they found two-thirds of the species had never been seen on the u.s. West coast before None of the species were known or expected to survive trans oceanic rafting voyages Then that's because the open ocean is really harsh of course But the these ocean rafts were only going one or two knots To kind of put that in perspective for us landlubbers That's 20 or more knots for commercial ships. So that's really really slow just one or two knots This means that they gradually could adjust their new environments and they actually think that animals were able to reproduce and host larva on these little floating islands So this is oceanic panspermia. Yes absolutely Yeah, so there's a huge potential for marine debris as Justin was getting to you already to increase the probability of these sorts of things happening and This is turned out says co-author John Chapman of Oregon State University to be one of the biggest unplanned natural experiments in marine biology perhaps in history Yeah, scientists largely agree that prevention is the most effective way to combat invasive species But we can't prevent tsunamis. So the main focus should be on managing plastic These vessels that these invasives are moving on Yes, just another reason to ditch plastic Plastic trash things that do not break down. Yes They are salt water over a long voyage. They are harboring biological criminals Well, they can wreak havoc on local coastal ecosystems that are probably already suffering from multiple They're like the cats of the ocean That's okay But to tell you how a couple of these things might might affect just very quickly A lot of these animals that we talked that I talked about before our filter feeders so one of the Huge differences they can make is if a mussel population Explodes water clarity improves which at first sounds maybe like a good thing Not for animals that have adapted to a foggy ocean So here on the california coast the water is very cold and it's full of lots of nutrients It's full of lots of phyto and zooplankton And it's also full of a lot of dirt and silt And so a lot of animals depend on those zooplankton phytoplankton to eat But they also depend on the murky water to hide from predators So when you improve water clarity sometimes that can actually Um, it can destroy ecosystems. Yeah, absolutely Fascinating. Yeah So it's a delicate balance. It is. Yeah, such a delicate balance It's like when it's 80 degrees in san francisco and they put out a warm weather alert. Yes. Yes. That was great For the delicate flowers. That's right. Yeah. All right, everybody It is time for us to take a break. We are going to take a quick break And then return with a lot more science. We have a lot of good stories coming up in the next half of the show We've got tabby star being updated. We've got early italian Celtics from justin No, no, got a good lot of good stuff. I hope that you stick with us Just a few more minutes. This is this week in science Congratulations Hey everyone, this is this week in science and thank you so much for being a part of the show. Thanks for watching Thanks for listening. 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We could use the help The more people we can reach them better, right? The more people we can tell about science more conversations will be had about science on a daily basis sharing science Is a great thing. It's like joy germs. They spread the science sciences joy germs anyway This is all all all a big request because you know We do this show and we love doing it We do it because of you, but we do it because we love it also, but we can't do it without you We really can't do it without you. So thank you so much for your support We can't do it without you And we are back with more this weekend science Yes, we are Justin. What you got I got textiles textiles represent one of earliest human craft technologies and applied arts and their production would have been one of the most resource and labor-consuming activities in the ancient past so certainly Something we would want to study about the past to give us insights into what people were up to back then Ah, there's a little problem though textiles are relatively rare finds in archaeology Not just because people ran around naked all the time Though i'm sure that happened some places But typically conditions are unfavorable for something like organic material to be preserved Many archaeological textile fragments Do survive however in a mineralized form Which forms the basis of a new study published in antiquity Not published a long time ago. There's something there's a publication called antiquity Detailed analysis of several hundred textile fragments has provided for the first time a much more detailed definition of the textile related cultures in italy and greece during the first half of the first millennium bc or about 3000 years ago according to dr margarita gleba this study author and researcher at university of cambridge likely for us during the iron age Which is a thousand to 400 bc people were buried with a lot of metal goods such as personal ornaments weapons and vessels these metals Are conducive to the preservation of textiles as the metal effectively kills off micro organisms Which would otherwise consume the organic materials while at the same time metal salts create casts of textile fibers thereby preserving textile microstructure This is how we get such a large number of textiles even though The only they only exist now in tiny fragments through meticulous analysis using digital scanning Through electron microscopy high performance liquid chromatography and other advanced methods We're able to determine a lot of information including the nature of the raw materials Structural features such as thread diameter twist direction type of weaving or binding and thread count Technical differences suggest that during the iron age textiles in italy More closely resembled those found in central europe's early or proto-celtic cultures While the textile culture of greece was largely connected with the near east Dr. Webb added there is overwhelming evidence for frequent contact between italy and greece during the first half of the first millennium About 3 000 years ago, but this evidence shows that their textile traditions were technically aesthetically and conceptually Very different This means that the populations in these two regions are making an active decision to clothe themselves in a certain way And it may have to do the traditions set up already in the bronze age And i found this story kind of uh kind of interesting because We know that the next thousand years or the thousand years Forward is going to start finding romans and kelts Going to war with each other as as though they are completely different peoples and and uh By roman times the establishment of greek colonies in southern italy. This is quotey boy still from the researcher Suddenly in a more general oriental influence observed in material culture of italic populations Leads towards gradual disappearance of indigenous textile tradition Our future research will attempt to understand the cause behind this change in textile culture But it's very interesting because a lot a lot for a long time because the romans were so technologically advanced a lot of Things like swords and weapons and and artifacts that uh are considered Celtic origin and Celtic is sort of a large That's that's from iberia up through northern france out to austria like it's it's Really a broad region that is called these Celtic cultures because they shared a lot of tradition a lot of Technology and there was a lot of trade in in back and forth But one of the one of the items is this sort of iconic sword that's very very roman looking That they've found indications of within Celtic cultures