 Hello world if you are like me feel like you're losing your mind in modern society just a little bit at the moment we do hope that the next couple of hours of science will lend you more of that sanity maybe a little humor maybe a little joy yeah we are going to do our live podcast broadcast right here and now for the next little bit unlike I love to tell you not all the stuff may necessarily make it into the final podcast so you're here for all the real stuff isn't that exciting make you feel great hello everyone in the chat rooms so good to see you tonight wonderful to have you here it's just great to get everyone together because we need a little our good community right now I like the I like that that you've added to the show what you're about to see is a rehearsal of the actual show that represented before live audience no this is the live audience one this is the one where we take out the point parts when you laugh and we take that audio and we put it into other parts of the show where the laugh didn't really laugh track we add our own laugh track exactly yeah live audience live track are we ready to do a show I think so oh we've got a crowd in there already look at let's make showings hello everyone okay time for science our audios are good at least in my end of things I'm not seeing the chat room telling me that everything's poorly so yeah shoebrew you're not losing your mind everyone else is crazy something about beavers in Iraq I don't know about that but there is but there could we could have after show beavers in Iraq in the after show maybe we'll also talk about parrots and opiate addictions in Afghanistan but you know that's an after show so stick around for that and yeah no new glasses yet because I have yet to go to an optometrist I just know that I will get them at some point this year you know you'll have somebody like literally in your face I'm kind of optometrist just test the eyes and do the thing and say here's your eye glass prescription yes that will happen eventually it's a 2021 adventure hello twitch hello YouTube hello Facebook hello web chat hello live we are going live in three two this is twist this week in science episode number 807 recorded on Wednesday January 13th 2021 why is science so hot I'm dr. Kiki and tonight we will fill your head with heat herpes and hope but first Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer aside from the occasional constant need to do things for others jobs family friends other social construction tasks to require attention paying there are many ways to be in the world life is a choose your own adventure book where you can flip pages based on choices of whim or reason assuming you don't have any missing pages and do have the ability to read life can take you just about anywhere you want it to within reason but without limitations wherever you choose whatever you choose you will gain new knowledge meet interesting people visit strange places even if that strange place is your own hometown where if you haven't noticed is much stranger than you think if you get too bored you can flip the page and set off on an adventure making all the choices that lead you from one encounter to the next one of the places your page flipping has taken you is here the reason you are here is because of everything that has ever happened every choice ever made even by other people the sum total of all history human or otherwise has led to this what happens on the next page should be obvious by now it's this week in science coming up next science to you and a good science to you to Justin Blair and everyone out there welcome to another episode of this week in science we are back oh we have come through this past week of events and things in the world to talk about science bring here to bring you that science that makes you feel so good and happy because there is progress being made somewhere in the world I have stories tonight about hot oceans a hot planet and hot new mRNA vaccines what do you have for us Justin oh that's a good question ah let's see I have got some ancient couple stories about ancient human persistence Ukrainian melting pot baby megalodons and this dire wolf DNA no baby the other thing actually I do have baby sharks as well I have baby megalodons and baby sharks Justin you're crouching on my territory a little bit all the animals outside the animal corner I'm feeling a bit spacey tonight but Blair yes did you bring for the animal corner oh my goodness it was very hard there was lots of good animal stories this week so I understand why Justin brought so many I was torn but I brought a story about snakes a story about spiders and a story about jellyfish this sounds like a fun vertebrate in vertebrate animal corner and it's almost appropriate for Halloween but that's still 10 months away it's Halloween in January oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh get hot. In the ocean, they're getting really ocean-y hotness. It's not good. Yes, technical term. The water is heating up. And we are the proverbial frog in the boiling water that's not yet boiling, but is warming slowly. Although it's not us in the oceans, it's all the fish and other organisms that live in the oceans. A research research study that was published in advances in atmospheric sciences this past week, found that the oceans really, really, really are warming up quite a lot. They discovered that let's see, let me get the numbers right here. The Earth's oceans warmed anywhere from one to 20 sextillion jewels since 2019. Now, what may you ask is a jewel? I mean, a sextillion is big. That's like a trillion billion or a quintillion million or a million quintillion. There are possibly about 300 sextillion stars in the observable universe. This makes it sound like the oceans are boiling. It does! The amount of energy that has been dumped into the oceans that they have heated up, the amount of energy, and this is a jewel. Jewels are measured in kilograms times meters squared per second squared, meters squared over second squared, or Newton meters, the amount of force it takes to move an object a meter, or it is the energy dissipated as heat when one amp of current passes through one ohm of resistance for a second. One jewel is also equal to the heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 0.24 degrees Celsius. And so they looked at the upper 2000 meters of the ocean and found that they contained 234 sextillion jewels more than the average over 1981 to 2010. So it's a lot. And an article from Science News equates it to about enough energy has been absorbed in the last year to heat, potentially heat to boil 1.3 billion kettles of water. So if you wanted a lot of tea last year, really would have done it for us. But that said, there's a wide variation between one to 20 sextillion jewels. Well, but also how many kettles of water in the ocean? Because you have to think about that energy spread over. And that's where I want to say the surface of the ocean. This is the surface of the ocean. It's the heat in the oceans are big. Yeah. This is the amount of energy. The oceans are not yet boiling. We don't have to go and the frog and I didn't realize I was boiling yet. But we kind of do have to start sounding that alarm because as the oceans heat up, that's going to change their ability to hold co2. It's going to change their ability to do all sorts of things. We're going to see more ocean acidification. We're going to see more co2 ending up in the atmosphere. I know Blair, you work on this and communicate these kinds of risks all the time. But it's Yeah. So the thing is one of the main things that we as land dwelling individuals have to worry about what the ocean's heating is the changing of ocean currents, which change air currents, which change weather, which we were talking about last week, with the cold snap that that certain areas on the planet had over the past couple months. But Spain, there was in Madrid is snow in Madrid for the first time in 50 years. Yeah, it's happening now. Yeah. And so I mean, that's why the the communication group I'm with no key talks about the earth or the the oceans as climates heart, because that's exactly what it does. Right. And so when you heat it up really quickly, it puts stress on this circulation system. And so the the movement of hot and cold water affect the movement of hot and cold air, which totally mess up our our land based weather systems. Yeah. And when weather systems change over time, because climate is changing, that means different organisms are able to survive it changes survivability in different areas. And so they're going to be huge impacts in the next few years. Anyway, on to more bitey things. Justin, tell me about sharks or maybe sharks. Yeah. So this is this is kind of follows what you're talking about the the warming oceans a little bit. The last time we were in the carbons per wetsits in the atmosphere was when the megalodon was in existence, the super giant enormous shark, which isn't actually as super giant enormous as I think people think it is because media has shown even monsterously bigger. It's still big. I mean, they can reach 50 feet. Yeah, it's like the size of a school bus as a shark. It's longer than a school bus. It's longer than the longest school bus you've ever seen. It's another like 10 feet longer than that, which is huge. That's pretty massive, right? So this this was they were looking at when they they discovered that when when they gave birth, the babies were about this size, even maybe a little bit bigger than an adult human, six foot six longer, two meters in length at birth, which is kind of weird for a fish to give it's a live birth by a fish, it's kind of a live birth. It's a it's a live birth like written really light in pencil because it's because there's still an egg. The egg hatches internally. So it's just like some snakes do that too. Yes. So and actually, I guess some sharks to this day kind of do this. Yeah. Sharks do that. Yeah. But but not all of them. I guess not all of them. So but what this shark to do is it gets they're born, these eggs, they hatch inside the megalodon mom, and then they start they need something to eat as they're growing to six foot six, right? So they start eating the other and that's how that's how they survive. So that was sort of an interesting story. But then the reason that one's so much caught my that's just what do you call it? Oh, oh, phagey. It's some sort of internal in cannibalism. It's going on pre birth, cannibalism eating your siblings. Just one method of survival. Anyway, that's published in a journal scientific reports. Or no, that's, sorry, that's not in scientific reports. Where is that? That's in the journal historical biology in scientific reports is the other story that caught my eye going along with this, which is research that was done New England Aquarium found as climate change causes oceans to warm, baby sharks are born smaller and exhausted under nourished and and having a harder time surviving as ocean temperatures warm, which baby sharks are usually actually pretty, pretty small. So then you can see sort of the why was megalodon so big? And why was it having such big babies in those olden times of warmer oceans? Because it had to that's how they survived. There's a lot of competition in the oceans back then. There's lots of big bads around. It's a big bad thing. Yeah. Yeah, it says a co author and associate professor, Jody Rummer. We lose a who's one of the co supervisors at James Cook University says, what is the Great Barrier Reef will likely experience summer averages near even exceeding 31 degrees Celsius, which is pretty warm day in California, 87.8 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. Sharks do not care for their eggs after they are laid, meaning shark eggs must be able to survive unprotected for up to four months. Rumors site rumbers sites rising ocean temperatures is a major concern for the future of sharks, particularly those that are laying eggs. So megalodon back in the day had the solution just let them chill for the time get big inside mama and then spit them out. Mama has to be big enough though for the babies to grow inside. So it just everything has to get bigger and bigger and bigger. I don't know if there are any sharks that do is it tiger sharks have live birth? Yeah, there's there's quite a few actually I'm trying to remember. It's kind of a grab bag. It's it's it's about a half and half I think of sharks, but a lot of sharks still give live birth. But this aquarium days are too far behind me. I don't know tiger sharks because it's mentioned in the study. Silver tip, hammerheads, white tip reef sharks, lemon sharks, blue sharks, mako sharks, bull sharks. Right. But if sharks become affected, if sharks end up scrawnier because the temperatures are off, then they're not going to be able to get the food that they want. They're not going to be able to fight off other sharks the way that they need to they're not going to be able to fight off other competitors and sharks will not survive. And sharks are important for ecosystems. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, there's lots of questions. Do we know if the the egg case of sharks for sharks that lay egg cases are those impacted by temperature or carbon dioxide content? We don't know that yet. Right. And I was also mentioned that one of the strategies they've seen is for the the baby shark in the hack the unhatched shark to start devouring the egg gilks or egg casing sooner for nourishment, which also makes them born sooner, I guess, because they're big, they hatch earlier, basically, they're devouring any resources they get. Shoebrew. And one of the chats says, when you run across a shark skin diving, they all look 50 feet long. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. So from sharks, let's move on to jellies. We're going to stay for a minute. Jellies, aka jellyfish. They they're wild. If you've ever sat and watched them in an aquarium, I know I could, they're like nature's lava lamp. They're perfect. They're great. It was an amazing graceful movement to them. And if you if you pay close attention, I've often wanted it looks like they shouldn't be able to go anywhere. Looks like they're moving the same water out and in kind of with their bell. So anyway, researchers from University of South Florida uncovered how they're so good at swimming. They're actually considered one of world's most efficient swimmers. And so actually what they do is they make a wall out of water to push away from. So let me explain. They produce two vortex rings, donut shaped bodies of fluid underneath their translucent the bodies the way they move. And they spin in opposite directions, which means they push against each other. And it creates basically a wall for them to then get leverage against as they squeeze and reopen. So it creates what they call a ground effect force. So it's like they're pushing off from something. This is actually the same way. Airplanes take off, which is very interesting. So during take off, the air squeezes between the airplane and the ground, which builds pressure and forces the boost that gets the plane off of the runway. And so these jellies are using these two vortex rings in instead of ground to get this resistance and create lift. They have this virtual wall. And this is something that they have never seen before in the animal realm. This phenomenon of pushing away from a solid boundary where there is no boundary. And of course, there is no solid. It's a right. Yeah. Absolutely. These little bags of water figured out how to do this. It's crazy. But they have they they now of course are looking at this as a way to engineer vehicles to take advantage of this phenomenon so they can develop underwater vehicles that can be equipped with sensors that monitor the ocean without disruption. Because the other thing, these jellies, they don't create a lot of disruption around them. They move so smoothly that this could be something that would be really beneficial to create. Aside from it being something that takes very little energy to begin with, it would also create very little disturbance. Yeah. If you could create something that has that flexible form factor to be able to create to create that motion to create the the force itself, that would be a pretty cool underwater sub, right? The submarine would be pretty amazing. Yeah. Then slap on those chromatophores we talked about a couple weeks ago. You're good to go. Oh my gosh. I someday do want to be inside a jellyfish themed submarine. That would be amazing with a clear dome with chromatophores and you see the side of it and then it has like the whoosh whoosh. You might really have to take a lot of drama mean before that because you'd be you'd be doing a lot of this. A lot of this. Yeah. Done enough. It could make you really sick. I think. Done enough. If you have motion sickness problems, it may be an issue. Yes. Not quite the same as those smooth jets of water. Yeah. It's so interesting how we go from though in figuring out this new method of movement and then immediately someone starts thinking how can we start using that? Yeah. What does that mean for the future of spacecraft too? Oh, space jellies. Come on. I love it. Let's make it go. Let's make it go. All right. I have a story. More hot stuff for me. This time it's a hot and rocky planet, a distant planet, found around one of the oldest stars in our galaxy. This last week researchers from University of California Riverside reported on their discovery using the TESS Transiting Exoplanet satellite, survey satellite, the TESS satellite to inspect using the Keck Observatory, a star with a planet around it. And yes, identified this little planet that's not so little. It's a super Earth. It's about three times as massive as our planet and it orbits really close to its sun, its star, so that it whips around the planet in during one Earth Day about two times two days worth of orbits around its star. It's close in, which means it's hot. It's up to 2,000 degrees Kelvin on the surface of this super Earth-like planet. They have determined, however, that because of the density, it's very similar in density, even though it's three times as massive, it's very similar in density to the Earth. And so they're thinking this is like a proto-rocky planet. It's around a star that the reason they didn't expect to find it there, because this was a star that doesn't have a lot of metals that are used for planet construction. It's in this really old area of our galaxy, the galactic thick disk. And stars are old. They don't have these elements that are used for building rocky planets. Once they're like, oh, we'll just find another gassy giant there, but no. Because of the mass and the density, they're really thinking that this is a hot, rocky, super Earth-like planet close to its star. And the interesting aspect to that is, because the star is so old, because this is such an old part of our galaxy, this suggests that rocky planets have been around since the beginning, since as soon as there was stuff to start clumping together as more than just sticky gases, clumpy gases, that rocky planets started forming. And so maybe we'll be finding more rocky planets, more places. Although they'd kind of be like sponge cake planets. Not quite as, you know, more tufa-ish. Not quite as dense. So lacking metals, does that mean like civilization would never leave this stone age? But the stone age would continue to advance in technology. So it would be like the Flintstones. They'd have like big stone computers and stone cars. And you just keep going with what you've got to work with, I guess. Yeah. I mean, can you imagine if, okay, say one of these older rocky, quote unquote, rocky super-earths or planets. They have a similar, more massive similar density. So the gravity is going to be interesting. They're not going to want to go anywhere. But they're not going to have stuff like tungsten and they're not going to have metals that we use to create circuits. So maybe, you know, maybe they would never embark on a computerized civilization. Maybe they would never find that kind of technology. And I think I'm sorry, like it's three times the size of the earth, but the density is the same. But that just means it's relative densities. So that means it's still more like gravity is still like three times as much then. Right, because it's more massive. More dense, it's just bigger. That's a rough start. Like I guess you're used to the gravity you grow up with. So does that mean that you have like spindly creatures to handle the gravity or are they just really bulky and strong, but then they're too heavy? But if you don't have a lot of metals, I mean, even though stuff like magnesium is, you know, a trace metal, we still need that for our biology. So we grew up with it. See, that's the other weird thing. It's like you don't have it. You fear something out. This is my argument every time we talk about what it takes to make life is. This is just what we know it takes to make life here. You know what we should do? We should go investigate life on another planet and see how it came to be. Oh, you go, Justin. Just go check it out. No, I actually like this planet. I know there's plenty of people who don't, so they can go. Right. Well, this planet is called Planet TOI for the TESS Object of Interest 561B. That's what it's called, but they have confirmed its presence. It's big, not very dense, and it's hot. And they didn't expect it to be there. So that in itself is a wonderful scientific surprise. All right. So moving from my hot stuff, you've got a melting pot. Yeah. For fondue? Yeah, it's really interesting. So this is the largest study of genetic diversity in Ukraine, which is apparently the largest country that is completely within Europe. This is published in the open science journal Giga Science. It's an international effort, meaning it was researchers not just from the Ukraine, but also from the US and China. And this is also part of the Central Europe Center for Genomic Research in Ukraine. This is sort of an interesting thing. So human migration into Europe, or at least the most recentest big phase of what we consider to be modern-day Europeans, came out of the Caucasus and spread through what is Ukraine. This is where we were doing, starting to do a lot of farming. This is where we were domesticating animals. This is where humans sort of were before they did the 5,000-year-ago Bronze Age-ish push to the rest of Europe. And for some reason, it's sort of funny how it's listed here, but it's like nobody thought there was going to be much genetic diversity in Ukraine. Well, it turns out that it's got about a quarter of the genetic diversity of all of Europe is in Ukraine after this genetic study. So they had the prehistoric and historic crossroads of the spread of humans across Europe also into Asia. Migration events included modern human expansion into Neanderthal territory. So there's all of that is there. Movements of nomads and early farmers just started to domesticate plants and animals. They had great human migrations during the Middle Ages, and then they brought everyone back again to do the trade routes for the Silk Road. That was also in Ukraine. So they had all the expansion out, and then they said, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, come back, come back, come back, come back. We're going to do all the trading here too. We're going to make this a really big... So lead investigator, Taras Oleksik, at Oakland University says, our study shows there's significant genetic diversity in Ukraine, a country that had not been prioritized in genome surveys. We found more than 13 million genetic variants among the DNA samples, nearly half a million of which were previously undocumented. Something interesting finds of this though is that they found a decreased susceptibility to breast cancer throughout the genes that were most common there. Yeah. And there's another... Some of the mutations have been linked also to autism, which is a little bit higher frequency there, and lower in Libra Cognitive Amorosis, LCA, which is a rare inherited eye disease. So it's a little higher there. Yeah. So it's kind of an interesting survey there. It's funny though that they mentioned like, nobody thought this would... That seems like a pretty good... If you just do the history of human migration, that seems like it would be immediately sort of an interesting place to look, where a bunch of humanities sort of had an early precursor to what became Europe and what ended up in Asia and then the remixing of it back again. But yeah, who knew Ukraine, the most genetically diverse country in Europe? That's awesome. I just, again, it's that we have these human preconceptions based on politics, based on culture, society, as we see it now in the modern world. And sometimes it really takes looking at things from a different direction to be able to change that perspective or somebody saying, let's do this, nobody's done this before. And then you come out with something surprising. Yeah. Well, for how much of diversity studies was the Ukraine just part of the USSR? Exactly. What we really looked at as a separate entity from Russia. Right. Yeah. The other thing that's sort of interesting about it too is that it's from a historical perspective of learning about human migration, origin stories and all this, it's very historically interesting. But what you also then see now are genetic underpinnings for disease that might be common in Europe, but are sort of being excluded from this right. They also found a bunch of disease associated genetic markers that they don't know what they do exactly. They don't know how they're related to disease. But in a number of them, they're very unique to populations of Ukraine, which means that you can also then study disease outcomes and or prevalences in the Ukraine. Find new correlations between genetic markers that are associated with other diseases. And it also means that you can start to, now that you can find regions where the gene doesn't have that marker or has a slightly different marker and then the prevalences are tied, you can actually start attacking disease at a genetic level. When you have that decent amount of variation and can show a precursor genome to what is now more prevalent or less prevalent in another region, you can isolate diseases that way genetically and start to come up with treatments too. So it's more than just a history lesson, it's actually a future launching point for genetic disease-based therapies. Very cool. Let's launch. Back to space. I have another space story. Get on board. Yeah, let's get on board this one. Once upon a time, a bright light in the universe was thought to be a supernova. But then University of Hawaii astronomers checked it out and they decided that that was wrong. Science. Just a mediocre nova. Just a not a nova. It's just a- Not a nova at all. Nova light. Nova light. Yeah, they discovered looking at it. They're like, hey, let's check out this galaxy and it's not a supernova. It's a periodically flaring galaxy that has a supermassive black hole at its center that goes bursts with energy every 114 days. Yeah. Like an intergalactic old faithful. Yes, exactly. One of the researchers actually did call it an old faithful and said that knowing the schedule of this extragalactic old faithful allows us to coordinate and study it in more detail. They looked at a using assassin. Assassin is also known as the all-sky automated survey for supernovae. I kind of love that. A-S-A-S-S-N is the acronym, all-sky automated survey for supernovae. Assassin. Assassin 14K-O was detected by this global network of 20 robotic telescopes headquartered at the Ohio State University. And then they started looking at all the data on the phenomenon and went, hey, wait a minute, looking at this galaxy. That was not just one supernova, but we have a series of 17 regularly spaced flares. And so they predicted when the next flare would take place and they checked it out and lo and behold, it flared. And they have been able to see these flares over and over again since then. And what they think is going on is that there is a title disruption event occurring and a title disruption event is when a star is orbiting around a super massive black hole and just kind of dips into it just a little bit and the black hole goes and sucks off some of that star material and then a bunch of stuff flares out and the star loses a bit of itself every time. And so this star is slowly being eaten by its black hole. Poor, poor star out there. They estimate that the amount of material that's being lost with each of these bursts based on the distance and the brightness of the burst that it's equal to three times the mass of Jupiter each pass. That's quite a bit. So how long will the star