Yeah, but they're like eating less of it like it's regenerating, but they're Demons into not stealing the Sun anymore No, sorry, it's like an age age age old decision that was made between like It's It's Take all over the Sun, but you will afford us a little extra in the winter Young girl by the name of Persephone to be my wife and then I'm also going to release these demons to eat up the Sun every day So yeah, and if it really comes down to it, I'm picking Persephone over the Sun because she's Who do you choose the Sun Persephone or those pesky demons Cologne right 100,000 year old demon this We're getting all crazy at the show Hasn't even started yet everyone welcome to this week in science. We're gonna get going Right about now. The science is starting in three two This is Twist this week in science episode number 703 recorded on Wednesday, January 9th 2019 are there diamond stars Hey everyone, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on the show We are going to fill your head with a magnetic movement monkey selfies and human sexual desires but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer Robots are everywhere and robots are great because robots do a lot of work faster better Entirelessly. Yes robots work Until they don't and when they don't that's where humans can help and humans help Robots get back on task while having nothing to do with the following program is exactly how I began and ended my day at work today Which is why this disclaimer is all about robots and not this week in science Coming up next What's happening What's happening What's happening this week in science What's happening What's happening What's happening this week in science Good Thanks to you Kiki and Blair And a good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there Welcome to another episode of this week in science We are back yet again to talk about all the science that we found really interesting This week. Maybe we'll talk about robots with Justin. I don't know no We actually have a good plan for the show today Happy day of science everyone. I brought stories about space crystals repeating FRBs and autism Justin, what did you bring? sex drugs and DNA Woo sounds like a party We have in a science party Blair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, I have monkeys whales and almonds Ammons Alamonds pleaser Alamonds there is an Are they are they on the tree are they still on the tree or not? Because well because that's how farmers get ammons out of the Or almonds out of the tree. It's almonds when they're on a tree. Ammons when they're out of the tree. Sorry Are they in the tree or out of the tree? I think you're talking I don't I don't know what you're talking about California farmer knowledge the way that farmers get Almonds out of a tree is they shake the owl out of them But that was a long way to go To begin with and then it took me long to explain it. So it was a double fail and I apologize Ammons when you eat them almonds when they're in a tree Nice try very well done. All right as we jump into this show shaking the owl out of the science I want to remind everyone that you can subscribe to us all the places that podcasts are found We're on Spotify Pandora stitchers freaker tune in the apple podcast directory google plays podcast directory Just look for this week in science. You can look for twist.org online as well Additionally, you can find information about our 2019 Twist Blair's animal corner calendar because there are a few left get yours now But now It's time for science. Let's jump in things are moving and shaking And the earth is quaking. Well really the core of the earth is sloshing and moving and our magnetic field is changing You've heard about this, right? Yeah, I've heard about this forever It's like impellant blips. It's not news. Like how can it be changing but not flipping like stop But you have brought a story. I have brought a story. Yeah, uh, so this this week as Uh, we are sitting here recording this podcast the united states government is in a shutdown and even Even as many government employees are working without pay or furloughed at the moment Or finding other jobs or finding other jobs. That's right. The FDA is reducing the the amount of of weekly checks it's going to be doing on Or reducing its agricultural inspections. So our food supply is in danger and And on top of all this it looks like global navigation for those people who Navigators who rely on the magnetic field of the earth is going to continue to be affected by a misaligned north pole Because did you know there is a body? uh There's a world magnetic model that the world relies on for its magnetic navigation it defines where The north pole is it describes the earth's magnetic field And it's underlying all of the navigation from stuff that steerships to google maps on smartphones Wait, what hang on a second. Aren't we didn't we leave the the compass behind? Uh 10 20 years ago in favor of gps satellites Yes, but that is not always GPS is not always available and these systems can always rely on the magnetic field except That it's been moving and shifting and it has shifted significantly significantly Since the 1900s and in fact since the year 2000 it has Wandered about 50 of the distance so it wandered from about 1900 to the year 2000 over a hundred years It went half the distance And it went the same distance in the last 18 19 years So in the last 20 years the movement has sped up It's accelerating accelerating. Yes. It's uh, and it's shifting from Canada the north pole used to be located here kind of in Canada And it's in the middle of the Arctic Ocean right now headed towards Siberia It has shifted significantly since 2015 which is the last time that the world magnetic map was updated Uh, there was a significant a significant jump in 2016 That really adjusted the maps as we know them And so, you know, the world magnetic model was adjusted in 2015 and so navigation Was updated and everything was working based on that model But now it since 2016 since this big jump it is significantly off by a number of degrees and It is continuing to move and they need to update this model. However, it's um It they were going to do it this month on january 15th But it has been postponed until the 30th because of the ongoing u.s. Government shutdown I mean it hasn't been updated for a couple of years. So, you know, what's another month But so it sounds like it's shifting towards Siberia So you should really just make the russians do this research It's their problem now You guys find the north pole for us. Thanks I feel like everybody should just get off of the magnetic pole system. I mean I How can it be possible that there's not access to satellites? And anywhere on this planet at this point You can't always rely on the technology What if there's a solar flare that takes out power grids that knocks out satellites? What if that communication doesn't work what we have you can go back to star charts and the compass And if we know where the how if we know if we have an idea of where the north pole is then people can navigate Accurately I get what you're saying. Yes. We should be able to move past this look down on our planet from above From a bigger picture, but this is still a big part of how navigation works it is an essential part of it and The the big thing is like we've been talking about for years. We are at a moment in Geological history where there should be a pole shift a magnetic pole shift taking place and we are seeing small outbursts outbursts of magnetic activity as as Poles pop up periodically around the globe, but this main this main shift is actually very interesting because it indicates that the core is Is shifting So and and when it happens going on when it happens. I doubt that I would recognize that my Toilet flushes in the opposite vortex I don't think that's what I will notice because that's Coriolis forces and not I will know. Oh, I will know That people start having Australian accents. Hmm. Yeah, so bit of history here. Is that how this works? I don't know but a big bit of history here for those of you who are interested in trivia In 2018 the north pole crossed the international date line into the eastern hemisphere Interesting so What kind of to follow Justin's question and to recap because I know we've talked about this before but We also talk about a lot of things. So I need a refresher What actual impact on my life would there be If the poles switched Not much. I mean the issue battery terminals gonna need to be reversed like the issue The issue is this kind of model of the magnetic activity of the earth. It will affect Ability if you're using the magnetic field for navigation, it will affect that field for navigation It will affect some technologies that are being used. It will affect animals that rely on magnetic cues for their navigation It could it yeah pigeons and birds they would see these bees, right? Organisms that rely on the magnetic field may have issues. However, it if it happens We don't know how it happens. We know it happens and we say It happens quickly, but you know, that's geological time So geological time quickly is is this a few hundred years? Is it a few thousand years? And if it is something that the north pole shifts and you know Meets where you know the south pole and north pole north pole over several hundred years Move around the planet Then it's really not going to affect any anything because animals can adjust and our technology can adjust Yeah, I've never heard of a mass extinction event tied to a A magnetic polar shift, right? But but on the other hand I've never also heard of a A society that has advanced electronics technologies But it's not like you have different polar Electronics in the south pole and north pole. So I think our electronics would be fine Uh, this seems like one of those massively overblown y2k type It's I mean for the yeah for the average person you don't have to worry about it It's the people who who update the software who update the global models who You know, this is it so so another reminder of what government does for us of That we might be forgetting about That yeah the north pole But yeah, how many times do we think this has happened in the earth's history? um every Yeah, it happens every You know what? I forget 46,000 years 60,000 years. Oh, no, just like it was yesterday. Was that right more frequent than uh, we care to Yeah, it's fairly frequent. I mean, I've probably got the number wrong But I don't have that off the top of my head. But yes, it happens with a surprising frequency But you know what is also probably very Surprisingly frequent in the universe What Stars made of diamond Oh, yeah stars Stars. Yes. This is so interesting. There is news out this week researchers looking at from the University of Warwick and elsewhere using the european gaya telescope to look at white dwarf stars around the universe um And our own sun is going to turn into a white dwarf. It'll be a red giant It'll expand out all of the planets in the solar system will get burned up And then it'll smash back down on itself. It'll go nova not supernova because it's not big enough It'll blow off all of its light gases and Hydrogen and the helium will go floating off into space And then you'll it'll be left with some heavy elements It'll be left with Oxygen and carbon and it'll be smoosh and it'll smoosh itself down during that nova and after it blows its Gases off It'll turn into a white dwarf and it'll be really hot for a long time And then it'll cool cool down and eventually It will cool to a point Where it will be able to transition from A plasma to a liquid and so these elements oxygen and carbon Will go from being the plasma and it'll become liquid and the core of this of our sun will turn into liquid metal oxygen And then it'll cool to a point Where it will start to crystallize And so it'll get we'll have a core of solid oxygen crystal Surrounded by a shell Of diamond of carbon The carbon will will crystallize the oxygen will crystallize and the it's going to be amazing It's like an m&m with a diamond crust and an oxygen core You lost me at oxygen crystal Right. Yes. So it turns out that oxygen Oxygen it will cool into a crystal lattice because the way that the chemistry takes place the electrons and the core will get shifted off And it'll push carbon outward and the oxygen will stay in the interior of the white dwarf star and As it cools it'll get to a temperature where it'll make that shift from Gas to the liquid to solid And as it shifts to solid it will crystallize and the oxygen atoms will There'll be an oct an o8 configuration. So it'll be a hexagons of oxygen All of their orbitals will be filled up by other oxygen atoms And they will be just crystallized connected to each other So this is wikipedia, but this is showing me what red oxygen looks like. Yeah, and it'll be a color That's right. So the interior red the interior of this white dwarf star will be reddish in color because of the because of the oxygen Does that have anything to do with Like rust and oxidization and and how that's red or is that totally unrelated? Uh, that's a very good question Where's where's our chemist? Wait, uh, I know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna answer that question, but it's a I think this is actually rather simple. Uh picture ice without hydrogen Yeah, okay, my brain can't It's like wait, well here on earth, we don't have the conditions for oxygen to really do this We can't model this exact system here on earth And the what they've found in this study of these white dwarf stars They looked at their luminosity their brightness the color that they were giving off Right, kevin unique. Thank you very much. The red in rust has to do with oxygen and iron Thank you totally unrelated, but The coincidental The spectra of this oxygen crystal will be reddish But anyway, they looked at the they looked at the luminosity And they look Computer-generated like I always look this one of those things like did we assign a color to this thing or This is the core. This is the core. I mean, we're talking about a white dwarf here It'll cool eventually cool to be somewhat reddish That is something of the light that we measure Over time. Yeah the wavelength But what they determined what they're 50 years ago There was a prediction about these white dwarf stars that With their the lifetime of these stars and how they mature and go through their developmental cycle that there should be a stage Where they get to a cooling point And they release a bunch of heat and crystallize and this was predicted But it had never been directly seen before and with this Gaia telescope and this experiment that these researchers did They have for the first time Confirmed this prediction and they found a larger number than expected Well, then what they had originally thought but based on the prediction it lines up a larger number than expected of stars of white dwarf stars in this cooling phase And the cooling the fact that they found this it means that some of these stars are even the cooling takes longer than they thought And that some of these stars are older than they thought And what this means Is interesting because white dwarf stars are used to kind of age or date The the neighborhood that they exist in like oh, we see the white dwarf star We can kind of say it's that bright. It's this this color So we can kind of guess how old its neighborhood is But now they're like, oh Maybe these neighborhoods are a