 Doo-doo. I gave somebody an earworm. You did. You gave me an earworm. Hello, everyone. We are here to record the live podcast of this week in science and Glad that you are joining us. All of the bleeps and the blurbs and the bloops are happening here. They may be edited out for the podcast version. So remember you can always subscribe to the audio podcast to get the nicely neatly edited version of this program Or you can have fun with us here Good to see you all in the chat room. Oh my goodness our two chat rooms three three chat rooms and yeah all the places Wonderful to see you there all your names Thanks for joining us. Hey team. Are we ready to go? I'm ready It's born ready. Almost I'm rest. Yeah, I gotta do a thing. I gotta try to I gotta try to do a thing that relieves some lag Oh, okay. Justin's having internet. Should have done it beforehand It's okay Justin has to find a science story. So this is happening He's like, oh my god, I just gotta do some quick research This is one of the bleeps and the bloops and the bloops And by that I mean the things I was supposed to talk about I had those done a long time ago. What are we doing here? I had them in before you Blair Well, that's because I did my research last night and there wasn't a rushy yet. So I I had them saved as tabs Everybody's under control. I'm just I just need to write it. Just kinky. How dare you? That's rude Might as well mute me She's covering me up I twist you Oh, no, I'm gonna bit twist on Justin's head over there. There we go Are we ready for the show now, Justin? Have you worked worked worked on your lag? Yeah, I think everything at the end of control Be like a bad but sink It I mean if you like old school hong kong action cinema, just get comfortable with tonight's show Okay, so we are going to start this show in a three a two This is Twist this week in science episode number 780 recorded on wednesday july 1st 2020 Science we're halfway there Oh Living on a science, right? I'm dr. Kiki and today we will fill your head with stress response Giant penguins and flying snakes but first Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer just when you thought it was safe to gather in public again You remembered that we're in the midst of a growing pandemic That has claimed the lives of over half a million humans this year and we're only halfway in And so you put on your mask you socially distance yourself as much as possible Yes, we all want things to go back to normal But like any problem simply ignoring it seldom results in the problem just going away Things have been tough. They're going to get tougher political will The eagerness of businesses to reboot and the willingness of workers who are in need of income to go back to work Will not change the reality of the situation And cannot alter the course of events to come And while we can eventually look at this is a stress test of our health care systems our economies our trust that our politicians can handle a crisis The more immediate requirements to survive the situation will come from science Which is always finding new ways to fill our heads our futures and our fortunes with this weekend science Coming up next Science to you kiki and blare And a good science to you too, justin and blare And everyone out there welcome to another episode of this weekend science. We are back again As we love to do to talk about the science with you Oh look at me rhyming there and yeah, it's july 1st. It's halfway through the year. Can you believe it? This is like the longest year Yeah, this is the longest shortest year ever. I'm so confused by the flow of time right now Yeah Yeah, well, you know, I've I've heard that we need novelty to Make us experience things faster. So maybe this constant flux of information and fear is what's keeping us Yeah, you mean the the giant spike in cases. That's to spice things up a bit Yeah, so spicy. Yeah, so spicy. Oh dear But we'll be talking about that in just a moment during our covet update Tonight on the show. I have stories about covet. I've also got stress and brain eating Those seem related I think they might be yes Justin, what stories did you bring? That's a great question. Uh, can I get back to you? No, no, no, I have I have for some reason I have a lot of australia Uh, a little bit of a lot of australia stories, uh, and new zealand Uh, and uh, maybe a good reason not to recycle What? Okay, I'm waiting for that one. We'll get to that in a bit. Blair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, I have some birds that, uh, that know their relatives just by the way they sound I have some, uh, flying snakes And then I have a couple of quick stories about yeah jellyfish and penguins Okay jellyfish and penguins there we go As we get into the show I want to remind you that if you're not yet subscribed to this week in science as a podcast You can find us all places the podcasts are found spot spot spot a spy. No spot a spy Spotify speaker pandora Radio dot com tune in itunes or apple whatever it likes to call itself these days Google's podcast portal all the places Look for this week in science You can also look for us on youtube and facebook And you can go directly to our website twist twi s dot o r g Now we are going to start off the show a little bit differently than we normally do We're going to start it off with the quick news stories instead of ending the show with the quick news stories because you know We've got to keep it fresh around here So let's jump in The quick stories for today Is there a new flu? Oh, it looks like maybe there might be discover not allowed stop Just stop stop already. Don't even go there. Sorry player You're just you're like putting the putting the band hammer on this story I know what's going on right now. There could be a new flu. Get out of it. Get out get out Yeah, discovered by a project looking for viruses with pandemic potential in china a new swine flu strain called the g4 variant of the h1 n1 influenza virus is circulating in pigs But researchers think has the traits that will allow it to jump between humans And infect airway epithelia antibodies against g4 viruses were found in 10 percent of farm workers tested Suggesting that infection can and has occurred already But whether or not it's going to turn into a bigger issue for us to worry about is still unknown It's early stages yet folks. We don't know a lot about it Some of the big issues with this bird flu are that it contains aspects that of the avian flu that the that Our human immune system is not immune to Additionally, it has another component that is avian swine and human all mixed together. It's very fun So it could be something it has components that are similar to the 2009 swine flu outbreak that was that was an issue But not as big as covet is now Yeah, but don't worry about it. Just you know, we don't have to worry about it yet Just wear your masks social distance wash your hands. You're all good Yeah, but we can kill it before it even becomes a big thing by just isolating ourselves properly Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean if we just maintain this proper sanitation and social isolation Or distancing it has less less of a chance. So Maybe maybe being in the midst of a pandemic is a good thing at the moment Justin, what was your next story? this is in plus one a underwater civilization has been discovered Of aborigines living Under water Put some 7,000 8,000 years ago Oh when water was lower. Oh, yeah. No, that's probably That was my next question I thought this was a bigger story. Yeah This is flinders university. They've published in plus one. They have found 269 artifacts Uh at depths as low as deeper as two and a half meters below current sea level They've got them between 7,000 8,500 years Old and it's you know, it's one of those things that I've always pushed for is the the need to do more of this underwater archaeology Because so much of where humanity lives is always by the sea And so much of our history is currently underwater. What was very, uh Encouraging I think about this find was they were finding a lot of stone tools That they are in better condition than ones they typically find on land Uh, they have not been weathered. They have not been uh in freshwater areas that are getting tumbled Or uh are beaten by winds they go down to the bottom and they're heavy enough Or well that they don't go down to the bottom. They were already at the bottom They were already at the bottom, but then they got buried in sediment. They got covered No, and then and in this particular uh shelf area, there's not a whole lot of sediment that's covered Um, which is they determined that's part of the affect of this place is there's corals there and It's not that the corals are protecting anything, but the corals don't do well in areas where there's a lot of sediment So the fact that there are these corals there Sort of illustrated the fact that there's probably not a lot of sediment deposit that was going on in this area Which is why the tools were sort of easier to find because they were pretty much on the the surface of the bottom Of the shelf You know, they uh, what was also interesting is they found some sort of divergence Like there's definitely similarities to some finds that they've had in terms of the tool manufacturer and also some very different. So this is Uh, you can see that this was some different tool use. It was larger tools than They would find later or even concurrently on land in different areas But very well preserved at the bottom of the the sea not disturbed heavily as they would be on it. So that's very encouraging news for a lot of underwater archaeology, which is Those sites might really be intact. They might be under sand. They might be under soap But they might be in really really good condition Uh down there. Yeah, depending on where they are I mean, you don't want stuff that's been tumbled in the surf for a really long time because that would definitely be weathered Yes, tumbled in the surf would not sound like a good thing. Yeah But what but if it isn't a place that did get covered rather quickly Yeah, uh, it may not have been disturbed further beyond that and sometimes those conditions are great in northern areas we found like uh, wooden boats and nets there these wooden nets that were used to catch fish that were pretty ancient Uh in northern territories and cold waters that were very well preserved because they were cold and they weren't disturbed This is like fjords in norway. I think is where they found the Net still intact down there That's very cool stuff. I mean someday that's gonna be florida. Probably someday soon All right blare. What's your story next giant penglings um, but in north america um, so yeah, so um The there were penguins in new zealand about 62 million years ago that were 1.6 meters tall So like what is that five feet? Yeah so We know about them, but new recent discovery has found between 37 and 34 million years ago. So quite a bit younger these much Similar but in fact larger penguin like things So like penguins, they had flipper like wings just let me see this through the sea But they uh unlike penguins became extinct around 25 million years ago. They're called ploto terrids They were up to two meters tall So pretty large And the the really interesting thing here is that they had similar beaks with like nostrils They had similar chest and shoulder bones. They had similar wings like I mentioned And so they think they were strong swimmers They used the wings to repel through the water unlike other seabirds that use their feet And they think that they also based on this beak and everything Eight underwater too. They used that quick underwater swimming ability to feed underwater So this is a huge source of convergent evolution Yeah They look like swam like penguins, but they're not penguins, but they are not penguins Yes, so um, they even say that they think that they would have looked almost Almost exactly like penguins like they would have been hard for biologists to tell them apart except for their location But they were of course more closely related to north american birds like boobies gannets and cormorants Oh, yeah So but they were but they were swimming. There were giant swimmers not necessarily good flyers Right and and but uh, I think they also talked about this was uh These were these are diving birds Uh that over time You know spent more time on the dive the ones who stayed down longer and swam a little bit better Probably caught a few more fish and then that trait maybe then starts to take off So it sort of illustrates to Uh, the the sort of convergent way that penguins may have developed because we don't think I don't think we know How penguins became penguins, right? So that's that's a great point. They actually have a theory based on this Um, and that is that they think both penguins and ploto Drids had flying and so it's yes that would plunge from the