dating back to the iron age And so how curious now do we find iron age? Italy being Having technological features similar with more northern Celtic proto Celtic early Celtic cultures so Yeah, and it's it's one of those things too again We we look at a dominant culture in its advanced technology and somehow throughout history have been assuming That that's where the barbarians of the Celtic north got their technologies from and as we get more evidence these technologies Sort of like the braided stream of human genetics, right? We find there's a braided stream of technology and culture and innovation that took place throughout these regions from bronze into the iron And and back into the stone age either. These are we were doing a whole lot of sharing Yeah, well, I think this is it's similar to uh, you know, we know that the the greeks as they took over various and conquered various areas they did so not by Implementing their own cultural standards over the people that they ruled they they said, okay We're gonna rule you but you can still kind of do your own thing And that allowed them to hold a much larger area because people weren't didn't feel like they had to fight They could still be themselves and so by doing this there was increased trade There was increased influence between these different cultures as the empire grew Right. Yeah. Yeah, I just found it large. I mean, this is this is yet another example though I think of of of the history of of pre-rome being And I don't I I Tempted to even go so far as to call them potentially another Celtic Uh, uh to fall into that that that another area that could have Celtic origins. Um Again that term very broad. It's pretty much become all of europe before before rome And and and has such similarities with with what was going on in scandinavia and the language and all this but Oh, it's always fascinating that these things come about and we find we can find this these these micro fibers Through this this this wild transition of having finally having that metal in there preventing corrosion and creating these sort of salt casts of the of the textiles that we can suss out these details that would otherwise be lost Uh through history and it's these little tiny details that are helping us tell a richer story Yeah, and that's yeah, that is so cool So neat. Um a couple of years ago. I uh reported on a discovery in mouse brains that the brain is influenced by The body's immune system historically in physiology and anatomy It was not really thought that the immune system of the body work worked so much within the brain It was like the the brain has its own immune system. It's got its its own Cells up there that do things and we were protected right there's like a blood brain barrier thing It's like no the brain is a separate organ not connected to the rest of your body Yes But a couple of years ago. There was a discovery that lymphatic vessels So our lymph system our lymph nodes are where our immune cells are created and they're sent out to attack invaders in our body And our lymph vessels are the vessels like like blood vessels, but uh, but not they carry lymph fluid lots of immune cells and compounds these vessels Actually exist alongside blood vessels and Get into the brain into the dura matter of the brain Which as as far as recent discoveries go and as much slicing Dicing of the brain that has been done for all this time to only just have recently discovered. Oh, look We are some other little things here Yeah notice before Yes, and so There is a new study just published in e-life, which is an open access journal By researchers at the national institute of neurological disorders and stroke from the national institute of health um the researchers Have used mri technology magnetic resonance imaging and also cadavers to be able to discover Lymph vessels in the human brain not just in the mouse brain But now in the human brain and also other primates to give evidence that this wasn't a one-off One-off thing in the mice. This is a cross species mammalian trait that we have Lymph vessels that get into the brain and so our brains may Drain out some of our the metabolic waste of all the activity that occurs in the brain through the lymphatic vessels The lymph system is also considered the body's sewer system. It's like get rid of stuff pump it out through the lymph, right? um the researchers uh the head researcher for the study daniel reich said we literally watched people's brains drain fluid into these vessels And this was not something that was that was taught to him in medical school And so to do it they used mri to scan the brains of healthy volunteers who had been injected with a compound called gato butral Which is a magnetic dye that's typically used to visualize brain blood vessels that are damaged by disease The dye molecules are actually small enough to leak out of blood vessels in the dura Which is the kind of the the membrane around the brain But they're too big to pass through the blood brain barrier to get into the important parts of the brain And so when the researchers set the mri to see blood vessels The dura matter lit up really brightly because all of this dye was leaking all over the place And they they couldn't see anything to do with the lymphatic system But then they took the scanner and they were like, okay, we have to do something so we can see this differently and they tuned it So the blood vessels disappeared and when they did that They found that that the dura matter also contained smaller but equally bright spots and lines That they suspected were these lymph vessels And so they suggest that the dye leaked out of the blood vessels and then flowed through the dura And into the neighboring lymphatic vessels And so then they did a bunch of testing with different size molecule Dyes, and they saw the blood vessels again And then they did something else to see the lymph node the the lymph vessels again And and so they kept doing it over and over again retuning their scanner and putting in different size dyes to To be able to see the leakiness and where where the dyes would go And what the team says is really this is going to change the way we think about The brain and how it interacts with the immune system. And this is specifically important for neurodegenerative auto autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis Diseases in which the immune system is attacking itself and then attacks the nerve the nerve system Understanding that there could be a disconnect between the blood vessels And the sewer system that if you're not connecting correctly Then maybe you're not draining, you know, and if you don't drain the sewer system You end up in a swamp and that can have all sorts of problems so So it is a it's it's an interesting a very interesting discovery that is exciting And you know this one it was first exciting that it was a You know found in mice a couple of years ago, but now that they have actually confirmed This is something in the human brain as well that this lymphatic system is there. This is it could change the way That diseases are observed and also that they are that they are treated Yeah, and again, this is wow. Uh, this is this is wildly fascinating, but it's it's Sort of refrain we've made a few times throw out all the other drug treatments and ways you've been targeting a disease because now we may have found a direct Thing that's being affected regardless of the drugs you're implementing or where you've been witnessing symptoms and you know for for something that's affecting both The immune system and the brain Is it you know Uh, well, we've noticed the a correlation Here right, uh pretty strong now. There's a connection now. We know that there's a way they're connected Now we have an actual thing