last? Yeah. Yeah. How long will it last? We don't know. Yeah. Too bad it's not doing the reverse, like harvesting the black hole for energy. That's going to be all for that. Isn't that the next step, right? We're going to be like, oh, we can use the sun for energy, harvest solar energy, and then we're going to use the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Yeah. Plenty of juice there to run all of your energy. Or is it anti-juice? I don't know. No, it's just energy. It's still energy. It's not a different universe in a black hole. It's our same stuff. It's just compact. And so it's like a big matter. It's like a mass. Well, mass, it's the biggest battery, the longest lasting battery the universe has ever made. All right. On that note, thank you for being a part of TWIS and joining us tonight. If you've just tuned in. This is This Week in Science. We're here to talk about science. If you are interested in some kind of TWIS merchandise, head over to twist.org and click on our Zazzle link. Grab yourself a mug or a mouse pad, face mask, or any other item. We've got some cool sweatshirts in there too. Blue-footed boobies. They're amazing. We love them. So, all right, let's come on back. Come on back to TWIS right now for the COVID update. Oh, no. It's come back again. The COVID update has come back. Do you have some good news this week? There is some good news. Oh, thank goodness. It's not all good news, but there's some good news. I just need some because all I'm hearing in the news is bad in relation to COVID. So, I need some good. Okay. Well, I'm not going to start off with the good news. That's okay. As long as it's coming, okay. All right. New variants of SARS-CoV-2 are considered problematic as they spread globally. The UK's B117 and South Africa's B1351. Each have several mutations in their spike protein, which current estimates suggest increase the infectiveness transmissibility by 50%. That can be, that's a lot. That goes from if you had 10 people, one person infected. If you had 10 people, or you could have a lot, and it used to be 10 people. One of them was infected. Then you get like one more. So, you'd have like 11 people infected. But now that would be like 15 people infected. The numbers go up. So, part of that, I'm still trying to figure out like why is it more contagious? Because the spike protein grabs on to the ACE2 receptor better. And that allows it mutations allow it to grab on, hold on, and gain access. I think about it like the really hard puzzles where every single nub is slightly different is like the current COVID. I don't know, I'm just trying, it's very loose. But then like the toddler puzzles, like the knobs are all here in uniform and they're very easy to match up with each other even if it's not the right fit. I feel, I think of it like that. Like it's just, it's easier for them to bind essentially. So, and that's the important thing because if that's all it is, vaccine still works. It's still same binding sites. It's still same spikes. It's just being more effective at doing it. Which does then mean that you can have a lighter exposure? Yes. So, if you potentially don't have to be exposed to as much virus to become infected. So, a smaller inoculation can have the same effect. Yeah, right. And that's the other side of this. While more people will become infected as a result of these mutations, it doesn't seem to make the severity of the disease any worse. But we are going to be seeing, and we are seeing more children infected, more younger age groups infected. And as that happens, more people are going to be hospitalized and more people will die. Which this is not good news at all because we are already maxed out with our winter time here in the Northern Hemisphere. Yeah, I know one of the theories about the children not getting it is bad is just smaller lungs inhaling less air from the environment. And also, fewer ACE2 receptors was the other idea. Is that because they don't have as many of the receptors that that's part of it. But now because the virus holding on better than smaller lungs. Yeah, that's not as good. But the other issue with this is if more people are getting infected that also means more opportunities for mutations, for more mutations, and the possibility of vaccine escape. Well, and not to mention that if we think that kids are more easily going to be infected, they're not getting vaccinated. So that's not scary yet. So yes, let's continue on the vaccination. Hopefully that we can, hopefully we can continue in a way that gets as many people vaccinated as possible. It's going to be slow going and hopefully faster as we get better at it. But at this point, the best ways to reduce the spread are and the mutation. If you think of it not just as the possibility of spread, but also the possibility of mutation and this thing going on longer and longer and longer. Let's all work together, reduce it, masking. Outdoors, outdoors is okay. Don't get mad at people for going outdoors. Outdoors is air. It's ventilation. It's good. Don't socialize indoors. Try and stay out of the indoors with people as much as possible. Socially distance. It's great. These are things you can do and wash your hands. Okay. Here is a little bit of good news for you, Blair. We love the convalescent plasma. Oh, yes. And then they told us it was no good and I was sad. Well, so it's not great, but it does seem to work. A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at a number of elderly hospitalized patients and they were given not just regular doses, but very high antibody concentration. They call it a tighter, a high tighter antibody regimen. But it's a high concentration of antibodies from convalescent plasma given very early in the infection within the first 72 hours seem to reduce severity of the disease. So the patients that had gotten it were less likely to get intubated. We're less likely to have severe effects of the disease. And they don't have a significant effect, but it's trending in the direction of possibly leading to fewer deaths. So caught early with mild symptoms. You get in there early if you're over 72. Maybe you can get one of these high tighter convalescent plasma treatments. Sweet. Yeah. So that's some good news on the treatment front. Vaccines. JAMA published this last week a study looking at the number of individuals in the United States stating that they will get a COVID-19 vaccine. That number dropped last year from 74% saying they would get a vaccination in April to 56% saying they would do so in early December. And so that 56% is with the messaging about the safety of the vaccines, the vaccines becoming available. There's obviously counter messaging going on and there needs to be a huge educational push for vaccination moving forward in 2021. Can I also say I was talking to Brian about this earlier and I think that I hope that this will end up not being an accurate number mainly because of I'm going to say it even though it's a gross word, but FOMO, right? If people can post pictures of themselves getting the vaccine asking, ask your friends and family if they got it over and over and over once it becomes available. There will be a certain amount of social pressure. You know, maybe they'll get passed over the first time. They'll say no, and then they might start to go, oh shoot, you know, all my friends who got vaccines are able to go to Europe. Maybe I should get one. So the hope is that yes, there might be distrust now, but if people continue to share online and foster a sense of trust in this process and also share when you do have symptoms. If they're mild, then it seems less scary. Talk to them on the other side of it. Hopefully that can improve that number as things become real and available. Yeah, I hope so. And also the category of company that you keep when you choose to vaccinate versus when you choose not to vaccinate. The man in the fur hat with the painted face screaming as they tried to indirect the capital. Aside from believing that political leaders are Satan worshippers, it's also an anti-vaxxer. And he only eats organic food. That's probably not the worst thing. But you know, there is a category of you have to look who's sitting next to you in the sort of choice bench, I'm imagining. A place where like if you could just picture everybody else sitting down with you at the certain table that you've decided to join, I don't believe the earth is round. And you go sit at that table and you look to the left and you're right. And you go, no, I don't belong here. I don't know how, what happened? I need to get up and move over there. Move to the twist table. Come on, we'll talk about science and make it. You're going to find the same thing with the vaccinations as well. And so I implore all of you who are listeners to the show to sit with us and to get vaccinated table. But also, I also caution all of our listeners, the six foot social distancing, make it like 20. Like it's still not enough. Distance is great. Yeah. And I think the other real quick piggyback on that is six feet social distancing is great. But also make sure that you're not cross pollinating social groups. You six feet social distance with one group of friends on Friday and then another group of friends on Saturday and then another group of friends on Sunday. So keep that in mind too. Yeah. And I was going to bring up, I read an article in Wired today. It was a terribly written article about a very cool project out of the Bay Area. It's called the Micro COVID Project. And it was started by a woman who works in risk analysis and risk reduction. And it's a project taking all of the possible risks that you might enjoy in life. And figuring out, basically giving everyone a budget of microcovids. These are your currency to spend during a week or during a year. And based on it, it's a calculator that will help you determine what is low risk and high risk for various activities. If you go visit microcovid.org, www.microcovid.org. And the article, if you want to learn about the people who made it, it's on Wired this week. I read the whole article just trying to find the link to the project. And it was one of those things where I was like, come on. But anyway, great project. Very interesting if you're into numbers and analyzing risk and thinking about your risk in a very analytical way. This might be an interesting tool for you. Moving forward in the COVID news, a study in the Lancet reports that in hospital mortality for COVID-19 is higher than the flu across all age groups. But the interesting result from this study, we knew it was higher than the flu at this point, but for adolescents, kids 11 to 17, it's especially striking at 10 times higher mortality rate. So less kids are ending up in the hospital from COVID-19 or have to this point in time, but it is affecting them. If they are in the hospital, the outcome is potentially worse by 10 times. That's a 10 times multiplier. How many 15-year-olds do you know that died of flu? And that was the case. If you look at the numbers in the study, we'll have the link in our show notes. But the numbers, it's basically like, and this large number of kids died from COVID and only one died from the flu out of like Android. So it's a 10-time multiplier. It's totally different. Yeah, and the comorbidities for dying from flu are totally different from the comorbidities for dying from COVID. And then final good news story, this kind of boosts us out of our COVID update and into thinking about other diseases and how we're going to be addressing things moving forward. Moderna, the company that has brought us one of the current COVID vaccines that we are using here in the United States and globally, it is going to expand its mRNA vaccine efforts this year. It's going to include four seasonal flu vaccines. It's going to be looking at doing that HIV and the NEPA virus and is going to be looking for clinical proof of concept for 13 of their ongoing programs that are in clinical trials this year. So Moderna, they hit it this year with the mRNA vaccine and they are going to run with the investments that they've gotten. And hopefully there will be many, many successes looking forward. So positive thought moving forward. We may be dealing with a lot of viruses from an mRNA perspective in the future. Very exciting. That's some nice silver lining out of all this. And of all of this, the investment, Justin, you talked about before the history of mRNA vaccines and how long people have been working on this. And it's just amazing. And I think what we're going to be seeing after the investments of this last year because of COVID, it will reap so many benefits. I mean, the pandemic is awful. But it's going to have benefits in other areas moving forward. We will come back from that. This is This Week in Science. You want to help us grow? Tell a friend about twist today. All right, you know what time it is. What time is it? It's time for Blair's Animal Corner. Blair? I feel a pet. No pet at all. If you want to hear about animals, she's your mom. Except for giant pandas. Let's grow. And then I'll go tell her. What you got, Blair? I have spiders and snakes. You're welcome, everyone. I feel about spiders and snakes. The opposite of how I feel about pandas and squirrels. So, hooray, I hope everyone can handle this story. OK, so the first one is about a snake moving in a way that has never been seen before. There are four recognized types of locomotion that we have seen in snakes for about 100 years. Rectilinear, lateral undulation, side winding, and concertina. And now we see this is totally anecdotal and totally an accident. This was looking at invasive brown tree snakes living on Guam. And they specifically have been just eating all of the birds, which is terrible. So they were introduced in the 1940s, early 1950s. And pretty much right away, bird populations started to plummet. And now most of the native forest birds are gone on Guam, just decimated, right? So that's the colloquial version of decimated, not reduced by 10. So anyway, so they've been trying to figure out what can deter brown tree snakes? What can keep them from climbing and eating birds? Because there's only a little bit of Micronesian starlings left and other cave nesting birds that they're trying to keep alive on Guam. So they put up these things, these baffles, they have these three foot long metal baffles. They're these big kind of slick cylinders around these trees to try to keep