 We're here finally. I know seven minutes late, but we're here Apologies, everything is in upheaval topsy-turvy a little bit different I'm in a different location things have changed There is movement of foot yes So let's do this show that we call this week in science, right? Does that we do it? Yeah Oh Might as well Ten years in just got the title love it. All right Okay, this show we are a podcast This week in science is a podcast we're gonna broadcast live anyone who is here right now or watching the video You're getting the whole feed anyone else you may Want to subscribe to the video stuff to get the whole feed because the podcast is edited to try and make everything Those people you're talking to right now isn't this isn't this edited out. They'll never hear the part where you They'll never hear this part. 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We're ready Yeah, okay, let's go This is Twist this week in science episode number 886 recorded on a Wednesday August 3rd 2022 none of this is right But science Everyone I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight we will fill your heads with dead pigs old people and shrimp bricks but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer The following program is meant for therapeutic purposes only any knowledge or entertainment found in the minds of the audience is purely coincidental While the subjects of the conversations are sourced from the current cutting edge of published Scientific studies selected only from the finest well-established scientific publications submitted for scientific publication by researchers and institutions that are credentialed experts in their fields Real purposes of the show is a bleminal relaxation therapy as you listen a series of tones will play Imperceptibly just beyond the range of human hearing at frequencies designed to alleviate stress create focus and unlock creative potential occasionally There will be an advertisement that might have been one right there But don't worry it won't be annoying why you won't even know that you are hearing it though You may find yourself Controllably donating to the occasional worthy cause to sit back relax and get ready for another episode of This week in science Coming up next I've got the kind of mind I can't get enough. I want to learn it up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know Science to you Kiki and Blair and a good science to you too Justin and Blair and everyone out there Welcome to another episode of this week in science We are back again to talk about all the science that has happened in the last week Well, all the science that we want to talk about because there's always so much There's so much all the science we have time to talk about we only have a tight 90 minutes to tell you these stories Otherwise, we keep talking just 90 of an amuse-bouche of science Okay, I'm gonna talk about dead pigs. I've got also some embryos and Electricity in biology and then some brain stuff because I love the brain stuff Justin, what do you have? Oh, I've got a story. I'm excited about I got the oldest evidence of humans in North America ever found yet CBD anxiety in teens and I a long global warming thing right the end which Somebody's gonna have to somebody's gonna have to come in behind me on that one with a really upbeat story Yeah, okay. Yeah, we've been beating this drum for a long time, so let's just A little bit of a pick me up All right Blair, what is in the animal? Yes, I have the previously mentioned shrimp bricks I also have Spider tricorders, I'll just call them and then I also have a story about what did I I forgot already a whale eyes and Beep pain. So there you go Beep pain You didn't know this was a science show. Did you? We're yeah, I know right we're gonna jump right into the show here, but before we do I just want you to know that You can subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform if you haven't done so already We're also on YouTube Facebook and Twitch on Twitch. We are twist science we're also twist science on Twitter and Instagram and If all of this is just too much go to our website twist org and Additionally, we broadcast live each Wednesday evening at 8 p.m. Pacific time At YouTube Facebook and Twitch, so make sure you get those notifications on so you know when we are live because we're live right now Okay, let's talk about the science dead pigs. You ready? Okay, a couple years ago I talked about Technology called brain X in which Yale researchers had developed a a System in which to keep the pig brain after death less dead and It was a technology that enabled it's like a synthetic blood and a synthetic System that perfuses or did in the past perfused the brain allowed that brain system to Live a little bit longer after death, even though they weren't going for that brainy Electrochemical activity that normally is consciousness wasn't wasn't Blair's head in a jar Early experimentation, but it's you know, it's coming from Yale This is also very fringe kind of stuff, but not decided what near death kind of stuff They had amazing results They were amazed able to restore cellular functions able to get a lot of the neurons back online And because of what they were doing with brain X they were like dude Why don't we do this with the rest of the body and so they created a system called? organ X and With organ X they have also been able to restore cellular function to the point of metabolism after death so they Subjected pigs to death which is stopping respiration stopping heart action stopping brain activity and then Allowed this perfusion of their blood replacement This analog of blood that they've perfused through the system and Not just it wasn't just like a oh, it's okay. Some stuff kind of kept going Metabolism Started again cells started working again. And so this isn't necessarily like oh, we're gonna be bring dead people back to life, but what this could potentially do is allow for the extension of organs that could be used for Transition that's exactly what I was thinking. Okay, cool. That's not what I was thinking. This is probably in the lab of Dr. Frankenstein Frankenstein. Yes. Yes. Yeah, because because this is of course the We have the ability we've had the ability. This is like a little human Technology medical technology being able to swap out in Oregon. These are we're a collection of spare parts At some point, right, but there's the there's the extreme rush that we just talked about even last week With a story about trying to get organs to people in time And if the organ is coming from someone who's been dead a while Or if the organ has to travel a vast distance if this can like Re-invigorate it that would definitely change the game. It would totally change the game You know, there is the possibility also of this being used to keep the very rich alive longer or You know, how else could it be used to extend the lives of individuals who or whose organs are failing? This is It's a very interesting technology whose you know, I think the big application is organ transplantation keeping organs alive longer keeping people who have recently deceased At least in a metabolic state longer so that their organs can be harvested and used for other people in a better manner So that we don't lose as much, but this is Yeah, it seems like a much more applicable Experiment and study and method because the brain even if you preserve the brain and kept it alive in a jar For a week a month or even a year You're not putting it anywhere. It's not going back. That's the one thing. We haven't been able to swap Out yet is a brain a little bit too much connectivity involved and Compared to any of the other organs so yeah, they started with the brain with brain X and that was like this interesting complicated thing and then now they're doing the organ stuff and the organ stuff actually is Working, of course, better than just the brain stuff. They were able to restore circulation throughout the body They were able to keep a lot of the deterioration that starts occurring after death from occurring because The body basic the cells Kept metabolizing they the nutrients that they needed were there a lot of the genes So if you start going at the gene level of like, okay, what are the cells actually doing? Are they dying or are they gasping for air? What's happening? A lot of the gene activity Suggested that they were really metabolizing and that the cells were doing what they're supposed to do at the cell tissue level What they need they keep going to work. Yeah They're messing with forces of nature. They do not fully understand. Yeah, that's what science does That's what science is but I think this is Outside of the bot the brain This is fascinating because like we said it could really change the way that yeah the way that Transplants happen the way that organ transfer happens the way that so much happens if we can get this Part of can we make bodies live longer? Which is why I'm I'm I'm always hesitant to Make fun of a study that seems like absolutely ridiculous like like the last week spider Uh spider robot story. It's gonna be a while before that has an application. I'm sure but But they have this thing that seems like this preposterous thing that even be even be Opening as a line of inquiry and then here we go a year later Whatever since the last time we talked about this and here is an application that could be revolution. Yeah Don't judge don't judge the fringy science experiments Don't judge In the first experiment All right, speaking of fringy science. Let's talk about old people How old are the oldest people in north america? Justin? I don't know if this is I don't know if this is the least bit fringy This is the Hartley mammoth locality Which is a site in new mexico studied by scientists of the University of texas at austin and the site has a bunch of smashed up mammoth fossils, which by itself would be awesome finding a site with a whole bunch of Mammoth fossils very cool. These mammoth fossils are especially interesting because they have blunt force fractures And are found amongst