 Welcome to another Wednesday evening of science. We hope you have come to join us to enjoy the science, the curiosity, all the love of the natural world that we have in store. That and so much more. It is the Wednesday Night Podcast broadcast for this week in science and everything we say here is live. So hey, let's go. And if you're going to be doing the podcast later, it might be edited for brevity, but or not. Who knows? Who knows? There's editing and there's not editing and there's all the things. Are you ready for a show? So ready. Yeah. Okay, all right. We have a quorum, so we shall begin. Is the science on? Is this science ready to go? We will begin in a three, two, this is twist. This week in science episode number 875 recorded on Wednesday, May 11, 2022. Why is helium rising? Oh, wait, no. I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we will fill your heads with guts, brains and tattoos. But first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Religion. I don't care which one and it really doesn't matter. The winged donkey rider, the winemaking street magician, the elephant headed boy, the deadbeat dad naval gazer, the bearded old man telling mankind to get off his lawn and sending a flood to kill them all. Or any of the various ensembles of godly soap opera stars. All the same to me and as far as I can tell, functionally the same to anyone else as well. Collections of stories, mixed moral messages, conflicting logics, transformed into doctrines of social behavior, that for the most part bear no relation to the texts from which they are supposedly derived. And none of which should be considered at all relevant to today's world, because they largely manifested to serve medieval theocracies. And yet here we are in the United States, the land of separation of church and state. But not just here around the world is to there are very few places where theocratic rule still exists. Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia unless you're rich, and that last vestige of colonial authority, Vatican City. And very soon, if we're not actively vigilant, several of the less than United States of America. What we are seeing happen today already in the rewriting of math and history textbooks, the rolling back of personal freedoms to persecution of our LGBT communities. The elimination of sex education, along with forced pregnancies, regardless of age or consent at conception, is the introduction of theocracy to the modern world. The world was once full of theocracies, every nation pretty much was one. We gave them up for a reason they are terrible, yet gaining momentum in the one place that has never been one. And there is no greater threat to theocracy than science. Science that answers big questions heals the sick, impents technologies that allows near instantaneous information and communication around the world that lays bare the actual workings of the human body. The cosmos, the very matter of the universe. No matter what the origin story is, from which culture, whose religion, nationality, ethnicity, tribe, or tradition, anthropology can point to a mountain of evidence that proves that the origin story is wrong. As the fact checkers of human history, anthropologists will have to be next. The evolution removed from textbooks, biology itself replaced with creation myths, truth fact data evidence all contorted to conform to a theocratic narrative. The death of logic, the death of reason, and the death of any applicable knowledge. And the only thing standing in its way is, this week in science, coming up next. And the good science to you too, Justin Blair and everyone out there, welcome to another episode of this week in science. We are back to talk about fish. No, food. Yes, maybe I don't know science all the things. We're going to science all the things. Okay, so are you ready? We're going to dive in. Yeah. Yeah. Diving into the pool of science. Yes. I have stories. I have stories about healy and ricey Parkinson's probes and a diet for the aging brain. I've got to get on that one. Whatever that is. It's definitely time. Yeah. What do you have for us, Justin? I've got a Viva Los virus. I know doctors injected somebody with a virus on purpose. California dreaming about the future, ancient DNA of Uruguay, about the past, and diagnostic tattoos. That's been like the future just out of reach for so long. I can't wait to hear that story. It still is. Come on. It's a tattoo. It's right in touch. Okay. Blair, what's in the animal corner? I have animal oddities is what I have today. And that's all I'm going to tell you is I'm going to get weird. Okay. When the animal corner gets weird, you know, it's going to be a fun show. Weird by animal corner standards. So you really can't wait for this section because that's six point harness everyone. All right. As we jump into the show, I want to remind you that if you have not yet subscribed to us, you can find us on pretty much every podcast platform that is out there. Look for us on Apple on Spotify and Google, all those places and others. We're also on Facebook on YouTube on Twitch on Twitter and Instagram. We are twist science on Twitch and Instagram on the live streaming places. We're here Wednesdays, 8pm Pacific time every week. You can join us live or get us asynchronously. But no matter what, you can find our website, twist.org. Are you ready? It's time for the science. Yeah, let's dive in. Okay. Let's stop with a high note. I know I keep doing this and I don't actually have helium, which is like, I probably should have had, you know, a little gimmick of a helium balloon to tell this story. For once I'm talking about something that's getting high in Oregon and it has nothing to do with cannabis. Yeah. That joke just plummeted. Need some helium? Well, maybe we should be looking in the atmosphere. Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. You see San Diego. Have been using a brand new technique unprecedented evening, even according to their press release. To look for helium in the atmosphere and there and, and kind of answer a question among atmospheric chemists as to where's helium going in the atmosphere and how much of it is getting into the atmosphere as we release fossil fuels, greenhouse gases into the atmosphere because helium is the product of radioactive decay. And so it tends to get bottled up in all the same places that our natural gases tend to get bottled up and it gets released a lot. Anyway, these researchers found that one particular isotope, the four helium isotope is increasing in our atmosphere. Want to guess why it's increasing? Because we're not paying attention to it. And it's getting released when we burn and extract fossil fuels. Oh, that old chestnut. That wonderful chestnut. Yes. And researchers have been trying to figure out, okay, how much of it is getting out into the atmosphere because it's inert. It's not really helium itself is not a big deal, but we do use helium. Three helium, the isotope, the three helium isotope is very, very useful for a lot of cryogenic techniques, keeping magnets cold and superconductors for fMRI machines for all sorts of techniques. We use a lots of four helium, three helium, helium that we actually capture for things like helium balloons and all sorts of normal uses. And part of the helium issue is that a lot of the United States supply comes from our nuclear arsenal. And we take the radioactive decay of various things and we create, we have helium that we stockpile and that we use for things that are necessary for our economy and for research and for national security. But in the last 20 years or so, we've had a bunch of shortages. We're like, where'd the helium go? And we're just letting it go apparently. What were you going to ask? So does that mean like the helium from the kids' birthday balloons or the car dealership or whatever are from our nuclear program? No, that is most likely from produced in very particular industrial production during the removal of natural gases and fossil fuels. But you have to create a capture system to be able to make sure that you have it. But things like four helium for very important national security, radiation detection and cryogenic uses Yeah, that's different. Anyway, four helium, this isotope, it's produced in the Earth's crust, accumulates where the fossil fuels do. And we could be using it for balloons and stuff. The three helium is a little bit different. But this new technique has determined that it, we talk about the helium shortage all the time, but we're losing a lot of it. We're just releasing it into the atmosphere. The interesting aspect of this study is that it can be used to give us an idea of how much natural gas, how many greenhouse gases that aren't necessarily being reported are getting released into the atmosphere. So it can be used as a signature of fossil fuel, natural gas release, greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere, which could help us more accurately measure what we're doing to the atmosphere with regards to climate change. Helium, the smoking balloon of climate change. Yeah, so three helium. If we get, of course, if we get too much helium in our atmosphere, we might start to float away from this. We won't float away. So we don't float away. But helium, one of the issues with releasing helium into the atmosphere is that it leaves the atmosphere. It's so light, it just wants to go away. It just goes, it's like, I want to leave now. I'm out of here. And that's the problem. It's hard to hold on to. Losing more mass to space. Darned balloons. All right, Justin, you want to tell me a story? Yeah, a 56 year old immunocompromised man with an antibiotic resistant skin infection was injected with a virus by his doctors and has fully recovered from the infection. Antibacterial agents in general have become less effective over the years since their sort of invention and application resulting in antibiotic resistances is likely caused by a combination of over prescribing antibiotics by doctors and by patients not using the full course of the antibiotics, which then can lead to resistant strains of infection. So for the already immunocompromised who don't have good natural defenses, they're much greater effective death than the general public. In this case, the man immunocompromised man was treated with several of the newer antimicrobial medications. None of them worked. It was a pretty awful skin infection creating lesions and all sorts of other side effects. So what to do science to the rescue. Researchers from the Science Education Alliance phage hunters advancing genomics and evolutionary science project aka C phages, which is actually it's actually an undergraduate learning lab at the University of Pittsburgh, where they take people who maybe are heading towards science or maybe aren't even and teach them how to do wet lab and research and there's bioinformatics and probably sequencing all sorts of laboratory skills that are over. I think it's a two year program. The lab has thousands of phages that they have tested for bacterial interactions. And after receiving a skin sample of the patient testing it, they thought they might have the right phase to treat immunocompromised patient. That is a virus in their lab killed the bacteria in their lab. So a virus research lab that does research on viruses to save lives. In case anybody's afraid of virus labs these days. Make sure keep this one in mind. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the group described how they found the right bacteriophage. They cultivated a larger amount of that one virus that was working. Typically bacteriophages are a cocktail of many viruses that they used to address a problem. Which I don't know. Part of me wonders if that's just because there's correlative data of viruses or bacteriophages working on sets of bacteria. Sounds like their lab had it down to this is the virus that you need. We're just going to build this one up. They cultivated it. They sent it to the medical team. The team injected the bacteriophage into the patient and he died immediately. But the infection cleared up shortly afterwards. No, no, no, no. He's fine. He's fully recovered. Wait, what are you reporting on here? No. That was just more dramatic. I'm a terrible person. Anyhow. Patient. So he was fine. And everything cleared up. Cleared up. And from just one virus, which is also an unusual application of bacteriophages. It's usually cocktail group of viruses that are being applied. Just they identified one that was going to be effective. They applied just the one. It worked a whole lot of science behind it. And there's a bunch of things I love about that story. I love the, you know, viruses doing good work is always a great story. But also the fact that this is, this is all the heavy lifting is really being done by a learning lab at the University of Pittsburgh. I found that fascinating. But you can, you know, this is, this is, and it's getting having real world applications and saving lives. Yeah. It's going to say unexpectedly applicable. That's really cool. Although I don't know if it's completely unexpectedly because this is, this is also, there's other, you know, researchers, the tenured professors and the rest who were part of this and guiding the research of it in this direction of searching for phages. So it's very, it is meant to be applicable. But to find, find, get it, narrow it down to one virus too, that, and there's a, there's less of a chance. We've talked about this in the past for a virus to, to change or for there to be a resistance to a virus that is, is killing off infection. Then there is from a typical antibiotic. So these are also potentially much more sustainable antibiotics than the, the things that we've been using thus far. We think. We think. And, and, and well, I mean, it