 Hello world! We are back with This Week in Science. We're here, but no Justin, but we're going to do our regularly scheduled weekly program without him and begin the show that will go on and be recorded. Not all of it will end up in the final podcast, but you, you video viewers, get to see it all. So make sure to subscribe and hit that notification and like button right now before we get going so that you can make sure to find out whenever we are going live with video for you to see it all. Blair, are you ready? I'm ready. Ready. All right. Going live in three, two, this is Twist. This Week in Science episode number 809 recorded on Wednesday, January 27th, 2021. How to describe a mosquito. Hi everyone. I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show, we will fill your heads with bad ideas, old milk and mosquitoes, but first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Just because you want something to be true doesn't make it so. Attacking other people who don't agree with you won't change that fact. For everything you've seen and believe there are others seeing differently, but some try to see something new by silencing their biases, as much as possible anyway, and taking a scientific view. For everything you see, there is a likely explanation. It may not be the thing you think, but an unexpected reason. So take your preconceptions and throw them in the trash and join us here on This Week in Science, coming up next. Got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I want to learn everything. I'll happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know. Good science to you, Kiki. Good science to you too, Blair, and good science to everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back again to discuss science because we love it and we know you enjoy it as well. We are minus a Justin this week and hope that his travels are safe and that he will join us again next week after he has landed back in the United States from his adventures in, where'd he go? Denmark? Yeah, I don't know why you want to come back. Well, I know why he wants to come back here, but also why would you want to come back to the US right now? Oh, well, because there's a lot of good going on along with all the rest, and we've got a bunch of science to talk about. I've got one great study out of the United States related to zero carbon future and a plan to get there. This is very exciting. I'm super excited about this story. We also have an interview with one of the world's experts in mosquitoes, and I am thrilled to get to that in a little bit. Blair, what did you bring? I have a story all about poop. No surprises there. I have another story about poop. So I have two stories about poop in the beginning of the show, just if you're checking. And then I have two stories in actually the animal corner about CO2 levels and ocean warming. So just all of the climate changey things happening in the ocean and some impacts from that. All right, sounds like we have a lot of fun science to get to. Poop and climate change, that's me today. Poo positive. As we jump into the show, I would love to remind you that if you are not yet subscribed to This Week in Science, you can find us on Facebook and YouTube by looking for This Week in Science. Also, on every podcast directory that's out there just about, look for This Week in Science, look for TWIS Science, T-W-I-S-C-I-E-N-C-E on Twitch, and you can go to our website, TWIS-T-W-I-S dot org. TWIS dot org to find out more information about the show and get show notes for every episode. Now it's time for the science. So here we go. Carbon zero. Can you just imagine a day? I want, Blair, I want you to put yourself in that headspace of carbon neutrality, where we are taking up as much carbon as we are emitting, where we maybe are not emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Can you, can you imagine this this day? This is really hard. I feel like I can imagine if we come up with carbon sequestration methods that are really, really big. I could imagine that, but it's really hard for me to imagine a time when we won't be burning fossil fuels at all. Yeah, it's difficult to even imagine it, but out of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, there is a peer reviewed published road map for carbon neutrality for the United States. The researchers have prescribed eight steps to take in the next 10 years that would get us to that carbon neutrality. So let's dive in to what those steps are. Getting to carbon zero. They say we'll take the first 10 years. It's pretty much the same. No matter what, everything, every possible path that they looked at for potential outcomes in the future. The first 10 years, it's all the same. And it's about 2030 when the different paths diverge as to whether or not we're going 100% sustainable renewable energy or whether there is a balanced mix of different types of energy, depending on how much solar, how much geothermal, how much bio biomass we're using. There are lots of potentials, but in the next 10 years, the eight things we need to do, increase solar and wind capacity, 3.5 times to 500 gigawatts. That seems doable. It seems doable. But that's in 10 years. It's not that bad. Yeah. Eliminate most electricity generation from coal. Gotta get rid of coal. That's a big one. Three, maintain current natural gas generating capacity for reliability. So it's kind of a backup fuel. We can't just get rid of it right now. So over the next 10 years, it's still going to be there, but maybe we start making plans to ease away from it. Number four, increase zero emission vehicles share to 50%. It doesn't mean that if you have a car right now, you need to just get rid of that car and go buy an electric vehicle. It means that when your car reaches its end of life over the next 10 years, then maybe you consider buying an electric vehicle at that next point. Five, increase sales share of building heat pumps to 50%. Now, what's a building heat pump? It uses the coolness or the constant temperature of below ground to pump heat and cool through buildings so that you don't rely on electricity or fossil fuels for that HVAC system. Six, all new buildings and appliances meet strict energy efficiency goals. So we need to regulate and... That seems like the easiest one, honestly, because that's all new stuff that's being made anyway. Yep. Yeah. If you're building it new, build it clean. Number seven, R&D for carbon capture sequestration and carbon neutral fuels. Research and development for the future? Let's do that. Okay, who knew? And number eight, build electricity transmission and pipelines for carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas because that is something that we have not done yet is created infrastructure for hydrogen gas. And if we are going to be moving carbon dioxide from place to place doing carbon capture or anything else with it, then maybe we need to create infrastructure for these things. Now, the question that you might ask, hey, hey, this is all good, but how much is it gonna cost? Well, over the years until 2050, they say on average, it'll cost about $1 per person per day. The total cost will be between 0.2% to 1.2% of our gross domestic product. So it's not going to break the bank. It is a doable amount. And depending on the direction we take, there is actually a net negative path that could be taken that would cost 0.6% of the gross domestic product in 2050. So I think that's the part of this conversation that always gets me and without spending the next hour complaining about this, I will just say that whenever we're talking about the cost of shifting to renewable energy, there's a lot of conversation about manufacturing and purchasing and shipping and all this kind of stuff, which makes sense because it's a very tangible cost. But there's the cost of broken down infrastructure, health issues, socioeconomic issues, all sorts of other costs of climate change that you would be reducing by changing it. So it's tough to talk about how much it's actually going to cost until you also figure in what you're saving. But I understand that's a lot harder to talk about in the general public and in politics. But it really, it would be great to be able to push that part of the conversation a little bit farther. It would be wonderful. But going through this article I read, I read through it today and addressing the costs, they went deeply into the fact that they're not asking for energy infrastructure to be destroyed right now and new stuff to be built right now. It's like, okay, we have 10 years to start putting things in the pipeline to take over and to develop the infrastructure to reach the temperature target by 2050. So it's a very, it's a positive, very realistic view on where we are with energy and where we hope to be. And I was heartened by it and it was great to see a plan. And this is like this is out of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. So this is researchers tied in also with the DOE and with government programs so that maybe this is a plan that can really strike some conversations and get some action going. Anyway, I'm excited about it. So I hope other people, yeah, take a look at it. We'll put the links on the website. Okay. That was a good idea. Now Blair told me about bad ideas. Well, I mean, this is my, just clear, just clear, this is my take on this story. So let me just present it to you kind of neutrally and maybe you can kind of see what I'm seeing here. Okay, so start from the journalistic unbiased slant and then we'll go to the Blair. So in Australia, there's about 24 million cattle nationwide. Each of them drops about 12 patties a day. That's a lot of poop. There is a huge poop problem in Australia. Bush flies are a huge problem. But on top of that, those cow patties stick around for a long time. Over time, the grass actually rapidly grows around the nutrient filled cow patties and that creates what's called rank pasture. It's gross, rank grass that the cows don't want to eat. It's rank. It's rank. It's quite literally rank. Yeah. So it would be great to find a way to get rid of this poop. You know, I guess you could just clean it up, but that's a lot of cows. So there's a nationwide dung beetle ecosystem engineers project trying to find a way to get rid of this poop by introducing dung beetles that are active all year round to Australia. There are some species of dung beetles that are native to Australia. They're there during spring and winter. That's when you have really good source for poop, generally speaking, in the natural world, right? But because they need wet, they need wet poop to lay their eggs in. So that's their most active. But they don't really have anything super active from January to April. So they don't have dung beetles taking care of this poop. So they have started introducing other species of dung beetle so that they will then push the cow dung 15 to 30 centimeters down deep into the soil, feet on the dung, and then also it gets turned over back into the soil, and it's a place for them to lay their eggs. So that's the long and the short of it. Right. Okay. So they need the burrowing dung beetles to take the cow dung, bury it, and use it. Yeah. And I get it. Problem solved. Totally. I get it. But I'm just saying if there's somebody that's going to gung ho release a non native animal into their ecosystem, Australia, maybe take a backseat. You've done a lot of this, and it has not turned out well for you at all. So yes, I understand. I don't foresee any problem with this. Dung beetles, as far as I know, they're not going to upset the ecosystem. But we also know that they lay their eggs in poop. So is this going to cause some sort of crazy population boom that is going to impact the ecosystem in some other way? I don't know. But my question is, do they know? Before any biological control for anything, whether it's a species or a piles of dung, you need to take an environmental assessment, right? Yeah. And I'm sure there's been a lot of that done. But there was also a lot of environmental assessment done before other animals have been released into the wild and things haven't worked out that well. And also just, I'm just saying, Australia, you've had a bad record on this. So maybe put a hold on it. The cane toads, and the cats, and the rabbits, and the non native fish, and the canids, and just lots of things. Just all the prisoners. I don't know. Maybe clean up the poop. I don't know. I don't know what to do. But I don't have a solution. I'm just raising questions. But moving on from that, I have another really, really cool story about poop. Okay. I really wish Justin was here, because I feel like he would love this story. So this is looking at white gold, which is seabird guano, could have been responsible for the highly productive agricultural systems of pre-Incan civilization in the otherwise arid climate of the Atacama Desert. Wait, wait, what? Yes. So gull gull droppings. Yeah, seabirds of various kinds. But yes, absolutely. And it's not white gold like my wedding band. No, no. It's poop, guano. Here rates. Yeah. So there were these large populations in the Atacama Desert in this pre-Incan civilization in what is now northern Chile between 1000 and 1450 AD. This is one of the driest deserts in the world, but they have robust agricultural systems. And this is defied explanation for a very long time. But what they did is researchers looked at the specimens of maize, chili pepper, gourds, beans, quinoa, and wild local fruits from the Atacama Desert between 1000 BC and AD 1800. And they also looked at human isotope values in bone collagen. And they found an increase in nitrogen isotope values from around AD 1000. That shift to extremely high nitrogen isotopes, the highest in the world in archaeological plans. They think this is all based on the use of seabird guano as crop fertilizer, which has strong implications for their ability to have this very developed agricultural system, the population growth that resulted, and the social complexity that followed. I mean, agriculture is a big step to that in the first place because you're bulk producing food. But if you have amazing crops because you're using this really nitrogen-rich fertilizer, and it's improving the fertilists of the soil, this study is fantastic. I love how they connected the dots also between nitrogen in gual guano with nitrogen in the bones, which would have been isotopes from the food they ate. The whole side of science looking at isotopes through history. Yes, it is so cool. One of the first times I heard about that was actually bringing it back to climate change from earlier, looking at the different types of carbon isotopes and the ones that come from fossil fuels versus the ones that come from natural processes. You can actually see, based on topsoil, ice cores, all these sorts of things, you can see where the carbon came from because of the isotopes. Just like this, it's like a, yeah, it's like forensics. It's so cool. I encourage everyone to look into isotopes in soil and fossils and stuff more because it's very interesting. It's really interesting. And speaking of isotopes or leftovers, proteins actually that were leftover. I have a study that was published in Nature This Week. Ancient proteins provide evidence of dairy consumption in eastern Africa. So when did we start drinking milk? We must have started to drink milk before we really had prevalence of the lactase gene that allows for the breakdown of lactose. Breaks down that milk sugar. And for people who are lactose intolerant, who don't have the lactase gene, we know what that feels like. But African farmers were, there were hurting communities for millennia before there is known prevalence of the lactase gene or of lactase of this ability to be able to digest it. So they went, they wanted to find out exactly what was going on. They looked at teeth from individuals in various areas across Africa, dating back as far as 6000 years ago, and were able to isolate dairy proteins from the teeth and show that, yes, indeed, various groups based on these individuals were consuming dairy and most likely based on other artifacts and archaeological remnants. They were able to draw parallels between hurting communities and individuals that were surviving based on eating dairy before we could digest it. Thanks, teeth. Question. How do we know that they were drinking it and not eating it? So they could have been eating it as well. It could have been cheeses. I imagine that it would have been easier for or it could have been cultured milks, maybe yogurts, things that soured fermented a bit in containers. All that they have evidence for are the dairy proteins. So it's not evident as to what form of dairy that was. Right. Because I'm just thinking certain forms of dairy products are harsher on people who are lactose intolerant than others. Right. So that if you depends on the amount of lactose in the dairy that's being consumed. Right. Because yeah, like sheep and goat milk has less lactose than cow milk. And that's going to make a difference. Right. Interesting. And then hard cheeses have less than soft cheeses, right? Is that a thing? Yes. Okay. So that's, that's what I'm just wondering is if, if they were consuming it in some ways other than just drinking straight milk right away and that helped kind of encourage this change. I don't know. Just, just a curious question. Yeah. I have no idea. And that would be really interesting to be able to discover, discover, but at the, at the same time, what this is able to say is that yeah, before the ability to digest lactose came to be for a lot of people, there were probably mutations around and about for different individuals, but it, it wasn't widespread. And we know that still within Africa, the ability to digest milk is not as widespread as it is in Northern Europe. And in Germany, it's thought that the ability to digest the genes responsible for creating the enzymes to digest lactose that they weren't really widely prevalent in the population until about 850 years ago. So there's, that's a long time for these genes to be building up in the, in the population, in the human population. But we've been dairy-ing for a long time. People have put up with a lot to eat dairy for millennia. Well, it's delicious. It's delicious. I know. I know. And they didn't, they probably didn't even have ice cream that long ago. So no, no. One last quick story before these short stories. 