 It's 802 only two minutes late Only two minutes late. Someone needs to help me with Navigating social media passwords. It's always so many passwords. This is the son that this is I can't speak either. This is a podcast This is the broadcast of the this week in science podcast We will be here for the next hour and a half or so talking about science and If you want to get the podcast make sure to download it wherever the podcasts are found the whole thing is recorded here Right now live and then I hack it up and chop it up into little bits and the that that Repurposed recording is what goes out at the as the podcast. So those of you who are here for this conversation you get The whole thing Blair. Are we ready to go? We're ready We are ready starting in let me get my All my pieces of my documents in place So I can actually say the words Say the words And oh my goodness these windows are not placed appropriately ready to start the show in three two two this is Twist this week in science episode number 826 recorded on Wednesday May 26th 2021 it's the little things that make the difference in science Hey everyone. I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on the show. We are going to fill your heads with doom dear and just the gist but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer though You may be watching this from the comfort of your temperature-controlled home on your cutting-edge high-tech device While consuming your chemically derivedly delicious sustenance You are still simply an organism in an ecosystem with a role to play Though you wear mass produced coverings mask your scent with artificial aromas augment your appearance with pigments and fill your days with Mathematically created code. You are simply a hairless ape in a colony of the same No matter how much we separate ourselves from the natural world We will forever be a part of it and no matter how much we try to make sense of it It is simply the system in which we will forever participate So if you want to hear the these hairless apes chat about things which often cannot be explained Since it is far bigger than our very own existence We are here to provide you some food for your overgrown frontal lobe tonight on this week in science coming up next Good science to you Kiki and a good science to you to Blair and everyone out there Welcome to another episode of this week in science. We are back again to talk about Science oh, yeah, yeah, because that's what we do. We come here weekly to discuss science news stories that we found fanciful fanciful Fantastic fascinating that piqued our curiosity and we hope that this show does the same for you Tonight I brought stories about what did I bring tonight? I've got a little bit of stem cell relaxation I've got a gist. I've got the gist about a gist and we have an interview with dr. Elizabeth Bick about Scientific integrity and microbiomes. What'd you get for the animal quarter Blair? Oh, I have climate change bird poop primate accents and wolves Great lots of animals. Yep. A little bit of climate in there. Yeah, okay And a little poop because always always a little poop in this as we learned in our trivia We talk about poop a lot on this show, so we do, you know We'll just put one more in the tally Okay, for those of you who are not yet subscribed to this program You can find us by looking for this week in science on just about any podcast platform. That's out there Google Apple Spotify Pandora Stitcher speaker radio tune in all of them. We're out there. We're also on YouTube Facebook and on Twitch Our website is twist org Time for more science more science these science Okay, I have some headline stories that I want to start the show with tonight just really quick run-through rundown because I wanted to hit a lot of notes and I just like why don't I just? Knock them all out with a quick headlines All right a meta analysis of 338 studies of vaccine safety Published in the journal vaccine found that the vaccines we use the MMR vaccine diphtheria Protossus flu all all sorts of name it. They probably were looking at it. We use our generally safe for kids and adults This meta analysis determined that aside from what we already knew were previously Existing adverse events that there you know are certain individuals who do have a higher risk for certain events to happen No additional risks were confirmed vaccines are safe Just so you know and on that note the CDC Has told doctors to be on the lookout for myocarditis in young people following Vaccination for COVID-19 as a result of reports to the agency's vaccine unit However, the incidence of these reports is not more than what would normally be expected in the general population So it's still this is something that has been noticed by doctors It's been reported in the adverse events report system, but it isn't something that appears to be Actually connected. They haven't made any connection to the COVID-19 vaccine specifically yet But if doctors know to be on the lookout They might find something we didn't know before As for the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC is also reporting just 0.01% rate of breakthrough infections even with increasing spread of new variants This means that the vaccines are very effective at preventing infections of all kinds So let's keep up the pace and save lives Yeah, we can do that But even if you do Survive COVID and all the other diseases that are out there How long can you really be expected to live anyway Blair? What do you what would you guess your life? 250 yeah, that's your guess Wants to live forever Well a new estimate of the potential absolute limit for human beings was based on blood cell counts and Organizm all resilience It finds that the longest you can expect on this good earth is about 120 to 150 years That's the limit I'll take it. Yeah, that's what we that's what they say. They think we're gonna get But I I have I imagine there will be some battles with the anti-aging bulk And finally that brings me to what you Really have to live for right if you want to live 120 and 150 years You've got climate change on their horizon Oh all sorts of issues related to that But maybe just maybe maybe legal attempts will help the political and scientific efforts to draw down our massive carbon carbon emissions Dutch court ruled this week that the shell oil company Has until the end of the decade to get in line with the Paris Accord and cut its carbon emissions by 45 percent I'm interested in seeing where this is gonna go. How about you Blair? Yeah, that's awesome. It's more of that, please with we can't be trusted anymore to do things Because it's the right thing to do There have to be smackdowns if we're gonna prevent catastrophe Right, I mean that there has to be more regulation and if the political will isn't pushing hard enough fast enough, maybe legal Efforts will do that and this the Dutch courts actually back in 2019 had another ruling that was based on a new standard which Is basically comes down to Don't do anything that is going to leave the planet worse off for future generations And it's it's just a fantastic way to think right? Yeah, but anyway You had a story about climate. Yeah So it turns out maybe none of that will matter because we'll be infertile No, what yeah, so it's it's very important to make sure that that the current generation of living things survive But if they can't have babies It's it's a huge problem anyway, right? So this is a study looking at the impacts of climate change on fertility versus the impacts of climate change on Fatality basically so if temperatures aren't hot enough to kill you will it make you infertile? and so this is specifically looking at a historical research, but now also this is research from the UK Sweden and Australia at fruit flies So as with many things we start with fruit flies they have short Lifespan short generations you get to see a lot of things in a short amount of time They looked at 43 species of these flies to test whether male fertility was a predictor of global fly distributions Rather than the flies at which they the temperatures at which the fly dies So that's their survival limit and it did in fact follow that so Where you see flies on the planet has more to do with where they are able to still have babies rather than where they're able to survive and So they from this data they estimated both the temperature that is lethal to 80% of individuals and the temperature at which 80% of surviving males become infertile so these two different buckets, right? And they found 11 of the 43 species experienced an 80% loss in fertility at cooler than lethal temperatures and Rather than it recovering over time it actually for infertility got worse over time after exposure so infertility was More pronounced there was more impact of infertility based on high-temperature exposure seven days after the exposure And using that delayed measure it looks like 44% of species showed fertility loss at cooler than lethal temperatures So all of that to say It he won't die immediately, but it'll be the slow decline Population so I feel like there's two ways to look at this one way is it's really bad for all living things or that Maybe this is in the end the earth trying to prevent us from overpopulating. I Don't it could be an interesting Overcorrection in an accidental overcorrection, you know, there would be definitely definitely Isn't but it is interesting to think about how Just socially birth rates are lower than in previous generations, but it would be interesting again This was fruit flies. There have been previous studies looking at mammal species and infertility with great rise raised temperatures things like cows pigs fish and birds so there is a Historical significance to this looking at fertility research, but this could be a thing It's a it could be and it could just be one additional factor in Not just human populations. I mean if human populations can maintain with air conditioning and moving around Yeah, but but our our food crops and the species that we rely on Though they can't then if ecosystems stop failing as climate change increases That's an issue. So 100% yeah, it's all a system But yeah, this does harken harken back to the New York Times article from I think earlier this week everybody's going getting upset because there was a New York Times article Pretty much about the decline of populations that because of declining fertility rates populations are going to decline and that's going to affect the economy and Uh-huh people people have put that together before but I don't think anyone had written about it in such a Prominent Newspaper previously. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's just the the big kind of flashing red lights that I wanted to bring up about this is when we talk about Climate changes impacts on population dynamics fertility is an important piece Huge yeah huge piece Well speaking of fertility, what about stem cells stem cells are those wonderfully Reproducible cells that can become especially if they are the kind of stem cells that become any kind of cell in the body the pluripotent kind then They have much that they can do for us. However governments have taken Oversight and passed laws about when we can do research what money can go toward research funding and Over a governing body the international a society for stem cell research Provides guidelines to the research community internationally on kind of what research should be doing that you could be doing and Really helps people a lot follow along the moral ethical Lines which are not necessarily the same for every country for every society around the world And so they this last week or this week actually they dropped Their new guidelines and this is after a lot of conversation with With many scientists ethicists people around the world putting these guidelines together They have a new three-tiered system for research into Areas of concern and the lowest tier tier one is the lowest level of concern and into that tier is where they've put organoids Brain organoids we've talked about them on the four on on the show for a little mini brains, right? These little balls of nervous tissue that allow researchers to understand how brains work but there have been questions raised about the Potential development of consciousness by these organoids well the researchers Have all agreed that organoids are still at an early enough a state of research that there's no chance any organoid is going to reach Consciousness within about the next five years So they've put it at the lowest tier of concern next level is level two and that is where they have put The transfer of human animal chimeric embryos to a non human Uterus so kind of like a middle level of concern Okay, so it's a human and a mouse being put into or a human and a rat being cells Being put together in an embryo and having that embryo put into a rat uterus for instance There are there also human pig chimeras that are being developed and others The highest level of concern is Anything involving the use of stem cell derived gametes for human reproduction The transfer of chimeric or model human embryos to human or ape Utiruses and the editing of germline genomes. Those are prohibited at the highest level of concern so For now The stem cell community is policing themselves and saying let's not do this We're not gonna make human ape babies. That's not something we're going to do We're not making human animal chimeric Organisms that we will then That we will then bring to term that is not going to happen It's everyone's agreed that is not something that the scientific community Stem cell