air into the water just like pelicans and Gannets and cormorants And that they would Over time The ones that use their wings kind of like you're saying justin would get a little bit extra boost would get the food faster or something like that And so they think that they got better at swimming and worse at flying Step by step over the years So this is just a massive change that you can see in convergent evolution completely separated by time So we don't think this is like any sort of drift or migration mistake or anything the fact that they're separated by millions of years means This is definitely just a coincidence Something and that's great. And also to add to that would be If you uh, if you become good, even if you're still doing the diving thing Uh, but you have a nice fish source right there. So you're not traveling that you know You're not traveling that far in search of food You're staying close to where the fish are You're just hanging out on a rock by the ocean and not going much further than that And so the necessity of all that energy of flight gets reduced and you want to focus more on swimming And at some point the bird just gives up on learning how to swim or how to fly Because they just can dive right in off the rock and go after the food source Yeah, and it would change body fat deposition. It would change the the the weight Distribution for the bird it would It changed all sorts of structural aspects as it became more adapted to water than air What's really interesting about uh penguins and probably these guys too is that The same muscles and skeletal structure that birds have that fly It's it's the same stuff. So, you know, you could say well penguins actually do fly But they fly in water instead of in the air because it's the exact same Physiological thing that's happening the medium is different But the main main difference is um much thicker bones. So they're not as light So they can't fly because of that, but also their feather structure They're wearing a wetsuit now instead of something that helps them catch wind and stay alive. So right It's more insulating as opposed to lofting and yeah Fascinating adaptations Oh a new study has found that kids who were absent from school more often between kindergarten to eighth grades Were less likely to vote reported having greater economic difficulties and had poorer educational outcomes as adults And now as adults this is like 23 to 26 year olds Uh, but they were followed Since they were young so this was a study that looked at these kids and whether or not Their attendance record was good or bad and then then went in with a questionnaire to find out What they did as adults how much schooling did they go in go in for in college? How were their jobs? What were they doing in terms of citizenship? Anyway, these results have implications for how parents might want to prioritize school attendance for their kids And this is especially interesting as we move forward during the current pandemic And there are questions related to whether or not schools will be open and how we will And how many kids will go back to an in-person school rather than remaining online? And what does that online attendance do because that is something that's totally new So lots of questions, but this is pretty interesting because aside from Okay, we know that as a child Absenteeism or being tardy affects performance in school. This is looking at Linking it's not causative, but it's correlative with how absenteeism in grade school affects your adulthood I would love to look at these results and compare to a cohort of homeschool children Yes, I think that would be very interesting and because the first thing I thought of was like the social part Of school. Is that what they're missing the social interaction the The ability to kind of interact with many different types of people and learn about different people's values and experiences, but Yeah, they did find so they they did look at socio economic indicators and there was nothing That that came out indicative of socio economic status. These were Um, it pretty much across the board the only thing that was different was absenteeism It's very interesting. Yeah. Yeah, but I don't know it I honestly do not know how this compares to homeschooling. That was not something they looked at Well, and then there's also the possibility of weird confounding variables Like if if if a kid is absent a lot Is that because of a medical issue that is somehow affecting them in other ways? Right? Yeah, so I'm one of those kids that didn't go to school every day I always tried to knock it down to a four if not a three-day school week Like grew out. No, seriously This was like my goal was like to do three a week and no more and I was you know Uh, I did read though. Like I would skip school and and read. It's just Huh, I think it It's going to I think it's going to depend on the home environment Always in these cases. Yeah. Well, I mean this is it's it's the first of many studies I don't know if they looked at contentedness with life If that's if that's something that was in involved in there because hey Maybe you didn't go as far in school or maybe you don't have as high-powered a job, but You're happy. You're fine with it. Maybe there's there is something to be said and there is um There's definitely nuance in numbers always when you when you break it down. That's where yeah Looking at why the children miss school might be helpful. Yeah, where does it come from? You can look at specific groupings and and how their impact is Yeah, Justin, why shouldn't we recycle? Uh because you want to keep your ocean clean Uh, but that's why I recycle that's why I recycle So explain yeah, okay. So, uh, there's research from University of limerick That has evaluated the quantified the volume of plastic from european countries uh that contributes to ocean littering and what they found was Uh, so 40 46 percent is the number they came up with of european This is separated out plastic waste that they sent out to recycling Goes out of the country 46 percent of their recycling plastic leaves the country Of that 31 percent ends up in the ocean Uh, it doesn't end up in their ocean it ends up in an ocean across the continent in southeast asia Yeah Because we're mailing our trash are recycling to other countries where it's supposed to be taken care of But it's just being put into giant piles or buried in holes in the ground This is all right. This is our concept of recycling. I think the number I came up with was It makes it 14 percent of everything that they recycle ends up in the ocean Hmm like that's huge Yeah No, it's it's uh, yeah, it's quite a quite a large volume. How how can we stop why why So it's between 32,000 to 180,000 depending on the the different scenarios they put forward, uh tons 30 that 32,000 to 180,000 tons of plastics That was somebody like sorted out may have rinsed Put in the recycler and then yeah Ended up in there. I think we have been told a story about the recycling that we put into a bin and that gets sent to a company that's supposed to take care of it and for A large part of it. It is correct, but there is a large part of it that is not and that has been Miss sold to the public and maybe to to uh to Fix the issue what we need to do more of is the reduce and reuse I need to change our purchasing habits Why my mayonnaise jar can't just become a new mayonnaise jar and why it has to go to another country So so part of part of the thing is uh exporting of waste Is just that it you're just exporting waste Uh part of it might be that those countries presumably are making all of your goods So the raw materials are best served being recycled there Because you have what otherwise are just sending back an empty container ship, right? The goods come in they unload. What do you put back on? You put on plastic you put on cardboard And then it just takes the ride back and goes to recycling centers there So it's not like you're paying extra to move it halfway around the world. It's sort of Uh built in to the the logistics Uh, right um However, not everything that you put in a recycling bin gets recycled even if it's being recycled here The plastics especially The plastics are all different and you know There are whole categories of plastics that do not get recycled at your local recycler that you don't know the difference So you put it in and they spend a tremendous amount of time sorting and then whatever probably gets sorted that they don't use Probably goes to a landfill or gets sent halfway around the world what's uh What's a little bit uh unsettling though is those plastics that aren't getting used Aren't going to a landfill. Maybe it's uh too expensive See it's ended out on a boat and you drop it off in the ocean apparently Uh Yeah, so it's intentional. You're saying it's not even an accident that like They don't say, uh, but yeah, that's kind of what it looks like. Um, yep Yeah, it looks like a place. This is not just this isn't just your your your target bag Your trading just is flying off and then landing in the middle of the ocean causing this now this looks kind of like uh intentional Uh for this much for 14 percent of all things that were supposed to be recycled That's not an accident. Yeah No, it's 31 percent. It's a third. It's a third of what the export is getting Ending up in the ocean by these estimates of this unacceptable unacceptable So we just gotta use less plastics. That's what that means. We just really have to squeeze out plastics where we can Or throw them in the trash Hear me on it. Hear me on it Biodegradable plastics. It's your it's your garbage. It belongs in your landfill Put it where it goes But don't we also import uh or export garbage? We do export garbage also. Yeah, there's this So there's no solution useless plastic is the solution I'm gonna start exporting my garbage to my next door neighbor's backyard. No, I'm kidding. I would never do that No, but you do but that's pretty much like what it is. Yeah Well, um speaking of plastic in the oceans Plastic in the oceans often looks like jellyfish And something that we often wonder about in the biological community. I know I have is um Lots of animals eat jellyfish sea fish crustacean sea and enemies corals and of course turtles But why because they're basically just bags of water There's no carbohydrates. There's no fats. There's no proteins. It's just Water How does an animal sustain itself on this thing? It's got to have some of those things. It has some stuff in it But what so uh university of southern denmark Wanted to find out exactly what it was in jellyfish that was sustaining ocean life What are they eating also because this is relevant knowing that Due to climate change. Actually, we expect a giant bloom of jellyfish in our oceans We expect jellyfish are actually one of the winners from rising sea temperatures So we expect a lot of jellies in our oceans in the future So they found actually that they contain fatty acids that are valuable To the animals that eat them. They're of course vital components for cell membranes and play a Crucial role in growth and reproduction. So there's something there But really what it comes down to is the sheer quantity of jellies They are eating that gets them where they need to go So they they collected moon jellies from a fjord Every two weeks for two years they looked at the fatty acid content and it varied within seasons and um They found ultimately that what it comes down to is that jellyfish are really easy to eat And so it doesn't take a lot of energy to hunt them So what it might take you to hunt a shrimp if you're a predator very quick moving animal like that Lots of protein small package But instead jellyfish they they come in these giant um rafts of jellyfish and so You can just kind of sail through that chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp And you can eat jellyfish 20 times faster Then uh, then something like a shrimp and so between that and the sheer volume of them It doesn't take as much energy to load up on them And so it actually ends up kind of Evening out with what it would be to eat normal food So it's it's like, you know, it's not like eating celery because celery eat takes a lot of chewing Right, it'd be more like substrainting on Jello, it's like jello or nutritional shakes. Yeah I'm on a meal replacement plan Yeah, it's like if you if it was peanut light that was turned into jello Yeah, and that's all yeah, but I'm I'm thinking this is more like uh fast food because it's just like drive through Yeah, not a lot of effort you go there you think same thing you pull up to the next window Yeah, you pay you get to another window. Maybe and then they hand you some food and then they're off on on the way Um, versus you can order it super sized Well, it takes but the the idea that it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to go after them Yeah It's just it's an easy quick meal