 It's so easy Okay, according to this machine, I'm live, but I'm going to wait for that Happy happy. Hello from our chat room that says we are really truly live Before I actually act exactly I see it Shubru says YouTube is live, so We will start this show in three two This is Twist this week in science episode number 761 recorded on Wednesday, February 19th, 2020 fighting for space I'm dr. Kiki and tonight we will fill your head with old memories dead fossils and invertebrate sex, but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer You need to learn to walk before you can run before that you must master crawling long before crawling a human Baby must learn to lift an oversized skull and have a look around that act as Unassuming as it might seem is just the first of many gravity defying missions to come While we humans have gotten pretty darn good at defying gravity on greater and greater scales We still do so with the same desire We originally started with to have a look around and then to get up and go there And if we're talking about having better look around at anything that must mean it is once again time for This week in science coming up next I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I want to learn it happen every day every week There's only one place to go to find the knowledge. I seek I want a good science to you Kiki and Blair And a good science to you to Justin Blair and everyone out there Welcome to another episode of this week in science. We are back again with all the science from the past week Such a great show I have stories about Making Self-replicating monsters. No, not monsters biology self-replicating things in dishes I also have story a story about bird memories and we have an interview tonight about an Old a new book About an old fight What do you have for us Justin? I have a Nandertal site revisited and Just how the heck you can get dinosaur tracks on the ceiling of a cave That's a really good question with a ladder. Yeah, trampoline. I like the trampoline answer What really killed the dinosaurs trampolines and caves? What's in the animal corner I have after a long long respite Some invertebrate sex in the animal corner tonight, and I also have a quick story about new technologies for animal care All right all coming up in just a bit and as we jump into it here I want to remind you that you can tell your friends about This week in science if you like this podcast You can tell your friends to find us on iTunes and Google Play podcast portal stitchers freaker Tunin Pandora Spotify to all the places you can also find us on YouTube and Facebook or just visit twist org But now it's time for the science. I want to do a quick update on the flu season in the United States and SARS-CoV-2 Which was being called and cov 2019 a couple of weeks ago until the already mutated Yeah name Yes, the name is mutated Anywho the CDC reports that there have been what there have been 14,000 deaths 250,000 hospital of hospitalizations and 26 million infections from United States and only in the United States globally there are just over 75,000 COVID-19 cases that is the actual disease form of the virus SARS-CoV-2 Now there have also been 2014 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 But with this growing disease researchers have 3d modeled the structure of the SARS-CoV-2 protein spike and others have outlined the steps that are needed to To develop a vaccine for it Quarantines are still ongoing and those quarantines are affecting trade and scientific research So we will see how it plays out Now numbers that contrasted to each other are I think helpful So that people I don't know scare them about the regular influenza flu that comes around or or maybe Make maybe make the this pandemic that we're experiencing a little less scary Compared to the the the flu we already know Yeah, and I don't want to I don't want to minimize impact here But I do want to take this as an opportunity to remind everyone The way that you can help protect yourself from the flu and the way you can help protect yourself from this coronavirus Is to wash your hands not touch your face when you're in public spaces We just spent some time in airports and I made sure that I had my Hand sanitizer and I washed my hands before I ate anything after touching anything in the airports. So just good Personal hygiene and protection is still a good fight against These and many other diseases. And if you don't feel good, stay home if you can Absolutely. Yeah, okay I would love to introduce our guest for the evening. It's time for an interview everyone Our guest is Amy Shira title and she is an author and a space history junkie It's it's true. She blogs and vlogs at vintage space and has written several books the most recent of which Was released yesterday. Congratulations fighting for space. Yes This book this wonderful book tells the tale of two female american pilots and their efforts to go to space during the race to the moon And it it's a wonderful story. Welcome to the show. Amy. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for having me You're welcome How did you first Get into space? It's an I mean, it's not It's not abnormal for girls to like space, but It's it I guess not the the stereotype. So how did you first get into it fair fair? Um, it's awesome No, um, when I was seven and I was recently My science class had to do projects on planets and I ended up with venus through whether I picked it or not And I always just thought it was so cool that like it's it's about the same size of the earth But it's roastingly hot So it's like the earth turned inside out and it rotates backwards And you can see it without binoculars and to my seven-year-old brain That was the coolest thing in well off the world and I started getting all these books about space, you know thousand one facts were Facts about space for kids and stuff And in one of them there was this this two-page spread of a drawing of two astronauts on the moon in front of a lunar module It's a little cartoon. I was just like wait people walked on the moon. Why was I not informed? I would like to know of it this place. I'm from canada NASA isn't everywhere in canada So it's not like I grew up with like a grandfather who worked for Lockheed or you know We didn't have the same like space everywhere. So I just I I had to know about it And you know with anything something this big the more you read about it The more questions you ask the bigger the answer becomes and it just it's just been this thing that I've been Obsessed with since I was a kid. It's just There's always something new and there's always a new facet a new person a new angle There's always something something new to look at. It's always fun It is always fun there and I mean there are so many stories And you have found this I mean this story these parallel Tales of these women and the way that their lives intertwine And can you can you give us a synopsis of of this book and the two women that are the The main characters it's it's funny you ask that because I'm like still struggling to come up with the right elevator pitch of this book We'll help you practice. It's good. Oh, man. Yeah, it's it's really the the story of of of two Pilots and what what being a female pilot looked like at the time when America was starting to make the shift from aviation into spaceflight and for the women that wanted to be a part of that transition Um, and it it's kind of like it's set like a like a dual biography There's really close look at two women. The first is Jackie Cochran who held more records than anyone else Any other pilot in the 20th century like male or female? She was insanely talented and well regarded and um You know knew everybody I kind of described her like a real forest gump. She was friends with multiple presidents She saved lbj's life on a wednesday one day just like you do Right, she was such good friends with eisenhower that eisenhower wrote one of his memoirs at her house She was friends with chuck yeager who taught her how to fly a jet and she became the first woman to fly through the sound barrier She was the first woman to pilot obama overseas She led the women's air force service pilots in the second world war like she touched everything as did her husband Which which created like the most infant like power couple. You've never heard of he Owned arcale pictures for a minute. So it was you know, they controlled disney and like I have a great picture for Having lunch with carry grant who I love um, floyd also his his company was the atlas corporation, which you know Through subsidies and a built the atlas rocket um, he he he owned america and and jackie was right there benefiting from it and it's there they're kind of insane power coupleness just like she was everywhere and everything and Among their powerful friends was dr. Randy lovelace who did the um medical testing for nasa for the astronaut qualifications which if you've seen the uh the movie the right stuff that whole montage of you know, What's the same? Not woody harrelson the other guy. Anyways, I can't think of the actor's name with chuck glenn anymore. Um Yeah, blanket anyways them like blowing into tubes of water and like running down the hallway with enema bags and stuff Like that is what randy lovelace did for nasa and he put this younger woman jerry cob through the same testing And she just happened to be at the right age and the right place at the right time To to do it and then it kind of this the story kind of takes on this weird life of its own because You know how when when us, you know, a new paper comes out and it's like there's new evidence for Existence of past water on mars and then the headline is water on mars it's it was basically the same thing like randy lovelace presented this paper and was talking about how He put a woman through the tests and she fared quite well For the the astronaut medical tests and the headline is there's a woman astronaut in training It's like no, there isn't actually one and she like ran with this media for And then like randy lovelace being a good scientist knows that one data point is not enough So he wants to get more women involved and get more data points And then there's you know a handful go through the testing kind of pal mal a little bit And he asks his good friend jackie to like Help advise on the program and bring in more women So you've got these two kind of wrestling for control of this program. That's not actually a program It's a private medical investigation But jerry is like i'm gonna do all the testing and like gets herself some psychological testing And just like gets like figures out these things on her own And meanwhile like jackie's paying for all the girls to go and take time off to do these tests And they're trying that like they're both, you know, it's just while they're speaking at these events And jerry will go up in front of the crowd and say there's 16 women training to be astronauts And then jackie stands up right after her and gives her a speech like there is no women astronaut program Like it was just all over the map and the the best thing for me in in researching this book is that Jackie was a pack rat and she kept every single piece of paper and because she's friends with eisenhower It's all in the eisenhower library Wow So all of I have like the transcripts of these speeches exist the letters that they wrote to each other that jackie was cc'd on And she's not just writing these women and brandy lovelace like she she was writing lbj When he was vice president and president She was writing to jim web and all the navy brass and all these people who are involved in the story All of their correspondences and of course, you know, we forward emails They were sending each other carbon copies of letters. So jackie has it all I have it all So you have it all great. It was great to like pieces to write together and like I'd be like, oh my god This is you know, the story of like the mercury 13. I cannot use enough air quotes with that word the mercury So talk talk a bit about mercury 13 for people in our audience You might be unfamiliar with that and tell us this air quote story because this is fascinating in itself also Because the I mean I I have to put air quotes on mercury 13 because what I what I learned in Researching this is that that story is wrong So the typical story of the mercury 13 is that there was a group of 13 women led by the intrepid jerry cob who were trying to get nasa to Change the qualifications for astronauts to allow women to join the space agency in 1962 and it went all the way up to a house subcommittee hearing in in march of 62 And which jerry another one of these pilots janey heart and jackie testified on behalf of women and John glenn scott carpenter and george low testified on behalf of nasa and they didn't go anywhere the transcripts is Have some like amazing sexist moments even for 1962 And it just becomes this thing like the story that's always told is like this systemic sexism intrepid feminist rah, rah, rah This group of women was denied access when in reality this group of women never met And there were not 13 of them one of them dropped out. So really there were 12 So it's just like these little these little things like the the term mercury 13 was actually invented by a producer in hollywood In the 90s for a dateline segment And it stuck it's very catchy So so what I really wanted to do with this book is kind of tease it out and because I found all these letters I mean to find letters of you know There's a Some I can't refer to speech if it's a media a press conference But jerry says that she's representing the women because she did the testing first And then I have all these letters from all the other women writing to jackie saying jerry did not ask my permission to Speak for me. She is not my spokesperson. I do not like what she's doing And it's just there's division within the group that no one ever talks about so it was