works for now, but, you know, predator-prey interactions and, well, it's, it's less predator-prey apparently that the conflict here is going to be the immune system of the patient may not be able to have the same virus work twice. Yeah. The body might fight off the virus next time around. And that's the, that's then the, that arms race where, where that starts to take place. Well, you know, we've talked before it's something like 2050. Most of our antibiotics that we're using currently aren't going to be functionally useful anymore. And when that they have is people forget people used to just die from. All the time. This is a major source of death for, for life, for humans on the planet. And we haven't really had to deal with it for the last 50, 70 something years. So. And hopefully bacteria phages will lead us in the direction of not having to lead to, to deal with it in the future as well. I don't want to go. Viruses for, for better health. Yeah. Blair, tell me. Yes. Do you have some, some data? Yes. I have some better health through poop. So let me ask you. How do you know for sure if a football player had a concussion better yet? How do you know for sure if a football player is healed enough to return to play after concussion? That's right. You guessed it. Look at his poop. This is a study looking at blood, stool and saliva samples from 33 Rice University football players. They were able to examine the diagnostic potential of the gut spike or biome when looking at signs of concussion. They're finding to demonstrate that a simple objective diagnostic test could be developed to track the impact of concussions and signal when it's safe to return to action. That is a big problem. Actually, um, diagnosing concussions because the most commonly used tests for diagnoses of concussions relies on self reported symptoms like blurry vision, dizziness, nausea, headaches. They also, players often will not report them because they want to stay in the game. That's right. So it can make them notoriously difficult to diagnose. Also it can make it very hard to figure out when it is safe for players to return to the game. Over the course of that season, they found post concussion drop off of two bacterial species normally found in stool samples of healthy individuals. They also found a correlation between traumatic brain injury linked proteins in the blood and one brain injury linked bacterial species in stool. So they, the reason likely that this works is that the central nervous system is linked to the enteric nervous system, which occurs in the intestines, and head trauma leads to changes in gut, gut microbiota. So this is something mainly because injuries cause inflation, inflammation, inflammation, cause inflammation. And so that creates a bunch of conditions in the body, including sending proteins and molecules through the blood that breach the intestinal barrier and cause changes in the gut. So there is a mechanism here at play just hasn't really been looked at as a means of diagnosing concussion. And so they were able to find in this small sample size, it was actually only four of the players who were studied were diagnosed with concussions effectively. So this is an extremely small sample size, but they found that until the gut microbiome returned to normal, there was not full brain recovery. So if you really do want, in this case, if you really do monitor the gut microbiome, then you can really see when the brain is fully healed and the person is back to normal. So they want to obviously, yeah, so they want to be able to expand this to a larger sample size. And more importantly, they want to conduct a similar study on women's soccer athletes because in women's soccer there is also frequent head trauma and women in men don't have the same immunities or gut microbiomes. So this is something where it's very important to look at how this would impact the female system because it could be very different and you need to have that better kind of larger robust data set covering all the variables, right? But yeah, I love this idea, but again, it goes back to everybody's got to have a microbiome baseline. You have to get one filed with your doctor. Like that's where all these studies start, you know, is how does a normal microbiome look in your body? Right, what does it look like normally? How did it change in response to this particular insult or that? I think that with women, so with men their hormones change much more rapidly over the course of a day and they don't have the same like 28-day cycle that the women's menstrual cycle has and there has been evidence that those big hormone shifts have big influences on the way that medication affects women, on the way that concussions affect women. So how do the hormones affect the microbiome and then how does that affect the health of the brain, the recovery of the brain, inflammation and all that kind of stuff? Those are other really big questions that still need to be answered with respect to this. Yeah, great. Cannot be a single-sex study. No, but it's a nice start. But it's a great start. Fascinating, such a wonderful, just straightforward experiment too. Yeah, and it's also, and it's starting to dig also into that thing that we keep noticing which is the gut microbiome changes when we have an illness or when we are having mental stress, this sort of thing, but then is it the gut microbe that's causing the stress? Is it causing the mental, you know, that connection between gut and brain? Cognitive stuff is definitely there. And here's one that just affects the brain first. Yes, guaranteed. Yeah, right, yeah, it's kind of an interesting nice isolate. You have brain damage. That's basically what a concussion is. Your squishy brain bumping into the hard skull, playing pinball on your skull. All those synapses and dendrites just getting stretched apart. Smooshed and stretched. Oh, yeah, not so good for the brain. How about just never return to football? How about that anyway? All right, well, speaking of the brain and the way that the brain ages, we know that in Parkinson's disease, there is a loss of dopamine-producing neurons. And through the years, we've seen, you know, people, there's Eldopa is dopamine replacement to try and keep those dopamine levels up. It's a drug that people can take. We've also seen stem cell transplants where they've tried to put dopamine-producing neurons back into the brain in the substantial nigra, the area of the brain that loses these particular neurons. And there have been a lot of issues with that. And we know that there's inconsistency in a lot of the ways that Parkinson's plays out and how the therapies actually work. Researchers just published their study looking at the brains of deceased individuals. They had some without Parkinson's disease, some with Parkinson's disease. They compared the brains, looked at single neurons. They were looking at specific neurons in the brains, the specific area of the brain that produces the dopamine, the substantial nigra, and comparing neuronal subtypes. So like sub, they're all dopamine-producing neurons, but then they're like, oh, wait, this one doesn't look like that one. This one doesn't look like that one. And they discovered 10 different subpopulations of dopamine-producing neurons. Only one of them is the kind that dies during Parkinson's disease. And so now this means this could lead to some very specific targeting of drugs. What exactly is going on in this subpopulation of neurons? How are these neurons different from the other 10 subtypes? Why did they die when the other ones don't? What kind of mechanisms are happening in the brain? What specifically is leading to this neurodegenerative disorder? And so they know now that not all of the neurons that produce the dopamine in that particular area of the brain are the same. They all produce dopamine, but there's 10 different kinds, like that to me. And one seems crucial to the etiology of this disease. So I love that. That's a mechanism. That's a mechanism. We have correlations for disease. Now we have mechanism taking place that we're discovering, which that means that it's much closer. That's a leap towards the cure. And to me, it also explains maybe why the stem cell treatments haven't been as successful as we hoped they would be. Because we've been dumping a whole bunch of, here are dopamine cells. But there's a bunch of the wrong kinds. Maybe they're not reproducing the kind that have been dying out. There's so much there to be, that rabbit hole is going to go very deep in this. I think this to me is one of the big promising studies on the Parkinson's front in recent history. Very cool study. Yes. One in 10. One in 10. But tell me about planning for the future, Justin. Planning for the future. That thing that I forgot to do, ever. But California, on the other hand, state of California is taking action on climate change. Starting in 2026, new homes will need to be powered by all electric furnaces, stoves and other appliances, removing gas, natural gas as an option. The California Air Resources Board, a.k.a. CARB, plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. That's where as much carbon is being removed from the air, as is still being emitted. The Board also recommends the state cut the use of oil and gas by 91%. And use technology to capture and store carbon emissions from the remaining sources of emissions. State is already on track to require all new passenger cars sold to be zero emission by 2035. We also have a little bit further out goal for commercial trucks, commercial vehicles, that sort of thing. I think that's also 2045. The Western States Petroleum Association states that the plan would mean more bans, mandates, and expensive regulations forcing people to pick certain jobs, certain cars, certain homes, and certain times to use energy is way out of touch with how ordinary people live. The Western States Petroleum Association President Catherine Race Boyd stood in a statement, proving that even a petroleum lobby understands the value of choice. Meanwhile, in Nebraska, a cowboy hat-wearing candidate for governor announced that he would eliminate sex education from schools if elected. He barely lost his primary bid. So thankfully he's out. He lost to a guy who's also against sex education and wants to put prayer back in K through 12 schools, stating we should be teaching the next generation to love God. Because different states have different priorities. Different states have different priorities, but all states are supposed to abide by the federal separation of church and state. Yes. Anyway, that's not a scientific topic, but... For now. For now, that's a thing. Luckily, California, as an enormous economy, actually has some impact on the rest of the country and the world. So this is actually really good news as I see it. That does not mean the other things that you mentioned are not terrible news because they are, but this is good news for climate change because a lot of things that California does develop a standard for other places. So I hope that this goes through at a fraction of what is planned. Honestly, it would be great. I'll take it. Yeah, there's 13 other states that are basically on board to whatever California has decided they're going to do with their environmental rights. We're just going to copy it. It's just simpler. We don't have to hire anybody to be on top of that. And then big industries like the auto industry, the appliance industry, all of these things, they look to California because it is the largest size market in the United States. They look to what they're, because it's just at some point, it's easier to make everything the same than it is to make something like California standard. The Nebraska standard, it becomes ridiculous. And as we know, politics goes, this is a roadmap and it's not the final word. And so we know now people are unhappy on all parts of the environmental, economic, various aspects of the spectrum. They're all going to argue and argue and argue and debate and debate and debate. And this wonderfully worked out roadmap will be watered down and will be much less powerful than it currently seems. I mean, but there are, there's definitely, I mean, we are in, I don't know, from the scientific side of things, scientists are going, we need to be doing things as fast as we possibly can. And yet we have this, this negative inertia from our economy that is like, but people aren't doing that and people don't have that. And so the same, I don't know, this is a policy based idea, science evidence policy suggestion, but the same way that we threw all the money behind getting COVID vaccines, we need to throw all the money behind subsidies for sustainable energy, for electric vehicles, for update, I mean, we've already put the money into the build back better plan, which is going to lead to a lot of updating of our electrical grid, which is going to be great. Yeah, there's a whole bunch that needs to change. What you're pointing to is the California legislature, which is heavily democratic. It's still going to be debated before it gets. No, no, no, I don't think the debates have, the debates are just, that's the spin on the decision is the debates at this point in politics. The heavily democratic legislatures of the state of California have a pernicious history of suddenly abandoning the values that they have stated over and over on the political campaigns and then making a decision in favor of a lobby that has given them contributed tremendous amounts of money. You see this in when we had the legislation on allowing communities to vote on whether or not they wanted rent control, nothing seemed to be standing in its way except a giant pile of money, but the legislatures who had always talked about housing crisis voted against it. They voted down rent