that if you eat a lot of it. It's enough Jellyfish eat more Okay, I mean we honestly we all might be eating jellyfish pretty soon. So it's gonna be sushi of the future Yep Speaking of food the entire genome of the chicken has been Has been sequenced and analyzed And now we know where the chicken came from the egg. It did come from an egg, but specifically Specifically the chicken the modern chicken that we domesticated Showed up in southeast asia or southern china Approximately 7500 years ago. It was bred from a pheasant like bird A colorful pheasant like bird and its closest ancestor is a red jungle fowl subspecies called gallus gallus spedicchias The chicken But yeah, the modern chicken has been with us 7500 years almost as long as dogs I would feel like they'd be around longer than dogs. Honestly. Yeah, they it doesn't look like it. That's interesting That I think I would say is it's not can't be right Recent evidence suggests that sled dogs were being bred about 9500 years ago Yeah So it was pheasant, but it was pheasant like birds that we didn't hadn't really domesticated It's this domestication process that we got started 7500 years ago according to genetic Evidence and and by domesticating the chicken really what we're saying is you don't need big running muscles You don't need flight muscles. You just need the you know the the meat muscles. We want we want We want those chicken breasts and we want the thighs. That's what we want And even back then it was probably a pretty rangy skinny little chicken. Yeah Like a game hen much closer to a game hen jungle fowl type thing than to today's Rhode Island red with its large Breasts if you just tuned in This is this weekend science And if you are interested in a twist t-shirt or a mug or a mask we have masks now Our merchandise is available in our zazzle store if you go to twist.org and click on the zazzle link You can browse it and find some nice items All right, so Let's continue now With our covet update for the week. It's good news, right? You have good news for us today Oh, no I know it's terrible All right, we're six months into the pandemic Six months in wow the world health organization reports 10.19 million cases and that's confirmed cases and 500,000 503 860 to deaths we just went over half a million on monday of this week The uscdc recorded 2.58 million total cases that's confirmed cases There are estimates that there are possibly up to 10 percent more Cases in the united states that have not been diagnosed We have 126,739 deaths 370 new deaths this week According or today according to johns hopkins covet tracker the united states epidemic is currently following a similar Trajectory to what was observed leading up to its first peak in april And the new york times estimates that 35 states are reporting increased incidents over the past two weeks and at least Half appear to have set records for daily incidents over that period We are diving back in rapidly people So if you now would be the time to be careful Potentially if you're concerned and you stopped being careful at any point A preprint however on the bio archive suggests that immunity to covet 19 Might be more widespread than antibody testing estimates Suggest thanks to T cells that seem to be present even after those antibodies Have waned in the bloodstream. So I just wanted to do a really quick review of kind of How the immune system works so the lines of defense in our bodies it's like, okay I just inhaled a bunch of air in a grocery store and There's virus in it. There's dust in it. There's all sorts of stuff. What's gonna happen Well, first it's going to come into into Contact with our innate immune system It's going to bump up against the mucus that will trap a lot of particles that those particles will then be Moved out of the body either through the digestive tract or Through mucus that runs out of your nose or gets blown out of your head when you blow your nose and then you also have the contact of viral particles once they get past that mucus membrane past your Your first line of defense into actual contact with the cells of your body And the virus is going to interact with those ace two receptors on the cells in the airways however, when It's in there. It's also potentially going to bump into B cells B cells Start the process of our antibody response and sometimes we have circulating antibodies that just happen to match What is invading into our system and those antibodies can block the The the proteins that interact with receptors and allow them to Get into cells So the antibodies in this case might neutralize the spike protein for the SARS-CoV-2 virus And if an antibody binds with that spike protein, it's not going to be able to get into a cell Antibodies protected you however sometimes those antibodies can actually Because they're just little molecules. They're not smart at all They can connect to other parts of the virus and actually help them gain access to our cells And so it's thought that there are some antibodies that actually get produced by the B cells in our body that might be Helping SARS-CoV-2 get into Our cells and our and our body systems Anyway antibodies the IgG's they talk about these immunogot immunoglobulins IgG is one that is often used It it's in our bloodstream and an IgG is often representative of our body's ability to neutralize and block A virus so if you have IgG for SARS-CoV-2 in your bloodstream You are potentially able to neutralize it and so we would say that you have immunity The other aspect of our immunity is T cells and T cells these can be killer T cells they come in And they actually will Eat cells that have been turned By the virus into regenerating factories for the virus So once the virus gets into the cells it starts trying to make more copies of itself And so the T cells can come along and say a bad cell Die and so the T cells are there so In immunity we've got the T cell the the antibodies which may disappear in our bloodstream after a while But we might have quiet Quiescent memory B cells that are circulating around that if they come into contact with an antigen from The virus they'll start turning out more antibodies once again So just because the antibody level in your blood is low that doesn't necessarily mean That you aren't immune. Additionally, if you have T cells that have come in contact with The virus or with cells in your body that are putting out virus those T cells Can continue to create immunoglobulins and also attack cells in your body and give you continuing immunity so Antibodies B cells T cells. These are all very important. They all work together And I don't know Blair. Did I cover it? I think so, but then there's so this is what I don't understand We've talked before on the show about the convalescent plasma Do we not know why that works currently know that the convalescent plasma should contain antibodies And it would it would contain these antibodies that would then get into your body and uh, and possibly Hopefully help your body to to to recruit more B cells to make more antibody And also help make your you know protect you right while they're doing that But we also are not sure if the antibody situation Is forever like with some illnesses or if it you know if Further down the line you could get reinfected. So we still don't know that yeah But where we are right now is that there's evidence that T cells appear to stick around even when antibodies have disappeared And that is potentially really good news because because that means that if you do get vaccinated and you have a T cell response Then you can have continued. Uh, you can have continued Immunity, but if you get vaccinated and only have an antibody response A B cell a B memory cell response an antibody response That potentially means that you might have to get boosters If you don't have the more long-lived cells actually That create the antibodies going forward Uh existing in your system booster me up There may be boosters necessary, but we don't know this is still we're so early But I mean it's good news that the T cells seem to be there Even as we're seeing that the antibodies might wane in your blood, but that doesn't necessarily it's not necessarily bad news it's I will I will say I It's hard to have hope with this stuff right now because it's as somebody mentioned in one of the chat rooms that 500 000 people Those are real people. It's not just a number. Those are people who have families and friends and People know those people and and that really sucks, but I will say that Even a couple months ago I would not have expected expected based on how little we knew That we would know this much now and we are making pretty quick moves in understanding this thing and making a game plan and It's it's that's kind of my silver lining is I do think things are moving faster than I anticipated even though It's not fast enough like yeah, it's not fast enough We want something right now and of course we do But it still feels like it's moving a lot faster than I thought it was going to it is Both the pandemic and the science right moving very quickly and and I just I just have to tear out a little Cloudy lining. Yeah, which is the leader of our country, which is a global world superpower Which is a hub of people normally traveling throughout the world um Remarked that nobody knows why it's 19. Why COVID-19? Nobody knows what that 19 means. Yeah, we do within the last week. I mean 2019 It was discovered in 2019. Yes. We do know this I'm sorry, but that's just it's just too there should be a limit for the amount of dumb So I'm just gonna I'm just gonna following on your comment there. I've been trying to Share information about why wearing masks is useful on twitter and this week I Stuck a stick in a hornet's nest of individuals and I found out that there's a whole community of people online Who don't believe that viruses cause disease? That don't believe in germ theory and that's why Like there's all the stuff we're talking about right now They would not even hear and I I need to figure out how to how to talk to people and I don't know if it's possible I feel like they still wash their hands after they poop. This is the thing Like do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, they they inherently understand there's something there and that there's something that's communicable and there's some sort of massive disconnect and I don't Somebody's feeding them something That that is is breaking The domino effect of connecting the dots of how this works. They it's there I feel like the logic exists in the human brain and something is interrupting it Yeah, it's called youtube and I know we're on youtube right now, but I hope that we are a sane voice On youtube among the madness of another interesting story this week All right, but who who just just to follow this just a slight thread further Who would benefit who would benefit from this line of that's a great question Yeah, it's uh and And and and and one of them one of them that when you start pulling at the rope and casting the net the thread pull the thread to cast Whatever the saying is um I I do feel like there are a lot of uh Well isolated wealthy people in this country Who are taking every precaution and avoiding? Uh physical contact with the outside world Who want their businesses to run? That have people who have to be around people for their businesses to run or push it and and that Is a problem and this is you know It becomes a class issue. It becomes an economic issue. It definitely is. Yeah, definitely Meanwhile, somebody is telling someone that wearing a mask reduces the amount of oxygen that you get and it's a form of mind control But remember that surgeons wear masks every day every day and you trust them to do surgery And if any of you I know that there was a run on oxygen the fingertip o2 meters And if at the beginning of this pandemic it was okay We know that oxygen saturation Is lower in people with some Marshall bought all of them. Oh, yeah, my husband bought all of them Exactly. No, but a lot of people have bought them And so you can do the test yourself wear a mask and breathe Just normally for do your normal activity and then sit down and Test your o2 levels, you know test it before test it after after and there are surgeons who have been posting their blood o2 levels That has a nice pretty 98 to 99 100 percent blood oxygen saturation levels Um after hours of wearing a mask and I I think yeah, if you're healthy, you will find something similar I feel like uh, you could I could find the exact numbers and we could do the social math But I feel like of oxygen molecule versus. Oh, that's so tiny Oxygen is so tiny. It's like a basketball on an entire basketball court and oxygen is tiny compared to the virus Yeah, totally Yeah, these are these are factors of scale. Yes um cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 Dun dun dun Get taken over their normal processes get