bone flake knives that have worn edges The site has archaeological signs chemical signs of controlled fire Revealing the scene of an ancient hunt perhaps and butchering site Well Yeah, so they got the bone blades to break up mammoth meat and the manageable pieces fire that's maybe rendering the fat Thanks to carbon dating analysis on collagen extracted from the mammoth bones The site also comes with an age About 37 000 years old So this is new mexico where we have the site of the 20 ish thousand year old white sands footprints that were discovered But this is considerably older than any other north american site except for perhaps there's the there is the cave where they have found signs of Uh Human activity in mexico that's a they dated to around 30 000 years But for north america 37 37 000 year old human activity now The oldest lead author of the paper published in frontiers in the ecology and evolution is a university of texas and austin pately ontologist timothy row Who usually doesn't study mammoths or ancient humans about a when a tusk Of a mammoth was found sticking out of a hillside on his land. He thought ah, yeah, maybe I'll Make this a thing I study for a while As a treat for a hobby as a treat. Yeah, like what a lovely thing to find among other Find ct scans taken by the university of texas high resolution x-ray computed tomography tomography facility revealed Ah, thanks music Revealed bone flakes with microscopic fracture networks akin to those freshly napped cow bones and well Well placed puncture wounds That would have helped in draining grease from ribs Invertible bones So while there may be more than one way to skin a mammoth There are only a few ways to do so efficiently according to row the butchering patterns are quite characteristic. So Uh, also no evidence Of animal tooth marks on any of the bones. So these weren't that's important any time scavenged Which is also important because it it also likely means that the flesh was rendered without being exposed to scavenging rodents even chemical analysis surrounding the bones so that Fire particles came from a sustained and controlled burn not a lightning strike not a wildfire materials also contained pulverized bone and Burned remains of small animals mostly fish Which can tell a tale of its own because this is at a pretty high altitude 200 feet of altitude higher than another any other river or ways away from existing waters. So Uh, could be a completely different Environmental landscape at the time which actually we know it was But also it might mean that people were traveling with the fish. They also found birds rodents and lizards So it's also the sites being used beyond They've got this mammoth kill which you would think ah, that's it. We're just gonna live off of mammoth But there's a diversity of game. That's also being cooked at this site Which indicates maybe a knowledge that you kind of need that diverse more diverse diet for health reasons Not just availability so tools butchering fire diverse caught meals and 37 000 years ago in new mexico These are also important. These are they fat what they're describing as these bone tools that could have been used to render Uh Clovis site which at one point People were saying this is the oldest evidence of native americans in north america is stone tools There was no evidence of stone tools at this site So this shows Either that there's a pre clovis culture that was different or it shows an evolution of technology We don't know because we don't have human remains involved in any of this Which is very frustrating But hey, i've been saying it for a while. We're gonna continue to find older and older Uh north america and it keeps getting older than the things that they tried to to pin And in northeast asia as the ancestor culture that came to north america It's tough when the north american culture is there for tens of thousands of years already. So Much more in these stories to be coming in the future. I am sure That's Just amazing. I mean it was a last year that you reported the footprints That were took us back 24 000 years and now suddenly it's beyond that 37 000 years. Like this is a leap From those footprints. This is something totally different and it's I'm surprised there aren't any tools But it's interesting but there are tools there are tools that are bone Right nothing stone nothing stone which is yeah, which is interesting. It's interesting because stone tools are much older than that much much older Although and that's the other kind of weird thing. They're also stone tools also seem to originate in non-modern humans and stay with them Whereas humans kind of get to a little bit. We move around it moved around in our technology quite a bit Yeah, maybe the bone tools are better Yes, maybe they put down the stone tools and like we're like the bone tools I like them and and it could be that the the bone tools were also For rendering and the stone tools weren't being used for that You know, they might have found that their bone cutters Or they might have been precious enough to hang on to and not leave anything at the site because Again, there's no real signs of extended habitation yet my the picture at least that it painted thus far is one of Looks like a hot you you take down the mammoth and you don't carry it with you back to You know, you got to cut it up on site. Yeah, even a much smaller game You would want to render on site and take the pieces away Uh, but the site was also this is discovered in 2013 But it took, you know a long time to get around to realizing it was a really valuable thing to study Because the bones are are are smashed up, you know, they were they're broken up into pieces So it's not like oh, we have this great fossil we can send to a museum and the paleontologist is like It's not old enough. It's not interesting. It's not even a million years old. Why would I even bother looking at that at first? It's not even a million. Why would I look at that? Oh my goodness. That's no dinosaur. Let's go. Yeah Okay Blair, tell us about some spider silk. Oh, yes. I have a couple really cool stories about, um technological advances based on uh inspiration from the animal kingdom So, uh, this first one is about spider silk as optical fiber for medical analysis Um researchers have harnessed the light guiding properties of spider silk to develop a sensor They can detect and measure small changes in refractive index of a biological solution So they think that this could one day be useful for measuring blood sugar and other biochemical analysis, um Glucose sensors are used by people with diabetes currently, but these devices are invasive uncomfortable and not cost efficient They they rack up with spider silk They think that they could use A material including spider silk to optically detect various sugar concentrations in real time In fact, they're currently developing an app so that you could use use you could do it on your phone um So they found that these optical fibers could be could determine concentrations of fructose sucrose glucose And that uh, it was all based on the solutions refractive index spider silk was ideal because It can transmit light like an optical fiber, but as we know it is also very strong and elastic um, so they had spider silk from giant wood spiders Nefila pilipeds Which is native to taiwan they enveloped the silk which is 10 microns in diameter with a biocompatible photo curable resin and cured it to form a smooth protective surface and um The spider silk was at the core resin outside And they had a biocompatible nano layer of gold to enhance the fiber sensing abilities now. Is it just me? Or does this sound like the coolest wizard wand you've ever heard? And I was immediately very upset that in like harry potter lore, uh spider silk is not a core that you can have In your wands. I think that needs to be fixed. But anyway back on this, um Fair enough. I got it. Especially with like gold on the outside. Come on. Anyway So they they tested it by immersing one end in a liquid sample get the other end to a light source and a spectrometer and um, they were able to determine all these different things They it is reusable. It's cost effective. It's easy to use offers real-time detection And because it's compact it could actually allow access to hard to reach areas like the brain or the heart So beyond diabetes this could do all sorts of other things. So it could be implantable in medical devices There could be all sorts of things that this could be used for and as I said, they're working on an app So that they could implant it in a in a medical device and then have it just sink to your phone Basically, and it could be giving you real-time data on any sort of All numbers of things anything that's that's something that's in solution. So in blood You could you could track your lactose or your fat amounts. You could do all sorts of things with this. So Once again spider silk has a really cool potential application I don't want spiders in my blood, but the silk might be okay. There's silk, you know Might be all right. Yeah. Do you want to hear my other story about uh, okay great. Um This this is about animals Uh Contributing to technology and this is about the shrimp bricks that were teased earlier And you guessed it. Yes shrimp shells in cement Makes them stronger and it makes them take less or more time to harden which is actually helpful in the cement game Um, so the nanoparticles from shrimp shells into cement paste Had these kind of benefits And the cool thing about the shrimp shells is that uh seafood waste is a big deal also So you could actually take seafood waste add it to cement And you could you could be helping multiple problems at once So you have the seafood waste you have the the strength of the cement You have how long it takes to cure which you want it to take longer So you can form it into the right shapes and then you could transport it and all these other things And also it would lower carbon emissions which concrete is a large contributor contributor to carbon emissions So There's there's a lot of stuff here about how they like figured out the specific amount of chitin in crab shrimp and lobster shells Combined with the calcium carbonate made an additive to this cement that had all these there's lots of math here But essentially the long and short of it is that It made it stronger made it take longer to cure the amount of cement they had to make And their compression of it was altered such that carbon output was way lower. Okay. That's good. Yeah, and and Where was it eight million pounds? Of seafood waste is created annually Most of that waste is dumped directly into the ocean So also you could just leverage that exact waste into creating these nanoparticles Inject them into cement. You have all these problems solved Yeah, smart. Yeah, cement is one of the biggest polluters for carbon dioxide. So that's Huge. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely huge How about um working on embryos and um, you know trying to figure out how they develop and Keeping them alive long enough in the lab to really understand them and see how long they'll develop and Oh, maybe at some point they'll develop into a whole fully formed human or other. You talking about lamb bags or what? No No, so I'm talking about the fact that researchers have been trying for a very long time to Create a system in the laboratory that will allow us to simulate development As far along as it can possibly get before we have to like turn it off and say nope no further And so researchers have made artificial mouse embryos from stem cells They haven't used any sperm or eggs And they have this really cool bioreactor to make the creations work in the in the way that they do They simulate these embryos and then they have this Ferris wheel type contraption that they have developed through trial and error to kind of agitate these Little embryos to make them Actually want to turn into embryos as opposed to just dying Which happens after a few days. So what we've determined is that this agitation is very important For the actual creation of the embryos and the embryos wanting to live. Anyway, this we can sell researchers have allowed have reported their New development of enabling early development of embryos to at least eight days of development, which is like a huge developmental Threshold because we've never been able to get there before We've been able to get mouse embryos outside of mother body for about 11 days but human embryos have not lasted that long and so this Ferris wheel of Turning all the embryos and creating a nurturing Situation to allow that happen Has finally allowed these researchers to get to a point where they're able to Get segments that become skeletal muscles developing brain and spinal cords the beginning of another number of organs and gene activity in 40,000 or more embryoid cells Everything up to that eight day mark is exactly where it's expected to be like no deviations so we are extending the length of Time that we can create development in a laboratory And and potentially opening a pathway for cloning carnies Carnies exactly the Ferris wheel carnies. So the big thing now is that you know, like we said with these Mouse cells no sperm or egg required. This is the next step. Can we take human adult cells cells? This is You know using embryonic stem not embryonic stem cells, but adult stem cells. Can we take stem cells from adult? and then create embryos where we can with a person who has Some mutation a disease. Can we study that person? Can we study the disease? Can we start looking at what's happening in the developmental stages of that disease? Yeah, can we and so it's getting to a much Further a long state where you've got a neural tube. You've got a beating heart You've got the beginning of the development of a brain and a tail It's all it's It's it's it's very exciting. It's also, you know for people who might be worried about where this can go It is concerning, you know, where can we take this? Where is this all going to go? Along with like the death end of the spectrum with the pigs from earlier, you know You know, I it's actually right where my brain went my brain went to a a organ farm of Justin for Justin Uh, which we're just in yes, uh, when that when that matches my DNA That uh, that you know, it's oh Justin, you know, you need a new liver kidney gallbladder and maybe your your right lung could use a new and oh, well, thank goodness I've got one uh growing at a lab somewhere and I can just go get it Just excuse waiting right there Oh, well, how's it you have to go to the lab and get it done right there? No, no, no, there's this there's this pig brain Organ study that I just they'll send it to me via amazon now We're getting there like it's it's not amazon level easy. That's definitely not going to get there 24 hours kind of easiness, but this is uh, it's very in terms of the science It's very exciting because this allows much greater detail on How we understand development to take place and also for understanding the under underpinnings of disease Wind wind mutations really start to affect the brain. When do they start to affect different organs? How do we know the way that they work so we can start to figure out targets for therapeutics and like fixing that kind of stuff um But it's also, you know, there's some philosophical issues here like how long does it go? How long do we let it go? I don't know if it's fine so far eight and a half days. It's like it's eight and a half days It's not conscious. It has a beating heart, but it's not conscious for sure Oh gosh, see that's the other thing then what if it what if the you know, oh, we got your organ farm They're adjusting but unfortunately it's conscious. It's conscious. Sorry and and Technically Has access to your bank account What do you mean? Well, it's you so You sound kind of anxious you want to take some CBD? Yeah, you know, uh, I I don't I need the opposite of I need something that makes me more anxious I have a lack of anxiety However, uh for a very decent amount of the population according to this Perhaps even a a third of australians Which this study was based in so do suffer from some form of anxiety Which is not the anxiety you feel when you're nervous or Uncomfortable but anxiety That is so bad that you cease to function as you normally would be able to maybe lack of sleep. Maybe Uh, you put off going into work or avoid social situations And kind of elevated heart rates all sorts of things can take place with an anxiety Severity so this is an australian pilot study That showed that cbd reduced anxiety amongst young people With hard to treat or treatment resistant anxiety The can of uh I can never say this word. I don't know why that is uh Can a video No, can a video which is what cbd is uh youth anxiety pilot study Is a 12 week trial to test the feasibility safety tolerability and therapeutic effects That's cbd and reducing anxiety severity in these young people. There were 30 participants between the ages of 12 and 25 They had diagnosed anxiety disorder And had failed to show significant improvement in anxiety severity after five cognitive behavioral therapy sessions within a year of this study Participants started on a dose of one 200 milligram capsule of cbd Which is increased to 400 after one week and those who did not show improvement In their anxiety systems had their doses increased by 200 increments up to 800 milligrams per day in the study All participants were also offered bi-weekly cognitive behavioral therapy on top of this The research was conducted by origin A nonprofit youth mental health organization with support from the university of city I don't know the united states even has organizations like this That are completely focused on youth mental health. They do they do. They're probably just underfunded Uh professor paul amager who is the lead study Author said the level of improvement was remarkable young people had fewer panic attacks could do things that they were previously unable to do Like leave the house go to school participate in social situations either restaurants take public transport Or attend appointments by themselves according To the professor an amazing change in the group which has had treatment resistant long-standing severe to very severe anxiety Public the pilot study found that cbd not only helped to reduce anxiety But did so without all of the nasty side effects of traditional medications This is again nice from the professor. Oh, we did not see side effects like suicidal thoughts Irritability our sleep problems which are not uncommon in people taking ssri's Your anti-anxiety medication that gives you suicidal thoughts it does need to find an alternative My goodness, although the findings are prompt promising They say further research is required Next step is to do a randomized controlled trial Such a trial would then also be a larger group looking for 200 or 250 young people to according to the professor amager Enables to say with some certainty that there is or is not real treatment benefits and effects in trying to make sure that they didn't get The odd hit with their small sample size or some sort of placebo effect and that sort of thing So next step is to interrogate Their initial pilot study findings with a much bigger more rigorous version of the study Good, I mean, I think that's the big one is is this any different from placebo and then you know, it seems to have Lots of good aspects to it. So let's compare it and really see How it does in a larger study. Yeah, and it's a pretty I mean Definitely more research needs to be done for anything to be, you know I don't know for us to ever understand anything. We have to have so many looks at it but with the fact that this is not a This is not a light anxiety uh group this is a Therapy resistant group already that have are classified as severe to very severe You know, this is this is a hard group to try it out on in the first place if you were looking for a result Which they aren't they're looking they're they're looking for ways to improve mental health They're not looking for a product to do good, bad or indifferent. They