He joined DAA in January 2013 from Glambia, where he was CEO and President of Glambia USA and Global Nutritionals from 2005 to 2012. Before joining Glambia, he held a number of senior management positions with Coca-Cola in Russia and with Grand Met in Ireland and Central Europe. He's a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Management Accountants and holds a diploma in Applied Finance from the Irish Management Institute. He's also a Director of ACI Europe and the Irish Business Group, IBEC and a Non-Executive Director and Member of the Board of Total Produce. So Kevin is going to outline to us today his strategic vision for the future for both his own company and indeed putting it in a wider context. Perspective for me, four years into the job of aviation in Ireland and how it matters and what difference it makes. Thirdly, just to give you my take on the challenges we see as a business today, good and bad like any business. Then I'll move through Dublin Airport in a bit of detail, what we're doing to drive and develop the business and then I'll move on to the new Northern Runway Project and take you through that and why it's so crucially important to the country as well as our business. Firstly, the DEA, we're owned by the government, obviously. We're what they call a commercial semi-state which means we have to make our own investments, we have to find our own money and the company is run entirely as a commercial entity. Has been since 1999 when we first started paying rates. Walking through the different bits of the group, we have four or five businesses within it. Our newest business is DEA International which operates internationally in airport management contracts. We won a major contract last year in Saudi Arabia to operate the new terminal in Riyadh on behalf of the Saudi government. To put that into context, it's about half the size of Dublin Airport which has started up and is operating very, very successfully over the last six months. Our second business is ARI which is the old ARI International which is duty free. It's across around 15 countries at the moment and has been winning new business around the world over the last number of years with new shops due to open over the next 24 months in Muscat in Oman, Abu Dhabi in the new state of the art terminal and in Jakarta in Indonesia. Our next business is Cork Airport which is the second largest airport on the island with over 2 million passengers and was the second fastest growing behind Dublin Airport last year up 8%. We've got really strong growth momentum particularly as the economy picks up and we've driven a lot more inbound tourism to Cork and the south of Ireland and we have a very exciting issue with direct and indirect connectivity to North America with both wow through Iceland and Norwegian now that we've won a long-standing battle to get a license to fly directly from Cork to North America. Obviously Dublin, I'll come on to that in a moment. Overall the group is about 2 billion of assets overall about 6,000 people, 3,000 in Ireland, 3,000 abroad, primarily in our retail businesses across the world. We made a little over 206 million of EBITDA last year and our return on capital employed is about 7%. We're regulated, I see Adrian here today is from our regulator and I'd have to say we're one of the heaviest regulated airports in Europe along with Heathrow but that is what it is and I complain about it a lot but it doesn't get me very far. Moving for a moment just to the aviation sector, I think it's a terrific sector. We obviously live in an island and we have a far higher propensity to travel than our neighbours in the UK and in Europe we travel four times more by air than Europeans twice as much as people living in the UK but aviation matters in this economy not only is it a key industry all on its own we're absolutely privileged to have a number of very very strong airlines based here particularly Ryanair and Erlingus but also a key home to the aircraft leasing industry, a key home for talent for aviation globally I think the government has recognised that and also recognised the very special role quite uniquely of governments across Europe that aviation has in creating economic impact and developing the economy so it developed a very progressive national aviation policy a number of years ago in which enshrined Dublin's role in providing essential infrastructure which is one of our key challenges as well as running the company successfully financially bringing on the new runway on a timely basis and building Dublin as a hub to North America as we stand back at the beginning of 2017 and look at our business and look at the environment we operate in it's worth just summing up the sort of four or five key challenges good and bad that we see clearly the Irish economy has been a great star over the last year in particular it looks very strong again this year I think we would see some concerns in terms of rising costs, competitiveness also some of the fragility given the political system not just here but across Europe and the US secondly the oil price has been very good to our customers and therefore to us over the last two years it's now started to go back up again up around 56 dollars which is good because our customers have made more money they bought more planes they've reduced their prices and it's helped our business to grow and develop thirdly is terrorism the terrible terrorist attacks particularly across Europe over the last 18 months have had an impact I think if you look at the tourism industry in Egypt, Turkey, North Africa it's been decimated airports are both a target as we saw terribly over the last year most Istanbul and in Brussels and also there's a bigger issue which is it actually reduces underlying inclination to travel if you looked in Paris last summer there was a big step back in long haul business coming from Asia they just went somewhere else they felt it was safer so I think that's a big key negative factor at play at the moment fourthly the airline cycle it's a cyclical business they've been doing well for the last couple of years and when that turns and what it means is a factor we have to consider and lastly Brexit which we think is very very negative as a small island nation parked on the edge of Europe I think it's critically important that we stay open we stay able to trade with everyone and we stay able to keep the advantages that we have at the moment and we'd be quite concerned where things are and how it's all going to pan out there's now a very modern leading category one European airport last year we did nearly 28 million passengers we grew by 11% that made us the fastest growing major airport in Europe last year and we're the second fastest in the two previous years we're now up to number 12 I think in the airports within mainland Europe just behind Copenhagen and we passed out Zurich in the course of the year we enjoy as many of you would know the single busiest city pair route in Europe in Dublin London clearly Brexit will be a question for there how that continues and we've a very privileged position to be in the number five gateway to North America which we've been working very hard with all our customers to establish over the last number of years we've a very deep route network particularly into the UK provincial cities and right into Europe particularly benefiting from right now being based here and they're a very very extensive route network we work very hard on our primary customers who are the airlines and last year we were proud to be the number one in airports of our