reworked to do the viruses bidding Cells that are infected with SARS-CoV-2 grow filament like protrusions called philipodia That contain viral particles that researchers think might be used to poke and infect neighboring cells. No SARS-CoV-2 makes the cells that infects reach out and touch other cells. Oh very interesting So interesting You gotta hand it to this virus. It's really gotta figure it out It really does this uh, this study is published in cell. It's called the global phosphorylation landscape of SARS-CoV-2 infection They did a phosphoproteomics analysis of SARS-CoV-2 infected cells. They uncovered that SARS-CoV-2 Uh causes signaling rewiring it rewires the messaging processes the mechanisms inside the cell Basically hijacks it to do what it wants it to do Changes a p38 map kinase cascade activity shuts down cell division the whole cell cycle my Mitotic kinases get stopped and blocked. So cell so the cell cycle doesn't work anymore It just starts replicating virus and it has these finger like hair like protrusions that Reach out in touch, but the study also the big aspect. I mean, it's a horrific The philipodia is kind of like the sensationalist Perspective to take to get you into this story. The interesting part is that what they were looking at The kinase activity that they saw in their analysis. They were able to identify Many many many potent targets for antiviral drugs and compounds. So That is the the interesting thing that by doing this Proteomics analysis they were able to come up with lots of places. We could attack the virus which is good I let proteomics is like my favorite thing like if I Can stay with school long enough This is what I would be be doing someday because it's just always fascinating But you know what the thought the analogy that came to mind is this study that was published in cell magazine To make it performative it should have appeared first in car and driver magazine or You know any because it starts in the cell, but then it pokes out and ends up somewhere where you wouldn't expect it It should have published this story in a whole bunch of other Whole bunch of other places Just try to get the point across to people it started in cell magazine But then poked its way into other publications. This is how this is happening It is how it's happening. Anyway, that's what I've got for the covid update if you just tuned in This is this week in science That's right If you would like to help support this week in science You can head over to twist.org Click on that patreon link. You can also sign up for our newsletter Do you have stress always Never chronic chronic stress. You don't have stress Do you guys stress Why You've got it all you have everything. What do you what else do you need? Well, it would be nice. It would be nice to get rid of the negative results of stress So one of the things of not chronic stress necessarily, but acute stress Yes, it's my my little acute. It's acute little stress acute stress Acute stress here and now it's not chronic over a long term. It's very of specific short shorter duration of time but one of the odd things about acute stress is that it seems to Amplify inflammation and the processes of inflammation that might lead to other metabolic disorders and other issues over time and It's kind of this odd thing because the stress hormones themselves suppress the immune system. So if you've got increased cortisol levels if you've got You know, if you've got the stress hormones being increased then Your immune system is down regulated. It's your immune system doesn't work really well You know, if you when you get stressed out you get sick more often, right? But long term these things can also lead to inflammation that can have really long term deleterious effects on your health and nobody understands what's going on because of The immune system is getting down regulated. Why isn't inflammation getting down regulated too? Okay, so this group of researchers publishing in cell this week. It's a big one for cell this week. They looked at a cytokine an endocrine molecule called interleukin 6 and interleukin 6 has been Known to be involved in the stress Response for a very long time, but the question is how how is it involved? so they did a bunch of experiments with mice and with people to break it all down and They found that interleukin 6 gets turned on by brown fat That brown fat gets triggered by stress from the brain those stress hormones Trigger the brown fat the brown fat creates the interleukin 6 And the interleukin 6 then changes the inflammation and what it is is a trade-off between getting ready getting the body ready for mobilizing those fat stores for the fight or flight response versus more long-term health and so the evolutionary aspect it's an evolutionary trade-off of Survival here and now protecting my body the brown fat's like let's get ready to grumble I want to pause you. Yeah, I'm gonna pause it. I want to pause it. Why because because I I forget which is the brown fat Uh, the the brown fat is not the is not the one you hit first normally The brown fat is like that reserve like if you're starving or is it that's what that's why I want it It's the long-term storage fat. It is It's long term if you were starving to death Yeah, and it's it's uh, what's often used in what's called, uh, shivering non shivering thermogenesis So you can like you can move your muscles and shiver to heat your body up Or brown fat can actually like burn itself to create body heat and This is the last Animals Yeah, it's something that hibernating animals use to get themselves up from hibernation or from torpor Okay, yeah, okay for a long time. We didn't even know if humans had brown fat, but we do And it's involved in some very interesting things like this stress response Yeah, yeah, and so it's this what Yeah, well, I mean, okay. So like Take us out of our modern lives of you know, the rent is due the bad boss at work the annoying, uh Situate whatever it is that we run into Great the band up But we're we're an ant which is purely animal thing like this would kick in when We haven't had a meal for too long. Maybe or the temperature got very dramatically Uh, oh and uh make it difficult to keep home use stasis of of internal temperatures So this kicks in normally when we might already have stress factors Uh that we that we would uh that would be encounter. Um So that's that that's what's fascinating me about this, uh, that's why I needed this clarification because it's It is something that in our less modern world We would have utilized When we were already perhaps under stress. Yeah Okay Yep, and it would have been, you know, we weren't trying to live long long wonderful lives and you know Fight diseases of aging. Yeah, exactly. It was always here or now run away from the predator run away Uh, yeah deal with those stresses. So By the way, I still think that's a misnomer No, no seriously, uh, because when we when we look at those numbers, we also are taking into, uh account, uh, uh Early childhood mortality Which was tremendously higher Uh So so when we were talking about people lived up 30 that wasn't necessarily true So we did live much longer lives much much longer lives, but we also have We didn't have the issue of uh living long enough to have to deal with The metabolic diseases. No, but we had this is like the this is the revolution of the agricultural age Wasn't just agriculture. It was grandparents Yeah, that's right. No, that was like the first thing really like that was the big, uh, the evolution of societies Suddenly there were grandparents around who could watch the kids during the day and also tell you No seasons, uh, it's it's there's four of them or whatever like I can I've seen enough I can tell you a little bit about the future because I've seen a lot of the past Uh, uh, but but uh, when we when we look at statistics from a while back You have to remember that uh lifespan included a tremendously high rate of infant mortality, which is why we talk about, uh infertility But in the only people use if you go back and look at your ancestry You will likely find a lot of generations that had seven eight nine kids. Of course. Yeah It was very much a game of attrition. Yes lots of issues, but this study looking at the the interleukin six and this brain brown fat liver axis like this is the brown fat, uh, activate activates this gluconeogenesis or the the uh The burning of sugars glucose that are stored in the body for For uh, the fasting like you're talking about or fight or flight and it's a response to hypoglycemia or that fight or flight anticipatory need and This study discovering the way that is all this all worked. They they blocked interleukin in They they blocked the stress Adrenal pathway in mice. They blocked interleukin. They they paired it all down So they really did a great job of showing that this is the mechanism of What causes inflammation? In the stress response That before we really didn't know what was doing it and now we do and one of the things that goes along with this That's very interesting that we've talked about before is the use of auto immune drugs like Tosil is zoom. Tosil is a mab It's a It's an FDA approved interleukin six inhibitor that is approved for rheumatoid arthritis. It's being currently trialed to treat depression And anxiety and so this is what potentially Links it all together that there is this link with interleukin six affecting the brain affecting agitation through this like hypoglycemia Brown fat pathway. Um, and so there's a lot of work that's going to move on here looking at interleukin six not just for The uh the metabolic aspect but for mental health disorders as well But that's going to be Very interesting. Yeah Those really, you know things tie together and it's like wow, this is cool Our body is this very neat interlocking interwoven system. It's very fun So one one thing I'm just thinking about is the more we understand how stress works and how it impacts our body negatively If we can turn that off You know, there's some cases like you're talking about with um medical issues where it You know, it would be good to be able to turn that off But I'm also thinking about how for example us being able to tell what hot feels like Is good because it keeps us from burning ourselves Right and there is something about stress Yeah, and the impact it has on your body where It's hard for you to believe that this is it the and stress is something that has such a huge impact on your body potentially that I would be worried that we were missing something and by turning off the negative impact of stress You would you would people would be able to continually Um subject themselves to stress without negative impact So it wouldn't it wouldn't if we blocked the interleukin 6 it wouldn't block the The stress hormones the stress hormones would the cortisol levels and you know all the all the things that Effect the way that you feel Those would still be happening because it's not blocking the adrenal system pathways at all It's just if you were to go in to block that interleukin It would block the negative inflammatory effects that could lead to liver disease or lead to heart disease later on I guess i'm just seeing a potential Um abuse of this where it's like okay I don't mind that you're going to go slowly insane from stress because it's not going to kill you Okay dystopian person No, man, I just I could see myself doing it to myself I I gotta pause things again blare you're saying that the motivating aspect of stress to you is the fact that it might kill you And that's why you have to act upon the stress if it wasn't going to kill you You would just be like I would never act on the stress properly Yes, I don't know if I buy it Uh, believe it. I feel like i'm not acting on the stress properly now I think you would still feel stressed out Yeah, and I guess that's my point is that I think It's something that has it still has the potential of having such lasting impacts whether it's causing inflammation or not that uh Maybe we need to worry about our stress instead I think I think I have already discovered I've discovered on a lot of levels. Uh, how to lower stress Is it not caring because I have trouble with that Just two things one lower your expectations And and find any excuse to have fun Those are those are the two rules uh to beat stress lower your expectations and find any excuse to have fun That is really really great advice That's great advice Justin Um, that was that's what I did on Friday night when I watched the new will ferrell Eurovision movie I lowered my expectations and I went into it going I'm gonna have fun. And you know what I did that it was great Uh, oh what I did I did I you I don't know if you saw this. Uh I I got a hotel that had a jacuzzi in the room Hotel prices are extremely cheap right now Great don't go out in public, but maybe a hotel room not a bad day if you want to go somewhere