scientific community wants to do now the final thing that they did though is they did drop their 14-day limit for human stem cell development 14 days is just about when gastrulation starts getting started and it's a really interesting phase of cellular and organismal development Dropping the 14-day limit doesn't mean much for some countries like the UK actually has a law that says Scientists cannot do research with human embryonic stem cells past day 14. That's it The United States does not So the fact that we don't have that kind of a law Now that this is kind of opened up it it does beg the question of What kind of research will this allow now or will the United States? Politicians will they Will they create a law because they don't agree with the allowance? Of further research, but it's open questions as to where this stuff will go cells in a dish is not the same as cells in a uterus first for sure, so It's an interesting interesting state we are in and it's wonderful that people are talking about The ethical aspects of where they want the research to go and how I want to manage it. I want more Evidence and logic-based rules for these things. So this is exactly the direction We need to move in we and I'm really happy that they drop the 14-day limit. That's yeah, it'll allow better understanding of Early development and it could really really assist scientists Yeah, so let's go from stem cells to your poop story. Oh, yeah poop and how we're all killing birds Oh, no That's not actually true So this is a study from Manchester Metropolitan University and University of Edinburgh looking at garden feeders in Scotland So this is the big asterisk on this paper is that is specifically about Birds and bird feeders in Scotland. Got it. So before we extrapolate this to the whole world. Just keep that in mind However, this is not the whole world. No, but it is a system that you can study for future Research, right? So anyway, they they wanted to see how garden feeders were impacting local populations of birds and If you if you just want to see how a migratory population or population that doesn't normally hang out where people are Can run amok when you feed them look at the Canada goose situation in North America. It's just a mess They are not supposed to stay here year-round. They're pushing other native birds out. There's all sorts of stuff, right? so they collected data on Bird feeding in Scotland just asking people but also how else poop so they collected fecal samples they're always near bird feeders and Then they also looked outside of these bird feeders in local gardens and personal gardens and They specifically were looking for peanuts. Why because peanuts are often found in bird feeder Feed that's sold in Scotland, but is not a local plant Yeah, so that's like okay, this bird was definitely feeding at this bird feeder also just as some background 150,000 tons of bird feed purchased in the UK and that the amount of feed that they purchased is actually more than triple what all the birds would need to sustain themselves so it's it's a little excessive and They they did a whole transect of Scotland. They were able to check all these woodland areas and specific gardens and backyards and They found that 49% of samples Had peanuts in them, but moths, which is the natural prey of these birds were in about 34% of samples so the This is specifically looking for blue tit Poop and they found that it does look like the blue tits are getting the majority of their food from Bird feeders it also shows that as far as a mile away from a bird feeder They found peanuts in poop So they're they're come they're coming from all over to those bird feeders and then dispersing back out and The this is a problem because There are increased populations of blue tits and they are aggressive to other birds in the area like willow tits And so they're they've actually been known to evict willow tits from their nesting holes So this is a case where this this species is actually causing further problems for other species because it's too easy to live So this is this is part of the conversation that we've had on the show Previously when people have asked about feeding wildlife This is why feeding wildlife can be really tough and I'm not going to say all bird feeders are bad because also sometimes Like having a place for an bird to drink if they're a migratory bird can be really helpful If they're in an urban landscape that has chopped up what used to be wild, right? So I think that this is an opportunity for actually for for biologists to Set some parameters for What kind of feed when to put out feed and how much to put out and Maybe there are certain areas that bird feeding is not suggested because you're right next to a forest and those birds are taking care of But this is just kind of an interesting first look at bird feeders and how we might actually be hurting more than we're helping Which can be kind of hard to hear sometimes Yeah, especially if it's helping the invasive species or the more aggressive species that push others others out Yeah, absolutely, but that yeah, that's really interesting as I have bird feeders at my house Because I love the birds. I like to feed the birds, but sometimes I wonder It's a good question and maybe in your area you have some endangered species that benefit from bird feeders because you don't live in Scotland That's right. I did wake up to a Northern flicker at my window the other day, which was a nice sight, but yeah Moving from poop to the microbiome I have one story before we get into our interview scientists from over 60 countries have published a sweeping analysis and that's I'm using it as a pun because they swept surfaces for microbes and they looked for Genes for antimicrobial resistance and they wanted to see kind of what species are out there in urban areas so this is 60 countries and multiple continents we're talking about the urban areas they looked in Sampling city surfaces and the air for microbiome evidence They found 31 species present in 97 percent of the samples so out of some 4700 Species that they did identify there were 31 that are everywhere in every urban area Every urban area also had a fingerprint so to say The researchers at wild Cornell university who were in charge of the study They say that based on a swab of your shoe They could probably Pinpoint where you live within about 90 accuracy, which isn't you know 100 percent It's not as good as say the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, right, but 90 percent efficacy To identify where you live based on the bacteria in your urban area They're hoping that they'll be able to yeah be able to figure out more about where antimicrobial resistance exists where it doesn't exist maybe also Not have to find genes from various organisms in the rainforest. How about a bus stop? You never know what lives there Maybe your bus stop is like the rainforest Wow, who knows who knows This is this week in science Thank you for listening and if you are enjoying the show, please tell a friend I would like to take this moment to introduce our guest to the show Dr. Elizabeth Bick is a whoop, let me see if I can get my My words in front of my face some have called Dr. Bick a vigilante But she's a phd trained microbiologist and has studied a variety of microbes at the Dutch national institutes for health The saint st. Antonius hospital in new vigine. I cannot pronounce that correctly and stanford university In 2019 she left her role as director of science at estart medical in order to independently pursue scientific integrity Welcome to the show. Dr. Bick. Thank you so much for having me on and I really enjoyed the talks about microbiome and poop Two of my favorite subjects So I spit right in yes, yeah So I'd love to find out about your your background. It's just fascinating the Trajectory that your career has taken. Can you can you kind of take us on a little tour? And how did you how did you get interested in? microbes in the first place Oh, uh, well, I studied biology and I I basically had a fantastic microbiology teacher And I I really enjoyed the labs going into the labs and smelling all these Different bacteria that have strange smells and most of my my peer students did not like that And I I just love that smell of of of the the agar being Prepared and and just the bacteria have different smells and I realized that and And I also found it really fascinating that these Microscopically small creatures could you know grow in such amounts that we could actually start to see them on a colony on a plate And yeah, it was just fascinating and it was right amount of time when Molecular biology started so we could also learn about their genes. We could sequence them and I was just hooked right away and so I I studied microbiology. I did my phd in microbiology and stayed in that field for a very long time For microbes. Do you do you prefer bacteria the fungi or viruses? I'm a bacteria girl. I I uh, that's Uh, I found like viruses are are a bit scary because they're They're not really alive But they're also not that and they can make us sick and it's just very Scary when you think of it that's something that is not Really alive is this can have such a profound impact on humanity as we are currently experiencing Uh, but I don't know. I just I guess I grew up professionally with bacteria and that is that has been my my Topic of study for a very long time And then you moved into scientific integrity Right. What is scientific integrity and how did you come to how did you come to find it? Uh While scientific integrity is basically that as a scientist you should remain Honest and and true you should report what you're finding and not leave out certain amounts of data You should not steal somebody else's ideas. You should not make up data And so if you if you don't follow these rules, then you're maybe doing science misconduct You're basically cheating and you're uh, you're you're you're lying about your results And so I think that's a bad thing I think scientists should be honest and luckily most scientists are honest But because a lot of people are in science are pushed to To publish as many papers as we can I'll some people will try to break the rules and get uh more papers published by cheating by by making up stories And so that is the part i'm interested in and I think science misconduct can Could be a tremendously bad for science because other people might not be able to replicate those results If people lie and cheat then and publish that in a paper That is really hard for other people to replicate those results. And so it leads to a lot of waste of time and money Uh, and it could even lead to to maybe, uh People dying for example, if you if you lie about the effect that a vexing a vaccine can have as we can see now Then maybe people don't want to be vaccinated And a lot of the mistrust about science uh and vaccines is based on uh papers that Are turned out that turn out to be based on misconduct. And so I'm very passionate about misconduct And I feel there should be more people Trying to correct science And when did you when did you first kind of get started? I I was doing back back around reading and uh you Somebody plagiarized some of your work. Is that what started your adventure? Yes, I was I was uh Reading somewhere about plagiarism and I just thought just for fun Let's try to to put one sentence that I had written and put it into goga scholar within between quotes So I did that and I had not expected to find anything else than my own paper But I found something else as well. I'm like what somebody stole my sentence I wrote that sentence. I I thought really hard about that sentence I put a lot of effort in it and then somebody just stole it and passed pass it off as their own So I uh looked up that paper that had used my sentence and found out that they they had stolen a whole paragraph of text that I had written But not only that they had also stolen paragraphs from other scientists And so they made this new paper based on a patchwork of all different types of sentences stolen from left and right and and sort of glued that together into a new paper and uh, yeah, I was Yeah, I was angry and I was fascinated and I um Found more and more of these papers and I wrote to the editors and some of these papers got retracted And so I felt oh I'm doing something good for science finally because I've worked in the lab for a long time and I just felt this was this was fascinating and very effective and Yeah, so that was about uh, I don't know that was in 2013 and so I I was doing that this sort of as a hobby And then one day I found out by accident while I was looking through a phd thesis that had plagiarized text I also found an image that had a little smudge something I recognized And then in another figure in the same chapter they had used that same Western blot that was what it was that same thing with a little smudge But upside down and it represented a different experiment And I got even more mad this this this person had plagiarized text and was also using western blots Reusing them to represent different experiments And this paper got it was a phd thesis chapter, but it had also been published as a as a As a paper and so I wrote to the to another editor-in-chief of that that journal and that paper got retracted and This was sort of successful. I guess until then I Decided to to scan more and more papers to see if I could find more duplicates because I Realized I have this strange talent to recognize duplicated images And it's actually it's an amazing talent. I have been looking through some of some of the images and I I have so hard