 This is TWIS, this week in Science Episode Number 572, recorded on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2016. Natural or nuts? Hey everyone, I am Dr. Kiki and tonight on TWIS we are going to fill your heads with mutations, old farmers, and crabby tricksters. But first... Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Nothing you have experienced will prepare you for what you are about to hear. That is, unless you have been listening for a while, in which case your mind is fully prepared to encounter the unknown. To delve, brain first into the abyss of human knowledge, and step out the other side, wet with insights into the inner workings of nature. To the untrained brain, the journey may seem wrought with hidden dangers. The landscapes unfamiliar, the destination uncertain, the weather at once carefree and whimsical, and also wrought, if I can use wrought again here without seeming to over embellish, weather wrought with a wild foreboding and a willful wrath for whimsical ways. It is as if everything we could learn could in some way be used against us. It's not the knowledge of the unknown that makes this so, but knowledge of ourselves. And in knowing the ways that man can hurl hardships at his fellow human, we pause, we hesitate to speak what truths we know, what mysteries we have lain bare, what new knowledge we have now wrought forth from the abyss. Yes, there I used it again. For fear, fear could be used against us. But do not fear, for fear is the most formidable force that can be used against you. Never greater than when it finds you without the knowledge to understand. Never give in to fear, instead listen to the carefree and whimsical voices as they guide you through yet another episode of... This Week in Science, coming up next. What's happening? What's happening? What's happening? What's happening this week in science? Science to Kiki and Blair, and Brit, we have a guest today, Brit, welcome. Yes, welcome everyone, welcome Brit, hello to Justin and Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We have another great episode in store for you today, lots of science news and an interview. It's going to be fantastic. The stories I've brought involve stories about CRISPR, always CRISPR, CRISPR alert, so exciting. Zika, because Zika is always on the top of our minds when it comes to travel these days. And zombie genes, because zombies. We also have an interview with Brit Marie Hermes about her experiences in naturopathy and why she left. It's going to be a very interesting conversation, I am sure. Justin, what do you have for us? I've got high history, ancient farming, and robot nursery rhymes. Robot nursery rhymes for robots or by robots? For robots. For robots. For robots. There we go. All right, Blair, what did you bring for the animal corner? I brought old cockas, kidnapper crabs, and hermaphrodites. Okay. Okay. Awesome. All right, everybody, top of the list, we are going to dive into some CRISPR news. So researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are working on developing a CRISPR treatment for cancer that involves T cells, and it's been approved for human testing by a federal biosafety and ethics panel. The experimental treatment still needs approval from the medical centers that would run the study, which would also be UCSF and some others, and the FDA here in the United States. The interesting thing about this study, we talked about the research that these University of Pennsylvania researchers are doing last year, because what they do is they take T cells from people who have blood cancers, leukemia, and others, take the T cells and then mutate them once they've left the body. So they clip out or change them a little bit, kind of wash them up, make them act a little bit different so that they can attack the cancer more effectively. And with previous treatments and previous methodologies of changing how these T cells work, they've discovered that it works a little bit, but they become less and less effective over time. It just doesn't last very long. So the cancers come back. It's not a 100% cure, and there's a lot of issues with removing the T cells from somebody's body and then putting them back in. It's not necessarily a carefree and wild, happy experience. So this new idea that they'll be using CRISPR with will be with the intention of targeting two very specific genes. And the genes that they would be looking for, one is called PD1, and it's a checkpoint molecule that sits on the surface of a lot of cancer cells. And so when a T cell connects to the cancer cell, it recognizes that PD1 and the PD1, they bind together, but the PD1 then disables the T cell. And so the T cells then are at that T cell. It's a trap. Yeah. And so the cancer cells basically like, hey, oh, you're cute. I got you. I got you. So they're going to edit the receptor gene out so the T cells won't have the PD1 receptor anymore. They won't be able to link up to the cancer cells in that way. And so the T cells will stay active and keep fighting the cancer. So there are other natural receptors on the T cells that are called endogenous TCR. And there's been some other studies that have shown that you can remove the TCR to get these engineered T cells to just function better. And they've removed the PD1 gene and the endogenous TCRs in mice in previous studies. They've reduced the size of lung tumors much more than the T cells in previous experiments that did not use CRISPR. So CRISPR is better at getting at these genetic targets within the T cells more efficient and will allow T cells to attack the cancer more effectively. And this will now potentially, if it gets approval from the FDA and from these research centers, be the first instance of a CRISPR-ized cells being used in medicine in the world. Well, legally in the world. So this is a very, very exciting moment. There are some other labs that are looking at different studies that involve CRISPR and are still working on approval, but this might happen first. It might happen very quickly. Moving on from that one, I have another really interesting study that is similar. However, it kind of is working in the opposite direction. We talk about CRISPR and its CAS9 partner. And CAS9 enables the system that's used. It doesn't necessarily have to be CRISPR that it's used with, but it enables, it's a tuning system basically. It enables the system to discriminate between target sites. And there's a method that George Church's lab has developed that allows CAS9 to discriminate between two target sites that differ by a single nucleotide polymorphism, which, as we've talked about before, is how most mutations occur in people that cause disease and disability. So single nucleotide polymorphisms are one of the main drivers of disease issues. And if we could start fixing those, changing them somehow, it could be a wonderful tool in our arsenal, our medical arsenal. So what they have done is they've not just gone, okay, we've got this system that can discriminate between these single nucleotide polymorphisms. They've gone a step further, and they've created a CAS9 system that prevents mutations at single nucleotide sites. And so the implications of this system are that it could potentially be used within bacterial systems to prevent antibiotic resistance. It could be used to create prevention systems that work against cancer-causing mutations. It could be used to create systems in, say, our crop plants that prevent the spread of undesired traits. So it could be like, and what they say they want it to be like is like an immune system for the genome stopping mutations at the source. That would be pretty great. Wouldn't that be amazing? That would solve a lot of problems. I mean, it's a fascinating idea to be able to. I mean, we usually think about, okay, going in and fixing stuff later. But what if you could prevent it from happening in the first place? Yeah. So this study, it's still being reviewed. This is published in the BioArchive Preprint Server for Biology. So it's not a paper that has been reviewed and published yet. But it does come out of a very reputable lab. I'm sure it will be reviewed and they will deal with any issues that arise as they come. But it's interesting that they're putting this idea out there and they're developing this system that could be robust throughout many different species. So what do you think? Are you ready to sign up for some CRISPR-Cas9? Not yet. No. I bet Justin's ready to be in an experimental group, aren't you? Always. Always. Yeah. I mean, Cas9, it definitely is things are becoming more efficient. But we talk about these off-target effects. And for the CRISPR cancer T-cell study that I mentioned first, and for this one, that is one of the biggest issues with the entire gene editing system is the specificity and the effectiveness. So how accurate is it? Is there other stuff getting targeted on accident and what issues could arise from that? Is there just not enough of an effect taking place because it's just not hitting the target enough times? Right. And those receptors on the T-cells got to be there for some reason, right? Not just hanging out for no good reason. Well, it's not for no good reason. It's to recognize it's basically a recognition system. However, the problem is the cancer cells are subverting that for their own survival. If you block it long-term, there's something else that it's good for, right? So there is. But right now, if right now you've got cancer, that's all you care about is addressing that. So there's reason to take these big risks when there's a greater risk involved, certainly. Certainly. Yeah. So anyway, those are my fun genetic editing stories from this week. There's so many. There's really cool stuff happening right now. It's like, how is this happening so quickly? The future is now. Yeah. The future is yesterday. I'd rather have a CRISPR-Cas9 than a flying car, I'd tell you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think I agree with that. Who was that? Isn't there some billionaire that has been developing a new flying car model? I read something about that recently. Unnecessary. Yeah. It's called Planes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And now there's the single-person drones. So instead of just drones that are driving around taking video or just flying around everywhere, now they have a single-person cab on top. What could go wrong? Drone rides across town. What could possibly go wrong? Yeah. I don't know. All right. That's it for me for the first part of the show. Justin, what stories do you have? I've got three quick here. So since prehistory, whenever you determined that would have been, the Himalayan mountain range has presented a sort of barrier to populations really going there and living there. It's very cold. It's high altitude. It's got all sorts of issues, right? But also the valleys through it and around Himalayas have been major trade routes for years and years. Hub of activity, but we don't really know where the high altitude people came from. We understand they're acclimatized to that high environment. What is it? Is it epoxy? What is the thing, Kiki, that you get when you try to go where the... Hypoxia, yeah. Yeah. When there's not enough oxygen. There's not enough oxygen. Yeah. But they have genetic changes that allow them to live at this altitude. So this is... Yes. We're going to kind of look at this. In a multi-university collaboration that included University of California, Merced, researchers conducted the first ancient DNA investigation of Himalayan peoples. They generated genomic data for eight individuals, ranging in time from the earliest known human settlements to the establishment of the Tibetan Empire. So this is like 3,000 and as recent as 1,200 years ago. And I guess there was some sort of controversy, because when archaeologists and anthropologists were sort of looking at the Himalayan peoples going back in time, they noticed there were some pretty dramatic cultural changes. There's huge shifts in the way the cultures did things, the religious aspect, the cultural aspect. Things changed greatly over three sort of distinct periods of time. And so there was a lot of talk that perhaps there was other peoples who have gone up there and then gotten these genetic changes or acclimatized in some way. Because if you just look at the artifact record, or even they've made arguments for some morphological bone structure changes over time, it kind of looked like there were different peoples that were populating this area. So they did this investigation and the study shows the Himalayan mountain region was colonized by East Asians of high altitude origin, followed by a millennia of genetic stability. So the folks that are there have been there and were likely colonized by other peoples even of high altitude to begin with. So they started at a fairly high altitude even. Yes. They were high altitude before it was cool to be high altitude. Right. So, yeah, so they had eight of these prehistoric individuals across these three time periods. And they were most closely related to the contemporary Highland East Asian populations, Sherpa, Tibetans. So they're thinking, you know, now the cultural changes may be because there were the bits of a trade route and they sort of took on the passing cultures that would come through. But the peoples themselves weren't changing out. I wonder if they weren't changing out because it's so high altitude and just hard to get there. You probably just can't survive. Yeah. You probably just can't survive there for very long. So they also said that the most prehistoric individuals and contemporary Tibetan populations shared beneficial mutations in two genes which are implicated in adaptation to low oxygen conditions found at the high altitude. So pretty strong evidence and I kind of think that there may have been some sort of political pressure to come to the conclusion that the people of Tibet might not be the original people of the Tibetan Highlands. There may have been some pressure to come up with evidence to say that lowlanders originally or somebody else had originally populated the area, right. But nope, the Tibetans have been there since as far back as we can tell anybody's lived there. Which is interesting because of the genetic clock dating the mutations for high altitude survival. They're one of the what's thought to be most recent examples of adaptation