It was like less than half price um jacuzzi in the room I was on a road trip with my seven-year-old daughter Uh, she sees the jacuzzi. She knew it was there, but she's like I got excited turned it on immediately She's already got like her snortical mask getting ready to like go And then I'm empty. I'm unpacking like we brought, you know some snacks and some stuff and I take out this giant thing of uh Back gel And I had to say nothing else. She saw it looked Back of her grabbed it flipped it open and started pouring it in and we had the most gigantic bubble bath You would ever imagine. That's great. Uh, it's a way to relieve stress findings used to have fun and yeah Lower expectations about getting your deposit back on the room Uh, okay moving on from stress, let's move into some brain eating Oh, wait, what? Uh-oh, no Brains the brains that eat themselves Unsubscribe Really a good thing Yeah, it's a good thing though brains that eat themselves. It's fantastic because Uh, when cells die, they can gum up the works and get in the way of proper cell signaling If you've got a dead neuron in the middle of a neural circuit, what good is that going to do? Can't find your keys. You will never find your keys as long as that thing is there Yeah, so some researchers for the first time this is they're using this this method That I think we talked about a couple of years ago. It's called two fatal fatal two fatal two ph atal and It's this it seriously is science magic Where they use two photons of light to illuminate a single cell within a living animal's brain and watch brain cells do things And so in this in this process, they have the very first video of Um Of brain cells glial cells specifically consuming Neurons that have been killed by the researchers in a mouse brain a living mouse brain and the The reason they did this is they wanted to go in and confirm ideas of how the The process actually works and what they found is that there are three micro glial cell types that are involved with the process and micro glia astrocytes and ng2 cells and it's a really coordinated process of cell Removal so when they killed a brain cell in the brain cell They found that the there's a micro glia that engulfs The neuron body and its main branches and then astrocytes go after the dendrites for removal And then they think that ng2 might help prevent the dead debris from the dead cell from spreading And so these things these these these three cell types work in conjunction to make it happen It one cell Misses their you know their call time for the dead cell removal Then other glial cells pick up the slack and fix it. They also discovered that as we get older Our glial cells aren't as good at cleaning stuff up and this might be one of the issues with With the problems the cognitive issues of that are seen with aging the slowing of the slowing of brain processes Just full of junk Yeah, the junk piles up it gets in the way. You can't find stuff Yeah, where'd I put it? Yeah, so we know that the the glial cells are good for the supportive role For neurons in the brain where they're constantly Helping bring nutrients to the to the neurons. They're helping with short distance Communication like very like really short Signals between neurons. They carry some messages. They're really cool that way But they also are the cleanup crew And it's important Sort of thinking like my my brain seems my memory seems to get better as I've gotten older I think that is just you know, but I think You're special But I think I also had uh, if you if you can't remember what it was like to think slower No, but I also I realized that might be uh correlated to uh the amount of additions I've made that may have not been positive for brain function In your years Right It could be couldn't be. No couldn't be that There'd be a correlation there Again, this is this week in science. Thank you for listening to twist You're the reason that we're able to do what we do every week Bringing you the up to date down to earth views on science discoveries And with your help we can do even more With your help we can bring a sane perspective to a world full of misinformation and Your help would be appreciated head over to twist.org right now Click on the patreon link and choose your level of support $10 and up and we thank you on air at the end of the show Be a part of bringing sanity and science to more people. Thank you for your support We really could not do this without you All right, Justin Tell me some stories uh and one Uh Shampoo, I'm just guessing it's french. It's got an x at the end Shampoo shampoo. Who knows? Uh, but uh or he it's a phd student at the global ecology lab at flinders university again I think that came up earlier has cataloged the discovery of a new fern like plant species Didn't exactly discover it Uh, the fossil was found in the 1960s by an amateur geologist Uh, mr. John Irving on the bank of the manila river in Baraba new south wales Which is in australia the fossil was exposed after a flooding Took place and wiped away a lot of surface and the fossil He sent it to he sent it in to the geological survey of new south wales Donated the fossil find which is brilliant Great, uh, they put it in a box and it remained there for 50 years How many fossils has that happened to I just don't have time to get to it right now This is another going into the basement and looking at the old Uh, the old donations to see if there's anything there worth not throwing out, right? We've covered this story. We've discovered new whale species new plants new insects. We've made tons of discoveries this way and I keep thinking about uh, mr. John Irving going like Writing lever anyway, dear sir madame Has there been any progress into the research of the fossil that I submitted to you 10 years ago Where's my first? No so it turns out this uh Has been dated to the late uh, Devonian period which if you're not familiar with your historical ages and periods and such is about 372 to 359 No million years ago a long time. It's extremely old uh And it's kind of fun here. It says this is a time when Australia was part of the southern hemisphere super continent of Gondwana, but now we're like think like maybe it was connected to Canada was Canada all the way that like we don't know Right because the last week we like maybe that's not the right ancient map. Anyway, uh This is a time when plants and animals were just beginning to colonize land masses This is an extremely early uh plant species Very well preserved. They say it's very fern-like um Fossil is currently in France where Bridget Meier Betraud an international expert studying the first plants on earth Let a team at the French laboratory of botany and modeling of plant architecture and vegetation The French laboratory is particularly interested in further examination of Australian fossils from this uh, this region the site The only thing that I kind of have an issue with on this. I think it's an awesome discovery Super early plant and it's it's apparently a very nice fossil very well preserved, especially for its time They named it, uh They named it After a colleague who had passed which is which is nice But but Erwin got not he got he found it. He said yeah, he got now. He's not mentioned got nothing He got nothing. He waited his whole life and died not knowing In fact Of his discovery and they're like, uh, yes, we we've we're honoring one of our colleagues who's past was very influential in this field I think it's because he was an amateur. I think I think it's a little uh Uh professional amateur bias, but that's okay. It's the French are still doing that. They've always done that They've always done that that's fine but still really cool to know that you can find A fossil of a three hundred and seventy something million year old plant If I may I've always said That ferns the wreckage are to plants as crocodiles are to vertebrates in that They've been around when dinosaurs roam the earth And like it's just a fun little like Yeah, it's like a fun Time capsule thing. I look at a crocodile and I think holy heck you've been around forever Like I could I could go back in time and I could see you wandering around Almost exactly the same and I think that about ferns too They're so cool They can see in this fossil The walls of the cells. Oh, oh wow so good. It's not you know, it's like a high definition uh Fossil find lost for 50 years lost for three hundred and seventy million years I wonder what it will tell us like as they start digging into it more and more You know about you know the evolution of structures in the in the fern family or You know Like we were talking about the bird evolution earlier, you know, what structures make it, you know Make it succeed in one environment versus another Yeah, do you have other stories? Uh, I I don't I mean I had some others. I had this story about the giant pangolin Yeah Had another story about like a pangolin that wasn't a pangolin and like canada or whatever, but I guess okay What's a wait the giant penguin that wasn't a penguin. That's the same story Yeah, blare. Is it the same story or are they two different stories? No, it's the same story Blair found two stories that I brought and brought them Late and put them ahead of mine. Oh, it happens. It happens every once in a while Uh, it's a little bit It's been a lot rare since we actually put our stories into a thing that we can all see So if we go there and see oh somebody brought it, I should put but but it still happens. It's okay No, it was it was funny though Every once in a while when we were doing the show in the basement of kdvs The ucdavis campus we would print out our stories on our home computers and we had no communication whatsoever ahead of time It would come in and every once in a while we had like oh, I brought that too crumple crumple crumple I brought that okay crumple crumple. Wow. We brought like three of the same stories crumple crumple Okay, all right. We'll just have to talk slow. That's what we'll get through the hour This is this weekend science you want to help our show grow Get a friend to subscribe today. Hey, I do believe it is time for blare's animal corner Small And maybe now Yeah, not not giant penguins. We already talked about them They're they're benched for the rest of the day But I do have a story about long-tailed tits and their ability to Figure out who they're related to just based on their sounds of their calls so in a lot of bird species the Babies when they grow up and they mature they can kind of leave the area And by doing that animals that do that by and large can avoid incest We know that incest is a problem for populations as a whole because it it increases the ability for Bad mutations to pop up and for recessive genes to pop up and both of those things can impact the health of the population as a whole because The generations of of offspring can can have health problems and that can impact their ability to reproduce Can have this ripple effect. So generally speaking that is why incest is bad in the animal kingdom so Knowing that if you have a type of bird like the long-tailed tit That actually hangs out where they were born for their lifetime That increases the possibility of incest which is a problem So either there has to be a way to work around that Or this species should have disappeared So what has happened so when the way that they stay at the nest actually they They learn calls when they're babies And then they stick around and help raise related chicks so all of that to say that They it's a family affair from day one. So They they breed close to home They raise their chicks along with brothers and sisters and moms and dads And so what they do is when they're learning their calls In their nest when they're growing up It means also that offspring and siblings Their calls are similar And in fact by doing a 25 year long study They were able to Look at how different or similar particular calls were And it was that They were able to build pedigrees of known individuals over many generations Cross-reference those against relatives and non-relatives And look at behavioral decisions Based on all of that and there was a huge similarity calls within breeding pairs Were They were more similar to that observed among distant relatives or unrelated birds. So that's the sciencey way of saying They were most different So the the among the relatives their calls are very similar Among non-relatives and particularly with breeding pairs. They were very different So they think that they can actually recognize A similar call to their own and say oh, you sound like my brother or you sound like my cousin or you sound like my mom I am not going to try to mate with you That's a pretty awesome Layer to the strategy. Yeah Yeah So it's you would you would hope that that recognition would be there Mm-hmm. Absolutely. But we you know, it depends for each species. So There's a lot of mammals for example