could care less They're not involved in manufacturing cbd and something that Doesn't have the suicidal ideations that SSRIs are known to cause in different groups of people. That's That's really amazing and sleeplessness, you know sleep is such a restorative necessary part of human Like health mental health That if you've got any anxiety and then don't sleep on top of it, uh, the next day's anxiety. I'm sure is much worse I will be very interested to see what happens with a larger study because I feel like especially when you're dealing with humans Of any study on humans when you have a smaller sample size. It's really easy to accidentally Get confounding variables involved, right? Like you said that all these people are are resistant Their anxiety is resistant to therapy Are some of them still seeing a therapist and those two things combined worked Do some of these people have places to go home and be calm and other people do not then that will contribute to their anxiety So there's all sorts of things. Well, they did have this was combined with therapy This was two they had two weeks recessions. So it is a and Right, but also like who who has a good relationship with their therapist and who maybe does not right? There's all sorts of so many variables happening That the only way to overcome those weird one-off variables is to have a huge sample size now now to be fair There are larger studies that have been done on adults That have shown positive results. So this is this is Now we're focusing it on Uh an age group range. Yeah, it's younger and separate with different issues. Maybe and it's apparently according to the study too is there It's not part of their study. It's something they they assert and and the article here is that It is the leading mental health reported issue amongst these teenage, you know, this youth group is 12 to 25 uh year range group Anxiety is the highest reported uh mental health issue So that's also why that's being being focused on in this way. Um, I don't know. I I think it's one It's just a fascinating thing That this was a banned banned banned substance and possibly is still in some places in the united states Yet with with a therapeutic ability or potential That is much better than the pharmaceutical one. Like it's always puzzles me how these Well, and fada in the chat room brings up a really good point. He says come on. What could possibly go wrong I will say there are definitely drugs out there that have been approved for market with sample sizes probably this small with way more Way more side effects It's out of all the the I mean fada is kind of right here like If there's a potential that this could be helpful It's there's a lot more help than hurt out there. And so the it's an interesting point Is that like of all the drugs that have been approved out there? I I wonder if there's an extra pressure to prove it Further beyond any reason for sure because of the stigma, right? Yes. Yeah, well Absolutely, or it's or it's just the fact that it is now able to be studied because for a long time We weren't even able to study it now. Now that it's available and and gosh anecdotally There's been a little bit of self medication in the human population for a long time And people From CBD and this is CBD related and so the CBD is more the hemp side of things And so it's actually well It's it's interesting It's an active component, but it's an active component. But but the point of that is that Is that you know, if you're getting if you're getting your medicine with a spoonful of sugar You're still getting your medicine your medicine. No Very good point For those of you who are interested in how Various compounds have their effects in the body and how different Different metabolic actions take place something that's very important is an enzyme enzymes are catalysts they Grab on to proteins and they have a magic match and we talk about the lock and key kind of Fitting that allows things to occur and these enzymes enzymes make things speed up They make things go faster and better and easier than they would if you just let just Natural dissipation Take place. So enzymes are very important What we don't understand is exactly how they work what we've understood what we figured out is that every molecule Is its own little geometric world and the Angle of different parts of the geometry of that molecule is really important for how Things connect to other things so how the positive or negative charge how positive or how negative things are and When this happens in terms of an enzyme apparently How open that enzyme is is very specific To the thing it wants to grab on to it's like much more that lock and key analogy that we have Talked about is much more accurate than yet. Yeah, then we've really thought about it's like this general analogy But it's actually pretty now pretty accurate And so these researchers who are at stanford they just published in nature chemistry their study into Not just the charges on the enzymes, but the direction of those charges as well so how big the charges and where it's pointing and they They they uh Traded the hydrogen ions and a lot of molecules for deuterium because deuterium is this radioactive molecule that we can actually Monitor a little bit more easily and so they were changing things up for deuterium But basically it's the same as hydrogen And so they were able to start getting a real picture of how Various enzymes work and so they were looking at alcohol Dehydrogenase and some other enzymes and really starting to figure out how they work But they're really measuring vibrational frequencies in molecules Based on the wavelength of infrared light absorbed by the chemical bonds. So we're at this level of light being absorbed By chemical bonds and that changes the vibrational frequency it changes like what is reflected And what they're able to measure and so the shifts in these vibrational frequencies We're able to reveal information about the electrical fields that were present And so from that they're able to start really measuring How alcohol dehydrogenase is able to work as an enzyme to break down alcohol and all the work that it does but They're really trying to create a probe that can be used for more Enzymes and more molecules to really understand not only How do enzymes work? But how can we create enzymes? How can we make enzymes better? How can we Target enzymes? How how are we messing enzymes up? What are the what are the things that we're doing that are screwing enzymes up? um So they're they're really trying to figure out how we can Work with enzymes to make our biology better Yeah, anything we can do to speed that up because of course we do we The biotechnology is based is larger portions of it are enzyme driven and so One of the one of the things that Biotechnology does is it'll take an enzyme and work it into an organism and have that organism mass produce it So if we have if we have better ways of Customizing or checking the work checking you go and you engineer this enzyme It's supposed to do this function and if you can if you can test it, I suppose Before having to get it into bioreactors and grow it out and exactly on a larger scale You get higher throughput and you get More efficient search for the next bigger better More efficient enzyme. Yeah, and when we think about molecules It's all like oh a molecule, but we don't really think about the fact that at the really small scale What's happening is electric and magnetic? Interactions and so what we really need to figure out is What is the electric field orientation for an active site in an enzyme and can we make that? Can we copy it? And so this is going to help us get there Can we build our own? Have we finished all of our little uh our stories for the first part of the show we got our first half stories in yeah Thank you everyone for joining us for this episode of twist We are so happy that you have joined us if you enjoy the show Please tell a friend to listen today or watch we're on video too Hey, so uh right now we're going to jump directly to this part of the show To speak in science that we love so much. It's called Blair's animal corner What you got Blair? I have whale eyes You do? No I have a story about whale eyes So uh whales they're wild Uh, they're wild because they were land mammals that went back to the ocean They were like no no no it was better back there So they had a whole evolutionary history where they were on land and then they came back so Scientists have been spending a lot of time trying to figure out What aspects of being a whale happened on land? What happened when they were kind of in the middle and what happened once they had moved permanently back to the sea So this is a study from University of Toronto looking at Early whale ancestors and specifically their eyes to try to figure out When they started going deep sea diving So the common ancestor of living whales According to this research was already a deep diver They were able to see in the blue twilight zone of the ocean And their eyes could swiftly adjust to dim conditions as they rushed down To the deep deep ocean to forage and then adjust back as they move back up towards the light The deep sea heart of whale foraging has been a question of exactly when that happened for a while because not all whales do that Some whales are shallow forager forager So is that something that happened later on once they were all in the ocean permanently? Or is this something that their previous ancestors that were amphibious did the ones that went back and forth from From land to ocean So this finding to me sounds correct also just because you know, that's what penipeds do lots of penipeds are deep sea divers and they still go out onto land quite a bit so There's a lot to eat down there. It makes sense that they would be trying to take advantage of this The way they did this research is what's actually really interesting though is they were able to look at Whale fossils on a molecular level Focused down on a particular protein the rhodopsin protein which absorbs light and sends a