in human evolution and so that these genes I've been around for just a little more than 3,000 some odd years. But as far back as they can tell these genes are there. So you know, we've still got to work on that. Not work on the clock, maybe this is correct. I mean this is the oldest population we have and if it's matching that data then that's great. I've got another one actually that does match reverse genetic data. So two things. So first we got the oldest evidence of domesticated rice has been found in China and it's about 9,000 years old. The discovery was made by a team of University of Toronto archaeologists Shed some light on the origin of rice domestication. They found ancient domesticated rice fragments in the lower Yangtze Valley in Zhejiang province China. They observed about 30% of the rice plant material primarily bases, husks, leafs that sort of thing that they were finding. We're not wild but showed signs of purpose cultivation to produce rice plants that were durable, suitable for human consumption and the rice plant remains that they found also had characteristics of japonica rice, the short grain rice used in sushi that is now heavily cultivated in Korea and Japan. So this may really be a discovery that's showing the origin of rice period. Like this is the oldest one we have so right now it's that pinpoint in time but this could be it. 9,000 years old rice, well this is an incredible find. Another team of researchers has found an agricultural site and you're not going to believe this dates back 25 to 30 million years which is far, far, far further back than any humans were thought to have engaged in agriculture and and still it's way further back than we think because this was not humans these are termites. A team led by James Cook University's Associate Professor Eric Roberts discovered in his find researchers, let's see the oldest example of fungus gardens within fossil termite nests from the Great Rift Valley of Africa. Fungus farming, termite colonies cultivate fungi and gardens and subterranean nests or chambers helping to convert plant material into a more easily digestible food source for the termites. What's very interesting about this is scientists had previously used DNA for modern termites to estimate the origin of termite fungus farming behavior and they put it back 25 to 30 million years and this site is I guess about 31 million years so it's right, like right there. Pretty awesome, this is, it teaches us a little bit about the termites, yes and also there's, this may have radically changed the landscapes of the Great Rift Valley at the time because this made it so that termites could decompose dry wood much more effectively, much more efficiently and may have sort of transformed the terrain over some millions of years. But it's also a fantastic confirmation of a data point for that sort of DNA reverse time engineering figuring out how far back things may have developed through the biological clock, so very interesting in that respect. Yeah, it's fascinating to be able to take things, take things back, take that biological clock backwards and be able to determine that these termites were farming and doing their fungal gardening millions of years. And it also, I mean it did sort of what it did for humans too, it allowed them to, it allowed both fungi and termites to sort of leave the valley. It gave them a new ecological niche that they could prosper in. So termites now can be found pretty much all over the world but maybe it was largely because of this ability developed some 31 million years ago, at least that's the oldest that we've seen. So it's the cradle of termite agriculture. I think it's very interesting to see that the DNA that they had used to estimate the origin and then now this fossil evidence was so right on. It's very encouraging to see that kind of results. Results away, do you guys know what time it is? I believe it's that time once again for what's the segment called? Oh yeah, Blair's Animal Corner. What you got Blair? I have some really interesting dating advice from the natural world. Are you ready for this? Oh we should call this Blair's Dating Advice Corner. Yes, dear Blair. So first of all, here's a not so successful tactic for how to woo a female. If you're a male banana fiddler crab, there are kind of two ways of trying to get a female to lay eggs in your burrow. The first is to do a very nice display and then go into your burrow as if to say follow me. That's one way. The other way is to do your nice little dance, step to the side, let the female go into the burrow to inspect the burrow and then trap her in there. Oh jeez. So here's the question is why would a fiddler crab trap a female in the burrow if she's not always going to lay her eggs in the burrow if you trap her there? Well it turns out that they actually have more success trapping the females even though a lot of the time the females won't go in if the male hasn't gone in yet. They have a higher success rate of the females actually laying eggs in the burrows if they trap her in there. The females are just like, I guess I'm here. Yeah, so the reason I found this study particularly interesting is that this is one of those situations that I've talked about on the show before where there are multiple drastically different courtship techniques that both persist in a population. So in this case they both persist because there's an advantage to having the female go in first because then you can trap her in there until she lays her eggs but females go in less. So you have less females going in but a higher percentage of success once they're inside. If you go in first as a male a female is more likely to go in but she is also less likely to stay. So in this case you have two drastically different methods that both have merits for success in a population. So this is kind of an interesting conversation to have because it's very easy to think about evolution and sexual selection in terms of a certain trait that is selected for and wins out. And then you see that more than others and that's the trait that's selected for time and time again but I think it's important to look at these studies that shed light on situations that aren't like that when there are multiple strategies that are selected for in different ways and that's how you can have different animal, different tactics within one population or one species that both persist despite selective pressure. I wonder if there are more and more male crabs in the population who trap females as a result of this. Right so that's the thing is that as far as we can tell there's like I was saying there's merits to both. So they have seen that there is a higher percentage of crabs trapping than not but they're fairly even and that's because there's still a benefit to not trapping the females as well and that is that you'll get more females in your burrow to begin with. I think it would be a learning curve like you did the whole thing where you walked in like come on check it out and then like the lady crabs would keep walking in and walking out and you'd be like gosh this is so frustrating every time a lady crab goes in she just walks right out again. Right but then so this whole study started because most fiddler crabs they go in first and then the female follows them after they do this courtship display but these fiddler crabs were seen stepping aside waiting for the female to go in and many many times she was like no I am not going in first you're gonna trap me in there and so she didn't go in and the the researchers were just fascinated by this trying to figure out why on earth the male would take that strategy and that's when they discovered that then they would use that advantage when she finally would go in to trap her in there. So and then how do you how does this trapping work how do you catch lady crabs? It's it's basically just a body block so they just block the exit and so the females will eventually just give up and lay their eggs and then they're allowed to leave. Lay your eggs and you can go yeah yeah yeah yeah well like I'm sure it's going to be a very interesting thing to watch over generations you know do females become more choosy because they get trapped and give up their eggs because that's an energetic loss so will it drive more females to be more choosy and to enter fewer burrows also will it drive males to be more likely to trap females over time. Yeah and kind of the extra variable in this is that the reason females go into these burrows at all is that they part of the courtship display is these is the part where these females go into the burrow to inspect the burrow to decide if it's worthy of eggs that's the first mistake right so they have to go in there whether it's first or second they have to go in to check it out because they're not just going to lay their eggs anywhere they have to find a good spot for it so just it's this kind of give and take of which works out better does it will it take a while and then the females will get wise and just stop going in first all together time will tell time will tell what's your fishy fishy well so speaking of releasing eggs here is a much more give and take style relationship with a type of fish called a chalk bass so chalk bass are from the atlantic and they're these very pretty blue and they are hermaphrodites so not only here I have a bunch of pictures of chalk bass up here not only are they hermaphrodites they're also quite pretty google it if you're listening chalk bass chlk bass but they also so they're pretty they're hermaphrodites and they're monogamous and this isn't the kind of monogamy that we often talk about where there's a monogamy for a season this is lifelong monogamy and yes and in this study from that was taken off the coral reefs of Panama from the University of Florida was actually a married couple that did a 10 year survey of these fish near Panama and over those 10 years all of the original chalk bass couples remain together for the duration of the study until one or both of them disappeared from the study site so every single couple maintained through the full 10 years unless one of them died or disappeared so yeah so the animals that actually follow this true monogamy that it's only about three to five percent of animals that we found and it's really fascinating to us as behavioral researchers and zoologists but also as people who fancy ourselves monogamous generally we find it pretty interesting how this stuff works out because on the whole 95 to 97 percent of the time monogamy does not work out in in species so looking at how this works so first of all it's a hermaphrodite couple and they don't actually pick who plays the male and who plays the female it goes back and forth up to 20 times each day they switch off being the male so they're they're like they're dating their dates are always dutch yes that's exactly you you hit the nail on the head kiki so the way this works is that one only produces as many eggs as the other so if you give me five eggs I will make five eggs if you give me 20 eggs I will give you 20 eggs and that's because remember in sexual reproduction the egg is the more expensive thing energetically that's the valuable item so I don't want to give up eggs if you're not going to give me as much as I'm going to give you and so the chalk bass actually they alter their output of eggs relative to each other during the lifelong relationship that's wild yes and so they instead of bailing on a cheapskate um partner they will just give them what they're getting and then it's kind of self-correcting over time um I will mention vicious cycle well but that's not beneficial to either party right it's not beneficial to either party if you're not if you're getting stingy with your eggs so as soon as that kind of as soon as that that dynamic works itself out then there's this this pretty fair split and uh the other thing that's particularly interesting about this is that they will also philander but only when the balance is uneven so if one fish gave another five eggs and and I had give and I have 20 I'll give the other 15 away to other suitors but I'll come right back to my partner at the end of the day yeah so there really is this very intense give and take over this lifelong um relationship and the married couple uh that studied these fish said that uh the bond between monogamous animals has had an impact on their marriage quote I think the get what you give in egg resources exchanged with pairs result along with the potential for both positive and negative feedback within partnerships we're very insightful to both of us not even one of the original pairs that I observed switch mates while its partner was still alive that strong matching between partners and the investment into the partnership was surprising so after 10 years scuba diving looking at fish hermaphroditic fish these two took a lesson in uh inequality and in partnership yeah well it come I mean if we take it down to the basics of what's actually going on you know it's similar to the fiddler female fiddler crabs with placing their eggs in a in a burrow you know these hermaphrodites are both going to be giving an equal energetic input to the relationship so it's a it's a power balance yeah exactly yeah and it's and once they have that balance when they have that balance of power everything's fine and if they lose the balance of power then it doesn't work anymore yeah so everybody take a minute if you're in a relationship and think about your balance of power yeah but we see this not just in mating systems but like also in social animals in general so it's like uh vampire bats you know regurgitating food for other bats that have um have not been able to find food yeah you know yeah absolutely if that if those bats that are are not finding food are just taking taking taking the other bats just stop giving to them it's a it's a it's a it's a balance of that given the take and the cost and the benefit and so it's really interesting to see something like this evolve through natural selection that these systems do come about yeah and when two animals what makes this so interesting too is that these two fish they have the exact same resources to contribute because they're both hermaphrodites so they can contribute to the relationship in the exact same way so it is so easily measurable and that's the problem with these these single sex individuals is