couple of billion years older A couple of billion years in a 13 billion year old universe Yeah, it's still within according to a uh an astrophysicist astronomer From boston university who answered my question my my plea for help on twitter This is about within about 10 to 20 percent of Of accurate so if you're within about 20 percent of Of accurate they think that's pretty good It's pretty good, but it's also, you know, we I think And aging the universe are like flies that live for three days and try to determine the age of a of a lawn You know lawn grows and Yes, how long is this thing grown like we have like still shot picture frames upon which to Confer this information and we've made fantastic discoveries about Distance of an object and the age of it because of the speed of light That we can sort of Begin to yeah, but all of our candles, you know, we we assume that all supernova Our 1a certain brightness and that is exactly how we define The distance from us and therefore how far away an object is and as we've been learning from like The interview we did a few weeks back Gravitational waves have a little bit different answer Than the candles 1a is that we have we have previously conceived of and neutrinos When they hit they have a little bit of a different answer than the gravity waves And so we're yeah, we are still in the process of learning how big and old our universe is And and and and for something actually as small as a as a as a sun of this white white dwarf sun or whatever It is um to have a 20% shift even in something that is in the Universal scale a very small object, which we should have pretty well defined at this point um giving itself a 20% Uh swing is pretty darn significant as you scale up and yeah and so his uh Dr. Hermes from Boston University. He said uh that the Knowing in the age of any star that's 10 billion years old to better than 20% is really hard So not just the white dwarfs, but any star that's that old is really hard So as we get better observations of faint white dwarfs, we can calibrate models and improve our ages And in most cases he says white dwarfs are still the best game in town even though Their ages have become a little less, uh An a little less well defined with this study But the exciting step forward is that now we understand that this predicted crystallization step going from it's a phase transition From liquid to solid this crystallization occurs In these white dwarf stars and now that we have found evidence for it we can move forward with our models of star life cycles and How old the stars are and it'll help us understand cosmic neighborhoods that much better and Our sun is a pretty common sized sun So there's most stars aren't big giant ones. They're probably kind of average sized stars like ours And so that means it's a lot of white dwarfs There's a lot of diamond crusted stars out there Look at the night sky. You're not just looking at twinkling stars. You're looking at twinkling diamonds Oh, yeah, but I'll also throw out here at the end of this too that They're probably the 20 range Of accuracy of understanding is probably right and correct for some stars 20 in either direction The idea that there is a a systematic Uh, a reliable like candle of accuracy in star formation and then death is ridiculous They're all going to have slightly stochastic Existences it's just one of the it's these white dwarfs are just one of the tools astronomers use one of the tools And they usually use multiple tools and test them against each other Oh, of course they do but but I mean also within that it's there is no Uh, a white dwarf star live that white dwarf star lives for this long or exist that long and then does this in its end It's going to be different for each one It's just how the universe I don't know. I don't know that every star is like, you know, a person with all that variation chemical processes man It is but it's in the chemicals that are available to process And not you equilibrium This is not a homogeneous universe It is not we're heterogeneous. Thank goodness for that and on that note another finding fast radio bursts we've talked about the Really weird repeating fast radio bursts are these millisecond energy pulses radio waves It's super fast and then they're gone they're hard to study because They don't stick around they just fast radio burst and then they disappear and We found a galaxy a galaxy we found a galaxy Without far away that is a repeating fast radio burster And it at this point we've met we used Artificial intelligence to be able to measure and find all these fast radio bursts and last year it was reported something like on the order of like 90 or so fast radio bursts had been detected from this one frb And that that's it's amazing because like why is this one repeating? Yeah, what's happening someone trying to talk to us right? What's going on? And we haven't found any other repeating fast radio bursts until now Researchers have published in nature this week the discovery using the chime experiment which is the canadian hydrogen intensity mask mapping experiment in british columbia to discover a new Repeating fast radio burst. It's one of 13 newly discovered fast radio bursts And it has it it's repeated It's repeating and so it's an it's a new Signal in the sky that we can maybe look at to study the properties of fast radio bursts because It happens over and over again That's why they're excited about it. This repeater is over a billion and a half light years away So it's not anywhere close to us. It's really far away But it's this loud signal that is pointed at us and that we're able to Record and we don't really know there was I was looking at up a fast radio bursts in wikipedia and there's one story from a few years back of What was thought to be a repeating fast radio burst discovery that was really somebody in the The telescope facility opening the microwave in the middle of the cycle And they thought it was a repeating fast radio burst But it was really the energy the microwave energy that was released When the door was open before the microwave stopped I swear So there are these are sensitive machines that are detecting these fast radio bursts And there are a lot of signals that could be noise or that could be microwaves that have to be counted out when they're discovering fast radio bursts, but so with aliens opening microwaves far away There we go. Yep Yeah, we don't know what they are yet. We have no idea there are theories for uh, what FRB's What caused FRB's but we do not know but now we have two That we can potentially study and maybe we will find more with with this chime experiment This is the chime experiment somewhat like the LIGO Virgo experiment This was discovered pretty much as soon as they turned it on so we will see What comes with more analysis and And care Well, Justin Justin thinks it's aliens No, no, no, I just said at LIGO you're talking the advanced LIGO worked right away There was a lot of LIGO that that could pick up nothing but like trucks passing by Oh, that's true. Yes, that's right. Yes Yes, very true, you know microwaves trucks, whatever Yeah Like it was like either we found a gravity wave or a squirrel is bearing a nut somewhere Within 30 miles of our facility That was like the first like This is as we can science. Hey Justin, what did you bring? I brought no, oh no, I did bring this right. Okay so This is every once in a while I find a story where scientists attempt to study sex and I go Didn't pay attention to any blues or jazz songs the last 50 years um Okay, so here here we go though. What's the best way to see if that interesting boy or girl is worthy of a good long-term relationship or science says an invitation to the blues team of psychologists from the israel-based indoor disciplinary center Haslivia and the university of rochester's department of clinical and social sciences and psychology have looked into the dilemma of Go or stay what's best to choose? and they conclude that sex may play a major role in encouraging the formation of long-term attachment it might Sex may set the stage for deepening the emotional connection between strangers says studies lead author grud Brinbaum social psychologists associate professor of psychology at the idc Uh, this old strew for both men and women sex motivates human beings to connect regardless of gender The study in this case was limited to heterosexual relationships um, apparently Because they don't know Anybody according to uh, brinbaum They some believe that men are more likely than women to initiate relationships when sexually roused but when one focuses on more subtle relationship initiating strategies such as providing help This provider this pattern does not hold true In fact, both men and women tried to connect with potential partners when sexually aroused So they did four interrelated studies Uh, participants were introduced to a new acquaintance of the opposite sex in a face-to-face encounter Researchers demonstrate that sexual desire triggers behaviors that can promote emotional bonding during these encounters Uh, courty voice again although sexual urges and emotional attachments are distinct feelings Abolutionary and social processes likely have rendered humans Particularly prone to becoming romantically attached to partners to whom they are sexually attracted says co-author and a race professor of psychology and deans Professor of art science and engineering at the university of rochester Who again has never listened to a blues album in jails album or a spoken word thing about love life and pursuit of happiness. Okay This isn't sex though. This is sexual desire. Those are like two very different things very different So you're so what's this what this is saying is if you're attracted to them There's a better chance of creating a relationship Oh But I think also the Just to mention with if I put the like super Sciencey variable testing hat on it kind of makes sense that they would start with heterosexual couples because you know, there's male female There's male male. There's female female they didn't want to Throw extra variables in their first time through I would assume so next time they would want to see Because they were testing in male female relationships how this affected males and females if you then start testing these other variables of Male male to female female you could do that But those are extra kind of levels to the study that as we're talking about it sound maybe unnecessary Yeah, what what what so so what would be interesting from those studies Would be to see if there was a distinct Strategical difference between a male male or a female female versus Yeah, and I think that would be like the next step in this Out-gender strategy role. Anyway, yeah Um, yeah, I'm I'm guessing and you know, I don't know the researchers, but that's what I'm saying I'm guessing that this was their attempt to Narrow down to as few variables as possible on their first round of whatever this was Right study one I guess Study one included 36 women and 22 men who lip-synced to pre-recorded music with an attractive I don't know who decided it was attractive opposite sex study insider Okay, afterwards participants rated the desire for the insider who they believed to be another participant Which is sort of interesting because then it makes me immediately think that like They're bringing out like their nephew He's just never meets anybody Maybe I It's like they believe the person to be another participant, but apparently they were a ringer They were somebody who was Yeah selected because they were attractive an attractive ringer. Yes attractive ringer, right Scientists found that the greater the participants desire for the insider the greater their intimacy behaviors towards and synchronization With the insider was study two replicated The findings were 38 women and 42 men who were asked to slow dance with an attractive opposite sex insider Who again they believed to be a study participant But was likely somebody who was picked up at a local gym again the researchers found he direct association between the synchronization of body movement and desire for the insider study three 42 women 42 men And established casual connection between activating the sexual behavior system and behaviors that help initiate relationships In order to activate the sexual system the researchers used a subliminal priming technique In which they flashed an erotic non pornographic image for 30 milliseconds on a screen Which participants were not even aware of seeing Next participants interacted And with a second study participant essentially a potential partner Discussing interpersonal dilemmas while being videotaped afterwards judges rated the participants behaviors That conveyed responsiveness and caring scientists found activation of the sexual system this subliminal priming Also resulted in behaviors that suggested caring about potential partners well-being And I don't know have you guys ever heard of the movie the boy next door? No, I've not heard of this. Okay, so Then I they had 50 women 50 men half the group watched an erotic movie Which was again, they say not pornographic called the boy next door The other half watched a movie about rainforests in South America Then they were assigned an attractive opposite sex insider again a ringer Uh and told to complete a verbal reasoning task the insider pretended to get stuck on the third question and asked for help Researchers found that the participants who watched the erotic movie scene were much quicker to help And invested more time in helping than those who watched the video about the rainforest Which is where I'm I'm an outlier. I find Just I'm just gonna say this I find rainforest videos Extremely erotic Um, let me just give you a very quick two sentence rundown of what the boy next door is When a handsome charming teenager named Noah played by ryan guzman moves in next door newly separated high school teacher claire peterson played by jennifer lopez Encourages his friendship and engages in a little bit of harmless or so she thinks flirtation Okay, that's horrible. So she thinks yeah Yeah, I mean what this is really I mean it seems like this is showing that there is There is Desire and when that desire occurs people are more likely to do things that lead to connection and bonding like Helping and mirroring somebody's body movements. And it's I mean like like you said at the beginning of this Why did they do this study? Yeah, so I think I don't I just know from my personal experience I definitely have friends who are like, oh This guy seems great. Maybe I'll grow to be attracted to him And then other people that go, oh, I'm attracted to this person I want to get to know them to see if I would want to date them Right, and I think that that second avenue is the much more common one where the physical attraction comes first, of course But I think that might be part of this is kind of to Identify exactly What order is best? Which I'm not surprised so so the other thing in this is that um, the idea that that uh Sexual attraction is a lead into relationship strength also sexual attraction is also the lead up to a horrible relationship that lasts way longer than it should and Is because the sex is good Like like if the scientists don't understand sex and are trying to quantify it scientifically The data is in the blues the jazz the rock and roll lyrics. It's in like it's already out there just just going quantify What the poets and the musicians have been screaming about What what love is and isn't well and And we've talked on the show a bunch about um, how the act of sex releases hormones that include The oxytocin which is kind of this bonding hormone, right? Which is why oxytocin can be released because of those other bonding activities like helping and body mirroring And all the things absolutely. Yeah, but sex is one of those things that can also result in that So it all kind of follows along the same line of sex as part of a relationship. So It's part of the equation That it is part of the equation Justin do you have another story for right now or is it time? I do I have one right now, uh, except that my Interwebs seem to be rocking, but uh really quickly, uh, I will I will spit this out. There is, uh, apparently a new medication That in one dose successfully protected non-human primates against infection from all strains of Ebola We have A potentially Ebola cure. This is uh findings are now available in cell post and microbe the journal Yeah, so they they created a one bug one drug that worked spectrum They tested it against let's see. Let's uh in in non-human private, uh, non-human primates and ferrets uh against the Bundy buggy all the Sudan strain as well as the deadly Zaire strain that was the recent ish 2013 epidemic in west Africa, which is currently breaking out in The the democratic but not really democratic republic of Congo So it's which it's kind of like, uh, they haven't done the human trial yet, which they had to do But the thing that kind of puzzles me is Isn't the whole point of Ebola the fact that it's bush meat and it doesn't kill non-human primates Like isn't that how it sustains and survives? Like gotta do the human trial.  