signal through the retina to the brain And then they were able to use data models Of the rhodopsin proteins from a variety of living whales and related mammals And then that showed a gene sequence representing the rhodopsin in the common ancestor And from there they could extrapolate The kind of the family tree of what was happening with this with this protein And so then what's really cool is they were able to express the gene That created rhodopsin in the lab in grown cells to resurrect the protein in purified samples So this is a pretty novel way to try to figure out evolutionary history by growing extrapolated proteins And so the biochemical properties of that they're calling resurrected protein They were able to compare it to land mammals Found that early where whale rhodopsin was more sensitive to blue blue light that penetrates deeply To a degree that exceeded expectations of normal land mammals So it also suggested that the retinas of the early whales could respond rapidly to changes in light levels And therefore this early history of whales before they diverged into these different feeding strategies were deep divers Then that means that their eyes were adjusted to that and therefore That that was kind of the baseline model and then they specialized beyond that So pretty much as soon as they got into the ocean they were diving deep and potentially before that That's amazing. Yeah, but it wasn't Just I mean because we know whales are they're returned to the ocean They weren't just Evolving in the ocean. It was land mammals that went back Right. So this is fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. So these guys, um, it sounds like, you know, you would expect like, well Well, I'm here and some of them evolved to go deep But no, they were all deep divers before and then some of them Stopped having that ability later on because they didn't need it because they were shallow Tables. Yeah That's cool. So this is a cool study for what we learned about whales, but also because it showed this gene extrapolation model To resurrect proteins and then it worked and you were able to use that in a comparative model to to figure out evolutionary relationships. Very cool Old genes. I like it I want I know we have them too Old genes. Let's resurrect them. Yeah Maybe give them a wash Next let's move on to whether bumblebees feel pain. What do you think? What's your guess? Yes Uh, no, it's a bee Bees There's no pain being a bee. It's too much work to be done well much like how justin's talking, uh, the historical Expectations of bee brains was that they were regarded as simple reflex automatons They respond to stimuli with withdrawal free reflexes. So basically just like Nope, don't want to be there. I'm backing up. I'm not even thinking about it so The the way that you generally think about pain The experience of pain is that you're there's a certain self-awareness Of recognizing that Pain is painful. Like why why do we feel pain? It is a signal from our brain to stop doing what we're doing Right. So it's more than just a reflex It's it's a it's a signal That first of all stop doing what you're doing and second of all more importantly, don't do that again Learn from this So kiki guessed it this piece of research from queen mary university of london shows that yes bumblebees most likely Feel pain wait wait wait wait a sec. What's with that qualifier likely? Yes because We can't be in their brain their brain as it is is a clump of neurons. It's not even really a brain But so yeah, so the study I will explain the study method It is without being physically In a bee body, it's going to be very hard to qualify what pain feels like as a bee Okay, but based on the scientific model that exists It sounds like they can respond to pain. So here is the model. So they They used a motivational trade-off paradigm This is where animals has to have to flexibly trade off competing motivations These were given the choice between An unheated just a normal box or a noxiously heated 55 degrees Celsius box Obviously you're going to stay away from that heat But they had different sucrose concentrations inside Some of it was better quality sugar water They marked the quality of sugar water by colors So this is important because first you have to teach the bee red means the good food and blue means the bad food Or whatever. I don't know what actually colors Previous studies are shown you bees. It can be reasonably well trained And so they were able to learn which color so we'll continue with my guess of red So we'll say that red is the good food. It's the delicious food Then when they put both feeders had the high quality Food and one of them was noxiously heated the bees avoided it. They didn't want to go in there But then when the bees saw that the better food was in the noxiously heated the yucky box They would go in there anyway Now the it's important to recognize they were using their their little bee ganglia their bee brain Uh to go that's where the good food is it's gonna hurt to go in there. I'm going in anyway Yeah, so that is the thing if it was it was if it was totally a non-cognizant reflex They wouldn't go in to the painful space No matter what was waiting for them in there But the fact that they can take the path of least resistance. Yes, but prioritize the best meal So if it yeah, okay, that makes I think that's what I do Right and so that's the point is that they are doing a mental trade-off They are associating Higher sugar reward with a particular color then they're saying okay It's gonna hurt to go in there But it will be worth it because it has the better sugar. I'm going in anyway But now you're saying hurt. Is it is it is it just sweaty? Is it just right is it pain or is it just if you were in a room that was I'm going to guess you would feel some pain I don't know. I grew up in the central valley. I feel like So anyway, they're saying that this is consistent with Other tests in other animals as a capacity to feel pain. Yeah, so this is the trade-off in the central nervous system They're making a cognizant choice But this is where they say because this is a subjective experience It is not a formal proof Right, that's exactly it. Mm-hmm. This shows the possibility and I would say probability of insect pain and or suffering And so the problem is that in most Maybe in all countries, but in most countries bees are Insects aren't protected The same way that other animals are in lab experiments and in other kind of Humane treatment welfare laws So this is one of those things where you have to recognize If you've got neurons And you've got a nervous system and you can sense sensations as an animal I would argue it's pretty handy to be able to feel pain Or at least yeah comfort or at least at least it we call it pain, you know, but we have a pain scale, right? So is it Pain or is it just discomfort and it's the trade-off between A little discomfort and a bit of reward a lot of discomfort and a lot of reward You know, what is the trade-off and what is important to the animal? What is more important? Right and and I would argue beyond just a trying to be humane Which is important if you're going to have animals in experiments or in research facilities or In live stock scenarios as you've talked about, you know on the show that that insects are potentially the live stock of the future Then that is something that should be considered of course Yeah, additionally the thing that's important to recognize is if insects Can make these preferential decisions and can feel discomfort or pain or suffering or whatever you want to call it Then their Comfort should be considered in scientific models, right to make sense because remember what we learned about mice if they're too cold They they mess up experiments So if you're using insects in experiments if that fruit fly is too hot And it won't act how you want it to act in a mating experiment as drosophila so often is That could be messing with your results. Yep That that is the key point very good point there. Yep It's going to mess with the way that things work out Not whether it's a philosophical. Do they feel pain or not but more so How is it affecting their behavior? Yeah, how is it impacting them? Right and like if they're stressed out because they're they're just they're not comfortable in live stock scenarios. Are you going to be Feeding humans a bunch of stress hormone accidentally It's I don't know It is something to consider is all I'm saying I think but I think that also that is uh, that's a very good point about the animal husbandry aspect of it Happy bees, you know 90 90 now there's a whole thesis you can do about uh Happy bees versus stressed uncomfortable bees and foraging behavior. You can go happy bees. Happy life. There we go There you go. Yeah, this is this week in science. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode If you love what we do talking about science, please head over to twist dot over at dot org and click on our patreon link You can choose to support us as so many have done before and your support Really helps keep us doing what we're doing This is this week in science. Hey, Justin, what you got? Oh my goodness. I've got to get one of this story Pulled up here because it's probably going to need to load for a second. So this is Hey, have you uh, have you guys ever heard of uh global warming? What I think I've heard of that Maybe yeah So it's this this thing that we've been banging the drum about yeah when we were in fossil fuels Like coal oil and natural gas it creates a heat trapping blanket in our atmosphere which raises global temperatures Yeah puts carbons in the atmosphere. So this is This is uh, actually it's more of an article Published in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences based on a previous study that the Folks who got together on this had been part of It's an international team of researchers led by the university of cambridge They're asking for the intergovernmental panel on climate change to dedicate a future report to worst case scenarios Uh, apparently the IPCC reports have been focusing increasingly on the least bad possible outcomes Previous research that the inspired this proposal showed that the majority of mentions Uh by the IPCC and their texts talking about climate change and global warming Are about the lower end of the climate change predictions And anybody who's a long time listener of this show Knows that when these IPCC reports come out every story after seems to say it's much worse than the predictions in there And this might be part of why They looked in this initial study, uh at the ratio of studies Looking at low, medium and high end of century warming outcomes And they found that they do not match at all the probability of those outcomes as an example dramatic worst-case scenarios temperatures of a rise six c or higher Has an actual probability of about 10 percent at this point And yet it is far less than one percent Of the mentions in the reports the highest likelihood at the moment is that we will reach three c This is where we're we're tracking it when we get to 700 parts per million carbon in the atmosphere This is about three percent of the mentions The tension overwhelmingly seems to go to the 1.5 to 2 degree Celsius rise temperature rise studies Which are centered around the goal setting that we have made Potentially leaving people and by people I don't know how much of the general public is getting this You know information sent out to them Or are you hearing about it in the news? But this is the information that essentially is informing governments 1.5 to 2 degree c studies are centered around the goal settings of Kyoto protocol Potentially leaving people with the notion that the worst-case scenarios Of global warming are the ones that will occur if we hit all of the goals of the Kyoto protocol all the targets which Guess what We're on target. We're not We ain't gonna do it. We're going above and beyond So Justin, I'm gonna fight you now So here's the deal crisis framing doesn't work So even if it's realistic if you talk about the worst-case scenario, there is no motivation to fix things This is proven social science So I actually think this is really an interesting choice to potentially come up with a better outcome in the end because if you focus on the worst-case scenario You kind of guarantee it because because people will not be motivated to do anything about it Okay, so first of all, I'm gonna I'm gonna push back. I'm gonna say first of all you said proven and social science Yes That's a thing Don't tell me that's not a science I'm gonna take an issue with that separate from this at some other point. Wow. Okay At some other point, but If you're talking some sort of game theory about when you're trying to convince people that a thing is a thing worth doing something about What we're talking about here is an intergovernmental The one report that everybody's pointing to as governments that they're basing decision making on for the future of the planet and really Thinking through what the climate climate change Dramatic problems could be so that we can prepare for them Whether we take it on and change it or don't we're going to incur The actual causality of this happening over the next right So you're talking about it from an adaptation standpoint, which I understand what you're saying from a mitigation standpoint It's that's what I'm talking about Well, even from a mitigation standpoint, then if the urgency isn't made as clear Of what the consequences are if you don't if you haven't attached the actual levels of risk and consequence Then how can You decide how much resource? Or how much effort and time to put into solving a problem? So on one hand, I kind of get the like oh recycling doesn't do as much as you think it does may prevent people from recycling But when you're saying oh, you know Maybe the house is only a little bit on fire We shouldn't just run away and let it burn to the ground. You might need to rethink What you're well, but you remember the the politicians and committee members making these decisions are also people And so they are governed by the same reasoning practices as people on the street And so it's still an important thing to keep in mind that Yes, talking about real life Endgame possibilities to to adapt to a future is important and I take your point there But I also think it's important to remember that talking about worst-case scenarios Tends to move things in the wrong direction. Yes So here no, no, I just want to I want to just like break this apart for a moment Which is the difference between the science that we're reporting and also the method of communication And so what Justin is talking about is a scientific study that has determined some issues That need to be addressed seriously in the communication But at the same time Blair you're talking about the strategy of communicating the risk to everyone which is the importance of You know understanding that there are solutions and that we can address all this and there's still time to put To put our forces to change things And so this is where the two things are kind of Imbalanced and where your where your disagreement is where the crux of your disagreement really is stemming from and I think that is really It's hard in this kind of a podcast, right where we were talking about we want to talk about science, right We want to talk about the scientific studies. And so we're talking about a study that is Bringing up a thing that is kind of a communication issue. And so then It's like how should we report on it, right? Should we be saying the basics and what the study saying or should we be just reporting The hard line of we can change things I think these are very important questions as you know as we move forward because I think that's where this all comes Where where your conversations coming from right now? Maybe Maybe I I guess I guess the thing is I would I I would have a hard time distinguishing the strategy of Showing that we have time and there's things we can still do and it's not going to be that bad if we do these things and not focusing on The mean outcomes that are presented to us I can I have a hard time distinguishing between that and the strategy of Let's not deal with global warming for the sake of our local industries and give people the impression that there's plenty of time There's things that we can do. There's not plenty of time. There are solutions though There's not plenty of time. There are solutions That's that's I think that's that the difference is that the best case scenario and the mean scenario are still bad It's still not good So anyway, so most of the coverage Most of the IPCC is reporting. Let me reiterate this over 50 percent Is about 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius change, which we are already expected to go past Unless we have met all of the targets of Kyoto protocol So what what my my argument is is that's underselling the severity of the problem totally which I feel like that the the intergovernmental panel is Being pressured or pressuring themselves or selecting politics. The whole IPCC is not there for science. It's there for politicians The whole reason we have it is to make politicians happy The whole reason we have it is to put together a nice story for politicians That's it And then the politicians take the nice story that the scientists put together scientists give them A scary story and then it's made into a nice story for the politicians And then politicians put it into an even nicer story for everybody else for their constituents Like it's this trickle. It's it's awful So anyway, like what's really happening is not actually being represented by the IPCC Yeah, well, we report on it, but it's not really not enough scientists and politics So it's it's getting lost in translation But this is this is also Anyway, what they're suggesting is an effort to really just focus. So some of the suggestions they came up with is focusing on four key strands of the studies and information that's out there understanding extreme climate change dynamics and impacts in the long term Exploring climate triggered pathways to mass morbidity and mortality Investigating social fragility vulnerabilities risk cascades and risk responses And synthesizing the research findings into integrated catastrophe assessments They're essentially asking IPCC to face up to the bad to worst case scenarios these include outcomes ranging from a loss of 10 percent of global population to an eventual human extinction they want them to actually look at All the other things that are on the table that they have been avoiding talking about the team behind the P nas paper proposes a research agenda that includes the these four horsemen Of the climate endgame famine malnutrition extreme weather conflict and vector-borne diseases Uh, so it's it's a step beyond just talking about What the carbon level is what is sea level rises or these sort of things that are uh, that are somewhat Just some a lot of people maybe seem like abstract things to worry about Famine malnutrition extreme weather conflict vector-borne diseases Maybe the thing that does get more Uh attention. I do think human health needs a better A better connector to climate change because if you study the science it it makes perfect sense But if you talk to a random person on the street, they have trouble connecting the dots of how climate change impacts human health They just think about heat stroke pretty much. That's it, right? And so that's I feel like that I got heat stroke the other day. What you need help you need help making that connection to the average person I will however say calling it the four horsemen Kind of feeds right back into that crisis target. I was talking about before that makes people want to not talk about it So can I ask how do we do this? How do we go from the science to the messaging and how do we get into a positive mindset of really I mean this study I don't think is for I mean, I'm just gonna say it. I mean podcast listeners Viewers right now. I'm sorry. This study is not for you This study is for communicators so