it's much harder to measure what is an equal output yeah so that's another little nugget to think on i think absolutely is it's easy to see with hermaphrodites yeah well thank you for Blair's dating corner with Blair and fish and crabs oh my gosh that didn't work as well as i wanted it to but so some later give your loved one a bushel of eggs that's what we wanted today give them some eggs give your partner some eggs that's right it is time for us to take a quick break this is this week in science when we return we are going to be joined by Brit Marie Hermes and we're going to talk about nature opathy nature opathy nature that i don't even know not science-based medicine well we're actually going to be talking about science-based medicine that's what we're going to be talking about and so i hope you will stick around to talk to hear about why she left the profession that she spent time training to become a accredited in this is 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received a degree in naturopathic medicine from Bastier University held a one-year residency and worked as a naturopathic doctor for three years before deciding that nature naturopathy is not based in science is ineffective and dangerous she started a petition with change.org to ask the government the United States government to end state naturopath licensure and insurance reimbursement so she's active and doing some amazing stuff out there welcome to the show Britt. Good morning thanks for having me. Yes good morning to you good evening to us good evening to you that's right we're all over the world right now so can you can you talk a little bit about what drew you to naturopathic medicine to begin with right so of course I get asked this question a lot and I've thought about it a lot and I still don't have a great answer and what I am exploring and what I'm realizing is that I have had a predisposition to this natural health natural lifestyle for a long long time it started when I was young definitely in my teenage years with this idea that I could control or manipulate my health which of course you can through exercise and diet and sort of the normal avenues of health improvement but I took this one step further to actually jump into this idea that all pharmaceutical medication is bad and anything that is natural must be healthy must be better so it started with this sort of classic you know logical fallacy as a lot of the skeptics like to call it and it and it is because without much critical thought or analysis on my own if it said natural on it I thought yes this is what I want this is the way and this led me to making decisions for my own personal health and then also it obviously guided my entire education and career for almost 10 years of my life which is a significant portion of time to be working in in a certain direction and so let's move forward with this because as I introduced you've moved you've moved away from this area of study and work what and I've read the articles but maybe not everybody else has so can you tell us why did what led you to finally decide after those many years of practice and effort and you know I mean I I've been to school I've done all this stuff there is time and there's energy that you put in and you you you you feel aligned to something very deeply what what turned your head what changed your mind there were a few key moments for me but it's also important to remember you know I paint the picture of sort of waking up to the reality that naturopathy is not science-based but it was definitely a process that was sparked by a really horrible incident in my career as a naturopath where I found myself accidentally involved in a really ethically yucky and and criminal situation so I was working for a licensed naturopath in southern Arizona and he specialized and continues to specialize in treating patients with cancer with naturopathic approaches and unfortunately he chose to import and administer a non-fda approved medication and to deliver this medication intravenously to his cancer patients and he had a very busy and thriving practice and I was new and I had extra time on my hands so I was assisting him delivering this medication to patients and when I I didn't you know so I sort of naively assumed that this medication was safe and approved and that because a mentor and a boss was directing me in this that this was an okay thing to do and when the medication stopped arriving because I had been compensated we assumed by the FDA I started to look into why a medication would be compensated by the FDA only to come to realize very quickly that this was not approved and that is essentially a federal crime and the fear of participating in something so again like ethically terrible and of course then the fear of hoping that I hadn't harmed patients accidentally and what this would now mean for my career led me to explore naturopathy in a very different light and this included speaking with a former mentor of mine who also happened to be a former president of the naturopathic professional organization called the American Association of naturopathic physicians and this mentor strongly suggested to me that I should not listen to the advice of my newly hired lawyer who had very clearly and unambiguously explained to me that I am now on notice this is an official term where as a professional if you witness um wrongdoing in your profession you are on notice to report it and if you don't you are held live you know at the same level of liability and for this meant I had to or should report this information to the state regulatory board and then the state attorney general both of which I did the mentor this former president of the amp suggested that I should not do this and he was encouraging me to actually stay in practice with my former boss and to make amends and that I was really kind of blowing this whole thing up out of proportion and that was that was actually harder than realizing that I had accidentally been administering the drug because yeah this this said to me that you know someone that I had trusted and really just thought very highly of was telling me that I was okay that we were doing this really illegally unquestionably questionable thing and so just that this is probably common or perhaps common in the profession and that's what I wanted to find out I wanted to find out how many licensed naturopaths are actually doing something that is either in the gray zone or just clearly not ethical or clearly not legal and what is what is the science and the evidence behind the way that naturopaths treat patients and as proponents of science know and what I learned was that the science is is does not really support most of what naturopathy supports so off I went it was it was it was a long emotional journey but but you know so far it's been it's been worth it and I mean you're you're helping to describe how it's not how naturopathy is not science-based at this point in time the things about it that do not have science science-based evidence but that I mean I'm sure you're getting a lot of a lot of blowback from your previous colleagues in the in the profession that you used to call your own yeah for for certain at first there was a lot of personal attacks they still get a lot of personal attacks but now at least the balance is a bit offset because I have enough people supporting me on the side of real medicine and the side of evidence and I can I'm starting to see how my blog and how the information that I put out there is affecting real change so when I get emails from students for example who want to become a doctor or who are interested in um biomedical research and are looking at natural medicine or naturopathic medicine and find my blog and now they're changing their mind about going to naturopathic school because they were like me believing the marketing by the organizations in the schools that they were actually that they would actually receive real medical training that right so can you yeah can you tell a little bit about the the medical training because did you go into it thinking I'm going to receive medical training like a medical professor or medical doctor and basically be a naturopathic doctor yes yeah so the schools uh all of the accredited schools in north america say that the education that they teach is science-based rigorous and that it is on par with what a primary care physician would receive which you know from this from from where I am now of course this is absurd but at the time I really believed it and it's the curriculum and the training is set up to to sort of mimic or emulate medical training but it's really not the same so uh classes are named you know the same sort of names as as medical students receive in terms of basic science and clinical sciences and a lot of the basic sciences are pretty close but the clinical sciences where you would get real medical information real clinical information is definitely not the same and it's important to remember that these classes are taught by naturopaths so they're not people who do research in the field or who are specialists or real experts in like gastroenterology or pulmonology for example which is the part how do you square that circle like it's sort of like okay we're going to go right into the treatment phase of of these and it's medicine whether it's whatever you you know whether it works or not you're calling it medicine when you give something to somebody to treat something but how do you skip that entire step of um verifying of having any of utilizing the power of science to say how is this uh this sort of treatments how are they claiming at least that they're immune to the scientific evidence of of of their effectiveness yeah this is a difficult question because when you're when you're drinking the Kool-Aid you don't see the world the same way and so you can come up with uh answers to answer these difficult questions to make sure that your worldview doesn't change and I think this is where the differentiation comes in between something that's science-based and something that's evidence-based and so uh there's a lot of evidence for something that's scientifically implausible now the evidence isn't good but this information is cherry picked and so I'm talking about homeopathy as a easy example is that natural naturopaths can pick out studies to find evidence to support homeopathy totally skipping the fact that this is scientifically implausible and so uh squaring this just a not very special worldview tactics and I guess I guess some of it does inherently attract people who are perhaps skeptical of of pharma or doctors or the medical or scientific community I can sort of get the idea that gosh it's you know people have been on the planet for you know these these hundreds of thousands of years millions of years through ancestry they've they've lived this long why would we need this this new element of medicine and science to to engage our health so so heading in there I can see there's there could be it could be attracting people who don't have to drink the Kool-Aid once they get there but we're sort of already had the worldview or the suspicion or the scepticality of of science before they entered and so then everything would just sort of fit it would be like putting on more armament against having to look look to the sciences yeah it's heavily influenced by certainly your personal experiences I mean that was the case for me with being diagnosed as a teenager with psoriasis and having older family members with a variety of autoimmune diseases and being really afraid that oh gosh now I'm gonna have to take steroid medication for the rest of my life and I'm just I'm going to get psoriasis just like my mom did and then fall in line with all of these other autoimmune disorders and and this is scary and then again you know you have these ideas that you know big pharma for example and conspiracy theories and of course it's not that simple not everyone who believes in naturopathic medicine believes in conspiracy theories but there is a significant overlap with with the ease in which you accept information uncritically I would say I think I find it actually very surprising that there are a large number of very educated intelligent people who fall into the line of I don't I don't want to I'm going to go all natural I'm not going to vaccinate my child because their immune system is it's natural their immune system strong enough they don't need vaccines those can be damaging or they fall into the line of well pharma is big corporation and so they don't have our interests at heart and so they're just out to make drugs to make money not to actually help anybody it's a it's an actually it's a there's this very interesting mental gymnastics that takes place which which doesn't have to be that gymnastic I mean to be honest let's cut to this big pharma and the medical profession and you know like you can look at things like the number of c-sections and say okay there are there is undue influence by our medical profession in some in some places that could cause people to run screaming from them so I understand that too but I still I'm like how does it I get that you're looking that there's a desire to find this alternative path but why not apply it why is there is there like I'm assuming there's no research departments that are looking for the mechanical effects of of these treatments but rather just results with happy patients and testimonials yeah well I just want I want to say something I mean big pharma gets a bad rap and certainly they're not perfect but the idea that because big pharma doesn't exist in naturopathy does not mean that naturopathy is immune to this type of lobbying and sort of corporation mindset so um the AAMP for example just hired three new people whose sole job is to increase licensure and scope of practice of naturopaths around the country so they're doing this with PR people and they have a state advocacy organizer they definitely do aggressive lobbying they do an annual lobbying event where where naturopaths storm Capitol Hill and you know put a lot of effort and money into disseminating in my opinion misleading information about the training and the education of naturopaths and what naturopathic so-called doctors are capable and of doing safely and effectively and there are you know the AAMP and some of these licensing efforts are being funded by supplement manufacturers