20% of diagnosed autism cases are the result of maternal auto antibody related autism spectrum disorder. And focusing on this condition, UC Davis researchers at the Mind Institute used machine learning to assess the reactivity of maternal antibodies to eight proteins expressed in the fetal brain. Now, what happens in the maternal auto antibody related autism spectrum disorder is that these are autoimmune antibodies where they are thought to be antibodies that are attacking or getting the immune system to attack very specific proteins within the developing fetal brain. And so they looked at eight of these proteins that are known in the, to be a part of this, and they discovered that there's a very specific pattern of reactivity that they could, they could diagnose with 100% accuracy as to a, that could be potential biomarkers of autism spectrum disorder. And so they're looking at the possibility of being able to develop a blood test to search for these antibodies, these biomarkers in women before they have children to potentially give them a better idea of their likelihood to have this specific maternal auto antibody autism spectrum disorder in a child or any other form of autism. But it's, it's potentially good news for women who know that, that autism spectrum disorders run in their family. And it can give a little bit more information in this world where we just don't know a lot all the time. Yeah. If you just tuned in, you are listening to This Week in Science. I'm here with Blair to talk about science with you. And if you're interested in a twist shirt or mug or other item of our twisty merchandise, head over to twist.org and click on our Zazzle store link and then browse the store to find all sorts of items, some with the twist logo and others with Blair's original animal art from the Blair's animal corner calendar. And you can buy it and support the show. If you head over to Zazzle right now, peruse while you listen. Okay, at this moment I'm going to add to our conversation our guest for the evening. Tonight I would like to welcome Dr. Yvonne Linton. Dr. Linton is a research director for Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit. She holds a trust position within the Department of Entomology at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. She also serves as curator of the USNM mosquito collection, comprising over 1.7 million specimens. It's a lot of bugs. Her first book, Mosquitoes of the World, volumes one and two, written with Richard C. Wilkerson and the recently deceased Daniel Districtman, was recently published. Dr. Linton, thank you so much for joining us on the show tonight. Thank you for inviting us. It's great to have this opportunity to talk to everyone here at Twiz. So thank you. What is it like to be responsible for our nation's mosquitoes? It's a big job. As you mentioned, you know, it's 1.7 million specimens, so it's definitely something that takes a lot of our time. We're actually a military unit, the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit, and we've been a part, an integral part of the the Smithsonian since, formally since 1984, but before that, the military, basically when they were starting to work in Southeast Asia and just before the Vietnam War, they were aware that more soldiers were dying of mosquito-borne diseases than any conflict, active conflict, that was going on. So there started to be a very tight relationship between the military entomologists and the Smithsonian Institution, where all of the expert entomologists were. So that started this relationship between the military and the Smithsonian. And at that point in time, there was only 200,000 specimens in the collection. And so just in a very short period of time, we've been able to build it up to the 1.7 million that it is today. And the collection that we have is geographically the most diverse and also taxonomically the most diverse in the world. So we're very proud of it. And it's definitely the jewel in our crown. We go to the collection every day when it's not COVID. We host a lot of visitors when it's not COVID. And even in this COVID time, you know, we're responsible for that collection. So I do personally go and check on the collection, make sure that we're not experiencing any leaks or issues. So it's a beautiful collection. It's been really well looked after. And we're just working on making it more accessible to people digitally at the moment. Yeah. So of the specimens that you have, I mean, these aren't 1.7 million individual examples of a species. How many duplicates, how many examples of species and subspecies? How does it all divvy up within that massive number? So we actually do know how many mosquitoes there have been formally named in the world. That was part of our research for the book was actually if you're going to write a book called Mosquitoes the World, the question you need to do is know how many there are. Which sounds like an easy ask, but actually it wasn't at all. It took us many, many years to pull together all the information that we needed for the book. But we came to a final figure and that was that there was 3,570 species that had been formally described and 130 subspecies. So 3,700 dead, which makes seem like we made it up, but we did actually count every last one. And so in the collection, what we have, the collection was originally started as a US collection. So it's very heavily US orientated until 1961 when we started to work overseas. And so we did a tally and in the collection, there's about 65% of all known species. And we have a huge number of the original polytypes, which is the original specimen that the species is named after. So we do have the biggest collection in the world for that. But our collection is comprised of several different forms. You know, we have insects on pins. So we have adults, males and females on pins. But mosquito life cycle is eggs, larvae and pupae. And the larvae and pupae can't be put on pins. They need to be put on slides. So sometimes we have single specimen where we have a larval skin, a pupal skin, and then we have the adult in the collection. So we have to somehow keep all those things together. So the curation is always moving, always evolving. And we're always realizing that we could have done it somewhat differently to make it easier for ourselves. So it's always better. It's a huge, huge business, you know, just doing that work in itself. So we're very lucky, though, within the unit, we have a lot of people who have worked on mosquitoes for many, many years. We have somebody in our unit just now who's worked for over 45 years in the unit. So we have a lot of history there. We're very, very good at packaging big data sets, you know, maintaining this big data and knowing where everything is, you know, we loan a lot of specimens around the globe and keeping track of that. You know, this person in this universe. It's like a library. It is, it is like a library. But it's really rewarding when you see, you know, your collection really shining, starting to shine and really able to find everything that you need. Having visitors there who appreciate the work that you've done on the collection and the expansion that we have. So, yeah, it's a very nice dynamic place to work. And these are all contemporary mosquitoes? So some of them are mosquitoes that are fossils. Some of them are mosquitoes that have been found once or twice and never found again. So we really don't know where we are in that climb. We just can capture a certain snapshot in time. And an awful lot of our specimens are specimens that are donated to us from researchers worldwide. So if somebody describes a new species, they'll send either the holotype or a few exemplars. Our collections are very strong where we have military, active military overseas. Everywhere that we are working overseas, we work to protect the soldier. So that's another military aspect is looking at these mosquitoes, particularly, but also fleas, ticks, sand flies, any biting insects that can transmit diseases to the soldiers. So really the mission of our unit, the WRBU, is to protect the soldier. Did you ever envision yourself being a mosquito librarian, a mosquito classification expert, being able to identify and classify via taxonomy all of the mosquitoes? I think very quickly within my career at university level, I realized that insects were definitely going to be my thing and biting insects at that. So I worked for my PhD, I did collocoides, which spread diseases in agriculture, biting midges, very small biting midges. And being from Scotland, we were quite famous for our biting midges. So I always knew that I was interested in the disease aspect, in how species could look almost identical. But in fact, when you start to tease them apart, we realized that what we thought was one species can be up to 10 or 12 different species. And when we're talking about controlling particular species, which are important in disease transmission, it's really important to know your enemy, to know which of those are actually causing disease outbreaks in certain areas. So a lot of the work that we do is on identification of species, but now it's not only enough to have a microscope and be able to physically look at the specimens, we often need DNA analysis as well. So we've worked very hard at WRBU, working together with the classical taxonomists to make reference libraries of DNA barcodes, which is basically the way that we're able to rapidly identify and confirm and compare with other scientists that we have exactly the same taxa that we're talking about. Unfortunately. And you've been doing that for a really long time. You spearheaded the mosquito barcoding initiative. That's right. It's a never-ending story. We seem to discover more new species than we actually get through. So when we first started, we said that we would aim to look at 80 percent of the world's mosquitoes and get barcodes for those. But the numbers of new taxa that we keep finding everywhere we go is phenomenal, actually. It's about a third extra taxa everywhere that we look. So every group within every country. So we've been underestimating the diversity of mosquitoes. Grossly underestimated. And I think one of the aspects is as well that over time, a lot of the mosquitoes have been collected for biomedical studies. So they've really been pulling out those taxa that we already know is important in transmission, rather than looking at everything in the collection. So we've actually underestimated a lot of vectors, important mosquito that can transmit diseases. So a lot of our work now in WRBU is biosavailants. So we're working, collecting, and screening for pathogens. But those pathogens we know and those pathogens we don't. So we're doing a lot of next-gen sequencing approaches everywhere across the globe, really. Yeah, I just came across a study today talking about a new malaria mosquito that had been endemic to Asia and India and part of the issue of malaria in in the Indian regions, but has recently spread to Africa and where Africa has had a malaria problem in rural regions. This is now causing a problem in cities because it is a better host for the malaria parasite than it's like, it's like, Yay, infect me. I love it. And it really does well in in like buckets of water that could accumulate. And also in water towers as well, you know, people have water just in the top of their houses. So that's why we've been finding it. We actually were involved in the first study that reported that from Jim. Oh, you are? Yeah. So and actually recently, we just had another invasive species that we picked up this time in the Caribbean. So it's a really good vector of chikungunya, dengue, yellow fever viruses. It's called 80s potatoes, very obvious because it has six spots on its back, like a dice, like white spots. And we picked that up through biosurveillance, actually, activities with the Navy in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. And at the same time, other colleagues in Dominican Republic have found it in Dominican as well. So that shows, we were able to show looking at the DNA barcodes and putting biogeographical analysis in there, we were able to show that the two populations in the Caribbean were different introductions, but that they both stemmed from the southern Indian continent. So it's the idea of the introduction, right, is do they do they are they brought over in water from on in shipping containers? Or are they carried on the wind? Is there a known method for in banana plants? I don't know. Is there a known method for introduction? There are many, many examples now because the world is so small. You know, we're really globalized and the number of aircraft that move around, the number of ships that move around, our world is very small now. And these mosquitoes usually don't don't travel as mosquitoes. They usually travel as eggs. So so what we have is a number of different species, usually AED species, which are very good at surviving in the dormancy stage as eggs. And so perhaps the mosquito in Southeast Asia lays its egg in a tire or on a lucky bamboo plant. It shipped as an egg. And as soon as it arrives into USA or any other place in the world, usually if it's tires, they're just dumped out on the dock. And as soon as it rains, the larvae are stimulated to hatch. So it's actually a big problem that we have. We are finding more and more invasive species. But you know, we're looking now, we're in COVID, we're looking at pandemic starting. The issue with these AEDs is often that if the mother is already infected, her eggs will be infected. And so when she moves to a new region, that means that all of a sudden, you know, you can have an outbreak of disease. But we also did a very, very nice study with Tovi Lehman from the NIH. And we looked at why malaria disappeared from the Sahal region in Mali. And so basically in Mali at certain points of the year, it's nice and green, and there's lots of water on the ground. And then there's no water, there's no mosquitoes, and there's no malaria. And the question for a long time has been, where do the mosquitoes go? Do they, do they estimate? Where do they estimate? And nobody could find them. And so we worked together with Tovi doing the molecular identification of mosquitoes that he found on balloons that were put up over the Sahal. So this is actually a picture that was done by our friends and illustrator of the book, Taina Litwak. And actually each one of those mosquitoes is a perfect Anopheles Gambia. That's amazing. Yeah. So that's just showing, you know, our balloon over Mali with the sticky nets there. And actually one of the things that were shown was that the higher that we were able to put the helium balloon, the more Anopheles mosquitoes that we found. But one of the really interesting things for me was that as soon as I looked at the samples that were brought back to the lab, I noticed that all of the mosquitoes were gravid. That means that they had, within 36 hours prior to being found up in this, you know, high altitude, they had taken a blood meal. So this means that it's a strategy. It's an exit strategy. I take a blood meal. Mosquitoes normally, if they take a blood meal, they just hide out somewhere cool and dark until their eggs are matured. But this is the flight of their life. They take the blood meal, they get up into the air stream and do long distance migrations. And so Tovi's paper that you can see here showed that these mosquitoes could be carried up to 350 meters. So three amazing kilometers, I'm sorry. And it's just the wind, they're just allowing the wind to loft them and take them up to these heights? There's some indication that they are actively orientating within the winds with other people's studies. We weren't looking at that in this particular study, but one of the things that obviously is happening in Africa, across Africa, is that people are trying to eliminate malaria. You know, Bill and Melinda Gates, the senior author of the book, Dan Strickman worked for, are looking to eliminate malaria. So what you can understand by this study is that we're basically putting a postage stamp in the air and waving it around passively. And whatever is sticking to that, you know, is what we're looking at. And so there's trillions of insects that are on the move. It's not a few insects. So we're finding lots of different insects, you know, plant virus vectors as well as human vectors of disease. So the latest thing that we're doing is actually taking those mosquitoes down from these high altitudes and now testing them to see if they have any viruses or malaria parasites in them. Right, because that's a, you know, if they've had the blood meal, if they are up there, if they're infected with the parasites or any viruses, then