controls. And there's a lot of the, you don't think about California as an oil state, but it is an oil producing state and it produces a lot of natural gas, thousands and thousands of natural gas drilling that takes place in that state. And those lobbies have a big impact on the legislature's campaign watch. Oh, but solar is growing. Solar is getting bigger. It's gonna get there. But, you know, the key is diversity, right? Diversify, diversify, you know, it's like your stocks and your bonds. Diversify your portfolio. Don't put all your money into umbrellas. Diversify your ecosystem. Go away. What? Yes. There's a new study about fungus. Fungus species this week. Researchers have just published their study in Nature Ecology and Evolution Looking at Funguses. Funguses that break things down. A lot of them are below ground. Ecologists, we know it's like a tree falls in the forest and then the fungi come in and they break it down and, oh, it's part of the cycle. And we all know that's part of the cycle of life. But what is the real influence of these many species of decomposers and also pathogenic fungi who are involved in the ecosystems as well? They looked at a number of ecosystems from the poles to the equator tried from grasslands to forests to deserts and tried to find a pattern of how the fungi were involved in the ecosystems and how the ecosystems work. What they have discovered is that across all of the ecosystems, the decomposers, the more diverse you have a variety of decomposers in your population, also root fungi, it helps to keep your ecosystem resilient. So vegetation might not die out during periods of drought with a more diverse fungal ecosystem involved in the ecosystem. The other side, you can guess, pathogenic bacteria, if they're really diverse, they probably have a problem. All the pathogenic bacteria, they get in there and they like to cause problems more than fix problems, but generally having a wide variety of decomposers, not pathogens, but decomposers is better for any environment, any and every environment that they looked at. And they say, the researchers say, they say it's fascinating despite all the other variables changing from site to site, these patterns still stand out. So there could be other microbes involved and other things happening, but the main message here from this study is that we can't underestimate the diversity of soil fungi because it is contributing to the resilience of ecosystems around the world. Yeah, and that sounds like also something that's going to be very important as we replant forests that burn down and we need to start replanting them maybe not in the same area due to climate change. As temperatures change, as environments change and you start trying to figure out how to manage that landscape, one of the things we're going to have to do is focus on that soil. What are all the fungi and bacteria from where we used to plant this forest because if you're going to replant it somewhere else, you need all of the forest. You need all of it. The soil is important. Below ground is as if not more important than above ground. If nothing else, this is all going to be a great lesson in terraforming. So if we ever do... The fabulous fungi for the moon, for Mars. Yeah. This is just all... We destroyed the planet on purpose. This is an exercise. We're just back-engineering terraforming a barren planet into a livable one by ruining our own. That's how we're doing it. Big experiment. I don't like experiments. This is stressing me out. Oh, yeah? That stresses you out? Yes, a lot. Well, it turns out it stresses out rats also to the point that it impacts their fertility. Wow. What? Female rats exposed to scream sounds may have diminished ovarian reserve and reduced fertility. Ovarian reserve is the reproductive potential left within a woman's ovaries based on the number and quality of eggs. We're dropping the eggs. We're killing the eggs. The eggs have gone bad. The eggs are bad. There's no more eggs in the carton. The eggs have gone rotten from the screaming. Can I pause it for a second? Yes. Is there like research assistants who are coming in and screaming at the rats? Or is it not rat screams? No. I had to look it up. I don't have access to a lot of backers. I could do a bunch of Googling, figure it out. It was human screams. In the lab, a human came in and screamed at rats. So for cities, if you want to get rid of your rat problem, tell people to scream more. But of course, so I was looking into it, it's actually pretty interesting. You can't deny them food or do other sort of stress activities. Because that could impact their biology in other ways. If you deprive them of things or if you turn up the heat or turn the heat down or bombard them with electricity. These are all things that could impact their fertility directly. So you had to find a way that you weren't directly impacting them physically, just stressing them out. In this case, screaming at them. And that was enough to have the diminished ovarian reserve, the loss of normal reproductive potential in the ovaries due to a lower counter quality of remaining eggs. They also had decreased fertility, decreased estrogen and anti-malarian hormone levels. Estrogen is a group of hormones that play an important role in growth and reproductive development, as I'm sure most of us are aware. Anti-malarian hormone is a hormone made by the ovaries, which helps form reproductive organs. The scream sounds lower the number and quality of the women's eggs and these hormones. So this is... The reason this isn't fully in the animal corner is that this is actually specifically to explore the rat model in terms of human fertility due to stress. That is the point of this study. This is like the starting point to look at the impact of stress on human fertility. When you go and you get fertility testing if you are having trouble conceiving, there's lots of inexplained infertility in humans. We're terrible at getting pregnant as a species. There's all sorts of reasons for that, but there's all sorts of non-reasons for that. Sometimes couples just can't get pregnant. Everything looks good, but it's not working and stress could be part of the problem. So there you go. Don't stress yourself out. I still want to see... I still want to be there for the onboarding session of the lab assistant. All right, let me hear your screen. No, that's not good enough. No, I'm sorry. I've been working in a wet lab. I'm working in a genomics lab. I'm working in fermentation lab. Yeah, no. I'm sorry, you're just not loud enough. I mean... Did they talk about using the Wilhelm scream? Did they talk? I feel like that's not scary enough. It's just stressful enough. Is it Star Wars? Is it Star Wars playing somewhere? Oh, rats. This is just... Have you ever seen a compilation of that stream over and over again that's a game and a challenge? It's arts everywhere. This science news is definitely something to scream about or maybe whisper quietly into the ears of your friends so that you don't deplete their ovarian reserve. Ovarian reserve. It's either the name of a punk band or a 2021 Zinfandel. Thank you for joining us for another episode of This Week in Science. We do hope that you are enjoying the show. If you're enjoying it, tell a friend today. Whisper it. Don't scream it from the mountaintops. Don't scream it like in a horror movie. Whisper to your friends. Twist is a really great podcast. Subscribe. All right, let's come back and talk a little bit about some COVID news. Okay. Yeah, I know. It's still going on, everybody. What? What? The woman who took two COVID tests this week? What? Oogly booglies. People are taking COVID tests. Not as many people are taking COVID tests. Yet, COVID cases are rising and we seem to have a whole bunch of new COVID variants of concern. The ones that we are now looking at out of South Africa are BA4 and BA5, which seem to have some amazing mutations that allow it to even escape the immunity from earlier Omicron variants. So say you were infected by BA1, BA2, Omicron. It might not really matter to BA4 and BA5. But there are now some 30 new mutations in the Omicron variants. They're just going and they're finding new ways around all of the immunity and whether it's natural or vaccine caused induced immunity. These cases are rising. But at the same time, we do not have evidence that severity is rising at this point in time. And it does seem that even the BA4 and BA5 are very similar to the severity of the earlier Omicron variants. So people who work in public health are concerned because we don't know what this necessarily means for future vaccines. We don't know what this means for the future or how this is going to work out for the health of everyone. Interesting side note, side point, a study out this week talking about the 1918 flu discovered that the H1N1 seasonal flu that makes the rounds all the time is related to that 1918 pandemic variant. So H1N1, we get vaccinated for it. We know that the flu is a deal. We get ready for it every year. And it may be the kind of thing that with SARS-CoV-2 and I don't know, as some epidemiologists and immunologists are calling it that maybe this is SARS and we should be calling this like SARS-3 because it's so completely different at this point in time. Yeah. Without vaccines, we do have antibodies that are starting to work for us in other interesting news related to vaccines. FDA has really put strict guidelines on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. So right now in the US it's Moderna and Pfizer although there is a lot of really good work going on currently at nasal spray vaccines which could be amazing. We've talked about those recently but the clinical trials are coming and they seem to be moving forward. Fingers crossed, we'll see what happens there. In the meantime everyone has to determine their risk and the risk for their community. Vaccines are still the best way to maintain your health even though they do not completely keep you from getting COVID, they can keep you out of the hospital which is great. And masks also masks, they're great. N95s they're really good. Good news about the lockdowns though. We do have some good news from the lockdowns. Guess what happens when you send people home they don't have to work and they don't have to commute and they have a bunch of free time. They make sourdough. They get creative. So a study out of the Paris Brain Institute and the CNRS Sorbonne University a bunch of people worked together to create a couple of surveys of people to assess the impact of lockdown on creativity and what they determined is that the lockdown stressed people out. People were stressed psychologically because people didn't know what was going on it was a new situation, they're stuck in their houses they don't have the normal social input and it was like ahhh but the author of the study says on average they felt more creative and by correlating the two pieces of information we showed that the better people felt the more creative they thought they were. They also found that more creative activities related to the issues of the situation so like you mentioned sourdough a lot of the activities that increased during the lockdown period were cooking sports watching sports and dance programs or doing them in your house self-help initiatives and gardening 28 activities investigated they also looked at interior design sewing creating diverting objects diverting objects I love that what's this object I will divert it to something else about 40% of those were already practiced in the five years prior to confinement they increased their practice so people took their hobbies and did them more and there was definitely a correlation between positive mood and creativity and creativity the researchers go on to say here one of our analyses suggest that creative expression enabled individuals to better manage their negative emotions linked to confinement and therefore to feel better during this difficult period I think this is also proved that the four day work week needs to happen yes I mean I'm just imagining so hear me out on the artificial intelligence stuff and Blair we talk a lot about like how much advancements in technology lead to people working more hours it makes you more efficient and then you can work more no give people the time off to do the more human creative things when you give people time in the future automation will make mom's job easier at the house I'm just gonna sit on the couch no I might actually write a book come on there's always been a lie that automation for instance was going to somehow alleviate the the length of the work day when in fact what they used it for was to just eliminate cram more in sectors yeah well I'm cram more for sure increase productivity yeah so you need you need a big shift change and like the four day work week is like a real thing that should happen that's a thing it would be good for the economy too all the people griping about the economy all the time and I can go on I can go on a short rant about the economy maybe in the after show after show is a good place for that two sides of that which I will talk about in the after show then is housing costs versus small businesses and that's the actual competition in every economy that nobody seems to address directly and automation plays a big part and I'm gonna do a big huge part to talk about that later so far I mean AI is heading down the route of trying to also replicate human creativity but still the thing that the human mind has is the ability to adapt quickly and creatively to situations and the human mind is a creative wonderful place to spend time COVID thank you for reminding us of that and hopefully we can take some of these lessons from the last couple of years and apply them to our future moving forward right better future for everyone I hope you're all enjoying the show if you really enjoy this weekend science please head over to our website twist.org you can find show notes and all sorts of fantastic things about the show there you can also find a link to our Patreon community Patreon is where our listeners support the show you can join other listeners in supporting the ongoing efforts of twist to bring science to people all around the world science curiosity creativity we're here for you every week we thank you for your support we really can't do this without you alright let's come back now after I get my computer to get back into recognizing me says who are you I've shut down for a moment what's going on my artificial intelligence isn't intelligent enough to know what I need to do it's time for Blair's animal corner isn't it with Blair yeah with Blair for sure I can get the music to play come on you go now music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music only 22 birds left in the world. And in 1983, they were they were launched in a captive breeding program, not physically launched, the captive breeding program was launched, they weren't like catapults. Anyway, they were one of the very first endangered species to be named. And today there are now approximately 300 condors flying in the wild in California. Last week marked the first time that they were released into redwood habitat, which is one of their native areas that now they are expanded into. So yeah, not not weird, not strange, not too much to talk about. I just wanted to let everyone know that there is good news in animal conservation. It does happen. There are breakthroughs and communities work together to make pretty large strides. 