So it does yes, there is that aspect But you don't just go straight to testing on people. Yes, we have to get there You have to you have to show safety efficacy And and that seems to be what they have done And if and if this this pants out Ebola, which is one of these scariest sort of pandemicy things Uh may have just met its match with this uh, little biotech company The exciting thing is that if the because part of it is we have multiple strains because the ebola virus mutates and evolves right and so How do you protect against all of them and this is the kind of step that we do yeah It is because as part of their claim is that uh, it's the fact that it's spectrum Of the ebola viruses that are out there They expect it to work on future evolutions because it's working upon some core aspect of the ebola ebola virus Uh, that is that is essential for Ebola to the virus to exist But isn't reliant on the the little mutations that take place upon the edges Yeah, we'll just go put it in the water supply. Good. Yeah, just go blanket the jungle. What could go wrong? Uh, sometimes ebola and monkeys include fever decreased appetite and sudden death Which makes them easier to catch and eat And eat and uh, many of these primates are are also meat eaters and so If they're eating other primate species that are carrying the virus then it's gonna then it It spreads and that's and that's what's going on Wait Monkeys eat monkeys. Yes All the time You weren't aware of that. Okay. Sorry everybody if you weren't aware You're only afraid of monkeys now. Have I taught you nothing? I know Blair Blair's been on it, but you know, it is time right now For Blair's animal corner with Blair What you got Blair I have a story about zoonotics and monkeys. How far away do you do? Well, this is a slightly different study along the exact lines. We were talking about though This was more of a social science side of zoonotics in monkeys between monkeys and humans and this was a research project carried out with a populations in Cameroon Looking at how they interact with non-human primates And looking statistically at what behaviors could put people at risk for infection with new diseases In those areas Zoonotics are 60% of emerging infectious diseases and of those zoonotic diseases 70% come from wild animals So some are coming from livestock and things like that, but the grand majority is coming from wild animals And of course because we and monkeys are so similar genetically, it's very easy for stuff to go back and forth That's why if I had a cough when I was working with primates I had to wear a mask because I didn't want to get them sick, right? We're so similar So knowing all of that they did surveys They did data collection oral history interviews and wild meat surveys to try to see a full picture Of exactly how people in southeastern Cameroon were being exposed to zoonotics Via non-human primate species. This is in 2016 2017 and included information from multiple villages and hundreds of people And they found that Cameroonian adults had frequent physical contact with primates and more with monkeys than apes Which makes sense because if you think about it the monkeys are always running in there to kind of raid people's pantries and steal all sorts of stuff, but The the apes are a lot more secluded. They stay kind of in the in the bush as it were So knowing this it's mostly the the monkeys But a little bit of apes most of the contact is through exactly what Justin was talking about hunting for butch meat So they were hunting for food butchering preparing and consuming meat But also injuries are sustained from these animals Especially gorillas, which is pretty surprising 85 of respondents had eaten primate meat in their lifetimes, which we know we know that the food is not Overflowing in these villages and so bush meat is something that it's not like.  It's I'm out of food. What is around? It's not easy to catch a monkey. This is something you do when you're Unless it has Ebola, that's true but so this is something from bush meat and For the most part about 85 percent And the exposure was directly related to the relative density of non-human primates and their proximity to human settlements So this give and take between monkeys and humans is causing a lot of movement of zoonotic diseases Knowing this which again, it's not too surprising But we have some of the data now knowing this national and international authorities could move to support improved surveillance to protect these monkey species and Help circulate messages about the dangers of monkey meat and safe meat handling How to cook it high enough to not actually get yourself Sick from it. Um, and so this is something where there's ecological science. There's Biological science and there's social science all kind of working together to attack this But I think what makes it so interesting to me Is that we talk about the dangers of bush meat and how it's affecting populations And how you don't want to interact with monkeys in the wild and take a selfie with them because it it imprints them So they'll stop looking for their own food and all this kind of stuff but if you tell people they could get sick and die from eating monkey meat or Playing around with wild monkeys it might change the narrative a little bit of like oh don't hurt the monkeys versus Hey, this is a hazard Stay away from the monkeys Stay away from the monkeys stay away from fellow humans as well. No, um in terms in terms of the cooking Yeah, I was gonna say though. I mean we we have education in the In the us for you should you should cook pork to such and such a A degree so that it gets rid of the trichinosis, right? You you cook poultry to a certain level 160 degrees 65 degrees so that You get rid of salmonella risk. I mean these are These are public education campaigns that have gone out Time and time again to try and educate people and keep them keep them healthy I mean and it it could work so in Madagascar Bush meat is a huge problem for lemurs lemurs are hunted for their meat all the time and it's for by and large because Communities have chickens or rabbits or whatever they may be and they get sick the population of this livestock gets sick And they all die and then this village is left without a food source So actually what what some projects have started doing which is you know great strides so far already Is they'll fly american and european vets out with chicken vaccines and they'll help Villages establish a chicken population Vaccinate all the chickens teach the people who live there how to make and then administer the vaccines And then people have actually stopped hunting lemurs because they have this very bountiful Renewable resource of chickens right outside their house There you go. Yeah, so knowing this is the first step to kind of starting that path of communication of hey These monkeys are making you sick Let's find a way to get meat to your family or your village or your community that That is safe That is you know ecologically better But also is is easier to keep healthy and all that kind of stuff So I think it's an interesting angle To look at the plight of bush meat from I thought that was really cool Yeah, I was uh very surprised to learn that zoonotics wasn't uh a Practice of hypnotizing zoo animals This is what I've always thought that meant Nope Not really. What's next Blair? Uh singing humpback whales So we've talked on the show before about how humpback whales have these amazing songs They have a whole vocabulary and in the uh in the areas that are kind of Uh well connected these different populations of humpback whales will trade and share songs I could talk about this kind of mid last year. Maybe maybe I just saw it, but everyone look at that story It's very cool. They'll they'll train songs. It's not surprising. Whales are very smart. They're very vocal That all makes sense. They're like, hey, what's on your Spotify? Can you send me that song? Oh, yeah, that one's great yes, um, so This new study is looking at two humpback whale populations that occupy completely different Ocean basins. This is the south south atlantic and the indian ocean In and this is in the southern hemisphere And they wanted to see how these songs exchange Among these kind of more isolated groups And what they found this is the study from wcs the wildlife conservation society Who's been studying whale song for probably 20 years at this point university of st Andrews stony brook university madagascar national parks all these people work together to look at the whale songs and really Synthesize them and figure out what's going on. They transcribed More than 1500 individual sounds recorded between 2001 and 2005 They compared similar song similarity Using statistical methods. So somehow you can boil music down to What doesn't make sense? You have the frequency. Yeah, no, it does it does make sense Yeah, they uh the waveform that you have there are uh, you can note certain syllables and free and frequencies and uh bird song They use statistics to analyze the song all the time I love that so the so they'll they'll boil the song down to Song units made of moans cries or other vocalizations And then those song units are put back together into larger phrases, which are called themes Different themes are produced in sequence to make a song That is then repeated for hours to days And for the most part all males within the same population sing the same song type There's a very strong similarity between a population of whales and this population-wide similarity is maintained despite the fact that Members die new members are born. There's a kind of evolution and change in the song It it moves with the group so that they kind of consider it hit songs. It's like the top 10, right for the group It's like having the same accent, right? Yeah Absolutely, and so we know that some song learning can occur between populations that are in close proximity But this was interesting because these two animals are in completely different basins And they're not in the same space for very long usually they When two sets two populations of whales will kind of converge in their song type It's when they share a mating ground. So they're together for a while But these guys they're pretty separate and so in 2003 they saw that the songs sung by one set of whales Uh in Gabon was more elaborate than those in Madagascar in 2004 They shared the same themes um, and then Both whale groups in 2004 had dropped the same two themes from their previous year song types So it was like they were out of out of fashion like oh, nobody's listening to that anymore Um, and then five songs being sung on both sides of Africa were very similar They are individuals in both locations singing songs with the same themes and order So Whoa, that's a very flirtatious whale. I will just say that right there Yes, you're being flirtatious Whoa And don't get fierce with me. That's a little too much. That's more That's more aggressive whale Thank god and I didn't handle She was a beautiful whale by the way indeed um, so so what this study tells us is that There's this communication from pretty far away happening between these whale populations and in very short Kind of spurts of time So even they even though they're they're close enough perhaps for them to be able to hear each other They're not together and for very long. So this completely changes the way that they think that that whale populations trade Sound or songs and how they move between different seascapes So They want to take a closer look at how these animals move now to see if they were wrong about their migration patterns with all this kind of stuff But it's very cool that these these whale songs In some ways can travel the world They do. Yeah, um amazing And and and one possibly interesting thing And also which means it's possibly not interesting at all Uh, is that the uh, those those low tones that we kind of heard really at the end Are likely to travel a much further distance And the high tones Even though they they seemed loud when we hearing them Are maybe whispering like that the higher tones are more are more likely like I'm gonna tell you who's really close to me by saying something in a high tone But then when I'm going low tone, it's because I want everyone everywhere. I'm posting this on facebook This is a thing I can tell everybody in my friend ish group Quaintances as well. I'm gonna tell everybody this low tone But when I go high tone It's only the people close to me That's just for you. Yeah, the whoop is Oh, and and and every man believes that that whoop is just for him So because the way that uh sound travels those lower tones go much greater distances than the high tones And I and so I wonder if there's then some connection between a local Communication and a broad band sort of communication Based on a choice of tone that would be really fascinating To see if they're controlling Uh, not just the the not just the message that they're sending But who has access to it Yeah, yep higher level communication. Absolutely. Yeah And all of this is gonna really help us Figure out how they communicate Much more in a much more nuanced way and help with maybe conservation help us really define what these groups are How they identify with each other Define their populations Figure out how different frequencies of sound in terms of sound pollution could affect them There's all sorts of stuff Oh sound pollution Yeah, do you haven't have have any more right now Blair? I'm gonna save the last one for the quick news at the end I think I'm all good All right. Well then everybody We have made it to the end of the first half of the show We will be back in a few moments For the second half of the show where I believe Justin has brought his immune system And I've got a story on autism and anger stimulation All coming up in the second half Stay with us. This is this week in science The methods of hypothesis and patients are the only things I need Put on a pair of goggles and go look at all the things I couldn't see The answers lie somewhere within this Hey everybody, thank you so much for joining us once again for this episode of this week in science We do appreciate you being here and learning with us discussing with us enjoying science with us Now to keep this show going we are an audience listener funded show if you've noticed no advertising This show is funded by you and thank you so much for helping us Keep this show going as long as you have but let's keep it going longer So let me tell you a few ways that you can help twist Yes, you you right out there I know you you can help us out specifically by heading over to twist.org twist.org Is our website and it's the portal to all things twist over there You can see a big orange subscribe button now That is the first thing I can tell you you can help us out with help us get more people subscribed to twist Tell people about twist send them to twist org and get them to click on the orange button To choose whether they want to subscribe on the google podcast portal itunes or youtube super simple Please help get people to subscribe if you're not yet subscribed Please subscribe get us in your in your player once a week Second we have cool things we have twist related stuff number one We have a calendar for this year. 