pressed to be able to recognize The the patterns that you find within the images And where you know coming from an academic background and lot many people In in writing in general you learn to look for plagiarism online and you learn to look for the copied text but to be able to identify The copied not even whole images, but little parts of images What are the what are some of the lengths that people go to that you have that you have seen in images? Oh, well, there's there's all kinds of duplications that I found and Um, I do want to point out I can only really find the tip of the iceberg only where people really leave traces of photo shopping I I would be able to find it if a person is a really good photoshop And I should not really say this because people might now know my my tricks But a really good photoshopper. I would not be able to to detect that so what I detect are duplicates so duplicate duplicate parts of images and uh, yeah, so I I sort of scan an image and I'll I'll Let my eyes go over it and then maybe I'll pick up on a on a duplicate and I can remember maybe up to 20 or so images So within a paper I can look at the different panels and maybe I can recognize And compare a couple of other papers But I I don't have the ability to remember all images ever published. I I don't have any photographic memory or so So it it is limited what I can do and I'm sure software in the end Which is being developed now is is going to do better But as of now I can do a decent job in finding duplicates between Yeah, some within a paper for example Do you think that your Your training in microbiology gives you some of that that pattern recognition Do you think did did you spend a lot of time at the microscope identifying things? When you were training or do you do you have anything that you think you can put your finger on? um No, I did not really look a lot through a microscope Which is maybe surprising for a microbiologist, but I'm the microbiologist who who studied bacteria by looking at their DNA so sequencing Uh and things like that and so I I'm actually very bad in using a microscope I think I learned it as a as a college student But I would not be able to to get a decent microscopy images right now So so no that's not something I I would be able to do now, but I I've always seen patterns So when I go to a bathroom In a in a restaurant or so I will look at the tiles. I'm like, oh that tile is the same as that tile But it's upside down or that tile is now rotated 90 degrees And I do the same I do the same with um laminate flooring, you know, but you have these fake photos of of planks and and you sort of see the wooden pattern and and then you can just recognize That one plank is the same as the other plank and uh, I've always Assumed that everybody would see these patterns, but I guess I'm I'm sort of the the old person who who will look at these things and is fascinated by them And and I'm now applying that for science. So it's a little bit more useful than studying bathroom tiles for sure Although I'm sure you would be amazing at puzzles Uh, I I don't think I'm pretty good at them. Um more, you know better than others, but um, I think um, maybe I have Just the the patient to to look at hundreds or thousands of papers and I look for these things And I I sort of see it as a puzzle But then when people want me to play real puzzles, I I don't know. I just don't really find that useful I find it more useful to look at puzzles in scientific papers and do something Yeah, I can look through these images and I can actually do something here. Yeah, right And you've um, you've started the hashtag image forensics on Twitter, which has gotten a really amazing following. Um, Have you have you seen the community of people who are Looking at images, um in papers grow in the years since you've gotten started in this Yeah, so so I'm part of a small group of people who who focus on published papers. So we we get lots of tips and we uh, or we we have our own leads that we follow But I I hear more and more from people who have found these things independently of that who who are just reading a paper for their work and finding a duplicate or finding Duplications while they're doing a peer review, for example So I do think that the the amount of people who can who who recognizes these things is definitely growing And I hope I've contributed a little bit by playing this game on Twitter And uh, just opening people's eyes like you you if you if you know what to look for you'll find these things in in the papers that you read I know by following your Following your feed and following the following your hashtag. I've I've tried my hand at things But I I haven't found anything in any papers yet. So but if I do find something in a paper Your advice is to do what? To remain calm And to not yell misconduct So this is what I think a lot of people will immediately say. Oh, this is misconduct while in reality A lot of these duplications might be honest errors Not all of them may maybe only half of them But you you it's hard to know from just looking at an image what really happened So in a lot of cases you're you can say that it's a duplicate. So what I would recommend Is to write to the editor-in-chief of the journal in which you have found this paper In this this duplicate and and and tell them about what what you found and but remain very objective So just say figure 2b looks remarkably similar to figure 5c Or there's an overlap with a little illustration Unfortunately, I've done this a lot. I've reported around 4 000 papers by now and there's I know it's it's all I've scanned like probably 100 000 papers But I really only look at the images. So I don't read the paper. So it's it's I don't really read them I don't should should probably not be saying that but I only look at the images And so I I have reported a particular set of papers around 800 A couple of years back five six years back And so I know what has happened to the all these papers that I've reported to the editors-in-chief And basically with the majority of these papers nothing happens So I found these duplicates I reported them and that the editor did not take any action So only in 40 of the cases did they either retract or correct the paper So in the majority there's just nothing that has happened to the to the paper And I found that a disservice to the scientific readers of these papers So these papers usually cost a lot of money And if you're part of a university your university pays a lot of money for these papers And these journals And and the journals should care about the quality So I feel that if a reader raises a concern about a paper the journals should take action You know if you buy a car and the wheel drops off a year later You you would probably go back to the dealer and ask You know what's up with that and kind of get a new wheel But yeah, it seems that a lot of journals don't really care about the quality of a paper after it has been published So I'm taking things a lot online. So I either take them to twitter or I will That's usually a sort of a last resort But I post most of the papers on a website called pop peer dot com and I will Alert the reader that there's a potential problem with a paper And then if people have a pop peer extension so they have plugins that will work with your browser So you can do then a literature search and if you have that plugin It will tell you which papers have a comment and you can click on that and see if there's a problem with the paper Interesting. See I would think that a lot of these journals would respond to your Your message with a job offer because I feel like it would be very helpful to have someone with your skill set Um In charge of publishing papers Uh, that would be wonderful. But uh, no, actually one would like to remain independent because I don't want to be working for a boss ever again This is really good. It's just fantastic to not have a have somebody telling me what to do um, yeah, but Unfortunately a lot of and it's changing but but let's say five six years ago when I started this this work Most journals did not even respond or they would say well, thank you, dr Beck will look into this and then I would never hear anything again And I sent them reminders once a year like to what's up any updates and they would just not respond to those So I'm I'm taking things online and I have even criticized Big name journals for not responding to these things And I think that is something that not a lot of scientists would dare to call out science or nature for not responding I it it seems like it somebody needs to take the journals to task Uh, the the system the entire Scientific endeavor the ecosystem Um, it there's a lot of toxic practices that that go on a study just out on The replica big replication studies has found that Even though these replication studies are going on to find out the power of the original studies that were were done in psychology Doesn't matter people are still citing the original studies. There are no commentary There's nothing going on to the original studies giving them any kind of addendum or comment or you know Just hey just to note this other study was done that showed it it wasn't valid or um giving it any any sort of um I think any sort of warning sign I guess But the publishers they want to publish and they're going to get money from libraries and they're going to get money from people who are Subscribing to their services and then you have the publishing publish publish publish and perish within science um Do you see this kind of an effort um as just one little step towards changing that ecosystem? Yes, I I have noticed some some positive developments But but I also realized that scientific publishing and I guess academia as a whole is just a extremely slow moving ship It's it's not gonna Quickly shively change directions. It's going to take years and years Um, I feel there's there's a lot of things wrong with scientific publishing You know like should peer review be done for free? And peer reviewers are not really educated to find fraud they're educated or they're they're they're supposed to find flaws in papers But not necessarily fraud and so that's not really their job to do And editors will will probably tell you that if they hire people like me who screen papers For for image mistakes and some journals actually do this And that's a good development, but but journals will tell you then we'll have to raise the price even more and Most academics will tell you but we we write the papers for free We peer review them for free where does all that money go to and because papers are not being printed anymore? so it is tough to To see the amount of money we pay to academic publishing and at the same time realize that there's there seems to be little quality control and Yeah, not not enough checks to to check for these papers and check for these irregularities before publication Where do you think the the drive to Create paper mills comes from um, do you have any any thoughts on? Why there are groups of people just publishing publishing publishing these fraudulent papers that are getting going out Yeah, so paper mills is a very uh, at least the ones i'm familiar with are very specifically tied to um medical doctors who work at hospitals in china And that's not because people in china are more or less fraudulent than anywhere else But it's because of a very particular requirement that these medical doctors when they're done with their Education and they want to work at the at a hospital. They have a particular requirement that they have to publish one scientific paper But they're not given any time off to do research and they might not work in a hospital that has time Or a lab to do research in so these are Mainly people who work in clinical hospitals not associated with the academic hospital or academic institution So they're not they're they're you know, their focus is to cure patients not to do research And so it's they're in a very hard situation But they have to publish a paper, but they don't have time or uh opportunity to do so And so those people feel that the only way out of this You know This situation they're stuck in is to buy a paper and so there are companies called paper mills who will offer papers for A big amount of money and then authors will buy their authorship into one of these papers and these papers Are completely fake at least that most of the ones we're finding they The text is written through Uh by ghost writers on a template the images are often stolen from other in other papers Or are artificially generated are not even real And these papers are very hard to recognize as fake because each of these individual papers looks fine I mean, maybe you know not really high quality, but you know decent But if you compare a lot of these papers together You you will see that they have a very similar title structure a very similar Images sometimes they reuse images And so uh, it's only when you look at the bigger picture that you literally that you see all these That all these papers come from the same studio. And so we we're Together with with a lot of other people who most of them are anonymous we're working on to find these these paper mill papers and And alert editors that they should pay more attention that there's just massive production of papers by almost like, uh, you know organized crime type of organizations that will pump out these papers That's fascinating that that this is even happening right now. There were, uh, a couple of papers that came out one paper This is not so much paper mill as People publishing a paper with a a particular slant and it's