snakes from climbing up to bird boxes. And they were watching four hours of video to see how these snakes kind of approached and to see if it deterred them or not and how it all worked. Then all of a sudden they saw the snake form what looked like a lasso around the cylinder and wiggle its body up. So when you think about like on the show, yeah, and we're showing a video right now, it really does look like they're looping their body around and they have their neck kind of going under the loop. So their tail is holding their neck against this baffle that leads up to the bird box and they're shimmying up. So they're using tension, like this is like a lasso or I mean any sailor knows how to work a knot. And it was all a new knot to sink from Mulan because it's very much how Mulan goes up the giant cylinder in the montage where she's learning how to be a soldier. Anyway, all that aside, you can all sing along at home if you know what I'm talking about. But yeah, so they were slipping up. What were you going to say, Justin? This just looks like I've seen this technique with humans using a strap when you're tree climbing like an arborist would use. Where you put the strap on the other side and climb up a little bit and use the strap as leverage all the way up. It looks very much like this. Yeah, it looks very calculated, I guess, is the way I was describing it. Totally calculated. That snake has a hole. Oh yeah. And so I have to do some research of my own here because the first thing I thought it was, well it wasn't that long ago we reported on flying snakes which were really gliding snakes. How did they get up the trees? Well they actually use kind of a concertina movement so they kind of accordion up. They double over over a rough part of the tree and then extend and then double over and then extend. So that's how they climb trees. So this is totally brand new to the knowledge of sneak researchers. But it does also look very difficult. So in the video they saw that they slip a lot, they stop to rest, they breathe really heavily. It's not easy for them but they were able to do this. So first of all they want to use this information now to develop a baffle that these tree snakes can't get around so that they stop eating these birds to extinction. But also that means that there's this fifth form of snake locomotion. Was this a fluke? Was this something that only these snakes know how to do in this particular situation because of this particular deterrent? Or is this something that other snakes can do? Right. And we don't know. We don't know. Hopefully there will be news about that soon. Goal oriented. They know they're going to get up there and there's going to be an egg. There's going to be a little animal up there. They're going to be all like, no, no, no, no. Eat it up. Yeah. So there you go. But really the question is why are they doing this instead of if this is something that was developed to climb trees specifically, why are they doing this instead of concertina movement? Is there something where these snakes are from trees that are very, very slick, for example? Well, not the trees, but I mean, did they just develop it to get past those metal baffles? That's the question. Did they do it for this or where they're originally from because these guys are invasive? Is there a natural application of this that they brought over? Yeah. Nobody's seen it before. Nobody's looked. We'll find out hopefully someday. Go look at snakes at night. Snakes climbing trees. Yeah. It looks, it looks to, if it's an innovation that they picked up on the fly and then taught to one another, that's a whole other layer of snake communication that I haven't seen before. Well, and this is a snake using its own body to create tension. That's 100% different from all of the other types of locomotion that we've seen in snakes. This is such a novel behavior. It's smart. Necessity is the mother of invention. Yeah. Either it has historical roots we don't know about, or it's, yeah, it's snakes adapting just so fast to a new challenge. Which is- Yeah. I feel like, I feel like it's the first. Which is that. I feel like it's going to be- The second one is a bit terrifying. A bit terrifying. Yeah. That's what I, I, I aim to inspire and mildly terrify. Moving on then to huntsman spiders creating traps in the forest. Oh. Oh, another non-terrifying topic. Slightly terrifying. So huntsman spiders and Madagascar. This is an international research team two universities from Madagascar and one from Germany looking at huntsman spiders. Huntsman spiders are named huntsman spiders because they hunt. They don't spin webs to catch their food. They, they actually inject venom into their prey by biting them and capture their prey that way. So it's a totally different method than most spiders we think about. And again, totally accidentally and anecdotally, these researchers have found huntsman spiders doing something crazy. They were, they were walking through the forest. They were looking for frogs. They were trying to survey frogs and they found a huntsman spider pulling a dead frog into what appeared to be a custom made leaf trap. So not only is this spider being smart, but also potentially fabricating a trap. So they were, yeah. So they were looking at creatures living in a certain part of Madagascar. They came upon a huntsman spider in a tree eating a tree frog. They got closer to the spider and it pulled the dead frog into what looked like a pouch attempting to hide. It was two leaves and on the back end it had been sewn together with spider silk. So it's a little pocket. They sewed it. So researchers came to believe that the spider had created a leaf structure as an enticing trap for the frogs. So they found three other leaf structures in that area. No spiders inside at the time. And then they also found more of those structures the more they looked, but this was the only specific case where they caught a spider actively eating a frog inside of it. So it totally could have been a fluke. It could have been something spiders made for something else entirely, but the reason that they really think this is what it's for is that frogs are known to seek shelter during the hottest parts of the day and it looks like the perfect place for a frog to go. So if you're a huntsman, you could kind of hang towards the back where it's shadowy and the frog would come in to hide from the sun and get it. Yeah, nom nom nom nom. So of course more research is required to not only watch them make these things, but also confirm that's what they're using them for. But it looks good. It looks like this is probably what's going on. So this is again, this is totally anecdotal. This is not a data set that we're working from here. But it really looks like these hunting spiders. Yeah, it's a data set of one right now. But yeah, it looks like these spiders are using leaves sewn with spider silk to make a trap. Wait, Blair, don't go in that covered bus stop. Why not? Look at the edges. There's spider webs. Ah, what in the world are we living? Where you have to be afraid of just getting a little bit of shade. You might get into a spider. That's not a good way to be. Well, there's lots of things trying to eat tree frogs in the rainforest. It's pretty tough to be a frog in the rainforest. Everything's trying to eat you. Even other frogs. Oh, geez. Yeah, but they have several observations, not just one observation. So that's a, I love it. Trappers, trappers, spiders are trapping frogs in the rainforest. That's amazing. It's interestingly, and you think of it because there's the, there are the tunnel weaving, funnel weaving spiders that. That's a great trap. The funnel, and they said at the end of it. The spider web is a trap. The spider web is a trap, exactly. Yeah, so if you're an orb weaver, you're recreating it every night to make it extra see-through. Yeah, but this. Trapper spiders, it's in their name. Trap door. Trap door. Yeah. So this doesn't, I mean, we think, yes, when you start thinking about it, it doesn't seem like it's that much more of a step, but it is using things in the environment to accentuate what they already have. Ooh, and huntsmen, they're scaring me anyway. Yeah. You're not supposed to be laziness. Hey, you know, instead of making the whole web, why don't we just put some of these leaves in there and just, just do a little webbing around the edges? Yeah. And it's a little less, a little less work for us. And just hang out in the shade. Take the rest of the afternoon off. Take the day off. And then the fog happens to show up. It's like, okay, bonus. I would, I would say this is tool use if I would too. It's using, using bits of the environment and in. So, physics, engineering, what would it, what would it be? And then you have to, once you start digging into this, if they find more observations of this and its tool use, is this, how do they learn it? How do they come to do it? Is this random? Is it just one spider who figured it out? Spires, I know huntsmen spiders don't stick around to, do they take care of their young? Do they teach them the ways of the weaving? No, no, no. I don't think so. I want to know about spider school. I mean, when I, when I learned. No, huntsmen spider makes a great mom. She will lay all 200 of her eggs inside an egg sack, which she places behind her, behind bark or under a rock. While the babies are developing, she will stand guard for three weeks without eating. I don't know after that though. What happens after that? I mean, I've seen the spiders that run around with their babies on their backs. What are those babies learning? In the beginning, it can just be genetic memory. I mean, nobody teaches you how to breathe. Nobody teaches your heart how to beat. And if you're, you know, a spider with a certain technique, nobody really needs to teach you that technique. If it's hardwired, it's your physiology is associated. This is unique. This is, uh, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's it's unique. It's unique. But you know, I wonder if it is, if you go back in time, maybe they were doing this underground with leaves on the ground for some other prey and an ancient spider. Like the genetic information is there throughout evolution. There's billions of years of trial and error on these things. Uh, maybe it's maybe you can access it. Maybe you can access, uh, innovation from a genetic memory that's not being used in generations. Who knows? We need to find out so that we can know. So then we can say, we know that's who knows us. Yeah, yeah. And as far as tool use goes, I feel like defining to tool use animal in animals is like defining consciousness in animals. It's the edges are so fuzzy. And I think that, you know, I define a lot of things as tool use that, that other people do not. Yeah, but yeah, I don't know. It's hard to live in the natural world and not use any part of your environment to your benefit as a living thing. So, so here's one of the things I would say about that though. There's tool use and then there's, uh, the story I'll talk about later, which is more human, uh, how humans became, uh, reliant on a tool that, that was, we needed the tool for our main, uh, for our survival. We became completely dependent on our tools at some point. The spider's web, the spider's silk, in a sense, is a tool that it is completely of many, but most spiders, I don't know, a lot of spiders seem very dependent on their web and the construction of this thing, the architecture, the building, the use of this tool to their survival. Now, they produce it themselves, but I don't think that's an out, uh, for calling it a tool, uh, to begin with. So, uh, you know, it's one thing if something picks up a twig a couple of times and uses it, that's usually a tool, but are they very, are they really dependent on that? Or was this sort of a... See, but that's the fuzzy edge right there. That's the fuzzy edge. I feel like that's something like the web is the, is the not fuzzy edge though. I think that one is they have a tool, they create it themselves, and they use it as a tool to trap things, to lay eggs, to, to preserve meals, to, to create leaf traps, okay? This is, this is, uh, always, uh, uh, can only be defined, I think, as a tool. I would think so. Yeah, it's constructed, but is it intentional or is it instinctual? And I think that is the, is there intent or instinct? I think there's, there's where we divide it, but this is This Week in Science. Thank you so much for being a part of the audience. You are the reason why we are able to do what we do every week. Thank you for your support. And if you are out there and wondering how you can help twist, keep going and how you can help us keep growing, you can head over to twist.org and click on the Patreon button. And that will allow you to join our Patreon community where you can choose your level of support. There are also buttons at twist.org to for PayPal donations if you would rather use PayPal. But on Patreon, you can choose your level of support. And if you support us at $10 or more a month, we will read your name off at the end of the show as one of our ongoing supporters. Be a part of bringing science and more sanity to more people by supporting twist. We really can't do this without you. Thank you for your support. All right, friends. Justin, what did you drink? How did you lose the science? I lost the science. It's coming back. It's coming back. It's almost here. And aha, the human story begins with toolmaking. Well, I mean, yeah, there were there was there was constructs of humans, very generally ape-like things running around before we had tools that had fingers, sort of a tool, even if you are using it eventually. But there was this period where we sort of adapted to becoming more and more dependent on our tools. This was likely the thing that spurred everything from language use to full-time bipedalism. Because over the course of millions of years, we were using tools and passing down that knowledge of tool use to next further generations. Once you get into the teaching thing, you really need to have language that's a little bit more precise, a little bit more detail-oriented, even if it's like, hey, watch me while I do this thing the entire time and then go try it yourself, whatever the initial communication was. All of our gorge, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Tanzania, is thought to be the cradle of humankind. Because this is where