 Are we ready to begin everybody? I'm just sitting here. This is TWIS, this week in science episode number 617, recorded on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2017. Science gets dirty. Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki and today we are going to fill your heads with wine, animal poo, and dirty DNA. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. We have a new technique. It's one of the most exciting phrases, a cluster of words we love to hear in science. That eureka moment when a new scientific tool is discovered because a new technique for inquiry hints at hidden knowledge that is about to be unveiled is pregnant with the promise of potential discovery should send shivers of anticipation down the spines of any vertebrate science fan. And just as every discovery in science leads to still further findings farther down the road, each new tool of science is just the beginning of what our research capabilities will be tomorrow. And while tomorrow is always just a day away, now is the moment which you can do. And right now you're about to delve into another exciting cluster of words we call this week in science coming up next. What's happening? What's happening this week in science? Good science, Kiki. And good science to you too, Justin. Oh, and good science to everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of this week in science. We are back once again to talk about all the cool science stories that, well, you know, the things that we thought were cool. Anyway, we hope that you'll enjoy them as well. Oh, I would like to tell everyone also remind you that the Young Innovators Fair is coming up in Philadelphia. If you are in the Philly area and you have a young one or a youngish one, it's for youngish youth of all ages, science for all ages, the Young Innovators Fair in Philadelphia will also be hosting twists. We're going to be there from June 10th to 11th. And if you are interested, you can find information at younginnovatorsfair.com. I'm tired today, Justin. Oh, Pasha. You're never too tired to do this show. I am never too tired to do twists and to enjoy the science. But I'm telling you, I'm tired today. The heat suddenly it's 80 degrees in Portland. What is so weird? Spring is springing. And I have my thermostat set to 80 to cool down the house. So the Central Valley heat wave just kicked in. Oh, dear. Just kicked in. Always good for some good, good hot fun. Hope everyone's ready for some good hot science fun. On this week's show, we've got lots of science stories. I've got stories about salamanders in the sun, fungal cooperation, and why we all need to take time to speak two languages, not just one. What do you have for us, Justin? I've got dirty DNA. Last of the Moroccans. And why a glass of wine is good for the brain, but for reasons you probably would not have guessed. And Blair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, right. Blair got stuck at the small world. It's a small world ride at Disneyland, didn't she? Still there. What's really awful about it is there's a certain point in which, because they haven't turned off the music, where the small world after all is now mocking you. It's starting to sound a little distorted. They're smiling faces. I have to pee! Yeah, Blair is away on a vacation on a little interlude, a personal life interlude. She'll be back again next week. But don't worry. I've got some animal stories for you, geeky style. So anyway, let's get going, everyone. You ready for our new segment? What has science done for me lately? That's right. Everyone, like I've said in the past two episodes, send me your thoughts. What are things in life every day that you recognize having come from the world of science? How does science affect your life every day? Send me an email at kirsten at thisweekandscience.com and I will read your response on the air. This one comes from Minion David Vaughn and he says, thanks to science, I have allergy medication to relieve my stuffy head and coughing. And when spring is sprung, yeah, yeah, yeah, he definitely need it. And he says, and also thanks to science, I have clean water to take my pill with. Nice clean water. And it is thanks to organizations within the government, the EPA, that we do have such wonderfully clean water across the United States of America. Not every community. I know there are many communities struggling with issues, but for the most part, federal regulations are giving us better cleaner waterways than we would otherwise have. And this brings me to the first point of the science news stories for today. We've got a U.S. budget deal on the table. Congress has reached a deal on the spending bills that are looking for this 2017 fiscal year, which is already underway, ends on September 30th. And they are voting this week, hopefully, on an agreement wrapping together 12 appropriations bills to fund federal operations. And so 2017 spending was actually frozen in 2016, about seven months ago. And government operation has been under a continuing resolution since then. And so this vote could potentially spawn some really neat stuff. And, you know, there's been worry that science would get the short, short shrift as Trump has wanted to, President Trump has wanted to cut much of the spending to various governmental offices and federal agencies. But really, there's some good news coming from Congress, because Congress actually does works out the details of the budget. And science is not as cut as you would expect. So I mean, this is what I was expecting to hear, not cut as badly as, like, right, it's not because some of the expectation has been there shall be no science in this country going forward. It's just going to completely get cuts. That's not happening. Lowered expectations, people. That's what we're excited about. We lowered our expectations further than the actual cuts. That's all we're I think you're right on that. So anyway, overall federal spending on research and development is growing by 5% under this fiscal 2017 budget deal that is actually expected to be approved. Let's see what happens. Total R&D spending will rise to $155.8 billion for the fiscal year. $72.9 billion for civilian activities, $82.9 billion for military programs. This means that basic research spending is growing by 4.1%. And funding for applied research is rising by 6.3%. And that is slightly more than, you know, the average rate of inflation, right? And then if we look across the board at who's getting money and why or for what, we have a $2 billion boost going to the National Institute of Health, $2 billion increase for the NIH. And $352 million of that are provided under this 21st Century Cures Act, which was actually signed into law in December 2016, creating a big pot of money that can be used for initiatives at the NIH. Moving forward, we have the Department of Energy. It's kind of flat. Not really gaining much. And this is part of Energy just kind of staying where it is, copacetic. NSF is going to hold steady as well, but it is being told to build three ships, really vessels, actual sailing vessels. But it doesn't really have the money to do that. So they're trying to come up with a staggered build plan for the hulls of these research ships that they that the NSF is looking for. NASA gets a 1.9% boost increasing from $19.285 billion. And the agency's Office of Science is going up 3.1% since last year. And this is defying Trump administration proposals to cut things. And then how that money is to be spent within NASA, though, is also going to be important. Whether they continue to do as much in the planetary science here on Earth or if it's redistributed in some way, that's sort of been is it boldly going? Yeah, there was a report just just out talking about NASA looking to private companies to help it get back to the moon sooner rather than later. So I don't NASA's still got still working on these things. And then the NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gets an overall cut of 1%. So NOAA is going down. However, the agency's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which supports climate change research across the country, is increasing by 3.5%. That's not bad at all. Yeah. So even though NOAA is getting a slight cut, there are increases within the budget for the specific programs at the Office of Oceanic Atmospheric Research. Yeah. Bad news at all. That's not really bad news at all. And then there's modest support for the FDA. We've got the National Institute of Standards and Technology is also staying where it is and not really getting cut for its research and at the USDA, the competitive grants program for basic science is getting more money. And so there's a 7.1% increase for this AFRI agriculture and food research initiative, which is very good news. And the EPA is avoiding major cuts. Also good news of its budget is not necessarily being cut. So lots of interesting stuff happening there. And we're in a time of hacking and cutting the budget to take care of debts. And things do have to be cut, but I think it's not necessarily all bad news for science there. You know. So I think some of those 1%, 1.9%. I mean, a 1% cut is a 4% cut or a 5% cut if you take inflation, that sort of thing. So not every increase is an actual real increase. Yeah. Some of it is where it, oh, you get 3.5% increase. Oh, that's just going to keep you even. Yeah. But still, they haven't figured out a way or don't have the will or desire to remove science completely from the budget yet. And it's going to be fascinating. We're going to need a lot of science to research what rollbacks and regulations and what might actually be affecting going forward. Absolutely. Let's keep science as part of the national conversation, part of the global conversation, actually. Yeah. Science is pretty important because we're up against things like antibiotic resistance. Which is terrible, right? We talked last week at the end of the show about the guy who got this experimental viral treatment with a bacterial phase, a virus that attacks bacteria to address his untreatable, untreatable bacterial infection. So as bacteria become more and more and more resistant to the antibiotics that we have and use in our medical practices, we have to start looking around for new antibiotics, right? And so researchers found a new antibiotic in a very unexpected place. Normally, we look at bungalow species kind of on their own. We put them in a dish and then see what happens. And it was as though penicillin was discovered with the penicillium fungus in a dish, right? So fungus, yeah. That came from a vent of a researcher in the next lab back when they had kind of shoddier conditions. It was a total, it's a great story. It's a great accidental discovery. It's a wonderful accidental discovery. And researchers more recently have been thinking about how we look at these microbes, fungus species or bacteria in isolation in a dish, but that's not how they exist in the real world. And in the world, they exist as part of ecosystems. And so recently, there