that they can address communication Better That's what I think. Well, this this story is actually for the IPCC Uh, it's an open letter asking them to make some changes in Right in their focus Uh, but that's part of the problem too that I've seen over and over is that a lot of times bits of the IPCC get released to the public In its entirety or in snippets and it's just taken as it is and that also is really tough For an average person to synthesize and not feel overwhelmed and just totally tune out the world Yeah, wow scary. Yeah, my gosh Well, the world is scary It is scary. It is scary the world's scary. It's scary, but dolphins are awesome I'm gonna talk about dolphins right now. I'm gonna take us totally awesome I'm going to take us from climate change to dolphins because oh, yeah, that's right. I asked for this Bring us bring us back from the brink of the mass destruction Somebody better have a happy story. Well We all know that dolphins like they have their own language and they've got some really incredible behaviors And they do really cool things while there's a new study that's out this week in current biology In part from one of my previous research My my PI Nicola Clayton from Cambridge University. She's working with researchers looking at common bottlenose dolphins to figure out whether or not These dolphins have episodic like memory, you know, uh kiki. What's episodic like memory? Well episodic like memory is where and it's not just like remembering a thing You're remembering all the stuff that goes around that thing. It's remembering What you did when you woke up in the morning When you got that cup of coffee, how it smelled who gave it to you Um, maybe not just where you put your keys, but why you put your keys there What happened at that particular moment? What are all the contextual cues around that thing episodic memory? is memory for episodes and We know from research that humans have episodic memory now in other animals I've been in I've personally even involved in research with Nicola Clayton related to birds in the past Showing that scrub jays and some other birds have episodic like memory able to remember Where they put food what the food was how long ago they put it there They're able to remember these things. It's very important for survival Right, so of course dolphins They're like people with fins who go You know You know, yeah, yeah, anyway So let's look at dolphins and in this particular study They looked at whether dolphins were able to encode spatial and social information where A treat was given to them and who gave them that treat so instead of just a Where when they're doing a where who kind of episode and in this particular episode the dolphins were able to Very easily remember who gave them a particular treat at what particular time And it's not surprising. I mean honestly thinking about dolphins and how smart they are It really are we surprised? I'm not surprised. I'm not I feel like most of the I'm not the animals I took care of as a zookeeper could do this You right you think so, but nobody tests this stuff. And so this is kind of the you to go. Oh, well duh but then Nobody's tested it before and so it's a question of do these animals have a similar similar ability to humans to be able to Remember multi contextual information social animals with a long life You would think They have the ability to remember individuals And situations, right? It's going to benefit them socially But we got to test it right so they did and the dolphins were awesome Dolphins win test rhinos next List yes, let's test rhinos next This is off the there was a story. I didn't bring this week that uh, was talking about uh, the need to study shrunken heads in museums Yeah, like apparently they've never been like genetically tested or CT scanned or anything like how did you have These shrunken heads and not heads and you never have studied them. Oh, we put them on museum because people come to see them that's why Okay, let's get some science on some of these things. But yeah, that's a great point like that. You may think that a thing has been studied Uh, nobody's nobody's taking the time to look at yeah This is the one that is also a couple weeks ago I was talking about the the years that how they figured out warm bloodedness because of correlation That the size of the ear canals and they were able to go back through time and look at that This was all kinds of things that based on the size of the ear canals determine whether or not something was warm blooded Which which uh, you know So Hadn't hadn't been done And so if you want if you want a job if you want to find a career Where it's like the open territory is still there to go out and explore and find new things Science has that opportunity It's all over the place all the science hasn't been done All the things haven't been figured out and if somebody gets to a point where they figured out that thing you're interested in Guess what? It will unlock a whole bunch of other things to go look at after Look at the things Look at that things. Okay. So, um, my last story is that uh, some researchers at max plonk institute of molecular cell biology and genetics in Dresden And the max plonk institute for evolutionary anthropology and libsig Have discovered That neural stem cells these are neurons The the cells from which neurons derive in the developing neocortex They spend more time prepping their chromosomes for division In modern humans than they did in neanderthals And how'd they figure this out? Well, they did a bunch of genetic sleuthing and they determined that mice Have the same genes as neanderthals and that humans are the ones who have these different weird genes and so instead of Comparing humans to neanderthals what they did is they compared humans to mice really um And so in the comparison what they determined is that because of the genes that are present That are involved in preparing chromosomes and when you're preparing the chromosomes This is a possibility that you're dividing you're translating things you're you're moving things around There's a possibility of errors if you speed the process up More errors can be made if you slow it down You can fix those errors you there's more possibility for fixing it all up and so What they have determined is that because Mice have the same genes as neanderthals and humans have these weird Mutations that speed that slow things down comparatively That what's really going on is that humans have more time for fixing errors And so that's why our brains are better Then Neanderthals, I mean mice. I mean I mean And I was thinking it meant that like We had to put more You know eggs in one basket as humans like we have to invest more in our babies So now I was thinking about uh neanderthals having litters I don't think neanderthals had litters. No, no, they definitely don't but right. Yeah, they might have had babies more often less often No, right if they had if they had babies more often then that would Provide time and offset the errors that were they would offset the errors because there'd be more opportunities for good babies No, they have they actually they have they have less they have less babies than uh current modern humans and they develop faster They develop faster. But they had less that's a thing They develop faster Developing faster means more errors and that's what this studies all about. Why would they have less babies? They had less babies because they were uh Hunter-gathers. I don't know why I know why why no humans. Why are we weird? Is that a thing? Yeah, so so there's a lot of uh fertility issues That are linked to neanderthal genes Oh And they lived in much smaller groups in the current modern humans It's one of the also the theories of like that competition and the humans uh humans overtaking neanderthals as a population A lot of it might have just had to do with the fact that we have litters In fair to them having a nice little new family and being like that's it. I'm good Whereas we're just like plopping them out all over the place, you know dozens and dozens of kids I'm running around Uh Yeah, and they didn't have and they likely didn't have as we were talking about before too that uh the grandmother genes uh going on so so they also probably had less Childcare available, which is partly then again why those kids had to grow up quicker interesting Growing up quicker with brains that weren't quite as good as ours. We're gonna still we're gonna stick to human Like we're humans are better. We're gonna stick. I do want to I do want to spell check I do want to tack one thing though because there is a misnomer about hunter gatherer cultures This idea that they had to carry their children around with them and therefore they is like a reason they didn't have more kids That apparently is not true. Most of your hunter gatherers didn't actually like it's not like they were nomads like Oh, what do we do today? Oh, let's keep walking in this direction And then you know they lived in you know seasonally Some years and years and years in certain locations might have traveled seasonally a little bit But it's not like they were just always wandering around But anyway I'm wandering around. I'm in new places this week. Did we do it? Did we come to the end of the show? Yeah, that's the show the tight 90 Tight 90. We got all our stories in everybody Thank you so much all of you for joining us for this show tonight We appreciate you being here and I do want to give our absolute shout outs to Fada, thank you so much for doing social media and the show notes that accompany our youtube page And thank you to identity four for recording the show and gourd and are in lore and others for making sure that our chat rooms are happy shiny places of hanging outness And rachel, thank you so much for your editing and other assistance And I do want to thank our patreon sponsors Thank you Teresa smith james schaefer Richard badge kent north coat rick loveman pierre velez are bralfi figaroa john rott swami Carl cornfield carol tozzi woody ms chris bosniaak dav bun figured chef stad health