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I got someone else in here with me With the what has what has story I have a letter from a long time listener and I would love to read it to you It is a fantastic note. He says hi folks I've been a fan of the show for years now and like many of your listeners I have much to thank medical science for Perhaps i'll get back to you about later about that for today though. I have to thank science for entertainment Silent science is mostly the the slow accumulation of facts and refinement of ideas But i've always been fascinated by the breakthroughs that have added to the storehouse of knowledge or in some cases By scientific events that were just spectacular I've seen the arrival of black holes quasars the cosmic background radiation smallpox eradication quarks lasers lasers high temperature superconductors computing from vacuum tubes to cubits space exploration from sputnik to major tom and a tesla The higgs boson plate tectonics graphing lucy denisovins dark matter and dark energy crisper and the list goes on And the beat goes on. Yeah the Anthropocene and mass extinction I could do without but I find science and the power it has to lift the veil of ignorance To be immense fun and a great source of hope at the same time Lately well Lately I've been given new entertainment by a subject that some folks thought was old hat when I was a kid namely Relativity and it largely started with a twist episode Let me explain LIGO and its companion detectors have opened up a whole new field of gravitational astronomy for us The detection of gravity waves has been covered extensively on twist and as i'm drafting this text I see four more events announced as a byproduct just over a year ago Two papers came out almost on top of each other and generated a classical movement of unintended comedy On twist episode 643 Justin Jackson with great enthusiasm explained How the authors of the first paper using LIGO measurements from black hole collisions had been able to place upper and lower Bounds on the speed of gravity at roughly the speed of light plus or minus 45 percent so far so good He then immediately went on to describe the findings of the second paper Issued only two days later which compared the newest matching gravity And gamma ray detector results for a new ton start collision These findings prove that the speeds of gravity and light are the same to within a miniscule fraction above or below expressed in scientific notation as numbers times 10 to the minus 15th or 16th power Unfortunately in reading out the numbers Justin kept leaving out the minus sign And in the exponents thereby effectively changing the accuracy to plus or minus about a billion light years per second Rather than fractions of a micron Yes, he tried valiantly to explain why what he was reading out was an improvement The look on dr. Kiki's face as she sought to contain their result resulting confusion was priceless The whole occurrence inspired me to order a bunch of books from the library about einstein and his work on Relativity which gave me many hours of educational entertainment and deepened my respect for a great man's genius in appreciation in appreciation I offer The following limerick to the twist crew Although Justin could not say it quite the detectors show einstein was right Their data set proves that gravity moves at precisely the same speed as light Oh Ron Haglund from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Thank you. Thank you so much for writing in. Um I'm so glad that a moment on twist that are whether confusion or excitement or Description in whatever way how that it inspired you to do further search and it led you to more appreciation and more education and understanding that this whole story Is wonderful and I really appreciate it. Thank you for sharing And for the limerick that was awesome So good So good and it's a reminder that even though, you know, sometimes We might want to bungle the numbers a little bit Accuracy is important if we can get it right and yeah Yeah Yeah, if we if we can get the numbers math is math is important scientific notation is important and If you're still in college or even high school your teachers are going to be on your back about scientific notation until You're not involved in doing that anymore if you're doing the maths. So get it right learn your notation get it right kids It's important to understand why these numbers work the way they do Thank you, mr. Hagel and if anyone wants to join us For a what has science done for you lately Section of the show, please send me an email Let me know what science has done for you lately Send a message to our facebook page this week in science Or send me an email kirsten at thisweekinscience.com I'd love to keep doing this. Thank you so much Justin What you got in your jeans Uh Well, there's a possibility that jeans play a bigger role and the body's defense fighting ability Then some scientists may have previously thought according to results from the study of twins From queensland australia Scientists have long known that people build their immune defense networks using antibodies Which basically is just molecules That get deployed Within their bodies when their bodies are exposed to different viruses or other types of There's strong evidence, however that genetic factors play a key role in how effectively and efficiently the body builds and deploys these molecules This is researchers from james cook university australia institute of tropical health and medicine Uh and university queensland They analyzed blood samples from a pretty decent size group 1835 Twins that's that means it's like twice the number. I just said if you're doing the math Uh And there are other and in thousands of their siblings who are not twins participants were recruited as part of the brisbane adolescent twin sample aka bats So as your professor john myles of james cook university said that the team looked the body's immune response to six common human viruses Uh within this group was arpey's virus human hybridized uh parvo virus epstein bar virus and coxsackily coxsacky virus We were surprised to see that the power of your immune system is predominantly controlled by the genes passed down from your mother and father said miles genes determine whether you mount an intense or weak immune response when confronted with viral infection professor david evans Says the environmental factors shared between twins appeared to be more important And determining whether individuals who had been exposed Generated the proper antibody response to a virus in the first place The classic twin study compares traits similar between identical twins or drive from the same brutalized egg therefore share identical genomes With the trait similarity between fraternal twins This is what they were comparing against the other siblings who arrived from different eggs and therefore genetically similar to each other as ordinary siblings, but not in the twin factor Demonstrating that antibody response is heritable is the first step in the eventual identification of individual genes that affect antibody response next step the researchers Identify the actual genes They're involved in tuning the strength of the immune response Quoting uh here dr. Miles if we can identify these genes we can eliminate super We can imitate Super defenders when we design next generation vaccines Likewise, we can identify the genes that are failing In immune response we could possibly crack that dysfunction Using immunomodulation So I I kind of feel like a little bit of this is Tied to the recent news of genetic modification If we identify Those heritable genes that are effective in producing a good immunological response Then why would we hesitate from Making sure the next generation has that good response versus knowing That there's an ill ill ill prepared response That's going to take place based on genes And and allowing that to go forward Yeah, I mean I guess the interesting thing here for me is Determining the kind of the fine-tuning aspect that strength of response because there are individuals who do have they mount an incredibly strong antibody response to certain To certain triggers And other people do not so their immune systems just aren't as strong. And so if we can figure out how to Accentuate some people's immune systems when they're in need that would be awesome Or to even or to even tamp down to you know modulate some super responses because those even can lead to Inflammation cancascades and yeah, I cannot leave all sorts of trouble So if you can figure out the genetic factors that are involved in that immune response to begin with I mean, I know we know genes are essential for immune response But it yeah figuring out how that how that all works. That's going to be And so it's sort of interesting and this is going to lead to the next story. I'm going to Talk about later. You want to talk about it now? Or you want to Get it all out of the way roll with it Open access journal plus one as a study about specific respiratory microbiome communities being linked to Whether or not you're you can be affected by influenza Okay, so This is another virus It's the biggest cause of the agent of the flu Or group of viruses influenza virus a primary targets the respiratory tract infects Epithelial cells epithelial cells of the nose and throat are enveloped by complex bacterial community To begin with and whether or not you can Have a decent response to getting the flu is based on that microbiome According to the study So it's sort of like okay, so so the part of it is Of this is that it's the mic microbes the within the respiratory system Which are crucial to mounting defense to a respiratory element So if you are of a family that is Got a good microbiome response to these external forces then Then you're better prepared and it may have nothing to do with your genes because Yeah, the those of a close family are going to have Shared space and therefore I have a very Very convergent microbiome Mm-hmm All right, so so so taking away and also This is the this is the part I left out of the last story Part of the left out of the last story is at the end of that story They congratulate themselves and show amazement that anybody from Queensland came up with anything scientifically useful Like they go on and on at the end of like I left that they go on and on at the end of the last study About how amazing it is and how impressed they are the fact that Queensland any year Had any impact on that which is important, but it's sort of Interesting the way that they actually designed their study between twins and And other siblings having Having differential effects, right like the twins were more consistent than the other siblings So what we're what we're ultimately circling Inon is the fact that it is the microbiome which affects Your ability to respond to a disease But that your genes that you have from your parents and grandparents It's the genes that you have also dictate To some degree what your microbiome is going to be and so the the more we sort of drill down on the subjects of gene Defense versus microbiome defense is a probiotic going to work is is it just your genes The more we sort of learn that it is a community of both Isn't this the classic nature versus nurture nature is your genes Nurture is the microbiome you are raised around So it's it's this environmental versus genetic factors again and the answer is always I mean I think both of these two studies which again like sort of how How uh the uh what is saying stunned for me lately Pointed to is two different studies that say two different things Within a week of each other These two studies are saying correct things from different perspectives One was purely based on genes and found a connection One is purely based on the microbiome content and found a connection and Those things too are going to be connected And it's one of those uh, you know One of the things that always harkens me back is often I do To the the fact that the highest viral load that humans have In life is before the age of two That that is when we are most Like just completely filled with our gut and respiratory systems with viruses Uh from the age of birth To about two years old. We're viral pods and after that Uh bacteria sort of take up And there's initial viruses that we have Sort of set the stage For what bacteria Will then be our our micro my microbiome Because they they are going to sort of screen in or out Based on their their dietary habits And and some of that is just inherited Through the viruses that your mother And the genes that you have from both parents that say what you're going to Have genes that are going to allow to be expressed with different bacterial defenses to different bacterial Assessions Yeah the The interesting thing with this microbiome study though is they're they're looking for Hypothesizing that there's an interaction between the flu virus and the microbiome and then so they look at the microbiome and they're like Oh, hey, it changed after the people had the flu. So maybe that means it's interacting with The virus, but I mean, isn't it more likely that it your body's immune defenses are affecting the microbiome While it's fighting off the virus. I mean, you're increasing heat which is going to change the environment that the You know your respiratory system micro microbes bacteria are existing in as well you're creating more snot and Blowing your nose and blowing all sorts of bacteria out of your nose, you know that there's The things that your body is doing to get rid of the virus and kill off the virus is going to get rid of and kill off a lot of bacteria as well And so it doesn't I yes, there could there still could be a connection They're very but I don't think this study shows anything like that at all other than what you said Justin, which is hey They looked for something with the microbiome and they found it. So you're saying this could be a classic correlation Not causation Totally Yeah, I mean all they did was look at whether or not people had the flu and had them write down a diary of their Of their symptoms but also like Part of it is like a lot of a lot of the diseases that we A lot of a lot of diseases that we get when we're talking about especially respiratory That we're we're actually there In present, I mean, you know a lot of the infections of the skin Yeah, they're already there It was just whether or not they were allowed the opportunity and so Yeah, a lot of people have MRSA Yes In their noses Because it hasn't gotten through yep, exactly Yeah, the bacteria compete each other into their population levels your immune system works. It's all a system. Yeah, yeah And and so I don't know It's one of these things that we've been talking about for many years now between the microbiome and the genetic and You know, there are predispositions to diseases of of these sorts We're going to drill down at some point on a more perfect resistance to Yeah But it is basically I guess all these stories say it's a lot more complicated It's more complicated than we know right now Or at least we're just really opening our eyes to that complexity Autism when does it start? Before you're born Yep, there's my story Okay Justin why you gotta ruin it by being right Right. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, so uh researchers looking at the question of when autism actually Appears and when the uh when the neurological changes start taking place that lead to autism spectrum symptoms You know people talk about autism as Rising as being noticeable in children around the age of one or two years old But there's other evidence as well as from this study that it probably Occurs while the child is still in the womb and changes that take place Are occurring from very early stages and this study suggests Suggests that these early stages could be as early as three weeks into the into the pregnancy When the stem cells are turning into neuronal stem cells And gene expression is beginning to shift the balance of certain cells Into certain lineages and down particular developmental lines So these researchers used stem cells To compare how neurons develop from autistic cells versus Normal cells and so they took skin samples from people with autism and people without autism to and and Made those stem cells grow turned those stem cells into brain cells They created a little brain organoid for these individuals And along the way they are like oh, these are neurons. These are not neurons and they started classifying the cells as they Developed along the way and looking at them and then they looked at those different cells along the way at the RNA expression and ribonucleic acid is Known to be responsible for the expression of certain genes and so you have little bits of micro RNA that travel around and Help bits of DNA genes be expressed or silenced And so they looked at what was expressed the RNA that was being expressed and they found that there were differences in gene activity from The neuronal stem cell stage So very very early on even before neurons became neurons there were genetic differences in in in the cells themselves And so They had also found an interesting aspect to this is that they could take that neuronal stem cell Instruction there is an instruction that basically says hey, you're going to be a neuronal stem cell you're going to go from just a Pluripotent stem cell that can be any type into a stem cell that's going to turn into neurons of any kind There's a single instruction. They found that single instruction And when they got rid of that single instruction and skipped the neuronal stem cell stage and went straight to neuron that a lot of these incremental developmental Problems didn't happen and that the neurons looked in these mini organoids looked Very similar between the autistic cells and the normal cells. They there weren't as many differences And so whether or not an intervention Is possible at like week three of pregnancy, which is before most women even know they're pregnant Is questionable But it does start getting us at a point of being able to figure out how early these changes really do start taking place during embryonic development Okay, so so there's a there's a Occam's race There's a Difficult question in treating this as a disease Highest per capita of autism rates in the united states is Silicon valley Yes, it's it's it is it's a developmental difference But it is potentially something that is Is caused by environmental factors and that there are there's there are genetic and it and it's it is a spectrum It is a spectrum Symptoms which could have a number of causes and they're genetic and environmental as we were talking about earlier I don't know that they're environmental. I don't buy that for a second. By the way, which is why I said it was determined before birth I believe it's completely genetic And and the the the aspect that makes silicon Yeah, you believe the reason I think that silicon valley has like the highest per capita of autistic children Is because of that spectrum because silicon valley attracted people who are very good at large amounts of information handle All right, these are people who are attracted to this area and the Dot-com boom or whatever in the programming world we're very uh Articulate that handling large amounts of information and processing this and this is part of the spectrum of autism Is that you will find more autistic children? Who are the children of? doctors and silicon valley execs and this sort of thing uh, because That that same that same sort of genetic divergence from the I guess average human Uh, which allows for autism also allows for Being able to remember everything understand everything handle large amounts of Large volumes of information. Yep. So so there is there is this weird Uh connection between autism and high functioning intellect high functioning and so the the the issue at hand is there are individuals who are severely dysfunctional as a result of the the uh neuronal pathways in their brains and how their brain Functions and they are unable to function in society.  There is the the reactionary aspects are are overwhelming and so um Yes, there is it. I'm not going to go along with your it's all genetic justin because that that hasn't been Showing we have found that there are genetic influences, but not it doesn't explain everything There are also Yet to see a proper environmental Study that leads to autism ever. No. Yeah. No, there's no direct. There's no direct Absolute. Yes. I will go there, but that doesn't mean there isn't something Okay, but at the same here. That's not arduous because I want to finish the show and we're not done yet and But the the the question is our you know, we should understand It's not whether or not we want to cure it or whether or not we want to Fix it, but it is a different Developmental pattern and if and we should understand it. We should know why some brains develop in Why most brains develop in a particular way and why some brains why a subset develop in a different way These are important questions What are the genetic and environmental influences? And I don't believe that's all I'm saying with this story All I'm saying all I'm saying is how do you identify it three weeks? Whether or not it's autism or the next like Neurosurgeon slash head of a tech company slash somebody who's doing ted talks Like how do you how do you tell? When you have a spectrum Of of of what we don't know. We don't know we don't know generation. Right. That's what we don't know Yeah Don't do anything about it.  Maybe I could control your outbursts. Maybe I could control my responses Maybe Hear you hear you the verdict has decided that your sentence will be to Experience anger suppression through electrical means you will wear a device for 30 minutes every day in order to reduce your anger in public You will do this in addition to public service in lieu of going to jail for your transgressions so a study published in cortex Researchers use transcranial direct current stimulation to stimulate or to modulate the impulse control pathway And the ventro medial prefrontal cortex and they use this transcranial stimulation They were able to target this particular area of the brain and they looked at people After having this transcranial stimulation for about 20 or so minutes How they responded to aggressive It to video situations that would make them kind of angry they measured their brain activity in the ventro medial prefrontal cortex in fmri and also Looked at their behavioral responses as well to see how well people were able to suppress their anger and they found That people's anger was suppressed much better After zapping their brains a little bit Who knew so maybe this will become some kind of treatment therapy down the road I don't know. We will see So so nothing in this makes any like relevant Affirmations about Whether or not it's effective for you. So what do we know about impulse control? Well, we know that impulse control was a thing that was developed Mostly along racial lines Uh in the marshmallow test What no no that is not No, some people are not able to control their anger become Some people are highly aggressive and easily stimulated toward emotional responses that lead to violence Okay, that's if that's what you're talking about then that's different than in impulse control Yes, i'm talking about well, it's it's it is still in the same. It's the impulse Probably is that an impulse rate some people you may have a vision in your head of Leaping through a screen and throttling somebody but you hold yourself back because you control your impulse And so it's an interesting development that we potentially could have understanding where these The the nuclei that control or the the the pathways that control Our ability to suppress our anger to express our anger If we could modulate that externally either with direct current or magnetic stimulation Is this something that would be therapeutic? Could it be used to help people? You know what I was just thinking about was cte with football players one of the side effects is being prone to aggression Um and kind of like mood swings and intense anger and stuff like that and I wonder If this if it was you know Figured out to be worked just right for it if it could actually help treat some of that I don't know. Yeah Yeah, I mean it's still very small study only about 25 people, but uh, it is Opening up.  The study it's pretty big for an fmri study Preliminary Justin. No study is small. It's preliminary Here's the thing we're zapping a part of a person's brain You've caused her effect is basically a lobotomy in my book No, it's not zapped to the point. You don't understand the nuances of the way that tdts works. No It is very low current.  You will feel a slight sensation from the electrical current, but it is a very low voltage current low amperage current That is It modulates activity. It doesn't Block activity. It doesn't knock out part of your brain. It's not a lobotomy So so basically what you're saying is that like though after this treatment Somebody cuts you off in traffic, and you're like, oh, I guess we need to get there quicker Yeah, instead of instead of Road rage, maybe it would be a more nuanced happy Or or you'd be like you'd be like Ah global warming and their children are dying at the porter versus after you're like Getting warmer and children died Like I mean like no, but like what there's some part of rage that is being outraged is I think at some point For a reasonable person a reasonable thing to be feeling Right and so the interesting I think the interesting kind of sci-fi dystopia question to this is How do we use this can you know people are experimenting with tdcs on themselves all the time Is this something that could be used, you know As an easy therapy. It's something that's not Controlling but more moderating and so you can you can get people To it's transcranial direct current stimulation tdcs Who's doing this stop it whatever you are lock it off There are people doing this But in the future, I mean will we be It will it be something that oh criminal you have an aggressive tendency you need you you are required by the court to do this Oh Suddenly everybody is required to do this because we need to calm society down or you know, is it How does how does it end up being used? But these these are two very different things to me the idea of impulse control versus just being angry Those are two very different things. It's doing something about being angry. It's going right and hurting other people versus Just being angry. So it sounds to me like the intent of this is not to stop people feeling angry about things But to stop them from physically hurting somebody Yes, okay, but this is very different the intent. Yeah, this is how the intent is sold One of the things that that caught my eye and why I referred to the marshmallow test was about impulse control when we talked about Uh impulse control about whether or not somebody could delay a react delay toddlers or children could delay taking a treat Came down to whether or not they were poor or wealthy right and the reason was um the better survival strategy For a poor child is to take whatever resource is available in front of them immediately because They have learned by experience that it won't necessarily be there again where the wealthy children Are used to well if you didn't have the treat now you can get it later or the next day Or you can have three times as much at grandma's house, right?  I think that's very important. Yep absolutely Yeah, it's under context is everything. Hey Blair. Speaking of context speaking of context I have one question asked Blair, and then you can go on with the thing Blair, yeah, that's a good segue. I know I know I'm sorry I I'll give it back, but it's just Blair was smiling and I just couldn't help but thinking about it Blair Do dentists pay you? To look at your teeth because you've got like the most perfect teeth of any human ever We are doing a podcast right now Justin I'm sorry.  I was like if I was a dentist I would pay that That set of teeth just so I could look at them up close like Where are we right now? Oh my god, I'm editing so much of this show that tomorrow all right I was gonna say context is important because Sometimes you think things are something that they are not and this happened in the case recently of the strange noises that were thought to cause concussion like symptoms among State department officials in Cuba Yes No, we still don't know what caused the concussion like symptoms but we do know what caused the noise and it turns out that As reported at the annual society for integrative and comparative biology meeting this last week Recordings were of the sound were released to the public through the ap and Alexander Stubbs who is at the university of california, berkeley listen to the recording And he's reminded of a particular cricket call That he had heard before and he went in his database. He looked up different crickets And he determined that the echoing Call that was heard was very much like the indies short-tailed cricket Almost perfect match to the frequency decay within each Pulse so they looked at the biomechanics of the crickets sound and the recording and they have a pretty Very pretty sharp match. So the sound Was a cricket the concussion. We don't know what caused that It was nonsense That's what it was I never heard a cricket before there was this like Sounded that just looked freaked out and I like brain stopped working and now I can't remember my birthday Yeah, okay. It it is very strange. It was just crickets, which by the way helped me sleep but cause Cuban like golden parachute dream job Giveaways to billionaires type jobs Keeps them a reason to see the government for more money. I go Anyway, yes, so uh, it's it's good to look into things a bit more It still you know may not be crickets, but it could be a you know Astridly sound device, but uh, it's it's crickets. I never believed that So And my final story, you know Blair has one more but my final story is about freaking eye beams I'm staring at you right now researchers looked at uh how much people estimated an object was being pushed on what force was being applied to an object when somebody else was Looking at it when somebody else was blindfolded or somebody else was looking away and they found that people actually in part a force to people's stairs and that the Force that comes out of our eyeballs is the equivalent Of a puff of air. No So you're saying like when when you like get the weird prickle on the back of your neck that someone's staring at you And you turn around. No. No. No.  