to target and look at And and finding cures that this is huge Yeah Yeah That the brain has this has a drainage system like the other organs of the body And that uh, we need to be looking at that need to be looking for it. And yes clever trash panda It is insane in the brain insane in the membrane That's right Cypress hill Yeah, what do you have next Justin? Oh is it me and uh I that was uh, all of my stories. Oh wait. No It never is Justin always trying for the fake out. It is the most abundant element in the universe a potential clean fuel of the future water and Fossil fuels contain large amounts of it But unlocking it from these sources takes a great deal of energy Casting doubt over any future. What's the element? Hydrogen economy Turning water into hydrogen using solar energy could lead the way to cheap and clean hydro fuel However, this process currently relies on photo catalysts containing expensive precious metals limiting its capacity because of money and availability of these precious metals Now researchers centered at osaki university have developed a new kind of photo catalyst For producing hydrogen from water Which is not only free of expensive metals But also absorbs a wider range of sunlight than ever before Uh, they've recently reported their findings in the journal of the american chemical society Quoty voice lead author Tetsuro Jami Majima says We were pleased to find a good amount of hydrogen produced from water using our new composite photo catalyst with graphitic carbon nitride and black phosphorus But what we didn't expect to find was that even when using low energy light in the near infrared photo catalyst continued to produce hydrogen So this is uh potentially heading down into the future still more More implementation, but uh, the the hydrogen economies hugest Obstacle right now is coming up with enough hydrogen even though it's the most abundant thing in the ever Coming up with enough to use as fuel cheaply and easily Yeah, but if this uh, if this pans out and if this can be scaled up and turned into hydrogen producing plants That we could turn three quarters of the surface of the planet into this energy Uh Yeah, it's be fantastic breakthrough Yeah, it would it would be an amazing breakthrough to be able to bring The technology is what's holding us back, but we're making these incremental incremental advancements and so So it's fascinating. We have to take the elements we have the things that are available figure out What's abundant enough that's cheap enough. It's easy enough to access. How can we get to it without? You know, we want sustainability. How do we put it all together? So that the next thing that we create is is uh, is a viable source Right, and it's one of these this is sort of a fascinating thing that sort of happened too is that our Our the hydrogen fuel cell car exists now It's on the roads. It's get it's in you know, it's at least in california in or again I think new york, uh, but it's on the road There's fueling stations people are enjoying the heck out of these vehicles that have zero emissions Now we just need to produce enough fuel for them to keep driving these vehicles. Yep Make it accessible without using Uh, a fossil fuel or heavily extract energy somewhere else Right, I mean that's that's we got the vehicle now. We got to clean up the fuel source Which is a lot of what's going on. I mean somebody was joking that That chevron corporation was opening up. This is this is a joke by this isn't the real thing But they were opening up, um electric car fueling stations where you go and plug in your car And that when you would plug in your car though, you would hear off in the distance the diesel generator fire up To do the charging which Started to beat would be defeating the purpose of the thing But uh, but yeah, we need to the fuel source itself needs to be Have its own green imprint footprint for this to be successful and meaningful Agreed Do you know what people have thought is meaningful? Oh plenty of things lots of things lots of things people get crazy ideas actually and one of those crazy ideas is that tabitha star tabby star this crazy strangely dimming star that dims and brightens and dims and brightens and What could be causing that dimming people are like, oh, it's got to be aliens. It's a dyson sphere. It's they're coming up with these Really kind of off the wall suggestions hypotheses though testable hypotheses all As to what could possibly have been causing the dimming of tabby star now I I say Hypotheses because the idea that it was possibly a dyson sphere created by aliens was Initially proposed by scientists themselves Wow, not just not not just weirds people coming up with ideas on the internet like we do so KIC 8462852 this is also this is tabby star otherwise known as boyajian's star after tabitha boyajian who discovered the star And it does have these unusual brightness dips NASA's Kepler space telescope observed it dimming over about 20 percent over just a matter of days Not a very long time, but there's also a longer term There's a short term trend and there's also a longer term dimming trend that occurs but wind stars are about the size of The son or even a little bit more massive. We don't expect them to have this kind of dimming behavior And so there have been all sorts of ideas that have been Put forward. Well, there was a new study researchers started looking at it again And NASA's spitzer and swift missions as well as the belgian astrolab iris observatory We're taking a look at tabby star And all the wavelengths of light that they were able to see The study is published in the astrophysical journal the researchers suspect Is not aliens It's a dust cloud Just a dust cloud But where did the dust come from kiki? Could it be dust from alien origin? Probably not I mean maybe an alien ship came by and Pulverized all the planets around this star creating a dust There we go. It's an alien mining operation That uh because you have to travel in the deep space to find the elements that are kind of common everywhere and the That's not that what this study did not address where the the dust came from it was just looking at the light and Basically, they found less dimming in the infrared light from the star than in the ultraviolet light Frequencies of the spectrum and so if there were larger than dust particles Any object that's larger which is be blocking light, right? And so then it's going to be dimming all the wavelengths of light But if you've got dust particles There and of many different sizes there's light that's going to be bouncing and scattering Through the dust particles it's going to be obscured and yes dimmed but kind of In a different way than if it's just big bulky objects And so uh the researchers looked at the way the light was scattered by the little objects And so it suggests that the objects that caused the long period dimming of tabby's star Are only about one ten thousandth of an inch in diameter tiny little dust particles Yeah, um They observed it in ultraviolet using swift infrared using spitzer and in visible light using the astrolab iris, which is a public observatory in near the belgian village of zele beak And the researchers based on this strong ultraviolet dip determined the blocking particles must be bigger than interstellar dust Small grains that can be located anywhere between earth and the star And these small particles could not remain in orbit around the star Because pressure from its star light would drive them farther into space Dust that orbits a star called circumstellar dust is not so small that it would fly away But also not big enough to uniformly block light in all wavelengths So Little dust bits that could be around the star, but also might be anywhere between us and the star