22 to 300 is a pretty big jump for any population. And so if we can do it for them, we can definitely do it for other species. So I just wanted to throw that out there. California condors make me come back. I'm glad you did. I'm still I'm actually still terrified of running into one. It's a big bird of all animals. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it. It's a big bird, but it doesn't want to eat you. No, unless you're dead. Are you dead things? Speaking of dead things. Oh, great. I want to talk about something that has been all over the internet, which is the Bolivian River Dolphins playing with an anaconda. So glad you want to talk about this. All right, let's get let's go into it. So this is a trio of scientists who were trying to report on Bolivian River Dolphins. They're really hard to study. They're in the upper Madeira Basin of the Bolivian part of the Amazon. Very little is known about them. They're endangered. But they barely ever breach the surface of the water and the water is so murky that researchers have a really, really, really hard time studying them or knowing anything about them. How many of them are there? What do they eat? How do they communicate with each other? If you talk to people who actually live there, maybe they have a good idea. But at least for, you know, the researchers that are traveling to Bolivia and trying to study them in very specific situations, they have a very hard time. Snark aside, these researchers saw some, some of these Bolivian River Dolphins popping up above the surface of the river. And they took a bunch of pictures. When they got back, they noticed in the pictures, Oh, what's this? A benian a conda. So boa species known to live only in parts of Bolivia. It's it overlaps in its habitat with a lot of the Bolivian River Dolphin habitat. Adults can grow to be about two meters in length. That is about six feet. And so what they noticed was there is in this benian a conda with the dolphins in the water. Hmm. The more they looked at these pictures, the dolphins weren't eating the anaconda. They were passing it back and forth. As they continue to look at the photos, it looks like they were playing with it, sometimes in a synchronized way, carrying downstream together, other times taking turns individualizing play. The other strange thing is that they noticed that these adult males in the group were sexually aroused as they played with the snake, which doesn't really mean anything. It happens with dolphins. Dolphins get sexually aroused all the time. But really, what it means is dolphins happens. Yeah. What it means is they were excited. So this this indicates it's play. It wasn't for food. It was they weren't, you know, fighting over it, they were tossing it back and forth. So this was this really looks like play. The adults also could have been using it to teach each other about the snake. It sounds like they were just playing with it. They also noted that the snake was held underwater for long periods of time. Didn't appear to be moving. Most likely dead. Yeah, I'd say so. Um so so they're playing with a dead anaconda maybe. Definitely. I would say definitely. From my perspective, seems like it. How long can anacondas can swim? Can't they? Yes. Yes. And they can hold their breath for a pretty long time. Yeah. Yeah. So I would guess that that this one was dead from blunt trauma. Uh dolphins can do that. So they are they are dangerous beasts. Um yeah. So this is just a reminder that dolphins are terrifying. No, uh this is a reminder that dolphins are are smart. Uh they like to play and they there's no reason to be afraid of anacondas. They this is just this is a reminder that that dolphins will play with what they will. This is a reminder that when two horny dolphins are throwing you around in the water, it's just best to play dead. Just just write it out. Yeah. Yeah. So this is what we've learned about this little known dolphin is that at least this one time they played with a snake. That's what we know. At least this one time when we were watching. Yes. I don't have any enlightening take. I just kind of wanted to bring up the situation. I wanted to make sure you know I've seen a lot of the sensationalized headlines that made it sound like the snake was involved in things in a way that didn't make sense. They just got excited. That's all that happened. I think that's the I think that is the river dolphins here on this show. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the I think that's the big take is not to put our human values onto dolphins and we know that dolphins, male dolphins, they get aroused when they get excited and that that is it doesn't necessarily mean anything other than excitement so they were playing. Yeah. I'm excited. I got a big snake. Look what I found. Yeah. Yeah. It's no answers but it's fascinating. Fascinating. We had a we had a photo up earlier and I'm just now I'm not sure if whether or not that was the anaconda. The anaconda is towards the top by the yep that's the anaconda right there. Yeah. No, I think the other thing is not. Correct. Okay. That's okay. It's the first I thought that nevermind. What else you got Blair? If you are curious that's what it looks like. So next in in the weird world of Blair's Animal Corner I wanted to talk about bats that buzz like bees. Great. Okay, that's normal. I saw this. I was going to send this to you and I saw you already had it of course. Oh, I had it. I had it. Those listeners of the show that are constantly telling me to bring bat studies. This is two weeks in a row. You're welcome. In baitsian mimicry a harmless species imitates more dangerous ones in order to scare away predators. This is what researchers believe is the first case of acoustic baitsian mimicry and one of the very first in mammals and that is greater mouse-eared bats imitating the buzzing sound of stinging insects to discourage you guessed it owls from eating them. So let's again let's back up. I wasn't going to guess that but okay thanks. Yeah, this is why the story is amazing. So if I told you the story about a bat an owl and a hornet I don't believe you would come up with the story. No, no. So a bat is imitating a hornet to scare away an owl so that the owl won't eat the bat. That's so awesome. Yes, so how did researchers figure this out? They made this discovery while conducting field research in which bats were caught in mist netting a lot which is usually used to catch birds. When they handled the bats to take them out of the net they started buzzing like bees. Like what? So they started to wonder what this was about. Is this a warning? Is this something to deter predators? So then they looked at the acoustic similarity between buzzing sounds of bats and some stinging insects. Next they placed those sounds bats back to captive owls the natural predator of these bats to see how they would react. They consistently reacted to insects and bat buzzes by moving away from the speaker but sounds of potential prey like normal bat sounds they move closer to the speaker. It sounds good. First example this is the first example as I said of interspecific mimicry between mammals and insects and it's one of very few if not the only example of acoustic mimicry so very cool. The similarities between the buzzes of the hornets and the bats were actually harder to hear if you just played them completely as they were but if they altered those sounds they narrowed the acoustic parameters to what owls can hear. Yeah. Yeah then it sounded almost indistinguishable so buzzing sounds are even more similar when it's heard the way that owls hear them. So then the question becomes why are owls afraid of hornets? Do they get stung by hornets? Um likely yes. Everybody gets stung by hornets. Everybody likes hornets they're mean. Right um and hornets do nest in tree cavities where birds can sometimes go and birds anecdotally will avoid cavities that have hornets in them. They have a hornet's nest so um likely it's very likely that these owls are often stung by hornets they hear the singing sound they go I'm gonna scoot I don't know if they think that the bat is gonna like open its mouth and hornets are gonna come out or what but um it's enough it's enough to scare them away. So um this could open up a whole field of research into auditory mimicry. The first thing that I thought of that actually you know for them to say it's one of the only encounters uh that they have found um I think about the gopher snake which shakes its tail against dried grass to sound like a rattlesnake they also kind of look like a rattlesnake. So sure they look like a rattlesnake that's visual mimicry but they also make the sound so um it's not unheard of but it is pretty wild for a mammal to mimic the sound of an insect. And we know bats echo locate but the idea that bats would mimic we I haven't ever heard of that before that's yeah fascinating. It's a mammal mimicking an insect to fool an avian like it's yeah very uh yeah that's that's really a cool story. Yeah yeah so there you go bats. When did the bats learn that the owls don't like the hornets? Yeah did the bats just was it transitive property was it like I don't like the hornets so the bow owls won't like the hornets let's see if it works did they try or was one bat like super horse like he had a cold and instead of screeching he buzzed and he survived. Or maybe they were just sitting around doing impressions yeah and then they noticed that the owls really didn't like one of their impressions. Yeah I think that's really the the interesting question is the the origin of this thing start. Fascinating. That is so cool. Go science figure it out. Oh gosh that's smart. Discover discover the things. Hey Justin. Yeah. You want to tell us some stories now? Oh I can do that as soon as this page loads up. Uh okay let's talk about Uruguay. Okay Uruguay. The first whole first whole genome sequences of ancient people of Uruguay has been collected and analyzed. This is a penis nexus published research led by anthropologists at Emory University and the University Republic of Montevideo Uruguay. According to the paper we find a surprising connection to the ancient individuals from Panama and eastern Brazil but not to modern Amazonians in their in their study. This result may be indicative of a migrative route into South America that may have occurred along the Atlantic coast. We also find a distinct ancestry previously undetected in South America. So they had DNA samples that some that dated back 800 years, another from a woman that went back 1500 years. So both well before the the arrival of Columbus. So our work here shows that indigenous people of ancient Uruguay exhibit an ancestry that has not been previously detected in South America according to John Lindo co-corresponding author and Emory assistant professor in anthropology. This contributes to the idea that South America being a place where multi-regional diversity existed and send of a monolithic idea of a single Native American group across North and South America. Archaeological evidence for human settlement in the area that we now know of as Uruguay which is they say along the South Coast of Brazil it's really close to Buenos Aires, Argentina, it's between Brazil and Argentina on the coast. They have evidence of settlements there that go back more than 10,000 years. European colonizers made contact in the early 1500s and by the 1800s colonizers had been launching massacre after massacre on various hunter-gatherer groups in that territory. Basically pretty much wiping them out. And then this is Quodi voice of Lindo again. Through the first whole genome sequences of the indigenous people of the region before the arrival of Europeans we were able to reconstruct at least a small part of their genetic prehistory. This work then is going to open the door for modern day Uruguayians to potentially link themselves to the genetic populations that existed before colonization. And he says we would like to gather more DNA samples from ancient archaeological sites from all over Uruguay which would allow people living in the country today