That is not been proven Okay, we have an imaginary sense that people. Oh, it's okay. I see when you can see it Yes The force So it's we we make that a real force in our brains In our brains very cool I like it This is gonna be like subjective, isn't it to the uh The the ideal that we really paced across the face of the person who was doing the looking No, they they measured it across a few different like they've looked at multiple people and Yeah No, but I mean like like For instance is somebody who you Maybe don't have any respect for maybe the person holds a position of say Uh a a high ranking political and administrative position with the united states And so their eyes people apparently that they did not test that no They did not so probably the people doing the staring at the object were all neutral I'm going to imagine that they were That they were neutral people and not Not involved not not biased or a biasing persona in one way or another So that would be an interesting thing to study and these are people in the same room, right same room as them Yeah Yeah, but I mean like yeah, like there's some people who stares and like what are they looking at? It must be important and other people.  I want to tell you about cleaner living through plastic and garbage researchers at University of california davis Hey, davis are encouraged by early results from collaborative experiments with Biosolarization Combining the sun's heat with soil amendments to manage weeds and other soil-borne pests So right now there are two ways that you can treat a field before planting new crops One you can tarp the entire thing and wait six to eight weeks For the sun to kind of irradiate this And kill all the microbes or two the more popular option you can just Pour a whole bunch of pesticides all over it to to clean it all out So that's the current option because it's the cheapest quickest way to clean the soil before planting But this new preliminary study now has been extended to one Almond farm in chicco In coordination with the almond board of california They were able to use biosolarization And a mustard cover crop to increase organic matter by 1.25 to 1.75 percent So not only as efficient more efficient than the fertilizers by putting grape skins and Almond skins and all this sort of kind of trash from agriculture Layering that into the soil and then covering it in a tarp for a very short amount of time So this biosolarization is a great new way potentially to To sanitize fields before a new crop goes in So they're going to go into secondary testing very soon try to find their next step is strawberries Because strawberries are commonly treated with fumigants, which I didn't realize they're very porous strawberries.  You just eat the whole thing. Oh, I don't want those fumigants So this could be a really great one, especially for porous fruit. You can use Biosolarization you don't have the potential of getting pesticides leaking into your porous fruit Pretty cool. That's a way better. Love it Better living through agricultural technology. Yes trash and plastic tarps for the win I would not have guessed that I would not have I would not have guessed that would be the way it would go but it did I so it's sort of an interesting concept of a neutral soil From from everything that we've learned about how important the bacterial plant relationship is It's very interesting that there is like could be a benefit from a neutral soil Or I mean, I wonder if it's if it's a detriment depending on where you're planting So they what they said was that the that the the grape skins the tomato skins the ground nut holes Which I called the nut skins before those all promote Beneficial bacterial growth at least in the six cases that they've checked so far So I think yes, this would depend on the region This would depend on the type of beneficial bacteria you're trying to promote because they kill the the bad bacteria And the sun kills the bad bacteria I mean, I did this but I've done this before like this is how I prepped Gardens in the past as I put down clear plastic Yeah, at least the six weeks where it was like really burning everything and not allowing anything to grow And yada yada. Yeah But there is this aspect of Of how much are you neutralizing what what viruses still persist? And the more we've learned about the interplay of bacteria and viruses in the soil and how they affect the plant Well, and we're not little family farms anymore these huge farms these huge agricultural spaces They can't lay vacant for six to eight weeks. They cannot Which is the problem So they they they have to find something faster. So this is this is a very, um Promising option. I like it. It is and I promise I will be back again next week. We have reached the end of our show I want to say who we did it. That's right. I would Yeah, then I'm gonna edit out. No, I would love to say thank you to several individuals who make this show possible Fata, thank you so much for your help on show notes and on social media could not do it without you Gord, thank you for helping in the chat room. Ben Rothig also. Thank you for moderating in there Identity four. Thank you for recording the show. We our podcast depends on you I also would like to say thank you to all of our patreon sponsors Thank you to paul disney richard onamus ed diers to paulic philip shane Ken haze harrison prather charlene henry joshua furie steve debel alex was in toadie steel craig landon mark mazaros jack matthew litwin jason roberts bill k bob calder time jumper three one nine Eric nap richard brian kondren dave neighbor adin jeff dave fridel darryl myshack andrew swanson paul ronovitch koreen benton sue doster dav wilkinson ben bignal richard porter jacklyn boister noodles kevin reardon christoph zook narek Ashish pants ulysses adkins sarah chavis artyom rick ravis paul john mckay jason olds brian kerrington christopher drier lisas lazusky jim drapo greg riley shun lamb ben rothig steve lesmond kurt larson rody garcia marjorie gary s robert gregg briggs friend and minnish christopher rap and flying out erin luth and matt sutter marqueson flow kevin perich and biren lee and e o thank you for all of your support on patreon and if you are interested in helping us on patreon You can find information at twist.org click on the patreon link You can also help by telling your friends about twist On next week's show. We will be back once again. Well blare. You're not going to be here next week, right? No, no blare next week, but we justin and i this week in science Yes, we can science will be back next wednesday night at 8 p.m Pacific time on twist org slash live. We're also live on our youtube channel And if you can't watch live that's okay Don't worry because the episodes are all recorded And they're made available on our youtube channel and at twist.org Yes, uh, thank you for enjoying the show. Uh, you can also catch us as a podcast which is still available Just look for this week in science in something called a itunes directory Or if you have one of the mobile devices you can look for twist the number four droid App in the android marketplace or simply this week in science In anything apple market placey For more information on anything you've heard here today show notes will be available on our website You know where it is. It's www.twist.org That's Where you can also make comments Answer conversations with the hosts or other listeners But if you don't like other listeners, you can contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com Justin at twist minion at gmail.com or blare at blare bass at twist.org Just be sure to put twist TWIS somewhere in your subject line Otherwise you will be You can also hit us up on the twitter where we are at to science at dr Kiki at Jackson fly and at players menagerie We love your feedback if there's a topic you would like us to cover address A suggestion for an interview a haiku that comes to you in light A limerick In a what has science done for me lately? 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So i'm setting up shop got my banner on furl It says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to stop the robots with a simple device I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand Science is coming your way So everybody listen to what i say I use the scientific method for all that it's worth and i'll broadcast my opinion all over the air Because it's this week in science This week in science science science This week in science This week in science science science i've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That's what i say may not represent your views, but i've done the calculations and i've got a plan If you listen to the science, you may just get understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy We're just trying to save the world from This week in science is coming away So everybody listen to everything we say and if you use our methods We may rid the world of toxic plasma got the eye Because it's this week in science This week in science science science this week in science This week in science science science I've got a laundry list of items i want to address From stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness I'm trying to promote more rational thought and i'll try to answer any question you've got The help can i ever see the changes i seek when i can only set up shop one hour a week This week in science is coming your way You better just listen to what we say and if you learn anything from the words that we've said Then please just remember it's all in your head Because it's this week in science This week in science science science this week in science This week in science science science This week in science This week in science This week in science this week in science This week in science Thank you for appreciating and enjoying our show But now it's over No, no, it's time for the post show It's the post show And thank you all for watching. I see you in the youtube chat rooms Thank you for watching I'm glad you enjoyed it Save me science Toloi old scratch Wayne And who is Matthew is asking if is is just in drunk and I think so Oh, he said he was really tired. So I think he's just punch drunk You know how you get I get kooky when I'm super tired Kooky just kooky kooky kiki I'm trying to remember how to make things in the zazzle store I don't know Oh, our and Laura is asking are we gonna stick to youtube or are we thinking about twitch? Well, I really liked how twitch worked out last week There is definitely something nice about having you know all three of our faces up on the screen at the same time and being able to kind of Talk to each other as opposed to Having the little windows and the one dominant Like it is right now with the thing else today I I mean I've had to do a little work around because the link to get me in to do this broadcast Was not immediately available within my creator studio workspace And I don't know why because the words live streaming are there and I should click on them and it should have the You know live and the events and whatever I should have the options and it's just giving me a 504 error and so Something is going wrong there and it's across all my computers So I don't know what is going on there, but I was able to Find the general link to be able to get to the live streaming events page that I use and to start The hangout and it worked But I am a feared that it will be broken in the future Or that they will uh You know that they'll get rid of it that they're gonna sunset this feature I don't know why they would but um Something is broken and I don't know where or what But I do like the twitch thing It was really nice to do the twitch thing So then our lore is saying if you give me a few days notice, I can switch the live page to use twitch awesome Yes, because um our lore is the person who uh, I want to give you props Our lore you made our twist.org slash live page Um, he made it possible for people to go to our website to watch To watch the show um and have the chat room right there We would not have that option without our lore and so if we do switch Yeah, it would be awesome if you could help us if we do make the switch, but I don't know. I like I like having I like having the different chat rooms I like the fact that we have live youtube viewers. It's great I mean there would be live twitch viewers as well adam weaver you liked the uh the twitch stream Identity for the twitch streams audio was fantastic. Yeah, there's a lot of compression. I'm finding in the youtube That's not in twitch, which is interesting Justin I learned tonight your um your microphone is very directional It is And I think I think you do this thing where when when you're reporting on your story You're like looking at your screen. So you're talking right into it and the sound is really good But when you're responding to somebody else's story, you're like You're kind of looking off into the distance as you ponder And it's very quiet Well, I I want to be less of a All right audible influence Like when I'm doing when I'm commenting I feel like it should be It should be comment Not when it's going on and on and on from the back of the room I mean people are listening in audio in their cars and if they can't hear you over the road noise your cars Yes I mean I try and post process and make all of the audio the same loudness But it's hard when there's the very very variation It's I don't usually notice it very much, but tonight it was definitely you were I think you are getting very essential Going on There's some element of Of genetics involved in this too Yes, there is Is training you know how to use a microphone But but there's also a like one of the things I learned growing up uh heavily within a Italian community Was that italians tend to speak in the center of a room? Because if they get too close to a window They break windows when they're talking like There's like we have we have like spatial difficulties in communication because the the Hand gesticulation thing will like go through a window and cause either an artery to be opened or just property damage and so Like and I get that like I can I also have Uh problems staying close to the mic This makes sense Because you gotta back up the microphone is not a window It is a window, but it's it's You can also back up as long as you're still pointing at the microphone. I think it's not as bad It's when this happens and it's kind of a problem I love identity for he's laughing. He's like I can totally see the justin talking bits in the show's waveform Blair the mountains and justin is all the valleys everywhere All right. Well, okay. I'll just talk louder like I feel maybe I'm like No, because that's not the end of the mic. It's gonna be ridiculous I don't need a microphone. I can talk like I You guys don't even need to be listening through electronic device. Just open your window slightly. You'll hear me talk Oh my goodness. Good night fata No, I feel like that's for me too when uh, if anybody ever tells me like, oh, can you speak up? I'm like What? I've only been told that like three times in my whole life.  