when they land, that's the potential to drop all that off wherever they end up. Well, I think as well, when you start to understand just the numbers that are in that, that airstream, them coming down and landing is a big... Yeah, so what is it? What is it like, your postage stamps that you're sending up with a big helium balloon? So you've got these sticky traps that are collecting insects while they're up there. But how, what kind of a sample do you get from... So the sample nets are, you know, a meter by a meter. And what you pull down can have grasshoppers, sometimes bats fly at that height, where, you know, we sampled up to 240 meters. It's very, very difficult to pull down a helium balloon from 240 meters. And so you need a certain amount, a size of balloon, but you also need a lot of helium. And every time you pull that down, you have to recharge the helium, which can be very difficult to find sometimes. But this, this is a really interesting study. And I think it changes the way that we view how we have to control mosquito-borne disease, because this is showing that the introductions of many, many diseases could actually be aerial. Right. And if this is happening in the Sahel, we do know that there are dust storms that will bring dust all the way from Africa across the Atlantic to the eastern seaboard of the United States. You know, even within the African continent, how far are any of these insects moving? And what kind of population movement would that be? That's certainly something that we need to have more data to actually ascertain. And working out where along the clines, you know, we can work out potentially with the wind speeds, how far something could go in a certain direction. But that's not necessarily, you know, we're not starting from point zero just because we collect it at this point. That that mosquito could have been in its travels for a day or just an hour. You know, so it's very no idea. We haven't, you haven't gotten to the point of doing mosquito-banding experiments yet. We need to bark at them more. Right. I was just picturing lots of fancy nail polish. Right. Little dots on the backs of the mosquitoes. How you would find them again. Exactly. Yeah. A little, a little note on them. So if found, please call. Yeah. I wonder, yeah, I wonder if there's some kind of citizen science bark coating experiment that could be embarked on to, to find more out about this. I mean, it's just so interesting to think about where these insects are distributing. That's fascinating. Well, I think that what we showed, you know, really with the, with the gravity aspect is that this is a conscious movement. You know, this is, this is a survival strategy for, for the insects, certainly in the Sahal. And I wonder just how, how common that is across other regions of the world as well. Yeah. As far as, you know, disease and mosquitoes, those are the things that we connect in our minds. We like, oh, mosquito, that's, it's going to not just itch, it's the possibility for any number of viruses or parasites. And depending on where you are, you're going to be familiar with whatever species. But like you mentioned, the eighties mosquitoes are very well known as disease vectors. What proportion of mosquitoes at large are disease vectors? So now that we've started to work more with, with viruses, we're finding that the viruses, unlike malaria, which is only transmitted by anopheles mosquitoes, viruses are much less strict with, with where their hosts are. We, we find a number of, of taxa able to transmit a lot of different viruses. So when we're talking about anopheles mosquitoes, around about 70 of the 470 species are known to transmit malaria. But when we started to work on the book, we realized that actually huge numbers have been found positive for viruses. Viruses are somewhat more difficult to ascertain whether the mosquitoes are actually able to transmit the virus that is found in them. You know, so that's another aspect that we have to bear in mind. So certainly in the book, when we were doing the research, we, we have stuck with associated pathogens, because it's very difficult for us to verify that all of those have been tested, you know, as, as competent in the lab. But I think that the number of viruses that we're finding, all these new and novel viruses are very, very common. Whenever we're working in new areas, we tend to find a number of new viruses. We worked recently along the, the borders of, of Syria in the refugee camps in, in the southern borders and also in, you know, in the northern border with Turkey. And we found a number of new viruses that we described from Turkey, just in that time. So we are, we're doing a lot of work on, on describing new species of mosquitoes, and also at the same time looking at the, at the viruses. Yeah. So you find the mosquitoes and the viruses that are in the mosquitoes, then you say new virus? Yes. What does this mean for humanity? Is that kind of, is this just a mosquito virus? Or is this something we need to worry about? That's right. Yeah. And, and obviously, you know, the mosquitoes can tell us a lot about the environment as well, because now that we're doing molecular analysis, we, we not only can work out which mosquito species it is with their DNA, but we also have the DNA of the blood meal that they've been taking. So we can work out, you know, which, which exact hosts they're feeding on. And also more interestingly, which of those mosquitoes are feeding on more than one host, because then we have more chance to, to understand that, you know, which are, are playing a bigger role in being able to transmit these viruses through, from wildlife, for example, into humans, you know, where are those crossover points of these big zoonotic diseases. And obviously, in this COVID pandemic, everyone is very aware of what that means these days. So, you know, we do a lot of surveillance work that now includes what we call Zeno surveillance. So we, we look at mosquitoes not only with our entomological head on, but we also look at them as blood bags, which can tell us what is happening, you know, in that environment. So I was hoping you were going to talk about this. I was like, I want to hear about the blood. Yes. But the blood. Yes. The blood meal of a mosquito. So, you know, not all mosquitoes actually feed on, on blood. That's, that's a big misconception. People assume that, that with mosquitoes, we're always talking about blood suckers. And actually, the reason that we have this beautiful image as the, the first cover of our volume one was to show that some mosquitoes, in fact, don't take a blood meal at all. And this is a toxin and kites mosquito on, on a flower. And its proboscis is, is so bent that it can't actually penetrate skin, even if it was, if it was to try. And it feeds on flowers. And some of the, the reason that mosquitoes feed on blood is to produce enough, you know, to, to imbibe enough proteins to produce their eggs. So when you have a mosquito that has a carnivorous larval stage means it can take in all the proteins that it needs to at that stage and can produce eggs from that reserve that it has. So, so we have the biggest mosquito is the toxin and kites. So it's a giant. So tend to think of it as the gentle giant of the mosquito world. And so that was our choice of putting this beautiful image by Larry Reeves on the front cover was to show that, you know, we're talking about mosquitoes of the world, which means all the diversity of mosquitoes and not just the bloodsuckers or the, the vectors, which everybody hears about so often. Well, we're, as humans, we are concerned about the ones that make us itch and give us allergic reactions or cause a disease. I mean, we're just self centered that way. So if Justin were here, he would ask a question. So I'm going to ask it because I'm sure everyone's very curious. He for a long time was very much a proponent of specifically those ones that spread diseases, just wipe them out, right? Just, just get rid of what caused they serve. What could they possibly do that we'd be losing to getting rid of them? So I'm just kind of curious about the suicide mosquitoes that are being released right now about that kind of attempt to slow or stop a population of mosquitoes and just kind of the idea in general of like, do we need all the mosquitoes? I guess is my question. So, you know, do we need all the mosquitoes? People often ask that mosquitoes play a pivotal role in a lot of different facets. So they can play a pivotal role in pollination of flowers. They can play a pivotal role in the food web. So if we're talking about bats, you know, bats and birds eat enormous numbers of mosquitoes and other insects in their flights. But, you know, mosquitoes have a larval stage and an immature stage, which is in the water. And so that means that they're food for numerous fish. So if we were to wipe all of the mosquitoes out of the world, we have mosquitoes in almost every habitat that we can possibly imagine. If you have water, you will find a mosquito. You'll find it in the axle of a plant. You'll find it in the tree hole. You'll find it in a spot on the floor in a puddle that you'll find in Africa. You'll find the most infamous malaria vector in a hoof print that's going to dry up within a few hours, which means it's life cycle needs to be that fast that it can, you know, go from an egg to a larvae to a pupae and out again before those tiny, tiny puddles of water dry up. So people often say, you know, can't we just get rid of all mosquitoes? For one thing, it's almost impossible. It's almost impossible to find all of those small, tiny little places that you would find mosquitoes. We know that with chicken and Zika and dengue outbreaks, the mosquitoes that primarily are involved in that are Stegomaya, Aedes Stegomaya mosquitoes, and they breed next to us. So if you leave your child's toy out in the backyard and it rains, you know, the mosquitoes will probably be occupying that in a few days time. If you like flowers and you have flower pots, the mosquitoes will be in any water that you choose to leave around. And that means then that they're also feeding on you and your children, you know, as you're in the garden. So it's actually incredibly hard to get rid of all the mosquitoes in the world. And there's many, many people that are working on vector control and different new techniques and new traps and different baits and repellents. It's a very, very difficult business. If it was easy, it would be done by now. So we would have done it. There's lots of mosquitoes that we don't need to get rid of. This Toxer and Kites here, I put this as an example page of one of the pages that we have in our book. We have 41 genera of mosquitoes, and each one of them is totally unique and distinct and different. They are geographically bound to the areas, apart from these invasives that we talked about. But they have very particular habitats and ecologies that are linked to that genus. So we have 41 and I believe 172 subgenera. So I'm probably wrong on that number. It changes a lot. But we decided that what we wanted to do in this book was, as well as give a lot of details in the text and the chapters prior to it, we decided that we would do something that was unique, which was to showcase each one of these genera so that people could better understand and identify them more quickly. So we looked at the binomics, we looked at whether any of the genera had been associated with any pathogens, what the distribution was, and how we could look at them. So you can see in this picture anyway, the mosquito has a very curved proboscis, and that's the toxin kites that doesn't feed on man. But we have a 41 genera, so there's 41 generic pages, but we also picked the top 127 vector species around the globe. And so we did this very detailed look and produced these wonderful images through our illustrators, Tina Litwak and Judy Stofer, and they did an amazing job to capture all of the images of all of the characters that we need to identify these mosquitoes. And the detail to them as well. I think the reason that I chose this one to show you is just most people think the mosquitoes are really boring. They're either black and white, everyone knows the tiger mosquitoes, black and white, or they are just brown. And actually the most dangerous ones are just brown, which is why I didn't show them here. So this is the toxin kites, and if we go to that next one that you looked at. Before we do though, this carnivorous mosquito, it's, you mentioned it's only carnivorous during its larval stage. Yeah, that's right. So what do the larvae eat? They eat other mosquitoes, and sometimes other mosquitoes of the same species themselves, you know, they will usually... It's a mosquito larva grudge match. So these mosquitoes, where we've heard about mosquitoes that are invasive, that move across the world accidentally, man has actually moved some of these mosquitoes into the rice fields. Rice fields are full of mosquitoes. It's a perfect breeding habitat for larval mosquitoes. So in Southeast Asia, and particularly Vietnam, they use a lot of biocontrol using these mosquitoes. So although people see a lot of these mosquitoes, they're very big, they don't bite. So you have in the larval stage, these mosquitoes are ferocious and they feed on, you know, up to 10 or 15 other larvae in a day. So this can be a very significant reducer of the number of mosquitoes that are there. You know, you can use fish also. There's gambusia fish have been used to control mosquitoes. But obviously when you drain the rice fields, then you kill off the fish. So, you know, mosquitoes, eating mosquitoes is somewhat more agreeable to most people. Yeah. What an interesting mosquito biological control. Other mosquitoes. Just a kind of off the wall question. I'm just really dying to know now, how did you feel about bugs as a kid? I was brought up in the Middle East, in the middle of a desert where there was lots and lots of bugs. I was always very fascinated. Yeah. Always fascinating. Lifelong bug interest. That's fantastic. But moving on from our carnivorous mosquitoes, you also have an example here of this Brazilian hairy lipped mosquito. Yeah. This is Chocopocepong. And the reason that I picked this mosquito to look at out of all of, you know, many, many others is that it's super interesting because you find it in the forests, in the Neotropics. And it spends some of its time up in the canopy feeding on the flying squirrels and the monkeys and all of the different animals which are up in the canopy. But you also find it down on the ground biting man. So, this is one of those mosquitoes which acts as a zoonotic vector. So, it's taking diseases that are in the wildlife and passing it down to us. It has a super neat habit that it does. So, basically in the rainforest, obviously if any of you have been to tropical countries, the downpour is immense. So, this mosquito actually breeds in tiny, tiny little pockets of seed pods which are on the ground. And when it lays its eggs in the water, the danger is that it's then going to rain and that its eggs will be washed away. So, this particular mosquito will actually guard its eggs. It lays eggs on this tiny seed pod on the ground and it will stay there and gather the eggs between its legs and up for up to 24 hours until the eggs actually hatch. Once the eggs are neonates or like small larvae, as soon as the raindrop hits that water, they'll shoot to the bottom. So, they'll save themselves. But this is an example of the mother actually looking after the brood, which for me is astounding that a mosquito acts as a kind of behavior. Yeah. That is amazing. And will the mother not just shelter those eggs, but will she fly off with them? Or does she just put her body over them in different ways? She puts her body over them. But what she's really doing is holding them between her legs. Making sure they don't float away. That her babies are safe until they hatch and then her job is done. But I think that, you know, doing this book was so eye-opening for me, just seeing all of these incredible evolutionary habits come through and how you would ever dream that a mosquito would do something like that. There's other mosquitoes that we know just do very, very intricate displays in courtship, which is also fascinating. Yeah. What did you learn? What was one of the most interesting things you learned as you were going into all these details on all these different species? Oh, it's so hard. There's another few examples of mosquitoes that we have. One of the things that I found super interesting was that there is a genus of mosquitoes called Malaya. And they're generally in Southeast Asia. But when you look at them, they don't have a proboscis. They have a club that comes out. And you look at that and you think, well, how on earth does that feed on blood? When you look at every other mosquito that's actually a blood feeder, they have the proboscis and it's very clear that that's what that is. But here we have a mosquito and it's tiny. This is, you know, a pinprick of a mosquito, really. But it has this club. And these particular mosquitoes are symbiotic with ants. And the pouch that you see turned up at the end of the proboscis is used to drum on the mouth parts of ants. And the ant will then spew forth like a globule of amazingly dense liquid that's, you know, like sugar nectar. And the mosquito will then suck up this offering from the ant, which is incredible. Amazing. Wow. Okay. So this is also the second. What does the ant get? You've shown us that has just the craziest longest legs. Yes. Why do we have