I can speak to kind of captive management of mammals that you have to separate related individuals Or when they hit estrus they will mate because they don't know they don't have because their Ecology is such that when they grow up they separate So if you're used to putting different distance between you and your relatives You're less likely to come across a relative and mate with them You're more likely to come across someone who you're not related to When there's an animal where they're being pushed into space or they're sharing space with relatives There has to be some sort of signaling and it could be a call is in this case. It could be Um hormonal it could be some sort of hormones. It could be uh patterns colorations There's any number location. There could be any number of things that could help Tip you off because this is a really important thing to figure out as a successful animal Yeah, incredibly, I think that's that's an interesting point that you're bringing up though It's just when you've got animals that normally would distribute themselves They don't they don't have to worry about it So when you artificially put them in the same environment the keepers have to worry about it, right? But but if it's an organism destruction and climate change Now also animals are getting pushed together that weren't before That weren't before. Yeah So there's new new new forces at work that are definitely that could If it happens, I mean most of it is happening too quickly for adaptation to take place And so there's the potential for Fitness and fitness decline because of those challenges But if there's a species that has Potential markers that could be caught on too quickly You could see pretty quick Um evolution in behavior To compensate. Yep. It's possible. Yeah But as it is these little tits They're able to tell these calls apart recognize their mom's voice versus their sisters. Yeah, that's good Good job little birds And now now it's time for you to terrify us, right? I would like to end on a nice bedtime story There we go about flying snakes No Yeah, did you guys know snakes fly? No, yeah, of course they do. Of course they do. How else do they travel? So it's this isn't like, oh, they fly but on the ground like with the penguins. No, no, no They actually fly on a plane isn't it? It's not on a plane. I never thought but I just assumed So there is one family of snakes chrysopelea which They they are the only known Limeless vertebrates capable of flight When you say flight Put that back before you're talking about it. Well, let me tell you I think we've talked about this before on the show and I was horrified then but yes, please Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Um, they basically what they do is they jump out of a tree They curve their body into a j shape They spring up and out And then as they launch they reconfigure their shape They flatten their body out. They look like a ribbon Everywhere but the tail they're flat They're kind of domed at the top but on the bottom they look completely flat and wide It becomes a quote-unquote morphing wing It produces lift and drag and it forces air flow so that it It as it goes down from gravity it actually kind of carries it further and slows down its descent So it's more of a glide But they are they're airborne They're definitely airborne So um, researchers collected motion capture data from 131 live glides Made by paradise tree snakes in this family of flying snakes And paradise Yeah, I mean it's pretty cool. Um, so so they did this they collected the actual flights then They created they actually teamed up with aerospace and ocean engineers and mechanical engineers to develop a 3d model They looked at the frequencies of undulating waves their direction their forces acting on the body and mass Distribution and they were able to then run virtual experiments to investigate Aerial undulation and how exactly to optimize flight for snakes So the original thought was that these snakes undulate they they move back and forth, right? For all kinds of reasons on land or in trees And the Lee researcher says that's their basal program by program. I mean their neural muscular program They're receiving specific instructions fire this muscle now or now fire fire that muscle fire this muscle It goes beyond snakes the pattern of creating undulations is an old one It's possible that the snake gets into the air that it goes. What do I do? I'm a snake I undulate Love it But that's not that didn't look like how a snake moves on the ground Yeah, so it's similar. Well, that's based on a little video clip that's playing on the youtube version It's similar, but it's yeah, it looks a little different probably because you're looking up at it from below But um, so then they wanted to see what role this undulation has in Movement, so they turned it off in the simulations and they basically just dropped So there's something about this undulation that enhances rotational stability. They actually say it's like a frisbee So because of like the rotation of the frisbee it keeps it straight and it carries it further And that's how the undulation works for the snakes This is the whole this is like giving me a whole new appreciation for frisbee golf Yeah, except it's frisbee snakes snakes. Yeah Um So yeah, so the aerial undulation not only kept the snake from tipping over during glides But it increased horizontal and vertical distances traveled so it helped them get further more effectively So the snake is able to balance the lift and the drag forces. It's flattening Body produces rather than being overwhelmed and toppling for dropping This is the part I know ki is gonna love is that from here from here There is a potential for their 3d model to continue exploring snake flight They want to do outdoor experiments to gather motion data from longer glides and next they want to Increase the effectiveness of flight So what if they could get it to move so that actually they could fly upwards not just glides slowly down They think they might be able to make robotic snakes that would be able to fly And of course they say this is for search and rescue and disaster monitoring But really we know what it's about. It's just robotics people wanting to make fly snakes That's pretty much the truth Okay, okay. I have so many questions. I have so many questions. What do you got? Uh, okay one uh Where are they flying from? Tree to tree Okay, I now need to know how they're getting up the tree Wait, I didn't know okay. I didn't know snakes climb trees. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There are lots of arboreal snakes Okay, uh, that's one The other is like are they just trying to get down to the ground or are they like a hawk and be like I see something. Yes, and I want to go down and get it There is an amazing video if you google paradise flying snakes um I think it was an episode of planet earth or some show like that But you actually get to see one of these flying snakes scope out a lizard Fly to catch it And then big fat spoiler alert the lizard also has wings What A little So This is all to say in the rainforest What makes a rainforest a rainforest? Of course rain. It's the wettest habitat on land But it also has this massive vertical space So you learn in grade school usually about the different layers of the rainforest all the animals that live in all the different layers of the rainforest, but that means that there are some Animals like snakes and lizards that never hit the forest floor They spend their entire life in the trees And so you have to have a way to move from tree to tree and use your environment effectively But if you're a snake, how do you do that? This is how You fly. Yeah, you are a glider. You are a flyer Wow This is yeah That's another reason why I may never visit tropical areas of the world They're not gonna hurt you. You're too. You're too big to eat too big. They're looking for lizards. You're fine I know You just if they fall on your hair just go hi snake And move them They're fine Also, you're probably too far down in the trees Oh good. Good to keep me far away from the snakes I know lots of people in our audience might love the snakes. I hope you snakes are great Yes Thanks for thank thanks for the nightmare juice flair. No man snakes are great. They're pest control Without them. We'd all be in big trouble. Oh, yeah snakes are absolutely important I'm not sure uh, how important the robotic flying snakes are going to be in the future But who knows I could be entirely wrong Well, uh in order to uh, pre fact in the chat room is asking could someone explain to me why we need flying robot snakes Okay, it's because we don't have them yet. Yeah Yeah, I do feel like there's something with legs that could do that and it would be fine I'm not sure. I guess, you know the idea is if you have like a collapse building and there's lots of rubble in small spaces A snake would be a robot snake would be really effective because you could slither into spaces that are very small And and get into places where people could be trapped why they need to fly again. I am not Sure, we can drop them from helicopters. Obviously Of course, that's also why we're developing the flying robotic spider. So it's going to be a competition I'm good with that one. We will win the spider or the snake All right Let's dive into the last segment of the show this week in science questions I don't know what happened to justin there. He ran away. He ran away from the spiders and the snakes This question comes from gaurav sharma He says people often talk about having a strong or weak immune system Or a weak immunity what determines the strength of an immune system? Can people who have been exposed to more viral load on a regular basis? Like those who live in crowded slums as an example expect to have better chances of surviving covet 19 Because their immune systems are stronger Band of the show. Thanks So The thing that determines your immune system strength is The health of your body. It also is determined by your genetics so There are aspects of your immune system that might not work. And so you might be immune compromised. That would be a particularly weak immune system not able to respond to things a strong immune system Is one that is potentially we talked earlier in the show about stress Dampening your immune response that the stress hormones actually make it so that your immune system can't respond to the extent that it normally would And Those things are really important. So when people talk about getting proper sleep Exercising having a proper diet and how that goes into a strong immune system. It's true It really goes a long way towards just your whole body system working as a well oiled machine now And can I Stress Is also related So there's also things that you can do but there's also things that you can do to dramatically lower your chances Of having a serious COVID infection Which has nothing to do with masks or your immune system, which is how to type o blood Right. So there's that genetic aspect again. Yeah, there are things that have nothing Nothing to do with the virus really other than how it interacts with your body Yeah, it's the it's the places and attachments that the virus can exploit Somehow so so part of this also comes down to we've talked about this before but um the lining of blood vessels and gut bacteria Have this weird connection Which also is connected to types of blood So there's there's a lot of interplay in the way the body's operating that we Are just scratching the surface on and starting to understand These two receptors all this sort of thing But yeah, blood type is a not a cause of not it's not a preventative thing to blood itself But it is telling you that at some point on a chromosome There was an expression that is probably linked to something else that's over or under expressing something that is affecting downstream of it Yeah, it's it's yeah But the question the question of if you live on in a more crowded area So we talk often about preschools being petri dishes and I have never experienced as many colds That I that I recall as when my son was in preschool and brought all those colds home to me And that is it is Quote on quote Strengthening your immune system in that you are getting exposed to more viruses and I remember last week Blair you were talking about Uh your summer camp and all the kids from the different schools coming together and bringing whatever it was that was circulating at their Petri dishes together Right, it's like let's combine our petri dishes. And so if you hadn't been exposed to something We talked about antibodies. You don't have the antibodies for them Until you've been exposed and your body has a chance to react so being in a More crowded place a place that's potentially a little dirtier Yeah, your body is potentially going to have been exposed to many more things and maybe you have antibodies to other corona