really interesting Division within the group that's not a real group. Yeah They they met you know, they they knew each other through through air races or through whatever You know, some of them They weren't tested as a group like in the movie because women Couldn't just take time off to do astronaut medical tests. They had to ask for time off They had to quit their jobs They had to find sitters to take care of their eight children in one woman's case So they kind of went like when they had a chance some of them got to test in pairs and got to meet each other But I think the the first time they really started meeting as a group was in the 90s They and by then two of them had passed away So they never they were never all in the same place at the same time So it's eight children Eight children You know what just go go ahead you pass I need to get out of the house Yeah, she was she was the wife of a senator on top of that. I can only imagine the insanity of like All of these things sure. I'll take a week off to do some medical tests. Let's find out Yeah, so did you get any amazing story? I've never heard of yeah, I know and I'm so excited that I get to tell us Yeah Aside from the you know the I guess the the ego and probably the drive of jerry Did you get any sense from uh, your readings of the letters and and all of the the transcripts Of really why was she pushing this narrative of the women astronauts? Why was I mean was it simply if she thought if she pushed the media enough that it would come true I think there's a little bit of that I I it reads to me a little bit like she started to believe her own hype quite a bit But she and she kind of presents it like there's this group if we're a united front You can't deny all of us like what you know one person it's harder to make a change But when you have a whole group coming in then you take them seriously Especially if they're they're all saying, you know, we're we're medically fit for spaceflight Which let's also be honest in the early 1960s being physically fit is like this Big a piece of like this piece of the needing to be an astronaut puzzle. I mean, yeah, it was sketchy. It was way sketchy back then So there's part of that but it's as she kind of gets As you start to read the the letters and I I quote a ton of them in there There's a lot of direct references you start to feel her desperation a little bit And to the point where she starts writing to jim webb and jfk and lbj once he's president saying I want to go to space and it stops becoming I want to I want to spearhead this on behalf of women to I want this for myself and it's like the the more she gets turned away and gets knows I mean, I have you know White has routing slips that she would send telegram to kennedy and he would route it to jim webb to be like Can you deal with this? You know as she's getting the blow off from all these places she starts just like Grasping at straws she asked lbj if she could fly the x15 And he's like no Do you know what the x15 is if anyone doesn't know the x15 traveled at about six point mock 6.7 And is uh, effectively it's a rocket with a cockpit on its air launch from underneath the b52 At altitude it rockets up into space is controlled like a spacecraft for a few minutes and then has to land Unpowered on a dry lake bed. I mean there's I think I think the x15 I can't I'm trying to pass. I think it had like 10 pilots ever I mean including neil armstrong Like these are not this is not an easy thing. You can't go from flying a propeller plane to flying the x15 And she would have to be a rocket jockey And it's I mean this is years of training. This is jet training and you know, she never flown a jet She had a lot of things that were missing and she was just so It became this almost desperate plea It was it was it's interesting till it's kind of see see how the tone changes as she as she continues pushing So it's weird though is I I just have uh, I've always been a fan of vintage science fiction Uh, and there was something that I noticed in in the outer limit series Which is like 61 62 maybe 63 is there a women astronauts? It's as if like Duh That was that's just normal there and which you did is if you look at earlier sci-fi It was thought of as men on a submarine going through space and suddenly there's all of these women's and I never had connected like What was in the air that could have uh, provoked the the writers to start throwing women science But this might be the background from it. This might be why they like oh I guess women can be scientists now with just put them into the show Yeah, there's definitely what did come. I mean, you know jerry and and these roles didn't get their chance to fly in space But what did come was this really big push at nasa to highlight women who were working with the space agency So starting around 1961 62 you see this like Huge explosion of nature articles and magazine articles about you know, there's there is a place for women in space And you know they Nancy grace roman is like heading every article that you find She was the I think the first woman head of a department at nasa. She was an astronomer I've got pictures of her, you know teaching buzz aldrin how to see stars and you know very cool stuff and Dio Herrera who is the astronauts nurse and they're highlighting all of these women who are playing these absolutely vital roles just Not the You know sexy astronaut getting free cars and groupies roles. So, you know, it's it's astronauts were it was a thing um, so there was this really interesting like push at nasa to start really being more aware of women and and opening to opening more positions to women and you there was this interesting shift that started and I think um You know, it's it happened just before that second wave of feminism too Where it was it was still kind of new for women to be in science at all But all of a sudden it did bring bring to light the fact that there are everywhere You just you just don't see them because you're kind of blinded by this like shiny man in a space suit Is is my microphone working? Uh, you are a little bit delayed from where I'm at, but yeah, you're working Okay, because I had my my computer did its little boop thing Oh, I think that's your off completely this time. Thanks cut me off. Yes So from jerry and her her uh attempts to go to space there's this story of of jackie and her historic her Her historic abilities in flight and her and her connection but her lack of support for jerry she was seeing Or stories have been told about her in a very negative light and yet Your book tells a different story. Yeah, um Yeah, I think it's because when you when you tell the typical story of the the mercury 13 and air quotes um There's always the the villain of jackie who's just this this older woman who like swoops down from her castle Thwarts the other young women and then just like goes back into the forest to confer with her pet raven I mean, she's basically maleficent. We don't know what her beef is But she just comes out and she's like super evil So I started looking into jackie a little bit because I realized that like there's some there's a very interesting interplay here And it definitely has to be more than just like this is a real story. This isn't just Pitting women against each other because it's a trope. There's there's something here um, so starting to look into jackie and realize that she's actually this amazingly complex dynamic Really phenomenal character. I mean, I don't want to get into her backstory But you just even her her upbringing She grew up incredibly poor in florida and the beauty industry was her way out of poverty And she she learned to fly because her husband before they were married But her husband suggested well if you want to sell cosmetics During the depression you need to cover more ground. So just learn to fly and she's got her she's got her palpite So it's in 17 days, which is like Yeah, she's such a gifted aviator and just like You know, she learned to fly in 1932 in 1938 She won the bendix transcontinental air race, which is like the biggest air race in the country at the time Like she and this was not a female race This was she and amelia airheart who were buds by the way Like were the first Were some of the first women start campaigning to make it a mixed gender race. So I realized that she'd done a lot Whether, you know, in some cases she wanted to do it for herself because she wanted to win these races but she'd done a lot of Of fighting for women's rights and aviation on her own So she'd done a lot of this work already. So why is she coming in as the villain? And I think it's because I really do you think she She had a different understanding of what it meant to break barriers for women Like she went through a lot to get the women's air force service pilots going She went through a lot to be able to do some of the things she did She was under a lot of criticism a lot quite often when she was flying a jet For the first time people said that she was just, you know seducing air force generals to buy her way into a plane and it's like And Chuck Eggerson, they're like, no, she can actually fly the thing that you can't like, you know She'd been through a lot of this and I think she understood that like The reality of 1962 is if a rocket blows up with a guy on it It's because the technology is really new and really scary and we're still figuring out space If a rocket blows up with a with a woman on it It's because the woman wasn't doing her job right and it may be that having known all these great aviators You're not up to you don't have the right stuff. Yeah It was really that's like this interesting thing where she kind of knew like you got to play the game a little bit Like this is this is not a thing where you can just like say you want to do it and just claim that you're you're qualified like These things are in place for a reason what you can do I mean what she was arguing to do was do this like big scale research program on women such that when NASA was like We need female astronauts. She could be like, here's the report. You have everything you need start immediately Like that's kind of the point and that makes for 1962 it makes a lot of sense Especially when you consider in 1962 NASA was a year into the moon landing program. NASA was still trying It was hadn't figured out the mission mode yet of like lunar orbit rendezvous versus descent like NASA had bigger issues Then gender equality in 1962 and that sounds like I mean very dated, but it is dated I mean when we're talking about that era That's going to be the bigger concern than a couple of women saying that they feel it's unjust And you know, it's it's one of those things. It's you can't take it out of time um So yeah, it becomes this really interesting thing of like Which one of them was playing the game right because they were both playing the game Then that's what that's what I'm hearing too is if you're gonna Make waves you have to do it right the first time or you end up doing more harm than good And that's and that's kind of what I've got letters from other women and also letters from from jackie saying that You know nagging people that are in charge is not the way to ingratiate yourself to them this is actually potentially harming women's entrance into space and um It was actually I think I should I should have checked this before I came on with you guys But I think it was the fourth group of astronauts or maybe the fifth. Anyways, it was like 1965 or 66 NASA recruited a group of scientist astronauts And this was like to start bringing in actual science people who could help on the moon landing like jack schmidt Who was on a poly 17 was in that group and that group actually had four women make it quite close to the selection Because they didn't need to be pilots. They just had to have a scientific expertise And I I haven't dug into this in too much too much detail But I I kind of suspect like if if none of this stuff happened And four women were up it might have been the case that without having been dealt with as like pr nightmare Four years earlier. NASA might have given more consideration to bringing in women Earlier than the 80s because that's ultimately how nasa Started bringing in women. They made it made the division between pilots and mission specialists the mission specialists I mean, that's what sally ride. That's a lot of the first women were in that scientist camp So it's it's a question of yeah, if you If you're trying to change something as big as systemic sexism in the space program You know, you got to you got to Do it do it right and I just think they were both going at it for with very different goals and very different ways and Yeah Neither of them really got there Right, neither of them got there. I mean for for jackie, too. It was probably you know Generational Also, I mean she was starting to As go to pilot as she was at a certain point you you're gonna age out Wait too old. She was yes gosh, she was in her 60s by then I can't math But she was she was nearing 60. She was nearing 60 by that point. So she was too too old by any any uh By any stretch, but I think she Been around enough to sort of know what needs to happen to create a big change Right Sorry, go ahead. Oh, yeah, I'm just I mean the and and knowing the people that she knew I mean she was close in to political circles and People who were working on big strategic efforts Yeah, you know on on many different Many different areas of the public sphere and so she probably had An amazing bird's-eye view into how to navigate those waters and make something happen. Yeah Yeah, that's a mix of like I was gonna say it's makes it like she knew how things worked, but she also had everyone in her pocket like she could get to the deciders with a phone call, I mean She had a very unique perspective in a unique position and and and used it when she needed to which was fairly often That's amazing From the perspective of the