Okay, so alien dust got it alien dust, right? The really fun thing about this is that the astrolab team involved amateur astronomers. This was a citizen scientist project of sorts um these team members from astrolab they volunteer at the observatory frankie du bois He operated the telescope during the observations He was used to be the foreman at a seatbelt factory until here he was retired now He operates the telescope ludwig logi He helps with technical issues on the telescope is a security coordinator in the construction industry and steve rough Who processes observations of star brightness is a trainer at a belgian railway company? These are all just astronomical enthusiasts Siegfried van der ver van der burbeek Who's also a volunteer holds a phd in physics and got interested in Tabby star after reading an initial study and persuaded all these guys to use astrolab to observe it And they all decided that would be a lot of fun. And now they have published in this study on what's going on so They have this good idea of the long-term dimming But doesn't really explain that 20 dimming that was observed by kepler Over about a three-day period at one point in time. We really don't know why that happened So this explains long-term dimming trends the dust But not necessarily short-term Uh researchers do suggest that maybe it might be a swarm of comets That could be involved there could be dust and comets that come through occasionally So could all be related but anyway not aliens Not aliens. It's just dusty in space. There you go Um We've talked before on the show also about universal flu vaccines Right the idea that maybe there will be one shot to rule all the things so great Right, it would be so cool Well, it might be coming sooner rather than later fingers crossed for the first trial The world first trial For a universal flu vaccine for individuals 65 years of age and older They are going to be recruiting individuals in The uk it's going to be Supported it's supported by the national institute for health research and will be delivered by the ox University of oxford in berkshire and oxford shire sure oxford sure They're targeting. They're trying to get 500 individuals Who they're trying to get 500 individuals for the study? And uh, they're hoping To find to see that this is going to work. Well, they've there's already they've passed a safety study So this is actually to see if it works Is this a one and done? Vaccines so pretty much so it wouldn't be once a year anymore It would not be once a year anymore No, because the reason we have to have a vaccine once a year currently is because of the different proteins that are involved the way that the vaccines work is They target there are these It's like a pin cushion almost the the virus is like a ball with these little pins that stick out of it and those pins on the outside are little proteins and that those protein markers they change and mutate all the time in the flu viruses and so We formulate our vaccine to target the and the antibodies create antibodies against those external proteins But what's happened for the the universal flu vaccine they're testing is they are creating an antibody against proteins that are on the inside Of the virus that do not mutate and change as regularly and that are more common to all of the influenza viruses and so usually we have we have influenza a and influenza b and influenza a affects the largest number of deaths annually and so this is affecting this particular universal vaccine will be Targeted at influenza a central proteins And so hopefully it will protect people against influenza a that would be great Yes, and so they are going to be The the initial trials they are going to receive the regular annual immunization So they get the regular flu shot so that they don't get sick if the if the Universal vaccine doesn't work and it'll be in combination with either the new vaccine or a placebo How will they know if it's working if they're also giving them the normal flu shot? Well, they will be first testing to see what they'll test people's blood On follow-up to see what antibodies the the bot their bodies are creating Cool very neat Yeah, it is very neat. And so we will see and this is Primarily aimed at helping individuals that are six for to the universal vaccine for aged 65 and over as current vaccines are only effective in 30 to 40 percent of over 65s because of the weakening of our immune systems as we age And um elderly are the do suffer the most In terms of mortality from the flu as well Well, as soon as everyone's super vulnerable is taken care of i'm ready. Yeah, that's right. Let's do it Sign me up. Yeah, so if you're in the uk In berkshire or oxford sure Oxfordshire Then and you're over 65. This may be something to keep an eye on Blair tell me about bullies. I I'm in or at least killer scientists killer scientists. Yeah, what? No scientists are good people Let's talk about it. So Some uk scientists have taken to an editorial Begging for people to stop bullying them on the internet calling them killers That is because of a citizen science program that was started to get the beat on Some social Wasps wasps in something called the big wasp survey Say that five times fast And so how do you survey wasp populations? You catch them and you pin them and you You compare and contrast them to categorize them. This is I was gonna say I was gonna say just go to any cheesecake factory, but Right So So this is how entomology works We can take we can do a certain amount of citizen science with taking pictures and stuff like that But ultimately at some point you got to pin some specimens to do a categorization of these individuals. So They wanted to find out about these social wasps. They're pest controllers. They're pollinators. They're really important So they asked the public to set out beer traps, which is exactly what it sounds like It's a it's a water bottle You cut in half you insert it upside down and you pour a little beer in there So the wasps are attracted to the beer they get stuck in the trap and then the They were able to submit these these wasps in the beer traps to the scientists and they were able to Start the survey, but in their ask to start the survey public opinion exploded calling these scientists killers and murderers killing in the name of science and lots of Hyperbolicistic kind of comments about What scientists do? so I just wanted to mention it because We talk on the show a lot about specimens in museums that have suddenly created these breakthroughs in in saving endangered species in discovering once lost species and We have also talked a lot about pollinators and effects on pollinator communities from Climate change and all sorts of things like that. How do we know anything about that? It's from scientific studies that involved capturing and pinning these individuals So yes, perhaps someday you'll have an advanced app on your phone Or you can take a picture of a wasp and it'll do a 3d model of it and send it to a scientist somewhere And we won't need to capture or kill any animals But as it stands now, these are the best methods that we have to conduct science And I also want to mention that people in general are not that nice to a lot of insects Especially wasps especially wasps. So I want I I just I do also want to call out kind of the hypocrisy in this Yeah, please of of using a fly swatter on an insect one second and then the next second Taking to the internet in droves calling scientists murderers for trying to study a species That's why this sounds kind of like a setup to me Like is there really that big of a pro wasp community out there that this really like galvanized people? I bet if you asked any of these kind of troller type people out there to Come see a wasp alive