these crazy long legs? The mosquitoes tend to have those legs that they bounce for days. You know, when you see the long legs like that, these are relaxed because they're on pins. So in nature, they would all be crunched up. But it's because we've taken pictures from the national pins collection. They are long. Compared to body size, yes. Yeah. And I imagine these mosquitoes probably spend most of their time hovering up in air. Yes. They would hover, they rest. Often, you see mosquitoes resting and the hind legs will be, you know, waving, sensing the air. That's often how you see them resting on the vegetation. If you look hard enough in a bush, you'll see them. You mentioned the courtship. Do they use their, I mean, do they do dances and shake their tail feathers like birds? It's not all of them do, but there is a genus in Latin America, again, in the Neotropics called Sabbathies. And the subgenus there has fantastic feathers on their hind legs. They can also have smaller feathers on their forelegs. But these mosquitoes are incredible. The number of scales that they have, the colors, the diversity of colors is incredible. And we don't really know why they would have all of these different plumages. But they have such heavy legs that when you see them actually flying in the forest, they're so slow you can literally grab them out of the air. So this seems to me not a very good strategy if you're a mosquito to have these heavy plumage. And so there's the species that's illustrated there is called Sabbathies chloropterus. And it is, it's been shown that the mosquito that those feathers are actually involved in the courtship. And so the mosquito has to find a mate and then they have to go through a set pattern of drumming of the legs and waving of these feathers and before the copulation can take place. And it's been noted that if you have, if you chop the feathers off, and you introduce a male that has its feathers off, the female will still mate with it. The feathers don't seem to bother it, but the male will not mate with a female that doesn't have the feathers. Got it. So the female sexual selection, but not male directed. Interesting. It's, it's really interesting. There's just, you know, so many different small factors that come in. The, the one that's next to it there, the genus Arema poditis is another nice mosquito. It's very distinctive. It's almost bright orange in its thorax and then has these silver and black striped abdomens, usually. And again, super long legs as you can see. But these are another one of those mosquitoes that are actually Arema poditis is restricted to Africa. It's the only mosquito genus that's wholly restricted to Africa. And it's restricted to the forests in Africa. And it breeds in, when the monkeys are in the trees and they eat fruit, they split the husk and they throw it to the ground. And that's the breeding habitats of these Arema poditis and ground snails, just these tiny snails. So you'll find them in there. And again, they're very much linked with being up with the monkeys in the, in the trees. And these are, are some of the mosquitoes that we're interested in now for transmitting some, you know, forest viruses. And we're interested in looking at these mosquitoes which are, you know, between wildlife and humans. So in that zoonotic potential to pass viruses, which would otherwise be restricted to, to non human primates. It's fascinating their, their environmental ecological specialization for breeding. I mean, that you can find little, little cavities all over the place. But if you're just choosing to live in the cast off fruit husks of a monkey, that's going to limit where you're going to be able to go. But it also changes the, the body of the mosquito as well. You know, where they breed changes the body. We have another genera that's called Udaya. And those are, those mosquitoes, the female will lay an egg singly and capture it with her foot and, and take her foot and, and put it into a tiny, tiny insect hole that's been made in bamboo and shoot her leg in there, or if she can get her abdomen, shoot the egg directly into the tiny hole that's in the bamboo. So if there's a hole in bamboo, there's always water in, in that compartment. So the mosquito then, you know, breeds really happily. There's, there's no predators there. It's a really safe place for, for the larvae to grow. But the mosquito has to escape. Otherwise, this is game over. So you'll actually see that, that with the genus Udaya, that the, the thorax is super long. So we're down on the right hand side, the second picture down there shows that the, the thorax is elongated and the, the head is also really, really narrow. And the body shape is totally changed from your regular mosquito, so that it allows it to exit from that tiny hole. So that's, that's super fun. Yeah. Form, form leads to function. Yeah. Yeah. And I just think that when I was doing the research for the book, all of, all of these aspects just came to me so clearly. But there, there was the other mosquito that is, is featured here in this slide is, is genus Opifex. And there's only two species of these mosquitoes known in the world. And they're, they're restricted to New Zealand. And they look to me like, like ancient predators. They're so old and, and, you know, scary looking that they should really be in some kind of movie. What you can see is that on their antenna, they have these huge spikes. And I was looking and wondering what they could possibly be for. And the mosquitoes are actually, they feed on, on seabirds. So they have to get between all those feathers and, and not get damaged to their eyes. So I think that this is a protective mechanism for the mosquitoes as they do that. And in the image above, we have the arm of the mosquito or the leg of the mosquito, really. But, but it sits for a leg. And you can see that it's split into two. So it's almost like a pincer. It's like the Edward Scissorhands of the mosquito world. And I thought, what can this possibly be? This is, this is amazing. You know, why would they have this structure? And I thought maybe perhaps it's to, it's to pins on to the, the, the feathers of these seabirds that they feed on, because obviously the seabirds don't stay still. So the mosquitoes have, you know, they're hitching a ride and they're moving with them. But in fact, it turns out, as I was reading more, that these mosquitoes have been observed looking the males actually wait on the water for the females to emerge from the pupae to mate with them. And these pincers are for getting the pupil case open far enough that they can, they can put their abdomen in and mate with the female before she's even out of her pupil case. The sexual predator of the mosquito world. All of these crazy things that we found on the way through, you know, doing, doing the, the diversity of mosquitoes just makes you want to learn everything about every species that's there. You know, so it was a lot of fun working through all these amazing things. And, you know, as we're, we're finishing up with the book, it was a great paper that was written by colleagues here in U.S. on Uranitania serifina. And they determined that this particular mosquito here in USA feeds on earthworms. Now, I have several small, small children and, you know, one of our games is go find a worm. Sometimes we're lucky. Sometimes we're not. But for a mosquito to, to be able to find earthworms as their primary target. When we think about mosquitoes, we think about heat, CO2, all of the different, you know, attractants that are pulling those mosquitoes to their house. But what could possibly be attracting a mosquito to a cold, blooded worm? So I think that we have so much more to learn. Right. And, and earthworms also are underground. Until it rains, and maybe when you have a big rain, they end up at the surface. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that we have so much more to, to learn. But what we tried to do with this book, certainly Dan and Rick are both really tired. And they have, you know, almost, between us, we have 100 years of experience with mosquitoes. So it was a huge, huge honor for me to work together with Rick and Dan on this book. And really to lay down for the future, the, the knowledge that they have, and that they have accumulated over their working lives. The, the second volume of the book, and I do laugh because it's 12 and a half pounds worth of book, which is ridiculous. This is a, it is a massive, I mean, this, the work that has gone, I am so astounded and impressed by the amount of work this is 100 years worth of knowledge put into, to two massive volumes. It's, you must be so proud of the achievement. It's just amazing. It's amazing to finally see it. You know, we've worked long hours, long, long hours, and, you know, weekends and nights and middle of the night for almost seven years, pulling all this data together. So, and one of the things with mosquitoes is that you're never quite finished. You know, as you have to draw a line in the sand and say, this is where we have to stop, because otherwise this book is never being published. We need to, we need to publish this and share the knowledge and ask our colleagues to, to help contribute to, to maintaining that knowledge. So at WRBU, we have our, our website is wrbu.si.edu. And, and on the website, we'll be keeping a list of, of the updates to anything that changes in the book. The catalog has been, is the volume, the second volume of the book. And this is really the labor of love of, of Rick for forever. He started an online catalog and has maintained that since, since the 1990s. And, you know, this, this is the succinct, important taxonomic works that has been done for every single species in the world. So every entry that's there, every name that it's been previously given is distribution where, where you can find the original type specimen, who described it, what his name means. It's very nicely done. Johns Hopkins Press have done an amazing job of laying out the catalog. And they've helped us by giving us colors, stripes of colors for different genera, which is always really helpful. But, but basically the last time that a taxonomic catalog was, was attempted for mosquitoes was in 1997, 1977. So, so almost 50 years. So it was long overdue for an update, but it was a marathon, marathon effort to try. And I'm sure so much has been learned and so many more species named, discovered since the 1970s when that last catalog came out. So you're probably adding exponentially to the, to the volume of work that's out there. Well, it's certainly just for the, the references for that work is, is two more than 200 printed pages. So just the reference list, which is, is amazing. But yeah, respect you for being able to maintain a reference list that that that's that long and complex. I'm sure that there's, there's definitely a good number of references that we didn't pick up at the time, you know, that we, we did absolutely the very best that we could. But I think that this is a, this is a work that's more than three man's work. So moving forward, we really, encourage the rest of the community to help us keep this up to date and to, and to, to point out any things that we've missed or any errors that, you know, creep in. It's a, it's a work in progress. And as we have, as we move forward with, with identifying all these cryptic taxa with molecular means, you know, then you end up splitting species that were before. And we're going to have to, as a community work out how we deal with all of those moving forward as well. We just simply do not have enough taxonomists to name every single species that we find. There's a global taxonomic impediment in every, in every field and mosquitoes is no different. So, but not everybody's naming everything after David Attenborough now. David Attenborough was actually instrumental in starting my path on the mosquito barcoding initiative. I was at the Natural History Museum in London and he, he helped with the donor's dinner and that set the path for the mosquito barcoding initiative. So, they were very privileged to have met him and have him influence. Yeah, that's, that's fantastic. He's done such amazing work. I'm not saying that he shouldn't have species named after him. I just feel like everybody. There's a lot. Are you looking for one after you? We have a lot. We have a lot. Because I need to be a blood-sucking mosquito. Well, our, our latest manuscript is actually a mosquito named after my mom. So, that's fantastic. Mom, I love you. I named the mosquito after you. I'm not sure how she'll take it, but we'll see. Well, from you, that's a very big compliment. Yeah, probably. So wonderful. I don't want to keep you up too much later. We've kept you up so late already tonight. What is one thing about mosquitoes that you hope people will know and understand moving forward? I think for me, I would like people to appreciate the, the diversity within mosquitoes, not, not just totally to, to regard them as disease vectors, but to hopefully better understand the role that they play within the ecosystem and, and to appreciate them for the uniqueness that evolutionary time has, has generated within mosquitoes. I think that they're a fascinating group and I think we can learn a lot from them. Personally, I love the fact that they transmit all these fabulous viruses and, and I'm super interested by all of that. But, but I do hope that that's, you know, people will have an appreciation for mosquitoes that maybe they, they didn't before they look at our book. And I think that that some of the, the data chapters at the start are really detailed and very nice insights into biography and copulation of mosquitoes, development, oviposition, what stimulates the females to oviposit in the different habitats that they have. So, yeah, this is our WRBU website. As you can see, we do ticks as well, mosquitoes. We found lots of new, well, that's the, the project that, oh, there's our collection, how wonderful it is. All of those drawers are full with, with glass slides with mosquitoes on them. They're, it's an immense collection. It's an amazing collection. And we welcome visitors. And as soon as we are able to host you back in WRBU, we'll be very happy to see you there. You see some of our drawers there. It's definitely, US National Collection is the jewel in our crown. It's what we use every day to, to validate what we, what we're finding and, and to compare against to describe these new taxes. So it's, it's hugely important to, to support the museums around the globe and, and also to share material so that if we have any big disasters, like we've seen in Brazil recently, that we don't, you know, as a society lose all of this history. We have an immense amount of information that's in, in the collection just on, on the pins. You have all the information about where that mosquito was collected and when. And now, you know, 100 years ago, we didn't think that was important, but now we're, we're looking at ecological niche models built off museum collections. And we even have some mosquitoes in our collection that were actually collected by Walter Reed himself when he, when his team determined that, that yellow fever was, was spread by 80s Egyptis. So there's some treasures in there too. Yeah, it's the history, not and the, not just the understanding of the insects, but our relationship with those insects also and how that relationship has changed through time. And yeah, as you mentioned, the loss of the, the museums in Brazil, that was such a, the loss of those collections with such a huge wake up call for museum collections around the world to just be like, okay, are we preserving everything? Do we have a way to take care of this just treasure of information? So I think one of the good things is that, you know, the museums worldwide are talking more about sharing collections, you know, we have 100 of these, do we need 100, you know, we have 400 of these, we definitely don't need 400 from the same place, but maybe we can share them and then, and then research has have more easy access to, to specimens close to them. We also, you know, look at a digital sharing. So having a microscope that somebody can maneuver from across the world without having to send those very valuable specimens, you know, in the shipping, you know, yourself with the number of Amazon parcels that have arrived, how damaged everything can get. So, you know, sending these precious samples is becoming more of a worry. But our doors are closed just now at the Smithsonian. They're being very careful with all of the staff in this time. And we have national treasures in all of our entomologists. So we don't want to put them at any risk by bringing them in. But they are amazing national treasures of insect, insect knowledge. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. So your book, Mosquitoes of the World, volumes one and two, it is available now. You hope that entomologists, that insect lovers, maybe teachers, maybe anyone interested in mosquitoes will take a look. Sure. Where can people find you at the WRBU? Yes, WRBU. So we have on the website, you'll see that there's a contact. And you can email us through that contact. And we'll pick that up and respond. We hope that you enjoy our new look website as well. It's been updated. And we're working tirelessly to get more and more pages up there to give all of the latest information on every mosquito that we have. That's great. So much to be able to delve into. Before tonight, I knew a bit about mosquitoes. And now my eyes are open to just the amazing diversity of biology of what mosquitoes have to offer. A lot of blood bags and blood sucking, but there's more. And I do appreciate that. So thank you. Yeah, lots of long, dangly legs, lots of long, interesting proboscis. Is that the plural? Proboscis. Yeah, I guess they only ever have one. So it sounds weird, but it seems like it would be a very cool coffee table book in a funny way. We hope that people will use it in lots of different ways. Definitely those people who are working with mosquitoes that volume two will become their new Bible. That's what we're hoping. It's certainly the way that I've used the last catalog that was 50 years old. I've looked at it every day. So I'm glad to have an updated version. There goes Blair's dogs has enough talk about mosquitoes. Thank you so much once again for joining us tonight. And I do hope that I mean, we'll be keeping a look an eye out for more mosquito knowledge and information. But maybe we can get you back on to talk about mosquitoes at some point again in the future. It was just fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good night. Good night. And everybody, we are going to take a very quick break. Come back in just a second with more This Week in Science. Okay, so this is in the podcast, a big cut. Thank you so much, Yvonne. You're welcome. We talked a long time. Was that too long? No, it was great. It was wonderful. I think everyone out here has loved it. I really enjoyed it quite a lot. I don't want to keep you up too much later though, because I know it's late. Time for more caffeinated tea. Do you normally post them like this week? Yes. Yes. So I will try and get it edited and posted tomorrow. But if anything gets in the way then Friday at the latest, but I will send you an email and I will send you links and let you know. Great. Perfect. Well, thanks very much. Thank you, ladies. Bye. Thank you so much. Have a great night. You would have thought there was a murderer in the house. Yeah. Thank you, Sadie. Why was she scared? I don't know. Somebody was walking down the hall or something and looked from a deep sleep. Yeah, that's definitely adding to it. She's on edge from the moving, but it's fine. Anyway, it's time to come back with more twist. This is our break time. Look at this break. It's like an aftershow yet in the middle of the show. Sorry. Sorry, future Kiki. That was cool. I think I learned a lot about mosquitoes tonight. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Mosquitoes who talk to ants. Give me some food. I feel hungry. I'm going to especially develop my promoscus to smack an ant on the head to ask for food. That's my favorite. It's so good. Okay. Thank you. All right. Back to the show. What am I doing? Talking, talking, talking. This is This Week in Science. Thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, please help Twist Grow by suggesting a friend to listen to it today. Yeah. Get a friend to subscribe today. That'd be great. All right. Back to the show. It is time for this part of the show that we love that it's not about poop tonight. I don't think. No, the poop was before. Right. Okay. It was all about carbon dioxide. Oh, that's right. This is the carbon dioxide climate change time. It's time for Blair's Animal Corner. With Blair. Thank you. Thank you. So, I want to talk about coral bleaching. I don't bring it up in the Animal Corner very often because there's not usually new news. It's just kind of like, hey, corals are messed up. Hey, did you know that warming oceans are bad for corals? It's just that kind of over and over again. Oh, another coral bleached again. Oh, darn. So, anyway, this week, we actually have some very interesting coral bleaching news that might impact future management of corals and how we can predict the response of corals to ocean warming. So, this is largely an international effort, but this is mainly out of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Very nicely done. Using that French minor every once in a while just to pronounce a word. That's right. I'm so proud. Anyway, so, as we know, corals bleach when the water gets too hot and they expel their photosynthetic algae, their symbiotic algae that lives inside of them because the reason coral reefs are so beautiful and so pristine looking is that actually it's kind of garbage habitat because the water is so clear that means there's no nutrients in it. So, the corals, which are actually little animals that almost look like teeny tiny anemones that then secrete this calcium carbonate skeleton that turns into these kind of giant apartment buildings is kind of how I always think of it where all these little anemone creatures live in. So, coral is an animal. I always have to bring that up since people don't always make that connection. So, they are this colonial animal that then their filter feeders, but as I said, the water's so clean. They can't really eat too much just via their little teeny tiny anemone shaped bodies. So, instead, they have these photosynthetic algae, Zosanthole, Zosantheli, depending on what you want to call it. And they are responsible for the amazing colors that corals are. And they are using their photosynthetic processes to then deliver nutrients to the coral. And they are provided at home via the coral. So, all that together, they have this symbiotic relationship. But when the water gets too hot too fast, the coral freak out and they kick all the algae out. And that's called coral bleaching because they all look kind of like white and pale because all of these beautifully colored algae have exited. Now, over the past 35 years, there have been a bunch of different heat waves we've measured. And during these stressed moments of warmer temperatures, they kick these guys out. And it's not necessarily a death sentence. They can bring the algae back into their bodies if they calm down a little bit. They get a little bit more used to the situation. Maybe the hot spell doesn't last as long. They're able to bring it back in and then they can survive. So, a coral bleaching is not a death sentence to a reef. However, the expectation was that the stressed coral just kind of, they don't know how to function anymore. They just kick them all out. They're just like, I'm stressed out, get out. Or that actually the algae is somehow not providing them the nutrients. And so they kick them out for that reason. They're basically a bit like, you're not getting paid in your way. But this new study looked at kind of specifically the order of events here and what causes corals to bleach. And they found some brand new information. So, like algae, which is stressed by warmer temperatures, they release compounds that are toxic to the coral, which then prompts the coral to expel them. Which that much we knew, so there's some sort of toxic exchange within the corals. Well, fine, then get out. But this new study found how actually the coral starts to suffer from hunger before the algae are expelled. So, the algae stop providing nutrients. They're still inside the tissue. Then the corals already stressed and hungry. Then the algae releases toxic compounds. And then they say, that's it, get out. So, it's actually compounding of multiple factors here that cause them to do this final extreme gesture of kicking out the algae. So, the roots of the problem are deeper than was previously thought. It involves breakdown of metabolic exchanges in between the two organisms. And so, this is all discovered over a year studying coral reefs in the wild and then replicating these environmental conditions in aquariums so that they could investigate very specifically the data that was happening in these corals when they're bleached. So, one of the lead researchers says, based on what we found, we can determine which environmental conditions other than temperature, such as water quality, stress the corals in a reef and use this information to predict whether the reef will bleach. So, first of all, you can figure out where to expect bleaching, which is helpful. Then our findings can also be used to identify corals that are particularly resistant to bleaching. So, that can help scientists determine which reef should be most protected because they have the best chance of survival in a warming world. And also, what's going on in a particular reef that's protecting them? Why is this reef so much more resilient than this other reef? Right. Well, and we've done stories on the show before about transplanting more kind of hardy corals into bleached areas. So, that's something that you could do here as well with this information. But it's interesting to see probiotics. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So, it's interesting to see some of the actual mechanisms at play here because, yeah, I always just kind of pictured the crow going, I'm hot. Get out. Yeah, it's like, no more. I can't do it. Get out of my bed. I can't focus on you and this. You gotta go. But it's just, there's a lot of stress. The corals, the corals, they have to deal with a lot of stress. And, yeah, there's a lot of, they're not just one kind of stress, many kinds of stress. We just have to know what those are and what different thresholds may be affecting where they are at a particular time. Yeah. Absolutely. So, that's from warming waters, which of course come from a build up in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But there's also the piece of the carbon dioxide that then gets absorbed by the oceans, which is somewhere between a third and half the carbon dioxide that we emit ends up in the oceans, closer to a third, but there's a lot of different numbers for it. But ultimately, that has a lot of impacts on aquatic animals. And with fish in particular, last year we reported on the fact that some fish are shrinking in higher CO2 levels. Some fish, their senses are impacted by CO2 levels. There's lots of different ways animals can be impacted by CO2 in the ocean. But this new study from University of Adelaide found that some species of fish actually have higher reproductive capacity due to larger sex organs under more acidic oceans. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? Yes. So, the oceans are acidifying and they're having bigger gonads? Correct. Even though they're shrinking. Well, these guys aren't shrinking. So, some fish are shrinking. But these guys are not seeing any deolaterious effects that they have found. Asterisk, right? That they have found. Asterisk. Yes. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. That they have found. So, at this time, they haven't found any negative impacts on these fish. These are triple fins. There are species of temperate fish and both males and females had larger gonads under conditions of ocean acidification. Increased covered oxide level in the ocean. This meant increased egg and sperm production and therefore, more offspring. They also looked after them better, enhancing the chances of reproductive success. They used natural volcanic CO2 underwater seeps to compare ecosystems the levels of carbon dioxide predicted for the end of this century with fish living under today's quote unquote normal levels of CO2. And I love that now that we have to put normal in quotes when we're talking about today's CO2 levels because there's authors already. Not normal. But so, that's an interesting variable here that I will just point out is this wasn't a highly controlled laboratory experiment. This was naturally occurring fish that they recorded in two different environments to mimic different carbon dioxide levels that could be the standard in the ocean. So, there could be other variables going on. I'm just throwing that out there. So, I don't, but anyway. Yeah. So, they saw no negative effects of ocean acidification. They did not appear to have the larger gonads did not appear to have a physiological cost of any sort. There was no trade off that they could see. But the way that happened is it looked like males were eating more. They showed intensified foraging and their prey was more abundant because of increased biomass of algae that grows under elevated carbon dioxide. So, that could maybe track more algae means more feeding, which means bigger gonads, I guess. But the females, they didn't eat more at all. They just moved less. They reduced activity levels and preserved their energy that they invested into larger ovaries. So, they had more babies in general. And there were more observations of parents nurturing agnes, which could also increase offspring. So, I bring this up only because there's a lot of conversation when you talk about the future and climate change. And the phrase often comes up winners and losers, right? And so, this is a situation where you could see this as these fish, the triplefin, could be a winner in climate change. However, the thing that I will then just throw out there for you to consider, humble listener, is that, as I always try to say, it's all about systems. It's about ecosystems. It's about entire habitats and food webs. And we don't know if an entire clade, an entire family tree, an entire type of fish, or even just one species here, one species there suddenly performed better under climate change. How that would impact the ocean environment as a whole. Is that going to impact the food web? Is that going to impact the kind of distribution of biomass? Is that going to impact water quality? Right? So, if they're eating a bunch more algae, is that going to spike CO2 even more? Because you're eating the stuff that usually processes CO2, right? So, there's just because on its face, you see what you might want to call good news and that an animal is winning in the climate change game. They could actually boom and bust as a result of higher CO2 levels. Just like when you take out the wolves from, where was it from Yellowstone, right? Right. Your population explodes and then they all get sick and start to die. So, natural population control. Yes, there's population control and there's all these other factors. So, I think on its face, this is very interesting. It's something to watch for, for sure, because this is a good reminder that every animal, every species is going to react differently to a chemical change in the oceans. That's a pretty drastic thing to just change real quickly all at once. But there's a domino effect here that we can't see the end of yet. Yeah, but it does seem as though, so these fish are, their gonads are growing, they're having more young, laying more eggs, they're being more protective over their eggs. So, yeah, they're having more offspring. But perhaps because of the ocean acidification, there is less food. And so, they're having more young because there's a lower chance of survival. Or there are lots of different ways that it could trade off. Right. And I'm sure that these researchers did a really good job of accounting for other things. But I will just throw out there again. This was a naturally occurring seepage that had CO2 levels. So, was there temperature difference? Was there mineral differences? Was the terrain different? I'm just, I'm just starting out there that this is an interesting initial look, but a controlled study in a lab would, I think, give us more clear results of the effect of CO2 on the species. Right. And was there time for adaptation to take place in this particular population in the wild versus, you know, a manipulated laboratory experiment where you can switch carbon dioxide levels very rapidly? Totally. And that's a fair point, right? Are they genetically dissimilar, these two populations? Or are they commingling, and it's just the ones that live over there have bigger gonads? If they're genetically different, then that might mean that they, that might mean that they, they have been changing in this way for a long time. And then will ocean acidification happen too quickly for this to matter at all? Right. Right. I mean, that, that's the big argument is that this is all changing so quickly that only the very rapidly adapting species are going to be able to keep up. Kitch up. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let me talk about brains. Please. Can I take you away from some animals and talk about brains? I would love it. Awesome. Let's talk about, well, oh no, I know what I want to talk about first. This brain, this is, this is a, this is a story about women. This is this whole, this whole story right now. I want to talk about women. Blair, have you heard the idea that, that women and our menstrual cycles are reproductive cycles synchronized to the moon and the lunar cycle? I have heard this. Yes. Many times. And every once in a while, you're like, Oh, look, the moon and here I am and maybe, and then you're like, the next month, you're like, that didn't work at all. So there are these questions we don't know. And people have been studying this for years, decades, trying to determine whether or not women's menstrual cycles are tied to the lunar cycle. We've had studies that have been short studies with lots of women where they've only looked at like one or two cycles. We've had cycles that are, are cycles where they followed individual women. They've studied big groups, all sorts of things. Most of the research though has not really found a link. And there's a new study that's out in science advances this month that is looking into this question of whether or not women's menstrual cycles are synchronized to the moon. And you know what? The question is still there. They didn't find an answer either. So these, yeah. I just, I haven't heard the actual story really yet, but I just, I'm already having problems with this because other mammals aren't on lunar cycles. But there are aquatic organisms that are. So why not women? But why out of all the mammals? Why would humans be the one? They're like, oh yeah, I gotta link my period to the moon. So apparently, one of the data sets that they looked at to support this study is wild gorillas that wild gorillas appear to be synchronized to the moon and the cycles of the moon. Blair, you're giving me a funny look. Okay. I didn't write this paper. I've never heard such a thing and I am thirsty for knowledge. So please continue. Let me continue. Yeah. So they looked at 22 women. So it's very small sample set, but of these women, they kept long term records. And so they had records up to 32 years in some cases of lunar cycles, of menstrual cycles. And then they tried to look over time at how these cycles lined up with moon cycles. And you know, 20, 22 people really is not a very large sample set, which is, I'm going to say, the big limitation of this study. And any, any results that come from this are mostly anecdotal. This is like a pilot study. They really need to have more long term sample sets. I feel like it would be very easy to get this data. I feel like lots of people, especially now use period trackers on their phones. And that's part of the study. That's what they say at the end of their paper is that what we need is new long term data sets and maybe technology can help. So this is a direction that they are trying to look. But when they did line up women's cycles, they discovered that older women seem to have less synchronization with the moon than younger women. So women over 35 less synchronized than younger women. They think that it's because older women have been affected by our modern technology and light and and devices and other things longer than younger women. And so maybe that's what's driven older women cycles out of sync with the lunar cycles. But they did find that several individuals within their sample did not just line up based on the lunar, the light cycle of full moon to new moon and, you know, the faces of the moon, but seem to line up also with a gravitational aspect of the moon so that when the moon over several years is in its closest position. So its gravitational effects of the earth on the earth are the strongest. Several of the women in multiple years did line up with their cycles with the moon in those instances. So they suggest that this correlation, it's not causation that there's this correlation between positive, possibly gravitational effects of the moon, also the light of the moon during the full moon could maybe, but they still don't know. They need to do more study. But they do want to do a directed study that takes into account our modern society and the devices that we use, the blue light that we're affected by constantly from our screens and our small screens and how late night light affects us. So I get all of that because we know blue light impacts circadian rhythms. Yes. So why not? And circadian rhythms affect hormonal rhythms and all this kind of stuff. So there's, this whole thing has always had some potential in it somewhere, but nobody's ever really found that link. And so the big take home message from this study is that they hypothesize that before in pre-modern times, women were likely to have been synchronized to the moon more often than not. But because of modern society and light and staying up late and changing our circadian rhythms through just living today, that doing that has taken us away from that synchronization. Or if I may. You may go for it. A menstrual cycle is supposed to be approximately 28 days. A lunar cycle is, I just did up 29.5 or something like that. Yeah. So it's like, it's right around it. And also just generally speaking, 35 is when you're supposed to be like less reproductively viable. You start becoming less reproductively viable. Your menstrual cycle starts becoming less and less predictable. So it could just be a funny coincidence that they have about the same period of length, no pun intended. And then things get dodgy after 35, which is all just, it's like that. Yep. I have many issues with this study. I love that the fact that they've done these long-term records with women, because how fascinating to be able to track somebody for 30 years for the majority of their reproductive ability. And that in itself is very cool. I can tell you, I'm sitting, not to get too personal, but I'm sitting on, I think, eight years of debt on my phone right now that I'd be happy to provide to a scientist. I'm not the only one. So like we talked about before, I feel like this data set could get beefed pretty quickly. Yeah. Absolutely. And then there's also women who are taking contraceptives or others. How did those affect the cycle by managing it? So there's so many things. But this question, it's ongoing. And before I get all your letters, since Carol Ann also is saying in the YouTube chat room, yes. What I meant when I said that your reproductive cycle gets wonky after 35, that is statistically a thing that it's just less reliable. All the stuff is less reliable. The hormone cycles are less reliable. It's different from person to person, but that statistically is the date at which it is harder to conceive because that stuff becomes less regular. That's all I'm trying to say. I will be one of those people attempting to have it filed after 35. So I get it. Yeah. When you go to the doctor and you say, hey, I'm pregnant. They say, how old are you? And you say, I'm 36. And they go, oh, and then they put you down. And yes. And then you have different tests than people who are younger. And so there is, there are medical differences and they just, they drew a line in the sand at 35 because of statistics and probability. But it does not mean it for anyone in particular. Some women can have children until they're 50. I mean, it's just who knows. Not that I, oh God. Not the moon. It's my point. Yeah. Yep. We're going to have it no matter what. And now let's talk about brains because brains are, brains are something that I just really love. Decisions are very hard to make and it would be really cool if we could track decision making in the brain and maybe even be able to know the decisions that people are going to make ahead of them making it, especially for, you know, not autonomous, but for human brain controlled interfaces. So say you're controlling a drone with your brain, you're like in the military and you're an Air Force pilot, but your plane is over the Middle East somewhere, right? So if that's the case and you're not using your hands because it takes a little bit longer for the instructions, the decision in your brain of the action you're going to take to go from, I'm going to make this decision to actually going to your hand to move a joystick or hit a button. If we had a way to know the decisions that people are going to make ahead of time, those decisions and actions could occur more quickly. This could happen for all sorts of brain controlled devices in the future. Other concerns though are interfacing with your phone, with your computer and what if it knows what you want before you know you want it? No, I didn't mean to buy that Amazon thingy. No, thanks. Unsubscribe. Unsubscribe. Hopefully my brain would be unsubscribing me from all sorts of stuff because that's the first thing and then I second guess myself. But the process of deliberation, the second guessing, this goes back and forth. And so as the brain is taking in information, it's going to be weighing the information that's coming in before making that decision, coming to the final decision. And so researchers put together a new real-time brain monitoring system, which they have tested on monkeys. Well, something just turned on here and I suddenly have a video playing somewhere and it's very loud in my brain. There you are. Go away, advertisement. Oh my God, what's going on? That was crazy. You can't hear it and I sound like a crazy person. That was just weird. Okay, so these researchers, they were tracking in the prefrontal, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex of monkeys to be able to track these monkeys as they made a decision. And the decision they had to make was which direction a set of little dots was going to go. And the information that was coming in ahead of time were these little tiny dots were giving them information as to which they should choose right or left. So a bunch of dots coming in and if most of the dots are over on the right, then the monkey was supposed to choose right. If most of the dots are over on the left, the monkey's supposed to choose left, something like that. So the monkey's brain is tracking the position and the timing of these dots appearing on a screen. And as that information was coming in, the researchers were able to view the brain's activity on a screen. And the researcher said, this researcher who is involved said, I was just looking at the decoded activity trace on the screen, not knowing which way the dots were moving or what the monkey was doing. And I could tell the lab manager, he's going to choose right seconds before the monkey initiated the movement to report the same choice. Seconds ahead of time. And the researcher, his name is Diego Peixoto, he is a co-author on the paper and said, I would get it right 80 to 90% of the time. And that cemented in my mind that it was working. So it's this real time tracking of the brain's decision making process could potentially open up a whole new window, not just in decision making, but in a lot of cognitive aspects. Neuroscience studies looking at all sorts of activity in the brain could use this new technique to be able to predict what the next action, cognitive choice within the brain could potentially be. It makes me think about impulse control a little bit. Because I know especially if I really want that dessert, I'll think that I'm deciding for a while, but I've made up my mind. I know what I'm going to get. And it's not going to be the piece of fruit. It's going to be the chocolate. Chocolate. It's going to be the chocolate. Yes. So the decision process that's going on in the brain where the researcher is able to look at this output, the decoded output of the activity is the decoded output. The researcher is able to go, I can see what the monkey's going to do before the monkey's going to do it. But in the brain though, there's multiple neurons that are responding to different types of information, different aspects of the environment. And all that information needs to be collated. Those electrical signals need, the noise needs to be taken out and the signal actually needs to be processed to be able to lead to the output that they can actually use. And one of the things that they wanted to mess with were those dots that the video screen was showing to the monkey. And in one of the experiments, they decided to see how many dots they could add to the experiment before the monkey got distracted. And then while they were adding those dots, they added dots in this so that they weren't bright dots on the screen, but just below noticeable threshold where the eye could make out the light. But it wasn't something that the brain would be, I see a dot on the screen where it's below the conscious threshold. It's like a subliminal dot on the screen. And the researchers tried to use these subliminal dots to bias the monkey's choices. And they were able to bias the monkey's choices. But if they added those dots in after the monkey's brain activity, after the monkey had already taken in enough information to get on the direction of making a choice, that choice was already dialed in and that subliminal act, that subliminal stimulus didn't have any extra effect. So there is a level at which certainty happens. There's a threshold for that. But the part of this that bothers me is they were using subliminal stimuli to influence the monkey's decision and they were able to do it and they were able to see that they were able to do it before the monkey made the choice that was subliminally influenced. So what does this mean? We know what choice we want you to make. And so because we can read your brain activity, we're going to give you a particular input to lead you down that road to making that choice. So could be used in a very interesting way, advertising. Could be a lot of chocolate even harder. Yes. No, that choice was already made Blair. Yeah, that's true. It's important right to know in the brain when you make the decision. Because I mean, there's definitely human applications I could think of there in a lot of ways, but especially intervention in bad behavior or detrimental behavior is really what I mean to say. So if you're trying to figure out what's going on in somebody's brain that's causing them to do something that's hurting themselves might be helpful to know when that decision is being made and where and how. So yeah, that is a great way to look at it. Anyway, those are my choices for stories tonight. Those are all the things that I wanted to talk about for those of you out there who have questions about COVID or anything else that you know, ask the twist team a question. You want to know what our favorite movies are? Ask us that. You want to ask us a question about science? Ask us a science question. We're here for you. If you have questions, send us an email, my email kirsten at thisweekandscience.com or a message over on Facebook. You can go to the This Week in Science Facebook page, leave a message there. Also our twist Twitter account, you can leave us a message there. If you want to ask a question over there, we can copy and paste it in here. There was actually one question that came up a bunch during our interview that I think we can answer in like one sentence, which is, can mosquitoes give you COVID? And we've talked about this on the show before. The understanding is no, they cannot because it is not a bloodborne transmission. It is a respiratory droplet and aerosolized droplet transmission. So it's from the mouth and the nose. And the nose as opposed to the blood. Yeah. So the method of transmission makes a difference. Yeah. Yeah. And then I guess final comments. I wanted to comment briefly on people's excitement around ivermectin, which is a potential therapy for and maybe prophylactic for COVID-19. And there are a lot of YouTube videos about it right now and Facebook pages and Twitter tweets. And people are very excited about it. And the NSF and the World Health Organization, I believe have opened it up to use as because they've determined that they don't think it'll do harm, but they still don't know if it'll do any good. And yes, there are hundreds, there are thousands of studies available on ivermectin and how it works in cells and also how it works in the human body because it is an antifungal that has been used for years, but not, it's not an antiviral. It is an antifungal. So we know how it works with respect to certain fungi, fungus infections, fungal infections. The thing is we just haven't, we know it works in human cells in a petri dish. We know it's worked like in some animals, but we haven't done the studies yet that are clinically random, randomized, controlled studies in large samples of people to know how it affects COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2. So just like the hydroxychloroquine, just like any number of wonder drugs that people want to jump on the bag, what bandwagon for, the research is out there, the researchers are doing the studies. So have patience and be a bit skeptical of amazing claims, but you know, it could be something that could help people, but we don't know enough yet. I think this is why the real science gets muddled in media, right? Is that you have this amazing claim that this is going to save your life, or you have this amazing claim that this other thing is going to kill you. And then in reality, we have like, okay, we have these vaccines. They're 94, 95% effective. You might feel crappy for a day after you get your second dose, but then you should be pretty well protected. But the thing is, you might still be able to spread it to someone else. So still wear a mask. So it's the fact that it's this process. It's not as easy. It's squishy and imperfect in its own way. That's how you can tell it's real, right? Is that you're getting, you're getting the whole story. It would be nice to be able to say, this will kill you. This will save your life, but it's much more complicated than that. Uh-huh. And it usually is. And if it, if it, if it seems too easy, there might be a reason. So yeah. Yeah. All right, everybody. I think we have come to the end of our show. Loved our guest tonight. Big thanks for Dr. Yvonne Linton for joining us tonight. Her book, Mosquitoes of the World with her co-authors, if you are interested, is available now. Thank you all for listening. I would love to shout out to a few people. Shout outs to Fada. Thank you so much for helping with social media and show notes and the YouTube chat room. Gord, thank you for manning our main chat room. Identity four. Thank you for recording the show. And as always, thank you to our Patreon sponsors and to the boroughs welcome fund getting there. Hopefully it won't break my computer this time. What happened last time? Thank you too. Woody M.S. Andrei Baset, Chris Wozniak, Dave Bunn, Chefstad, Hal Schneider, Donathan Styles, aka Don Stilo, John Scioli, Guillaume, John Lee, Ali Coffin, Gaurav Sharma, Shubru, Sara Forfair, Darwin Hannon, Donald Mundus, Stephen Albaran, Daryl Mai, Shaq Stoupolic, Andrew Swanson, Fred S. 104, Sky Luke, Paul Ronevich, Bentley, The Translator, Bignell, Kevin Reardon, Noodles