has been a huge growth in the field of microbial ecology where researchers are studying interactions between various microbial species and the environment in general. And so researchers, a team led by Andrea Steele from the University of Montana has actually been looking at penicillium again, yet not on its own in a dish. They discovered that when it's grown in a culture with another species of fungus, of other penicillium fungus strains, that the two different species cooperate together. And they both together create a molecule that is an antibiotic. And it is a molecule that neither species produces when they are all by themselves. And so if the researchers had never started putting them together, they never would have found this new thing. So still this wonderful story of penicillium, penicillin, penicillium continues in a new vein. So these species, penicillium fuscum and penicillium chemembertii clavir, clavigerum, these are extremophiles. And they were isolated from the Berkeley Pitt Lake, which is an old mining lake. It's full of acid and high in metals. It's really not a nice place to vacation. But for the fungus, these two fungus species, it's great. And so they had been grown in pure cultures and then in culture together. And then metabolites from these cultures were isolated and looked at and identified. And they found this one molecule C19H3207S. They named it Berkeley lactone A. Berkeley lactone A was found to have very, very strong antibiotic activity, could block several gram-positive bacteria like MRSA, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. And also the bacteria that can cause strep throat and anthrax. Oh my goodness. Yeah. And it was really, really good at blocking MRSA, much better than commonly used antibiotics. So it was good against these gram-positive bacteria, but the one catch is that it really wasn't good against gram-negative bacteria, which are bacteria like E. coli. And so we don't really know where, how they together, these two species of fungus, these fungi produce Berkeley lactone A together. We don't know how their cooperation, what mechanisms are at work there. But there's, there's something going on there that produces it. And this could be this bacteria, this antibiotic molecule could be used as an antibiotic if it passes future tests. So this is very exciting stuff. A new arsenal of weapons. Yeah. And it's something that we had seen in bacteria before, where, you know, individually, bacteria don't really produce certain, certain molecules, but as a, as a group, they sort of differentiate tasks and then they, they work off of what the other produced and then do something else. And so, so to see this in a fungus as well, that's, that's pretty awesome to see your two, I guess strains of a fungus finding, finding, finding a cooperative effort between each other. That's fantastic. Finding the fungus among us cooperatively. Yeah. And then my last first story is, hey, Cassini, our favorite spacecraft that's been orbiting around Saturn since about 2004, sending us beautiful pictures of Saturn, Saturn's rings, information about the moons of Saturn. It is on its final leg of its journey. And in September, it will crash into Saturn. It's, there's gonna swan dive into Saturn. But in the meantime, it's going to be doing some dives through the rings. And there's a gap in the rings where they're like, Oh, there looks like an empty space where we can send Cassini diving through to take pictures of, of Saturn and take pictures readings of the rings and kind of figure out what's going on with the rings. And so they did their first test dive last week. And there's another dive planned for tomorrow, or I guess tonight as it's taking place, there will be more pictures out tomorrow. There are 20 dives that will be occurring in all, and they will probably give us some beautiful images of Saturn and the rings and a new understanding of how the rings are formed. And possibly one of the big questions right now is that they have found what they consider a big empty space in the rings. They thought there was going to be a lot more dust and particulate matter in this area where Cassini made its dive. However, it really, really wasn't, it was empty, there was nothing there. And so they protectively put the antenna end first. But that kind of limits the amount of kinds of measurements that can be made because the other instruments are on the other end and won't necessarily get good readings if the antenna is in the way. But because there was no particulate matter, nothing to destroy the craft or its instruments, they're probably on future dives going to flip it around, flip it around. Yeah, turn it around to get some really good pictures of the Saturnian surface to learn a little bit more about this wonderful planet and to learn more about the rings. Dive, Cassini, dive! They're on to dive number 19, moving on up. And the final dive will be the end of Cassini. So it's the countdown. 19 is like the countdown to... Right, this is the countdown. It's like hopping on the diving board before actually diving in. Think of it that way. So anyway, we can expect all sorts of fun Saturn and Cassini news over the next couple of months between now and the end of September. This is This Week in Science Justin, what you got? What have I got? We have a new technique. That cluster of words we love to hear in science was spoken most recently by an international team of scientists developing a way to pull DNA, the dirt, but not just any random fragments of DNA. This technique is specifically searching for fragments of mitochondrial DNA. And they apply this not to just any old dirt, but to sediment layers in caves. Caves were Neanderthals and Denisovians once lived. And that's cool. Yeah, so already the technique is allowing remains of hominids in these sediments to be traced. Even in strata, layers of old, old dirt which have no skeletal remains. The results are published in the latest issue of science. Researchers analyzed 85 samples of sediments in Plustin between 550,000 years ago and 14,000 years ago from eight Eurasian caves, including the one in northern Spain, El Sedron. This work represents an enormous scientific breakthrough. We can now tell which species of hominid occupied a cave on what particular stratigraphic level, even when no bone or skeletal remains are present. We now have to learn to make best use of the soil sediment, which until now was discarded, and to discover that it is teaming with DNA sequences from your organisms that occupied the land, says Antonio Rosas, scientist in Spain's Natural Science Museum in Madrid. Extensive records of Plustin deposits associated with prehistoric human presence already exist in many cases. The scarcity of fossils hampers the understanding of which group of hominid occupied at this specific place and time. But the soil, the soil unquestionably they say holds this information given that preserves the remains of organisms that have decomposed, defecated, or bled into that dirt at some point in history. Wow, okay. So decomposed, you've got cells and bones and skin, but every day you're wandering around and your skin is sloughing off, your hair is kind of falling out, right? So there's maybe hair follicles, you've got skin cells, blood, blood cells? Really? Wow. So we're talking about stuff that is recent enough that the DNA would still be intact. This is, I mean, I'm shocked by this. And it doesn't have to be like fully intact. They're finding fragments, right? And matching up fragments with what they already have discovered elsewhere. So they don't need the full picture from each one of these fragments, or maybe they get a bunch of fragments from a certain sedimentary layer and that sort of builds the puzzle piece together. So they get a better look at what was there. But yeah, the ability to go through all the noise, filter through all the other things that could be in there, and come out with, aha, this is a Denisovan, Denisovan, or Neanderthal, or a bear, or what it is, right? So they were, yeah, they were able to start to break up which layer corresponded to Denisovan versus Neanderthal in a site in Siberia. They, let's see, they had observed that there was alternate, that they alternated in occupying the cave. So it wasn't like there was one and then it was replaced. They could actually see like over time, sometimes this is in the Neanderthal cave, sometimes this is Denisovan cave. What they was also interesting is they found Denisovans appeared at the bottom most stratum of this. So therefore indicating that the Denisovans had inhabited this cave initially and longer ago. And this is in layers of dirt within this cave where they don't have skeletal remains. Where they didn't know, like how far back. So now they can begin to date things that they couldn't date before, right? By just finding that there was this commoned presence there at some point. They say here, the technique could also increase the sample size in the Neanderthal and Denisovan mitochondrial genomes, which in town now are limited by the number of preserved remains. It will probably be possible to even recover substantial parts of nuclear genomes, says Carl Luzza Fox from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology. Interesting, Al Sadron was the only cave in the site study in which no animal DNA has been yet identified. Mitochondrial DNA from prehistoric mammals, specifically 12 different families, was found at each of the other sites. Most common were hynids, bovids, equids, cervids, and canids. This technique allows us to collect information from mammals that were present in a particular site, regardless of whether remains are preserved or not. The origin of the recovered DNA seems to come from deposits made in or from decomposition of bodies in the caves themselves. This megafauna DNA can provide information on the diet of omnids in the past. Explains Luzza Fox. This is such a fantastic tool because already applied, we're finding out oodles of information about these few caves. In some sediment samples, scientists have recovered genetic sequence from the woolly mammoth that became extinct about 4,000 years ago. They similarly, the sequences attributed to members of the rhinoceros family corresponded most closely to the woolly rhinoceros, although the species became extinct less than 30,000 years ago. As for DNA from the hyena family, the sequences correspond with variants of the cave hyena whose modern-day subspecies hyena, the spotted hyena, I think there's another kind to do, only exist in Africa. And then 90% of the bear sequences they got from a cave in Croatia coincided with a cave bear that disappeared about 25,000 years ago. So, yeah. There's some old DNA in the dirt. In the dirt. No, it takes us to look in the dirt. You don't even need to find a fossil now. You just need to find interesting places to look for the dirt. And so, this is really, this is huge. This is going to, I mean, we may be adding segments to our, to the DNA of Denisovan and Neanderthal. But we, I mean, we're also going to learn a great deal about more about where and when they existed. Locations, we may have caves that looked like a great site, but upon digging, we found no fossils. Time to go back. And hopefully, you didn't disturb all the material there. That's also one of the things we might have to find new caves. New caves. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely the potential here. You're talking about, you know, people going into caves shedding their own skin. You know, so the, this adds another layer of complexity to the care that must be taken in excavations. You know, and as opposed to just being careful not to break things and getting the bones out or the pieces of pottery or whatever it happens to be. Now we have to be careful that we're not dropping our own pieces of hair or our own finger skin or, you know, whatever it happens to be so that it doesn't contaminate potential genetic analyses. And I didn't go into it in great detail in this, in this, in the information I've got here, but apparently part of this technique is designed to filter that out. We have to find a way. Part of that, yeah, part of the technique can, there's a distinction between a sort of fossilized bit or older bit, I guess, of the DNA in the newer bit. And so a newly deposited sample. And, and they've part of this technique is the ability to filter out contamination as well. That can be used beyond just this technique, right? Beyond just the soil, it can be used in a whole lot of other places as well. Yeah, new techniques. New techniques, new tools in the science toolbox. Let's go build something or discover something. It's gotta discover things. Okay. It's this week in science. Are we ready? Do you know what time it is? Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There's Animal Corner with Kiki. Yeah. That's right. With Kiki this week. Okay. I think that Blair would approve of this story. Researchers publishing in the journal Soft Matter. And I am not even kidding about this. A paper titled Hydrodynamics of Defocation. Researchers took clips of videos from YouTube. They also went to the zoo, Atlanta Zoo, and like some other things, they investigated defecation of mammals. Cats to elephants and animals in between to figure out the physics. And I'm quoting this from their abstract. The physics by which feces are discharged. So like I said, they looked at various animals. They used the dimensions of the large intestines and of the feces that came from them to do measurements and create a mathematical model of defecation from the abstract. The diameter of feces is comparable to that of the rectum, but the length is double that of the rectum indicating that not only the rectum but also the colon is a storage facility for feces. Despite the length of rectum ranging from four to 40 centimeters, mammals from cats to elephants defecate within a nearly constant duration of 12 plus or minus seven seconds. Well, they only looked at about 23 instances of this. So very small sample size to be determining such a range of animals. Something that happens like you would think within the research team itself they could have facilitated enough looks at this. Absolutely. So I don't know, maybe this is maybe the researchers are working hard for the next ignoble prize considering that this last year there was an ignoble awarded for researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology calculating that all mammals take about the same time to empty their bladders. 21 seconds, give or take. So I will say though, there is no more performative word in the English language than the word poop. It starts puckered, it opens up with a woo for a little bit, and then it ends puckered again. That is like by definition a performative word. It is a performative word and in this instance it turns out, you know that book Everybody Poops? Well, Everybody Poops for about the same amount of time. Yeah, and so across the animal kingdom, I will reiterate the low sample size. I mean, they're looking at YouTube, I think they could have come up with a few more videos maybe, I don't know, or maybe that's just not a thing. I don't know, I've never seen it on YouTube. Yeah, animal defecation on YouTube, that probably is a little something for everybody out there. Yeah, anyway, from kitty cats on the small end of the spectrum to elephants on the large end of the spectrum, the ratio of fecal size to time it takes to evacuate the body is pretty much the same. I will say that in their analysis, they did get rid of certain different digestive systems, the ruminants, for example, and also rabbits and deer who are speedy boopers with lots of little pellets and stuff anyway. Yeah, so there are a few parameters that they manipulated to be able to get at this data. But anyway, they do find also that there is a factor that keeps these times relatively quick and similar and it is mucus. The mucus in the bowel helps to lubricate the bowel and the largest animals with the largest poo have the thickest mucus layers. Anyway, the model estimated their model estimated the universal poop time was 5.6 seconds, not 12, but their model did hold steady for the animals of different sizes. Hmm. Yeah, so the question is now why such a speedy experience when it is common human lore that the male of our species can tend to take sometimes several hours? This is the lead up too, right? I think they're focused on the actual event. I mean, if you start the timer when a dog is looking for the right spot and doing the little circle dance, then it's much longer. But if you're just talking about the actual mechanism, mechanistic act, the hydraulics of everything, what did they? Physics. The hydrodynamics of the event, then yeah, I guess that portion of the event does not take as long as one might think. Yeah. And then moving from there into a little sunnier topic, salamanders. Let's talk about salamanders. So we reported back in 2011 on a really interesting endosymbiosis that had been discovered, and if you are going endosymbi, what? Endosymbiosis is the act of one organism entering the cell of another organism. So for this particular instance, algal species, algae, entering the cells of the skin of salamanders developing during their development, the algae bonds with the salamanders in a very significant way. And the researchers were like, what is going on here? So this algae is a photosynthetic species, and the original idea was, okay, maybe this algae is photosynthesizing and giving energy to the salamanders somehow. What? Maybe there's something going on here, and it's a wonderful algae. And the researchers have been trying to figure out what's going on. We discover now that these algae living inside the cells are actually super stressed out. They're not happy little algae. No. Oh, no. The researchers did a map of the messenger RNA library that is transcribed from the genes of the algae growing outside of the eggs. They compared it with the our messenger RNA from the algae growing inside the cells of the salamander. And they found that even though the algae is photosynthetic, they're in a very low oxygen environment. There's not a lot of oxygen bathing the algae inside of these cells. And so they're suffocating, or as my six-year-old son would say, suffocating. They're suffocating. I like that word. That's a very fantastic word. He's come up with some good ones. They're suffocating in there. So there's a whole bunch of stressful stuff going on. And instead of producing oxygen and sugar through photosynthesis, it's fermenting. It's doing the process of fermentation in the cells. And so it has adapted to this low oxygen environment by switching to fermentations that can deal with the limited oxygen. There's other sides of stress. Proteins like heat stress proteins. There's also proteins that are released when they get swallowed up by predators. So there's a lot of stuff going on there. The algae that are combining with the salamander cells are actually feeling eaten. Yeah. Well, and maybe they are. I mean, maybe this is less like maybe at first you would look at this and say, okay, this is some sort of infection by the algae. This is something that the algae is biologically wired to do. But maybe it's the salamander. Maybe it's a capture or it could just be a mutual coinketing. Right. That this is possible. Right. What is going on? And so the researchers are then like, all right, what is being activated in the salamander? Let's look at the salamander genes. And really, the salamander is pretty much ignoring the algae. The immune system doesn't seem to be turned on at all in the salamander. And it doesn't really seem as though there's any kind of benefit to the salamander either. I mean, maybe there's something about the stage of development at which the algae enters the salamander cells. And we also don't know whether or not the algae are passed on from, you know, from salamander to salamander or whether it's something that actually there are algae outside the salamander that just get in during a particular stage of development. Are they inherited algae? Are they passed on? Or are they just constantly are the salamander cells just constantly kidnapping algae? Yeah. So if it's, is there a word for it yet? If it's not symbiotic, really, like there's not a back and forth benefit to the two parties. It's just Quinkadinko. Is that a Quinkadinkus? Just a coincidence. Yeah, we, they really don't know. There may be, yeah. Yeah, we don't know. This is not biological entanglement thing going on, where they just neutral, neutral symbiosis. I don't know. It's not beneficial. It's maybe just neutral to the salamander. Yeah. It's not harming the salamander. And in fact, it might, maybe the, the algae is benefiting even though it's being stressed out, but this is still something that is yet to be determined. Yeah. Strange symbiosis in the animal salamander world. And I think that does it for the first half of the show. Are we done for a little bit? I think we got there. Wow. First half of the show. We're going to keep going, you guys. We're not done yet. No, we got a whole second half going to come up after this first half has ended, which is happening now. Please stay tuned for more This Week in Science. Hey, everybody. I hope you're enjoying the show. This Week in Science has been running many, many years and it's thanks to listeners and viewers just like you that we continue to do what we do. I mean, really, why would we do this if not for you? I do love it, but it would be like talking into a vacuum if you weren't there. Thank you for being there. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. If you're in the Philadelphia area, come see us. We're going to be at the Young Innovators Fair on June 10th and 11th. That is in Philadelphia. If you can go to younginnovatorsfair.com to find more information. If you are from the Philadelphia area and you know a scientist around about those parts who you think should be interviewed during that weekend while we're in town, let me know. I'd love to interview local scientists for TWIS during the weekend of June 10th and 11th. It would be amazing. I would love it. 