uh, the women's rights. I mean The timing for you to write this story now. Do you feel like this? This is this is the right time to be telling this particular story It definitely feels like it's a a good moment to be talking about this kind of stuff and bringing it up and There's a there's a lot of elements and it's not even just like the straight up Women fighting to chain Fighting for their space to use the title Be it, you know Jackie fighting for her space in the aviation world or jerry fighting for literal space You know, it's it's that that element is timely But there's so many other other parts of this that I think are very relevant One of my favorite elements of Jackie is that she ran this cosmetics company that was one It was one of the top luxury brands in the country right along with Elizabeth Arden And she refused to compromise femininity because it was also it was as big a part of her as her technical skill And there's a great. I have so many pictures of this, but there's a great picture. I have of her She's sitting there on the tarmac in front of a t-38 jet in her flight suit putting on her lipstick And you can just see Chuck Yeager behind her like head on his head She's like She would win an air race and she'd see the press and she's like well I have to fix my face and she like developed all these like just think all the perk up stick That's like, you know the stackable makeup things But like really nice quality ones because they're from the 40s and she would have it in her pocket And she'd you know, touch up her her rouge and her lipstick and she's like she's making all these men wait Like she turned this typically feminine thing into a power move and she's like Why would you rush me if I'm gonna have my picture taken? I'm not I'm gonna be happy with it like she she kind of was that like demanding woman and like every facet of her life And I think there's a lot of things to be gained from a lot of facets of the story and at the end of the day It's just it's so nice to write Write something this big that's like The women are the ones in charge the women's are the one the women's the women are the ones in the cockpit. It's like I kind of describe it's like, you know kind of top gun or ford versus feet for Words are hard ford versus ferrari, but like the women are the ones in the in the cockpits They're the ones driving they're the ones putting their lives on the line all all over the place and they They still also have romances and it's just they're very complete characters And it was really fun to bring all of their elements to life and just you know, I'm I'm hoping that Whatever you're whoever you prefer because I feel like they're very dividing characters You're either to happy or to cherry a little bit And in either case like you're gonna be inspired by something that they've done whatever it is And there's just there's so much kind of amazing inspirational elements in both of their stories That it's really fun to bring it up, especially now when we're sort of You know, especially now, but I'm a little upset that I haven't heard this story No, I know this is fantastic But it's it's incredible that it's there and that it's that you're going to be able to tell this in this way But yeah, it's overdue. This is a very overdue story that needs to be told Could not believe I think well, so Jackie died in 1980, which I don't know like When people stopped writing about her I mean, no, everyone knows Amelia Earhart and she did not do nearly what Jackie did and you know, I've been going I go to all every aviation museum. I go near I stop in and look and there's always like a weird little, you know Display case with like something of Jackie in it and like now that I'm looking now that I'm aware of her Like she's everywhere, but no one's ever really good and you know, the last book written about her was like 20 years ago I mean, it's just It's weird. It's weird that it's not it's not more known I'm like, I'm so excited to bring it to people because I just she's so awesome And like this take on the story that's not, you know, not the Hollywood version Although there's definitely like Hollywood story in here But you know, not the version of of these women banding together for something that's not real I mean, it's I'm so excited to have it and have it with so many references Not I was I loved I mean just the historian of me is like I love that I have the words to put in people's mouths Like just being able to have all of their letters everything that they actually said is just like this is wild Yeah, that's a treasure trove. Yeah, you're fantastic. So how are you how are you telling this story? How are you getting this story out there? What do you mean? Wait, it's it's in a book. It's in the book. All right. I just I didn't see the thing I held it up in the beginning of the show So there's okay, there's a couple verses and and when will the movie be out TV tvd is that the one? Um tvd follow my twitter for updates on that one No, the book came out yesterday. So it's it's available all across the united states and canada As well as the audiobook that I Narrated this time which was a trip in and of itself Fantastic. Did you did you narrate it in an actual audio booth or in your closet? Oh, no in an actual audio booth Thankfully, I did not have to sit there and like then edit it's 11 and a half hours I think thankfully I did not have to sit there and edit that because You know, I wouldn't do that but they they offered me the chance Actually, it was one of the first things because I didn't get to narrate my first audiobook And I know people because my voice is you know with the youtube channel and stuff people know my voice and we're like It's weird that it's your words, but not your voice. So actually that's one of the first things I told my agent was like, okay great contract. Also. I'm narrating the audiobook She's like it's a lot of work and I'm like no no I'm doing it because I got a lot of feedback about people wishing it was in my voice. So No, I spent I spent six days with a lovely engineer named denis who was responsible for saying slow down every other sentence because I talk really fast You need to slow down. People will listen to it at one and a half or two times speed. Just slow it down Yeah, no, it's And I love you know when you flub a sentence You're supposed to say pick up to just kind of go back to the top of that sentence to redo it But my canadian was just like, oh, sorry. So just sorry It became the the cut one Yeah It was fun The editor like figured out what the what the frequency which pattern is for that story Yeah So no, I would not I couldn't do the audiobook myself. I was I don't have that kind of skill or patience But it's great to be able to but great to be able to work with a professional to be able to get it edited And but it's your voice in the final product, which is going to be which is really nice Yeah, and that's also available to and ebooks If you are you know, don't like physical things Yeah, no, that's it. I I've been seeing those all over the place. It's apparently it's catching on Yeah, I don't know. I feel like I I read in bed every night and drop books all the time And like the last thing I want to do is drop a very, you know metal ear reader on my face Yeah, that'll happen But that was just on a couple of very long flights and there were like there were people There were people reading throughout the flight but without the without a physical I get it. I mean my my carry-ons would be way lighter if I did that but I don't know. I'm tactile I would love to know from I mean Will you tell people whether you're on team jackie or team jerry? Me personally. Yeah, I I mean I or are you staying unbiased as the historian storyteller I I definitely have an opinion. I I definitely I mean, I don't know if I should like ruin the surprise But do you want to take a gas flare because you're like I mean it sounds to me like your team jackie Yeah, I think I think she I think she kind of knew what she was talking about I think she had enough behind her that like You know, sometimes you you got to trust the the experience that weighs into Something like this like making a huge change in the country. Um, but I went writing it. I didn't want to lead Lead the witness at all. I tried to keep it not witness is a weird thing but I tried to keep it quite balanced and and let you kind of see for yourself where it goes and um, I actually Stumbled upon I was in the the osnhera library and I was just out of curiosity looking through some of floyd's papers jackie's husband Um looking through some financial stuff just to see, you know, they spent I forget what it was But something like $50,000 or something weird on flowers every month like just to see how like what their money was actually doing It was weird. Yeah, they had two houses too. It was deaf gosh anyways, um, and I I found a couple of like extra letters and stuff that I I one is kind of Is the central piece of the epilogue which kind of Gives you my my opinion because I I included it but I don't want to ruin it But it's there's just this one thing that kind of throws a lot of stuff into question right at the end And it was just like I found this thing and I was just like I struck gold paper gold Yeah, oh that's that I thought as a historian and a storyteller that must that kind of digging and Forensic search where you start laying it layering it all together to you know Create the story and the tension and being able to put it all together in a way That's got to just be so fun. It was great I mean one of just the little things like everyone everything's obviously dated and they write letters at the in the 50s and 60s was as per my letter or in reply to your letter of november 3rd So you have all these dates to line up and you can see like on the third saturday of the month And like you can find the calendar and you can see you can put people in the same Day in different places based on these letters and recollections and it just becomes this like Building the story out of all of this stuff and it was really so fun. It was so fun to see it all coming together I wonder how your job is going to be in say 20 or 30 years Where all of a sudden you're downloading people's google maps history in there Yeah, every time I I find weird stuff you find like conference, uh You know itineraries and stuff and like the digital age is going to be so fun for the next generation historians If I ever do something that's not mid-century and how is that kind of data like it's going to be fun It's going to be a lot of annoying digging But you're going to be able to build something so complete that it's going to just be kind of beautiful If it's preserved so that's those interesting things like the letters got collected and they got uh sent to those This library in different places, but who's who's dying and having all their emails sent somewhere I mean, I don't know how this you just send the password to the museum Sum honestly, I assume that like google has the main server That's just keeping a record of every gmail email ever sent. So like every server has But like you're never going to lead it because it has to exist somewhere in that server I I don't know. I don't know enough about how like the computer archaeology stuff works I've like looked into it a little bit just out of curiosity But like eventually somehow there will be records of everything like everything that you do on your phone your provider knows And that data has to be stored somewhere at least for a month Which means it's like the temporary storage can be rewritten But like it depending on the kind of storage you could Potentially still find record of it if you needed to although that would probably be really difficult Don't know But well and so many things now you you link to your social media, which we know social media Oh, that never goes away. Yeah, I mean people link their venmo account to their facebook So, you know exactly what people are spending money on and in terms they share it on their facebook So yeah, there's gonna be this amazing kind of footprint. Yes, everybody. Yeah, we all have we Old gen xer here is like shaking. I'm shaking my head going. Why why do people do this? Yeah It's wild, but there's yeah for the future historians That's why for the future historians because they will definitely need to know what we spent on lunch And what we got for lunch in 2012 This is here. Karen on vicky six dollars for brunch. Yeah We got Do you think that in the future? You know looking back at the history. Do you think that future Future missions to mars or the moon or nasa considering where they've been in the past where we are now with The astronauts that we've got and also with future Private space travel. Do you think that we're going to be struggling with similar issues? I hope I hope not. I hope not and I hope that we're starting to to kind of Take the the stance of like well, we are all humans Humans do things therefore. Let's pick humans and you know that we'll we'll stop having the the gender discrimination any racial Discrimination that's just like here's the best humans for this job. Like we need to dig a mine on mars Here's your eight people that are the world experts on this who can do this They are the people and I think I think like taking that stance of looking at the human ability And just will allow you know the next and I say this without having kids So, you know, this is just my wishful thinking of like we'll help the next generation and the generation after that See that like it doesn't matter who you are if what you do is really inspirational You can still learn from it and you can still be inspired by it and that you know It doesn't matter who's in charge. You see someone who's in charge as the kid They are the authority and you learn that everyone therefore can be unauthority So as we start getting into, you know, these feature long long term space missions and stuff