up close. They would probably say no thanks get that wasp out of my car so It's an interesting conversation that I just wanted to bring up because It seemed unjust to me But I think it's also important to remember Why we do these studies? They are hugely impactful on all other fields of science in a lot of different ways so Yes, we wish we didn't have to kill individuals for Scientific studies, but sometimes it's necessary to do proper science and that science that one individual Their sacrifice to science can make a huge difference down the road So I'm I'm not I'm not saying Go out there and kill wasps But what I am saying is if the scientific community, especially the entomological community a community I'm very excited to talk too soon who is extremely Passionate about the work that they do and they care a lot about their their Invertebrates that they study that they would not Have any unnecessary loss of life And that really they're trying to save save species by doing these this research Right the person who studies cockroaches is less likely to step on them than you are Yeah, absolutely down on the ground and observe for a little while Yeah Yeah, I wonder how many of these individuals who are up in arms over this Have never Killed ants never put out a fruit fly trap in their own kitchen Never, you know, never swatted a fly never, you know, let he who Does not live in a get blast house cast the first stone, right? Yeah Yeah, the whole the whole situation The whole situation and yes Unfortunately, we are not at the point where we can Do the science without the death insect but it's uh take some perspective and realize that it's part of This grand scheme to actually save species Yeah, and in order to save species sometimes you have to do a little killing Currently, you know in order to make an omelet you got to break a few eggs 1 million birds A day are dying due to a killer that is plaguing australia. That's 377 million birds a year by this estimate killing 338 bird types almost half of australia's native species including 71 threatened species such as these spotted quail thrush the squatter pigeon and the night parrot the culprit An invasive species including an actually suzu limited to cats With the staggering slaughter driving down the decline of many species study published in journal biological Conversation Estimated that wild cats wiped out 316 million Birds every year while pet cats killed 61 million a year Everyone knows that cats kill birds and quotey voice But this study shows that at a national level the amount of predation is staggering says lead researcher john Wayne Arsky from charles darwin university It is likely to be to be driving the ongoing decline of many species Numbers are based on results of nearly 100 studies across the country by environmental scientists eat sampling cat population and density Another set of almost 100 studies assessed feline diet Feral cats which numbered the millions across the country Considered the main culprit behind the high rate of mammal extinction in that country as well They have wiped out entire populations since being introduced by europeans with efforts to coal or sterilize them so far failing to slow the march We found that the birds most likely to be killed by cats are medium-sized birds Birds that nest and feed on the ground Birds that occur on islands or in woodlands grasslands and shrublands said Wayne Arsky For Australian birds cats are a long-standing broad-scale deeply entrenched problem That needs to be tackled more effectively Australia's threatened species commissioner Sebastian Lang called the study extremely important And of great concern our knowledge of the impacts of cats on threatened mammals was a major stimulus for our first ever national threatened species strategy Which prioritized actions of controlling? Feral cats said Lang under government the government's threatened species strategy more than 30 million Australian dollars, which I don't know. That's probably like 400 American dollars has been mobilized for projects to reduce the impact of feral cats on wildlife in june Construction began on a huge cat free zone in the desert covering 69,000 Tears that's a meaningless word so 170,500 acres to allow native mammals That have been pushed to the brink of extinction by the predator to be reintroduced So a big thumbs up to australia for their cat culling Activities and for creating which I think is a brilliant idea A huge cat free zones I think we need those across the world really to preserve Our our native bird populations from these invasive species Feral cats specifically are the The big Pet cats too Pet cats too, but the main the main impact were these feral cats And the secondary impact was the pet cats and when you get feral cats from you get feral cats from pet cats That's how you get them. So fix your animals. There we go Yep, fix your animals fix your animals Oh and that brings us to another Hot end of this week in science We have done another show. Thanks you guys for a good show. Appreciate it. It was fun Thanks everybody for watching. Thank you all of you in the chat room for your Fun commentary. I love peeking over and seeing what you have to say in the chat room I try and peek over at facebook and youtube as well. Thank you so much over there And thank you to fata to identity for and to brandon for all their help in Making twists possible this week and every week. I'd like now To thank our patreon sponsors Thank you. 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That's at www.twist.org where you can also make comments and start conversation with the hosts and other listeners. Yeah, or you can just contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at this week in science.com. Justin at twistminion at gmail.com or Blair at BlairBaz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist, T-W-I-S somewhere in the subject line or your email will be spam filled. You can also hit us up on the Twitter where we are at twist science at dr.kii at JacksonFly and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. There's a topic you would like us to cover or address, a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes to you in the night. Please let us know. We will be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember it's all in your head. I'm gonna sell my advice, show them how to stop the robots with a simple device. I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand and all it'll cost you is a couple of grand. This week science is coming your way so everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that is worth and I'll broadcast my opinion all over the earth. This week in science, this week in science, this week in science, 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 may not represent your views but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science you may just understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. We're just trying to save the world from jeopardy. This week in science is coming your way so everybody listen to everything we say and if you use our methods that are rolling and die we may rid the world of toxoplasma. Got the eye. This week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, I've got a laundry list of items I want to address from stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness. I'm trying to promote more rational thought and I'll try to answer any question you've got. The help can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop one. This week in science is coming your way through what we say. This week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science. We're in the after show everybody. We made it to the after show. You know what that means? This is after the show, not before the show but after the show. We will be in Denver, Colorado in one month. Blair, you're muted. You're muted. I'm sorry. Oh, there you are. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. One of my favorite characters. Sorry. Gilly. Gilly. Sorry. Sorry. Yes. What's during the show, Ben Roffig? What? What happened? Nothing. Ben was being silly. Yeah, the after show kind of sometimes is during the show nowadays. We just kind of do the show, show, faux show. In a month, in a month, in a month, we're going to Denver, Colorado one month from tomorrow. Yes? Yeah. Yes. We'll be in Denver, Colorado. Anyone in Denver, Colorado? I hope that we can do, we can meet up with people. That would be fun. So I don't know where Dave Friedel is. Last I checked he was in Denver. He was in Denver, right? But he's not in the chat. He's not in the chat. So we can't chat and say, Dave, come into Denver. He's going to have to listen to the show later. Who else is in Denver? I don't know. We'll find out. I have to, I guess I have to start telling people that we'll be in Denver more than just this right now. Packed jackets. I know there could be weather. What's in Denver? The entomological association. Entomological Society of America. That's right. Yes. All those, all those killers that are killing wasps. Oh yeah. Wasp. Right. Wasp killers. The etymology one. Is that also in November? Or is that a different? No, it's different. The what one? Oh, Portland podcast. Well, somebody is throwing a podcast festival in December here. I guess I'll find out about it. Whoa. But it's like pretty fast after Denver. It's kind of crazy. When in December? I don't know. Nobody's invited me, so. Yeah. Some group called Fun Employment. What is this? Yeah. Never respond to those ads. Never applied to that job. Yeah. Fun Employment Radio. Wow. They've been, wow. They've been podcasting five days a week since 2009. I don't even know who they are. Hence why they didn't invite me. Who's Jason Lam? Who's Greg Nibbler? Who's Sarah X Dillon? I need to know these people. Oh, unemployed festival. Unemployed for a week. That's okay, Ben. Fun employee. Oh, I know it's a, I know it's a well-known podcast. I just haven't listened to it. I haven't listened to it. I will admit. I know it's been around for a while. I didn't realize they were in Portland. They're in Portland. And it's going to be just, oh, it's going to be just down the street for me at the Hawthorne Theater. Yeah, maybe I should get in touch with them. Yeah. Hi. I'm your neighbor. I'm your neighbor. That's right. Maybe I should find out. Oh, yeah. I'll go. It's right down the street. Why is everything so hard to find out about? The interwebs are just too big. That's all. Interwebs are a very big place. It is very true. Oh, they've got a Facebook page. There we go. Here we go. PDX Pod Festival. Saturday, December 2nd, 5.30 p.m. Shows begin at 6. I'll be right back, friends. Yeah, I should find out who they are. One moment. Okay, friend. Come back. These names are familiar. Who are these people? A twist minion. Yes, therapeutic quality of homebrew. That could be a good topic. I know I can't listen to them all. That's right. Clever trash panda. Yes, we'll go to the Hawthorne. We'll go to a podcast festival. Yes. So let's see. People are still talking about kittens and fixing their kittens. And then Ben Rothig's taking off time between jobs. You should have taken two weeks off. It's nice to have some time off, but you're not making money. So that's another problem. And we've got people talking about Australia because Australia. And yes, I think the Pod Festival is for PDX Pod people. I think so. I think so. We say feral, feral cats, right? Feral, I think. Feral. Feral. Feral. Feral. Feral. Feral. Feral. Did I mispronounce it? It's getting late. I'm tired. I haven't had any alcohol, unlike other people who are watching the show. Or on the show. Or on the show. I'm trying to buy a microphone stand, meanwhile. Good. Good, good, good. Let's see. I don't know the difference between these do-hickies. I had a... What? Oh, you just need something. What do you want? Something that's on the floor. And it has an articulating arm, right? Yeah. There's a bunch of them. I don't know what to choose. You don't need a... There's so many objects. It's a mic stand. It's a mic stand. You can do this, Blair. Did I find out what the problem with Patreon was? No, I don't know what happened. Wait, what? There's a problem? Yeah. So, September, somehow. I mean, I possibly could have not not posted the last show of the month in Patreon, but I remember sitting down and going, oh, I forgot to post the shows in Patreon. And I have to post the shows in Patreon for people to be charged for them. Right. And I started looking, or Brian Condren contacted me and said, I haven't been charged for you guys. I've been charged for all the other podcasts and other things that I support. I haven't been charged for you guys. And I was like, that's really weird. And he said, yeah, that's really weird. And so then I went into Patreon and discovered that none of the episodes that I had posted actually posted. And I don't know why. So I did put them in as scheduled posts. And so I'm thinking that the mech, whatever mechanism, either I didn't hit a button to, like, I might have done the scheduled post and then and then not saved it or something. It's probably my error. But yeah, that's not, that's not going to happen again. So anyway, nobody got charged. We didn't get any money this month or last month. And but then on Monday I went through and I put all of the episodes from September in. So now people who are on Patreon may be charged for lots of episodes this month unless they have have limits on how much they're going, how much they can, there's limits to their support. The top limit on Patreon. So fully. Yeah, it'll be fine. It's all good. It's all good. We, we survive. Okay, I'm, I've narrowed it down to two. Sweet show us strengths. I love that image. That's hilarious. Strength says it would be funny if I found out I'm in a neighborhood packed with famous podcasters and they're all operating from their garages. I think that would be pretty funny. Nobody knows anybody else is here. Everybody's in their garages. Do a podcast garage crawl. That would be funny. It would be a lot of fun, actually. Oh my goodness. Do you guess on each other's podcast? Just hop around. Yeah, let's see. Also, YouTube has changed rules around videos with external links. Yeah. They don't like you having, they want you to use their platform and they don't want you linking out to Patreon and all that kind of stuff anymore. So I also, I also, I watched a video recently there, YouTube has kind of like this inside the algorithm video series, podcast series. And I, I checked, I checked out one episode and one of the engineers was taught, the head engineer was talking about the YouTube algorithm and people, this, one of the questions asked was, okay, everyone wants to know, you know, how do you get more views? And, and the engineer gave an example and he said, well, we wanted to try something first. We looked at, we looked at the views that different, that different videos were getting across YouTube. And we found that there was for engagement that there's, there were some videos where people were watching for an hour, an hour and a half, they're watching and not turning it off. And I was like, yeah, that's my audience. Yes. And, and then the engineer goes on and says, but there are very small minority of YouTube's viewers. And so while YouTube does want to support those viewers and their needs, really YouTube is focused on growth. And so we changed the algorithm to exclude videos that are long. So basically, all of twist's videos are much too