they found lots of tools and hominids over the years. His location of Lewis and Mary Leakey's amazing discoveries is considered the origin point, or at least a critical step in human evolution. Fresh field work from the site has found the gorge was used by early human ancestors through a wide diversity of habitats amidst environmental changes for a period of about 200,000 years, and this thing that's sort of called the past. So this is the Rift System in Eastern Africa where stuff was sort of splitting apart. And it has, because it's split apart, you have these nice layers of antiquity where you can go back and dig in and see what was here at this age. You can go back pretty easily. So there's always been, in my head, a little bit like, well, it seems like humans started here, but this is also the easiest place to look. So it's easiest place to find fossil records, as well as, you know, so maybe that's why we find it all. Maybe humans were kind of a lot more places, but that's not even the point of this story. This story has to do with the fact that they also discovered that the humans persisted, and this would have been, this would have been from 2 million years ago to about 1.8 million years ago, that the early humans persisted in this location despite fluctuating environments. They have, they can show there was fossil mammals of wild cattle, pigs, hippos, panthers, lions, hyena, other primates. There's reptiles and birds together with a range of other creatures. And it shows that the habitat could change pretty dramatically over that 200,000 year period. You could have river lake systems, fern meadows, woodland mosaics, naturally burned landscapes. There's palm groves at some point, dry steps. There's volcanic activity taking place. Pretty diverse. And yet humans persisted. Actually they left a couple of times and then would return to the area when it got a little bit nicer. So they did leave a couple of times. But the tools remained the same. So these are Aldoan stone tools. This is pebble and cobble cores. It's a very specific way of flaking to make axes and cutters and carvers. The sort of things that early humans would have used to render plants, animals to maybe hunt with. Implication is that by two million years ago, early humans had the behavioral capacity to continually consistently exploit a multitude of habitats using the same reliable stone toolkits. So when we're talking about tool use too, this is a tool that was being designed that went unchanged in this period of 200,000 years. That is passing down knowledge without for anything that we have found a written language without an archive of written word or libraries. Maybe there was something written on a cave wall that we've missed that sort of details how to make these stone tools. We haven't found it yet. But to be able to pass down now, now it's for 200,000 years. It's something we struggle with these days, passing down knowledge to a next generation. It's a very huge undertaking. Anyhow, so I thought that was very fascinating that humans were successful. And this is also, this would have been, this is Homo habilis. So this is really early, early human. There's Homo habilis nearby. Sorry, this is probably homo erectus. This is Homo habilis is nearby. There's also the osteopathic scenes nearby. So this is also a place where we may have done a little intermingling with other hominin types. 1.8 million years ago. And then the next story I will take us to that was in Eastern Africa. We'll now move to far Western Africa. And we'll move all the way up to modern humans. This is a far Western Africa preserved ancient toolmaking techniques the longest. So this fieldwork by Dr. Eleanor Scarry, head of the Pan-African Evolution Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Science and Human History in Germany. And Dr. Khadim Yang of the University of Cik and to Diop of Sengal, they documented the youngest known occurrence of middle stone age. So this is stone age technology that persisted closest to the current day. What they found was there was stone age scrapers and points and tools that were being formed that they thought had been used between around 300,000 years ago and 30,000 years ago. So this is even a longer spread of time than those other tools. To passing down knowledge for about 300,000 years of the same tool types and techniques. And it was thought to die at around 30,000 years ago because that's when these tools suddenly vanished. Well, they don't vanish, they're replaced by a sort of miniaturized smaller is better, the new smaller smartphone, the new smaller pointy stone. To do finer work, more detailed work, showing perhaps that sort of thing. But they thought those types of tools were replaced 30,000 years ago by the very radically different modernization of tool types. And what they found is there's this whole region in this site that they were discovering where these early stone making techniques persisted another 20,000 years. So up to about 10, 11,000 years ago, they were still making the older version. And one of the things they point out is it doesn't mean that they weren't as smart as their neighbors. But what it indicates is that Western Africa, far Western Africa, was an extremely stable environment because one of the things that can, the argument they make is one of the things that required all these different regions around them to modernize or change their tool sets is perhaps that the environment changed and that they needed to address new things. Whereas far Western Africa, things are just nice. Things stay nice. Old tools that ain't broke. Don't fix it. You don't need to innovate if there is nothing changing. If everything is fine, you're like, God, I can live. Do I need? No, I don't need that new thing. No, no, I'm good. And it's such a, to have, again, to have a 300,000 year passing down of knowledge is just an incredible feat. It's amazing. By any measure. Yeah. And it's also, they're also pointing out that, yes, there were different societies in the area have different techniques. And sometimes those techniques for survival are based on the tool set. So if somebody does have the modernized tool set, their niche might be different. The things they pursue and hunt might be different. The plants that they use might even be different. So people mold themselves not only around their environment, but around their technology as well. So I don't want to mold myself around my technology anymore. I don't, I don't like what it's, I don't like what it's reaping and sowing. Too bad, I think. Did you have one more story, Justin? About, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh, I never saw the Game of Thrones, uh, TV show. Yeah, you don't need to. Read the books. Books are good. Apparently they had dire wolves in there. Uh, so, uh, that means I guess that it took place in North America because the dire wolves were coming across North America until about 13,000 years ago when they went extinct. So what this is, this is just a click off from, uh, published in Nature, uh, on January 13th. It shows that the dire wolves, which coexisted with the North American gray wolf, weren't related. Well, they're related. But, uh, they split off by the, based on the genetics they were able to get from some, uh, dire wolf sub fossils from Wyoming, Idaho, Ohio, and Tennessee. These are 50,000 year old fossils. They did analysis of these fossils. They were enough to get DNA that could allow them to compare it to modern day wolves. And they found they must have split six million years ago. Well, how does that mean? Because it seemed very, you know, if you picture a dire wolf, which I couldn't until I went and googled the picture of it on the interwebs, which I'm not even sure is accurate, they look like a wolf. A big wolf. Well, not even really, not even really that much bigger. Uh, from at least what I was looking at. Great wolf size, right? Yeah, great wolf. It's not which is a big wolf, but it's maybe slightly bigger, but about the same. And it looks more fall, morphologically, they look the same pretty much. But apparently they, based on this genetic analysis, the fact that they, uh, had overlapping territories, but they could not see any of the genetic intermixing and even looking back six million years, there was a study a while back that said that the, uh, dire wolf had more in common with an African jackal, I think it was, than it, or hyena, than it did with, uh, uh, with the gray wolf. They weren't able to interbreed is basically what this means. If they, because if they could or they would, because you see these crosses between coyote and wolf take place, they still have that ability, uh, when they, when they have overlapping territories to odd off occasional interbreeding, intermixing, but not the dire wolf. So the question is, can we bring it back Blair? Don't break back. Where are you going to put it? Ah, with the mammoths up in Canada. We'll just put everything in Canada. Let's get Canada on the phone before you. I think we should ask, I think we should apologize if things turn out badly. Ask for forgiveness. Yeah, instead of permission, because we will never get it. But the interesting thing would be that the dire wolves, even though they form this, they're more related to jackals, they're still going to be using a similar ecological niche to the wolves. So they would, you can't bring it back because they can be competing with the already endangered wolf species or threatened wolf species. So let's help the ones that are still alive. Yeah, that's the thing. If you bring dire wolves back, they're going to start killing things that we don't want them to kill, and then people are going to kill them immediately. It's going to be a problem. It's a cycle we want to avoid. Just breed your dogs to look more wolf-like, and then you can pretend you have a dire wolf. Wait a second. We're going to have to be. Wait a second. I'll be great. Wait a second. No, just, yeah. Mal, let me not tell you. You're saying the danger is that we would kill the, the dire wolf? Yeah. Well, there's none of them now. They'll still be better off if they give them a run in jail. All right. Well, let's move away from these dead dire wolves. Is this weird? They also says that they overlapped for 10,000 years in location. Aren't the gray wolves not as native to North America as I think? Gray wolves are more recent, I think. They may be the dire wolf. The dire wolf is maybe the native. We need to replace the gray wolf with the dire wolf or a hybrid of the two because they never, they never got it done them. Don't hybridize them all. Hybrid of two species that never would have become hybrids from mating in the first place. That's not, no. Let's not do that, no. Let's not do that, no. Let's not do science now. Maybe they wanted to have children and just weren't able to and there was no scientific help. Well. They did not have scientific help then. No. All right. I'm going to talk about sperm. Yes. I thought we just were. Oh, okay. I love sperm science. Yes. We're going to talk about sperm markers. And no, these aren't little markers, sperm and no. Anyway, these are epigenetic markers in the DNA of sperm. Researchers at Washington State University Pullman have been looking at biomarkers in human sperm to try and identify men who are more likely to have autistic children. They have identified and published in clinical epigenetics this last week a set of genomic features, DNA, methylation regions in sperm samples from men who were known to have autistic children. Then they did a bunch of blind tests and were able to predict whether or not a man's sperm indicated probability of having an autistic child by with 90% accuracy. Wow. Yes. So the researcher, Michael Skinner, says we can now potentially use this to assess whether a man is going to possess, not possess, pass autism onto his children. It's a major step toward identifying what factors might promote autism. Because we do know that as men age, there's a higher likelihood of having children with autism and other disorders. And very often, there are many factors that are put on women. And there was another study that came out today as well that identified a number of metabolic factors in women who had autistic children. But they didn't look at the women while they were pregnant. They only looked at them after the fact. So there's no way of knowing. There's no way of tying it together. But these factors were related to folic acid levels and other enzymes and metabolites within their blood. But that seems that there are potential dietary metabolic issues in some women. But if there is a genetic issue, an epigenetic issue, that can be identified ahead of time in men, this is something that could be a major change. Yes, you can. Everybody can change their diet. You can eat more. Make sure you get more folate, more folic acid. But you can't change your sperm. So it's good to know. But dating in the future. Dating in the future is going to be great. But you could screen your sperm, right? Especially if you're doing IVF. You could screen, yeah. Especially if you're doing IVF. So dating in the future. Hey, before we go even on the second day, I'm going to need a sample of your sperm. But it's fine. That's actually, that works out. Because that's kind of where the office opening evening would go. Or you just pay to get your sperm sorted. No, no, no, no. So it's all good. I like my version better. The sperms. Oh, oh, like, yeah, the sperm screener. Yeah, yep. The sperm screener. Of course, there's definitely more work to be done, accuracy rate to improve. But 90% is fairly accurate. They are limited by number at this point in time. And so they'll be working on a more extensive study involving over 100 men within the next study to see how their 805 different methylation regions pan out in a larger study sample. Yeah, because we also have to remember that that autism spectrum is also in the realm of people who can handle huge amounts of information. Very likely, young Albert. This is also Albert. Was it Albert, junior? But Albert Einstein's, one of his sons, very likely had autism had severe issues. So people in that same family, you could be getting rid of all the geniuses if you're trying to just screen out autism. Then you suddenly don't have the next generation of people who can handle huge volumes of information and data handling, so it's a thing that we all need. And our very bright future is probably for autism. Genetic diversity is amazing. And different phenotypes and human diversity is amazing. And no, I don't think that we should be going, the everyone is the same and that kind of route. But if people are concerned and they want to have their sperm screened, maybe in the future, this will be something that can be an option for some people, which I think is interesting. Another thing that could be an option for some people in the future, this is what I think is going to be this huge advancement. If it pans out for people. Right now, once again, scientists cured mice. That's so awesome. We cured the mice of everything? They're immortal. Yeah, that's right. The mice live forever now. No, no, no, no. A company called BioNTech. Yes, BioNTech. The name might sound familiar to you. Yeah, they're working on the vaccines right now. Yes, they are making a vaccine with Pfizer. So the Pfizer vaccine, Pfizer has gotten the bigger billing mostly here in the U.S., but the company that they've been working with is BioNTech. BioNTech recently, this last week, published a paper. There are researchers published a paper in science called Non-Inflammatory mRNA Vaccine for Treatment of Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis. Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis is a model, disease model, that is used in mice to model multiple sclerosis. It's an autoimmune disorder. In mice, it's as close as they can get at this point to the attack on myelin and the physical effects that occur as a result of the immune system attacking itself, attacking the nervous system. And this is another hope for mRNA. This is a vaccine in which they delivered autoantigens. They took little segments of antigens from the body that the mouse body would normally be attacking, that the mouse body would normally go, ah, it's an intruder, but it's me, but I don't like it, so I'm going to attack it. And then you have disease. The mRNA wrapped in the fatty layers, like they do for the vaccine that we're taking for COVID, delivered autoantigens into mouse lymphoid dendritic cells. Dendritic cells are immune cells in our immune system. These dendritic cells then created a population of T cells that suppressed auto reactivity, the treatment delayed onset of the disease, and it reduced severity of disease in mice that already had the model, the model disorder. So this could potentially be, if they can get it to work, clinically, in people, a vaccine for multiple sclerosis. Wow, that's... Amazing. And the kicker for all this that is so exciting is that it's immunosuppressive specifically for these autoimmune antigens that the immune system recognizes as foreign for whatever reason and starts attacking. It's specific to that only. It has not generalized the entire immune system to the entire body system. It is a specific, very specific response within the body. And so the immune system, so what happens in multiple sclerosis very often is that you take immune suppressing drugs to keep the disease from progressing. That it turns down your entire immune system. This kind of vaccine would not do that. It would only turn down the part of your immune system that's attacking you. Oh my goodness, yes. And so it was very effective in these mice. It seemed to work really well. They didn't really see any kind of negative immune reactions. There didn't seem to be excess immune reactions, immune responses that you might be afraid of. There didn't seem to be anything like that. So this is a huge advancement with a bunch of potential. Once again, mRNA. Man, mRNA really already edging for MVP of the decade. Yeah, so mRNA, MVP, yeah. It's going to the 2020s. It's going to be the decade of mRNA, for sure. Yeah, like the 2010s are like the decade of CRISPR, right? Yes. Yeah, mRNA is going to be the thing. Yeah, CRISPR became a tool that's being used all over the place. It's being used in labs everywhere. It hasn't panned out as much for medical treatments and therapies as we thought it would, but things like mRNA and other gene editing software. Software? Gene editing technologies. Yeah, they're heading that direction, but yeah. But in mice, we can't get it to people because that's the next step. Just we need to see this in pigs, in humans. I want to see this. I want to see it work in something other than mice because we do know that there are sometimes problems in translating research from mice to people. So fingers crossed. I can't get too excited too quickly, but I'm excited. I'm very excited for people to be able to potentially live a life without multiple sclerosis who would otherwise. It's huge. The thing about this vaccine, though, is it doesn't get rid of whatever the initial problem. It does, in a sense, because it danced down that specific autoimmune response. But whatever the misconnect was, it doesn't fix that. But maybe it doesn't matter. There's only one way to find out. That's with the clinical trial. With the clinical trial, yes. But we have come now to the end of our show. I don't have any more stories. Do you have any more stories? No, I am all good. We all add a stories. For now. For now. Until next week. I mean, there are more stories. There are so many more things out there. I had a really tough time winnowing it down this week. There's a lot of really good sizes. I feel like everyone took the holidays off. They're sitting on the research. It's a perfect change. They're like, give me, give me, give me, give me. These stories are all from procrastinators and bad time management people. She's like, ah, we should have kind of tried to get it out before the holidays. But yeah, we're not going to have to wait. Now, we're not going to have to wait. And then publish. Or they wanted to publish in 2021, so they didn't have the shadow of 2020 on their paper. It's not good. It's a good year for finance. It's a good year for lots of things. It's just some human nonsense that's terribly tragic that's going on. Yeah. Yeah. On that note, thank you for joining us for this show tonight. We have come to the end of the show. I would like to give shout outs to the people who helped the show. Thank you, Fada, for your help with show notes and with social media and in the YouTube chat room. Thank you, Gord McLeod, for manning, managing our twist chat room over at Web Chat. And Identity 4, thank you for recording the show every week without your help. We really couldn't do what we do. I might be looking for some more help, though. So if you want to help me out, send me an email. I need some assistanty type help for people who like to do assistanty type things. And I would also like to thank the Burroughs Welcome Fund and our Patreon sponsors for their support of This Week in Science. Look, I'm gonna do something new this week. Da-da-da-da-da-da- da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-ohhh! Thank you patrons! Put your names, put your names down. WoodieMS, Andre Bissette, Chris Bosniak at Chris Wozniak, Dave Bunn, Vegard Shevstedt, Hal Snyder, Donathan Styles, AKA Don Stilo, John Ciole, Guillaume John Lee, Ali Koffengorov, Sharma, Shoebrew, Sara Forfar, Darwin Hannon, Donald Mundes, Stephen Albaron, Darryl Meishak, Stu Pollock, Andrew Swanson, Fred S. 104, Sky Luke, Paul Ronevich, Bentley, the translator, Bignell, Kevin Reardon, Noodles Jack, Brian Carrington, Matt Vase, Joshua Fury, Sean and Nina Lam, John McKee, Greg Riley, Mark Heselflow, Jean Tellier, Steve Leesman, AKA Zima Kenhays, Howard Tan, Christopher Rappin, Dana Pearson, Richard, Brendan Minish, Melizand, Johnny Gridley, Kevin Railsback, Flying Out, Richard Porter, Christopher Dreyer, Mark Mazaros, Ardeon, Greg Briggs, John Atwood, 2020, can bite my shiny metal arse. 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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 is the end of the world. So I'm setting up shop, got my banner unfurled. It says the scientist is in. I'm gonna sell my advice, show them how to stop the robots with a simple device. I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand and all it'll cost you is a couple of grand. This week science is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth and I'll broadcast my opinion all over the air. Cause 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, science, science, science. I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news. That's what I say may not represent your views but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just get to understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. We're just trying to save the world from Japanese. And this week in science is coming your way. So everybody listen to everything we say and if you use our methods, instead of rolling a die, we may rid the world of toxoplasma, got the eye, A long list of items I want to address From stopping mobile hunger to dredging Loch Ness I'm trying to promote more rational thought And I'll try to answer any question you've got So how can I ever see the changes I seek When I can only set up shop one hour a week? This week in science is coming in a way You better just listen to what we say If you've learn anything from the words that we've said Then please just remember it's all in your head Cause it's this week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science. They left me. My whole team left me behind. I don't know where they've gone. I'm going to guess that Sadie needed a walk and... Maybe so did Justin. I don't I don't know where everybody went, but I'm glad you are still here I know and so is my feather you see it there the feather. Yes, I started investigating new headsets for my ears and I wanted I Got I got bogged down Technicalities, but what I would love what I really would love hello thunder beaver. I would really love Get rid of this cord because when I move around cord yanks, and then it pulls on the the headphone jack and that's not good for my headphone jack or the the scarlet so if I can get a bluetooth Headphone jack adapter transmitter Right, then I could get bluetooth ear buds To monitor that would go with whatever that was and so That's what I was thinking Caroline, it's okay to be tired. I'm glad you slept. We're still here Body here, but those chickens. Oh good identity for I'm glad you're a figment of my imagination We don't want it any other way Sam sung momentum. All right. Yeah, something that'll be long enough to do the show. I think would be good Yeah, that's always the thing about bluetooth headphones for me. I feel like they always die in opportune moments Yeah, and they'd have to I would have to be really good about charging them Keeping them charged. I mean if I just left them here and only used them here Yeah, and not elsewhere around the house The ones I'm wearing are bluetooth, but they also have the option to be plugged which I appreciate So then if it dies then you can still plug in you're good. I just um Actually, this is I could probably bluetooth on your computer with the headphones. I I have bluetooth on my computer I you know, I probably should just use these bluetooth It's it's basically a holdout from when I had that super old laptop because I think the processor couldn't handle all of the things And so I had bluetooth headphones on and did the show my internet like I feel like the quality of my Upload was worse. So yeah, I don't even know if that makes any sense. I think my computer was just like too many things And also I think drained the laptop battery and all sorts of stuff, but Yeah, I could totally do it now. I don't know why I don't I should wired is always better Yes, Shubu. I mean wired audio if you're listening to music. I If I'm listening to music, I'm gonna want good quality I mean, I'm not like a super super audio file But I'm enough of an audio file that if I know I'm listening to Something that is not super compressed. Maybe I'm looking at listening to master tracks or something. That's got some a really good You know a good compression scheme But it's not overly compressed if I'm listening to something. That's really good. I want to hear it and I don't want it to be smushed by Bluetooth Which is going to happen no matter what whether you get bluetooth 5 or 4 or whatever 3 Yeah, bluetooth, but anyway, yeah, so wired is great for stability And it would be easy to buy a pair of wired earbuds or headphones like you have a Blair I just I started looking at all the options and I Oh my god, you guys, you know how I know that I am like ADD. I am really bad at shopping I'm like look at all the options. Oh god, I'm totally overwhelmed. I need to go now So much It's like I have a general idea of what I want and I'm like, I don't know how to make that happen Shopping shopping's hard How hard shopping is oh my god IKEA is like I don't want to go there fries electronics. No way God places with too many options Superstores any superstore would be out of here Carol in the chat room saying she fell asleep during the show And it made it I listened and it made its way into my brain and I created a dream around it Gaurav Sharma I take three hours to book a flight as well But then you add another three hours on top of that for like no maybe another couple of days for booking a hotel Oh, yeah, keep adding the options. I'm like, oh god. Oh, yeah, don't let's not even talk about a rental car Was fun like I took one to the airport ahead of my flight to Denmark and I asked for standard econo car and I ended up with a a 5-liter Mustang I'm like convertible America Econo car and I well, it's what we had Okay, so the whole like point of choosing was just negated by like This is what we've got on a lot. So this is what we gave you. It was it was a fun ride Yeah, sometimes your your whole like choosing Isn't oh up to you No, no, sometimes that's better that way. Oh Michael Gibson. I would like that'd be nice Just use your own plane. That makes it really easy. That's much better it doesn't One of the things Wait, does Denmark drive The same side of the US. Yes, they drive the same side as the US But they have tiniest cars like the picture the Smallest car you've ever seen on an American road That's like the average car size like a large car is a compact Here like most of the cars are subcompact and it's really weird and the speed limits are much lower For most of the I've I've tried to avoid driving as much as possible because it it just feels weird But yes, they do drive on the right side of the road It's I