that it's just like These astronauts, whoever they are do amazing human things because we are all humans And we finally stopped just fighting about petty things together and like let this be the thing that helps us show like look These humans did something awesome and they all look like all of us and we can all do the things That let's do the things humans my like rainbows and unicorns vision for the future Where we stop having to have this conversation about about gender and everything And we're just we're people who are doing something amazing together as people You know, it's gonna it'll take a while and you know, so I think I think nasa is there The question I have definitely getting there. Yeah question. I have is is nasa the one that's going Oh golly, who knows? Oh, that's I know I having you know, I I don't I don't work for any of these people's and like I I don't I haven't I've been so living in like 1940 to 60 for so long at this point I don't really know what's going on right now. I'm very confused about this whole internet technology. Um I don't really know what's going on with spacex and I feel like Because it's a private company they might have some magic figured out that I don't know yet But last I talked to people at nasa about it. We don't We can't land humans on mars yet. We're not quite there The parachute I mean I the parachute technology to slow something down to actually Land softly with humans is not there yet. So like physical landing is really hard To have retro rockets that rockets not getting off the earth right now Like we'd have to start doing like a fun brownie and like build your thing in orbit and send it to mars, which like who's gonna actually start with the infrastructure because Yeah, we change leadership so much. It's impossible to actually get something going that lasts And you know, that's that's a challenge in itself. So I don't I don't really know. I think I don't know Relanted the booster rockets and you got to reason from that point on I'm stopped. I've stopped questioning Once that happened, I'm like, uh, this they're going to figure it out On some big crazy some promises that seem pretty crazy. So I mean, who he might he might figure it out. I I don't know. Um Yeah, I don't know it's I I can't really I just I can't say with any certainty because like I ultimately think like how How many times has the mars mission been pushed back? Like we were supposed to go in in 1989, right? We're supposed to go in the 70s Then we're supposed to do it in 30 years in 1989 and it's just like everyone keeps having mars It's like they're attempted a kennedy moment with the moon and like then mars is really hard and expensive And is like well beyond anybody's term in office. So like it disappears Like this is the cycle that we keep going through and I think until Either something or SpaceX like Really laying that foundation. I I don't know. I don't know until we get until we get to the moon moon base We're doing this year. We're going back to the moon this year. Or at least that was the last proposal of going to the moon So 20 years ago is that we're gonna do it 2020? I thought it was no the first flight was now in 2021 Yeah, I think it was last year it was moved back Yeah, but that's for a rover mission not for a man No, we were supposed to land again 20 years ago. We were going to be landing on the moon again now I think we were supposed to actually have humans circumnavigating the moon Last year, which is then pushed to next year, but I still don't really know what the status of that mission is And this is this is the one too that I think it's supposed to be like the all-female crew which to me feels like Tokenism a little bit like a little I don't I don't feel like we need to have an all-female crew for the sake of having an all-female crew Again, let's get the right humans for what we need to be doing and show that it's about merit Not about what you look like. Well, and that also still Is that the expectation of otherism with the wind? Yeah, yeah, so other than just integrating That's my biggest frustration with like and even I mean, you know, I as much as I I love sort of like the the women empowerment Like conferences and stuff I feel like all that needs to happen in a mixed environment So that little boys also grow up seeing that like women and little girls grow up seeing that like women in charge Women doing these things is not limited to only within women that like we don't do this apart from everything else we do this Period like that's and that's kind of why I love Jackie is like a really cool model of like Doing what you can do because you know, you can do it and shut up if you think you can't like She's she's that You know a century ago So yeah, I know that it's that that yeah that otherness of women that otherness is just sort of like Kind of leaves that bad taste on now Yeah, I know what you mean So you are uh going to be current right now you're going around and promoting your book And you're probably going to be too. Are you touring around? Places or are you I've got like I'll do this too. Burn it into your brains Um, so far. I've got a handful of things coming up nothing. Uh, no like crazy tour Um, but you know, if there's if there's a good reception and there's interest like yeah, of course I'll promote it because why would why would I spend three years writing this and not want to promote it? um, so I've got a couple of I've got like four or five events coming up the next couple weeks and uh, yeah, we're kind of just I'm kind of playing it by ear and Getting back into like the youtube channel and you know all that other stuff Yeah, are you doing are you going to be doing more of your vintage space videos and Yeah, I actually just rebranded the channel to the vintage space to kind of open me up a little bit to stuff That's that's vintage but not strictly spaceflight because there's a lot of stuff that was great in the book that couldn't get in there That I I really want to talk about and I want to share and it's it's awesome and and it fits within vintage But you know, it's a space for vintage things too now um, so kind of getting back to that and getting back to blogging and and um, Kind of figuring out what happens next Yeah, finding the next amazing story. I know that much. Um, yeah Yeah, congratulations on surviving looking for the next big thing, but I also am like, let's let's sleep and vacation That sounds like a wonderful plan. So we will let you get to sleep So the vintage space Yes, if you if you yes, yeah, if you um Yeah, all of the plugs um the vintage space with the youtube channel, although If you search vintage space, you still find it which is convenient for google search analytics. Um, also on twitter Amy sure title is where I do most of my shameless self promotion as well as advertising and letting you guys know about Event signings anything I have coming up and also like what my new youtube video is when I do have one It's an irregular schedule right now because the there's a decent amount of travel happening Um, and yeah, that's uh, that's kind of everything kind of lives on on twitter is kind of like the main spot So that's the best place to follow me fantastic I hope many people follow you and Check out your book. Yeah available everywhere in america and canada Wonderful and hopefully soon in other languages in other countries. Yes. Yeah, that's that's to come I will announce when that happens on twitter Well, I'll be following you and I'm gonna and I'm gonna definitely check this book out. Thank you guys Thank you so much for you know letting me kind of Rant a little bit about this stuff. I'm clearly have a lot to say I love it. It's fun to share this It's fun to finally have it out in the world and be able to share it So yeah, I imagine you hold it close to your chest while you're While you're fostering it and bringing it into its form and then now it's like I can talk about it Yes Yeah, exactly all the details Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you guys Yeah, have a wonderful night Everyone that was amy shira title fighting for space is her book And we are going to take a very quick break And we'll be back in just one moment with more this week in science Thank you for being a part of this week in science. Thank you for watching on youtube or facebook Thank you for listening to our podcast wherever you are listening And you are the reason we're able to do what we do every week bringing you up to date And down to earth views on science. It's great. It's all because of you And with your help we can do even more together We can bring a sane perspective to a world full of misinformation Head to twist.org right now Click on the patreon link and choose your level of support be a part of Bringing sanity and science to more people We couldn't do it without you And we're back with more this week in science We have stories. I said it was a quick break. Justin didn't believe me No, he definitely did This is the new flow of the show We're trying to do I'm trying to do some new things to break it up a little bit Make things move a little bit more quickly and so Yeah, we're not going to do that big old long break there in the middle anymore It's going to be it's going to be much shorter. We'll see. We'll see. I think it's a better idea, but Let's talk about science. Are you ready for that Blair? Oh, I'm ready You are ready for science. So let's talk about the self-replicating nature of nature Self-replicating nature you're talking about dna? Yeah Oh, okay. Good job. Oh, you jumped on that very quickly life. Yeah life It replicates itself. That is one of the hallmarks of life if it doesn't replicate itself Well, it's not going anywhere and that's not that's not how it works Researchers in synthetic biology have been attempting to mimic biology But artificially and in doing so over the past several years we have gotten things like artificial ribosomes where the RNA the DNA and the and the RNA that are necessary to Produce the proteins that create the ribosomes which then put together the proteins that we need to have ourselves function that they're able to work together and and And that has been one separate Effort other efforts have taken genes and put them into bacteria We've taken genes from one bacteria and put them in other bacteria last weekend. We started talking to David Baker over at university of washington who is working to make completely synthetic proteins and now researchers from the max plonk institute have published in nature communications their paper called in vitro self-replication and multi-cystronic expression of large synthetic genomes lot of words put shortly is that They have created a A pilot system. It's this is the early stages still this isn't in Completely artificial cells. It's a cell-free system, which pretty much means in a dish. They've got a bunch of DNA and RNA and it works together and There's transcription which copies the DNA into RNA Translation which takes that RNA and turns it into a string of amino acids and then protein production and they showed through mass spectros mass spectroscopy that increased levels of protein We're showing up compared to their starting system They have a system that is 116 kilobases Which is really short 116 kilobase pairs of DNA is Really close to what is thought to be the smallest genome size possible for a cell genome to To live and be self replicating The smallest that they have seen That's estimated that it for it to work is 113 kilobase pairs and that's a natural system so this synthetic system is Not much not much bigger 3000 kilobase pairs bigger and Has RNA polymerases which are the enzymes necessary for a transcription translation to take place we have They have a bunch of genes that they did take from e. Coli And put in there to create the the genome, but in this cell-free system DNA was copied and pasted and copied and pasted and copied and pasted and it was self replicating itself you know And just working synthetic genome How's DNA do as DNA do? Yeah The DNA did They did what they do best Yeah, the the exciting part of this is that in the future They'll be able to take this system at least where they hope they'll be able to take this system will be able to They'll be able to potentially make a minimal a minimal by a minimally viable cell and m MVC That could be used in biotech to synthetically produce Substances that we want Yeah, so my first question is was there a purpose with the proteins that they had? Were they were they right so so but no it was just all furthering the this was all just furthering self-replication But that's that's the thing so what biotechnology does is they back engineer the entire process They find an organism and they try to tweak it so that it produces Uh a protein that they want but of course there's all this other stuff that the organism was was uh evolved to do That the process is an energy that's being used up in other places That's such a uh tremendous goal there is to start and have minimum thing that makes Uh what you want it to do that a cell that's going to to be very specific and efficient at it um Could be tremendous and just Yeah, converting carbons and what you're putting into beat it in the whole Yeah, and the so what you're talking about is that is is a top-down method take something alive and tweak it And what this is is bottom up. Yeah, it's designing it from the bottom up and this is uh So it's taking principles from nature. Yeah, yeah, and then you don't end up with a car That's got like three extra wheels that don't touch the ground and like all this other stuff that came with the thing You started adding things on to or tweaking that you don't actually need But just came with the rest of the the architecture And what i'm imagining is this bottom up design would be I think more A better application of the synthetic proteins that uh david bakers lab From our interview this last weekend That it seems as though