viruses That help lessen the effect of covid 19 when it does actually infect you But since you've never been exposed to covid 19 You don't have that and your body is just going to react in the way that it can in that moment Based on your genetics and your health And someone in the chat room hnek in the youtube chat room also put in a really good point, which is Sure, if you live in a poor community or in a in a slum as the question asked You might be exposed to more things, but you also might have less access to health care Work more have higher stress levels So they're going to bring your immune system down and so you won't be able to fight things off as easily you might get sicker Yeah, exactly greater levels of pollution And we've been seeing so many studies in the last few months even about how air pollution Is a huge problem for these respiratory diseases these viruses Yeah, so there are there are lots of things out there when you if you see Claims that something is going to boost your immune system or strengthen your immune system we don't really have evidence that vitamins Can strengthen your immune system unless you are deficient in those vitamins to start with For the large part our body will use vitamins and pee out everything else that it doesn't need So if you're taking a lot of vitamins to try and boost your immune system, it's not necessarily going to help I mean there are You know, there are questions about how vitamin c interacts and whether that can strengthen your immune system, but When it comes down to it As far as we know There's not much you can do to you know do immune system push-ups Yeah, I I do I take vitamin c when I feel like I'm getting sick and I'm very aware every time I put it in my Mouth that it could be a big fat placebo and you know what like Maybe it's telling me hey listen body. Don't you get sick? So that could be what's happening is I'm just alerting my immune system I'm heightening the guard or on my body by taking that vitamin c. I'm saying Listen up. I can feel this happening. I'm not with it Well, my only word of uh, a wisdom would be anybody who is trying to sell you Uh a supplement Avoid them Like like if you want to go and do your homework and say like oh, I think I would like this and I you know Maybe it's you need it. Maybe it's a placebo. Go ahead and try it. Do your thing But if somebody if you're listening to somebody who is telling you dr. Justin's not a real doctor Poo pills are gonna make your Digestives just leave them immediately stop listening to them. Stop participating in their media whatever it is I'm talking to you dr. Oz I'm talking to All of the charlatans and the snake oil sales people out there in the world in this unregulated an industry of supplements They're liars in sheets all of them All of them who sell you these things I attempt to all of them are liars. They're selling things and there's not a lot of There's not a lot of evidence behind these things that and vitamins as they are not considered medicine are not subject to the same checks and balances and uh testing and All this kind of substantiating that we require of our medicines So they can pretty much say whatever they want And your point on the the placebo Blair if something is Making you less stressed because you feel like you're doing something to protect your immune system Yeah, potentially that reduction in stress is what is keeping you healthy Yeah, as long as it's vitamin c tablets and not uh hydroxychloroquine, which is like we're gonna kill you Ding ding ding ding ding. Yeah, there's making sure you're taking something that's not dangerous the levels of your Yeah, if you're taking something that does nothing, but it doesn't hurt you Uh, that's a bummer, but it's a waste of money, but if it makes you feel better great But if if it's if it's not gonna help you and it's gonna hurt you potentially that's a problem Or if you're taking something away from someone who actually needs it, which was the case with hydroxychloroquine So Yeah, oh boy, oh boy All right, if you have questions for us Send them in do you have questions about science that you would like us to answer or that could be answered with some amount of our Scientific knowledge and know how We'll do our best to answer those questions. Let's write send them in to our facebook page or You can email me kirsten at thisweekinscience.com Anyone have any final thoughts? parting jokes words of wisdom for the end of the show Words of wisdom Let's uh, let's work on flattening the curve, but in the right direction Horizontally, uh to vertically which is Lower your expectations And seek out any reason to have fun Wear a mask Wear a mask, please everybody And social distance wash your hands Use your common sense and make sure to come back next week for this week in science Thank you for listening. We have finished another show. I hope that you enjoyed it Shout-outs to fada for help with social media and show notes Gord for manning the chat room id4 for recording the show and I would like to thank our Patreon sponsors and boroughs welcome fund for their generous support Thank you, too. 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This week in science, this week in science. So my dad sent me a picture. Whoop, turn off the music. We're in the after show now, everyone. We're here in the after show. My dad sent me the cutest picture. Aw. Alvin and his wife, and they both have twist masks with their names on them. Oh. I love that. They're personalized. So they've got their names on them. They're so cute. I love it. I was wondering what it said under there. A little adorable. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh. I love it. I love it. Thanks, dad. Thanks for supporting me wearing your twist mask. That's great. So Justin's gone. He just disappeared entirely now. No, he wrote us in the chat. He said, got to go. 13 hour day at work, and I'm beat. See you next week. Oh, he's gone. He's just like, ouch. All right, fine. Whatever. I understand. I understand. Yeah, he's working some long, hard days right now, which it's good. It's good to be working long days, but it's hard. H&K is getting some Blair art masks. I also have some pictures. Let's see, was it Twitter? Did somebody send me a picture? And the messages. Somebody sent me. Ew, I logged into Twitter to see if somebody tweeted to me during the show. Trending in the United States. You guessed it, the word Nazi. Great. That's not great. That really bums me out. I got to tell you, I'm bummed. Yeah. Oh. Had a really interesting conversation yesterday about how the, so when Germany was rebuilding after World War II, they looked at the United States and how we had gone about emancipation and the things that we had done. And basically everything that we had done wrong with Jim Crow laws and all sorts of stuff. Basically Germany was like, all right, let's not do those things with the Civil War and basically allowing Confederates to continue to, you know, who had fought against the Union to be able to continue to maybe not have their slaves, but to raise money, to work, to have land. They didn't have things taken away from them. They didn't go to jail. They, you know, they were, there are statues of them all over the, you know. And we allowed that to happen because we want, yeah, people were like, let's make everything okay, right? And Germany instead, they, with the white power Nazi movement, they basically outlawed everything. You know, like people were killed. They got rid of any statues. They, in the schools, taught that Nazism is bad. They, like, they basically- Swashdicas are illegal. Swashdicas were illegal. They did, they looked at how we came out of the Civil War and where it led us and how we're, like, basically we're still dealing with those problems because we didn't address it appropriately. We didn't stamp it out, you know, 100 years ago. But yeah. Yeah, so anyway, it's fairly interesting. It's like, oh, great, yeah. Oh no. It makes me really sad that it's even still a thing. I just found out why it's trending. Oh no, why? It's Trump's new logo for his 2020 campaign. It's an eagle holding a circle with the American flag in it. So it looks a lot like the logo for the Nazi party. That sucks. God, come on, guys. Oh, this is terrible. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it. I just saw it. Oh no. Don't get it. Like, you just can't. Like, 6 million people were killed. Yeah. You got to fact check this stuff. You got to just, even if you want to say this is a mistake, which I don't know, but even if you want to say this is a mistake, you got to have people looking at this stuff. You'd be like, Mr. President, it looks kind of like a Nazi thing. Maybe we shut it. Oh boy. OK. Is he going to change it? No. No. Doesn't appear so. Oh, good. It's not trending on my trending things. Yeah, I don't need to know. That's just not OK. It's a big, big bummer. Well, it's going to have a huge reaction, for sure. OK, well, anyway, let's talk about something else. Yeah. I'm really bummed. That really sucks. What's that? Yeah. I like the fact that there are big conversations about our country's history happening now and that we've been talking for a long time about how what's being taught in the schools is not what really happened. And then there's Barr's comment about history being written by the victors. And we need to change some of that history. It's time to, you know, OK, well, who are the victors now? We're going to change that. We're going to rewrite that history. Yeah. Yeah, Eric in AK says he doesn't admit to errors. And it's true. That is true. Yeah, somebody in there thinks it sends the right message exactly identity for. Oh, yeah, I saw HNK. I saw Vanilla Ice was trending, too. I guess he's doing a concert, I think, in Florida somewhere. And when someone said, like, hey, you're in an area with a lot of coronavirus cases. Maybe you do not want to have this concert. He goes, like, this is a 90s revival concert. And there was no coronavirus in the 90s. What? OK. That doesn't even make sense. Oh, my god. So apparently on Twitter, like, somebody has decided that I am a hashtag talking head for hashtag Big Pharma. Oh, that's funny. I've gotten so many wonderful responses. Oh, yeah, people are pissed, I'm sure. 24 hours. Yeah. I got some funny responses from a shouty blared. You saw that one? I said, from the start, we should have just lied and told people that the mask was for the wearer. Yeah, just why not? Because this is the problem. We were in California last year. I think I said this on the show last week. And people did not walk from their house to their car without a mask on because it was smoky outside. So they wanted to protect themselves. But because we're protecting each other, people are like, oh, I don't need to put it on. I'm just running across the street. Or like, oh, I don't think I'm going to see anybody. You're like, oh, I forgot my mask. Screw it. So because it's for everyone else, there's like these little allowances we're allowing that I don't think would be the case if we were protecting ourselves with it. Everyone would be like, ah, the rona, a milk. They'd have their mask on all the time. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, they would. I mean, there is so much when you start digging into public health communication for years, the messages that are told are told for particular reasons. And the messages that are spread, there's a goal of certain actions being taken by the public. And so, yeah, like when we started, it was, no, masks aren't helpful because we needed to preserve the N95s for everybody, right? And that was a lie. And people were upset about that. Or now they're confused. And they're like, why are you flip-flopping? And yeah, it just, and then you can't have the conversation anymore because now there's the trust in the source has been. Yeah. Well, but that's the problem is like, if I can be Justin for a second, since he's not here, like this all comes down to a misunderstanding of what science is. Because there's no such thing as flip-flopping in science. That's called taking in new data and responding to it. That's like, that's the cornerstone of science. Yeah, somebody told me, I shared a link to a Lancet article and somebody said they linked to another Lancet article on hydroxychloroquine that had been retracted. And they said, you can't trust the Lancet. Look, they're retracting papers. How can we trust this outlet? And it's like, well, actually. That's how science works. That's how science works. And I, you know, it's unfortunate that they rushed to publish the paper, but the reality is I trust them more because they did retract it because they actually went through the process of saying, this is wrong. This science is not good anymore. And basically did the, you know, everything lives on the internet forever now, but basically said this is, this study is not a good study anymore. And they put that message out there so that scientists moving forward will not use that study to inform their experiments and their thought processes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, so, but it's because somebody doesn't understand how science works. They're like, you can't trust the Lancet. They're like, no, no, you can. It's a very good distinguished journal. I trust the Lancet. Yeah. And yeah, Danielle Yacht is saying the issue was we needed PPE for medical workers. So like, we didn't want to tell people to wear the mask, but see, this is part of the problem too, is there were people out there going, well, we could tell people to wear masks, but they'll hoard them. So we can't tell them to wear masks, which also is indicative of a much bigger problem. That that's the first thing people did was buy out pallets of disinfectant and toilet paper, and then start trying to sell it for 10 times what it's worth and doing the same with masks. And it's like that, that exists. This is why we can't have nice things. Like, we could have told the public the truth. You can wear a mask, that would be helpful, but really the hospitals need them, so don't overbuy if people could be trusted with that information, but people couldn't. So it had to be a step-wise communication, and I understand it, and I'm glad they did it that way, especially speaking as someone who has a loved one who's a healthcare worker. Has it preserved the PPE for him and for others? Yes, like him, yeah. So I'm thrilled that they didn't tell people to wear masks right away. Yeah, I don't know, but now it's a whole thing, and now it's freedom, but somebody came up with the hashtag to call them freedom masks. Good. So now it's like, no, no, here is your freedom mask. Wear this mask for your freedom. It's your freedom mask. Yeah, anyway, I like it. Well, communication's hard, and the internet is full of, yeah. A sound bite doesn't always do it, is the problem. Yeah. Science doesn't often work in headlines, and I think that's, it comes down to that too, is how do you communicate? We talked about COVID for 15 minutes tonight. How do you get that across in two sentences? And we've talked about COVID for at least that long on just about every episode over the last several months, and normally with different studies involved, but we do that every week, yeah, but exactly. How do you do that? How do you do 10 words? 20 words in a headline, right? How do you get those ideas across? Yeah. And then GA, what did you think of the show flow tonight? I would like to try it again. I liked it, but it still felt, it felt a little uncomfortable, it was a little different. I feel like, especially because I think we're good at keeping the quick stories quick when it's at the end of the show, because we're like, oh, it's late and we wanna go to bed. Exactly. Yeah. But when it's at the beginning of the show and we're just getting to see each other, I just think it's gonna take a little adjusting to figure out how to keep it kind of quick and succinct at the beginning of the show. It's not what we're used to doing. We're used to chatting it up over a coffee or a drink for 90% of the show and be like, oh, did you hear about this? Oh, did you hear about this? Good night. But yeah, I'd love to see what happens if we try it again too. Yeah. Okay, cool. All of you out there watching, let me know what you thought of the show, the show flow. Thunder Beaver said it was a decent flow. Yeah, they weren't really a quick headline rundown. That's true. We haven't nailed it. I mean, I threw the new rundown at Blair and Justin today. So nobody was prepared. And so this was like a pilot, a run through, a read through, if you will. So if we want to kind of emulate what Daily Tech News Show does a little bit more, we can, I think the only way to get those things really short and succinct is to pre-write exactly what we are going to say about the headlines and read it. And have an understood number of sentences that are allowed. Yeah, an understood number of a comment or question. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in their show, they don't comment on them at all. The very first headlines, yeah. The very first headlines are just headlines and they go very quickly. And then they have the stories that have a short bit of discussion and then they have their main discussion thing at the end. Am I short shooting for shorter shows? No, not necessarily, maybe slightly shorter, but I love everybody who is here, but I also want to make the show more accessible to the casual listener who doesn't know us yet and who maybe it's kind of hard to get into who we are and what we're doing. So it might be easier if we, I think it might be easier for a new listener to dive into the show if we have kind of that quicker pace at the beginning of the show to get people into it and get people warmed up and like, oh yeah, science, that's good. And then we can have an interview and then we can have, yeah. So I'm figuring it out, but yeah. And noodles, I do agree that in DTNS, there's something about DTNS that's too strict. And I think they're aiming for a half hour. Like they want the show. Yeah, I mean, like down to the second. That show is a half hour. And I don't think we need to do, I don't care to do a half hour show, that's not who we are. I mean, if we were to do a half hour show, I think it would be a different show. What I might consider trying one week, I don't know if Justin's gonna like it, but what I might consider trying one week is how we have the link, we have our title that we give to the story and then we have our summary, is that we actually write out exactly what we wanna say for the headline. That's what I did today. In the summary, and then we can react to it and we can expand on it if there are questions, but plan exactly what the headline is. Cause I think that's the problem that I run into is I like to kind of craft a story and figure out a cool angle and all this kind of stuff, but a headline is a very different thing. So if I can kind of plan out exactly what I wanna say and how I wanna say it succinctly ahead of time, I think it might make it feel tighter. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't think it necessarily has to be, you know, tight, tight, tight. And I think like people in the chat are saying, you know, there's the, there is a certain, what was the comment in there? Who put it in there? Noodles, let the show flow like a flying snake. Yeah, and I think, you know, there is a certain amount of letting us have our back and forth that is important. But yeah, I think there is also, is there an alarm bell for, hey, a story is dragging on too long and it's time to wrap it up. I mean, I can sit over here and be like, mm-hmm, yeah, but nobody's listening to me. No. No. No. And well, also if the person talking is looking at notes, then they might not see you do that. They might not, exactly, exactly. Yeah, Anthony, Becerra, and YouTube is saying 90 minutes of science is fine. And yeah, I mean, I think, I think 90 minutes is a good show time to aim for. Yeah, it's a good aiming. We do two hours pretty easily, but I think two hours might be, It's a lot. It's a lot for people to listen to. But I think, you know, maybe, maybe if people are seeing the quick stories at the top, maybe it'll, more people will watch on YouTube. The quick stories at the top might lead to more people watching longer if the interview or their favorite segment is after or listening longer. No, no, no. Garov likes twists specifically because it's long. Hey, TNK, yes, you missed my computer reboot twice or twice. Once during the show and once after. Once it was while Justin was talking though, so I was able to slide on out of my chair and fix my microphone. Yeah. I see Garov, it's great for doing dishes and cooking and cleaning. That's right, it's the conversational show. Ed likes more conversation over more stories. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Multiple audio releases, yes, Thunder Beaver. That was an idea that I discussed, but I haven't done it. I think what I need to do is hire somebody to work with me as an editor. If we were to do multiple releases, you know, like, oh, release the twist questions as a segment or if we were to release Blair's Animal Corner as its own segment or, you know, we've got the long podcast I could take interviews and have them released separately. Yeah, twist bits, exactly. Little things, small segments for easy to digestion. Yes, I've thought about doing that. I've thought about, but it's like a, it's just there's the activation energy to, you know, I need a catalyst to make some things happen. Another idea has been. When I was working from home, I was doing mini episodes every week, but now I'm working nine and 10 hour days at work. So they're back in the toilet. We'll see. In the fall, I might be back working at home again. And if that's the case, then I can start doing stuff. That would be nice. Thunder Beaver, each segment could be a little longer, 10 to 30 minutes per segment. Yeah. And then they could, we could record once a week, but then release smaller bits daily. Yeah, I like that. Noodles is like, just let it flow. Stop trying to tell it what to do. Stop trying to tell Twist who to be when it grows up. Yeah, it's good. It's good. Oh man, Gaurav, there are probably so many bloopers. Oh my God. Yeah. How about just every time Justin tries to pronounce someone's name? I know just a reel of him mispronouncing things. I love that. We need to make that happen. Oh my God. I feel like it needs to be a video too because his face is like half of it. It's like his mouth moves a lot when he's trying to say the name. Thunder Beaver, a short, near daily thing that's set up for people's smart devices, five to 10 minutes max. Yeah, that's kind of what I was working on. I don't need for it all has to be slowed down so Justin sounds drunk. I think some of them he probably was already drunk. Yeah, and I keep trying to get Kai to do something. He was excited for five minutes, but I think he really likes just coming and being on twists as opposed to trying to do his own show. Wish he was open in here. Yeah. All right. I think I'm dying. Don't die. I like you here. Yeah, I have to retire. I'm a wilting flower. I have to go. Oh, rehydrate yourself. Get your sleep. Maintain your health so you can keep your immune system up and not get sick again. Yeah, I also have to handle my stress. Handle your stress. Handle it. It would be helpful if the parents of children who attend camp would wear their mask when they drop off their child. That would be great. I've had to get in some confrontations. It's pretty frustrating. Anyway, if anybody knows children, parents with children who are going to the San Francisco Zoo for summer camp, tells them to wear their masks. We are asking you. Blair is asking you for her own health and safety. And the health and safety of others. Please, please. Let's see. You need to go. Justin's already gone. Yeah, Thunder Beaver. Kai could come in, do his own segment. Maybe have his own show later. We'll see. He just wants to do gaming on Twitch. Have a YouTube channel where he can be like DanTDM. Well, there's certainly a market for that. There is. I need to write something for the newsletter. That's what I need to do. So does Justin. Justin said he was going to. Yeah, so OK, I'll poke. I will poke on these things for newsletter. We will try and get some time together to talk about all of these show things and thoughts and ideas. And thank you, everybody, for being with us for another episode. I'm also trying to get some interviews lined up for the next few weeks. Yes. I'm hopefully I might have one for next week. I'm not sure. Got to confirm. I hadn't confirmed yet, so I couldn't put it in. It's somebody who works on CRISPR with Jennifer Doudna at UC Berkeley. Nice. Yeah, so that could be a fun interview. CRISPR and COVID. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Moving into the future. I got a physicist lined up possibly. Oh, and I think we're going to be talking about lemurs sometime in the near future. Oh, gosh, OK. Yeah, give me a warning before that happens at all. Yeah, you're going to be so excited. Hold on, let me. Lemurs. Lemurs, as people sometimes call them. Yes, lemurs. Excuse me, where are the lemurs? The lemurs. We have a month, August 5th. August 5th, we are talking about lemurs with someone from the Duke Lemur Center. Oh, cool. That's August 5th. It'll be good. If anybody has ideas for interviews, people you want to hear from, send me an email. Send us questions for this week in Science Questions. And say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Kiki. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. Thank you once again. It's been so much fun. I hope you enjoyed the show. And I hope that we will see you again next week. Thank you for joining us. Good night.