whether I'm wondering whether it's to get attention or whether it's actually to Give some kind of scientific credence to a the beginnings of a conspiracy theory or some kind of uh idea that's meant to drive Uh people's perceptions. Um, and there was one study on five that linked skin and 5g and Covid this last year that you uh, that you had uncovered and blogged about Can you talk a bit about um about what you found with that? Right. Yeah, so that was uh, like a set of paper that claims that 5g scary Would produce corona virus from our skin and If you're like if your jaw is already on the floor that should be so this paper got published in a PubMed index journal So it sort of looked legit at first glance. Uh, sort of passed all the quality controls Um, but if you read the paper it looked impressive It had uh because it had a lot of formulas now So i'm the the type of biologist if I see a formula i'm like, I have no idea what it means But i'm sure it's impressive and I think that's what the peer reviewers thought So it had there was full of formulas and it's sort of those formulas were supposed to show that 5g caused corona virus to burst out of your skin and uh somebody rightfully asked question Well, if if the 5g changes something in the cells of our dna the dna of our cells Why doesn't it produce a hundred dollar bill? Why does it specifically produce a corona virus? And that of course that wasn't answer in the paper and the whole paper was full of strange formulas and strange Graphs that but no there was no data and I will say if you have a fantastical claim You have to have fantastic data and there was no data in this paper And so um, I wrote a blog post about it and the journal retracted it sort of silently. I think they were It's not a very good journal in which it was published up obviously, but um, yeah It somehow it passed all the the quality control filters Yeah, and uh looking into the the authors it seems the authors have published other very odd Scientific claims in uh in other papers as well. So there's a history of kind of pushing a A fringe science perspective, right Yeah Anyway, I I just wonder if you know, it is something like that the the paper got Retracted but is something like that is that just that that researchers Urge for attention or is that is that something else? Do you think that there is the possibility with paper mills with journals that maybe aren't great quality but get published in pub pub med That there might be the possibility if we're not looking closely enough of it Being used to like I said give credibility to not credible ideas Uh, that's a tough question and I think in this particular case. I would still blame it on some persons with strange ideas who Family each other and just pushed out papers because they they love doing that I I hope there's no agenda behind it But i'm sure it those papers will be misused by people who have a Either a very yeah like a strong five anti 5g agenda. I'm sure they'll find this paper and they'll they'll use it for that purpose. So I I I hope that it was not an organized action But there's a lot of people with strange ideas Um as we have all realized in the past year and and they will try to They're convinced that scientists are Uh are not giving them a voice and they'll find Some topic some platform to publish their ideas in So whether or not that's completely organized or just the result of all the misinformation that we hear around us And all the mistrust that we that that people seem to have in science that I don't know But uh, there's definitely a lot of strange papers that somehow have passed peer review And I I feel that we should be more on the lookout for those things and we should be Um ensuring a better quality of publications So my question for the general public then would be if I'm going to pretend I'm I'm somebody who's not accustomed to reading scientific papers at all How do I both maintain? faith in the scientific process well also Maintain a healthy skepticism Of the information that I receive off the internet about the latest publication Well, usually you'll I tend to look at the the quality of the journal in which things were published But even that is not a guarantee. We've seen some big retractions in big name papers, uh in the past year and so, um It's it's really hard to give a hundred percent foolproof You know, this is what you should do to trust the paper, but in general if things can be replicated That's always a good sign. Um if um, for example, the hydroxychloroquine paper That I wrote a big critique on that paper has not really been able to be replicated by by other studies And so I think that's a sign that that paper maybe is not a good paper and um But it's hard to give that In general, I still believe that most science is to be trusted But there will always be these these old outliers that, um Fall through the cracks and that that that get out there and and that just have not been peer-reviewed Very well, and that is why I'm a firm believer of post publication peer review I feel once a paper is published you should allow other Scientists to to be critical of it and to write critiques about it. And so that's why I make a lot of views of papyr so Probably my guess would be go to papyr and see if there's people have written critiques about the paper and and and see if you can trust it and um That might be the only way to to really advise it, but it's it's hard for even for scientists to know what is true Some papers just look real and turn out to be completely fake, but that is only a small fraction of papers Yeah, I really think that it There are so many papers being published right now and that is really it's the information overload when the scientific community is These are the people who have to read the papers and the the You know if you are an expert in a particular niche area Read the papers in that area and tell other people what you think about them Are they good or they bad and you have to be able to be willing to speak about them or Criticize them if they are not good so that That information can percolate out to other communities who maybe are not the experts, right? right Yeah, time to get that information out Is there anything else that you want to say about scientific integrity and the work that you're doing currently that you think people should understand? um Yeah, well, it's it's not always easy to do what I do. I I do receive a lot of criticism. So Right now there is a threatening lawsuit like a lawsuit that I might get because I criticize the work of of a particular scientist and so It is not always easy work It could be even dangerous work and I I feel that I am a scientist who criticizes papers But I don't try to attack The persons behind, you know the authors. I don't try to make it personal and It's it's tough that I receive these automanum attacks You know on the way I look or the way I talk or the way You know my whole history While in reality we should be talking about the papers that i'm criticizing and I feel that these lawsuits are sort of trying to silence me and that's not how science should work and I do hope And I know that there's a lot of support for what I do But it's it is a tough situation to be in so it's um, I hope that that will change in the future that will be able to freely speak and criticize and and and uh, you know build upon each other's papers without the Having to be afraid that will be sued for for that What happened to the free scientific enterprise and right inquiry? I know That that is what I was promised when I started this career, but it did not quite happen Yeah Yeah, well, thank you so much for doing what you do and for our audience and uh people who are out there You do have a patreon account Is it uh, is it just your your name to if people are interested? Elizabeth big I I don't want to ask people for money. But uh, if if people have one one dollar to spare Yes, I am on patreon. Elizabeth big is my handle. I guess Thank you. Wonderful. You're welcome. Yeah, I I think this is the work that you do is very valuable and You know until the AI come in and you know the robots take your job Um, which potentially maybe that'll be a good thing if uh, you know, large databases of of images can be assessed, you know more rapidly but Um, until then your work is very important and thank you so much for joining us on the show tonight. It's just wonderful to speak with you Thank you for having me on was my pleasure. Thank you. You're welcome. Oh and before you go, where can people find you? Uh, so I'm on twitter, uh, so my handle is microbiome digest And it's not microbiome with the e at the end because twitter did not allow all the letters that I wanted in there So I had to drop a letter and it became the e so it's microbiome digest But you can also search for my name. There's only as far as I know one elizabeth big on twitter with an s not with his e And uh, yeah, that's me. So I hang out a lot Way too much time on twitter. So you can find me there. Same Like once again, thank you so much. Have a wonderful night. I hope you get some rest from your work and I will see you on twitter again soon. Yes, see you there Thank you Everyone this is this week in science and we are going to take a very quick break When we come back, it'll be time for blairs animal corner And this is where we cut and we chop Thank you very much elizabeth It was wonderful. I will um, I'm gonna remove you from the screen if you're ready to go Bye. Have a wonderful night. I will send you links and things tomorrow. Okay, great. Thank you so much for having me You're welcome. Have a great great night All righty And I turned my computer back on for the music Thank you for listening to twist If you like the show, please consider consider heading to our website twist.org and clicking on our patreon link For patreon supporters with who support us at ten dollars or more per month We will thank you by name at the end of the show We really can't do this without you. Thank you for your support And now it is time for the show Section that has lots of animals in it. It's time for blairs animal corner with blair What you got blair, oh good you said it All right, so if you're uh, if you're a monkey, um, if you're a tamarin Very adorable tiny little monkey that lives in rainforest So you're in a new territory. You don't belong there. You haven't been there before in fact other tamarins live there How do you get through safely? Well If you were a pied tamarin Which is a critically endangered species has one of the smallest ranges of any any primate in the world You might sometimes have to go through red-handed tamarin territory. They are found throughout the northeastern amazon region and when the Other way around when the red-handed tamarins enter the territory of the pied tamarins Other ways so these these pied tamarins that have their teeny tiny territories They don't want to give it up, right when these red-handed tamarins that are all over the amazon wait, wait, wait Wait, what what tamarins the first ones pied? Oh pied tamarins tamarins with their teeny tiny territories. There was a lot of alliteration there. Okay Yes, thank teeny tiny teeny tiny tamarin territory When the red-handed tamarins move into the pied tamarin territory The red-handed tamarins adopt the calls used by pied tamarins so This is the first asymmetric call convergent Convergence shown in primates. So that means this is the first time ever that has been recorded that one species Chooses to adopt another species call pattern to communicate. They're not Merging they're not cross communicating both ways. Just one species is going don't mind me It's just another pied tamarin walking through And so um, they there are a few these reasons that researchers think this is the case First and foremost red-handed tamarins have greater vocal flexibility So the likelihood that they could even do this is high They also use calls more often than pied tamarins. So they just talk more So that also would make you think that their brain would have more kind of elasticity around calls and stuff like that So scientists believe that they alter their calls to avoid territorial disputes over resources unclear as to whether they're trying to get through Unnoticed as a pied tamarin or if they're trying to speak to pied tamarins in their own lingo Could be either But ultimately what we know is happening here is they all of a sudden are sounding like a pied tamarin when they enter pied tamarin territory That is so tricky. Yeah, that's sneaky Yeah, like I I I am respecting the tamarins a little bit more I mean the pied tamarin does a little look a little bit diabolical Maybe you do want to fit in yeah I used to work with these tamarins and they are Wild creatures and yes, they are critically endangered. There's so few of them left But yeah, tamarins in general I would encourage Anyone who has five minutes and isn't actively driving right now to google pictures of tamarins Because there really isn't an interest a not interesting looking one Every single single type of tamarin is cute or weird or interesting looking in some way. So just As an aside check that out. That's my little piece of advice to all of you On your internet wasting that you'll do because everyone's gonna waste some time on the internet today guaranteed, right? Just look at tamarins. Anyway point being um, this is a really unusual interesting way for species to communicate with each other and Yes, they are both Primates yes, they are both monkeys. Yes, they are both tamarins And yes, they are very closely related But this is still very cool It's you know, it's very cool. I mean not just