it would be a better application because then again you're dealing from the bottom up With the specific Uh the specific blueprint to So you've designed the protein you designed the protein that you want that'll function exactly how you want It's in it's itself the minimum and the exact and the most efficient version And then you create an organism that is the most efficient at making that protein and there you have together The the thing it revolutionizes everything that we think we've got so far from biotechnology Unlocks that field for reals For reals. So this is Yes, pretty exciting. I think it's uh, I think this is a big step Towards actually creating a self replicating system that mimics biology It's it's a big one And we've talked about the show how we're always sort of this is the greatest time to be Thinking talking about science and the potential when we're talking about science Because we're always getting to see firsthand is these things come across the the crawl of the this show But the what's been happening lately is really bigger and more promising and massively game changing Uh compared to I think anytime we've been on this show And talking about these it's it's all the all that potential All that potential that we've been talking about is the genome has been unlocked and as they've learned to do and play with And got more taken out all the potential that's there is starting to turn into Actionization Yeah, I think in in Maybe as little as 20 years medicine will be unrecognizable Yeah, awesome. You need to wait in the best way. Absolutely the best way to wait that long It's it it'll be less before it starts happening But i'm saying in 20 years you're gonna go you used to do what used to put a dead person's stuff in your body Crazy I don't used to make antibodies by putting dead stuff inside of you You took people who are already sick with cancer and then you expose them to massive levels of radiation What? The memories the memories. Oh the memories back in the days of leaching people with radiation You know, you know birds have long memories, too I do They do a new paper in biology letters uh from a researcher out of victoria university in new zealand rachel shaw Uh and her co-authors they looked at A little songbird new zealand's north island robin's petroica longi pez This is also known as tutu why in maori and these birds Based off Okay, the reason i'm bringing you the story is because this is a memory and bird study And for those of you who've listened to the show for a long time You'll know that my phd was in bird memory and in my studies What we did is we had these little trays and they had little covers over holes and One out of seven holes was filled with food and we trained zebra finches and other species of birds to go and Take these little lids off the tray and find the food and over time when they learned where the food was They got really good at finding it. So it would only take them one or two lifts and they would be like I found my food and it was really great We only ever looked at their memory Over I mean, maybe the the longest duration between Testing intervals was a week So we weren't we weren't testing Really long-term memory however This story I love because shaw was studying these birds previously and she trained them to Open up and i'm gonna i'm gonna show you a little uh little picture Let's see if i can get back to the right window because technology is being hard right now When it works, it's beautiful. Yeah, and so this is a very wonderful design of a tray with holes drilled in it and her little lids were The birds had to they were held on by screws And so they would rotate around the screw and the bird had to push The lid to be able to find mealworms that were hidden inside of one of the holes in the tray She did these studies back in she's published a study on these back in 2017 Showing that look these birds can learn this food finding task. Ta-da very similar to the work that I did now She went back to new zealand and was giving a talk And happened to have the trays there and a bird when these little robins hopped out of the the the forest and Opened one of the lids and was looking for food As if it remembered the task like a year or two later So that was a very long period of time later. And so it led her to think Huh, I wonder how long these birds memories actually last Because the idea is oh, they just have to have this seasonal memory So their memories are going to be there only like one season and then go away Right, if you only have to remember where your food is to survive during winter or breeding season Why why is it going to matter? Well, except those things then Kick back in the next time that season comes around Right, but it'd be rough to come up with a whole new strategy every year. Okay. Exactly. And so I'm a bird I have wings And so so that's that would be the other side of it is okay. Perhaps these are longer Food finding strategies and these memories are are deeper and longer because of this so they learned Anyway, she went back. She tested the birds again. She found out that yes, indeed They are able to remember this food finding task for up to two years and now she's wanting to test them even longer To see how long They can remember this task so for one one thing comes to mind right away and that is migration So if birds if we're just generalizing to birds, there are some birds that migrate Yes, you need to know some birds are really good at going back Exactly where they came from being able to forage in the same spaces and It just makes sense that there is some long-term memory involved with that It does but if you don't look at it, you never know. Yeah, and this is what we come back to Yeah, and this is my other kind of I think we've talked about this on the show before And this might be a really silly question, but like how much How many longitudinal like really long-term studies are there out there? because PhD projects and even postdocs are only so long And it just how many People how many advisors are out there that are fostering the same study Over 10 or 20 or 30 years and how either Yeah, they're they are a rarity. So these types of studies that do go on Long when we find out about them. It's one of those especially for a science writer or a journalist. You're like This is exciting. We can this is an amazing thing that that is going on these and um, you know more so in human studies because humans are so long-lived but Animal studies you can definitely You know five ten years. Maybe you can learn a lot And I think still a long time and I think you know some of that might have to do with We maybe need to adjust how certain universities have phd candidates defend a thesis or or a phd project because If if you're supposed to be finding things in the course of study But you're really just contributing data to this very long-term study Maybe yeah, I'm just this might be a meta thing that I'm bringing up here But I think that that might be something that could be looked at is how do we change kind of the nature of academia? to contribute more to long-term studies and less to something of Design a project do a project. Tell us what you found right Now I think the uh, you know the question also is with this This particular This particular study is getting back to the birds What you know, what are the aspects of the task that they remember? You know if the tasks were more complex Would they? Remember it as well. If it is it just oh, I remember this box. I'm not afraid of it I can move the little lid then that's more a procedural memory than it is a a spatial memory or a contextual memory Right like association versus logic versus problems up. Yeah, it's a lot of different Yeah, that's interesting Oh, yeah, I really I really liked it. I think it was Little birds and probably many more animals as we have said many times probably have Very great memories Animals animals are smart and they remember things And we need to fund longer-term studies so that we can discover more of this more easily There we go. That said Justin, what do you bring to talk about today? Oh, okay, this is The Okay, so this is from Shenadar cave in Kurdistan Uh, some new neanderthans. So anybody who has been closely tracking neanderthans stories over the years might Uh, remember this cave and it might sound like an old story. This site is one where archaeologist Ralph So lecky discovered About 60 years ago a whole bunch Of neanderthals 10 of them Some clustered together We found some clumps of ancient pollen surrounding one of them Many of the skeletons showed signs of being cared for because they had injuries or disease That had healed. They were a little bit older than we might have expected. Some almost my age even Uh, so this was some evidence that they had been married Uh, and then further studies found that they might have been well cared for Uh, there may have been Funerary rites a little bit of a mortuary thing going on with the flowers from the pollen so, uh As as this is uh as can happen in science. There was not agreement Uh about all the implications of this and certainly of seeing this picture so far into the past and extrapolating Why these were found there when we've reported on ups and downs of this to some extent There was one study that uh had concluded that They had been crushed in the cave. That's why they were buried because the the cave had had fallen down upon them um And then another study went back and goes no the yeah the skulls were crushed and the bones were sort of broken up But that's just what you would expect it with you know, 50 60 70 thousand year old bones They could have still been laid in place So lots of lots of uh There was a study that said that the pollen could have just as easily come in from animals There's another one that said the pollen that was found it looked like it was made up of things That would have been considered medicinal herbs uh in the ancient world And so maybe they were they were funerary rites after all Anyway, there were attempts to keep people alive that they were had on them To treat injury or illness of that sort of thing. So there's been tons of controversy on this uh, so uh Professor graham barker from cambridge mcdonnell in the student of archaeology wanted to go back And redate this cave redate the soil and and take a little Return look he started trying to go back over a decade ago, uh, but of course this is in Kurdistan In iraq and there was there have been wars and there was ISIS things so they've been having a hard time getting back finally got back and 2016 and started To to go about their work Uh, and this is quotey voice from barker We didn't expect to find any neanderthal bones because of course what they were there to do was just to Revisit that site and redo some of the studies with modern equipment and But of course that's exactly what they did. They found another neanderthal Buried in this cave. Uh, they dated it to over 70 000 years ago and they have dubbed it Shen Dar z The new excavation. This is quotey voice uh, quoting barker The new excavation suggests that some of these bodies were laid in a channel in the cave floor created by water Which had then been intentionally dug to make it deeper There is strong evidence that Shenadar z was deliberately buried If neanderthals were using Shenadar cave is a site of memory for the repeated ritual and tournament of their dead It would suggest cultural complexity of a higher order even than has been applied to them so, uh, they've they've CT scanned the bones at Cambridge and they've found Uh, some some interesting the wedge at the base of the skull appears to be intact And that is a pretty decent spot apparently for retrieving ancient neanderthal dna So they're going to be able to uh going forward try to take a look at the genetics Of this new find which should answer some more questions as well as get the all the data that they literally went searching for which You know, you're going there for soil sample dating and then you find in neanderthal They got a little sidetracked, but uh, we're going to keep our eye on Shenadar cave and Kurdistan in the future to see what new rounds this investigation is going to give us I think it's exciting. I mean every time news comes out about neanderthals neanderthal neanderthal um, it's just like it's like the animal news. It's like of course they were Complex and they had culture and they had all these abilities that we once upon a time Said no no no no no only humans only that only humans which also turns out neanderthals are part of us also So that's also fun Yeah well and now cave art that we had associated with some of the ancient cave art that we associated with with uh Early current modern humans is now much too old and has to be neanderthal So yeah, I've taken together if you took what we know now Uh about neanderthals and Shenadar cave had just been discovered By Ralph then then his conclusions that he was coming up with would have not been outrageous at all What he observed and the inferences he took from it would have fit nicely to what we now know The fact that we didn't know anything they were neanderthals were supposed to be knuckle dragging caveman offshoot dead end of prominence and and weren't supposed to uh be part of the picture going forward And so and so that was also part of what uh, what that was at the end what was understood so far about neanderthals So his discovery was met with considerable and Probably do skepticism because of that Yeah, if it had been discovered today, they would have had a very different Take on on that because of all the other observations elsewhere that fit with it And it wouldn't be a standalone sort of data point of showing more of a complex society with neanderthals Yeah, it this really highlights the the importance of the timing of scientific discoveries That if they do not fit within the milieu of what is commonly understood It's not, you know, it's not met