and companies and so there definitely is such a thing as big supplements and naturopaths are selling these products which are not regulated by the FDA in the same way that drugs are out of their office and making direct profit and so when the supplements that we sold out of every naturopathic office that I ever worked at was marked up significantly you know from 65 to 100 markup and not only was that of course profit for the clinic but I also got a cut of this in my personal paycheck and so yeah exactly so there's a huge incentive to take people off pharmaceutical medications and to switch them to supplements that may not have safety or evidence behind them perhaps it's just like traditional use or you know belief system or to add supplements to someone's regimen that they may not need and we're finding out more and more that actually there might be a lot of negative effects from picking too many supplements or maybe there's not even what the supplement says there is on the bottle because of course without the same regulations the labeling and the ingredients don't always match right someone in the chat room was saying he says you know he doesn't know about all this whiskey renegade was saying he doesn't know about all this stuff but he would use treatment treatments with strong results in for say example europe that the FDA hasn't approved and I know you recently made a blog post about ozone I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit yeah so I don't actually know if this is a thing but I've called this the european fallacy so the idea that because something comes from europe it's somehow safer or better or more magical actually we do know that mattresses need to be made in Scandinavia they need to be sweet right so they have to be a Swedish mattress right like there's there's certain reasons that just better one specific product or another sure but I don't I don't think it's natural medicine no and ironically you know I live in the country of the basically the birthplace of naturopathy and homeopathy and the start of these movements actually has some unsavory roots and it's affiliated with the nazi party this is a whole other interesting statement so uh ozone so the way that natural paths in the united states are in north america use ozone is basically for the treatment of anything you know from cancer to chronic infection to autoimmune illness and then to generally just this idea that patients need to stimulate the immune system because I don't know I guess without stimulation it doesn't work properly or however they need to to justify this but this is even a phrase that I would use commonly as a natural path myself so to stimulate the immune system and depending on where the naturopath is licensed and practicing the naturopath will administer ozone in a variety of ways so you can inhale it it can be absorbed with the skin you can sit in chambers and breathe it in and then it can even be applied rectally vaginally and intravenously so this is really bizarre and some of the the laws and some of the provinces in canada for example like have specific language to allow naturopaths to administer ozone this way and ozone is a toxic gas you know it takes a lot of energy to make it's three oxygen molecules and it's highly unstable and it has been studied in in europe and in north america and there's been no proven safe or effective medicinal use of ozone and yet naturopaths are so savvy at marketing that they have somehow convinced lawmakers in their areas to allow them to do this to patients legally in most cases I mean certainly naturopaths do things that they're not supposed to in unregulated areas but I find that I find that just absolutely fascinating and it's not like north america is withholding the treatment of ozone from patients I mean it's unanimously decided thus far that there is no medicinal application for this even if it is used by some quacky physicians in europe so it sounds to me like and it's dangerous yeah yeah and it sounds to me like there's really two sides of this especially from what i'm seeing happening in the chat room is that there's the question of whether a treatment is effective or not but then there's this other side of whether or not a treatment can hurt you and really yes it's true that there might be things that make it through and are approved by the fda that come from big pharma that don't help you but chances are if it's fda approved it's not going to kill you yeah chances are yeah chances are unless you're really up against it and it's worth that risk yeah right so so there's kind of these are the two sides of it I think that it's it's worth looking at both both is yes will it work will it not work but also will it hurt to me the thing that scares me about naturopaths deciding to use treatments that are not fda approved is the idea that naturopaths feel for whatever reason that they can somehow assess the evidence and the safety and the research behind treatment x better than the entire agency of the of the fda and oftentimes other regulatory agencies and other countries and so for example the the medication that I had been delivering to patients under my boss's orders is a medication called ukraine that comes from a quacky sort of backyard pharmaceutical company in austria this the chemist who made the drug is now facing criminal charges because it turns out that he was relabeling expired product and exporting this product to the united states amongst other countries and it had been studied in and up for approval in the european union and australia and north america and all of these countries had decided that this medication was not safe and that it was possibly effective but they had serious concerns about how it was being manufactured and despite this information naturopaths like my former boss decided that he could assess the evidence better the safety better and so that sort of blows my mind that an individual who really hasn't been trained in science and took shortcuts through his or her medical education system could then say yeah i know what the fda says but i'm going to ignore that because i know better yeah and and what would make this natural too because this is what this is this other thing like if you don't really know what's in it there was some amazing i think it was a point of this usa today uh sort of investigative things where they were looking into things that are labeled natural supplements and one that was designed for to help people relax and and to be more calm but it was all natural herbal supplement had prozac in it like it was this is that's that's a pharmaceutical but it wasn't labeled in there it was discovered when and there's actually the nfl national football league has as created the players union has created a lab that does nothing but test supplements uh that they you know what they might be interested in taking they send it off there and it turns out a huge percentage of these have like a little bit of a steroid in it a little bit of this a little bit of that and things that could get them in trouble uh in their job and it because it became such an epidemic that people were getting you know uh drug screened and and and told that they were failing when they thought they were doing something all natural so that whole change of supply then if it's um if it's not also being regulated means you really don't know what you're getting exactly again back to this cancer drug because it just seems to be such an easy and all inclusive example so it was being we we were talking about it as a natural supplement as a medication alkaloids being derived from a plant called teledonium and potentially these alkaloids do have anti cancer uh effects but this the these plant alkaloids were being mixed with a real chemotherapeutic drug and so then of course the study or you know the information is you know what what's having chemotherapeutic activity is that the drug that we know has chemotherapeutic activity and is used if for chemotherapy purposes and some instances or is it the fact that we're mixing up with this plant and now calling it natural and so there's a real sort of like adultery of the terms here and uh just a rebranding and um and remarketing how we think of things and I tend to think of naturopaths as being highly skilled at doing this in general I think they've rebranded and are redefining words like doctor and medical school to fit their training rather than to make sure that their training fits into the medical paradigm that already exists and is universally accepted to produce competent physicians and I know now with the uh with the rise of uh boutique insurance agencies um I know like in in california there there's an add-on for uh for insurance that this group called medical one for instance and you can and they have medical doctors within their their practices but um they can also they also have naturopaths and osteopaths and um and acupuncturists and all sorts of things and it's like okay you pay a hundred dollars extra for your insurance and you get to use their services um but they've kind of started pulling all of this stuff under the same umbrella without any um extra definitions or any extra conversation about okay what are the appropriate treatments and you can pick yourself and at one of their at one of their um at one of their practices you can choose a naturopathic doctor over a medical school trained doctor hmm I think this is one of the main dangers of licensing naturopaths it's this perpetuation of misperceptions and a misunderstanding of of what a naturopath is and how they are trained so uh because naturopaths like to use words like attending a four-year accredited medical school or uh saying that they completed a medical residency which is how I characterized my post graduate training we are confusing the public and this is one of the things that my change.org petition is trying to get at is that I really actually don't care if naturopaths are licensed or if people still want to go to naturopathic school or if someone wants to choose a naturopath for uh some aspects of their medical care the the problem for me is that when people make these decisions thinking that a naturopath is a doctor or thinking that a naturopath attended medical school and this just isn't the case and it sounds like I'm being really nitpicky but these points are are are vitally critically important so naturopaths are not attending medical school they're attending naturopathic programs the programs are accredited but they're not accredited by the same agency that accredits medical school so it's accredited you know here's medical school and then here's naturopathy like we're way over here operating in this totally other other sphere and we do a voluntary post-graduate training in some cases but you don't have to but it's not a residency you know this is me spending time with a licensed naturopath and getting a very low salary and calling it extra medical training and and and so when people I mean we all know that it's very difficult to to make decisions when you're sick we either know that from personal experience or from taking care of a loved one and then you throw in something tricky like uh you know being on a budget for your medical care or being pressed on time or having an acutely ill child and you 7 30 in the morning and you need to get into a doctor now and so I don't want people making decisions under pressure uh googling a naturopath's name and seeing the word physician and doctor coming up and thinking that they're getting real medical care I think it needs to be very clear that this is alternative and not real medicine well in using your your example of cancer right going through chemotherapy is tough and if you've seen anyone that you know and love go through that process if you are then faced with going through that process and you're told there's a natural alternative that doesn't have those drawbacks that sounds pretty great exactly yeah and there are there are naturopaths who are licensed and operating fully within their scope of practice who uh say things like we have side effect free cancer treatment we have all natural proven effective I mean I these are almost like verbatim clothes except for one once like side effect dying from cancer which is still have cancer and I don't think I don't think anybody should really feel too foolish for for for falling for this I mean from what I little I understand this is why we don't have Steve Jobs here today it's exactly right and he actually had a cancer that was was treatable right so this isn't this isn't something that's just the gullible amongst us or the unintelligent amongst us they're falling for this this is something that can affect some of the brightest minds amongst us so I think it is serious and I think I think you did replace the term physician or doctor with something like sales I think that people would have a different view of the type of treatment they would sort of it's not a fiduciary but it's the whatever what do you call it the the the thing that doctors have the that they they're supposed to take care of you I it's blanking it right now but what is it the oath the hippie you assume like you know when you talk to a somebody who's going to be working with your finances you might want them to be a fiduciary where they're actually looking out for your best interest and not just trying to make a profit on it's something in the in the economic field that they're having arguments about how you define somebody is is whether or not they're actually working with your money for your best interest in the fiduciary or if they're a non-fiduciary and there's salesmen of economic products their name can be can be the same I think that's be very important in this in this field too to to know that you're working with somebody who's a salesperson and and and not uh not a doctor doctor and have a clear statement of informed consent so I I believe that uh natural pass the way that they are licensed currently and the way that they sort of sell themselves cannot really provide true informed consent because they're misrepresenting their education and their training and also because there isn't you know language in how they describe what they do that will let the patient know that under naturopathic care in my opinion based on the training and the way that I've seen naturopath practice that they might actually have uh missed