think only the British and British allied Wrong side of the road drivers. I don't know why they've never fixed it. Um It seems like just for just for car manufacturers It would just make it easier. Just like let's all have the steering wheel on the same side Let's all drive the same way, but no they I prefer to be different. I guess Yeah, um, they were a British colony. It's on the other side except for the us. We were we were colony ones too Oh, are all the flat fries closing I wouldn't doubt that I mean, I saw an article about it, but I didn't click on it. So I don't know That's always a fun store to go wander for the technology. I guess people are buying more tech online, but There's something about walking through a giant big box of Technology And just sort of wandering around and going like Oh, what is that? How can I use that to my right? I guess you could still try to do that online But I don't know but that's not the point of fries The point of fries was the theming Because each of the stores had a different theme Wait, what? Justin what do you not know about this? I've not I've only got one giant big box fries electronics in my uh And what was the theme of that one electronics like no no no So where was it? It was the one your sack right isn't there? There's a giant train that looks like it's driving through the fries No, no there isn't No, you're making stuff up It's got a like a unique Arch or something over the top of it, but I just assumed all the fries fries. Here we go Yes, it's train. They're all like most of the ones in california are themed the one in san jose was Aztec themed So it was shaped like a little like aztec like a pyramidy thing. I'm trying to think there's another one I guess I've only ever been to one so I'd never noticed that they were putting this extra effort I'm looking at I want these um earbud bluetooth earbud Headphones, but they're not like headphones. They're active I put a link in the chat room, but oh If there's something I didn't account says this we didn't used to drive on the other side huh Sweden used to drive on the other side interesting. Oh, yeah, japan is on the left. That's that is weird That's weird. I don't know why This is just I guess it's too late. Uh at some point. It's just you can't switch now All your off-ramps would be on ramps. It's just it's like too Effort I'm gonna get glasses and earbuds for aging people active noise suppression Earbuds they're gonna be amazing turn off my whole family Oh, yeah, yeah, the one in so care was alien themed. That's right. Wait, what? The fries electronics was it? Yeah Sacramento was railroad road themed The one in fremont was silicon valley themed whatever that means so there was like computer chippy stuff everywhere But they No, but it's like you've understand it's like giant plaster dioramas in the store You know, what's really funny is I went I went to the sacramento fries a lot when I lived in the davis area and every time I went I got so Like overwhelmed that I ended up just looking in this like just what's right in front of me So I never ever ever noticed any of that stuff can't I uh My my thing was after after having gone a few times and walked away with nothing Because for the same reason just wandering and being like there's too many choices I went up to somebody and I asked a question And I ended up spending like five times more money than I had planned on for this computer But I was like really happy with it. I was like, I think I got the right thing because the person seemed to be knowledgeable Uh, but yeah, I have trained themed fries. So there's a whole list on the side too So there's an alice in wonderland one an alien one two giant So it's funny. I've been to that. I've been to that one, uh, you know Few dozen times. I never noticed that it was train themed at all I never never once noticed anything train themed about it whatsoever It's inside it's just a big giant warehouse the outside didn't look anything So the outside has a giant water tank and a train coming out of the wall Is it the outside looks like yeah, yeah, so yep, I remember I've I've never I've seen Older people. What's your favorite store as a kid that isn't around? Toys R Us, obviously. That's the only store Is A favorite KB toys was also fun. Those are all gone Uh, they're here in Denmark. Uh, some day the company bought them. So F. A. O. Schwartz I So I was really sad. I remember going to F. A. O. Schwartz in New York City And being like going to the toy store. It's awesome. And then I went to take pie there and it was Awful that they still have it but it got it's like it was sterile and awful and I was like what happened all the time It was really not It lost its You know what else lost its brilliance like last time I went to disneyland the Tower Oh tower records. That was definitely my favorite. Oh my god, our records Radio shack you and shack was also fun. Ah, yeah Great go to circuit city was pretty fun. I would like to go. I loved playing with all the um The stereo cluster like you would go walk through the stereo section and crank up the tunes and all the Yeah, I don't know. I used to have that but yes, blockbuster was very fun too blockbuster gone Yeah my home hometown of davis Had uh a lot of small stores That were that were pretty cool. Um Yeah One was called the naturalist which at one point encompassed two stories of A big space right right right right downtown And or discoveries that was discoveries the naturalist was the little one. It was upstairs Discoveries was the two-story one But it had like all sorts of like art supplies plus science. He gets it was like pretty pretty groovy Pretty groovy place naturalists was pretty cool, too. They that's right. The one thing I remember getting there was this little bird tripper Like the thing you would twist it and it's like They little bird trippies And then you go out and then like none of the birds paid attention to you so you threw it away Because it was like not working The only thing it was good at was annoying my family. Yeah Go outside with that. Okay, mom All right, I'm trying to get some birds Licorice pizza Never heard of licorice. I love licorice. I love pizza I don't know about that double salt licorice pizza And hey remember video game arcades This is pretty cool because you didn't have home consoles So you had to go out and socialize with other kids and you had to put your quarter Up on the machine to be next. It was like I'm next I got my quarters right there. You got to get off the machine now I have my quarter up there if you were gonna play again, you should have put your quarter up there But you didn't see how it works And it was very lord of the flies the rules Of that society Your game arcade it turned out the biggest kid usually got to keep playing if they wanted to Yeah, the biggest kid could always Yeah Oh video game arcades We ride your bike and get to well, I never I lived out in the country so that couldn't happen, but I have nostalgia for something I never did Nostalgia for days that never existed Kiki, I'm gonna I'm gonna share my screen. I would like to Complain about this microd covid tracker that you uh sent out to all of us Okay, oh you we're trying that cool cool cool cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna put it on adding to stream. Look at me Oh Not seeing anyone Just working from home But living with a healthcare worker. Thank you That's it, huh? Just living with a healthcare worker Pshh Yeah, you should get a vaccine next so this is the thing I was having a whole twitter conversation today um because it's really concerning to me that households of individuals who are essential workers are Not part of the rollout at all They're not a separate category which like I understand you can't get too deep into minutia. I understand that I also think teachers and grocery store workers and firefighters and police people and all of these people should get vaccines before me I get it. I totally get it But I also think that in terms of people who are a household of people who are working from home Maybe don't need it as bad as me Right, like, you know, also if you're a teacher and you have 20 year old son or daughter living at home with you and you're teaching in person That person should get vaccinated. You know, it's I think that There's there's a question here, especially because when brian god is vaccine They were like, okay, be sure not to take your mask off keep wearing your mask Keep doing all your social distancing and your hand washing and all the stuff because you can still transmit the virus Yeah, so He could still bring it home to me. He's protected Yeah Okay, but my new shirt You're not you're not wearing a mask at home either Families then in that case and then hey, I got a kid that's going to a school I need it to the point is that everyone needs it. It's the stupid part is that Roll it out somehow. We roll out So Totally, but if you're you know, there's some minutia that's being discussed and there's other minutia that's not That's all I'm saying is that you know, also there might be something to say Maybe we should be looking at vaccinating households instead of you know Because that's the other thing I have a friend who's one of her parents is 75 and one of her parents is 70 So the 75 year old is getting a vaccine and the 70 year old is not Ah See this is like The household thing gets real weird because now the 75 year old is vaccinated He can go to the grocery store and not get worried, but he could still bring COVID home to his 70 year old wife. So Okay Can I get Yeah, I think california families are about to start 75 and over Can I get Very rational on this whole thing. Maybe we should start with reverse age Uh, maybe the younger you are the is is when you should be allowed the youngest you are allowed to get the vaccine I don't know if there's an age cutoff down Well, one of them is 18 and one of them is 16 Okay, so whether you're 16 or 18 you start there up because They have more life left Yeah Yes Yes, if you already passed the average age of living on the planet and I'm Only saying this until I get there and then I'm going to change this completely because I'm actually in the middle I'm not anywhere near any direction either anything. Yeah Yeah But by the time I get there anyway, my point is Uh Yeah, I think if you're like you're actually at life expectancy And we need to get as many of these to people to preserve and you're not you're probably already not Going out that much as much as if you're talking about getting Kids uh, so one of the super spreader events or locations that we've discovered is college universities Right And yeah Single people they're going out and socializing and they go out they go away from home. They come back to the home They they're everywhere. Uh, that's everywhere these young people That's probably where we should start like at university Oh boy I mean We need to start with the places where we've seen the major super spreading events which have been nursing homes prisons With frontline workers who are In the healthcare industry first and then you go out to what are the next essential? Okay, then you've got frontline workers who are Post office grocery Who are teachers? Yeah, um I mean it yeah, it's just it's I do not I I I mean The having to go through this whole process and the people making these decisions. I mean, I'm glad I'm not one of those people So here's what's going to happen. I can sit here and be playing all day long. Here's what's going to happen Uh, this is a prediction that wasn't in the prediction show, but this is this is a prediction They're going to blame the slowness of the rollout On the factors that are required for who's first They're going to say, hey, this is what's slowing it down Not the fact that there's just not enough vaccine or that they should have started planning all of this Logistics involved at some point. There's also that problem. That's why other countries have vaccinated more than the united states already But they're going to blame it on the tiered rollout And and they're going to get rid of the tiered rollout and then what you'll see is the people with wealth and access to health care Uh That connected health care plans. I don't mean connected to a health care plan I mean a health care plan that is you paid extra for and it's politically connected That's who will get it first from that point on it will become a wealth gap Thing if we do away with the minutiae if you do away with the minutiae Has look at twitter. So first of all first of all All of our political leaders have been vaccinated, which yeah, I think is insane because they Okay, so there's that but then also like The fact that I saw today not not to throw any shade at tony benet, but tony benet has already been vaccinated, right? And i'm like Any years old sure sure and that's important, but in california for example As like health care workers haven't been fully vaccinated yet people in nursing homes haven't been vaccinated tony benet who has all the money in the world and could have everything delivered to him And is not going out in the world for any reason is not the person who needs a vaccine right now But there's a reason he got the vaccine And it could be so that he can promote the vaccine and increase compliance with getting the vaccine I hope so great I hope so but it could also just be because he's rich and famous Well, I hope that all of the rich and famous people and politicians I mean the one thing that we can hope it comes out of it is that The rich and famous and the politicians who are role models and people look up to and want to be On the same team as or you know, I look up to you They come out and they say I've gotten I got the vaccine because that's teachable. That's education It's showing safety. It is it is showing that people want to do this that you look up to so Yeah, I mean from a from a Messaging standpoint You can look at it and say someone else should have gotten it first and you can complain about it But you can also use it and say Tony Bennett got the vaccine Wait, that means we should get it right right now right Actually, it's funny those I made this argument about uh, uh vaccinating athletes And you guys shot it down I was like they they're you know, they're already the guinea pigs for all medical science and their role models for So many people And it's not that many of them if you did the nba Yeah, yeah, you're