well But if it is it's it's evidence of its data that comes in at a time When people are seeing other things when the when the environment is more welcoming to that Perspective then it then it it finds it's it finds its kin more easily. I don't it just is um Very interesting person to say dinosaurs had feathers were they were laughed at Yeah, absolutely dinosaurs. They're lizards. They don't have they didn't have feathers. What no And I think it's important that the people understand that this is how science is really supposed to work So when you hear that scientists are disagreeing about something or where there are arguments in science So many people believe that science when they stop learning science. It was a hard science It was it was these are the laws. These are the facts. Science is a thing of set in the term When you watch a nova special, it's a great example to me A lot of the times they are telling you all the things that we know and whatever the subject is that they're covering What they sometimes leave out is all the different opinions that came and all the arguments and all the new evidence That had to come along to piece all of these portions together to to make that definitive Claim that science makes. So most of science There's uncertainty. There is uncertainty. There's doubt. There's questions. There's there's uh, there's an observation That has a very good signal of this is what I think it is and somebody says I don't see it completely differently And it's not until more and more data points are collected and put together that we can start to have a Uh a better view of it. So and I just think the public needs to know more Uh more that this is a process this science thing. It's it's uh It's supposed to have people raising doubts within the science community as they argue back and forth about Yes, it is So It is now time That time in the show Oh, but if you just tuned in you're listening to this week in science And if you're interested in a twist shirt or mug or other item of twist merchandise We have stuff you can head to twist.org and click on the zazzle link to browse our store And now it's time for blairs animal corner And I'm so excited because I think this might actually be the first time since I got a theme song that I actually have some millipeds to discuss iPad milliped There we go. So millipedes actually is how they're pronounced. Um, they are arthropods. They are invertebrates They do not have a thousand feet the the biggest and oldest ones have closer to 300 maybe 400 feet But they have a lot And their body plan has been confusing Scientists for decades mainly because they can't figure out How they have sex Which is important due to that, you know self-replication We were talking about before kind of like the whole meaning of life right being able to put past your DNA on so how the heck Are they able to do this? It's been a mystery for so long a joint effort from the field museum in chicago and uc davis Have put a bunch of different kind of layered information together to try to figure this out They use new imaging techniques and back lights to Make different tissues glow to try to identify kind of like the the pathway to where where it's all happening There are around 13,000 different species of millipedes that we know of 13,000 we discover more over here Yes, so they're They're there's so many and as far as we know they each mate differently But we still don't understand the mechanics of what's going on during the mating process and so on this study Scientists focused on pseudo polydesmus, which is a half-inch long brown millipede from north america They're not too exciting to look at they're just little half-inch brown things that hide in the dirt But what made them the perfect study individuals for This research was that they are happy to mate In laboratory laboratory conditions. So most millipedes because they live underground They only mate underground Under dirt so pretty hard to study But these guys will even mate in a petri dish under light without dirt So no shame in their game. No shame at all, which is great because they were able to take Dozens of photographs at varying distances They use computer programs to to stack images together so that they could see Miniscule details in focus in each different shot They were able to take both natural and ultraviolet light pictures Since interesting fun fact millipede genitals glow under UV light So that helps kind of identify what's going on there and then they were able to do micro CT scanning These guys you can actually put them into test tubes and do CT scanning on them So you don't have to dissect them or anesthetize them to scan them, which is great So all of this together Helped them figure out some really important stuff. So one The male's testes are behind their second pair of legs But his gona pods the things that he uses the specialized legs to insert sperm into the female Are behind the seventh body ring Now what makes a millipede different from a centipede is that millipedes have two sets of legs for each segment So they have four legs per segment and centipedes only have two. They have one leg per segment on each side so Seven The difference between the second and the seventh body ring is a difference of 10 legs So what he has to do is release the sperm Onto his body And then dig his gona pods into the ejaculate And and it's a bluish liquid For some reason And then once he has kind of Loaded up his gona pods with the blue liquid He can insert them into the female And so she has two openings on either side of her second pair of legs, which makes sense for the body plan that they're copulatory That they're they're A gamete producing organs are in the same place in terms of body plan male female that makes total sense so hers are on her second pair of legs and then um The gona pods can kind of insert and have a slight curve on them like claws So that he can hook in and make sure that he gets what he needs in there This is where it takes a turn After mating the female actually seals up with a gooey secretion that traps the sperm inside Then when she lays her eggs, so they're not internal fertilizers When she lays her eggs, they get coated with the stored sperm on their way out So that they can then be fertilized outside But the expectation was That because there's secretions happening anyway from the male That this secretion is something Provided by the male to seal her off so that she can't mate again to reduce sperm competition makes perfect sense We know well about that in the invertebrate life cycle. However She's they've yeah, they found glands inside the female with their CT scans So they actually think the secretion comes from the female. They have no idea why It could be her way of protecting herself It could be a way of preserving the sperm That's kind of what I thought like yeah, I'm not ready. This is not uh, I've got that. It's a great strategy I can do the mating now I'm all set now. I just have to find a good time in place. Yeah Absolutely. Yeah so We have more information than we did before which is great For a bunch of reasons. One is just that invertebrate sex is fascinating At least if you're me, um, but or these researchers But the other thing is that when we understand how animals mate We can understand other things about their lives their role in an ecosystem And how to save or eradicate them Depending on what animal they are and what their situation is So from a wildlife management standpoint understanding how mating works is quintessential So it's fascinating weird bizarre cool Whatever you want to call it We we understand a lot more about millipedes that that being said Said there were like 13 000 species of millipedes that we know of They they're divided into about 16 orders that we know of And most of them we don't have any idea what any of their genitalia look like or how they work So this is all preliminary. This is our first step in understanding millipedes They could all be very similar and then we can kind of draw conclusions from there Or they could all be like different colors in a rainbow Right and knowing how to look for it is How we can discover more about all of them and see how similar they are how different they are If they have different, I mean, I would imagine there are different solutions for different environments Right, but you can different life histories Yeah, so so part of the thing was that this species Was such an exhibitionist and didn't mind performing in the lab. So that's great Yeah, that's a big part of the research. Can we get it to work in the lab part? But now that we know certain things like where gonads live We can take A millipede of a different type that does not want to perform in front of an audience And potentially dissect and see if we can find similar structures in similar places And if we keep finding this stuff behind the second set of legs Then we can We can kind of extrapolate from there and be able to study further without having to watch them in the act Which would be huge That would be huge Although I think the Another important step would be to find out if they have the same kind of reproductive plug to Decrease sperm competition in in other species because that seems and then if there's the same kind of female Process as right is described in this one because that I think is really interesting Absolutely. Yeah I want to know 13,000 species. Are they all the same? Probably not No, I'm gonna go with no. No, we'll know more at 11. Well, actually But what's your next story? Oh, it's about mating squids More invertebrate sex. Yeah So squid They are one of many animals living in the ocean that have to deal with certain noises that humans make One of them being pile driving Okay Yeah, so we we do a lot of pile driving in the oceans for a lot of different reasons to install Structures usually is the big one either for windmills or bridges or any number of things peers Who knows a thing that's part of building in and around oceans It's loud It is high intensity and Previous research has shown that it can actually damage marine animals tissues when they're nearby Or alter their behavior When they're further further away. So this is a study from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Huey And this was looking at long fin squid to see how they kind of reacted near pile driving noises during mating And so what they did So first just the long fin squid is responsible for around two Oh numbers 26 million dollars of annual revenue in the fishing industry And they have an important role in the marine ecosystem. So that was a good place to start kind of see how this could impact Us fiscally, but also the marine food web ecosystem They placed a large male a small male and a female squid into a cylindrical tank and added an egg mop Which is a cluster of laid eggs to entice the animals to perform mating related behaviors So, uh, there are different squids with other mating rituals and tactics Male squids have a couple different tactics. Which is why they had the large and the small squid in there smaller males attempt coercive copulation So they dart at the female and try to catch her by surprise But larger males will actually court females and guard their mate They stick by them and protect her from sneak copulation attempts from the smaller males So they wanted to put the large male the small male in there to see how this impacts all of these different kind of behaviors So they the males are visually and tactilely attracted to the egg mop and it gets them kind of Armed up and ready to mate. So they're they're like, oh now's the time, right? And after one of the males started guarding the female the researchers exposed the animals to five minute playbacks of pile driving noise They then repeated the process with 10 minute breaks in between On dozens of groups of mating squid pretty good study size With the speaker and one into the tank and a hydrophone on the other They measured noise levels in the tanks and observed the animals And they saw that some squid showed alarm on the first pulse of the first playback But really quickly became habituated habituated to the racket and Once they were startled when the nose began noise began then they went back to mate guarding within seconds Um and and after some time some of them showed no sign of alarm at all at the start of the sound Once you get used to it, I imagine it wouldn't be a big deal, but um this sound I think is It is a bit startling if you listen to it What was that? Ah, snag it off! Stop! Oh my goodness That's too much Hey, you know actually kind of It almost sounds like a heartbeat after a while You know the cover I don't like it I couldn't I don't think I could Perform with that. Um, so the the interesting thing about this study is that They had already done experiments on as I said, you know tissues and behavior based on pile driving sounds But those are all done with individual squids in isolation so they showed this alarm when the pile driving noise started and They would ink they would jet they would change color But if they were in these groups and mating was kind of suggested Then they became acclimated much quicker. This is probably because Priority priority mating is crucial. It's yeah, and a lot of cephalopods have um They they're terminal breeders, so they'll die right after they breed right So if you if you get to the end of your very short lifespan and you haven't taken care of business That's it. You're done Your dna's gonzo. So This is crucial which means Nothing else matters if you're getting down to business as a cephalopod, right? You got to keep your eye on the prize and so in this case Mating is one of the behaviors that does not appear to be affected by human Racket big auditory noises. Yeah disturbances and I would imagine if you're with the group and It also doesn't seem to be something that is Causing It's not something immediately life threatening You're gonna be a