schneider Donathan styles aka don stylo john lee alikoff and gore charmer regan don dirrick schmitt don mundus steven alberon derrick mashrack stew pollock andrew swanson Fredas 104 skyluck paul roanevich kevin reardon noodles jack brian carrington math base vote beta for texas john mcky greg riley marques Willow jane telly steve leesman aka z mckinney's howard tan christopher rap and Dana pierce and richard brennad menace johnny gridley remy day flying out christopher drier arty I'm greg riggs john outward regarcia davilkinson rodney lees paul philip shein cartlew's kurt larson kurt glanton sue duster jason olds dave neighbor erick nappy o kevin parent chan air and luthan steve debel bob calder calder bargery paul disney davin similarly patrick pecararo donnie steel and jason roberts Thank you so much for your support of twist and if you want to help Support twist head over to twist org and click on our patreon link on next week's show We will be back wednesday 8 p.m. Pacific time broadcasting live from our youtube and facebook channels as well as from twist twis.org slash live Hey, do you want to listen to us as a podcast perhaps uh while you build something out of spider silk? I don't know just search for this week in science for a podcaster found if you enjoyed the show get your friends to subscribe as well For more information on anything you've heard here today show notes links to stories You can go to our website www.twist.org Then you can like click on the link go read the actual study That was behind the story that you heard that you were interested in and find out about the methods used Getting that information to you. Yeah You can also contact us directly email kiersen at kiersen at thisweekinscience.com Justin at twist minion at gmail.com or me blair at blairbaz at twist.org Just be sure to put twist TWIS in the subject line or your email will be spam filtered Into a pile of shrimp cement and once it hardens we'll never read it No No, but as a time capsule in the future if twitter's still around you can hit us up there Where we are at twist science at dr kiki at jackson fly and at blair's menagerie We love your feedback if there's a topic you would like us to cover or address A suggestion for an interview haiku that comes to you in the night. Please let us know We'll be back here next weekend. We hope you'll join us again for more great science news And if you've learned anything from the show Remember It's all in your head This weekend science this weekend science This weekend science it's the end of the world So i'm selling up shop got my banner unfurled. It says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to stop the robot with a simple device I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand And all it'll cost you is a cup of the grass. This is coming your way So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientist this weekend science science science This weekend science this weekend science This weekend science science science science science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That's what I say may not represent your views, but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan If you listen to the science you Your philosophy We did it I earned a sit you earned a sit have a sit Oh It's a thing Did that fade all right? I tried differently this time As opposed to just the shoving the digital fader down It was better. Yeah Um, I don't know. I just didn't couldn't hear music today. That's very weird, right? I was like, no, it's right there. Yeah, I got it You heard it. I saw you I heard it Digital How's san francisco? It's good I mean, I guess actually I don't know how san francisco is right. I know south bay. How south bay? It's great. It's hot it was it randomly rained a couple days ago for like A couple hours and then it was sunny again. So it didn't really help with the drought at all, but Oh, well Oh, well, that's fine. Everything's fine. How are things with you? Crazy Yeah I'm glad that I was able to pull this little situation together because I am mid move Excuse me mid move And it's all a little wild there's a lot of stuff going on and yeah Moving's hard I'm surprised you had internet We made internet a priority that was a Number one kind of thing. It's not uh, so this is ethernet. It's not I mean, it's wi-fi. It's not ethernet. It's wi-fi. Yeah, it's pretty good for wi-fi. I'll see right all right tonight Which is great. I would love to have ethernet, but we don't have it wired yet. So that's the big thing I'm just glad to have Internet last night. It was a lot more sketchy Well, I'm glad it got figured out Yeah Yeah, no, I'm sitting here in my future studio With my desk and my laptop not using my major computer. I've got a ring light. I'm not using like Big lights or anything And I've just been spending A lot of the day like I was very glad to be able to make the science happen and I'm sorry that I didn't get either run down earlier There's a lot going on That's all right That's what emails for Right. Yes. I'm still in the portland area. I'm just in a different place in the portland area. So But it's still it's a lot of stuff to move. So I'm in the process of cleaning out The family and all of the stuff that we brought with us from san francisco seven years ago And the disaster that's in the house that we're leaving I can't leave a house a disaster Right. Make this house nice. So yeah It's like I'm like I'm every person I just want to say this is not a scientific study But every person who moves and makes it happen with a full-time job And all the things that go around that I Just want to acknowledge the strength of your Who you are in making that happen because moving is It's traumatizing It's hard in terms of scheduling and making time management happen and I just want to appreciate all of you out there Who have ever moved No, I've I've for some reason have had the word especially as you become more of an adult and accumulate more stuff I've I've moved probably at least every two years Yeah Going back for forever. Yeah Uh, it's not fun. I got to the point where I got to the it got to the point where I was like This is just temporary It's gonna be easier to keep everything in boxes And in fact, I even have I even have a giant plastic Uh crates that uh that have wheels That I This is just gonna happen again This is just gonna happen again I just need crates with wheels so I can throw everything in there and roll it into the the move You know the moving van Or truck or whatever to get to the And then and then at that point why even unbox What I got all I need is what maybe one plate and two forks Anybody have it so so we got our last couple of places in san francisco. It was a big issue with uh with landowners house owners Flipping places and so we got basically moved out of our last two places in san francisco No, just one year two years one year two years Okay, gotta be ready to move again and I was ready and then we moved just to portland And we moved into a rental and I was like, oh no, we're gonna get kicked out. This is gonna happen So I saved all of our moving boxes. Wow. I saved all of our packing Right plastic all of the paper for wrapping stuff. I saved everything And I was pulling it out from underneath the stairs that you know this last week or two and Marshall was laughing at me. He's like, why did you save all that? I'm like, are you kidding me? You kidding? We were gonna get kicked out. I was ready for this and then you know, he's like, oh actually thank you I didn't order enough bubble wrap. I was like, yeah, you didn't We're good. We're good. Yeah, I feel like there were Gone are the days where you can easily just procure old cardboard boxes I had to I ended up buying the last time I moved I bought Used cardboard boxes you can buy them for moving You say approximately what size you want. You're pretty much just paying for shipping And then you're not getting brand new boxes and then you can recycle those So at least you're giving them a second life before they go under recycling, which is nice But yeah, these boxes have had a second life all of them all of them I've had to scratch out what rooms they were supposed to go to Right the new rooms like oh man. You labeled your boxes. That's very impressive. Yeah They were labeled before and they're labeled now Every time I move I'm always like, all right As I pack I'm gonna like donate things and reorganize and it always makes it usually about 50% I get about 50% packed that way And then you just got to start throwing things in boxes and bags and you're just like nope Out of time just I don't care. I'm not even gonna look at what it is I'm just dump it. Oh, this is a box from the last place that I moved and I never even opened it Well, it's getting moved right over to the necklace So this is this is also what happens with with my labeling system I've got like, okay. There's there's a kitchen one or two and then there's a Better and then all the rest say miscellaneous Why did I bother labeling? miscellaneous miscellaneous Miscellaneous I've started it's like office miscellaneous Ky's room miscellaneous Please go to the right room. Yeah This is who you belong to but yeah, I'm gonna Very definitely be digging through boxes for the next year trying to figure out where things are Where they go. Hopefully this is my last move ever Yeah, so hey, I gotta I gotta I gotta cut out a little early from the after I gotta I gotta do that too It's fine. You got a you got a morning. What you got a day? I got a whole yeah, I got a whole thing to do I gotta Yeah What slew of stuff going on today, so Uh I'm gonna say good night. Say to tell you to say good night. Blair. What am I trying to say? Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Say good morning, Justin. Morning, Justin Good Good night, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode Justin Blair, thank you so much really appreciate everything and everyone make sure that you stay safe Stay healthy and stay curious. We'll see you again next week. Tell your friends about twists. Good night