paying attention to a another a conspecific Call but being able to mimic that call being able to Uh blend in being able to okay. It's you know, it's the ventriloquist act or the you know, or the american Going to uh, england and pretending to be canadian a Yeah, I remember for a while they were telling you have to travel overseas put a canadian flag on Anyway, um, yeah, it is like that But it's also kind of more like walking through the zoo and Making a call like a chimp As you pass the chimp exhibit because it's a different species. Yep. No, it's It it it kind of is like learning a language before you go into a country But it's kind of more like mimicking the sounds of a language you don't understand completely and passing Which I think is really crazy So the question now is do these animals understand the sounds that they're making Do they understand each other? Do they understand the sounds they're making to the pied tamarins? Do the pied tamarins understand the sounds? Yes that the red-handed tamarins are making. I think that is a very important question Yeah, yeah. Yeah, is it just mimicry or is it actually Picking up the other language, right? And then I can't help but wonder with our Fairly poor human ears When we go into a habitat and we think we're hearing certain things Are we always hearing those animals or sometimes are we hearing other animals mimicking those animals? That's a great question. I don't know You know, I just I watched crows fighting a red-tailed hawk the other day And it didn't occur to me until right this second that crows are capable of a lot of sounds Do you think I has ever mimicked a red-tailed hawk? I have a starling that lives in my house that mimics so many It mimics the crows it mimics the song sparrow It mimics a the the bird of prey that lives nearby it All of them this starling mimics all of them and so I have caught myself going Oh, I wonder if there's an osprey in the neighborhood. No. No, it's a starling Gosh darn starlings. Um, yeah, so then you have to you have to separate out mimicry Versus communication. Is this mimicry that we're hearing in these tamarins or is it communication? Yeah Yep, and when you look further out and then okay, which which which which anyway, which one is it? Yeah Which one is it? Which one is it? And moving from monkeys to wolves um Wolves in deer territory, which one is it prey or savior? So this is looking this is a study. Um looking at both michigan and wisconsin And the impact of gray wolves on deer populations So specifically looking at michigan's upper peninsula Wolves moved in in the 1990s and 2000s and what happened deer collisions Went way down So deer were getting hit by cars less coincidence Good question So another fewer deer Right So another team of scientists gathered data about road collisions and wolf movements in wisconsin And they looked there And found that in fact what was happening was wolves were creating a quote landscape of fear So once wolves colonize a county deer vehicle collisions go down about 24 percent Which is not nothing that is a good chunk and um, it is partially the thinning of the population Which as we know is not always a bad thing Sometimes there's too many deer and it makes deer sick it reduces their resources It's actually a problem for deer if there's too many of them. So Uh, that is one piece, but the other piece is behavioral changes Wolves it turns out use linear features of a landscape as travel corridors things like you know roads Also pipeline stream beds But they will use these linear pathways to move through a habitat And so deer learned very quickly to avoid those linear features when wolves move in which means they stay away From the road Wow, so the presence of wolves obviously is um looked down upon by rangers because wolves eat livestock and so there's all sorts of um data being collected and being looked at at the financial implication of livestock losses to wolves because Then we're stuck doing cost-benefit analysis as a government of which is worse the loss of the habitat Or the loss of the livestock don't get me started on how we shouldn't be living off so much livestock anyway But ultimately that is a conversation that the government has to have because they have to decide Is it beneficial to keep the wolves? and this is why wolves were eradicated from the united from most of the united states pretty early in westward expansion of Europeans is because The wolves were getting at the livestock But a 2008 study from the u.s. Department of Transportation estimated that crashes from hitting deer cost more than eight billion dollars annually So if you can reduce that Then it actually might be more financially beneficial to let the wolves stay Even if they're taking some some cows and sheeps here's it here and there But the other kind of unknown Ecologic or economic impact, which is what I always gets me stuck in I get stuck in the fact that We're really not good at quantifying The cost of things really in an environment But wolves are also reshaping ecosystems as Justin loves to bring up I know he would talk about it if you were here the whole yellowstone situation, right? So there's a huge benefit to ecosystems Very hard to measure that economically But if you think about collisions, you have this eight billion dollars But that's not even counting medical bills fatalities and other things that happen as a result of these collisions this is really just looking at like If a vehicle is destroyed if a road is messed up if if um If a roadway gets blocked for a period of time, it's looking at a lot of infrastructure type things It's not really looking at the human element when it's looking at that cost So this is potentially something that could be really helpful to know for wolf management and wolf advocacy in the united states And just as a quick little Wolves are good for cars Turns out turns out In 2016 actually There was a study done that found that cougars Decreased the number of deer vehicle crashes in part of the eastern u.s by about 22 so a very similar number So this is tracking that same number that same rough number. And so um, if that's the case having natural predators around Just by the nature of them being there can help Eliviate this really this pretty big problem. And you know, I grew up in the city I I didn't almost ever have to worry about hitting a deer until I started going to school in a more rural area area for college But there are lots of places in this country Where people are scared to drive late at night or early in the morning And it's kind of nerve-wracking because if you hit a deer it could be the end of your car Or the end of Your life potentially it's it's really dangerous. So Um, that's it. It's very good to know that there are natural solutions for this There are natural solutions to the problem of hitting deer with your car Who knew? Yeah, and it doesn't involve Going out and hunting deer necessarily Yeah, and and so wolves do that Large carnivores have an ecological and economic value That's really what this is about is again the whole ecosystem. You think about the whole system thinking the package, right? We get so tied up in our little details that we lose sight of the big picture and the whole system and The system is essential The ecosystem systems thinking is pretty important Yeah, very important. I hope we get to go back to uh Uh, the the center for the institute for complexity the um in santa fe they do a lot of systems thinking there Oh, I can't wait to go back to santa fe. Yeah Yes After covet get to go back AC after covet Yeah, bc ac. This is the new the new dividing line for modern society Uh This is this week in science and I've got some story I've got a story about stimulating sight Really interesting study. So we've talked previously about uh, uh, retinitis pigmentosa and how it leads to deterioration and event of vision and eventual blindness And there really are not many, uh, treatments for it and researchers have been Trying to come up with various ways to treat the disease whether it's um, been gene modification or Whether it's drugs or whether it's hey, you're going to get a cybernetic eye. There's all sorts of things and researchers Just published from the university of pittsburgh and the use of university of basal in nature medicine on the first evidence of a Giving a person who has retinitis pigmentosa partial vision partial recovery of vision with optogenetic treatment Excuse me And now opto optogenetic treatment is when we put light sensitive molecules into cells and I've talked about it on the show many times with respect to mice and controlling Cells in mouse brains getting mice to do different things and usually it's a Uh, a redopsin with a light sensitive protein light sensitive, uh, molecule That responds to blue light, but in this particular case this 58 year old man was injected with a A vect of a virus vector an adeno associated viral vector That then put this channel redopsin crimson r Into his eye and it took several months of this, uh, this vector to actually incorporate this new Molecule into the light sensing cells in the retina of this man's eye this This molecule originally came from an algae chlamydomonus noctygama And so now from algae to vision This man went from not being able to detect any light at all to being able to To be able to at least locate on a table objects. He can't see them Distinctly necessarily but as opposed to being 100 percent in the dark. He's now able to make out Shapes on a surface and be able to identify them and The really interesting trick to this though is that even though this channel redopsin Crimson r it doesn't respond to blue light. It responds to red light And it won't just respond to sunlight even though there's a bit of red red in sunlight. There's not a lot They Have to put special goggles on the person So the people who get this treatment have to wear have to wear goggles and the goggles then take The visual signal and send red light and wash the retina In red light so that the photosensitive cells are then activated and allow the person to see so it's a combination of molecular technology in addition to actual physical technology goggles plus special chemical in your eyes and suddenly you can see Suddenly you can see Would you if You could get a chemical that would get rid of your color blindness if you had it injected into your eyes Do you think that you would do that or would you stick with what you've got? Uh 100 yes until you said the word injected into your eyes I think that was tough because I'm I I won't even get LASIK because it scares me to have I just I have a thing about my eyes. It's it creeps me out. But if I could yes if I could get color vision back It would it would make my life so much easier. I gotta tell you You're like that would be great. Let's do it Yeah, I mean I don't think a day goes by that somebody doesn't Use a color identifier for something to me and I often have to be like, oh, I'm sorry I don't I don't know I don't see that color. Yeah Yeah Yeah, well this research is very cool. It's just a few people so far that they have started this trial with with this optogenetic technique And uh, they've treated a few more people found that it worked Okay, they weren't able to do the face-to-face testing because of covet so But they did Determined that it was safe that the dosage they were giving was safe and they are now Doing additional tests with increased dosage to see if they can get a better response with more cellular recruitment with more of this light sensitive protein getting into the retinal cells and with better light detection and better vision so Maybe one day there will be people and maybe they won't need goggles one day Who knows? Maybe it'll be a different world Yeah, and then the final I know It's amazing. This is I mean this kind of this kind of science where it's like Combining, you know, it's just it's very futuristic. I'm like, this is just I mean, I was I was sitting there thinking about having no vision at all and then suddenly having The difference between light and dark and and some just kind of crude shapes would be It would be a complete game changer. It would completely change your life totally Yep Yep, you'd be able to actually get around your house more easily just basic tasks would be so much easier. Yeah Yeah, so more tests to come and they uh are are calling this new Technique this new kind of information and the the way that it worked it took a long time for It to start working and the the the subject had to start really learning how to see again And so what they're calling it the clinicians are now calling it with a a whole new name Because no one's ever done this before and so it's a new scientific field That they're calling visual rehabilitation awesome Yeah, brand new awesome. This is this is what the 2000s was supposed to bring this Yes, this is exactly the this just a little bit late, but you know Artificial it's not even that late. We're still in the first half The artificial limbs that can interface with your brain And this this is exactly I forget the flying cars. I don't need that. This is what we need I don't need those Just give me all the adaptations. I need that I need that extra thumb from last week's show And totally And my last story for the night has to do with memories Oh, the details fade over the over time, don't they they sure do They just fade And we know like we've heard from researchers through the years that if you access your memories over and over and over again That it's that accessing of memories that maybe overwrites them a little bit and kind of muddies them up But a new study