little bit you got group dynamics going on feeling a little bit safer Even if it is go for it bombing salmon Oh, hey look out up ahead bears up ahead and I'm still going Yeah, exactly. It's if I can if I can fertilize those eggs None of them swim past the bear. It doesn't matter if I die worth it worth it. Yeah Absolutely, so so if I can just put this in context It's a fun story because it's about invertebrate sex and all this kind of stuff, but really What this means is? animals response to potential Kind of triggers in the environment or non natural impacts Are not universal they're not universal to the species. They're not universal across individuals They are not universal across behaviors, which I think is what makes this really interesting if you're foraging That can really mess you up and in the long long term That could still be a problem Because if you can't get enough food in order to survive long enough to mate Then you're sunk for the same reason but If it doesn't impact mating then maybe you only pile drive during mate squid mating season So you can see how this could this could impact wildlife management in a good way Right and if you could get human activities to correspond to the behaviors of the aquatic wildlife then Man, we'd be living so well because if you're just going to say no more pile driving in the ocean That's that's not going to happen That's not a that's not a realistic expectation There's something really interesting here to me that it makes me wonder how universal Blocking everything out for mating is because you think about humans even which we consider to be the highest most Cognitively advanced species on the planet People will take huge risks for love Uh, this history is full of examples Of this and and it seems like uh, there might you know This might be the one of those universal traits about life forms where when it comes to love We'll do we'll do anything. I'll do anything for love and And now it's time for some quick science stories Whoa Getting into it. Some dog-like teeth were discovered in a Paleolithic cave 28,500 year old fossil site in the Czech Republic Had evidence of two groups of canids And the researchers publishing in the journal of archaeological science Uh, they were looking at the dent the dental Micro-wear Texture so how did food that these animals ate affect The surfaces of the teeth what they discovered is that there were two very distinct wear patterns It on the surfaces of the teeth and one of the groups That they're comparing uh to wolf-like canids seem to have smaller wear scars Probably because they were eating more uh more flesh like mammoths And the others had larger wear scars that indicated a diet Including hard brittle foods So they think that these dog-like canids from 28,500 years ago. These were not dogs yet, but these were canids That were wolfish and were hanging out around people and eating the scraps Huh, so looking at the wear pattern on the teeth. They were able to figure this out Yeah, the the yeah breaking open, uh bones to get it marrow Would be perfect for for the uh for that wear Yeah Yeah, so interesting. I'm I'm gobsmacked 28,500 year old That's a long time ago to start that domestication process We really have been with those dogs a long time getting pushed back Does and then water water water water everywhere, right? Not a drop to drink. Well, there's a lot to drink. Thank goodness. Otherwise, we would have some problems But water is weird. It's weird and we know it's weird because it has all these different ways of behaving that is that are very different from other liquids And so we're always like why is water so weird? It's got a normal Structure and you'd think that it would just be look at that oxygen bonded to that hydrogen all the way it should The way that the molecules should bond to each other should Should demonstrate a very specific Structure when there's a lot of them bonded together However, these behaviors that have been seen for a very long time centuries even It has been hypothesized that there's something else going on and researchers just publishing in the journal of american chemical society Have been looking at scattering data. So how light is scattered By these the molecular structure of water and they Determined that instead of having a single Internal structure, there's actually two So water has multiples and they're finding a couple of different peaks in the data One of them is similar to ordinary liquids and corresponds to the oxygen to oxygen distance in the crystalline structure in the structure of the molecules The other is in a lot anomalous peak that arises from A tetrahedral water structure and this is what they're identifying as the so-called first Sharp diffraction peak that's commonly observed in silica and other tetrahedral liquids So it has now they're saying that water has This structure that is similar to other oxygen oxygen containing liquids and tetrahedral in nature similar to some others So it's got a couple of things going on and their findings They say not only provide vital clues to settle this long-standing controversy on the structure of water, but also allow direct experimental access to the fraction of tetrahedral structures in liquid water water It's weird Water science is still going on. It's still going on. You think we know a lot about water and we're still just figuring stuff out It's water. It's amazing. Yeah Yeah Tell me about those dinosaur tracks on the ceiling They find the fossilized trampoline. We got to know so the the uh mystery surrounding the dinosaur footprints are on a cave ceiling in central Queensland, australia and uh, it's it's been solved Some half century after it was initially discovered Oddly though the mystery has nothing to do with how the footprints got on the ceiling That they figured out a long time ago. It wasn't gravity defying dino's, but uh, uh 200 million years of geology that took care of that So the cave roof had been a lake sediment In which the footsteps were imprinted by dinosaurs walking by sand came in eventually this turned to sandstone a couple hundred million years of geology the sediment underneath eroded away and there was a cave Where the roof was the sand And which uh had filled the footprints of the dinosaurs who had walked by so it's sort of like a reversed footprint It's uh, it's a relief to stamp. Yes. It's the stamped, uh relief on the ceiling. So it's been embossed Yes But what was weird is that this had initially been identified as a four-legged Uh theropod like a carnivore like uh, this is a university queensland paleontologist uh, anthony ramillo Ramilio Earlier examinations of this ceiling footprint suggested that some very curious dinosaur behaviors taking place that a carnivorous Theropod walked on all four legs You don't assume t-rex used its arms to walk and we didn't expect one of its earlier predatory Relatives 200 million years ago Did either Researchers wanted to determine if this dinosaur did move along using both feet and arms But couldn't get access to the cave anymore So this site wasn't being allowed to be researched. What they had was some of photographs from the 1950s And they didn't show all the tracks that were uh reportedly there So, uh, ramillo then did what any paleontologist might do And and have an occasion to do he went to the dentist Dentist and he met apparently was rosalind dick whose father happened to have found many dinosaur fossils over the years quoting, uh Rosalind dick Our father was a geologist and reported on the mount morgan caves containing the dinosaur tracks in 1954 Besides his published account He had high resolution photographs and detailed notebooks and my sister and I kept it all We even had his dinosaur footprint plaster cast Stored under my sister's harry potter cupboard in sydney harry potter cupboard. I think it's uh, the It's it's covered under the stairs covered under the stairs. Yeah, so there's this there's this uh Half-century old cast of dinosaur footprints In their harry potter cupboard Uh They turned it they had this chance meeting. They had this conversation ramillo Got all of these documents archived them But that were archived by the sisters Uh, it made virtual 3d models of the dinosaur footprints and then gave all the stuff back to the family because they've already been doing an amazing job caretaker And it Revealed the answers in combination with their current understanding of dinosaurs It told a pretty clear cut story says ramillo the teams Firstly concluded that all of the tracks were indeed foot impressions. None were hand prints from a dinosaur They also could tell from the splayed toes in the moderately longer middle digit of the footprints that these resemble two-legged Uh herbivore dinosaur tracks not carnivores after all Differing them from the prints that they were had been assumed to have been originally So rather than one dinosaur walking on all four Two dinosaurs walking by both plant eaters That walked bipedally along the shore of an ancient lake ramillo says so Uh 50 year old mystery but thanks to a geologist who kept his notes kept his documents and Hey his family that uh appreciated that he had done all this work and kept it too End of chance meeting it all came together and did some science This just makes me feel very very bad about all of the stuff that i'm not preserving Does it bring you joy if not? That's right. Does it spark joy digit? Is that tm? It is it is just that i mean to keep the blaster cast When you're not using that, you know, it's taking up storage space. You could see somebody Uh, but the fact that it fell it managed to get back into the right hands Uh of somebody who was interested in solving this puzzle was I think fantastic. Yeah I think it's wonderful that really you know this This makes me root for all the pack rats in the world. There you go Blair what's always your last story? Uh, this is a study on how to monitor health in animals and zoos But I actually brought it because I think there's something else going on here I just wanted to bring up real briefly So this is from university of south australia and they studied animals at adelaide zoo nine species of animals giant pandas african lions Sumatran tigers orangutans baboons koalas red kangaroos alpaca and the little blue penguin which if you don't know what that looks like Head to google because they're amazing But they were able to use high resolution digital cameras and solve on a tripod In order to take an animal's pulse and check its breathing rate So you can actually extract cardiopulmonary signals from the animals in a zoo setting without touching them Which is awesome. It definitely allows for consistent repeated Recording of data on animals health But the thing that I wanted to mention here is that a couple of people with this story I saw on the internet editorialized that this will remove the need to anesthetize animals in zoos or ever put hands on them Which is not true If an animal has a toothache, you can't have the first time you're touching them before an oral surgery So no matter what if you have animals living in captivity You are going to need to anesthetize them or get them used to being touched regularly by a human in order to be able to provide excellent care and This will be an awesome addition to that But it is not going to replace current veterinary care The thing I think actually is really interesting about this is you'll be able to collect that data in camera traps On wild animals, which will help us inform what correct resting heart rates and all these other things will be In animals that we have in captivity Yeah Just a real quick soapbox moment Yeah, I mean there's so much that technology can do for us and I mean if we can minimize the amount of time that there is that the putting hands on Animals, you know, because they are wild animals unless they have you know Even though they're in the zoo, they're still wild animals And so if you can minimize the stress The duress that they go through with stuff like this that's great But like you said it doesn't replace it right and this is one of the failings of technology very often Is that it's like we're going to disrupt everything and yeah We're going to disrupt zoo keeping you could add add to veterinary care. That's amazing Yes, yeah, but also I think this has amazing implications for studying wild animals Because you don't want to tranquilize wild animals if you can avoid it, especially endangered ones So if you can take medical readings off of wild animals without touching them, that would be amazing That would be very cool. Yeah It would be awesome Oh, look at that one. It's heartbeat is fine. Oh, look. There's a predator. Look at that heartbeat. It increased so much There we go And now there's no heartbeat Oh, no Story that's the circle of life. I suppose Oh, wait, no There's a bad wi-fi connection. It's okay. Everybody heart beats back. It's back. It's fine. It's just the same way I remember fine as David Attenborough will be quick to tell you everybody's gotta eat Everybody's gotta eat Oh everybody, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show if you did share it with a friend Shout outs to fada for his help with social media and show notes gourd for manning the chat room ID for for recording the show And I would like to thank the boroughs welcome fund and our patreon sponsors for their generous support Thank you, too Paul disney stew pollock ed dire andrew swanson craig landon ed phillips shane ken haze charlene henry joshua fury steve devel alex wilson tony steele Richard porter mark bersaros bob caulder jack matthew lippin jason roberts bill cape eric nap richard brian kondren Dave neighbor maddie perron Is that new? 