to explore the possible genetic connection. If you're of European descent you can have your DNA sequenced and use that information to pinpoint where your ancestors are down to specific villages even. If you are descended from people indigenous to the Americas you may be able to learn that some chunk of your genome is Native American but it's unlikely you can trace a direct lineage because you there are not enough ancient DNA references available. Which is something I've absolutely seen. I've got the six percent Native American. You know I've you know equal percentages of other things like Portuguese a little bit of Greek and it gets pinpoints of oh it's probably northern Greek from this small three percent Greek and then Native American it shows two continents. Right it could be any of it. Six percent from somewhere on that side of the planet. All the rest of it it's got a little oh maybe from this village was it Yeah exactly and this is only great great grandparent I would have had that would have been a full Native American. So so that I can see how this is this is going to be a pretty cool tool going forward collaborating closely with indigenous communities locally archaeologists. Lindow hopes to advance DNA sequencing techniques to build a free online portal with increasing numbers of ancient DNA references from the Americas to help people better understand their answers to which I absolutely would if I found out like if I could I don't know if I've got ancient Uruguayan some sort of Peruvian thing I don't know if it's a North American if it's this Blackfoot so I have no idea native Native Native Californian. But I would you know I would absolutely soak up whatever remnants or post colonization or left of those cultures immediately and want to learn all about them as people do with their with ancestry and other scenarios too. And it is it is unfortunate that we don't have that record. And I think it really goes to show the biased nature of a lot of the the research that's been done that is focused so much on European ancestry as opposed to what is actually going on here in the Americas. Yeah there is bias there's also number of the population that they are serving but there's also there's also issues with North American Native American remains and the just absolute travesty of how they've been handled over the years that prevents a lot of that sort of research from from being done. So we'll see what happens going forward but I do like this story. Anyway the last story I've got today is about tattoos. Tattoos? So tell me are you going to break my heart? I don't get to have a fancy health tattoo that I can touch and that's going to tell me what my what's in my blood. I'm not going to break anybody's heart and that's a you know uh not intentional anyway you know it's it's really it was you not me it's just written a uh tattoos I've got a few you might too celebrities professional athletes musicians have them the guy your mother dated before she met your father was covered in tattoos. In fact your mother has a tattoo you have never seen. Ask her. I'm not saying you're going to want to know the answer what it is or where it's located but it's it's a conversation you should probably have at some point. Aesthetic skin inking has been around for a long time we have seen them on thousand-year-old pre-inking Peruvian mummies 1500-year-old Siberian princess of Ukok, 3000-year-old Egyptian ladies, 4000-year-old Terram Basin mummies, 5000-year-old Uzi the Iceman had tattoos, 43-year-old Adam Levine has some tattoos. List goes on. There's a lot of people got tattoos but imagine a tattoo that could be functional as a health sensor telling you how much oxygen you are using when exercising measuring your blood glucose levels at any time of day monitoring exposure to environmental toxins then everybody would want to get tattoos even the people who don't have one for whatever reason. Engineers at Tufts University have worked out a way to make a tattoo of sorts with a silk-based material that glows brighter or dimmer under a lamp and the one that they've created changes depending on exposure to different levels of oxygen in the blood. They report their findings in advanced functional materials. So the novel sensor is currently limited to oxygen reading levels. It is made up of a gel formed from a protein components of silk. The silk proteins have unique properties that make them especially compatible as an implantable material and currently these only are lasting in the skin somewhere between a few weeks and a little over a year. So these aren't permanent as of yet because the body is going to break it down over time. Substances though in the blood they say glucose, lactate, electrolytes that's a really interesting one. That's a really fascinating one. Dissolved oxygen all these things that can offer windows into the health and performance of your body can be very detected and absorbed by this silk material and even you know diabetics could get monitoring just by shining a light over a patch of skin. In experiments the implanted sensors detect the oxygen levels in animals, animal models in real time accurately track high low normal levels of oxygen and this is apparently just the latest this medical group in Kaplan's lab. They're working a lot with the silk proteins so they've got the sensors that they're working on. They're also doing orthopedic implants. They're doing scaffolding for creating new tissues for heart and bones where you sort of build up the tissues over a scaffolding. It sounds like they're finding a lot of really interesting uses for this but yeah I think I would definitely be on board for having having sensor tattoos. I think that would be fun. I think that would be... I like the idea of this one also it's not it could be a it's not like a tattoo it's a it's like a little little sensor light it's subcutaneous and you slip it under your skin and when your oxygen levels in this case but you could be looking at insulin you could be looking at glucose you could be looking at pH like there's all sorts of things it could sense and it suddenly changes colors or lights up at you. Time to change that filter. I love the idea of this for certain things but it scares me for other things right like for medical privacy you wouldn't want certain items about yourself to be displayed for anyone to see on your skin. Oh but what if we had a subcutaneous sensor that indicated whether or not women were pregnant? Yeah yeah exactly that's it's on the mind for me because of all the you know the you know it could go even situation happening right now it would just be you know like oh it's your time of the month I can tell it's blinking like oh my what right well well these all require a light to be shown on them to be active but I can imagine yeah you're in the club and you're like dancing and all this and then somebody's like oh look somebody's got pretty low oxygen levels for being out here on the dance floor it might not be a healthy maybe you should get tested for covid might be telling a little bit more about yourself than you want I suppose but uh but yeah like I like the idea of the electrolytes because that's the one like like knowing when you you've overdone it and are getting dehydrated would be fantastic knowledge for that's that's the one thing I could think of the diabetic thing you're of course having there's all forms of monitoring that are out there all seem a bit intrusive uh and annoying like I'd be really if I got diabetes I'd just be in so much trouble like I don't think I could never be checking I just never I'll just keep eating candy if I'm feeling like I'd just be bad at it I think but if it was just a little a little sensor I could just put the flashlight on and it said yeah you're fine or yeah maybe do something you know what I think that the actual application of this would be that would be super helpful is uh is something you put subcutaneous under your smartwatch or your fitness tracker that then it sends light signals to your tracker that then sends that information to your phone because then it's like it's more confidential it's sent to you personally you can turn it on you can say what's I know it's not ideal because then it seems like many layers of transmission but it does seem like it's something that you already have your fitness tracker there it can track multiple things in a way that your tracker could not and it could communicate with I don't know it's just because it's light that's also how that works yeah because you're right because the bluetooth connection is so secure well yes we have our secure secure podcast our secure stream I hope you're secure that this is this week in science I have a few more stories to bring to you now um hey we've been talking a lot recently about how we can keep from getting old we can what was your story last week Justin we can do micro uh fecal transplants microbiome transplants there have been studies oh we can inject young blood we can be like old vampires trying to be young we're talking but last week about metabolites and various things well brand new study published in nature this week cerebro spinal fluid if we were to inject cerebro spinal fluid perhaps it would make our brains younger researchers just published in nature about their study in which they took cerebro spinal fluid from young mice and injected it into old mice and then tested them on a fear conditioning memory test and discovered that hey the old mice that got the csf they had better oligodendrocytes which are kind of like the supportive cells in the brain not necessarily the neurons themselves but the ones that are packed all around it the oligodendrocytes support brain cells by producing myelin shields the axons makes the transmission of neural signals a little bit more a little stronger uh so yeah cerebro spinal fluid contains something that stimulates oligodendrocytes to boost up their activity to act younger and uh to make old brains younger they found that uh this something is called a serum response factor and if they used another compound called fibroblast growth factor 17 that fgf 17 it there's a lot of it in young mine young mouse cerebro spinal fluid it boosts srf levels which stimulates the oligodendrocytes and so maybe we won't actually have to use the cerebro spinal fluid after all but it's these growth factors that potentially make it all work a little bit better yeah here i am it's already extracting spinal fluid for mice and you're from your children that's what i was going to use mouse immortal doesn't want to stop for a child they want their stuff to go you know but i think the key to all of this is that we're seeing with all these mouse studies that's all mouse studies so far like really we're not there's a ways to go with understanding how it will work in people but the idea is that there are metabolites that there are things that are changing the way that the cells work the way that they signal with each other the way that they determine whether they're old or whether they're young and one of the things that affects all of this is our diet and apparently there is a a type of a type of i guess you could call it a supplement but a fatty acid it's a very particular kind of fatty acid called a plasmalogen and plasmalogens have been shown to potentially help uh to beat off mild Alzheimer's deficits researchers just publishing this week researchers from Xi'an Xiaotong Liverpool University, Stanford University, Shanghai Xiaotong University and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences they just published their work reporting that if you want to eat a diet containing organisms from the sea of the group acidiaceae that you too might be able to reverse some of the main signs of aging in your brain Blair do you remember what acidiaceae are what the heck is that jellyfish or something or what is that i can't hear you Blair you're muted i read the story for this week so i know the answer but i wouldn't have known it's sea squirts sea squirts if you want to eat sea squirts you too i dare ask what is a sea squirt it's a tunicant does that answer your question it's a kind of tuna it's a tuna fish oh perfect that's i don't know they're they look like they look like those um little under the toys that that that you would squish through your hands it's like a gel filled tube with a hole down the middle that's basically what they look like oh yeah they're not the kinds of organisms that you normally think of as appetizing for what could be delicious yet they are found in uh japanese cuisine in italian cuisine various uh various cuisines that are focused on sea life on sea organisms use them uh to yeah and enjoy them and apparently they are full of plasmalogens these plasmalogens are really really important for cell membranes specifically within our nervous system and so the proportion of plasmalogens decreases in our brains in our cell membranes in our nerves in our uh and all over our bodies as we age and so you would think if you can supplement your diet with either the precursors of or just plasmalogens you might be able to uh to improve memory deficits and aging effects that result from the loss of plasmalogens throughout your body i'm gonna start taking my plasmalogen yeah so i went looking and there is you know there are plasmalogen supplements on the internet but you don't know i mean really you can eat scallops you can eat sea squirts there's um a lot of uh sea life that contain these plasmalogens um i'm not quite sure i haven't figured out the exact dosage how many milligrams per kilograms of sea squirts you're gonna have to eat to have a benefit in your brain yet so so stay tuned on that until i can figure out exactly how big a serving size of sea squirt you need to see benefits going back to draining the spinal fluid