that was just published in nature communications kind of explains the the reasoning behind why they become less vibrant and the The gist is that We remember the gist We don't really remember the details that we don't need to remember And so they had a number of individuals in this study look at these visual images and they had to they were prompted to recall certain aspects of the image that were either very detailed oriented or more More meaning related so They had word image pairs and they were supposed to Say for example if the comer cult if the image was colored or gray scale, which is more Perceptual or whether it showed an animate or an inanimate object, which is more semantic or meaningful And then they tested them right after they were trained and then tested them again two days later And they found that the participants surprise surprise were faster at Recalling the semantic details the perceptual elements Just those were not they're they're just perceptual and they were not important and the researcher says it's kind of like Imagine that you're reminiscing about a dinner with a friend before kovat You realize you can't remember what the the table decor was But you do know what you ordered while you had dinner with your friend Or you remember the conversation with a bartender, but you don't remember the color of the shirt The bartender was wearing or you you know, you're like, ah, it was a green shirt or a red shirt. I'm not quite sure And they say this pattern towards recollection of meaningful semantic elements We demonstrate in this study indicates that memories are biased toward more meaningful content in the first place And we've shown in previous studies this bias is clearly reflected in brain signals too Our memories change with time and use and that is a good and adaptive thing We want our memories to retain the information that is most likely to be useful in the future when we encounter similar situations So it's whatever Means the most in the moment What are you going to remember about tonight's show Blair? Probably something about objecting into your eyeballs Um Yeah, and also that all those pictures that uh, that our guests said looked the same looked different to me I could I didn't have the I didn't have to You're not you're not gonna remember the the color of different people's shirts or yeah No, that's that's actually a thing my my brain doesn't store color because it can't trust it I have a whole I have a whole theory about this. So yeah, I have I have no memory for color So that's actually kind of related to this right so it is absolutely So I do think my brain knows it's not relevant because it's probably not right So if I assume something is a certain color Unless I am Verbally unless it's confirmed that it's a certain color then so for example I have a really good memory for what color articles of clothing are When I am told so when I go shopping or when I buy something and I come home I ask somebody what color is this? I have a really good memory that that sweater is blue because I was told it was blue But yeah in terms of in terms of just kind of like an environment that I'm in I have no memory for colors at all I'd love to know what kind of details people out there have memories for do you have photographic memories or Are you more of a gist person like me? I'm a gist person Anyway science it gives you the gist And I think we're done with the show. Did we make it to the end Blair? Oh, we did. Look at that We did it. Oh my gosh. Oh, I guess it's it's 9 31 Who knew who knew Well, I do want to thank dr. Elizabeth bick for joining us on this show tonight It was wonderful to have you on the show and as a reminder to our audience out there You can find her on twitter. You can find her blog. We will have links at our website twist.org Um as well and oh my goodness. I guess I it's time for me To say thank you to people I do like saying thank you. Thank you Blair for a great show. Oh, thank you kiki for hosting And my shout outs shout outs to Fada for help with social media and with show notes with gourd for Manning our chat room, which may be changing soon. We'll have a conversation after the show and identity for for recording the show rachel for your amazing assistance, and I would love to thank our patreon sponsors for Being our patreon sponsors for all of the support that they give us Thank you, too John Ratnaswamy Kira Carl Kornfeld Melanie Stegman de Kramsta Karrantazi Woody M.S. 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week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science science science science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science that's the show we've made it to the after show yeah is the show over yeah but is it really over no i mean that depends it depends i mean blares in a helmet it's the after show after after after this one frizzy hairs back here they're doing what they want to do yeah oh let me fix my hair yeah fix your hair blair i mean there we go i've done it there we go it's too big for my head is it i can't tell from here it fits brian a lot better this is not the way you know it's not the way do you know the way not the way do you know the way the show is forever we are everyone um so we have our chat rooms on youtube and facebook and twitch all over the places at the different video places and we used to have a live stream from youtube that went to our twist.org website and what has happened well the live stream to the twist.org website doesn't work anymore because youtube did something and oh no it broke so there's no video there at the live page anymore there's a chat room people are on place it's okay i have links there are links to youtube and facebook and twitch on that page so people can find the live links if they haven't done so before it's just an easy place to send people to find it but we have that's kind of an easy way also to get into our free node web chat which has been twist chat home for a long time um that uh gord has taken care of gold zader others have have fostered and kept it nice and happy and safe um and so question there's apparently some stuff happening with free node that people are not happy about i don't know the politics of it really but it doesn't sound great uh but there are a lot of free node communities that are very unhappy at the moment uh youtube keeps updating their sdk that's why it keeps breaking yep exactly yes but you are still there in the free node web chat so should we move to another irc like Liberia chat or should we say hey everyone go chat on twitch or youtube or i i want to do what the community wants to do and i know not everybody is going to have the same ideas those of you that are on youtube right now you're on youtube chatting away on youtube those of you who are on facebook or on twitch are doing that as well and that's great i want everyone to be able to be happy i can see you all right now which is awesome i see all of you but uh i can see you i see you but what should we do where should we go do people gord said he'd like to get rid of a chat client do you want to get rid of chat chat clients peoples do you like your chat clients did you know where you are happy i want to i want everyone to be happy i cannot make everyone happy but i will do my best yes fada saying 14 employees of free node quit over a takeover that has happened are they employees or volunteers but anyway it doesn't matter much if they're doing the work gord gord says we have a ludicrous number of chat rooms already wouldn't mind losing the irc twitch has emotes it's true and you're using them it's great kevin jones is happy in youtube i'm happy here in my happy house my happy walls i think i need to listen to some susie in the banshees soon fada says a bit of both yeah fada what do you use the c e slits smith no i don't keep track of when you're sleeping no it's not something i do feel like you can't see my facial expression so i can't see your what are you making faces at me this whole i was that's okay anyway right there's discord as well um and there is a twist discord i keep i'm so bad at discord i keep forgetting how to get in i'm like i have an account i don't remember i haven't tried to log into discord in a long time yeah i don't know how to log in okay fada is probably moving to liberia discord will have advertising in the near future um yeah you can give us bits on twitch it's true oh you get buffering huh but there's always youtube if you don't but you don't have to watch youtube where do you watch thunder beaver hear an op on hashtag twist on liberia dot chat okay so there is a an irc at liberia twitch twitch chat okay gord says for those who are really married to the irc clients twitch chat is irc based it will play relatively nicely with irc clients so that's good hot rod says twitch or facebook or youtube which we already use so no change okay good i just don't i don't want people to feel left out like if this i mean if everyone decides to leave the free node chat we can close it and um do the other things and i don't know do you have an opinion blare i think it all depends on if i can interact with these other chats through stream yard so i'm gonna i'm gonna sign up for an account today and see if that does something i want to hit sign up for free but i'm afraid it's gonna boot me from this discussion right if you did it right now uh if i did it right now so i'm not going to try it but i'll try it before next week's show and then if i can interact with youtube and um and twitch and facebook through this then it would actually be a lot easier if i only was looking in one place instead of two places yeah so that would be my personal preference is to reduce the number of windows i have to check while i'm also supposed to be paying attention to what's going on um so that's my personal opinion is uh i'm i'm sad to see the web the irc go because we've been there forever but um if if we if we have enough coverage and i see people are in both places sometimes you know it's kind of yeah it'd be nice to just have one less place yeah omnipresent yes identity four let's see identity four is in discord youtube and youtube you're in youtube and youtube how are you in youtube and youtube the mark is in twitch yeah i what is this what is uh so anyway i i will do what y'all want to do um thunder beaver proposes even more bridging irc twitch discord xmpp chats together yeah many orgs have moved to discord from irc you use irc for your twitch chat oh interesting because like gordon was saying you can do that okay fauna says discord and liberia whatever folks choose i mean we can just we can say i mean if there's a hash if there's a twist chat over at liberia if everybody i mean there's so many options i know eric nap oh my goodness so many options um so identity four is mentioning making sure like it would be cool to have an offline room like the discord is that right i just like i hadn't logged in probably a year uh but having an offline room is neat right it would be nice also for people to send us story ideas there and stuff there's lots of other ways for people to send us stuff but i you know in in twitter it kind of falls down the line sometimes if you don't get to it right away so um it would be cool to just be like oh i'm looking for stories what's in the discord because i think isn't that what um dtns does i think that's a dtms yeah yeah they get story ideas they have a reddit and discord yeah that'd be twist offline it would be we can live stream to 100 people well yes if okay can i post how you can log into the discord chat for twist yes because so far i think it's only i've posted it a couple like once or twice before but it was only um it was oh no okay i have to remember how to get into it give me a moment uh let's see give me a moment to discover why don't i download discord to this computer i guess i did i think it's just called twist did i just call it twist i think so okay let's see if i can get in here something's going on here yes okay yes something is going on here send me an email discord i'm doing kitten what else is going on in the world today was what it was world international otter day i don't know i don't have the calendar near me you otter i otter you otter have a calendar i got uh convinced when i moved to put the calendar in the kitchen so we could look at it more often which is nice but i need it near the computer yes can you tell me funny otter stories uh yeah so so river otters um when they are in uh captivity for some reason they have a proclivity for sucking on glass so you can see here let me pull up pictures you can see all these pictures of otters like sucking and licking the glass um at exhibit which is very funny oh my goodness i can i'm gonna screen share this scream shim scream shim you're gonna scream shim scream shim just what's happening scream shim okay i'm trying to screen share haha that was the otter day you too weka weka weka weka yeah there isn't there is an otter story oops there's your scream shim there's my scrum scream shim yeah so this is a thing they do and when i was imagining that they were finding like river glass in the rivers and no they're sucking on the enclosure glass that they do in fact do and when i was in the quorum of the bay they started doing this this is a quorum of the bay i think this picture actually um yeah this is look at this is a quorum of the bay too i think look at it look at this look at that face it's insane um i don't know what it is something about the sensation is fun for them or so i don't know i wish i could open image in me too there we go oh my goodness give me this that is i uh hold on i can't