diagnoses or that pursuing naturopathic care might delay treatment for something that is treatable and this of course can have really poor outcomes like of course with the steve jobs example and that you know sort of best case scenario it doesn't harm them but it could waste time and waste money and so until we start to see language in how naturopath describe themselves as like listen if you if you're getting care from me I want you to know that I'm not trained like a medical doctor and I might miss a diagnosis because I haven't seen thousands of patients and done thousands of hours of clinical training like a real medical doctor I haven't seen enough healthy people to be able to easily and clearly distinguish healthy from sick I may not recognize red flags of uh an acute asthma attack or a heart attack or meningitis because I haven't seen any patients with this you know as long as you understand that then you're welcome to get and not only that not only that I work for an organization that can't uh can't collect data from the thousands and thousands of other uh physicians uh who are who are seeing those thousands of cases themselves and sort of conferring and coming up with uh better and more effective ways to to diagnose and treat yeah um I think I think there's a big issue here like I think I think you're right there needs to be either language that specifies things or very specific rules on okay what are naturopaths allowed to treat you know what is you know it's say with like with homeopathy sure it's not going to hurt a person to take a homeopathic cold medicine versus a regular cold medicine you're going to have the cold for basically the same amount of time you know but if you start trying to treat AIDS or cancer with homeopathic treatments you might kill somebody and that is that goes against the um the the instruction of care which I believe that people like when you went into it you wanted to help people you wanted to do something natural wanted to help them in a natural way so it's not like people want to go into it wanting to hurt people but there needs to be some kind of limitation to what naturopathic treatment actually can be what is the scope of practice how far does it go and what is actually allowed like what does science show works or you know what do we know doesn't necessarily hurt you you know I don't know I think I does is do you fall in line with this way of thinking or is it definitely more I agree I 100% agree the problem that I see with trying to implement something because this seems like a pretty simple solution let's just come up with with an agreed upon definition let's make a spreadsheet get laser pointers out and we'll start directing people yeah so naturopaths have different licensing and scopes of practice depending on the state that they live in and are practicing in and so when I was in Arizona for example I was allowed to call myself a physician I actually could call myself a naturopathic medical doctor I had a DEA number I could call in prescriptions I could recommend medical marijuana so I had a huge scope of practice and this is in comparison to a state like Michigan for example who is currently trying to license naturopaths and and then in Alaska for example naturopaths are not allowed to diagnose or treat patients but they're licensed so there's a huge variability and so it's really hard to sort of talk about naturopathy as one thing and you know insurance companies have of course their end goal is to save money and so they actually have pretty strict and clear guidelines around you know what naturopaths should do and whether or not they're going to cover something like homeopathy or something else in the alternative care toolbox right but naturopaths are now arguing that it's sort of discrimination by the insurance company if their services are not covered under the claim that they are trying just like primary care physicians so it's really it's really tricky and having I think having a consensus agreement on the scientific medical side will be easy getting naturopaths to fall in line with us of course is not and as long as states are licensing naturopaths they're sort of a legitimization of of what naturopaths are doing and once they get licensed in a state that it seems to be a pretty slippery slope to then the situation that I was in in Arizona where before you know what I'm calling myself a medical doctor I know and will know the difference is there a point when somebody crosses a threshold of that drinking the kool-aid and wanting to help people to realizing perhaps they've invested a certain amount of time and effort into something that is now just the way they're going to pay a mortgage and so the actual effectiveness of it stops mattering I think so I don't know this because you know my coming out of walking away from naturopathy was different but I hear from a good number of licensed naturopaths who either contact me anonymously or contact me and say please don't ever tell anyone I contacted you but I so I I totally am in agreement with you unfortunately I have kids I have a mortgage I have a private business loan to run this practice that I can barely keep alive and perhaps like me they spent a quarter of a million dollars on their education and they they cannot walk away from those financial commitments and then there's also an interesting aspect of the industry in itself trying to line itself with medical doctors I mean I think this is what Ben Carson was promoting was some sort of micronutrient that hasn't shown it's that it's got any actual effectiveness but he did was paid handsomely to come in as a neurosurgeon and say that himself has even used this product and it's so amazing and wonderful so then it sort of it leaves behind those that were attracted to it for for its anti-medical industry affiliations and sort of says no you who've been believing medicine yes this also we have doctors who are behind this but why then not have that whole layer of research that goes into determining how what and why it's affecting and because we've already got a doctor who is at the end of this who's saying that it's it's great so we didn't need to do any of it because it's all about testimonials it's a big stinky onion lots of complicated lots of complicated layers because it exact it's so heterogeneous you know who is in the field and why they're in the field and then who's supporting it you know like the trump supplement pyramid scheme is another good example so you know people are either in it to make money or they're in it because they're truly confused or you know maybe conspiracy theorists or a little bit of all I think it's sales I think I would call them salespeople I really would it's sort of like if you've ever met one of these diet fad thing people where they're going to sell you their their diet thing exclusively and then they've got a ton of testimonials and then there's group activities with other people who are also only eating this product on a daily weekly monthly basis it does have as a professional salesperson it looks like sales it looks like sales this the pitches are product pitches their sales pitches no your doctor doesn't pitch you on a product when you need to take a drug they don't start with let me do a 10-minute presentation on this wonderful new drug that you're going to be taking that's going to fix everything in your life they don't do it right but if you hear the sale now that I'm not talking about a tv commercial I'm talking about when you're in there with your doctor in the office maybe it's happened I think it depends on what who your doctor is you need a new doctor because your doctor shouldn't be enthusiastically excited about your your your anti-inflammation medication he shouldn't be like you know uh monorail monorail it's going to change well I'm not I'm not going to stand here and pretend that the pharmaceutical industry is not without fault in that arena because it is and there are doctors that get kicked backs for certain drugs things like that so that that's not without blame sure without but but when you're if you're just in recognize just in just as saying he recognizes his own kind yeah what I was thinking about too is that naturopathy there's there's elements of it that really scare me very much like injecting things into your body that shouldn't be there but there's other parts of naturopathy that probably could work in unison with medicine that would not be a deleterious effect like like what like acupuncture like nutrition there's elements of it that I think is is not without its own place but it more needs to be discussed as an enhancement not as a replacement so you're sort of talking about complementary care yeah exactly and so yeah I want to point out that you know nutrition and lifestyle changes and exercising and stress reduction techniques you know in forms like meditation or even biofeedback are all part of real medicine and so we don't have to pay for an alternative provider to provide this sort of like the basic essentials to health and but there is this idea that my doctor doesn't know anything about nutrition or my doctor doesn't spend time with me and he's not going to tell me how many minutes per week I really should be exercising and and I get that and part of that is you know this image and it's true you know that your physician is hurry hurried and doesn't have the time to spend with you but this is changing unfortunately it opened up sort of a niche market for naturopaths to jump in to say we spend time with the patient we look at the patient holistically we're really going to ask you every single thing that we that you've ever eaten in the last 72 hours and and they do you know I used to spend an hour with my patients and sort of just get down to this nitty gritty detail of like well did you have soy sauce because there might be wheat in your soy sauce and we need to talk about them yeah and and and as much as we've been learning about how the the microflora of the gut are are really responsible for so much so many of our reactions to regardless of the nutrients that go in that it really we know now the only thing that can cure everything is dr justin not real dr poopills now for 1999 today we can have it to you by thursday and next week but yeah like this there's the nutritionist the more i mean amazing thing about doing this show is hearing all of the that we've been learning about microflora and its effects throughout the entire system of the body that sometimes even trumps nutrition it seems it seems to trump what we eat to a great extent so so all of this is at the beginning of its knowledge not the end of ancient wisdom on it yeah and i think that that's something that we're seeing a pretty big shift in too is that a lot of your general practitioners now in house there are nutritionists there are people that can talk to you about diet and about lifestyle and about exercise and all these other things that i think that you know the the kind of the silver lining of this is that things are getting a lot less clinical in standard medicine now which is which is i think a positive thing for sure but not necessarily a naturopathy and and this is an important point so so naturopaths are you know they have this reputation of being uh you know awesome nutritionist actually an awesome like lifestyle experts but a lot of the nutritional information that we're taught is actually not real nutritional information and we're taking it and we are making a business model out of it and so i had a bogus lab test that i would give to virtually any patient that would test food intolerances which is a totally bogus uh test you know testing system it's called i gg food antibody testing and we called this food allergy so we would confuse patients with the term allergy thinking that patient you know leading patients to believe that they really can't eat this food even though they're not having an i g e allergy reaction to it they're having an i g g you know spike which is normal this means that your body is encountering you know an antigen that it's seen before and this is sort of a normal reaction and using this and translating this into a naturopath treatment plan that of course included expensive supplements oh and guess what follow-up visits because now i need to see you every two weeks to assess your dietary habits and your bowel movements and if you're nauseous and no did you get a migraine because that might be you know the fact that you had an i gg spike to bananas and so we have to be really careful about saying oh naturopath can can deliver this sort of complementary wholesome care of exercise advice and nutritional advice because this information even in a naturopathic context is probably corrupted and again sales pitching corrupt yeah and brilliant i wish i could uh yeah based on uh based on your e gg here yeah you shouldn't even go near a four dealership no you'll immediately break out in hives also it says here uh you may have a weakness uh to your immune system when it comes to nissan it's perfect you're gonna get some phone calls i'm allergic to overcharging you for this vehicle oh my gosh that is yeah that is okay so i have a question what can i look for to recognize this kind of snake oil in my everyday life well look for the word naturopath for one thing and i know that i know that's really just sort of a nasty comment but if you see the word naturopath you should be skeptical and then of course you want to look for anything that is touted as natural side effect free and uh safe with in conjunction with you know alternative so you'll you'll start to recognize the language and and things like immune stimulating or holistic care and and typically this goes on a long string of words natural safe effective alternative health care side effect free approaches get off your medications uh root cause this idea that you know a naturopath can find the underlying cause in a way that's different from a medical physician it is sort of a key selling point or symptom suppression you know don't just take pharmaceutical drugs to suppress the symptoms your body is natural healing we need to look at the root cause so come in for this food and tolerance testing and 16 visits later and 500 dollars in supplements you'll be healthy promise promise we're gonna find the root cause anybody who's yeah he was making promises like that you just have to think around it a