from mice um but an unvetted source just a quick google tells me that there are also foods that have plasmalogens in them like pork and beef i don't know if they're pork and beef they're not it they're not as high levels as sea squirts muscles and scallops but they are so i can just eat bacon you can eat muscles scallops sea squirts i eat a lot of muscles so i feel like pretty well off um but anyway this is the first study to show in detail how these plasmalogens influence the aging brain and remove some of the deficits that occurs as a result of aging you know what is also great that a lot of people do eat and living in the pacific northwest is one of my favorite foods blueberries and i want you to know i have determined from a study published this week a half a cup of blueberries a day is enough to supplement and to reduce your risk for dementia you start in your midlife eating a half day late midlife not late life i mean late life you can you could start whenever really how do i know when it's midlife this thing doesn't have a i don't have a skin monitor that tells me how close to the end uh time for kerosel what is it 89 years old is is uh life expectancy so what fifties what would they call forties fifties we're just blueberries blueberries my friend are you really going to eat blueberries every day or did they find what's in the blueberries and you can eat other things too well in this particular study they did give individuals powdered blueberry uh extract so it contained all sorts blueberry stuff without the fiber and appears to have benefited the individuals so in this particular study they enrolled overweight women and men 50 to 65 years old with subjective cognitive decline and then had assessments to determine a bunch of things and they checked mitochondrial function as well they found that there was a a small benefit to the blueberry group as compared to the non-blueberry group and they also had a correction of their hyperinsulinia so it was uh it was good and their mitochondrial function improved as well so the cognitive findings improved executive ability in this middle-aged sample so 50 to 65 they're calling middle-aged at this point and it it suggests that the potential mechanistic factors associated with anthocyanin and proanthocyanin are what we're looking at anthocyanin and proanthocyanin these are uh antioxidant compounds within the blueberries my monies on eat varied and colorful fruits and vegetables and you'll be good don't just eat the blueberries everybody blueberries and sea squirts so that you can avoid eating the children this is the diet the twist diet i am going to write a nutritional manual my advice is start collecting mouse spinal fluid now before you get to midnight so that you can have enough because it's you only apparently you only get very little per mouse you're gonna need a lot of it man i'd rather drink mouse spinal fluid than eat blueberries what is wrong with you no i'm kind of with you Blair thank you my kids love them my kids my kids have devoured mountains of blueberries i can't stand them i just can't stand them i don't like fruit bitter little awful things terrible you don't have your your beef in your pork how can you not like muscles bake them bacon and shots not like fruit and be mostly vegetarian i eat vegetables she's not a fruit Italian uh what are you talking about nobody's nobody does that oh you know it's rare when we learn something new about each other on this show what a day it's a it's quite a day well i hope that we have benefited everyone's brain fluid that whether or not wear your sea squirt or your blueberry for the day that we are benefiting your brain we hope that you have enjoyed the show we've made it to the end yeah yeah i think we're there a tight almost 90 almost so close well i want to thank everybody for joining us and shout out to people who help the show fada thank you so much for all of your help on show notes and social media couldn't do it without you gourd are in law others who help keep the chat rooms clean and happy thank you for maintaining that identity for thank you for recording the show and rachel thank you for your editing and other assistants so great and i would love to thank our patreon sponsors thank you too therese smith james chauffeur i'm totally moving things around what just happened there boop de boop look at that story everything is moving now i'm gonna do that again let's start and i would really like to thank our twist sponsors thank you too therese smith james chauffeur richard badge Kent 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patreon and if you would like to support us on patreon head over to twist.org and click on that patreon link on next week's show we will be back wednesday eight p.m pacific time or thursday five a.m central european time broadcasting live from our youtube and facebook channels and from twist.org slash live hey do you want to listen to us as a podcast maybe while you powder your blueberries so you don't have to taste them just search for this week in science or podcasts are found if you enjoyed the show get your friends to subscribe as well for more information on anything you've heard here today show notes and links to stories will be available on our website www.twist.org you can also contact us directly email here's it here's it this week in science dot com justin at twistmeaning at gmail.com or me blair at blairbaz at twist.org just be sure to put twist twis t w i s in the starting line or your email will be spam filtered into a bat that sounds like a b that's being chased by an owl you can also then hit us up on the twitter where we are at twist science at dr kiki at jackson fly and at blair's menagerie we love your feedback if there's a topic you'd like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview a haiku that comes to in the night please let us know we'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news and if you've learned anything from the show remember it's all in your head this week in science this week in science is the end of the world so i'm setting up shop got my banner on furl it says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice show them how to stop the robot with a simple device i'll reverse for the warming with a wave of my hand and a little costume is a couple of grand this week science is coming your way so everybody listen to what i say i use the scientific method for all that it's worth and i'll broadcast my opinion all over the air because it's this week in science this week in science this week in science science science this week in science this week in science this week in science i've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what i say may not represent your views but i've done the calculations and i've got a plan if you listen to the science you may you might just not understand or you just may understand will you understand little sea squirt bunny rabbit looks like a bunny rabbit it's the after show after show yo yo they're so cute is this one's very cute this image it looks like with the little schmutz that's on it it looks like it's got a little face it looks like some little japanese anime character or something i love it a sea squirt is a tuna kit because that explains it entirely with a rounded leathery body and two short siphons lives on reef spilings and other hard surfaces in the shallow waters sea squirts are also called seed called sea grapes because a pack of sea squirts looks like a bunch of grapes not sea blueberries if there were blue ones they might little sea blueberries thank you for joining us everyone we appreciate it blair is maneuvering into her seated position for the after show ah yes time to recline and move my microphone much closer to my face what is this reclining that you speak of oh you know why is this night so different from other nights that is a philosophical question i don't know if i can quite answer it's actually part of the Passover Seder oh is it yeah and one of the questions is why tonight do we lean on pillows why on other nights we do not at the time why do you get to lean on pillows tonight because we were delivered from slavery and thus are able to relax or something like that i it's not correct it's very close um four is part of the four questions very cool why do we eat mattha why do we eat more or what uh why food is dipped twice there's something about the oh why mattha the unleavened bread because they had to run away and didn't have time for the bread to rise oh the comforts of freedom i was right yes that is why the pillow there it is eating good night father Derek i was hovering before so i didn't fall asleep everywhere hovering she has science magic yeah she has a hoverboard and she hasn't shared it with anybody yeah yeah yeah yeah justin you're not talking Derek Smith also points out to just never figure out how much everyone was talking during random shows so i went back to the show a couple of weeks ago to listen to the i listened to the edited version uh there and uh uh i wasn't even in the episode at all i was not i was nice no i probably picked one he wasn't in and yeah i went back like three or four weeks something like that and i was definitely the week that my baby was born oh right yeah that okay okay i see what you're doing there if you eat mattha you have to have a broom to sweep sweep it up yes yes this is an important when i would snack on mattha growing up and even still today i would often eat it over the kitchen sink oh i don't think i've ever tried it like that the only way i've had it is in a soup and it didn't was there was no crumbs that's that's mattha balls that's different yeah it was mushy yeah yeah that's a completely different thing that's not in its uh original form that's in you know like what's the what's the pokemon terms like that's an evolution of mattha is the mattha ball you know what's happening this weekend that's like or that's happening this week and weekend that's like my favorite thing every year what euro vision i actually finally saw the will ferrell movie one night and now i kind of want to watch the real thing you have to watch the real thing what do i need to and what's it on well i think peacock has it if you're subscribed to peacock um if you have a vpn you can access it on youtube through a vpn um uh i love sweden that's where or or or uh i guess i would have to turn mine off you're at yeah are you watching euro vision denmark no in in denmark absolutely not come on absolutely didn't even know it you're just i don't even know what it is you're just upset because denmark didn't make it past the semifinals that's all i get it that's why i haven't heard about it yeah now if you want to talk handball i want everybody i need everybody to go watch the norway performance or at least their music video norway's entry into euro vision this year is i think one of my absolute favorites ever ever ever ever so what am i searching nor region it's uh uh it's a euro vision yeah norway euro vision uh look for i guess the band is sub woofer w-o-o-l-f-e-r right absolute give that wolf a banana yes okay i will watch the wolf eats your grandma give that wolf banana give that wolf it's amazing before your wolf eats a grandma oh my what are we what are we doing what is this it's my new favorite thing oh i'm saving this for later oh yeah it's it's a whole i started walking it and i love it so it's a whole whole thing i'm sure you have a name so i will call you thief and then it goes and maybe you don't like that so i'll call you jim the lyrics are really funny i love it i hope it wins you really hope it wins that's great so euro vision is a music contest band contest the european song contest european song contest okay good to know i believe you're in europe right now and you don't even know like you could vote ooh can i have your votes sir i'm calling euro vision to tell them watch your votes hello euro vision i don't want to go to denmark anyway i didn't like their entry oh no i have yeah i didn't i somehow uh uh not a really big deal at this house that's very sad i'm sorry to hear it i don't know how it's it's not but i have to share the link hold on i'm gonna share i gotta share the link in our discord in the music channel for people because this is a i forgot that's a channel that we have yeah we got a discord people who are patreons can uh check out the discord i know identity four it's not true not only americans but they did start this year the american song contest and apparently the winner i didn't watch it because it's all on nbc and i just couldn't bring myself to do it but um apparently the winner is a k-pop singer uh from oklahoma or something like that that's not in europe no it's the american song contest it's the first time oh that's it what's happening is that maybe the american song contest winner will go to euro vision and be competing in the euro vision in the future not this season fair but i think we i think we should just stay out of euro vision i think we should just stay out of it but i don't know i'm not in charge else i don't know i gotta i need to go watch all the american song contest entries see how it stacks up i don't know some people get the euro vision assignment and do it appropriately others do others don't get it but gotta do what you can so i'm excited that's how i will be spending my saturday be watching the semifinal tomorrow my saturday will be euro vision nobody here isn't as excited as i am it's just oh yeah well you know i maybe i will be like maybe i'll look at it go out you're in there between this this episode taping and the next time we do show and i'll be like oh euro vision is like the most amazing thing i've ever seen but i doubt it i know i know it's unfortunate yeah it's gonna be my Derek Schmidt i know it does sound weird the euro