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If one has real power, who needs rigging the law? If you could travel by thought to a mystical place. Why go to book signings and buy for shelf space? Why would you wait for your agent to call you a friend and try to convince you? And we're back with more this weekend's science. We are back, Justin. Tell me some science. We now take you to a phosphate mine in northern Morocco, where a recent fossil find of a dinosaur was found. As far as dinosaurs go, this one lived about as recently as any dinosaur could about 66 million years ago. Little is known generally about dinosaurs that lived in Africa at the end of the Cretaceous. As just before they were wiped out by a giant asteroid impact, sea levels were much higher than they are today. So most of the fossils we have found come from marine rocks. Among these are the phosphate deposits of Morocco, remains of an ancient seabed laid down 66 million years ago. The phosphate is harvested from vast strip mines and is used from everything from fertilizer to cola drinks. There may be a little bit of dinosaur in your cola drink. Just think about that next time. A study of the fossil led by Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath suggests that following the breakup of the super continent, Gondwana in the middle of the Cretaceous period, a distinct dinosaur fauna evolved in Africa. This new species, Chenonosaurus barbac, one of the last dinosaurs on earth, the last of the Moroccans. It is the smaller African contemporary of the North American T-Rex. So this is last year, Nick Longrich from the Milner Center for Evolution Department of Biology and Chemistry at the University of Bath, studied a rare fragment of jawbone that was discovered in the mines at City Chenane and Abduin Basin in Morocco. In collaboration with colleagues based in Morocco, France and Spain Longrich identified it as belonging to an ablosaur. These are two-legged predators like T-Rex and other Tyranosaurus but with shorter blunter snouts, even tinier arms. While Tyranosaurus dominated North American and Asian ablosaurs were top predators at the end of the Cretaceous in Africa, South America, Indian Europe. Dr. Longrich, courtier voice, this find was unusual because it's a dinosaur from marine rocks. It's a bit like hunting for fossil whales and finding a fossil lion. It's an incredibly rare find, almost like winning the lottery. But the phosphate mines are so rich, it's like buying a million lottery tickets. So we actually have a decent chance to find rare dinosaurs like this one. We have virtually no dinosaur fossil from this time period in Morocco. It may even be the first dinosaur named from the end Cretaceous in Africa. It's an exciting find because it shows just how different the fauna was in southern hemisphere at the time. The newly discovered dinosaur stood on two legs, had stumpy arms. The teeth from the fossil must be pretty decent. I don't have a picture of this, but it must be pretty decent. Now the teeth from the fossil were worn as if from biting into bones, suggesting that like T-Rex, it was a predator. However, unlike the partially feathered T-Rex, the Tyranosaurus scales. Its brain was smaller and its face was shorter and deeper. Research projects carried as part of international scientific collaboration is helping create and study paleontology collections in Morocco. So, youngest, newest, most recent dinosaur possible. I love that it has these little, tiny, stumpy front arms. They're even stumpier than T-Rex's. And more scaly, less feathery too. Less feathery, more scaly. And this comes on the, there's another dinosaur find that's reported this last week of another of the most, I guess, the missing links in bird dinosaur evolution. And those actually had very aerodynamic feathers that were on the same kind of plan as archaeopteryx, same kind of tail feather plan and whatnot. But yeah, and this picture you've put up here too of the T-Rex that I was talking about, those aren't stumpy arms. That's like, there's no arms. It's just stumps, little. They're like vestigial arms. Yeah, vestigial arms. Wow, it's already, oh wow. The question is, if you have sharp enough teeth, if you can run fast enough to be able, or if you are, as T-Rex has been suggested to be a scavenger, if you don't necessarily need to grab things with your arms, then do you need them? Right. And having that, the size of those big gnashing teeth, there's plenty of predators in the world that are taking down game, different sizes across the ecosystem. If you're just bigger and badder, you can just walk in and take it from them. You don't actually even have to do the hunting thing. You just show up and eat. I'm a bigger battered dinosaur. Give me my food. They might even be ferocious, just intimidating. Totally intimidating. Ah, this theropod. I like it. Moroccan theropods. We need more. Let's study that area more. Let's do it. And let's also study things that we've been looking at, but still have lots of questions about, like the brain. The brain? The brain, yes. There's a lot of, there's still many things unknown about the brain, right? We know about areas like the prefrontal cortex, which is supposed to be an area responsible for holding our attention on things, right? But how does it really do that? And then, you know, how do you really keep something in your head when you're trying to remember a phone number, for instance? Or if, for instance, you have a certain decision that you have to make, say, to open a door based on something that happens in your life, right? You know, you get a key. Oh, I can open the door. I don't get a key. I can't open the door. Which door do I open as a door number one or door number two? There are all these things that we need to keep in our minds, right? Information. Keep it front and center so that you don't forget, like I do, when I'm walking between the living room and the kitchen and I end up in the kitchen going, why am I here? Something short circuits, right? So what is it that's potentially short circuiting? Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have been looking at the thalamus. And the thalamus has been looked at historically as an area of the brain that's kind of in a relay region, kind of putting together, oh, there's information from over there. We're going to connect it to information over there. And just it's kind of a relay structure. It's been in has been looked at. But there are lots of things within the thalamus that have not been really investigated. And so this this week, researchers from New York University Langone Medical Center, who is a brains award grantee and other researchers of formerly of Columbia University, Columbia University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, among others, have published about a newfound role for the thalamus in nature and nature neuroscience. And so beyond the thalamus as a relay, this new research suggests that it's actually something of a an informational or connect neuronal network strengthener. So they took mice to explain what I mean here, they took some mice, and they had them perform a task in which they had to act on cues that indicated which of two doors hit a milk reward. They used optogenetics, which is this cool technique we've talked about before, in which they use light to turn neurons on and off in the brain. And so they used optogenetics as blue light to suppress neuronal activity in the thalamus and block the mice's ability to choose the correct door where they would find milk. And they used optogenetics also to stimulate the thalamus's neural activity and actually improve how the animals performed on the task being able to choose the correct milk hiding door more often. And so what they found is that looking at these areas of the brain as these decisions were being made, the thalamic inputs to the prefrontal cortex, the attention area of the brain, kind of what we've thought of as kind of this working memory part of the brain sustained the maintenance of working memory by stabilizing activity among the neurons there during delay. And so there's the delay period in, okay, here's a maze, how can you find it? And then if you turn left or right to get to the reward before a delay, and then they're kind of stopped. And then they have to hold the information in their head and then remember what they have to do next to find the right door in the maze, right? They found during that delay, activity in the thalamus actually maintained the neuronal activity in the prefrontal cortex. And when they got rid of the thalamic input, the prefrontal cortex activity kind of went and was not as strong as it was with the thalamic activation. So what this tells us that the thalamus is very important for actually keeping thoughts in our mind, keeping our attention focused on something even when that thing is not necessarily right in front of us. The neurons of the prefrontal cortex, we thought could do it on their own. And now we know they can't. But the thalamus is involved. And so it's just this very interesting new role for the thalamus, number one. Second, it's neat that they used optogenetics to figure it out. And finally, that they find as the researchers stay in this, our results show that cortex circuits alone can't sustain the neural activity required to prepare for movement. It also requires reciprocal participation across multiple brain areas, including the thalamus as a critical hub in the circuit. And that this thalamus is this reciprocal participation is what's important. Yeah. And they think that potentially this could, this could be very, they found two separate populations of neurons in the prefrontal cortex and one encoded for spatial location and required hippocampal input. And then the other was active during memory maintenance and required thalamic input. So there's like two different populations of different kinds of neurons need that are important to different kinds of information, needing different kinds of input to keep going. And so this might work on schizophrenia. I like Nate C in the chat room, kind of like how a strobe light lets you see a working fan. Yes, exactly. I like that analogy. You can't really see it on your own. But then the strobe light, because of the timing of it, it gives you that visual. Yes, that visual. So that's a neat analogy. Yes. Thanks, Nate C. Yeah. So something a little bit new, new information about how our brains work and our thalamus and what it's important for. But anyway, yeah, could be important in helping understand how to fix these circuits when things go wrong. Parts of your brain. All of them are necessary. Yes, all of them. That's right. You think you can make do, which is one part or the other part, but no. Makes a brain community. Cooperation. Reciprocal activation. So for several years, researchers have been finding that moderate wine intake can be beneficial in