long for the YouTube algorithm to promote because YouTube is focused on getting new viewers. And the maximum number of new viewers will come if videos are shorter, because that's what their data suggests is that people want short videos. So if you're not a short video, their algorithm will not prioritize you. So now I've discovered that we need to do what I've, what I've decided we need to do as a result of this is have a preview video where I'll go on for like five minutes or not even five minutes, two minutes, or Blair can go on for two minutes or you Justin can go on for two minutes and summarize, say, Hey, don't miss this week's episode of this week in science, we're going to be talking about and give the, but it's just a summary of the stories in the show. A quick, it'll be like a quick, quick summary. Be like this week in science is live every Wednesday. Don't miss the show tonight. See you later. Bye. And then we've got a short video and that video will get promoted. And then I can put these cards at the, I can put things all in the videos so that people will click on the long video and hopefully watch it. This is my YouTube strategy. If I care about YouTube and doing that. Yeah. This is what I need to do for, for the YouTubes. Well, I don't know. We'd, we'd, the YouTube is a conduit for us to reach the audience. We've kind of already got large and yes, we want growth. We want more new. I don't know though that that's the new, like if, if you are just clicking into that, is that the thing that you're like, oh, I'm going to watch this thing that's a commercial for another show. I don't know that I'd even want to watch it, but then you've already are watching it before you know you're watching it. Like, I don't really understand how it works. Yeah, I don't know. Mbeam says, just switch to Twitch. It's probably the solution. Hmm. That's probably the solution. Twitch is a little bit nicer to its partners. Yeah. Would that mean we're not on the YouTube or does that mean we're going through Twitch and then it sends it to YouTube later? Like. Yeah, that would kind of be, it would either do that or if you have, there's, if you have a publishing software like OBD, open broadcast distribution, OBD, whatever it is, open broadcast, OBS, open broadcast system. If you have a publishing software setup, you can use it to publish to multiple places at once. And so it can send, if you have the addresses to send it to, you just input those and then it'll set, you do it once and it sends the feed. But because we're using Google Hangouts, it couldn't necessarily, I don't know how to do that. I think we would have to switch how we do what we do. Things would have to change significantly. Google Hangouts is super easy. That doesn't mean it can't happen. It just means that that we need to make things happen. Blair, I like your more expensive mic stand better. You like the $60 one? No, it's $60. Okay, because Bleak. Cheaper than mine. Mine's $34. Bleak, just that one that's, that's $60, but it seems like overkill. It's very nice. Okay, the one that says here's a gem of a mic stand. Whenever, but this is like sales lingo and a little bit behind the scenes. Whenever anybody's selling you anything as a gem of an anything, it's because it's crap. Where does it say here's a gem of a mic stand? On an oh-hoo-hoo microphone stand. Whatever, the first thing in its description, here's a gem of a mic stand. Okay, so oh-hoo-hoo's out. So now I'm looking at the Lix Pro and then I'm looking at the pile that Bleak sent, but it is, that one is $60, I don't know. I like the Lix Pro. I think that one's just fine. Yeah, um, Tree New Bee Microphone. Come on, open. What's that? That's the like, desk mount, you get one desk mount. It's the one below that one. That's what I've got. Yeah, the pile is pretty good. Yeah, it's $60, so I mean, it's nice because it has like the springy part, so I wouldn't be stripping all these screws, which is what just happened. I stripped like three screws over the life of this thing, but yeah, I don't know. Kiki, it's your call. Actually, that's kind of nice. It booms out a little bit, which is convenient. You're going to, this, this, this. Which could mean also booming over. It's like an old table lamp. Good for the Yeti, if you have a counterweight. Yeah, will the snowball work in this? That's the other question. Solid and secure. Yeah, I think it would just hang down upside downy in case for it to be fine. But I think, again, the licks would probably be fine, too. Yeah, everybody says it's a decent stand for the money. Hey, there's only two left in stock. You should order now. Other people say the weight of the mic pulls it down and they have to keep retightening. That's not great. Yeah, the pile probably will not have that problem, at least not as soon. Okay, I think I should go for that one. The one that looks like a lamp. What are the votes? What are the votes? What does everyone vote? Ooh, restream IO. Thanks, Mbeam. Look at that. I'm looking at it. Strengths. How did Jackson's play fit? I don't really understand how it works in the one syllable. I don't even podcast an ag. I don't want one. Practice. Let's have practice. Suspension scissors, sound dampening product. We do want sound dampening for sure. And the way that you would set it up, could we get it so it doesn't hang in front of your, well, I mean, it'll kind of hang in front of your face. Like, Oh no, Jim, doctor, I didn't mean any disrespect by What did you say? The gem of something, meaning it's junk. Obviously are the real thing that they're trying to compare their junk products. Ben Rothig says pile is aptly named. Oh, no. That's funny. Yeah. So I don't know. Vote for the one with Amazon Prime says, says Ed. Right. Oh, yeah, that's not this. Is this one prime? Pile is prime. Little licks pro isn't, but licks pro is not. I need it in a week. I feel like that would be fine. Yeah. So the table mic and Chris Clark got me was absolutely amazing. By the way, this thing has not let me down anyway. Yeah. Unfortunately, I need a floor stand. No, you just need a desk and a mic stand. Not to it. I don't, I don't do desk. You need to start. This is what would happen. When I sit for the show, I fall asleep. Wow. So glad we can keep you awake. Maybe not. All right. Okay, okay. No, it's, no, I'm just less. My muscles are less activated. That's, I'm, I'm more, I'm more, I'm easier. I'm better at like all my blood moves when I stand. It's better. Everything's better about it. Kiki knows she's doing it right now. What? Standing. I'm standing. I know. Standing is the way to go. Active body language. I would like you to have a microphone. Do you want one that, I mean, if you have the pile, it will hang down in front of your face. Yeah, that's probably okay. Will it? Or can I scissor, scissor it down? Oh yeah, I guess it will. I'll actually know because of the way that the, let's say, let me look at that picture. Because I should be able to make it come from the side in theory. Or even underneath your face. Yeah. Yeah. I just want to move that pop screen. But it has that back sort of space to the elbow, which might get in the way of where you're trying to put it. Yeah. You might, you might be better off with something straight up and down. Which apparently it can also do, but then I can't tell how, how low it is. Yeah, I'm trying to look at 28, 28.3. No, that's, that can't be right. What tall is it? Night arm extension distance, 3.1 feet, 3 foot 1 inch. Doesn't see how tall it is though. Where are the specs? Show me the specs, man. All right. Here's what you do. You buy the cheaper Lynx Pro and a sandbag just so you can wait it. God. This need to be. Yikes. And some duct tape. Trying to ditch the duct tape. Now you've sent me to a Amazon sort