vision america winner was a k-pop singer from oklahoma yeah i know that does that that actually this sounds really awesome it sounds great that that that's almost just by itself that statement is almost enough to get me to watch it like there's something there's something right with the world when that's taking place yeah well euro vision more people watch euro vision than watch uh the what's that what's that thing the super bowl we think in america we think the super bowl is a big deal but like more people watch euro vision i didn't see any of the super bowl this year none zero not even a commercial i i saw it it was football yeah i don't do the football anymore i used to love the show i used to love all of it but now it's uh i have trouble with it because of the head injuries i can't i can't do it i i tell me that's actually that is honestly how i feel about college football because i know none of these kids past the university level are playing the nfl there's just a this can't few of them that will make it through and a lot of them their lives are ruined damaging yep themselves now at the nfl level you know somebody's like hey justin you know i can give you multi millions of dollars for you to support your family with on into the future uh for some midlife late life brain impairment i'm like i'm doing that to myself anyway like that's a fair trade off yes and there's a big problem with that that's what i feel like any job does to me anyhow so yeah i would i there's a there's a certain level of compensation for physical risk that seems commensurate to me there's a big problem with that and it's the domestic abuse that follows cte the football players families didn't sign up for that did they right and it's not just it's not just oh and domestic abuse it is aggression that can't be it it's dysfunctional aggression anger issues and it's way beyond some brain damage it destroys lives it's not good and i can't watch football anymore what about boxing you're totally into boxing right no you know i've never liked boxing because it's right i've never liked boxing because it is just people punching each other in the face and that just seems like it's crazy because i don't i don't know the numbers let me give you but i know that in some ways putting helmets on football players hear me out has made it worse because because there are theories that hits are harder and people stay in longer because they feel protected because they have the helmets on and so they stay in longer because of the uh the pain medication and the steroids that's how i stand so so there's some real picture that i once watched uh who's the who's the guy who didn't uh vaccinate that played in green bay oh yeah that guy erin rogers thank you so erin rogers i watched him in a game and i watched erin rogers and he's like he's limping up to the line and then oh he's he's got this he's oh he's in so much pain and then he comes out of the game they're like oh they've lost their starting quarterback for the rest of this very important game and then like a couple plays later he comes out he's like bouncing up and down he like went back into the locker came out now he's bouncing now he's out there like an agile 20 year old version of himself and as you know does the sports ball winning thing rushes himself ahead first into the crack they shot him up with a whole lot of something real quick that took all no no you know what they do they take them and they smack them in the side of the head and they say it's okay you're gonna be fine come on get your head in the game they put an ice pack on their head for 20 minutes they go you're fine it's yeah and i mean a lot of terrible head trauma comes from repeat concussion so if you got a concussion and then you went back out there and got hit again it compounds you know why i love eurovision the hits keep coming sorry not sorry no that was a good i was a good one i was a good one you're i'm still i'm still i'm still your your helium portland the preamble is still affecting me in a very negative way somehow negative i appreciate it this one got me uh you know this is where i this is where i try all my stand-up material you know that's good good sounding word in my world stand-up is just a lot of puns i'm gonna i'm gonna forego my uh my economic post show everybody knows yeah you know it sucks i hate it it's the worst it's the economy it's the worst i just can't i i just can't right now i can't with that and the abortion and the and the overworking and the and the the targeting of minorities and people with disabilities and the i just can't i just can't right now yeah and and just tell you it's not an abortion law technically it's a forced pregnancy law yeah really yeah it's a force a contract forced upon you by the government to give birth is what it is and it's uh it's also it's quite literal murder in some cases if you prevent people from getting an abortion so there's that too which is fun though well the so yeah so the public health stuff related to it like there's so many so many things but if you go look into the history of all of it apparently um uh Ginsburg Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she was still a defender when she was still a like a lawyer working things up she had a case that she wanted to get to the Supreme Court before Roe v Wade because she actually thought it would be a better better defense of of abortion and it wouldn't have tied it uh to privacy in the same way it would have been uh tied to a different constitutional amendment um it was the 14th amendment that she wanted to tie it to but um yeah and so if she had gotten it to the Supreme Court first we could be having a very different conversation today because it would be a it would be a different a different reasoning in a different battle but yeah it's fascinating the history of it all there's so much and we have to remember this is there's never the end this is the long journey of time and not everything goes everybody's way all the time and there's groups you gotta gotta work through all of it and there's more to be done there's work to be done and maybe it will be better maybe it can be done better later and the to just look at everything from the fatalistic pessimistic perspective that it's everything's row and it's gonna and and everybody's um everybody is going to like from this one action and and extrapolating out to like the worst-case scenarios which is that's the worst-case yes okay you can worst-case scenario scenario it but that's not where we are yes we don't want to go but we should make plans to veer away from that i think i think but the problem is we are almost there we're pretty much there there's trigger laws and i think 18 there are and it's gonna yes and it's not gonna be great it's gonna be really bad for a while the person who's gonna be the i'm not saying it's gonna be good the governor is talking about prayer in school and eliminating sex education you know we're much closer to that experiment of having states that run like theocracies because what they're trying to do is break the federal thing i mean this is a step that we're not the republicans in the senate maybe want to put an abortion ban federal law into place which is hilarious because it is the most hypocritical thing you could think of in this debate because it was also supposed to be about states rights and now this is gonna what i will say is it's easy to look at worst-case scenario it was always about sure driving revenue to to church groups but that's fine but what what i want to say is like it's this isn't the end of the world for the nation or women's rights in general however it is the end of the world for certain individuals in the next few months and years and so what i will say is there are resources out there for you to contribute to organizations that will transport women to areas where they can get legal abortions there if you live in a place where this is helpful you can go escort people to abortion clinics and there are things that you can do to help the individuals who can be whose lives could be ruined by this i'm going to be very clear so lives could be ruined like their lives will never be the same or they could die so uh there are there are lives at stake and there are things that we can do if all you can do is is give some money that is a thing if all you can do is give some time you can make calls um and so there there's stuff that you could there's there's resources out there you can i did this last week google like how can i help abortion rights now because in california it's it's not always easy to figure out how i can do that because physically where i am right now it is not a screaming issue like abortion rights in california are safer right now so i'm in oregon yeah right so how can you help people in these other states in half of the united states that are going to be impacted and there are resources out there for you so anyway that's that's my soapbox moment i think it's a good soapbox i mean i think there's a lot of uh disenfranchisement that's gone on over many many decades to try and keep people from voting to keep people from being civically active i mean why don't we have civics classes anymore yeah that's interesting um you know there's there are certain things about our government if we want a democracy you have to be active in the democracy democracy is for the people by the people right we have to be active in it for it to work and so i think you know unfortunately it's a massive reminder that there needs to be uh needs to be more work but yeah i think your recommendations are very good uh someone i love reading i think she's a she's a a lawyer a um a professor at Berkeley terry canfield she's got some great writings that uh i think are very helpful she's very logical reasoned works from history like she's fantastic trying to find she had one link on things that people could do but i found i missed it somewhere whatever this little somewhere anyway terry canfield.com she's great if you're we're looking for stuff i remember i remember having civics class and like that great i have civics class civics class is taught by someone named coach right it was not very good i had um economics and uh american democracy that were each half semesters so those all together made one semester in high school so that was my experience i don't even remember if we had civics class we had it was history in the luckily our teachers thought it was important to include that kind of stuff. Derek schmidt thank you i do try to have a positive twist i do i you know if i let myself get super bleak then i'm not getting out of bed in the morning i don't need that i need to i need to think about think about positive positive stuff what can we do and you know what if i'm ever just completely angry and overwhelmed with the world i turn off the social media and i read science magazines i read uh escapist supernatural fiction i do whatever i can to give my mind a break and then i can get back to it sleeping is good i like sleep sleep is great it's a it's a big one it is a big one jesson thanks for doing the uh interview with me last week on friday oh yeah that was fun we missed you blare i know i couldn't make it i got stuck in my day job day job schmage rob yes yes yes yes yes it's important it's how i pay to live i've gotta do it how i eat and and stay warm and pay for gas you know oh gas and groceries all the things with the increasing prices is there grocery inflation in danmark too jessen and i know gas is crazy all over the place but like is i've heard inflation is everywhere but it's really the same yeah it's really hard to tell like i haven't noticed it but everything is more expensive here to begin with so it's like and then it's in a different currency which is also like feels like monopoly money on some level like so i am having a i don't really know gas is already uh like you know they sell it by the leader and it's more expensive right yeah so so it's already like that but then you know danmark has mass transit everywhere and everything's very close by so i think i filled up the gas tank a month ago and it's still like mostly full because yeah you know there's all sorts of uh danmark does produce a tremendous amount of food locally as well so maybe that hasn't been a big impact that way i i don't really notice uh oh the energy prices have been energy prices has have been higher much higher it's one point they were actually in got insanely high and had something to do with like Norwegian hydro electric generation being down because of unseasonal lack of rain or something oh wow yeah there was a climate related energy crisis that was gripping at some point but yeah and and this war in ukraine is a poland away from here yeah a little bit of Baltic sea in the in a the country of poland away and that is certainly affecting the eu in in general in mass yeah other than that i don't really notice anything but i also i'm not like i'm not like i'm not going out places and doing a lot of things right now either so it's i shouldn't necessarily be asking the uh the parent of a newborn but what's life like not really leaving the house to go out and do stuff everything that needed to get bought pretty much got bought a while ago so i am excited so in a bit in a few month and a half no i don't know somewhere around there month month and a half month and a half maybe i'll be going i guess that's end of very end of june to mid july taking a trip to france fantastic and i'm very excited because the eu is like a dollar five right now yeah yeah i'm i'm a fan of this yeah yeah so that's gonna be good uh and yeah flights actually i'm gonna be i'm gonna be uh visiting oh i'll be the end of the month uh a couple of weeks i'll be heading to the states for a little bit away i think it's like the cheapest