delaying onset of cognitive impairments in aging and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. This, of course, has led morning talk show and local news segments to expand upon the cure to powers of getting blood on wine. Though they rarely do segments on how heavy alcohol intake has severe harmful effects as well. And every other commercial in between seems to normalize drinking in any social situation. However, that doesn't mean it's not true that wine can be good for you. Dr. Esteban Fernandez, the Institute of Food Science Research in Madrid, and her colleagues have been investing the actual molecular mechanisms. This is when we left. We've had the correlative for years and years. Now we're delving into mechanism. They're looking at the actual molecular mechanisms underlying the neuroprotective actions of wine and have recently published in Frontiers in Nutrition. Instead of investigating the wine itself, they studied the compounds that are left after the wine has passed through the gut. And they've been looking at so-called wine-derived metabolites. They selected some of these metabolites based on their presence in the urine and feces of people consuming wine on a regular moderate basis to explore the neuronal effects of these compounds. They added them to human cells under stress conditions that normally lead to neuronal cell dysfunction and death are related to the initial stages of some of the neurodegenerative disorders. They found that the metabolites are protecting the cells from dying due to the stress condition. Most striking result, however they say, was that the metabolites are active at different points in the cell signaling cascade that then leads to the cell death. All right. So the exact composition of wine metabolites is as important in a protective neuronal effect. And this composition depends on the metabolites you get derived from wine depends on your gut microbiota composition. Of course. Of course. Of course I was going to bring a story that went right back to this. Of course you would. Yeah. Yeah. So it's your intestinal flora that are breaking down the wine into the different metabolites. So it's not so much just the wine itself that you're drinking. It's not like this brand of wine versus that brand of wine. That doesn't matter really so much. What's more important is this microflora or that microflora in your gut. What's already in you is going to determine whether or not you have protective neuronal effects. That's fascinating. So maybe all this research showing this, oh, a glass of wine a day is good for your brain. It's great for your health. It's within particular populations of people with particular microbial gut populations. Yeah. And so like think about this to going back. Now, backwards looking at all research data on any nutritional story study ever. Every correlation between this food, that beverage, this drug, this anything. Yeah. And having to go, oh, there's an outlier that's filtering all this data to whether or not it's successful or not. That has nothing to do with what we put into the body but everything to do with what's already there. I mean, yeah, but yes and no, because what you put into the body also, I mean, it's this back and forth really push and pull relationship, right? What you put into the body fiber and whatnot determines what can exist in the body. Absolutely. Right? You know. If you're drilling down to one component that's separate, like sort of ignoring the fact that everybody, because when you go in to do a study there or when you're running a study, you have lots of questions, a questionnaire that helps you filter out something like, what does your diet consist of on a normal basis? If somebody says just fast food hamburgers every day, you might eliminate them from the study because that's sort of an outlier. If somebody says, I drink five pots of coffee a day, you might want to eliminate them from your study because that's sort of an outlier activity. But at the end of the day, you're still assuming everything is neutral that you're putting this like, say, if it's wine, you know, everybody's neutral. If they drink this number of glasses of wine, it should have this sort of an impact or that sort of impact or whatever the result is, it'll be somewhat universal. But knowing then that if you did know that this percentage of your subjects who are going to be going through this experiment for you are missing this strain of microflora or have these two extras that the others don't, you know, like all of this now becomes an important factor in mechanism. The mechanism is going to be largely in that in that gut microflora. And so that's going to be the thing that you're going to have to do in the future. Scans or whatever, you know, determine what's in that person's gut that you're doing this with to sort of see the result or you're going to need to at least know what that information is. If everybody who didn't have a beneficial effect from your study, you're going to need to look at their microbiota and go, oh, wow, by comparing these two, they're, they have a different microbiota than the subjects who had the beneficial effect. Now I know where to drill down. Now I know exactly where to look for the type of gut back microflora that are having this positive effect based on the compounds going in. So this is going to have to be a necessity for anything when we're talking nutrition or correlatives of these sorts of studies going forward. We're going to have to know what the microflora is in these subjects. Yeah. And what I want to know now is exactly, you know, how much wine can I drink and still keep my bacteria happy and healthy? A lot less than what you want it to be. I know. That's always the answer. It's always the answer. Moderation and not, not my idea of moderation. Moderation. That's looks like abstinence to me. What are you talking about? That's what moderation looks like. No, it's not, that can't be right. Much higher number than this. I thought moderation was much more than a four ounce pour. Oh my goodness. More about the brain. I love the brain so much. And now a study from Lancaster University and some researchers, Professor Panos Athanasalopoulos and Professor Emanuel Bailand, who's a linguist from Stellenbosch University and Stockholm University put together a study they published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in which they looked at the perception of time by bilingual speakers. And so they got speakers who spoke Swedish and Spanish, for example. Swedish and English speakers tend to use words that mark the duration of how long events take using physical distances. So if I say I'm going to go take a break, how long is my break going to be? Oh, it'll be short. It'll be a short break. Distances. Greek and Spanish speakers, however, use physical quantities. So a small break is something they'll talk about or they'll actually talk about instead of, you know, a long wedding, they call it a big wedding. Size. Size. Quantity, right? So the way that you use the words can trigger your brain into a certain mode of thought. And so these researchers wanted to know whether or not the words that were being used, quantity or distance, actually triggered particular perceptions of time. And so they had participants look at a computer screen and they were shown in these bilingual speakers, either Spanish, Swedish bilinguals, and they were shown either a line growing across the screen or a container that was being filled up. So we've got distance. We've also got quantity. And then as they're watching either this line or this container being filled, they were, they were asked to estimate how much time had passed while this line was growing or while the container was being filled. And at the same time, they were prompted with the Spanish word duration, Spanish word for duration, or the Swedish word for duration. So Spanish or Swedish to kind of trigger them into one language or the other. And so they say their results were very clear cut. And so when they were watching the containers fill quantity and they were prompted by the Spanish prompt word, remember that Spanish speakers use physical quantity to mark time, the bilinguals based their time estimates on how full the containers were. So they were perceiving time as the volume of the container. And they were completely unaffected by lines that were growing, the lines that were growing on the screen. So if the lines were much longer, their perception or their estimate of how much time was more related to the container that they were watching than the length of a line. Then at the other in the other direction, when they were given that Swedish word, which prompts them into a method of speaking that refers to physical distances, they were more likely to estimate and be influenced by the distance the line on the screen and traveled and not by the containers and how much they had been filled. Same person, different language, different word, different method of time estimation, different method of perceiving the passage of time. It's blowing my mind. It really is. No, that's a fascinating thing. So I'm trying to think what we say going into the break. Do we say distance? After a short break? Yeah, we'll be back after a short break. Yeah. Okay. Can we change it? From here on out, we'll make it call it a slight break. A slight, a quick. Sometimes I say quick. Quick, sometimes quick and quick is just time. It's just telling you, but is it a, but then then they can envision their own. Right. But then they must envision their own. That's a quantity or that's a distance because quick is just fast, right? It's a speed, but a speed distance. Oh my gosh. I don't know. I think slight, I think slight would be that one that you could just sort of interpret both ways. But yeah, no, that's, oh gosh, I love that. That's a fun, fun story. Yeah, super fun. And so, you know, there's this, there's a whole body of work working on multilingual individuals and how language does influence our perception and our senses and our emotions. And, you know, now this is evidence that it affects our sense of time as well. And so maybe it is an advantage for people to be bilingual or multilingual, to be able to hop from different modes of perception, depending to use multiple modes of viewing the world. I also kind of like thinking like wonder, I wonder if there's also, like because we're talking quantity and distance, what if we did wait to, you know, we'll be back after a light break, you know, a light pause. We're going to take a light pause, a slight light pause, a slight light quick pause. I don't know how. I like everyone in the chat room is coming up with different ideas. We've got a milliliter of a break time. We've got, Nate, he is saying to be literal and say a five gallon break. Drank is a 200 kilojoule break. Actually, my favorite is intermission. Drank's up ahead. I need to take a bite-sized toilet break. That might be too literal. A little too little too literal there. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so it's super fun. I mean, who knows? There are ideas on language, you know, you dream in a certain language. You can, if our brain does process information metaphorically, then what are the metaphors that you that influence you from one language to another? I think I've talked about this before, but there was a kid in middle school who, who I found out one day spoke fluent German and was, you know, spoke German at home. And I thought that was really fascinating because I didn't, there was no accent. I didn't have any idea. And because he speaks, you know, fluent English all day long with us and the rest of the kids and at school and blah, blah, blah. It's like, oh yeah, at home I only speak German. And then I asked him this question, well, what language do you dream in or think in? Like, which he's like, oh yeah, I dream in German and I think in German. My internal dialogue, when I think to myself, it's in German. But every, like all day I speak, I thought that was like such a wild, because not having two languages, I would assume that you would think something in German and then have to like look up. Wait, what did I just think? I have to do the translation. Oh, that's what I'm thinking because I, you know, it's so, it's such a foreign concept to me. Yeah. And to be, to be, to be bilingual, to be fluent. I mean, if you're in a, in the learning stage, then yeah, you're in your head, you're like translating things and you're having to think about it a lot. So it's not really different modes of thought because you are actively, like if you're trying to speak German, you're actively translating it back to English and then back to German to be able to kind of get across what you want to say. But once you become fluent in a language, there is no more of that back and forth. You, you are thinking in that language. Your brain works smoothly as smoothly in that other language. If you're truly fluent, your brain works as smoothly in both languages. I just find that so amazing that people can do that, especially since I sometimes don't think that I think fluently in my own language. Yeah, Dave Shorty is saying, my wife speaks five languages. A friend of ours is a translator. They switch languages if one has a more succinct phrase. Oh, that's fun. Switched between languages in conversation, which is very... How do you say, oh, there's no way to say this in your language. I'm going to switch. There's a phrase. But this one hasn't. They have no concept. They have no idea. I'll switch it again. Do you have any other stories, Justin? No. No. Okay. I have a couple more. Yeah, I have a couple more. So I know I brought up a short while month or so ago about the ISS design challenge, which was a contest in which engineers, other individuals were designing objects to be 3D printed in outer space, aboard the International Space Station, which I guess isn't exactly outer outer space, but I mean, it's more outer space than my brain is usually. I was going to show a video and then I decided to turn another, there we go, volume. That's what I wanted to turn off. So in this design challenge, they have determined a winner and the winner's design was actually printed on the International Space Station. And do you know what the design was? Well, I just saw the video. So now I know. It's not a spoon. No. Isn't it those child-friendly chopsticks? It's not child-friendly chopsticks. It's a Fempto satellite launcher. Yeah. So it's this little tiny device that shoots out little tiny satellites and those little tiny satellites are able to be distributed and monitor cosmic rays. It was printed in April 2017 aboard the International Space Station, after a few modifications to the design had been done by the NASA scientists. Yes. Awesome, except for I didn't fix this. We're going to make this handle a little rounder. We'd like that a little bit better. Wouldn't that be a great backup for every DIY project you've ever worked on? Like, oh, okay. I think I've got my, I can do a P-trap and a sink drain. I can do this. And then like somebody from NASA goes, that's almost right. Let me help you with this design. Yeah. So engineers from NASA step in. Step in and like fix it a little bit more. Yeah. The engineer who designed the winning design is named Andy Philo. F-I-L-O is the spelling of the last name. And so he was able to hang out with Grant Imahara. He is also able to talk with astronauts on the International Space Station about his design and his design. He's going to, he's going to get some money, which is pretty cool also, but it's pretty neat to know that this guy's design is now being distributed, 3D printed in outer space. And this is something that was promoted by Mouser Electronics and in partnership with NASA. It's very exciting. 3D printing in outer space. I mean, seriously, let's design something here. I will send the blueprints or whatever you call them. The designs to, to the International Space Station over the secure com link. Or, or, and then they're going to print it in their 3D printer on board the International Space Station. There's no, it's very exciting to think about the things that could be done. And there's a 3D printer, and I don't have this in front of me because I didn't even talk about this, but there's a 3D printer that was designed that's big enough to, can print a house. We can print houses. We can put little tiny things there. You put this thing on Mars. And you don't have to go there to, you don't have to just dead drop. Right. This is something you've been talking about. We don't need to go there personally. Well, I mean, you could still go there personally if somebody was foolish enough and brave enough, courageous enough, and didn't have responsibilities back at home. You could go to Mars and already have, we could, we could have robots with 3D printers going around Mars, building out an infrastructure. You know, not just the, the basic sort of Winnebago of living apparatus that you need to start. They could put a polling alley on Mars before people ever showed up. Right. So this, this sort of technology for exploration of space for that, that first sort of pioneering, preparational landings is going to be necessary. This is how we'll have to do it. You can't just send people out there with a, with an axe and a hammer and a saw and there's nothing, there's no trees. There's nothing you can do just showing up on Mars day one. There's nothing you can do to improve your situation. You've got to send the robots. I don't know. I mean, maybe we could use the Mars dirt to make bricks. This is some news that is out this last week as well that dirt from Mars potentially could make bricks that are stronger than steel. Oh, wow. I thought if they were just stronger than bricks, it would be okay, but they're even stronger than steel. Yeah. Or no, sorry, steel reinforced concrete. That's one of those more, more exactly stronger than steel reinforced concrete, you know, that's concrete with the steel rebar inside of it. Is it because there's not moisture changes on Mars already? I don't know. Yeah, they've showed in scientific reports, simple pressure can compact small red bricks held together by iron oxide in the soil. And so this could be something, especially as you're talking about this 3d printing of houses or whatever else, maybe this is going to be the kind of thing that will be utilized by future Mars travelers possibly. And my final story, artificial intelligence, the robots are winning again at predicting Supreme Court decisions. But really not winning by all that much. There have been algorithms for years trying to predict how the justices on the United States Supreme Court are going to vote. And, you know, and people have even tried predicting and are the human accuracies usually somewhere around 63% Yeah, it's a little bit better than a coin. So this algorithm took cases overseen by the Supreme Court from 1816 to 2015, correctly predicted 70.2% of the court's 28,000 decisions and 71.9% of the justices 240,000 votes. Yeah, so it's not perfect. It's about it, you know, C minus. It's doing about a C minus, but it's better than people have been able to do. So it's a little bit better. And this is the kind of thing that with a little bit more information and maybe more context into the data set that's given to the algorithm that potentially these computer algorithms like this artificial intelligence like this might predict the behavior of a Supreme Court. And then the question becomes, why have the Supreme Court at all? Well, right. Okay. So that was my that's the second question that occurred to me. The first one was if we're just ruled by artificial intelligence at that point, right? The first question that occurred to me though was say this is artificial intelligence actually by 70 something percent is actually predicting how they should have voted. Like the Supreme Court justices get it wrong 20 something percent of the time. They made the wrong vote. They made the wrong votes exactly. Now the algorithm was right. It was the justices who got it wrong. Oh, my goodness. Oh, yeah. Questions, questions, questions. Do you have questions? I have no more questions. I have only I have I have only love for the fact that we've gotten through yet another episode of this show that we have. Hey, everybody. Don't forget young innovators fair June 10th and 11th. You can find information at young innovators fair dot com and let me know if there are any Philadelphia scientists that we should be talking to. And now is the time or what or what or New Jersey. I just okay. This is like honest, like like having to like tell you I didn't really know where Philadelphia was. Never googled it ever. Philadelphia and New Jersey are basically the same place. New Jersey is like a suburb of Philadelphia. I'm sure is a like is like a less than from where I live to the coast in California. It's like right there. So New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia. It's all in the same neighborhood. Everybody. It's no excuse. Come come visit. Come visit the young makers fair. Is that what it's called? And innovators fair. Yes. And Philadelphia. Yes. Now that Justin knows where I would like to take this moment Chicago for some it's not next to Chicago. Okay. I would like to take this moment to also thank our Patreon sponsors. Thank you. Chris Clark, Paul Disney, G Burton, Latimore, John Ratnaswamy, Richard Onimus, Byron Lee, EO, Kevin Perichand, Tyrone Fong. Oh, that's a new name. Welcome. 