little bit think around a little bit but we have been talking for a very long time probably would like to get on with your very early morning your day but i just want to say thank you so much for joining us today everybody out there if you are interested in looking into it her petition is at change.org called naturopaths are not doctors stop legitimizing pseudoscience i will put the link to it in our show notes so you can find it additionally her her blog is naturopathic diaries if you are interested in joining her reading her wonderful output on naturopathic medicine how often do you put up blog posts a little inconsistently lately because i'm headed into finals but i i i try to go for every two weeks awesome and then finally brit has a twitter account and so from the twitter account you can follow stories that she posts related to the petition and also related to things that she is interested in and blogging about related to naturopathy naturo diaries at naturo diaries brit thank you so much for joining us i wish you the best in this area of of work and also in your studies so that you know yeah at some at some point you're going to be doing some really amazing scientific research and publication yourself i'm sure once i'm off of the bottom of the totem pole yes that's the way it works yeah yeah get all the way climate gotta climb it do the work yeah uh so we're gonna move forward thank you so much for joining us thank you for coming bye bye it's been a great conversation thank you and now we have more science stories ahead we have i think a story from blair yes there oh um just that you can't teach an old kaka new tricks what a hooda what yes a kaka is a forest cousin related to a type of parrot in new zealand and younger versions of these kakas are better at solving problems than the older birds in the same area so they did a few tests and pretty much in every single one the younger birds whooped the older birds the first one was putting a block of wood over a feeding station the birds had to figure out how to move the block none of the birds over three years old were able to solve the problem 40 percent of the younger birds did the second one involved removing that plate in an unusual way they actually had to go to the back and move it with their beak instead of the traditional stepping on a lever half of the younger birds figured it out only one of the adults figured it out and in the third experiment they had to do kind of the foot over foot to pull a cashew from a rope on a perch and the all of the younger birds were able to get to the cashew only half of the adults did that so a couple things to glean from this is that these uh one is that these birds obviously the older ones were less predisposed to learn new things we don't know if that's environmentally caused if that's genetic what's going on in there um but this also kind of has a silver lining in that when there are drastic environmental changes i.e climate change the younger generation might be able to figure it out and pull through which would be pretty awesome and uh i mean it it's good unless of course the older generation is better at reproducing there is that there is that always kind of figure out the pros and the cons to everything um i've got some undead genes zombie genes the genes of zombies or genes that are zombies well genes that are zombies it turn researchers we're looking at tissue uh blood and liver tissue from human cadavers and also uh from what else do they look at that oh they looked at mice and fish that they looked in this particular study previously we've looked at blood and liver tissue from human cadavers and we've seen that there are a few genes that are active postmortem after death so that this research team were like hey let's look at mice and zebrafish let's track genetic activity after death and see what is active and so they tracked about a thousand or more than a thousand genes and they found that there were hundreds of genes that after the organisms died up regulated their activity huh they got more active after death than they were before death pretty interesting and some of these genes are related to some of these genes were active during embryonic development so it's like during death they think that maybe some sort of state reversal happens and these genes get triggered again that may be like oh we're breaking down no no no we don't want to do that let's start building again but they're running out of energy so maybe it's like they're like the the backstage crew like they do the setup for the show which is you know embryonic stage and then it's like all right they're down take down the lights let's close the curtain let's put everything away here yeah um some some genes that became more active also um are cancer genes that promote cancer and cellular division and growth and so there's a question here as to the link between people who receive transplants from people who have died they have an increased risk of cancer and so it's very possible that these organs have up-regulated cancer genes that are potentially triggering this cancer so understanding this could give us some some good clues at how to help people who get transplants might be good like I might might be used at a measuring the gene activity they say could be used as a diagnostic tool for predicting the quality of a transplant so it's uh it's a fascinating study and it could also be used to help um help police investigate time of death well right now we estimate time of death based on you know maggots yeah maggots and bugs and how long these things have been around these these little organisms that feed on the dead have been around right there's also cell phone messages and other different things but if we can time which genes are active at what point after death we could have maybe much more accurate calendar um to be able to use in investigations so these researchers who have published this study are actually really excited and they're like oh we need to study death a lot more yeah we'll learn a lot more about life in death I think that's a good rule that we learn over and over on this show we need to study death more yeah uh let's see quick other quick news we have um Zika the first human vaccine trial is getting the go-ahead from the FDA it's a DNA based vaccine so it'll be segments of the Zika virus DNA that will be injected into a person and then researchers could potentially use electrical pulses to get the human cells to take in the Zika DNA and incorporate it and start manufacturing Zika proteins and then once the Zika proteins get produced by the body then the body will have its immune response and then if you ever get invaded by the virus then you'll have an appropriate response to it and so um this vaccine is people are very excited about it because pregnant women women who want to get pregnant it might be a good idea to get a vaccine together fairly quickly for that it doesn't affect Zika doesn't affect adults generally but it's the birth defects and the fetuses that are an issue and then additionally the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is also working on another DNA based vaccine for Zika that they hope to get started testing in late August so we've got vaccines on on the forefront and then brain training industry a recent study that was done published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has kind of said these brain training companies like Lumosity Cogmed and Neuronation that promise that it's going by brain training yourself you're going to get a higher IQ it might be a bunch of placebo effect really it's also a lot of low graphic intensity games a lot of a lot of you know easily put together video games that you're playing this is what's happening yeah so they did a meta analysis they did a review of a meta analysis and the meta analysis concluded training could increase IQ scores by three to four points which okay that's cool and so this group went ahead and we're like okay let's look at that and figure out the methods of how they got their volunteers and they used similar methods to produce a study of their own in which they put up posters that used different language one of the posters said had words related to the actual effects so basically psychologically biasing people to want to take part in the study so brain training and cognitive enhancement numerous studies have shown working memory training can increase fluid intelligence and their email was even GMU brain training at gmail.com versus a flyer that said email today and participate in a study need credits sign up for a study today to earn up to five credits and then somebody's email address from the study authors so they actually found that people potentially that the people who self self selected themselves for the brain training and cognitive enhancement flyers with the language they had more of an IQ increase than the people who went for the neutral language every psych study is a study within a study within a study yeah but it's interesting placebo effect and then okay so a placebo effect can increase your IQ a little bit which is you know this is going to make me smarter let's go take a test if I just think hard enough about that I'm going to get smarter maybe I'll do better on that IQ test and as everybody knows nothing makes you smarter than this show but what is this story there's we have two moons there are two moons oh my goodness earth has two moons is this what I'm is this what your next story is kiki because I oh yeah I missed this one but it's not really two moons we have a quasi satellite what's a quasi satellite people like to say two moons because that sounds cool so our moon is called a natural satellite satellite is an orbiting object around our big object right caught in our gravitational field natural satellite is one we didn't put there we put lots of other satellites around our planet but there have been lots of other quasi satellites and suggested moons like captured asteroids and other things through the years and we actually had another quasi satellite for about 10 years that kind of hung out with us and orbited with us for a while and then it and it got caught by something else and drifted off and so it's not our satellite anymore but we now have a an asteroid it's called 2016 H03 and this quasi satellite is in an orbit around the sun and in the way that it is orbiting around the sun it is also caught in orbit around the earth so it is not really our satellite because it's really orbiting the sun but the path it's taking is also kind of captured by our gravity it seems to really capture how big is this thing it's tiny no it's little tiny it's smaller than you oh does it well then it can still be a moon like why not just a really tiny cute little it's a cute little tiny moon little baby moon and it's about and it's it's really far away it wanders about a hundred times the difference of distance of the moon away and it gets as close as about 38 times the distance of the moon so it's further away from us than the moon but it's also not very big but it's there it's been captured by us it's smaller than Justin well no it's not smaller than just okay because I would think that there would be just all sorts of small stuff floating around near us all the time okay so this study it's somewhere between 40 meters and 100 meters oh okay slightly bigger slightly bigger than yeah and and could be uh could that could be a planet killer if we uh interacted with it on it could but it seems to be in a fairly stable orbit um around the sun then I call it moon quasi satellite it's not a real satellite it's just a quite lunar minor we'll just call it quasimodo quasimodo oh my god quasimodo yes so it's a uh it's it's not really our moon but because of the way it's orbiting around the sun it's keepers it's our moon now it's our moon we have a new sidekick a new sidekick but it's interesting because there have been many of these proposed but this is the first one that seems to really have been confirmed and to have stuck which is cool proof of concept we could get other moons and this is how hello asteroid ta da actually what we need to do is we need to land some sort of propulsion device on this it's a little tiny moon that we have yeah yeah no and then and then we can have it there as a backup plan in case the big asteroid or the comet that's heading towards earth we could launch it towards it take it out to be our uh our earth defense system right there okay kiki that's an interesting idea so i'm done justin do you have any more stories last one i've got uh using cognitive science theories northwestern universities ken forbus and his collaborators have developed a model that could give computers the ability to reason more like humans and even make wait for it moral decisions done called the structure mapping engine or sm e the new model is capable of analogical problem solving including capturing ways humans spontaneously use analogies between different situations to solve moral dilemmas many artificial intelligent systems they use the example here of google's alpha go rely on deep learning process in which the computer learns uh by examining massive massive amounts of data by contrast people and this sm e based system learn successfully from far fewer examples uh in moral decision making for example a handful of stories suffice enable sm e based systems to learn and make decisions as do people in psychological experiments so so if you sort of think about it yeah like a lot of what you need to know in life you could learn by kindergarten through mother goose uh those parables they have all these stories like the kid who cried wolf uh what is it peter what's his name peter in the wolf the kid who cried wolf uh you learn like yeah if you give too many false the statements people will stop believing you and that might you know be bad for you later down the road that sort of thing so they've they've they've got this model and they're going to use it for artificial intelligence uh to to see if they can make it think more humanly of course the question is what analogies are going in uh but they've already successfully used it to do uh to to do a couple of things one was a vision based problem uh where it used visual cameras i suppose to to sort of solve a problem and another was it figured out a physics problem uh but it's an analogy based as opposed to a raw database which is going