even with that why somebody has to study this here i have to i this is frustrating i thought it would follow me but it didn't oh hot rod you want to put the link in there didn't you that's good look at this i'm waiting for discord to email me oh god okay here it is i got look at this look at the sharp teeth in that waggly tongue yeah so they're so they're um moustellids they're weasels so they have um they have like the um razor sharp cuisine art in their mouth um so river otters and sea otters um one of the big differences that they have is that um the river otters are in the river and the sea otters in the sea got it okay great no river otters um our parameters are in the sea it's like how a driveway and a roadway are completely different no they're primarily freshwater um and they swim and they will haul out on land to eat a lot um and they can walk on land really well so they're like they can like rotate their their feet forward and they can run pretty well um sea otters are terrible at running they look very silly when they try to do it um and they eat on their back and they're primarily seawater they also sea otters get really big a lot of people don't realize there's gonna be like six feet long what yeah that's huge yeah and um in both cases you should never ever ever go anywhere near an otter because as I mentioned they are mustelids they are uh they have very sharp teeth and very sharp claws they are predators and they are extremely territorial so um just like all uh weasley things they have a scent gland that they mark and they so they're extremely careful about their territory so when humans are in their territory they have been known to um get an altercation with humans and um you can get hospitalized by an otter so I would just say be careful don't go near otters if you see them in the wild um and uh oh and the other really cool thing about otters is that they uh have some of the thickest fur in the animal kingdom which is why they were almost all gone at one point we hunted them all um and so uh the reason it's so thick is that they have this extremely extremely thick fuzzy soft undercoat that keeps them warm like a like a wool coat and then they have um the outer layer for that's practically waterproof water beads and rolls right off of them so it allows them to stay warm in the water it's like they're wearing a wet suit a dry suit I guess is really what they're wearing um and so it uh that's a really effective way of keeping them warm and dry so there you go love it they're warm they're dry they're furry little creatures mm-hmm very similar probably to the beaver pelt yes very similar to beaver pelt mm-hmm if you're a USDA inspector you uh that's that's a good test can you tell otter from beaver I feel like something that's important for them to know capi is just purring at me no you want it's playtime isn't it okay so where is my computer discord send me an email come on well when discord can send me an email I will go into the discord uh I have it on my phone don't ask me to join it on my computer but uh it does sound like twitch is a good yeah so so for I mean I like having a central place yes where it's not just during the show where we can all chat about the if people have things they want to talk about or whatever so we do have the discord um and uh hot rod has put it into our free node IRC chat it's in there um and that is the link the invitation link to get in um the uh oh the discord not the twitch not yeah that's the discord not the twitch but twitch is another great platform um people have if they if they want to get on the twitch the twitch is good it's nice to have a chat different places different places but you know during the show we're here so if you're on youtube or on facebook or twitch you're good I think I'm just kind of the free node has been kind of a place where if you wanted to IRC at any point you could but since people are concerned about all this um free node stuff I don't want that to be an issue so join the discord yay Kevin unique you got in I will get in eventually to my discord I'll get in someday someday maybe maybe I went to the trap I don't know where anything is but um I just want a place where everyone can be together and be able to chat so uh twitch chat is usually kind of there and good anyway I think that's kind of how the twitch chat works gourd if you could continue to corral people um fada and thunder beaver if you want to keep uh keep tabs on the and moderate the uh like what was it the lie I see I don't even know the new IRC this is bad if I don't know where it is I won't be able to get the other IRC you want to if you want to hang on to that um if people want to go to the other IRC then that is great also and thunder beaver has posted a like bear a chat thank you thank you flying out thank you thunder beaver hello jarard yes how is ireland right now probably early in the morning um github okay I will uh I'll click on that link and then I'll investigate that later wow I don't know how to do that I don't know how to do that somebody would have to do it for me the github to link things together and to figure out on it fada um if you're gonna go thank you very much we'll talk later and I think so far we're pulling it all together um if we want to have if people want to I mean this free node hashtag will be here if you forget um I'll probably forget and come to free node before I remember Libera but uh there will also be the discord if you want to be there it seems to be the places that most people are going um but keep me informed on how you're feeling about the chats and whether you're feeling connected I want people to feel connected that's what I want if we can make it happen uh the link that Kevin unique the link that hot rod had shared earlier to discord was the twist invite link let me see if I can copy that and paste that down there um uh and so hopefully you'll be able to get into that discord link if that works are you in Blair I'm in on my phone only I have no idea what my login is so I don't know I'm gonna be able to join discord on here you will it will happen I'm gonna go back to my inbox maybe discord will email me oh I just got like not the email I wanted discord doesn't want to let me in okay this is thrilling video I'm sure Eric naps story was I watched a sea otter in a small boat at the harbor swimming oh scan this with your discord mobile to log in what I don't know anything about that scan your code please oh great hello technology I'm in oh discord there you are oh here I am this time discord here I am whole new chat room oh thunder beaver you think I use a password manager how quaint I have a password manager I I have a notebook okay discord you're fired it's telling me that I have to enter an email address to verify my email address and so I did and now it's telling me that my email is already registered oh good oh it's okay we're here it was a good show you can watch it later we had a good interview today it was fun twitch and youtube working okay and gerry gerard you're using the emotes we do like the emotes we need I need to figure out how to get uh get twist emotes for our twist twitch channel I need to figure out how to do that another invite to the discord the twitch channel I'm checking my email it's not coming I think I have email problems I didn't think I do but now I think I'm just gonna sit here oh uh baba brinkman is doing a Kickstarter right now if you remember uh baba the hip hop the science hip hop artist who came to the show and did a wrap up at the end of the show he's doing a Kickstarter to create a um what he's calling event wrap where he's got a group of different wrappers that you can hire to do wraps to wrap for your event and to make wraps for you which is kind of a cool idea like bringing together the hip hop hip hop writers gorge you can help me on the emotes that would be awesome yes I don't know I will try to get into discord over the next few days that's probably how long it will take me I am apparently becoming one of those older people who no longer knows how to use technology I need to achieve and register for affiliate to get emotes on twitch I think I am an affiliate on twitch I we leveled up we're no longer just basics just just there we got whatever the level one is we're in it's all because of you everybody over on twitch woohoo you know in all the places I find discord overwhelming as well I know identity for what is this new fangled nonsense it's for shangles shmangles nonsense cabbie are you just clawing at the walls yes you are wow I swear my cat's gonna climb up the wall noodles you feel discord is good for your gray hairs yes I will figure out how to get into discord why I never got a verification email from twitch so it's gotta be an email that I can an old discord email that I can use to get in right man how long will it take for me to get a twitch email I gave up I'm now I'm now wait did I get it no now I'm hoping for a text message from discord I did I got a text message from discord that's fun exciting phones hey sometimes this is frustrating how about to resend code resend yes yes discord it's great you're fighting with discord and I'm fighting with twitch let's fight the technology fight the power fight the power fight the power that beat fight the power fight the technology come on jute no no no look discord you're discombobulating me I guess I will pick a different email address oh maybe it'll work this time yeah it doesn't want to help me this will do it too many accounts too many things all y'all that I use a different email I might have but I don't think so because I was looking in my password manager and my password managers telling me this particular email so that's annoying why would that be wrong hmm so now I'm gonna search just search all my emails and see if I can find something else oh I must have changed my password that's the problem oops that's what's wrong I'm a mess hot rod darn it that's right my password uh-huh thank you that's right registration issues well I can go back to my if we let's have let me move away move away I got distracted by uh yes I am invited to be a twitch affiliate I leveled up it says the twitch affiliate program and yeah I think this is for the twist account uh yeah get started I'll click that button get started log into twitch okay log in uh now I need a token I'm this is technology there we go hit a button this is good television huh I know great television everybody did you get into did everyone get into discord I haven't I'm on twitch so but I'm on twitch I can be an affiliate affiliate onboarding so we have full coverage because I'm in discord and you're in twitch so we're totally covered it's great this is perfect I'm confused where's my email wow I'm giving up I'm giving up I probably have a different um probably have a different password in there somewhere yeah random emotes oh look our chat room is becoming more twitchified there are many more twitch comments coming in right now is there are our youtubers still there if I could have anyone on the show that we haven't already who would it be hmm John Hogan that's a great question I have I have all sorts of people I would like to interview make sure I get my numbers right ooh I can be an affiliate now that's awesome okay I'm in there I'm just gonna leave that dun dun dun wait what yes uh until I finish affiliate onboarding we cannot make any money through twitch uh but once I do the affiliate onboarding then then uh we can get people can give us tips and they can do all sorts of great things we can have twitch money yes so this is great it's a good step it's nice thank you twitch mike shoemaker still on all the places oh I'm verified thank goodness you're verified I'm not I am not verified I am unverifiable channel I don't want to do my financial stuff while I'm sitting here I don't have a channel how do I find twist and twitch twist science twis science twis science science I don't even know I don't know how to use this you can do it Blair I have faith in you oh oh no I'll fit I'll send you all my favorite dj channels on twitch okay how do I okay you can do it do you can get there how unique is like is talking this smack about discord right now nice that's great okay Kevin unique go to bed we've had our our kind of chat room irc conversation um we have the things that are going thank you for those of you who are diving over to discord those of you that are diving over to twitch if that's where you want to want to go thanks for trying new things out it's always good to try out new things even as a grown-up because it helps with the maintenance of your brain cells in your brain it's going to keep you younger longer as you're older yes chat room roulette oh Blair made it over I see people have found the Blair's words did you make it I made it congratulations mezzan is in there yes mezzan you have too many windows open that happens all the time who who should we interview big names in the future jane goodall uh yeah that's a san francisco high school right yeah yeah it's uh oh yeah who are you oh that's funny everyone's like Blair's in the chat who who who who's that wall who are these people in the chat oh it's Danilo hey no way that's awesome that's awesome I don't know who Danilo is but that's I do know I know you do that's why I was saying that's awesome it's good that's very cool I don't want that I want um let's see so next week we have an interview Justin will probably be back I mean unless this flight takes week I know he'll be um wonderfully he'll be wonderfully jet lagged by next Wednesday I'm sure I'm sure which will always make for a fun show but yeah we should