right about that But I mean it's the still the same argument of I mean Why should they get it first when there are people putting their lives on the line every day? And endangering their families because they're putting their lives on the line every day And that was my argument against it then and it's still my argument against A lot of people who are rich and famous who are getting their vaccines because they can pray for But at the same time if the nba does get vaccinated I hope that every single one of those players Comes out and talks about it because that will help the communities the that are especially black and Other communities that are being really hard hit by the kovid pandemic To get those communities to have higher vaccine acceptance rates would be amazing so I think there's a huge there's there's there's a huge I mean there nothing is nothing is simple everything has so many different perspectives to it and We can argue or we can go. Okay. Well that happened and and be positive Try and do something positive I understand what you said right there, but uh, I like the being positive thing Positive thinking is also very dangerous because then you're just like oh, whatever happened I'm gonna look at the shiny side of it. Well, no That's not what I'm saying We're gonna be in the bottom of this. Yeah, okay. That's pretty hard. I know I am What I'm saying is that we can spin it. Okay I'm saying be positive is a nice way, but really we can spin it We can use it to our advantage and we can take it and run with it And do good things with something that maybe was not great Anyway Any who oh, hey, I wanted to talk very quickly about a story that somebody sent to me that I thought was ridiculous But apparently a thing Um, I'm scrolling there it is. This was sent to me by Simon Zarafa And um apparently Parrots Are attacking poppy farms to get high on opium. Oh, of course Parrots are smart Parrots like drinking ferment eating fermented fruit Parrots are very high cognitive functioning animals probably on par with young children Young children like to spin around in circles Sure parrots want to spin around in mental circles as well or not. Um, but farms in india apparently have been reaching out Because because it's happening here if I can Share the screen right now. Hold on So while you're pulling this up something that's interesting We this is this is a story from 2019. It looks like Yeah So pop of pop of our savannorum is the opium producing poppy flower uh It Core of opium and heroin trade is also the core of a lot of opiates that we use and morphine etc Also all of the poppy seeds that you cook with that you can buy in bulk They're coming from these types of poppies also the decorative ones you might see in a florist shop So it's sort of always been this weird like it's an illicit illegal tear whatever illegal drug but you can use the plant to Decorate a flower arrangement and you can put it on your muffin the seeds you can put them on your muffins in the morning So it's always been this weird hybrid state that the poppy's been in Mm-hmm So there are massive Uh poppy farms that are not illegal on the planet because of the dual Uses and natures of this plant The parrots apparently have also discovered this they have yeah, I had I hadn't seen this back in 2019. I think it's Very interesting, but the parrots According to ifl science wait until farmers slit open the opium poppy pods in order to ripen them and then begin attacking and rating the farms and the Uh the cover in 2017 the government's narcotics department issued a warning about the drug addicted birds Yeah, so on a poppy plant you don't have to cut them open they they lightly score the outside And that creates this white sap that oozes out that then dries into that black tar of opium So they're waiting they're waiting for the cultivation step Of of that ooze coming out and turning into opium before they're taking them That's a selection based on an observe observed knowledge of when Oh, wow In my I remember in my middle school there was uh just outside the window there was some sort of fermented berry every Spring I want to say that um the birds would get drunk on and It was very funny to watch So they would they would fly all funny and like dive bomb the grass and like fall down and Run into each other. It was it was quite a wild scene. Yeah Oh birds Oh, it's distracting me for my english class at the time for sure Oh Anyone else worried just to know so much about this I actually did a bunch of uh research on uh, uh the opium trade. There was this uh, oh gosh This is going to date to a hundred years ago but it was something that the un had come out and The United States was trying to shut down opium production In afghanistan and the un had come out and said no, you shouldn't because it's going to collapse economies and cause starvation And it was sort of like this weird thing. I was trying to find out like why Why isn't it illegal if it's uh, because I'd known that it was from working in a flower shop As youth that they used those same poppies for floral range. It's like how is this Both illegal and not and apparently it has this weird like, uh Was it thailand can grow it for commercial use but afghanistan wasn't being allowed to but then canada could grow it Denmark they grow wild They're just wild flowers of denmark are the pop of our seven arm plant. So it's It's a weird both illegal and The essential plant on our planet, I guess cool Identity four likes to drink fermented berries as well. I like to drink fermented grapes and apples But I don't act like a moose After eating fermented crab apples. I hope Erica Alaska is saying wait until you have to deal with a moose that's been eating fermented crab apples Yikes um Just on a total tangent not related to anything else that we've been talking about This tonight before the show I had dinner with my family and we sat and we watched the simpsons and It was season 13 episode seven. It's called brawl in the family and It's amazing and I hadn't seen it in years and years and years and years and I highly recommend If you're a simpsons fan or even or even not there was a lot in this episode that It that it was great very pertinent to today, but then Yeah, just really funny good episode There's a clip in it that I want to share with people, but I have to find it because it was so funny made me laugh out loud laugh out loud Wolves and wolves and cougars working together You'll find it highly recommend it Flanders field. I don't know Flanders field interesting not strawberries wine Oh, what is there not strawberries Strawberry wine, but not strawberries That's awesome fermenting things Ooh a peach hard seltzer added cinnamon and vanilla beans that sounds delicious shoe brew yum You all are having fun with fermentation nice the uh official unofficial official state flower of california is the golden poppy, but it's not uh sovereign type. It's a just a wild flower. It's just pretty And it's the color of the shirt I'm wearing actually Isn't it more it's more yellow No, yeah, the california poppy. Well, it can be yeah, it can be yellow. It's a yellow to orange. There's varieties But they're very they're very I find them to be very orange orange, yeah Yeah, I guess so I think your shirt's more of like a burnt umber orange What do you see? What do you see any yellow? It's orange for sure yellowy orange It's bright orange. It's more of like a bright yellowy orange Your shirt's more of like a rust orange. It's more of the color of a poppy in the in the early morning or evening when the light is Yeah But uh, but yeah, I uh some years ago bought uh several pounds of of california poppy seeds And uh, which which they're tiny seeds So this is I don't know I might have and gotten somewhere in the neighborhood of a million seeds by the end of this And just had them in my pockets and if there was an unkempt lawn Or patch of land that didn't look like it was being used or anything I'd just scatter and I've gone back and I found some places where they have taken Uh, they've they've come back uh year after year So you can reclaim Reclaim california with it or wherever you live Uh find out what the native flowers. So fun fact uh native plants native wildflowers in california Are more fire resistant They have greater heat and fire tolerances and they burn less Than non-native species plants, which is great because that means you should grow them It's also terrible because it means california has been burning forever that the plants seem to have Have adjusted to this Of course they would But yeah, wherever your native area is find out what the the native wildflowers were and order a bunch of seeds and Throw them around try to bring them back throw them around or you can just you know Put them in your pockets and put holes in your pockets and shake them out when you're walking Yeah, that's how I was rolling. I literally had walking for pocketful popping seeds that was Which And it's scattering without like like tending so like most of them didn't do anything But there's a couple locations uh where where they've done pretty well um That's awesome. But yeah, if you have a garden Throw them in a garden fencing that Oh my goodness I don't want to look at the news Is everything okay? Everything's okay. Don't look it's a trap Is everything okay out there in the world is it all right? Yeah, I'm kind of looking forward to the Not one not feeling the need to go and check the news cycle to see if my country's still there I feel like I've been doing that for four years. I'm gonna be pretty happy when that is. Yeah, just in poppy seed I totally take that name I was getting this really giddy like sort of like I had this like feeling of being a subversive Like because I'd find like this empty patch of land or something on the edge of a farm Next to some in like or find an area of sprinkling where they would sprinkle water in one of those Uh areas between the freeways or on the edges of the freeways They sort of haven't fenced off like there's an on ramp or an off ramp And so there's a little patch of land that can't really be accessed or used by people for anything And then chucking them out there Uh to see if they're I felt very subversive and it was sort of giddy about it too And then it felt like I had the righteous right on my side because these are california native plants So I don't care about lawns and grass. Those are those are invasive species Uh make them back up boring again. That would be a great I would like that. It would be wonderful. Please Invite the guy for that It's definitely gonna be boring It'll be boring What are you talking about jack? I I got stories. I can tell you to make it. Yeah. Yeah hair curl. Okay, whatever Just have nothing happen. That would be great Somebody's got the zoomies. Yeah Your pups. Oh wait running around there My animals get the zoomies at night. Yeah The zoomies Oh my cat randomly has decided that she likes moon pies That's a new thing I don't know why cats aren't supposed to be able to taste sugar So i'm trying to figure out what in the moon pies she likes because she gets she gets very excited about them She gets like she's like interesting. She comes she smells them and she comes across the room To eat the moon pie But it's not a moon pie brand moon pie. It's like, you know a fancy moon pie from The local store and they're made with oatmeal cookies and Delicious I don't but why would she want to eat a moon pie? I don't even know what a moon pie is. I'm not very much into the sugary delectability thingies I'm not so much either But it's really funny lately marshall loves sweets But he can't eat sweets And so he buys them for me and kai to eat He goes to the store and he's like you come back and he'll be like here's a pie I'm like who's gonna eat that? He's like you are Okay Here are cupcakes. Thank you A moon pie y'all know what moon pies are don't you come on. It's two cookies with like, uh, um Crab cream filling but not like an Oreo. It's like it's like soft softer and more gooey It's like it's almost like marshmallow fluff Yes marshmallow fluff Hi Okay She says hi. I need you right now. You want to play? I don't I don't want to play right now. That's not what I want Don't you want to play? I just laid down and went Come on mom Come on It's your bedtime and you know it Shoebrew say at graham cracker cookies with marshmallow filling dipped in chocolate Yes The ones that I had they were weird. They're just like oatmeal cookies with a marshmallow fluffy In theory, they're delicious oatmeal cookies. Meal raisin cookies. They enjoyed them So did my cat which was very odd Yeah, I don't know that is a good question because yeah because they shouldn't taste the sugar No, the thing that would make it interesting to most people is the sugar Sugar and spice Because yeah, so oatmeal cookies have like a very Uh spicy they've they've spiked it up. Yeah So it's like cinnamon and and like nut nutmeg nutmeg nutmeg Um What would you put in your oatmeal raisin cookies? Yeah, so maybe maybe it's the nutmeg Oatmeal raisin cookies All right, uh and cats wonder what that's Somebody's cat eight oatmeal raisin cookies Not the only one whose cat has eaten oatmeal raisin cookies But without the raisins the cookies. All right. I'm not the only one Ha ha thank you google. You ready to go have a day. Justin. I gotta you guys making me hungry I gotta go make breakfast and go have some breakfast Go break your fast sun. The sun should be up in a few hours so What The sun is up for like four hours a day It's like that's it and then even when it's up there's like the clouds Still no sun Yeah That's why the Danes are such happy people Clothes that was the spice I was trying to think of clothes. Yes a clothes The Danes do get really happy when I see the sun like sun the sun. Do you see it? It shines. I can feel the warmth Come to california sometime you can have that all of the every day You can have that all the time Unless you go to san francisco and then you'll be like This I feel ripped off. I came all the way to california for the sun. I didn't see it There's more and more sun in san francisco as climate change is already sunny in san francisco Say good night blair. Good night blair. Say good night. Justin. Yeah Good morning Good morning. Justin Good night Good night, everyone. Thank you for another wonderful show Let's have a great week full of peace and harmony and peace And yeah, that'd be good