to make this generation of robots more humanly thinking yeah yeah so and that'll be the really interesting thing are we the the we'll have two we'll have multiple types of ai systems with different uh underlying learning systems deep data diggers or more human like analogy based systems and uh some of them we'll get along with i wonder i wonder if people will start asking their devices to make moral decisions for them well here's here's sort of what this is sort of interesting i love i love the way that he says given a new situation the machine will try to retrieve one of its prior stories looking for analogous sacred values and decide according so uh to encourage research on analogy for this team is releasing the SME source code and a 5000 example corpus which includes comparisons drawn from visual problem solving textbook problem solving and moral decision making so i i think this is a really sort of fascinating you could end up with like a philosophical robot yeah well and that's what i'm thinking you've you've to make a difficult social based decision and then later you can say well i asked the phone and it told me that i should i should choose Dave's birthday party instead of yours out of my hands my butt told me yeah in fact in fact uh this is after the fact because i i had i had set in my my to-dos here in my scheduler to go to your party but apparently my phone erased it i it and wrote in some other person's party but i didn't even know but i had a great time and this great time is now the end of the show i hope you had a great time just like we did what a great interview today with brit hermes i hope uh yeah i hope you learned something i know that we did it was a it was a great conversation and some great science as well but it's time for me to say thank you to our patreon sponsors thank you to paul disney kevin perichan keith corsell steve de bell melissa moseley jessie morano patrick o'keith jason schneiderman rudy garcia jerald sorrell's greg guthman alex wilson dave neighbor jason dozier matthew litwin eric nap jason roberts chris clark rigid onamist john rattner swami byron lee eo jared lysette ulysses atkins bryan kondren dave friedell jake jones mark mazaros trainer 84 and barter's room kiss brian hedrick kessie 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can help us out simply by telling your friends about twist and on next week's show we'll be back once again recording live broadcasting live online at 8 p.m pacific time on twist.org slash live and you can watch and join our chat room but don't don't worry if you can't make it it's all good you can find our past episodes at twist.org slash youtube purchase twist.org yes thank you for listening we hope you enjoyed the show twist is also available as a podcast just google this week in science somewhere in your itunes directory or if you have a mobile device which is an android you can look for twist the number four droid app in the android marketplace which simply this week in science and anything apple market placey for more information on anything you've learned here today show notes will be available on our website that's at www.twist.org where you can also make comments and start conversations with the hosts as well as other listeners or you can contact us directly email kirsten at 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couple of grand this week science is coming your way so everybody listen to what i say i use the scientific method for all that it's worth and i'll broadcast my opinion all over the earth this week in science this week in science this week in science science science this week in science this week in science this week in science i am science i've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what i say may not represent your views but i've done the calculations and i've got a plan if you listen to the science you may just then understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy we're just trying to save the world from jeopardy and this week in science is coming away so everybody listen to everything we say and if you use our methods that are rolling and die we may rid the world of toxoplasma got the eye because it's this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science science that are laundry list of items i want to address from stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness i'm trying to promote more rational thought and i'll try to answer any question you've got the how can i ever see the changes i seek when i can only set up shop one out to what we say from the word that we said then please this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science i think he's walked away and left the uh the music playing i did not so um it's the post show everybody let's survive to get another episode of this week in science so that was it i feel like that that interview was not just awesome but i feel like it was long overdue uh to have somebody who could really articulate what's going on in that field that was really really insightful um yeah she was very well spoken and and yes very insightful and i that's why i wanted to talk with her i read her i read her blog and i looked at her tweets and i read other articles that people had written about what she's doing and i went you know she's a good one to talk to remind me there was a good whole controversy that took place at the the yoga studio uh they were gonna put in an ionizer or something i don't remember what it was positive ions something like this oh yeah positive ions they're good for you well i don't know i don't know it might have been if some sort of filter filtration system i can't remember exactly what this little device was that was going to go in the other way but somebody some people were freaked out because they believed it was going to create ozone and and others were like no that's a good thing like it was this all it never went in it was like this is too much like it might have been a filter it might have been an air filter of some sort and ionizing up i don't know what it was but yeah it created this huge debate at the yoga studio to the point where it just couldn't be put in you don't want extra ozone or or you do or you don't but there was arguing it's an air pollutant and it makes it hard to breathe but it might not have even done that this is the thing like it wasn't even might not even a give no this is the thing like it wasn't even like it said it's will produce also no it didn't say but it was like the fear that i aren't like it was just based on zero science all of the entire the entire drama about it had nothing to do with science and it was and it's just and it just didn't go in it was like i forget it just let's go and sweat and do yoga never mind yeah i went to um i went to my very i'm in oregon right so i went to my very first marijuana dispensary yesterday oh i was with a with somebody and they're like i'd like to go and i was like okay i'll go check it out and so i go into the dispensary and they start talking about this cbd high cbd low thc high thc low cbd blah blah blah you know cannabinoids and the endocannabinoids and all this stuff you know and the guy who's selling the selling the weed he's like you know because her body's filled with endocannabinoid receptors we've been evolving with this stuff from years we have to take it yeah you can't breathe without it right like you can't even uptake oxygen properly unless you're totally it took of all of myself control to just go stand in the corner and shut up and then and then uh they offered my friend a um a taffy a little edible oh that's just pouty yeah cbd cannabinoid um which is supposed to be the body relaxing effects and not the psychoactive high thc effects so there's the cbd versus the thc and so the cbd had had a little label on it and she had this little glint troublesome glint in her eye and she was like here kiki look at this and the little label said anti-gluten anti-gluten not just no gluten in it it was an anti-gluten taffy like hunts down gluten and kicks it in the butt in your body I just I walked around and I was like I hate to leave this place right now so but and here's the thing and here's the thing too and this is this is this is coming from somebody who's been in sales for a lifetime right let's just put two words together and then people will be like yeah it's Corinthian leather and it lets you right it lets you fill in all sorts of gaps to the information that's not there and infill and overlay upon it anything that you choose anything that you choose um but you you know you know you don't have to just look at these object you know these these obvious sales pitches um but you see it all the time in any kind of marketing and politics is like horrendously filled with letting people imprint their idea of who the candidate is and what they actually mean when they say something like making america great like okay that could mean completely different things to completely different people uh but when they allow you to to fill in all of the missing information uh in an enthusiastic way this is this is sales right yeah hmm meanwhile if they just said hey marijuana yeah it would probably still sell like i don't think they would like i think they're trying too hard uh stops anxiety makes you ignore pain those are true yeah yeah great it if you're nauseous it helps you it you'll finally get maybe give you a diet it gives you a serious mellow if you can't calm down that's true yeah yeah this one's been specifically formulated to give you extra paranoia oh for those nights when you're really not sure that car driving down the street is trying to listen to your brain waves this this one will convince you oh extra paranoia that is totally what i want no thank you yeah that's what i want in a drug something that'll make me extra paranoid i want the thing that turns my brain off so i can go to sleep that's called that sleep doesn't even turn your brain off there's no turning your brain out oh i had a crazy dream this morning it was pretty funny i was a i dreamed that i had gotten a role not the lead role but like the the supporting a very strong supporting role in a disney produced cartoon i was voice acting in a disney produced cartoon and i had a supporting role and then it's and everything was going really awesome and then at some point we had to go get interviewed about it and the whole cast was going to get interviewed and i was a little late and them and and they were doing our makeup and hair on the way in to the interview because it was an interview it wasn't actually the cartoon it was an interview about the cartoon oh it's very important to have your makeup and hair done and we were getting our makeup and hair done and then i got in a huge fight with the makeup girl she made you look like a hoor i totally missed the part of the story where you took the taffy and i didn't ever take the taffy and when i woke up this morning i was like okay so am i excited about getting the voice acting job or am i pissed off about the the bratty makeup artist i don't know okay i know voice acting does sound fun except for right now yeah so i can voice act as a little horse this is what we should do is we should somehow get some people in at Pixar to start listening to our show so that the three of us can have a cameo in the next Pixar film yeah okay like they put click and clack and Sarah and Vinny in cars right it's not that far off to throw us into a Pixar movie um so i have to tell you this most one tea factory wait day fright i'll dream that one of the twist cast walked through a tea factory with them how arts is uh your dream that was wow detailed dream uh did it turn lucid so so the kind of kind of because you're trying to figure out uh why you were mad or what part you upset with was this when you woke up or was this during the dream because for me that would happen during the dream no during the dream i actually like made the choice to not be passive about the makeup artist's brattyness and to actually like talk back to her and stand up for myself and get and so basically i lucid dreamed myself into a fight i was like oh morning dreams yay morning dreams and i was and when i woke up i halfway thought i was like can i just go back to sleep i would i'm just gonna lie down and close my eyes and and finish the dream differently oh yeah i just i feel like i should fit it but then kai woke up and so i had to wake up i hate that when you want to continue a dream and you can't the greatest i know um so i have to tell you a phenomenon i experienced in the south you guys oh yeah okay tell us about your southern southern trium so there were a few things that were cool that you might find interesting but my favorite moment was i saw lightning bugs for the first time in my life and they are the coolest they are cool that's why people spend time chasing them and putting them in jars yes so i then had to do some research so first of all uh their winged beetles they have something very special which is that they have cold bioluminescence yeah so they don't they don't create heat when they create light which is so cool like a glow stick right yes exactly um so there's no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies um and there are about two thousand species of fireflies which i did not know their larva emit light and are glow worms i did not know that glow worms were baby fireflies cute glow worms are also a really cute little toy who that too um or creepy is what i remember i had a glow worm that had this really creepy face i'm gonna have to look that up now in a minute um but what my friend that i was visiting in the south told me that i then started doing all this research on was that fireflies talk to each other with their light up butts so yeah it's communication yeah it's like a morse code situation yes i had one of those terrifying they're so cute what are you talking about i had the one on the top in the middle that's like dressed in pajamas um that has the yeah that one i had that one that one's a little creepy yeah that's the one that i had and i forgot about it until you just reminded me and now i won't be able to sleep that thing is so creepy why 90s toys are weird glow worm uh oh fireflies produce defensive steroids in their bodies that make them unpalatable to predators that's interesting uh larvae use their glow as a warning display to communicate their distastefulness