Yeah, I was speaking coherently and articulately and loud enough for any human being there I was loud enough didn't you hear me? Yeah Yeah, yeah Um Oh I bought new pillows to go with my orange studio, but that's not orange teal That's orange and I have orange chairs and I bought teal pillows Because teal goes well with orange. I don't know these rules Is it a contrasting color? I think they're a color-blind person and a person who has a color of static I'm an artist, but I bought pillows to go with my orange chairs Because I have dreams Dreams of using this studio to its full potential and I think pillows will help with that My kids don't let me buy pillows anymore. We're like we go where'd Blair go Your kids don't let you buy pillows anymore I have a lot of throw pillows Stop throwing pillows at me Hey to the people in the chat room if uh, if anybody wants a particular image From this new calendar on a particular item in the zazzle store.  Yeah, I already did all the pictures The pictures. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Let's do it, but we could um Do something else like a like, you know something where a page is like it names the animals and like Give some like information about them and I'm on it Picture that people can draw and we will just we I think we can do it like we can self publish it Perfect. I'm on it Yeah coloring book Coming your way What what you could take and if you could decolor Some of the images maybe, you know, if you have other Yeah, so how many pages That's what I'm thinking is Um, if you were to add some not 50 That doesn't have to be 50 But I think if we if like with this year's calendar if you could You know get make it black and white. Yeah, I could do that Some of the background and like turn it into maybe colorable images. I don't know some of them if some of them can be Adapted. Yeah, I could do that. I could definitely do that. Um, that would increase the number of animals and pages adam weaver says 314 pages for a coloring book. No um And it was kind of fun to have little like, uh, I don't know. Maybe we could have I don't know Yeah, little animal descriptions where they live conservation facts Yeah, and I might put um a store something about a story we reported on also if there's good ones. Um, right But uh, what would the format of choice be for this document? What do you mean like for power point? pdf Like what what would what do you think it would be in? Oh how it would Oh, um, I I amazon self-publishing they have uh, I was looking into it a while back. I can look into it again I don't remember exactly. Okay, but they let me know. They tell you how to upload the images. Okay I'm gonna put that for When I get back from my trip like 1 p.m The day after I get back A reminder. Yeah, and uh, I think fata quit but um, we I was talking with him about actually starting an email list And so we could have a um, I think you know a weekly email that if Each of us added something to it not even every week, but if we had it rotating or something Yeah Then um It could be you know something that goes out and it would be like hey, this is you know Here's the show it's published or don't forget to watch this next week because so and so is going to be on and Here's a couple of thoughts about this topic that I was looking at this week Or I was reading about this story and I I thought about this and just kind of You know our thoughts about things and just kind of a personal email So I used to do a bunch of scheduled posts on facebook and facebook stopped letting me schedule posts Oh Interesting So I haven't been posting like all the stories that I love that don't make it to the animal corner Those haven't been going on the internet Which is a bummer because now every week i'm like oh man. I wish I could share this out to the world So if I ever find one I really like that would be the perfect thing to me to be like Oh, hey, not on twist, but here's the school thing So Yeah, yeah, I love it. I would absolutely do that. That's like a yeah It's a 20 minute lift a week. That's easy Yeah, it's a you know a quick writing exercise and you know and then it would be you know some basic stuff related to the show and updates about things that are coming and Yeah, and people use email still it's like this platform that continues as much as people complain about it It is something that endures And it is better than facebook. I think It is better than facebook email um, would you want to do How many I wonder what you think the number of recipients would be because like things like We're not doing our main podcast now so I can talk about products, right? That's right. This is this is after show Yeah, yeah, so um mail chimp is something that we use at work that works really well But depending on how many um recipients you have It's free or not So, um What is it? Oh, um Up to 2,000 subscribers, which would be fine. I think is free Definitely to start. I think we'd be fine just to get it started So and then if oh my goodness if we're able to You know, we get our email list going and it's bigger than that great. I'll pay for it Yeah, so um if do you want to use your email as a login for that? Because if you want to sign up for a mail chimp Maybe during my lunch tomorrow. I can try to make a mock-up Of a newsletter Yeah, okay. Do you mock it up all in mail chimp? Yeah all in it. Oh, I think so. Yeah Okay Sweet. Yeah. No, I got to learn how to do that and if you can figure it out and show me how that'd be or Yeah, you want to set up the template and Yeah, yeah, I have a lot of the stuff it so it's funny. I actually have on my to-do list for tomorrow for my 9 to 5 job to figure out how to use mail chimp So this would be a very nice Convergence because I don't have the materials for that work yet, but I do have stuff for us So doing this would actually fulfill my work obligations as well so I would be more than happy to figure that out and um It's something I'm pretty comfortable with normally. So if we If we set up Stream of information I would potentially be happy sending it out a lot of weeks. I think it's not hard. Yeah, that would be awesome Yeah, one less thing for you to do you have enough I would yeah, I was like, okay. I'll do this. I want to do this Yeah, yeah, if you send me words, I'll plop them into a newsletter for you easy. That's not hard Great. Yes. My yeah, I don't like plopping, but I can make the words Yeah, no, let me do let me do the plopping for sure. Let's just keep saying that Plop Yeah I have a co-worker who when she talks about sending out an email blast.  I have I have like my I should have been wearing this during the show My my my game of thrones for coat Um, so I'll look tomorrow too. I'm pretty sure that part of mail chimp is They give you like the the html to put a button on your website that will sign people up For the mail chimp newsletter. So you don't have to pull information at all That's amazing So I'll look further, but I'm pretty sure that's that's the deal is that like You don't have to You know export and excel and then like import emails and you don't have to do all that It's all supposed to be in there. So We'll see I'll look You'll figure it out. I will Oh, yeah, grally bear tells me I'm correct. Excellent It will be great. And if you give me the button I will put it on the website. That's great. That's great. Um, also I meant to tell you it just occurred to me the other day. I've been I I'm not going to say the words. I've been learning html, but I've been learned. I've been learning how to like recognize What to cut and paste from one page to another of html to make things happen Um, which is pretty cool It's lightweight got me to be like, oh, I kind of get why this could be fun Gem doctor, if I yes, if all my youtube subscribers want in on the newsletter, then they shall have newsletter It will it Our lord's like don't touch I would never I would never our lord. Don't worry about it. I won't touch it, but I was just thinking about it Because I was I was like, oh, yeah, I wonder how like does kiki edit the website? Like I do minimal I remember um one time I tried to add a button And I and I broke an entire page um and another time, but I I just closed the window I didn't save it. I just like closed it and it was fine but um That's what I do is I like mess with the html and then I hit you Close yeah, and I hit the preview button And if it looks terrible, I'm just like I just kill it. I kill the page Start over You don't look pretty die, but then what happened recently someone else who didn't know Obviously something about the html. They were editing did it and for a while There were a couple pages on the website that had random words underlined all over the page It's like, I don't know. Oh my gosh. Yes. I I'll I'll learn won't have to hunt you down. I'll give them your address. Yeah. Yeah. No, no I'm not going to touch the html on the twist site, but I uh, I was just like I it always seemed like such a foreign concept of like editing a website like I've worked in a WordPress before which I feel like is It's like the Little toddler kitchen set with the plastic fork and knife and like the plastic tub of a sink. It's like it felt like that it felt very like Website for toddlers sort of thing the WordPress right because it's just like let's just work in this field And just type out what you want and don't try to do anything fancy and it'll be fine But yeah working in the html has been very interesting You get to learn the difference between a paragraph and a break And I had to learn how to turn words another color recently Which was very fun to learn because I had to do all this kind of reverse engineering to figure out the html to like That's the prefix before you put the code for a color And then I had to find out what the code for the color. It was very neat It was cool Yeah, we start figuring all that stuff out. I could never remember the numbers for the colors All those color codes. Yeah There are lots of links on how to create how to self publish an adult coloring book. Oh my gosh Yeah, um that's so if if I get A self-published coloring book I think I'll cry. That'd be awesome. Well Second grade Blair wanted to be an illustrator. It's nothing she wanted more in the world than to draw it for books If I have a book Oh my god Okay, so this is the other idea.  You want to do that? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes Okay, our own publication. I love it Yeah, um, we could also I wonder if we could publish uh, some of our favorite, uh Well, we've been talking about disclaimers that I could illustrate but also, um What has science done for me lately? We could pick some of our favorites of those that we could that I could draw That would be very fun. Yeah It'd be super fun. I like I like the idea of adding some Projects in here. I love it. Yes. I'm trying to find there is There's just I know he disappeared Justin. Are you there? He just put us on hold and went away. It's like I'm surprised he didn't like put in some hold music This is like the most traction I've gotten on a tweet in a very long time was my tweet tonight You have good traction on your tweet. I do That's good. What year was that? I gotta go back go back. I'm taking it back I need to find a story I don't know What kiki? Do you know what what today is? I forgot to talk about it Today is Wednesday, January 9th. So I believe it was anniversary The second show of the year was my first show Seven years ago Seven years Yes, so cool Yeah, it is Yeah, I think it was it was the the second show in january Because I don't think predictions were a part of the first show I was on Um, I think it was just a normal show. It was definitely in january It was very early and um 2012 pretty 2012 I know Kai was was in that like bouncy thing in a in a diaper And now he is like so tall and he's growing and he's yeah, he's a little little Little man. Oh my god. Is he eight yet or is he still seven still seven March is his Birthday. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's right He will be eight soon and then I'll have it Then I'll have a crisis and I'll have another year until my next crisis when he turns nine. Yeah Yeah So right now what I'm doing is I'm looking through old stories to try and find An old story and I don't know if I'm ever gonna find it, but I'm gonna try It was like and I because I when I I remember seeing it it was We talked about It was like a fish and another it was like two not the same species of marine animals And they were like Helping each other out and I remember looking at the story and I was like this is a kid's book Was it the cleaner fish or sorry the the cleaner the cleaner shrimp and I think it was a wrasse Maybe Now let me search on twist.org for cleaner shrimp This is how I find my old stories, right search twist.org Okay Yeah, 29 august 2018 was that too recent That's too recent. Okay. So maybe there's something else Um It was cleaners cleanership help the fish they're cleaning heal faster But yeah, that's the yeah, that's no it was older than that Marine animals helping each other Mm-hmm now I'm gonna look I'm gonna look and see if I can find it I don't know which episode it was though it was something and I was like this is a book It will be and I it's in the back of my head. So I will find it It may be not tonight though I like this. I really hope that we get the we'll get the email list going and well, maybe you'll do coloring book Mm-hmm. Those are are achievable. I think especially since The coloring book is like not actually that much work for me at all. You've done a lot of it already. Yeah So that's that's pretty easy Um, we just might talk in in the next after show that I'm on about um Like the layout of the fact page and how we want to kind of sort through it and stuff just so that We agree on the best Way to move forward. But yeah, yeah, like I'll do common name and like genus species for everything um, and I'll do habitat and Diet probably and then like some fun facts or something Yep I like it. Yeah, I like it. I like it. Um, what was So you're going on vacation vacation next week with my mom Oh, I know what I was going to ask you. Did you see the uh, the write-up on the black widow story that we missed in december?  