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Aftershow. It's the aftershow. They're in the aftershow. I was muted. I mute myself. Why did the chatroom want to see the blue penguins because they're so cute yeah yes they're adorable blue penguins are adorable and you went to Archie McPhee I did yeah I love Archie McPhee I am I get their catalog and I I give Archie McPhee items at my white elephant gift every year so this was planning ahead no I didn't actually buy anything really I bought this and I bought which was appropriate for tonight actually it was a cat a cat or not cat cats sure not I already own so much from that store I bought my friend a tiny little gnome I'm gonna sneak that into her house somehow don't tell her she has many gnomes it's good and I bought a set of thank-you cards they don't have out here but they have a bunch of these animals with human head or human bodies with animal heads I love them they do have actually that's right they do have a whole lot of those they are good I like them a lot Archie McPhee Archie it's fun stuff for fun people I followed their Instagram account for so long it was really cool to be able to actually go we have a family picture that was taken in front of their giant chicken yeah I took a picture with the giant chicken I still have to post a bunch of my Seattle pictures thank you for sending pictures of the twist show I did not take any pictures of us together I was a lot of photos and I sent you the best of them I did not send you yeah yeah I found a tremendous amount of the science that was being talked about extremely fascinating and exciting and there's all sorts of new interest threads and things that are being followed now I think by the twist team that you're going to be getting updates on as the audience as well as I went to I went to a couple of very interesting conversations about because there was a large press contingent so I spent a decent amount of time talking to not scientists but science journalists and freelance writers and the like some kind of an interesting perspective came of all of this too which is sort of defining defining lines that are going on in terms of what is science journalism versus being science communicator and and it's sort of interesting ethical conversations about where in betwixt the two meet or overlap and and I came away from it like honestly feeling like we are we are unicorns in this industry on this show we live in the magical forest where we don't have conflict of interest things by based on who's funding us or what our editors say they want us to cover or don't want us to cover we we live in that we cover mostly stuff that is academic and not industry related so we don't have to be as concerned that we are being led down a golden path or whatever the thing is and so listening to a lot of the conversations about what science journalists and communicators and whether they're part PR or whether they're part this that we're just we got the magical forest here we really have like a really safe fun space for having these conversations where we don't have to deal with a lot of what the industry feels challenged by so it's kind of it's kind of illuminating maybe feel very good about what we do yeah and I think you know a part of it also is that we do all of it with you know we try and have quality conversations that are based around like real curiosity and like you said it's not because of special interests or you know other than maybe our own interests things that we find interesting yeah so it's a well it was also very interesting to me too and and and some of it was the desire to tell a story through science that I don't think that we do it's a thing that I think happens is a result that maybe of what we do and a lot of things but what we what we do is we we're the science is the story we're talking about the science we're talking about what's you know going on now now now it was an interesting conversation with some people who do longer term storytelling right not longer term but they do they collect the whole story of this subject and build arcs and present to the public versus what we do which is just give the update as it came across how it ends we don't know we might talk about when I speculate but we're giving the the morning brief if you will of what's taking place in sciences as opposed to looking backwards I don't know sometimes I think we've been doing it for long enough that if we wanted to we have like a big base of material that we could create a story with our king and characters which speaking of which I have made a New Year's resolution a little late but still finally got around to it of doing something like you've just mentioned for some sort of a newsletter type delivery device our newsletter that ours even yes our newsletter because it card to me that we have like you just said these arcing stories that we have reported in real time but have a history with the show that we could formulate into even if it was sort of the narrative of bullet points and flinks to go back in if you wanted to look at what was known then or at this point or what was being considered what was being said around but not by us but by the scientific community about any given subject and see that evolution over time these would be these would be not doing the contribution to the newsletter wouldn't be so much the stories that didn't make it onto the show but would be looking back at the show and saying here's your of course obviously the first one I thought of here's your your your Neanderthal reader your your guides in Neanderthal to keep up with it if you've just joined the show and you want to catch up with the latest thing Justin's ran thing about about Neanderthal here's what we've sort of here's the history of how we sort of covered this this far yeah exactly yeah so I'm kind of excited about this and taking this on and contributing to this newsletter I just found out we have wow that would be fabulous players shaking your head just found out huh we've just been doing it for a year because I did that special issue as the like soft launch for internet or international hippo day which is February 15th so we've officially even doing it for a year so if I might suggest suggest if it's possible that I can get on this list you're definitely on it I'm not on I have not received a single newsletter from the show this is this may be part of why I keep being oblivious to the fact that we're actually doing it this is I've never seen it I mean I had I really thought we were talking about doing it and then when somebody's mentioning like we've been doing I'm like why do we keep saying we're doing a newsletter I've never seen this newsletter I'm literally not on the list but anyway that's my new year's resolution he you're you looking she's back checking me yeah I'm looking at the chat room okay I can find out if you're on the list Justin if not I can add you no I can't get into it without you giving me Blair so I know that's that's definitely my least favorite thing about it's pretty easy though you just have to set if you get the thing you just send me the code and if you need a certain amount of time if you need my email Blair have it thanks I think we have it oh you trip me up tonight we got we played musical chairs yeah I completely like was like that's not me oh wait everyone is quiet I must be needing to say words strength that's funny identity for it was wonderful to see you in Seattle this last weekend thanks for coming out to the festival and hanging out that was great that was cool good he also checked out the skeptics guide to the universe they were there and I didn't see any of the skeptics guide people I don't know what they were doing I missed it yeah was a fun time I missed all that I missed all the skeptics guide people but I did run into Seth Shaw stack oh yeah who is he is just he's funny he's a humorous fellow I really enjoy hanging out with Seth Shaw stack Justin oh you're on this list no yeah from the beginning an admin ad but am I was do I get the thing yes yes you are subscribed added you TW IS MIN ION at gmail.com so go to your spam filter perhaps but they should all be in there do patreons need to sign up for the newsletter separately no but I had sent out a message to people on patreon a while back asking if people wanted me to put them on the newsletter and I only because this is a an opt-in newsletter I don't want to span people so if you would if if you would like I might I should send out another one I will do that actually if you would like to be on the patreon newsletter the newsletter just in general you can send me an email and I will bug Blair and she'll let me in and I'll add people by hand yeah whoa or you can go to bring me oh my god go ahead sorry or you can go to twist.org and if the pop-up pops up you can subscribe to the newsletter yourself so our top three locations for our contacts based on IP addresses when they interact with emails or sign up in form so this is slightly skewed because I have added people and Kiki has added people so that's going to skew it a little bit but so number one is Portland number two is San Francisco number three Casablanca wait what yes Morocco Morocco hello everyone in Morocco yes we have a Morocco contingent that's fantastic yeah what that was unexpected in the last month we've gained 22 subscribers to our newsletter so we should probably write one we should do a newsletter yes we should put out it put out a newsletter like send one to people how often okay how often do we do this we have sent five in the past year so it's supposed to be like every other month ish but yeah we've sent I guess we've sent six because the National Hippo Day was a special dish I will I will start writing with the newsletter in mind and then do I just email yeah email me and do Google do you do Google Docs I do Google Docs yeah because you can do a Google Doc and then share it yeah and share it there we go yeah all right ah yes we'll send it by our editor first yeah and and Kiki always gets final edit on there too yeah final showdown wait wait okay so I don't know why I just went all mortal combat in my brain I'm looking forward to I gotta go I'm looking forward to next week's interview that's something that's somebody are you going today so I've had since I think a couple of catnaps not a real sleep I haven't had a real sleep so can I can I before you go I just want something in the morning I want you both to hear that I will not be here for the show in two weeks two weeks in two weeks the first week of March okay and then what's the other week and what's the other week what good night good night good night Justin good night Blair good night Kiki good night are we done we can be I think that means we're done for after show I don't know cuz yeah if we talk about anything else then Justin I'll be able to I'll be back in and rare form next week we're having maybe slept sleep duration I don't know I don't remember so long I'm hoping that we will get audio files from the triple AS shows sometimes soon so I can actually publish those as episodes I haven't gotten anything from them yet but in the meantime the YouTube shows the audio is pretty good so it's fine it's not my favorite but it's out there and Justin have have good times yes have it could be the Nessan multiple good times it could be the Nessan you get yes that's it don't pick your nose that's my Danish hi hi hi hi hi okay everyone thank you for watching and Blair yeah newsletter you're gonna talk about we're gonna write up San Francisco and triple AS yes yes the plan for this one okay yes I will write something and you will write something and we will have pictures do you want to take Seattle and I'll take San Francisco it sounds like a musical from like 1940 take Seattle yeah we will blip miss Blair in two weeks garab it's so I'm going on what might be my very last just me and my mom trip to Disneyland who knows things are happening in the future that might impact that so it we're we're doing it maybe it won't be the last one but we're definitely we're making sure we're fitting it in there before life events events yes that's good to plan ahead yeah good yeah now I'm interested in these life events yes well I'm I'm I'm creating a union with another individual and then directly after that you see there there might be further complications how yeah we'll see about that family planning you have you know there are plans there are plans we'll see if they happen exactly okay I understand yeah I understand I'm just saying though it's nice to take a vacation it is and I would be a little you this this very special it's awesome you do your mom that I have with my mom that we've done many years now yeah just we drive down to Southern California and frolic for several days it's great I love it and I hope that it continues but we just kind of wanted to make sure that we fit one more in before things got crazy crazy yeah I can't wait for the crazies I love crazies it's how I live my life you're my people repeat else yeah the crazy that's how I live alright you know I know there's always things that I'm like darn it I was gonna talk about that and ask you about that and then I forgot and it's always after I hang up but there is yep it's 10 30 ish almost and sleep is always good it is hey you won't be here in two weeks I'm gonna be doing science talk week at the end of March so I think I will be taking a night off that week great so then in between those two things we we have to teach we had to use stream yard it won't be that hard but it's not hard yeah and if you just and I do a lot more clicking of things than you need to so yeah yeah great yes easy easy yes you did hang out so you can do stream yard yeah we'll do that at some point before then there needs to be a show show we're gonna get the things done this week in science we'll return next week cuz that's what we do we come back every week to talk about science and nothing else in the chat room I look forward to seeing you all next week thanks for being here this week we're gonna hit the end broadcast button right now that's what I'm gonna do I wait wait there it is there's my hand I can wave good night no I did two buttons