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We are now into the after-show. Justin has taken a short break so it's just me standing here. I'm tired. My kitty cat's here. Oh kitty. She's not so little anymore. Good night USS Rover. Have a good evening. Those of you who are exiting the stage right even. What's your kitty? Where you going to, Cappy? My pretty little Cappy. Cappy Star. Cappy Star. Who's named Cappy Star now? I just got back today from a wonderful trip to Seattle for a few days. It was a vacation that I hadn't really planned but it ended up happening. I had a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun. We saw a Daft Punk laser light show at the Seattle Science Museum. Thanks Dave Shorty. You're welcome. What else today? I was identity four. I know. Now that I know that it's so close to Portland, I mean seriously that was really not that bad a trip to go up there. It's amazing. We went, oh that's right. Eric and Oscar come into Portland. I should be around next weekend. Oh yeah the 2017 Eclipse thing with Twist. I don't know what I'm gonna do yet. I wanted to plan something and then I messed up and didn't plan anything. Now there's like no place to camp. I don't know what to do. Oh yeah video watermarks. Yeah but I'd have to, since we use YouTube so that's the thing identity four, not identity four, hot rod. I like this idea. Gotta figure out how to make that happen because basically use the whole YouTube Google Hangouts infrastructure to make the show. We don't use any other production equipment right now. Oh yeah wineries. That's a great idea. I'd like to do wineries, wine tasting and eclipse viewing. That would be lovely. 10 a.m. would be delicious. Yeah we need to add them. Anyway yes Seattle Important. Identity four. Seattle and Portland are just so close to each other. I was down here in Portland for the last two years and I knew Seattle was up there and I was like oh it's so far away and then we drove and it really wasn't that far. And then we drove up to the San Juan Islands and went whale watching. Saw a humpback whale up close and personal. Yeah it was very cool. Saw some bald eagles. The San Juan Islands are amazingly beautiful. I really want to go back. That was great. And then I got to visit my friends who work at Blue Origin. Oh yeah. Which is the spaceship company. That was really cool. Are they gonna let you talk about what you saw there? No. They won't let you talk about the aliens. No aliens yeah. Neither confirmed nor deny. I gotta keep my cat from going outside. Hold on. I have a captured flying saucer at Blue Origins in which they are back engineering the technology that's going to lead us stars. Yeah oh identity four can see one of the Blue Origin facilities from their living room. Very cool. Twist cardboard. All right I'm back. What were you saying? Oh um nothing. 30 minutes by air. Yes from Seattle to Portland. It's very close. I don't oh yeah oh and then we went on super adventure mode going out to the San Juan Islands because we missed the ferry and then the there's a lady at the the ferry terminal and she's like yeah well you know you could just go up to the airport. I bet you could call the airport and just catch a short flight over to the island at San Juan Island where you can get your whale watching. I ended up on a four-seater Cessna. Oh nice. Oh my god it was terrifying. I don't know. Terrifying but beautiful. I mean so gorgeous. I mean but it was like every single bump was like bump bump bump bump it's like this tiny airplane and I'm like my husband and my son and I'm like we're all gonna die I'm a terrible mother what have I done. I said yes to adventure that's what I did. We had a great day. And your child will never forget it. Exactly. Exactly going up in a little tiny plane like that. Oh and then so let's see Blue Origin what can I say we got to go into the crew capsule and I will I will I can attest that the seats in the crew capsule are very comfortable and it is a very spacious capsule and I could totally imagine it's full of like windows you get inside of it and it's just the thing that you notice is that you can see out and that's an amazing view and if you think of images of you know the Apollo craft you know the the moon landing crafts and those things were you engineered you know they weren't engineered for sightseeing. They were engineered with a very utilitarian purpose and they're all these wires and buttons and it was not comfortable and it wasn't really spacious it's probably kind of tight quarters right. This is the opposite of that it's it's the interior is clean lines and there aren't really any buttons because the whole thing is going to be basically manned from the headquarters. That's a little disappointing. That's a little disappointing. I feel like they should at least put in a bunch of fake switches dials knobs just so you feel like you know you're in there. Push the red button Steampunk. We need you to flip switch number three and hit the green button. Can you do that in that order? Can you handle it? One, two, three, that one and the green button. Okay I did it. Okay everything's fine. Thank you. I feel like you're participating in some sort of sort of active piloting of the craft but yeah it'll be an illusion. Exactly yeah but this. Which one's the green button? It's only purple. I don't see a green button anywhere. They just did it just to mess with Blair. Yeah just just just going into the crew capsule though it really kind of gave you and I gave me that impression of wow I can imagine people paying money to take trips in this up to the edge of space you know and being weightless for just a little while and float around the cabin for a little bit and you can see everything around you see space you can see the earth because there's all these big picture windows all over the place. Then you go back and you land and everything's hunky dory. Yeah the future, the future. Yeah. Oh Identity 4 can see one of the Blue Origin facilities from his living room. Do you live near Kent? How do you live near Kent Identity 4? Well they may have more than one facility. They may well they do. I have not been to the Museum of Flight in Seattle that would be good. Yeah Blue Origin. Very cool stuff man. I'll tell you. Ha ha he lives near Kent. Now I have an idea where Identity 4 lives kind of. Uh huh uh huh you're on that on a hill that overlooks Kent. Uh huh I got it on the west side. I've uh I've actually been there before. Maybe not on the hill. Um it was on my way to Tumwater which I think is just a little bit north of there. To uh to take a tour of the Paps Blue Ribbon Brewery in Tumwater Washington and we stopped by Kent and this is before there was a Blue Origin anything. Yeah seemed like a very I think the one thing they were known for then it was a fast food chain and I'm only not saying it because I can't remember exactly which one. Add cow from the hamburger in Kent Washington. As I as I recall that was the one thing we knew about the town so we went there and ate because once bitten you know you figure now for sure this is probably the safest place in the world to have a hamburger and not get it. Absolutely and not get it. Yes. It's good thinking there. Might not have been really but of course we were on the way to go tour a Paps Brewery so we might not have done everything with the best of intentions. Kill it with alcohol. Well we do know and we what we do know about the prions, prions, prions that they um that they don't die very easily. They're very hard to wash off of things, clean off of things. They don't just like go away. You have to like acid bath things to get rid of them. They're very hearty little beasts. So many like look at this small world. So identity four is on the hill that overlooks Kent. I've been to Kent. Uh let's see. Hot Rod has been on a hill before. Jim Doctor was born in Kent. He says the real one in England. Oh my god. What a small world. It's all connected. That's right. And Hot Rod currently lives on a hill. Identity four, stop spreading fake city news. Fake Kent, fake Des Moines. Yeah. I see you in your fakedy fakedy fakeness. Fake newsiness, fake city-ness. It's not the real one. Yeah. There should be a meet up. Well what we have to do is get Justin and Blair up here to Portland. Then we could have a meet up. My bags are already packed. Yeah. I mean actually I always have a bag packed. Ready to go. Something you can know about me. So I've always got a bag packed. A go bag. Justin. Set off on it. That's why your name is Justin. You've got a bag. It's your Justin case. It's my Justin case. Although I will have to check it before I hit the road because every once in a while I take an extra few days of letting the laundry pile up and go into the go bag to steal underwear. I should just probably buy a couple more pairs of underwear and I think I'd be okay. But everything will be okay. Yeah. Oh, that reminds me. Anyway, I'm sleepy. Yeah. Well, you know what? You know what? Blair's not here. Somebody's got to fill in for being tired on the air. I know. I don't know why I'm so tired today. I really am. Okay. Because I'm going on this mini Seattle vacation. I did a lot of things, but I was off my normal schedule. Everything was off schedule. I ate at different time. I woke up at, went to sleep at different times. My tummy hurts. I just need to go back to my normal routine. How do I have my schedule? How do I decide my story order for the show? Well, I kind of, I like trying to pick stories that I think are big news for the first part of the show, but that aren't going to lead to too much discussion because I like to stack up like two to three stories in the very beginning. So I want them to be kind of big stories, but also stories that aren't necessarily going to be the kinds of things that are going to lead into big discussions. And then for me, the second half is where I put stories that I think are like, that lead to more things to talk about. So this question is from whiskey run again. I'm going to read the holy doctor. How do you decide your story order for the show based on how they fit together? Is it kind of like argument order? Best first worst in the middle and best last? It's, it's kind of interesting. Like I, I tend to try to take my favorite story first is in the first half. I take my big disc. I try to take my big discussion one. I'm the opposite of Kiki. I'm trying to take my big discussion one and no, it's not a rebellion thing, but I try to do my biggest, I think discussion or expound upon story because Kiki is going to do three quick and Blair is going to do three quick with the animal corner. Right. So they're going to bring like six stories in the first half. So I'm only going to bring one. So it better, you know, it better be the one that there's something to talk about. Yeah. In the second half makes sense because I start the second half. I want that second half one also to be a really good interesting story and something that we can talk about a bit as well. And then after that, it's all about the stories that I would have brought first or second to talk about each of those. If those other two stories weren't there, those are the stories that I would have liked to have brought in and talked more about, but I'm going to put them down there where I'm probably not going to talk about them as much just because I've already found stories that yeah, I don't know better story, but one that I'm more excited or interested in or I think, I think will lead to the greater discussion. And sometimes it's just about like, sometimes it's literally