flight uh rancher flights that i've ever purchased for some reason yeah so even in the like which is weird like even during the pandemic when i was the only person on the airplane the price is actually even when they were giving tickets away during the pandemic fly please yeah we need weight on the plane we need to use up this gas that's cool summer holidays at some point at some point uh whoever's monitoring the chat room has got to kick cody s out until he's at least somewhere near subject matter at hand in any of the conversations or or it could be that's an ai bot that's just confused that we're in the aftershow and doesn't know how to track i also often wonder in those situations if like the code got crossed and he's watching a completely different video but chatting in the wrong window very much has that feel to it so what that was science oh he's send him home to think about it yeah i think that was science good i don't know i don't know about that oh Derek schmidt the last time we did a live show together was just before the pandemic wait wasn't this a live show wait wasn't this a live show this is a live show but it was yeah we were in seattle for the epicenter with the epicenter reported epicenter at a convention yeah that was was that before or oh yeah that was after because right before that we did uh sketchfest in san francisco in january and then we did seattle in february so we had like yeah back to back and i was very sick at the sketchfest show so so you know who knows who knows what that was first did you take covid to seattle no it showed up there before we went my very first us case is before we got there but yes i could have who's to say i remember that oh that was that was fun i'm glad we did get those two shows in that year before we didn't get to see each other for a very long time where are you going are you are you looking at your mess kiki don't out my mess come on the off-camera oh also don't call my husband a mess uh no we've not we did not do a texas show next month asking remember you did california didn't you do a texas show uh i actually have a never set foot in texas policy that i have been living by all of my life and i'm gonna stick to that i went to texas for twist in that's right 20s yes we didn't do a live show but you went to the podcasting conference yeah i think it's 2015 we had to send blare she was went to for i have a i have a don't set foot in authoritarian regimes the austin is a great austin is a great city go to i've yet to go there is it really though texas is a big state with lots of great is austin really that great that it would be worth being in texas for i don't believe so i know some wonderful people in austin who i'm sure they are wonderful people everywhere that's not the point you're still living under texas in austin south by southwest happens in austin it's a good reason to go austin city limits happens in austin yeah there's some great music in austin there's other places in the world all of those people should go to i'm just saying dig up the city we're gonna carry some place else hey everybody was from somewhere at some point right and now there you are everybody's been places ew make sure you wash your hands was there a lab coat involved no i don't know i'm answering random questions yes brian brushwood happens in austin it's true and his invisible wife and their kids and their cute new puppy yes all the invisible wife for many years uh bonnie brushwood brian brushwood's wife was known it i mean i think i think that's still her twitter handle invisible wife that's funny i saw actually that's the the greatest magic trick i've ever seen was on uh one of his episodes where they do magic tricks one of his yeah uh it was the greatest it was the greatest trick i've ever seen and the reason was is it was that one out of 52 the there's there's magic tricks that you get to a certain point and you go is this your card and you're wrong and then you do a second reveal where you've shown that you actually did find the right one and they got to that point where it's the wrong card only happened to be the right card and so and so then you know his mission in the show is to to break to try to bust the the the trick how it was done but he got it the one time it was like i was like that guy shuffled and that guy cut it and somebody over here picked the card you never touched anything like how that was just magic and it was because it was that it was halfway through the trick and it looked like it had been finished and so the magician guy just stopped because he just got lucky and it made no sense and it's the greatest magic trick of all time because it was that one out of 52 where that just happened yeah oh johnson space center in texas yeah i'm not saying i'm not saying there's good things i'm not saying that there's not a redeemable thing within the territory that we define as texas i'm just saying i'm not contributing you have your own style or putting myself at risk of it it's got the highest rate of incarceration in a country with the highest rate of incarceration in the world that state has the highest rate per capita of incarceration one of the highest rates of gundat there's there's like a whole list of reasons before i even get into the politics of the state of why i will never step foot in texas because i know for a fact i will immediately get incarcerated and shot and then and then and then and then kept alive long enough to go do some labor detention facility where i have to work for free for the state for the rest of my it's just not worth it there's nothing there's nothing about texas that i find redeemable i find i you know and everybody's like oh but i'll see next max i'm just making things up um hey minori should go though is um denver they just opened a giant new meow wolf yes yes and there's uh one already is the one already in las vegas yes there's one in las vegas already there's one in denver you should just do a meow wolf tour yes that should be our tour circuit it's just yeah please that's my yeah that was a blast i'm down for a meow wolf tour that i would love to do that i love it yes there's also outside of denver there's a meow wolf ride in a amusement park no that is that's meow wolf that is the meow wolf is it's like an amusement park no no no no there's like a no no no so there's like a there's like a great america style amusement park that has one ride in it that's meow wolfy outside of denver in denver proper what they just opened was the nexus right right but it's like it's like an amusement park isn't it that the whole i watched a video about it did they change it maybe so um no so so the one that just opened is a whole building that's kind of more immersive like what we did in san afa that's the one that just opened a denver the one that's been around to denver for about a year is no way longer than that is kaleidoscope and that is just a ride within a larger okay i got it got it yeah so there's two divergent station convergent station is the thing that just opened yeah this is meow wolf's third permanent exhibition yeah yeah so i don't even know if kaleidoscope's still there i hope they don't get rid of it i don't want to miss anything i know meow wolf's biggest experience yet is in denver colorado all right so we need a conference or we need something an event in denver how about meow wolf just meow wolf okay yeah i don't think we need a more thing maybe we should meet meow wolf people and see if they would like twist to do a live podcast broadcast from meow wolf yes we can always be a thing yes do we have to wear crazy hyper colored clothes i know that um i don't think we have to the house of eternal return had a stage in it so i'm just saying there could be a stage at convergent station that we can do a show at oh events meow wolf events welcome to the per plexi plex yes meow wolf's venue in denver i almost bought um bog water from their website they're i just love their website so much they have a lot of dj's playing oh man june 11th nintendo kiki ball you gotta get over there we gotta go the kiki ball we need a kiki ball i love it there's a pizza restaurant in this one i think i don't know if they actually serve any food but there's like a whole pizza thing involved with this one a lot of dj's i don't see any podcasts many dj's i'm sure that it's possible to make it happen i love meow wolf so anybody who has a chance if you get a chance check out check back check check out a meow wolf installation they're amazing and yes derrick schmidt you don't think the two worlds go together but they do they do where's like the i want to find the uh in the shop the uh the food they have like food items bog water yeah there's other stuff too it's so good i just love it there is oh okay there are sounds like two installations gonna be happening in texas justin we might have to go to texas to go to meow wolf when it happens uh might have to happen it's not yet but you just you know i'm just putting it in your brain right now i'm gonna put a pin in it just kind of let it process there's two there now no they're building them fourth and fifth permanent exhibitions located in grapevine mills maul and houston's fifth ward ooh do you want some goat cuss lemonade okay no nope i think it's time to cut her off i think we gotta cut her off that's it blare no more drinks no more drinking on the show blare it's vegan accessory where did you find it under accessories no it's under food and drink it's part of the omega mart i like the omega mart okay i have you been no no i haven't been i need to go to vegas to go to the omega mart i have heard it is the lesser of all of the meow wolf ex expositions but i still want to see it i'm gonna tour the mall i imagine that has to do with the maybe the cost of really growing up disney land i don't know how long can you spend at meow wolf oh at least three weeks oh yeah i would say we spent close to four hours there and i feel like are you sure i feel like it was longer than that no no because we had to go back for something we had to like cut it at a certain point i remember and we like had to eat we had to stop to eat was a problem like if if we could have quiet and we have to eat if we could have eaten inside the uh the house of eternal return i feel like we would have spent much longer more time yeah we're gonna back up another round uh yeah it's actually one of the frustrating things about traveling with the two of you is you're always needing to like stop to eat yeah let's have the meal no big yes human i'll go to the bathroom require fuel sorry not sorry who to thought like experiencing the food of a place yeah also i require food to function yeah there's that i get very angry if i don't eat don't get angry i become unpleasant don't do that oh look at that cute meow wolf cropped up oh man now i'm looking at merch stop it Blair i love it i bought here i can show you this is something i bought from he hasn't put it on anything yet but um this fun pin oh that's fun it is a fun pin i like it that's a good one it's from future fantasy delight oh gaurav that would be a fun 30th birthday denver meow wolf do you guys ever explain what it is meow wolf is a puzzle room slash art installation it's an immersive art experience that is run by a variety of individual artists that each get a room or a space or a stall and it is all turned into a narrative experience it's what i would say you actually physically walk through and yeah experience so you can walk through it and just like trip out of the art or you can like read things and like see the story that develops through the story that you can follow or or you can just look at things i have so much yeah but like in that story that you're following in that interactiveness though like you're in one part there's this kitchen and in the kitchen there's some hidden clues and stuff if you were trying to follow the narrative don't give it away oh give it away jesset i really think the less you say about it the better yeah i think the best thing about it is one of my best moments was somebody who worked there at the time where it's going through and i was looking at stuff and he like bent down and he pointed at something and he goes touch it and i was like i get to touch things oh my god i forgot yeah and it was like and then we ended up playing the drums with these little things with these little things on the floor it was very fun so good yeah i love i yeah i really do believe like the less you know about it going in the better because then you can experience it and explore anywhere you go yeah okay yeah that's fair enough just go just go take our recommendation go to a meow wolf near you or far away just not in texas i guess they're not open yet but if you're in texas they're not open yet anyway you're in texas already i guess you've already made that bargain with yourself to live there and so then you should go to meow wolf is when they open yeah yeah when uh the one in santa fe they did allow photography i took some yes photos yeah i didn't take many because i felt like it didn't do it justice they don't tell you oh yeah i took a lot i took a lot and they were amazing yeah yeah photos turned out better than my my ability to take a picture because of all the art that somebody else had made because of all of somebody else's art yeah haha paul yeah i see your comments uh i'm gonna go have meow wolf dreams well yeah say good night then blare good night blare say good morning justin morning justin good night kiki good night everyone thank you for joining us for this wonderful episode it was really great to see you again this week and we do look forward to seeing you next week check out your vision if you can't make it to meow wolf this weekend and in the meantime what stay safe stay healthy and stay curious we'll see you next week