of generally specific audio. Now I'm, now I'm gone. Danger. Dustin found Tony. I have too many electric guitars as it is for somebody who's not in a band or even proficient. Stop. We can hear them. Because you bought a previous electric guitar. How about this electric guitar? Actually, that's one thing I haven't bought from Amazon. I don't think any of that came from it. I've just been listening to your phone. Yeah. Oh, no doubt. They're all connected now anyway. I've got mic and tablet stands. So you could have a tablet that you read from as you're talking into your mic. Well, I've seen those. That's clever. Oh, it's clever. See what's going on with deals. Just give me something that's a deal. Can't watch sponsored products. I want to know what people want in a microphone stand. Come on people. No, not cables. What are some other microphone stands? Now I want to go play guitar. This is going to be kind of loud at night. I found one the Flex Zion tripod microphone stand with an extending boom arm. Okay. It's $25. Okay. Amazon Prime. Okay. I don't know about these things. Okay. Pokey dope. Everyone's like, I don't know anything about mic stands. Yeah. I definitely don't know anything about mic stands. Why are they Pokemoning us all of a sudden? What are we catching all? Guitar mon. You guys are funny. Flexion. Wait. I want this marching percussion thing that you like where? So you drums are in front of you and you like it harnesses over your shoulders. Oh yeah. And you could do that with a mic stand. Replace the drums with the mic stand and then just anywhere you turn. Good. It's like a baby beorn for your microphone. So Kiki, what's this clip for? That's one of the things I was really confused about. I did look at this one before. I was like, what is this clip? It's on the flexion. Why is there a clip? What clip? On the clip, the microphone. But the clip on the top of the stand there? Yeah. Yeah. What's that for? That's great. That's when you slip in a traditional microphone. No, not that. That's the traditional microphone, but there's a dual mic holder clip. Yeah, what does that mean? You could put another microphone in it. You could put another boom arm. You could put a boom arm in it. You could put a, yeah. Interesting. And then you could do duets. Good. With one mic stand. It's perfect for church. Okay. Is that what someone wrote? Yeah. Rotating folding for a conference church studio audio DJ word salad. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'll back your play. I don't know if you think this is the one I'm honest. Samson for $26 newer. I got one on the prime here for 20. Okay. But. It's a gem of a mic stand, I heard. Amazon Basics, tripod, boom microphone stand. Yeah, that one's $19. Here's the Audi microphone stand. Tripped in a week. Yeah. And that's four stars, but I don't know, you know, what does that mean for, you know, what you expect from a $20 mic stand? Who knows? I'm telling you that the Lix Pro is four and a half stars with 127 reviews. It's looking good. Looking really good. Yeah, yeah, maybe I will just do that one. Do it. Okay. I knew. Yeah, it's like what, $36? $36 free shipping, not prime, but that's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's all right. It is okay. Shipping to my address. That's right, Whiskey Renegade. We'll put 10 mics all right in front of Blair. Good. There's one thing I need more of. It's amplification. USS Rover wants to see your current microphone, but he doesn't know that if Blair moves her current microphone, everything will fall apart. That is true. Oh my goodness. I'm going to get it on October 18th. Not next week? No. That's okay. I'll just limp along. Can you limp for another week? Yeah, I might duct tape the heck out of this thing in the meantime. You and the duct tape. I mean, if it's going to be trash anyway. That's right. Okay, order has been placed. October 18th to October 26th. We did a thing. We did a thing. That's awesome. Okay. Oh my gosh. That looks great. Snago. I have some of those too. I have something I want for Christmas now. This is the one that I have that just broke. But on stage. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one. Yep. I just moved it around one too many times, I think. It's, there's too many moving parts. But that's exact, yeah, that's exactly what I have right here. Yeah, it'll happen again. We'll need to get you a new one. These things, this is what happens. This is what happens with them. Yes. Screws get stripped. Wow. Restream.io. The best way to stream to 30 plus password platforms simultaneously. Wow. Oh, you can get a theremin for $300 now. It's a mini. I want it. It looks awesome. That's really cool. Where'd you find? What you want for Christmas? A theremini. Twistmas. Oh, theremini. That's cute. Yeah. Very fancy looking. Not like the old school theremins. That theremin looks like how theremins sound. I think it looks like an answering machine. What's an answering machine? It's something people use at the same time that people also use beepers? I think we're having an answering machine. I had to explain beepers to a teenager recently. Oh my god. This is the mic I have now. USS Rover. Snowball. Be careful because it's falling apart. Snowball. And then, oh, yep. There it goes. That's just to hold the microphone for the rest of the evening. Because I moved it. So I'll just do the show like this now. There you go. Now you just hold it and hold it right in your face. In your face. Is it bedtime? Maybe it is bedtime. Yes. I'll find out about this podcast festival here in Portland. We will tell people we'll be in Denver in the beginning of November. Denver and November. Denver and November. And is there anything else in the next week? What's going on? No. Statistics day on Friday. People need to pre-order their calendars. Yep. And yeah. Yep, yep. Pre-order calendars. Right then. I will see the two of you and read stuff that the chat room is saying again next week. Absolutely. Hooray. Hooray. Thank you, everybody. Okay. It reminded me I held a chicken today, guys. I like chickens. That's great news. Now, say goodnight, Blair. Hold on. Let me show you a picture of me holding a chicken. I want to see this. I love chickens. Why do you guys always drag out the end of the day? So I don't know how well you can see. Here's me and my two interns. Why are you holding chickens? Because I work at the zoo. When you work at a zoo, you hold chickens. Okay. Should I even ask? Do I even want to know what those chickens were fed to? They are education chickens. They won't be fed to anyone. Education chicken. That is the special denomination of chickens. Hold on. Let me make you... There you go. There's your chicken with a chicken. It's a dark-haired beauty just like you. Okay, Blair. It's an Australorp. Next time you share, I'm just going to throw this out. Next time you share a photo of you with an animal at the zoo. Yeah. Chicken? It was fun. The chicken sat in my arms and it was very good. But it went... So from where I live, there's people who have chickens. And they're backyard. It's free range. So I guess I'm in a big city. Even somebody in a big city who works at a zoo coming into contact with a chicken is an amazing animal encounter. It was fun. But it was definitely... I felt like the chicken was going, what's going on? You're going to put me down, maybe? Are you... You're just... No? You're going to keep holding me still? Yeah? Why am I off the ground? Why aren't my feet touching the ground? That's what it felt like. All right. And on that note, I will say good night, Blair. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everybody. Thank you once again for watching. We hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful week. Send us your pictures with chickens.