like, oh my gosh, I have an hour and a half to prep for the show. And so the stories that you see at the end of the ones I found at the last minute, and I tried to read them before showtime. That happens too. That also happens too. That sometimes there is there is a quality of show difference, you would think. We try. I mean, we look at stories throughout the week, but sometimes but here's what's interesting. There was a quality of show would be a big quality of show difference between those stories that I found that we found on Thursday, Friday after a show, and then have a whole week to be excited and look into and digest and those stories that we found 30 minutes before airtime. But I can tell you that's not always the case. Sometimes that breaking story that you didn't have time to react to or think through becomes the most exciting story that you bring that week. And it's because we don't get to, it's not a creative process. Exactly, right? It's not, it's not, it's not so much like we spent time working on formulating and creating the content for this show. The content from the show is being created in reality by scientists. And that story might have broken a week ago or it might have broken an hour ago. And that's what drives the show. It's the content creators are the scientists doing research. And there's sometimes really no rhyme or reason for us in terms of when we get a hold of it. It's just all of a sudden it's there right in front of you and you bring it into the show if it's something that that that is a little bit maybe more exciting to the general audience or to ourselves than the other stories that we might have already picked that week. Yeah, I also try. I mean, I know I had my poop story in the first half of the show, but I do usually tend to go for the more humor inducing stories in the second half of the show. That's usually where I put things related to bodily functions and other make see asked you guys share some stories over the week. No, we do not talk. We're like in vaults. Like Blair and Kiki are a little bit better about getting stuff into the show notes during the week. Yeah, although a lot of times we're all guilty of it. They all show up the day of and and this is this doesn't mean that we're not thinking about it. It just means that that's the day that I write. But I mean, yeah, but we haven't shared them with each other in advance. And this is one thing that like is almost a twist tradition when we first started doing the show as a radio show. Me and Kiki didn't really talk too much the day before. We just showed up with stories the morning of and and so in that tradition, I have I've never gone through and read unless unless Kiki or Blair happened to pick a story that I was thinking of bringing to the show. I haven't gone through and read their stories that they're bringing. So and and and it's kind of nice. It's like I'm getting to experience the show just like you are hearing these stories for the first time in real time during the show. And I and I wouldn't want to go through and have digested or think that I understand or gotten my takes on a story before it's gotten there time, because then I lose that sort of real time experiencing the show like like the listeners do. It's fun to be two thirds of the show for the first time. Yeah, I mean, it is fun. But I do like having the I mean, part of the reason for putting the stories in the show notes is that I know what stories are being brought ahead of time. So I'm not picking the same stories. Right. And then yeah, and also so that I have an idea of like, okay, I can I can look through the stories that you and Blair bring and I can go, oh, okay, this is what I think is important. So I can like prepare some comments ahead of time. And we have different ways of looking at doing the show. And occasionally, I will I will send an email to a Blair Kiki about a story that I found that I think is in their wheelhouse. But generally, I've also discovered that that's not necessary. Like if it's in it, if it's in the wheelhouse, chances are they've already got it and they're ready to bring it. And yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think most of the twist audience probably does stay for the whole show. I don't know, podcast people, I mean, people who are listening to us on the podcasts, you know, they're listening to the whole show also, you know, the feedback that I've gotten a lot of the time is that people don't necessarily listen to the whole show and when sitting, but it might be part of a drive time, a sitting on the bus time commute time, a downtime between classes thing that they go to as infotainment filler. And so that that that hour, the two hour long show that we sometimes are what do we say the average an hour 45 minutes show? I mean, hour and a half show that we started hitting two hours a little bit more often, which is too long. Two hours. Because a lot of the podcast audience, we've had we've had conversations about this two hours is too long. My numbers, my numbers drop when we start hitting two hours, we don't have as many downloads. But what what what tends to happen with these at least commute listeners is that that that hour and a half to two hour show might be broken down into 30 minute segments that they listen to going going to and from work each day. So if it's they've got a 15 minute commute each way and twists is what they drive to, we might last, you know, three or four days of listening. So exactly. And then some folks upon discovering the show, this is a whole other segment, then go like it's like discovering your favorite show on Netflix, your new favorite show. And there's 500 episodes of this. I will not sleep again for the next three weeks as I go back and binge listen to every episode to it. So that happens as well. Yeah. So like one of the reasons that I have the I try and do quick science news at the end of the show, it's usually more blurby stuff, things that we don't need to discuss too much. Sometimes they do turn into discussions, which is always funny when you when I when I bring something that I'm like, I just want to say what this was. And then you and you and Blair start commenting on it. And all of a sudden it turns into a big conversation. I'm like, I meant for that to be like a one minute read, which is funny. You know, but that's the joy of doing a podcast and not having a scripted show. We can let it go if it's a conversation. But yeah, so we try and have something to grab people's attention. I try and do a blockbuster, you know, not a blockbuster, but something that's really big news, important to people grabs their attention in the beginning. And then also have something towards the end of the show also more discussion like the more interesting, I don't know, more discussion worthy stuff or more sensationalist kind of stuff. Because we have like favorite things that we've sort of picked up on over the years of story types of stories we like to bring, like if anything Neanderthal comes across the line, I'm going to try to bring that because I also think that there's a nice bit of continuity where because we've thrown out so many Neanderthal stories over the years, when a new development comes, it's like sort of catching up on that one character in the soap opera who might not have shown up for a few episodes, but now you're getting a little bit of an update on how they're progressing in their storyline, you know, crispers like that, gut bacteria is like that, the understanding of intelligences in animals is like that, you know, like all of these interactions within the Brain Act, like all of these things are continuations of subject threads that we've that we've been following for a long time over the years. Yeah, having that long lasting story arcs. Yeah, and then because and in staying in that and those threads, we then can sort of reference back to stories we've covered it within this this thread or within this subject and see how this fits in or changes something that we've we've talked about before. So there's a lot of factors that go into how we select these stories. But yeah, largest factor is of course, you, the listening audience. If it wasn't for you, we'd still be doing this, nobody listening. And since we live in different cities, that means we would look really odd. We'd just be talking to ourselves, walking around, starting oddly at the same time each Wednesday evening, talking to ourselves aloud about the science stories that we encountered that week. So thank you for keeping us from being crazy people, or from the appearance of we're not having an alibi or talking aloud about things we're interested in. That's right. We're talking to ourselves. We get to talk to you. Yeah. All right. I am sleepy. And with that apropos Rob the sparkly and chat ourselves, the show is great for falling asleep too. And I love I love I there's nothing more than I than I love to fall asleep to informative podcasts or YouTube channels. You know, there's nothing like waking up in the middle of the night, you know, sort of sort of like lightly like half asleep, half awake. And then like the Sub-Zaharan lion creeps up closely upon the frame. Something like my dream wake is now being influenced by this thing that isn't like a car commercial or, you know, something awful that was left on TV. I love to informative things while you sleep. And you know what, whether whether osmosis works or not, this is the best shot. It's better than the book under the pillow. If osmosis has any chance of informing you while you sleep, audio podcast while you sleep is the best way to go. Best chance at it. So says Justin with his case, Justin case. Whiskey running says that's what I did. I start when I started the show, I went back like 200 episodes and spent months catching up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where did Blair go? No, Karen did not and kidnap Blair. That didn't happen. Yeah. Blair's on vacation. She was supposed to be back, but she missed a flight or her flight missed her. I don't know why she's not back. She's not back because as Nate C says Elon Musk's super highway. Right. The super is playing on Elon. Elon, you should be working faster. You're not you're not fast enough, Elon, get to work. Work faster. Yeah. Prevented one of the hosts from not from making it to the show because of your lackluster efforts. That's so funny. All right, you guys. Oh, we're gonna keep working it. I have to schedule a bunch of interviews for this show. Try and get interviews. That'll be awesome. Right. We're doing four hours a day for two days. We better have some interviews because I can't talk the whole time, but I'm going to go in directions that won't be kid friendly. But at the end of hour three. What are we talking about now? Okay. I was like, okay. All right. Let's start. Let's start doing bar beds. Okay. All right. We've got a skill. Yeah. All right. Say good night, Kiki. Good night, Kiki. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night, Minions. We'll see you next week. Good job.