Right I'm really careful like I go through the stories to the last Time I look like I wait until I see a story that I read and then I saw How did I miss black widow spiders? Seriously, I was I was reading the atlantic story earlier today and just the picture of the black widow web Like I had goosebumps all over my arms. I'm like, uh black Black widow spiders use their sensory organs called slit sencilla All over their bodies Okay, this is very cool Yes, the weight of the spider had almost no effect on the radio dial Their hunger pregnant black widow sensory perception isn't change They posture their body differently Their perception is under their own control rather than it being out of their control. How cool. Yeah Very neat Yeah, I love the idea of these black widow spiders going. Oh, I'm hungry I need to make sure I catch little insects and tightening up their posture so that they Feel the high frequency vibrations of tiny things in their web more astutely Or they relax and they chill out and they can sense the bigger things. They're just in the flow That's so cool. They're they're great spiders are so neat So neat Um, somebody in the chat was asking what episode was my first one and lucky for you I looked it up And I talked about it on episode 700 so I'm looking right now I looked it up. I know Oh episode 355 January 2012 How neat I'm just a couple episodes shy of being in more episodes than I haven't I'm so excited for that Over the hump. I'm important You are White It's great Then I really won't be an intern anymore, you know, right. Yeah, really No more intern work for you Just, you know A nice newsletter. I'll be excited for that I could include like updates on the calendar for next year Like pictures of sketches Pictures from the zoo and musings Yes, it'd be great Yes, I'd love it. I'd love it. I think it would be great, right? It's another and the way to reach out and say hi to people Yeah, I love it They just need their friends. Is it that study? If I do a children's book, um with like a story with actually like a narrative arc I'm definitely gonna do paper cutouts I love a paper cutout Good paper cutout. I love them These calendars turned out really good If I do say so myself Yeah It's awesome. I think you did great. Oh, thank you. I think mixbook did really good work, too Yes They're good How fun This is so part of this process speaking of my mom. We'll be hanging out with next week. Um Yay mom She has three jobs She um run she's like the site supervisor for a before and after school care program Um, but she is also the motor perception instructor. So it's like gym for the little ones So they're just like learning spatial awareness and stuff and coordination But she's also one of the art teachers at the school And so they do all sorts of experimentation with different mediums And so this the pointillism was actually her idea Oh, that's awesome Pointillism. Yeah Thanks for the inspiration mom. Yeah, she has some fun ideas for next year. She's already told me about That's awesome stuff out It's great. Pretty cool. Pick more animals crank it crank it out. Do the art for a cat Url or I didn't know it was up to a vote What's up to a vote? He said I love when we voted blaring as an official co-host But declare Justin as still a probationary co-host Did Justin leave? He did. Oh my god, that's weird Justin didn't even say goodbye. What is up with that? He's like, I'm super tired and Bye I'm gonna I'm gonna group text that guy What happened man? Where you go? We were like hanging out for you, bro. I know We're hanging out waiting Where'd you go? I'm gonna find the story. I know it was in here somewhere Yeah, I saw I saw that video you sent I think yeah, I think the newsletter is a really good idea That was definitely That was my big takeaway is I do think considering how Lovely and open and fun a dialogue. We have with our People who can join us live. I wonder how many people are missing out on that kind of Interaction interaction and the newsletter would definitely help with that That's cool Justin Trimple What did he say? I fell asleep. I said did you go to bed? Justin? He goes. Yes You didn't say goodbye He didn't say goodbye live is always best it is I love doing the live show it's something that Seriously coming from Doing the show live On the radio and then I just really wanted to keep it live when we started podcasting I was like I the live this is the best part It's the best part being here talking to people. I love no second takes Cut let's do it again Blair like the same but more energy. All right Oh my goodness Now that Justin's gone, let's do the whole show again.  I'm sure you joke when I'm not here I got cat hair in my face. Oh no I really wish I could remember what that story was Oh and aren't Laura. Yes. I saw you cannot find the password for the twist server. I will Uh, either recover it or send you a new one Oh, no, that's a problem. There's not a problem There we had I had um what probably happened is that the site got hacked a while back and so in the Trying to fix all of that.  I Deleted everybody's passwords right to do new passwords. So That may have been part of it But I will go and check and I'll probably just redo your password while I'm in there And I should probably redo my password and they'll probably Redo whatever that key code for WordPress is that it's what we need to do that We gotta fix the update the time to update the security again. It's time It's been new year time from new passwords time to update security Okay, we can get on a voice chat Huh, that would be good and we can talk about it. Is that call? Is that also known as a telephone call? Something like that. Okay I think I heard of those I think you need something called a a phone Noodles your son stayed at seven until 14 and then 14 to 19 and then full man. Okay. There's the jumping I guess age jumping um Just not text only got it Discord I need somebody to come over and teach me how to use discord. What is that? I never heard of that new fangled things. There's always new fangled things that I Discord is used by podcasters and by live streamers and you can create uh, it's like It's like community texting and messaging, but you can also Do audio through it so you can uh have voice calls. You can record conversations Um, it looks like it's it's like a place. It's like aim again. It's like a well instant messenger, right? Because it's like chat rooms except with emojis lots of emojis How funny I like learning things Yeah, I just need somebody to sit me down and go kiki for modern day podcasting. These are the things you need to learn Okay I'm a learn twitch. I'm a learn discord. I'm a learn. I'm a learn. What am I gonna do? I can do it Okay, discord started as a replacement for skype by gamers who needed low latency and really fast voice communication Yes Yeah, it is something magical people A lot of people use it everybody uses it Pretty amazing Yeah Oh, that's a link to a discord server Do I have to download do I have to download things and get a new password and things that I'm going to have to remember? The library of lore that's a good one Nice, okay I'm gonna have to make an account Count More social media that's the opposite of what I want More social more social more I will say I have uh been very I've been I don't know that I'm getting more done, but I've been a little bit happier I've basically limited my social media to twitter and instagram And I am pretty much checking facebook for The this week in science account And that's it these days. Yeah Pretty happy about that. Yeah, same. I don't so. Oh, so I don't know if I said I don't think I said last week my 2019 Resolution if you want to call it that but my thing I'm starting now and I'm gonna see how long I can do it Good is is to not scroll in bed Period. Oh, that's good. I'm not I haven't gotten there yet, but that's a great idea So like if I'm gonna Mess around on social media or if I'm gonna post things if I'm gonna be productive I can't be lying in bed because first of all definitely ill Yeah, it aggravates my uh my carpal tunnel really bad to be on my phone in bed Um, but it also it makes me go to sleep later And then I wake up and I don't get right out of bed I like wake up and I'm like, let me check all the platforms before I get in the shower And like before I know it 45 minutes has passed. I'm like crap Wait to everything, but it's also it just it's not it's we've talked about it on the show there've been studies that like there's the amount of positive Like impulses going off in your brain from it are are nowhere near Equivalent to the amount of time spent or the amount of negative, right?  Good job It's been a whole nine days I read my books on my phone in bed because otherwise I have to have a light on with a paper book and that keeps other people awake so Like reading before bed and it's on my phone and so usually I start by scrolling and then I say I don't want to scroll. I need to be reading And then I switched to and I switched to reading. That's great I've been reading and I've been reading lots of books lately. I've been great I read Mr. Penumbra's 24 hour bookstore Last week. That sounds fun. Mm-hmm Yeah, very fun. Actually, it's not Uh, not really sciency at all, but it was a very fun book Um, and Yeah, I really enjoyed it Everything we do doesn't have to be science. Yeah, it's based in san francisco, too. So there's very fun. Yeah, so it's fun Um, yeah, not everything I read has to be science. Although did you notice my new scarf? Oh Oh and speaking of science book that you should read female. It's a uh, it's called the calculating stars Have you read it? You heard of it Put this on a list. You need to read it. Okay Calculating stars the calculating stars. Yes Very good. Oh a lady astronaut novel Heck yeah, it's so good. It's like hidden figures, but a fictional timeline It's amazing. Oh paperback 12 dollars Let's add to my shopping list Yes, put it on there I also recently added to my amazon shopping list My absolute Favorite series of books from my teenage years. Oh, what's that? I suddenly remembered them and I was like I need to see if they hold up. They're called the enchanted forest chronicles And the four books are Let's see if I can get it dealing with dragons calling on dragons Searching for dragons and talking to dragons And they're really good. So there's like The first three books follows a princess who ends up befriending a dragon and right because she would I have a dragon She wouldn't be a princess. So she like ran away and ended up finding a dragon or whatever So she was she was not lady like in any way.   I remember really liking it. So I will eventually pull the trigger and buy those and see if they hold up It's kind of scary though because you you there's always you run the risk of them not holding up And then it's it's like a piece of you has died But they have it has 315 reviews on amazon and they're all five stars. So I feel like This is a good chance. It's not like the what was it that uh, what is it the The reflective vampire stories that so many people love but they really were bad books Oh interview with a vampire those those are good, right good books. Those were good books the reflective vampires Oh twilight twilight that series is that the series? Yeah, there were like three movies or something. Yeah, yeah I never read them Good count yourself I have this I have this compulsion when I start a series. It's like Maybe it'll get better. Yeah, and then I have to read the whole series and I for a whole time I'm like, this is really awful. Yeah, I have to see if it's gonna get better So I used to be that way, but the problem was that I only read Consistently if I enjoy what I'm reading and so I would find myself starting starting a book being like I don't like it that much, but I want to finish it and then months later. I wouldn't have finished this book I'm like Eventually a few years ago. I was like, uh, this is a bad plan And so now if I find myself Not enjoying a book and I'm and I'm slowing down my frequency of picking up the book as a result It goes out the window. It's done and I move on to something else because There's other books I could be reading in the amount of time. I'm avoiding reading that book Right So it's I'm not as diligent of a reader as others. I think because also I I just I love reading but it's really hard for me to sit down and do it Because there's always something else that I could be doing which is why books on tape Are usually the way I consume books because I can cook and clean and reorganize and art While I'm consuming the book Yeah Yeah, so are and lore. I love dresden files. Those books are amazing I had those books and I think I I was moving and I had read them a couple of times like And then I was like, I don't need these anymore. I think I sold them to somebody or just mailed them to somebody I gave them to somebody. I was like, yeah, I don't need these anymore. Every once in a while now. I'm like, oh Oh, it's also a tv show It was a tv show that was canceled. Unfortunately I was sad about that Well, james marsters reads them awesome. Yeah, they're great books Love dresden files very fantasy Yeah What else if I I don't know what else I've read I read all sorts of things I read all sorts of things so many books these days That's good. I'm trying to read more books. I've decided 2019 will be my year of reading and writing Reading and writing. I'm going to write and do more of it This is the other book I have to read Alive in necropolis Oh, I haven't heard that so that is I heard about it right after I moved into my current apartment complex because It is a book that takes place Basically in my apartment complex Yeah, so uh a young police officer Struggles to maintain a sense of reality in a town where the dead outnumber the living so, um I live in daily city, but I Know that's right because of the cemeteries. Yeah, so touching daily city touching my apartment complex Is colma and colma care at california is the quote cemetery city The dead outnumber the living And so the idea is that this person is is like a a rookie cop And uh, they start seeing ghosts While they're like investigating a murder or something that I don't know Yeah, that's awesome Well, there was a series like that that I enjoyed at one point, but it was in london And it got very very fantasy based. Yeah, I'm gonna add this to my list also I share my prime account with my dad. He's gonna be like, uh What are all these books on the shopping list? Uh, sorry The good books I just want these books steady Um, let's see if you like dresden files There's a series called their sand man slim books by richard cadry And they're they're not quite as good, but they're pretty good lots of devil and The angels and iconography iconography and stuff like that. Um There is the one that I really like series Hot rod, I would I think that's a weird question I wonder if worldwide there are more dead people than alive right now. Well, I would say statistically ever like 99 of humans are dead, right? because Yeah, but I mean the the question is how many are are gravestones, right like how many are Are being stopped from decay Um by a very fancy coffin And have a headstone you know who's like Stealing nutrients from the natural cycle not that I have any personal opinions about this or anything, but Of course not We're the after show and Justin's not here so I can say semi inflammatory things Yep, and know that you probably won't be Just saying we're all we're all carbon and stuff and It would be I I like the idea of after I die becoming part of the carbon cycle Totally like I think that's so cool I do too I do too. Uh, what Ben Aronovich is the Aronovich and it's PC Peter Grant is the like series. There's a bunch of them and it's like this Cop guy in London.  What's the name of the book? Well, the author is Ben Aronovich a a r o n o b i t