have we should have a team meeting we should schedule video watchings and all the funds yes we should all there's the Sadie yeah we should watch movies together so this evening um the the movie of choice in this household was destroy all the monsters oh yeah the original one the 1968 Japanese all the monsters movie and I want to tell you all what a terrible movie it is I spent half the movie going what is going on what is going on what's happening what's happening they were destroying all the monsters they were but it took them until the end of the movie to kill all the monsters and then there were these aliens who were controlling everybody with like little BBs in the back of your heads and or your earrings maybe even were your mind key spoilers yeah the aliens that didn't look like aliens 50 years old but spoilers I don't know go see it you should see destroy all monsters and I want a book report next week my friends uh just saw that at the kabuki theater in san francisco they did a whole Godzilla weekend oh it's fun Kai would have loved that Kai is a huge Godzilla fan loves Godzilla movies my very first movie back in theaters since the pandemic was uh Godzilla versus Kong a friend of mine rented out a theater so oh that's fantastic yeah so everyone we knew everybody was vaccinated so and we had there were like 10 of us in the whole theater so it's very cool that would be a lot of fun I think I would enjoy a movie in that situation at a movie theater but otherwise I still don't think I'd want to go to a movie theater but the other aspect of that is Godzilla versus Kong that was also a very bad movie it was fun to watch in theaters but yes it was very very very bad the plot made no sense made no sense whiz mic our free-node IRC has been with twist for a very long time since about the time that we started doing online broadcasts um yeah I think I want to say it was probably after it was uh what 2011 ish because the IRC uh got started after twit right was it was the irs question did that because we had the twit IRC and then we moved and started doing google plus uh the hangouts for the broadcast yeah so actually I think that that would have been 2013 2013 because I started in january of 2012 did we have the chat then well we were on twitch when I started right yeah and so there was and I was on twitch for I think at least a year yeah before we moved yeah I I want to say that right I think so Gord yeah I think it was right around then because that was when we were leaving we're like oh but we don't want to lose the chat because there wasn't the possibility of having a chat and then um and then the room was started and it's been there and you have taken care of it and it's been a home for our chatting it's so weird you know you put yourself on these different platforms and we're still putting ourselves on these different platforms and we're just kind of at the whim of the platform and if the platform does something bad or there's an impropriety or if you know the platform just decides to shut down like all of a sudden it's like and that's it you know you're that's that's it so I understand the drive by many people that kind of create their own ecosystems their own places to put things but yeah but we keep jumping yeah well you found us with google plus it's I definitely I first I thought when when twit was no longer an option I didn't know how uh how resilient the show was yet because I was still pretty new and I was like oh that's so it's gonna be gone forever and nope that was a fun year I guess but January I will have been on the show for a decade wow that's right yeah because you came in the year after Kai was born uh huh mm-hmm yeah diversification stream nylo diversification or denial diversification is uh is good get yourself out to many places which is why I like stream yard and it's great uh I hope they continue for a very long time and are very a good platform but I've always got vmix or obs in my back pocket in case we have to manage everything on our own in case the platform that we're using for broadcasting you know decides to drop so you know there are other there are other ways other ways to fix things and so there's always the plan B in the back of the mind yeah but definitely building broad reach and I think Gord was saying that before get on the different platforms twitch and youtube and facebook and then there's more of an opportunity for people to find us as well which is good uh and thunder beaver is saying if with irc twist could technically run its own server and federate with other servers yeah that's that's true I have talked for years about having my own server and then I'm like I don't want to deal with my own server you have to have enough of my computers that I use I don't want to deal with my server I don't want to do that yeah you have to have a staff for that yes identity four if I ever managed to get back into discord which I'm wondering how I'm going to do it at this point we'll see but yeah we should I will add a channel for story suggestions probably do that now let me see can you do it let me see I don't know if I believe you about your article spam identity four yeah I gord I don't know if I do miss google plus uh I used it a bit for a while and then I didn't very much and I got a lot of spam because of the way google put their algorithm together yes on discord I can assign yes I can do that hot rod thank you uh no I don't have permission to do that it looks like oh well Ella mortured yes it is hard to do all of the things I'm gonna do the communication and creation and I'm gonna do the IT working all the things it's just that time of night or I'm just gonna sing random show tunes no they're not show tunes they are if you want them to be yeah uh channel twist what is that click stride oh there you go channel twist created Friday June 29th 6 10 59 seconds 2012 oh thank you stride that was way sooner than I thought that was about when I thought yeah wow that was only on twitch for six months yikes yeah it wasn't that long or not twitch twit twit yeah too many twizzes oh we need to start our own thing hmm or it's yeah worry yeah maybe you were on it for only a little bit I don't know so crazy how only the gist is left at the end yeah you're right I remember that in the end nobody knows why but we weren't on twin anymore that was it it's the end just one day we weren't nope see he's licking my feet right now he's like booping wasn't working jumping on you wasn't working very good maybe it's that password still I'm gonna it's the same password I should be able to get into discord I don't know why it doesn't like me and why it's not sending me at he bow hi Ed it doesn't like copy and paste hi Ed who sent test test are you real or a robot it's a test Ed test Ed you're a silly puppy okay fine I won't pet you she's such a cat and you tend to touch her and she's like no I finally I finally uh tried to get in I hit my password to get in and now it says that discord has crashed unexpectedly oh that's good you really you really don't want you in there I don't know what's going on oh and now I'm now I'm in nope wait am I can I log in no oh my gosh it doesn't think I'm human it said welcome back we're so excited to see you again and I said yes thank you very much I am human and I said nope no maybe I'll just tell them that I forgot my password now more hoops jumped through we're making it go into bed John Hogan I'm gonna think about the answer to that question because there are many people out there I would like to speak with I just have I have never been excuse me I'm starting to get the yods I've never been great at remembering names which isn't the best I do try I do try I don't know should be a real person I would want him on the show who Beekman Beekman oh we still need to try and get um Bill Nye the science guy on the show oh yeah yeah that would that would be that would be pretty great it would be fun it would be I will get into discord next year maybe huh possibly I don't know I'm gonna try everyone I know hot rod it's not that and if I get into discord then I will make people mods and I will give people manager managerial access and then I yes and we will have more categories of channels to post in so many things yeah did we oh you talked to the stream yard folks they are very nice I like them they seem very nice I'm logging in to Zazzle to see if anyone bought anything I made last week did anybody buy anything no oh maybe that's what it is it is I have an older mac maybe that has something to do with it because it really doesn't like me it's like sure I'll send you an email just tell her we sent the email nobody bought the leggings I haven't bought them yet yeah what gives I'm going to you though I mean orange twist leggings come on they're great pretty great no you can't lock me out shoe brew bender beaver I should probably actually try contacting them um yeah that would be that would be good it would be epic be like so we all have friends in common would you like to join us on the show I'm gonna save locking me out for April 1st great um what's another thing we could do it yeah well I know Carrie Byron and a science video maker have a Kickstarter that they're doing and they're going to be doing some amazing um science communication for I think uh like not kids but like the mid-age and teens so not quite teens and teen ageers which sounds very exciting so maybe they would want to come on the show and talk about their video project which would be that would be cool that's very cool it could be cool yeah or should try and get more more science science uh creators on the show people who do cool things yeah that would be very neat I am I love following Svaha on Facebook all of their clothes they're like science-based women's clothes very cool um yeah I like to see all their new stuff it's really nice just stuff like that like somebody using fractals to make art I would love to interview them fractals for art what was there somebody who told us about somebody down in uh Eugene who does fractal who who studies fractals I don't remember who that was though but there's supposed to be somebody fractally here in Oregon that we should get in touch with for fractals somebody's fractal for fractals for fractal sake well I'm looking in our zazzle store and I'm looking at our most popular items it's very interesting yeah yeah um there are four face masks in the top 10 that is telling for the last lots of people bought our face masks which is great a time yeah um yeah 19 people bought the mammoth face mask I like the mammoth face mask but yeah in the top well in the top six there are four masks we have the twist logo t-shirt the twist logo mug then the mammoth mask the red panda mask the twi and then two different twist logo masks at the top six you know I look forward to the day that masks are not the top sellers yeah yeah some people are buying our twist uh polo shirts that's cool oh cool are those back in stock I thought they were out of stock I mean they appear to be back in stock hope they're back they might not be um yeah I think what happened was they stopped doing embroidery so I redesigned it with a screen print got it and now they can sell them again yep that makes sense so gotta do what they can do and four people have bought my um um uh my tote to carry all of your um stuff that has the dung beetle on it so that's fun to carry your dung beetle stuff stuff stuff yes that's fun that's very fun the pillows seem popular too although nobody's bought my new pillows andy for fractals in art hmm ooh two people have bought the banana slug pillow that's very fun sluggy pillows now the leggings are good ooh four people bought the mammoth pillow how fun anyway twist leggings everybody buy your twist leggings wow for you or one that you love do we have let's see it's june already this this weekend is memorial day weekend hopefully it is a nice holiday weekend for a lot of people who are watching right now hopefully a bunch of you get the day off or days off hopefully you will be safely enjoying a nice warm weekend wherever you are hopefully it'll be lovely weather for you to enjoy don't get sunburned but i think i am i need to go i need to go to bed i'm starting to yawn and i'm tired of discord so i need to go away from the discord not emailing me for a while yeah you're gonna continue on good job thunder beaver identity four yes go to the beach that sounds awesome i like beaches if the weather is nice maybe i'll find a nice portland beach there are beaches by the rivers i could find something like that yes oh shubru i'm sorry your car is in the shop yes and it's time for susie and the bansheets maybe i can like put my headphones in and be like i'm happy here in my happy house happy things yes say good night kiki yeah good night kiki say good night Blair good night Blair good night good night everyone good night everyone thank you so much for joining us again and for talking through the irc with us things will work their way through we will see you on twitch we will see you on discord we will see you on youtube we will see you on facebook and maybe we will see you in libera chat or but i think this chat will probably fade away this free node chat that we've had since 2012 it's had a nice run it's pretty good but we're all still sciencing on together and we'll be back here again next week this show is not going anywhere so i hope that we see you i'm gonna look for your names i'm gonna look for all of your names i'm gonna take names next week okay that's right everybody sit present i'm here yes okay have a wonderful weekend and we'll see you next wednesday thanks for joining us good night