Jack, Brian Carrington, Matt Bass, Joshua Fury, Shauna Neena Lamb, John McKee, Greg Riley, Mark Hessenflow, Jean Tellier, Steve Leesman, aka Zima, Ken Hayes, Howard Tan, Christopher Wrappen, Dana Pearson, Richard Brendan Minnish, Melizan, Johnny Grindley, Kevin Railsback, flying out, Richard Porter, Christopher Dryo, Mark Masaru, Artyom, Greg Briggs, John Atwood, 2020, can bite my shiny, shiny metal ears. Rudy Garcia, Dave Wilkinson, Rodney Lewis, Paul, Rick Ramis, Matt Sutter, Phillip Shane, Kurt Larson, Craig Landon, Mountain Sloth, Jim Drapeau, Sarah Chavis, Alex Wilson, John Ratnaswamy, Sue Doster, Jason Olds, Dave Neighbor, Eric Knapp, EO, Kevin Parachan, Aaron Luth and Steve DeBell, Bob Calder, Marjorie Paul Stanton, Paul Disney, Patrick Pecoraro, Gary S, Tony Steele, Ulysses Adkins, Brian Condren, Jason Roberts, and Dave Freidl. Thank you all for your support on Patreon. We can't do this without you. And if you would like to support us on Patreon, make sure you head over to twist.org and click on the Patreon link support. And you can choose your level of support over there. I want to read your name, make our list longer. On next week's show, it's going to be the beginning of February already. Oh my goodness. I don't have a guest yet, but I'm working on things. And we will be back on Wednesday at 8pm broadcasting live from our YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch channels and at twist.org slash live. Hey, do you want to listen to us as a podcast? Just search for this week in science, wherever podcasts are found. If you enjoyed the show, get your friends maybe to subscribe as well, perhaps. Perhaps subscribe. For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes and links to stories will be available on our website twist.org. And you, yes, you can sign up for our newsletter. You can also contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistminion and gmail.com, or me, Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist T-W-I-S in the subject line or your email will become a blood meal of a mosquito. No, you can also ping us on Twitter where we're also at twistsinus, twist sinus? No. Twist science, Dr. Kiki at Jacksonfly, at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. And if there's a topic you want us to cover or address, a suggestion for an interview, a haiku, please let us know. We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news and if you've learned anything at all from tonight's show, remember, it's all in your head. I'm gonna sell my advice, show them how to stop the robot with a simple device. I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand and all it'll cost you is a couple of grand. Coming your way, so everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific map and I'll broadcast my this week in science. This week in science. This week in science. This week in science. This week in science. I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news. That'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 at understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. So everybody listen, 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. The laundry list of items I want to address from stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness. I'm trying to promote more rational thought and I'll try to answer any question you've got. So how can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop one hour or better just listen to what we say and if you learn 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. It is the after show now. That stop button. I did. We'll soon be in the after show. Yes, grouchy gamer. Not here to, what was somebody asking us to do a challenge? We don't do challenges. Uh, to wear someone's reading glasses. She did hers. I got glasses. Oh yeah. They're just reading glasses for now. Oh, congratulations. You don't need all the time glasses yet. That's great. Yeah, I don't know. I just haven't gone to an optometrist, but it was really amazing what a difference the reading glasses made. Like a Walgreens and tried some on and it's still diagnosed, right? You know, but the funny thing is I didn't do it. Marshall did it for me because he knows how awful I am at choosing and picking. And so he just went and got me the lowest. They're like 1.25. And oh, that's good. He just got me a cute pair of glasses and brought them back and they worked just great. They're super, they're great. They're, they're this, they're, there's a cute little reddish color. They have a little silver band. Nice. They're great. He picked great glasses. I'm like, I don't need to do anything for myself anymore. It's hard to make decisions. That was the thing I was thinking about during that story too, like if somebody could like stimulate my brain to make a decision. I would be very interested in that because sometimes I get stuck. And I just, no matter what I pick, I'll feel like I picked the wrong thing in the end. Yep. Well, some people have issues with buyer's remorse. The feather, I know I always have the feather. Well, and then I, the feather broke so now it's half of, oh geez. Falling apart. I have, I have analysis paralysis really bad. Analysis paralysis is real. It's so terrible. I can't, if you give me more than two options, I'm screwed. Yeah. Yeah, same. Or if you give me two options that are too dissimilar. Oh, yeah. But what if I want that one for that reason? But that one, that's different, but I also like that as a what? Yes. Yes. So difficult. Oh, yes. Fire extinguisher on fire. Yes. Your solution to your broken headphones is broken. It's broken. It is. Yes. Yes. Motivation to exercise would be good. Yeah, should I go work out? I don't know, maybe I'm just going to sit here a little longer, little subliminal motivation to make get up and go, go do the thing you plan to do. Rigger. Make yourself do things. Daniel Yant, have a lovely night. Yeah, reading books for things. It is, it's my, it's my headphone for other boa. Yes. Oh boy, I shouldn't have thought sitting was a mistake. The thing's going. Okay, you can see you exhausted. You have a box right here. Yeah. Yeah. So for everyone, if you, if you hadn't heard previous, Blair's moving this week. I'll be in a different locale next week for twists. Yeah. Moving during COVID. Who was it? It was, was it Kevin Unique who moved? Oh, was that who moved? I think noodles moved in noodles building. Yeah, noodles moved. Yeah. Yeah, I hired noodles moved. And of course, like everybody, it says all over it, like they follow PPE and all this kind of stuff. And I tried to find, I tried to find one that had a bunch of positive reviews from during COVID that said that they followed it. Cause like, of course you, they say that and then you don't know if somebody's going to show up with their nose out the whole time in your home and you don't want that. So yeah, I tried to find one that had good reviews. So I've read, I read an article too about there being a lot of pop-up moving companies that are taking advantage of everybody needing to move all of a sudden. So you have to be really careful about that as well. Yeah. Yeah. So I tried to find one that was like, better business bureau rated and was well established and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I've never used movers. I've always done the like find somebody in the truck and spend a whole day and have it take six hours longer than you thought it was going to. And then you're like trying to do the geometry of getting a giant couch into a house at 10 p.m. and you're exhausted and you haven't eaten all day. And I was just like, how about we skip the part where one of us wrenches our back and then can't work for a couple of weeks? How we just skip that this time? How we just let somebody else figure out how to fit the couch in. We let somebody else bring the truck. You're going to end up moving all the furniture anyway, but if it's at least put down somewhere that couch is going to be a comfortable place. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And you're still going to work your butt off even with movers. Yeah. We're going to move everything but the furniture and even some of the furniture, but all the big pieces we're going to let them do. Yeah. Gorov is wondering where you are moving. It's still Bay Area. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just moving a tiny bit further south since my new job is Silicon Valley. Yeah. Oh, I love the, the new, the new name Nadelva soap makers. Nadelva soap makers went outside and looked at the full moon. Didn't get my period. Imagine that. What? What? He didn't just walk outside, go, oh, full moon. It's almost as if your body is not the ocean. It's, listen, I could understand the origin. Good night. The origin of our, Kiki says good night. The origin of our hormone cycle. Maybe having some, I don't even know why it would though. Why would it? Why would have something to do with, because the, the moon cycle has impacts on land animals as well because the amount of light and the quality of light is different. But why would that have anything to do with your period? I don't get it because it's not even like that would influence when you would have a baby because your gestation is nine months. So I don't, I don't know. In the article, they talk about how there are, there's a slight percentage more babies born during full moons. Like two to 3% more babies than normal are born during full moons than other times. And that number goes down during a blue moon, which I don't understand, but that's interesting. Okay. So if you want to talk about, okay, so here we go. Let's follow this rabbit hole a little bit. I still don't like it, but since, since Brian's just left, I'll speak on his behalf that there's a whole thing in ERs. We're on full moons. Yeah. The people are going to be lack of doodle. And yes. And the, the reasoning behind that, because I looked into that and the scientific reasoning behind that is that it's so bright. It's so bright that like, basically your body's like, it's not nighttime, but I'm supposed to be asleep. So it messes with your brain because it's too bright for it to be nighttime. Yeah. There actually was a study out this week that I decided it was related, but I decided not to talk about it completely is the idea that there is a difference in how well you sleep and what time you go to sleep during the full moon. So that people are less sleepy, less likely to go to sleep at the normal time. And they have lighter sleep. So Gara wants to hear more about animal period. So this is my favorite thing to tell people about mammals. And this is itchy. I would, I would talk to just children about this too, but like, you know, not like five year olds. I'm talking like middle school, right? Middle school, high school. They would, they would say like, well, mammals don't lay eggs. Be like, well, I got news for you. What do you think a period is? That's an unfertilized egg. Yeah. It's like the chicken egg you eat for breakfast. Just tiny. Yeah. Women lay a chicken egg a month. Wait, that sounds weird. No, but it's true. That's the whole thing when they were like, why would a chicken lay an unfertilized egg? That's what it always is. Why would a chicken lay an unfertilized egg? And I would say I lay an unfertilized egg every month. You lay an unfertilized egg because it hasn't been fertilized. It was made. And what are you going to do? Just hold onto it and let it get old? Yeah. And of course, always the kids were like, or even adults, I've had this conversation with adults too great. And they're always like, no, we don't stop being silly. And I'm like, no, that's what that is. Like, wait, what? Oh, man. Yeah. It's actually, it's very fun to have that conversation because I, I know it's like the whole, there was that whole thing too recently where I think it was in the UK, I want to say they remove taxes from period products, which is one of those things are why, why are we still doing anyway? So they had a, they had a cartoon of a tampon on these bus ads. And somebody went off on Twitter about how gross it was. And so there was this whole conversation about like, okay, our bodily functions gross is a period of bodily function is a period of bodily function that is gross. Like all these weird conversations about that, which like, that's why I understand it's kind of a faux pas for some people to talk about periods. But this is exactly why I want to talk about it. Like it's an unfertilized egg. Like it is just a thing your body does every month, because you're not getting pregnant. And like, it is, it is not gross. It is not anything akin to defecation or urination. It is completely different. It needs to be mystified. The ick factor needs to go away. And like, also it needs to be, so I was watching Big Mouth, the latest season of Big Mouth, and they do all watch that. Yeah. About periods. Yeah. And it's just, it's been, it's been so cathartic for me to watch it, actually, because like, there is this whole thing where you're supposed to hide when you have your period. Other people are not supposed to know when you have your period, especially when you're a kid and you're first getting it. Right. And, and that's often when your hormones are craziest and your, your cramps are crazy and you don't know how to deal with them. And just like, you don't know how to use any of the equipment and all this kind of stuff. But you're not supposed to talk about it. It's this thing that you're supposed to go through by yourself. And that's not, no, that's not, that's not right. So ladies, we need to talk about, talk about it so that younger ladies don't get icked out and don't feel left alone and afraid and going, what am I doing? Yeah. I mean, the other thing that I think, and this is women inclusive. Yes. Yes. Inclusive. Anyone who menstruates needs to be part of that conversation. But I think, I think the other thing that's like this weird unspoken thing that I just, I'm going to air my grievances about women's health issues for a second here is that everybody talks about periods and how it messes you up hormonally and you know, there's pain and all this kind of stuff. But guess what? Two weeks after that, there's something else that happens to your body that also causes hormone fluctuations and can be painful and stuff like that. Like nobody talks about how ovulation for some people. Middle Schmerz. Yes, is a thing. I love this German word middle Schmerz. Which just means like the middle pain. It's like the mid-time pain. Yeah. Yeah. So this, that's like a whole thing. And also the name middle Schmerz makes it sound like a, no, it just makes me think of like an, I don't know why, it just makes me think of an old like Jewish New York grandpa talking about the middle Schmerz. Oh, sure. Yeah. Oh, my wife, she's got the middle Schmerz. Yeah. But in actuality, it can be like so painful, you can't stand for some time. So that's like an interesting thing that I never heard in my sex ed education or yeah, sex ed education in my sex ed classes or any of the pamphlets, pamphlets that I was given to read when I was a woman who suddenly went through puberty. They don't talk about that. That's like a whole nother unspoken section of being a woman of, or a person who ovulates. Like it's just, yeah, it's all, because it's this all like taboo topic. You don't get the whole story. And Carol Ann, yes, some people are very sensitive. Others less so, but you can feel the ovulation. I mean, if you're paying attention, you can sometimes feel it. I mean, sometimes if you're busy and moving around, you're not necessarily going to feel it, but yeah. Yeah, those people are full of it. And you can, you can tell them I said so. Oh, middle Schmerz. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely so it depends. It depends on the person and the time. Like some people can only feel it when one side is the one doing it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Some people can only feel their, their left ovary when they release an egg. Some people can only feel their right. Sometimes you feel both and you can tell which one is firing. Yeah. It is. Yeah. I'm just going to say being a woman, it's weird, but it's great. There's a lot going on and we haven't, I think there are a lot more people talking about stuff like on YouTube and other channels talking about these things now. I don't know. I just really do hope like that generations kind of make it less weird to talk about, right? Make it, it's not a weird thing. Yeah. Well, I mean, I can, I'm a big fan of Big Mouth and I honestly, I was, I was just saying like, would it be super inappropriate when I have a teenager to have them watch this? No. No. I mean, by the time you have a teenager, it's going to be way past now. It's, it's filthy. It is so filthy. There, it is, there's so much swearing. There's teenagers talking very blatantly about sex in a way that has, I don't think has been done and makes me as an adult feel uncomfortable because I'm like, I don't really feel like I should be watching this cartoon of these two teenagers having this conversation. I've heard it's really, really out there in terms of content and the scripts and the conversations that are had, but I've also heard that it's just, I mean, it's pushing boundaries, but also really in an awesome way. It is. It's liberating because it's, it's one of those things to where as I watch it, I've paused before I watch it with Brian, I'll be like, oh my God, this exact situation happened to me. And I can't be the only one thinking that because they wrote it, right? So it is one of those funny things where something happens to you when you're a teenager going through puberty and it feels isolated. But if it's in this show, then it's much more universal than you think it is. Yeah. And so yeah, it's like, there's a catharsis to it. Have you seen pen 15? I've seen, I've seen a few episodes, but I'm, yeah, I didn't get too far. Yeah, I've only seen a couple of episodes. I have a friend who's seen up to like the second season and she's like, you need to watch more. I needed more suspension of disbelief because all of the actors around them are kids, but they're adults. I was having a really hard time. I love it. I think it's really funny. For those of you who don't know, pen 15 is a show, I think it's on Hulu, but it's two 13 year old girls starting seventh grade, but they are like 30 year old actresses, comedians. So they're playing these parts of 13 year old girls going through puberty, going to their first dance, having their first kiss, doing all these things and all the other actors, as Blair said, they're all, they're all actually 13. But it's, it's pen 15. You have to put it together as one word. And it's like, if you think about what it looks like, the word, it's not really pen 15. It's like, so when written on like a, on a folder, on a binder. Yeah, I don't know if this was generational, but when I was definitely in late elementary and middle school, you would ask someone, do you want to join the pen 15 club? They're like, oh, sure, what's that? And they would take your arm and they would write pen 15 on your arm in pen. And then you had that word on your arm all day. You had to go home to your parents and had that word in pen on your arm. Oh my goodness. They are doing that. I wonder, you know, if they're just too busy. I don't know. I think, I think, talking to each other on YouTube, 13 years old, 13 year olds, these days are too busy being acting like they're 21. I don't, yeah. I think it's like a TikTok team going around right now or people say like, when I was 16 and like 16 year olds today, it's a funny juxtaposition where like, when I was 16, it has you with like a girl with like pigtails and a backpack and rainbow scrunchies and and then somebody 16 today is like in a crop top and twerking on a YouTube video. I mean, it's, it's a bit scary to be a parent these days, but you know, we'll do what we can. Yeah. I mean, it's hard because I am afraid of middle school. Let me tell you, it's going to be rough. My son is so nice. The access to information is crazy. Like it took me until college to learn how to put on makeup correctly. And it was because I was learning from other people. But I just think about like, yeah, like you could be 13 and say like, I'm going to watch 10 YouTube videos in an hour and learn how to do the perfect smokey eye. And I'm 13. What does that do? What does that do to your life? I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying it's just such a different experience. Oh my gosh. There's a wealth of information, but there's also like a weird misinformation spiral too. It's yeah. And peer pressure and all sorts of things. But I think the statement, talking to the boys about this stuff is important too. I mean, all this stuff. Yeah. I talked to Kai about things all the time. I explain things biologically. I explain what's going on. I talk about, we talk about all sorts of stuff. I think it's important to talk about all sorts of stuff. And talk about stuff at a level I think is appropriate for him to understand. But be honest. I don't want to hide things from him so that someday he's just exposed to something and totally taken off guard by it. And be kind of good for him to be able to put his own opinions together before those days come. And also just feel like he can, home is a safe space to ask questions about stuff like that. Because that's exactly where kids get into trouble, right? Is when they feel like they don't have the information they need and then they have to jump to conclusions that can put them in a bad spot. Yeah. I mean, it says a lot that they had to split the millennial generation into two because young millennials and old millennials had so much different in just this very short amount of time because of the advent of the internet. Thanks, social media. Just the fact that... Not just the internet, social media. Yeah. YouTube videos, TikToks, Pinterest. I don't know. All the things. I know. I just, I'm trying to remember, I was doing something that, oh, I was talking to Brian this morning because he's in a new set of classes for the new semester. He was trying to figure out how to post a photo in one of his online classes, which of course you have to go to Flickr or something and get the URL for a picture and then put it in the, yeah, so it's like all this extra stuff. I was like, oh, that reminds me of my MySpace page. I was thinking about having a MySpace page and that I got it when it was brand new. We were friends with Tom. I was friends with Tom, of course. I mean, who was it? Everyone gets to be friends with Tom. My top eight caused a fight at one point. That was the whole thing because I booted somebody for somebody else and then there were words. How could you boot them? Oh my gosh. And then, yeah, and then I tiled a picture in the background of my MySpace page. And when you went to my page, a song started playing in the background. MySpace. It was White and Nerdy by Weird Al. So White and Nerdy. Yeah, I had MySpace. And then I, yeah, I had Facebook when it was just for college students, which was wild. And it was a big deal when my college adopted it. And then it was also a big deal when my college adopted the photos function because, and this is where, like, when I tried to explain this to young millennials, their brain explodes, is Facebook didn't have a photos function. Right. It was just, you had your profile and then you signed up for your classes that you were in and you can click on your class and see who else was in your class. And like, so it was only, wasn't it only within schools too? So it wasn't even like my friend and it's other school all the way across the country. It was just like your campus, like your university. Your campus and your session of class. So like, it was like the 35 kids in your lecture or whatever it was, right, or 135, depending. But yeah, and then you could like message somebody to say, did you get the notes? I was sick today or whatever. That's what Facebook was. Facebook without faces. Yeah, it was wild. It was so bizarre. And then photos. And then it was the end of everything. Yeah. Yeah, photos. I think newsfeed is where it degraded into the, when was that 2007 or eight? I don't know. I don't know. Oh, I think, I think it might have been later. Because I think I was out of college. I think I started Facebook in 2007, I don't know. So Facebook was launched in 2004. Oh yeah. So I was really an early talker. Noodles wants your sweater, Blair. Oh, it was a present. It was my birthday present for my best friend. It was cute. It was something that speaking of decision making, I almost bought for roughly three weeks and then I didn't buy. And then your friend got it for you. Yeah. That's a friend. That's fantastic. I'm sure she was like, stop being stupid. I'm gonna buy this for you. Yeah. That was my Christmas present from my best friend was a box of really comfy clothes that I probably would have looked at online and been like, I'd love to buy that. And I never would have. And she's like, I know, here, you need these. I know what you won't buy, but what you need. That's amazing. Yeah, this is, I'm sure most of you know already, but in case anyone is wondering, this is from Schitt's Creek. This. Oh, yes. This is one of David's amazing pieces that he wears. David's sweater. My favorite of his. That's why I was agonizing about it and I almost bought it and then didn't. I think I put it in my cart on three different occasions and then I didn't buy it. But your friend knew. Yes, she did it. Ooh, Gaurav was on YouTube since 2007. Oh, gee. That is OG. So Tim and Ted are asking what happened in my space. My understanding is it does still exist. It's a music website now. Yeah. But I tried to go to my page because I had heard that somebody was able to access their page. But I think this is a couple of years ago. My page is gone. Yeah. The old designs with all the things. Yeah, no, those are not there anymore. Mm-hmm. Not there. Ooh, lightning. That's fun. Thank you for the tips, Hot Rod. Hot Rod says, keep heavy things on the bottom of boxes and spread them out to not overload them. That's very good tips. The first time. They put all your books in one box. I put books in all the books in a box. Yeah. No, this is unfortunately, this is probably like the 10th or 12th time I've moved. I have done this too many times and it still stresses me out every time. But I do now, since we're in this age of reusable grocery bags, which are pretty hardy, I usually put all of my heavy stuff in those because it keeps you from overloading them and then just carry them like that. Nice and easy. Get yourself a dolly and a don't mean part. Yes. Yes. We bought a collapsible hand truck. So we have that. We have an elevator here and the new place is on the ground floor. So that should all be good. It will be good. It's going to be great. I just want to be over. I want to be over. It's almost there. It will be over soon. You'll make it through. You can do it. Sadie wants to be over. She's very stressed out. Uh-huh. It's time of upheaval for her little world. Yeah. I'm going to. She's about to have a nice. This is her second house though, right? She's going to have a vacation. So she will actually see the moon. She's going to get spoiled too. Yes. She's going to be spoiled rotten. She's going to have an amazing time. She will have no idea and then we'll pick her up and take her to a new home. This is her first home. Well, I guess so she was fostered at my friend's house in Denver for like eight weeks and then she's lived here the whole time since then. Okay. So she's been here for over a year, like a year and four months. Okay. I just remember, I guess you had a different setup originally. No. I don't know. I remember something about maybe it was video difference. Maybe when we first moved in here, the first six months maybe we lived in this apartment, the setup was different in the living room and then we switched it around. So that's why I remember. I think it's a whole new house. Yeah. It's just totally different. You moved essentially in my brain. Well now we're doing it for real. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. You can do it. You can make it through. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. It's supposed to rain this whole weekend. So that's fun. But it'll be fine. It'll be fine. We have drizzle. We have 100% chance of rain in the next hour. Rainy California. California has been getting it lately. Yeah. There's a flood warning right now. Rain all the way down to Los Angeles. They had snow in the LA region. They've had, you've had your atmospheric river coming in and buffeting you and wind warnings for the city and what is going on in California. And just before it was like a week ago, California is like, hey, fire warning. Yeah. It was like 100, I think it was 100 degrees in downtown San Francisco. Wow. Week before last. What? Yeah. That's ridiculous. Are you kidding? I should look at what it actually was. But it was insanely hot. Yeah. So it was hot. They had wind and there were dry winds. And so they were saying wind warnings. And then it's like this quick turnaround to this massive atmospheric river. And now they're having mudslides and the fire regions aren't where the trees aren't there anymore to be able to hold the land together. Mudslides and disaster. Oh, California. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, there were 80 mile an hour gusts. Yes. 80 mile an hour gusts. Yeah. Which is crazy. It was. Rain is better than fire. True. Yeah. Oh, 72 in San Francisco. 72. Isn't that like 100? No. I thought it, maybe it was 100 in Los Angeles, maybe. Or maybe in like San Jose. San Jose. I should look. But yeah, what day was this that this was happening? January 18th. That would be last week. Oh, I think I snapped at somebody on Twitter. Oh no. I'm sorry. What happened? Oh, nothing. Somebody asked a question. And I thought they were being snippy and they weren't. Oh, that happened. They were just asking a question. They weren't just asking. You know, you read certain things in a particular, that people are being snippy and then you read one that could go either way because you're already predisposed to the snippiness. Sorry, growly geeky came out. Sorry. Oh, you gotta, you gotta be on your, on your toes. You know, the internet keeps you on your toes. You gotta, so it was 75 in Daily City that day, which is crazy. 75. Still, I mean, January in California, 75. I mean, that's LA, but San Francisco. Thunderbeaver's afraid of growly geeky. Yeah, you should be. Good night, Eric. I guess that makes sense. I wasn't like walking around the house in shorts and a tank top that day, but I was, it was hot. I had all the windows open. So yeah, it was like, it was mid to high 70s. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, I think it definitely, it snowed in Arizona. I know that. Yeah, it did in, in Phoenix. Yeah. And that's such a strange thing. It's the earth's like expelling its photosynthetic algae right now. And that, that's us. Yep. Sure is. I'm hot. Get out. Let's start over. Let it go. Michael Gibson says moving intercontinental is easier. Give the keys to the realtor and just carry your, use your carry-on luggage. That's one way to go. Good night, noodles. Oh, he already left. Hot rod has a funny story. Lived on the third floor once with a queen-sized water bed, dropped a hose out the window all the way to the ground. It drained in an hour by itself. It's awesome. It's a gravity-fed drain. That's awesome. Brilliant. I've never slept on a water bed. No. No, never. It's weird. Yeah, that would have been my guess. They're fun though. They're like water bed. They're not good for my back though, so. Yeah, it seems like it wouldn't be enough here. It would be too much give, right? Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And then if you don't keep the bed warmed, the water can get cold. And so then when you get into bed, then it's like the super cold bed of water underneath you. Oh, no thanks. Yeah. Keep the water bed warm. Random rick reviews. It says it's annoying water bed. It is annoying. It depends on the person. Some people love them. They can be great. I like turning them into a wave machine. I do enjoy sleeping on a boat. That's very calming. Yeah. That would be a great socially distanced activity to do this spring or summer. Going on a boat. I want to do that. I'm putting that in my 2021 to-do list. Who's going to pilot the boat though? Me. Okay, so like a little motor boat is what you're talking about, right? No. You're talking about a sailboat? Yeah. I'm going to get a sailboat or a houseboat. Houseboats are fun. I just got out on a houseboat, but I could go out on a sailboat. Hello, Dale Poco. It has been a while. Yeah, go out on a sailboat. Could be like Bill Murray. I'm sailing. I know how to sail. I could do that. What I'd love to do, but I don't think it'll be this year, but what I would love to do is go take a sailboat up to the San Juan Islands outside of Seattle. It's beautiful up there and then sail and then anchor out and barbecue and swim in the water. Oh, I want to do this. Yes. Sounds great. I love a boat. Boats are great. Go boating. Yes, sailing sounds awesome. Yes, we'll put it on the list, everyone. Put it on our 2021 list. Sailing. All right. Dale Poco, you came in, I think, right as we are losing steam. True. Yeah. Invertebrate, nooky, nooky. We talked about mosquitoes and their mating dances. True. Yeah, we talked about mosquito mating dances. Our interview was very invertebrate friendly, for sure. It was. It was fun. But Blair, you need to go get your sleep so you have energy for your move so you can do the next week and we can make it through steam. What steam? The hissing noise. Oh, steam, yes. The hot, the water. Okay, identity four was replying to hot rod. Hot rod learned how to flop on the bed and, yes, agreed about the warming. Okay, hot. We've got water beds. We've got mosquitoes. We've got, I don't know, moving. We've got all sorts of things in this show and sailing in this after show. Blair, have a great week. Thanks, you too. Yeah, we'll have Justin back to kick him in the shins next week. Yeah, good double jang, jet lag, Justin. Jet lag. Well, he won't be jet lagged. He should be getting back tomorrow. He's in the air now, probably, or soon. He'll be back very soon. So hopefully he won't be as jet lagged next week. But he probably will be because it takes like a week or two to get over that. But any hue, any hue, any hue. Oh, that's us losing steam. Yes, the steam coming out, thank you, identity four. See, that's losing steam. I don't even understand jokes anymore. Did you see that thing just flew past? What? Yeah, that was the point. Anyway. Say good night, Blair. Say good night, Kiki. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everybody. Thank you for joining us. We will see you again next week. We do hope that you will come back and join us again for more science and have a wonderful week in the interim. Take care, stay healthy, get your sleep, stay well, everyone. I'm going to click this in broadcast button. Good night. Good night.