as adults many fireflies have flash patterns unique to their species and use them to identify other members of their species uh female fireflies choose mates depending on specific male flash pattern characteristics um the higher male flash rates as well as increased flash intensity have shown to be more attractive to females in two different firefly species uh oh adult fireflies of some species are not luminous at all however and instead use pheromones to locate mates and there are some species that use both pheromonal and luminous components in their mating systems they're the coolest i was running around and i was like they're fairies they're fairies they're not fairies they really are just like it's like a fairy ring it's the coolest thing oh my god i got so excited um i also saw my friend uh defend her thesis or her dissertation and she was approved congratulations she's a doctor now doctor doctor when you two meet you'll be able to say that to each other doctor doctor that's one of my favorite things when i meet it when i meet a doctor a fellow doctor having that conversation uh what was this what was the movie the spy movie uh oh gosh no one that spies like us what was it called i don't know but it was uh doctor doctor doctor doctor doctor that's where that's where it comes from doctor doctor doctor doctor not a real doctor doctor not a real doctor i'd have to keep throwing that in it would be a longer version uh yeah spies like us thank you but it's a brain chat room um yeah people are really surprised here i've never seen the fireflies before but they don't there are none yeah there are none in california is there really none in california we've never seen them someone was talking to me telling me they they're in mendicino but that doesn't seem right to me i feel like i've seen them in northern california up in the nevada city north and one area but it might not be true it might not be true well i've never seen them it might not be true until now very cool i've gotta go terrific tire did you have firefly tea in your dream dave friedel what's mike's comment oh my gosh uh panted ladies or painted ladies with me i'm panted as we speak i'm skirted so i guess i'm a toxic okay here we go uh this was la times uh june of last year never before seen species of firefly was just discovered uh in the raga now i have to click on the article oh santa monica mountains of panga where's that well uh so that is that is right along the coast and uh southern california it's pretty urbanized area etymologists have known about fireflies in a reading for a long time but they're rarely seen or difficult even for the professionals to find the entire collection has about uh four million bug specimens and it goes back a hundred years that's all we found in the past century well it seems like pretty good well maybe that's where they all went they were too good at collecting them i went to topanga canyon we're gonna take the 405 they've been seen the santa monica mountains laguna mountains in san diego they've also been spot in the southeast slump of mount san hasinto and the upper little creek in san bernadino county so they they can be in california where i grew up i never saw a one so you know california is a lot bigger than just where i grew up at california yeah in terms of kind of big as far as states go yeah it's not just big it's also takes up like the northern and the southern most like coastal type regions of the of the of the it is the western seaboard pretty much yeah you got the or again in washington eating up little bits of it at the top but for the most part it's like the whole night of a continent ed every time someone says fairies don't exist firefly dies we're fireflies we need to go on a firefly saving mission save them no day fright also in my tea dream the twist host had all kinds of opinions on leading a tour group so just for a clarification for your next which host was this i guarantee you it wasn't me when it comes to traveling i absolutely know my place i think it would be pretty much is like okay i'm you can read maps and figure out subway schedules you're in charge of everything i'm not dave did this dream take place on sleepy time drive that's right because who went to visit sleepy where sleepy time t came from what do you talk about i know what do you talk about i have no idea what you talk about blare went to what is the name of the tea company that she went to last year seasonings okay so even the things yeah bears or something on the uh-huh everything uh-huh oh yeah use gbs to get there too oh my goodness where was that outside of boulder and boulder that's right because you stopped and you didn't visit dave what or did i oh did you yeah i did yeah that's awesome he drove me to the sleepy time tea factory is it celestial seasonings yeah we went in the mint room the mint room okay that's what that was all about not the mint room okay i got it i got it the bears out of the tea bag dave they figured it out yeah and also also if i ever disappear uh if i ever if i ever disappear first place you should look for me is just outside boulder colorada uh at the uh niropa institute for disembodied poets because that's where i'm going to that's my runaway spot that's my bug out in place that's when decided body poets yeah this is when i decide to uh bug out that's where i'm going niropa interesting i've been to boulder three times and never seen the tea factory it was pretty cool you're fascinating um i found out that uh most of the teas that celestial seasonings makes are not teas because they don't have tea leaves in them they are herbal infusions yeah it's like filled with prozac filled with prozac that's right and whatever does they put in nyquil that makes you sleepy it's like champagne can't be champagne unless it's from the champagne region of france except you know they use the same grapes and make it sparkling and it has to be sparkling wine yeah yeah corbell's the one exception i was just at corbell like last month and i was asking you about that and they got grandfathered in because they're so they've been around for so long that when that was kind of decided corbell got to keep the name champagne yeah no tea leaves it's not tea yep but you can still call it tea just like i still call sparkling wine champagne rock tradition well it's kind of like how you call all tissues cleanex hand me a cleanex can i xerox this yes can i have a ziplock exactly i'm gonna google this can i have an interlocking sealable plastic bag please that just does not roll off the tongue and blair bass told me how she tells kids to get off her lawn yes accurate totally why am i going to all these drink companies i guess i'm a connoisseur okay okay gem doctor rems are apparently not champagne fine but it's still a rule thing it's a thingy it's tradition what are you talking about i keep getting lost following the chat room we're having a conversation yeah i'm watching the chat room and i have to admit i said i thought champagne came from a specific region in france or at least the grape did was that is that right and that's what the gem doctor was specifying a particular region but not not it's not actually champagne there's not actually a region called champagne that's what the gem doctor is saying well he's got doctor names so i trust him yes he's obviously a real doctor um uh i forgot what i was gonna say sorry yeah well if it was important it'll come back to you oh i don't say i'm gonna say that dave had to wear a beard uh cap i had to wear a i had to wear a um hair net he had to wear a beard net when we went in the tea factory so you don't get hairs in the teas yeah that would be gross i don't know i mean they put the tea stuff the herbal infusion stuff in little bags paper bags yeah little hair probably wouldn't change the flavor too much they don't trust you to not touch things that's good they did at the uh at the uh the pbr brewery in tomwater washington they were like that self-guided door how fun kids i don't think anybody was uh we might somebody can we can we see the selfie player dave wants to see his selfie i was gonna post it tomorrow for tbt there we go here we go i was having trouble with my selfie methods it keeps turning i'll post it tomorrow oh i could kind of see it there yeah a little glare but there it is they hung out we we did we met in real life um champagne is a sparkling wine produced from grapes grown in the champagne region of france following rules that demand among other things secondary fermentation of the wine in the bottle to create carbonation uh the champagne region uh include oba coat of blanc coat of saison montagne de rime and valet de la marne the towns of rince and eparnay are the commercial centers of the area but it is the champagne region of france so we were all right what can i do now gordon oh the tbt now i'm gonna wait till west coast time it's still only 10 30 here oh yeah there was a hair net picture i didn't even find that it's like a hair net picture too awesome because you have to when you're wearing a hair net oh my god i'll post this tomorrow too but can you see it that's awesome you look like you're i don't i don't know at a hospital about to take a shower yeah yeah yeah that's the deal oh and then i went to leesburg virginia on the way back and i met up with a person who owns the couch that i will probably be sleeping on when we go to baltimore that's awesome perfect yeah i'm still working out the baltimore details more to come on that i'm looking at a bunch of pictures from a music festival i went to over the weekend it was fun people were crazy it's awesome get asleep you guys it is 10 30 10 30 yeah i'm tired too and my voice is gonna go soon and we lost justin what happened to him i don't know did he go to sleep probably not did he just leave that on the screen i know Dave i don't remember these arrangements these arrangements did you make arrangements apparently um i'm kind of feeling like a female banana fiddler crab at the moment i feel like trapped a moment you're a little trapped wait did somebody mention pbr oh that's where you went now we know okay is it bedtime i think it's bedtime yeah justin has his pbr yeah i do think that uh we had more to talk about tonight but i i can't think of it now i don't think we'd do tonight um oh we're still waiting uh on information about when we should be plotting for this uh road trip road trip road trip later on this say early november plane trip plane trip airplane trip i don't think we're gonna there will be some roads to get you to the airport is this the uh does the chat room know what i'm mumbling about or is this still under wraps for now baltimore yes we're working out details okay working out details so we have an absolute to make hopefully a detail next week i'm gonna have a phone call in the next day or two so oh identity four is tired sleepy identity four good night long day uh we'll let everybody go we're gonna come back here again though uh in the next week or so and do this again yeah we will give or take seven days yes i don't know if we give it or take it it's kind of hard to tell we just experience it and then it gets to the end of seven days and we do our show again i know what happens we will be wobbly timing why what's on justin's shirt oh yep no it's a it's a doctor who shirts i started working my way through my nerd violations i know i saw that i haven't made it far through the book because i can't read while the plane's in motion so i just right yeah you're ready hitchhikers yeah i can't read while the plane's moving it makes me so understand that this author that you're reading uh douglas also uh was a writer for doctor who uh started with doctor and interjected much of what has become the you know sort of doctor's sense of humor uh and the sort of quirkiness of being a time traveler throughout all time and space um he his his infusion of wit and humor really transformed the show starting with the fourth doctor and and is something that's carried on and out even today except for the most recent doctor because he's not very funny he knows i think he is but you know this is i think i've seen only like one it was a double episode but i was like only one real like what i thought of is doctor who episode this entire last season um well i'm mostly really excited about this book because my favorite author of all time is kurt vonnegut and what i've been reading so far is very similar yeah oh fantastic it's very similar to vonnegut um and yeah and then you have to read it and then you have to read tom tom robbins is it tom robbins or tim tim robbins is the actor tom robbins i read i read a tom robbins book i love those which which one was it it was um yeah one of his book starts with the description of blue and green algae i think uh is being responsible for this is where the story starts yeah fierce invalids home from hot climates i read that when i was in high school something something another roadside attractions oh yeah uh something else well the good thing is if i like hitchhikers guys there's six of those so i'll have a i'll have six books to read um so i think if you're reading well yeah you have three hitchhikers books and then some good tom robbins books i'm gonna go to bed now okay as i was looking through the douglas adams books at the bookstore where i bought it and um which one of which one was one of them maybe was the universe and everything whatever that one's called it said right inside the front cover um book six of three of the hitchhiker sky that's great i was like yeah all right good geeky books to read i like geeky books i just have to have time to read now that's what you stay up late and do and then you wake up and you're tired and expired and you're like oh but i want to read my book and you stay up late again and you read this doesn't sound healthy to me but it's so nice i'm already struggling to get seven hours as my vision continues to get worse i i i get more and more frustrated with reading so we're gonna have to do a new segment on the show which is um i read you a story yeah yeah like we'll create an audiobook company right but really it's it's blareete's suggestion it's just blareete's suggestion yeah i could bring in a fart book right now on that note everybody good night sweetheart well it's time to go good night sweetheart good night thank you for joining us au revoir adieu good night come back again now you're here