size over 25 million winner of the Roots Award which is the best airport in the customer's opinion we also work very hard on our passengers and for the last eight quarters we've been in the top five on the hard metrics measured right across all airports across Europe if you went back five or six years we would have been in the bottom five of the top 30 airports and we've been paying a lot of attention particularly to developing Dublin's a gateway and our long-haul route network 20 years ago we had four long-haul routes last summer we had 20 all that growth is very good very welcome in the recession we went down to 18 and a half million passengers we're now back up to 28 but like any growth company that produces lots of pain some of the key pieces of pain for us is how we develop our infrastructure to cope with that growth we think of the business as a factory so we look at each part of that factory each part of the day try to bring on enough capacity to meet our customers needs on a timely basis we've quietly been expanding the infrastructure over the last number of years essentially rebuilding terminal one very carefully if you think from the car park through security expanding security the shops just before Christmas a new arrivals area and we're also working through this year the actual departures area so terminal one will feel and look like a brand new terminal by the time we're finished later this year and there's a reason for that to be able to persuade our customers and passengers to be very very happy in using it terminal two we've also been adding capacity on the car park side on the security side and particularly over the last 12 months our key constraints have been airside we've been bringing on more stands places to park airplanes and you'll see more of that happening this year and you'll also see more remote periods you see more busing and you see some expansions on the actual airside but of course the big challenge we're facing is now on the runway side where we actually communicated last April that we're moving forward with a new our third runway our northern parallel runway and i'll talk about that a little bit more i suppose maybe just standing back for a moment and saying why what's the need and why now the need is because our core role and the key reason we're on the planet is actually to provide the central infrastructure to let this country operate and to help support develop the economy whether that's for tourism which is a prime industry whether it's foreign direct investment that we have so much of and value so much whether it's for irish trade that is increasingly going international that's our core purpose to actually help support that and drive it and make this a better economy if you look at the actual scale of the numbers we did a economic impact study about 18 months ago and there's about a hundred thousand jobs directly associated with Dublin airport which about 15 000 are directly on our campus that's about seven billion of GDP which is about four percent of the national GDP as we bring on the new runway that will create about 1200 jobs through the life of the project there'll be about 7 000 jobs by the mid 2020s when we're up and fully running and there'll be about 31 000 jobs when we're complete at full capacity a long time down the road in the future the issue of why now is a runway is a primary piece of infrastructure you can't bring on a piece of a runway like you can bring on other pieces of infrastructure and we're essentially full for a number of key times during the day we're about 87 percent capacity in total between five in the morning and midnight next summer in 17 and we're going to be absolutely full for departures and some key hours and arrival in other hours so i think that's the reason it's so important and why we've actually got to move now and as quickly as possible Dublin airport and the runway system we have in the infrastructure we have is a great example of really truly strategic long-term planning in this country it was opened originally in 1940 if you look back at the maps at that time you can see the runway and the airside maps show pretty much what we have today in the late 1960s in fact in my office i have a map on the wall from 1968 which shows the runways we have today and sketched on to it where the new northern parallel runway will be at that time my predecessors took active steps to actually procure land assemble the land bank and the planners both in north county dublin fingles predecessors and nationally put in place a set of planning guidelines and a framework to preserve the area around north county dublin even to the point of putting the southern runway in place first of the extensions in 1989 which essentially put a firewall with the city and putting in place sort of the green areas either side west and east of the airport i think that's been a huge success factor and one of the reasons that we've been able to develop and are able to continue developing so quickly i think it's interesting if you look at Heathrow for example where they're going to have to knock villages they're going to have to knock suburbs to build the runway our new runway will all be built on our own land bank if you look at the relative impact in terms of on the population the number of houses impacted by say a key daytime metric in Heathrow there are 46,000 odd houses impacted in Dublin airport 250 i suppose the unfortunate corollary of that is that for people living locally they say we live in a wonderful green zone so near the city and they do but that green zone so near the city has been put in place and kept that way waiting for the development of Dublin airport to be able to provide the economy with the infrastructure it needs we went through the planning process in the 2000s planning was granted in 2007 with 31 conditions i'll come on to some of those in a few moments and the project on 40 was put in hold through the recession when our passenger numbers crashed and there was neither the need nor did the company have the financial capacity to bring the project forward i suppose looking across at what we're doing and how we're doing it it's going to be a 3.1 kilometer runway it's a bit a mile north of the existing runway it's longer than the existing runway because we've got to make sure that Ireland is able to connect further to the rest of the world particularly important if you think of what's happening not just Brexit but if you think of in America and the way that a lot of parts of the world are becoming more independent and isolated we've designed it to make sure it reflects and is able to support the needs of our customers and if you look at our customers and their business models there are three key needs we've got short-haul customers and we have around 74 planes that are based in Dublin airport we benefit from Ryanair, Erlingas, Erlingas Regional, Norwegian and CityJet having base planes in the main and the key thing in the short-haul business is you're able to get up first thing in the morning get your plane out get plenty of turns during the day and get home at night secondly on the long-haul we are a small piece of a global system we've been very successful not just in building business to North America but also building business from the Middle East and what's critically important is that we're able to fit into the flight patterns coming from those parts of the world where essentially flights arrive in the main early in the morning through to late morning and leave late morning to mid-afternoon to be able to connect with connecting waves elsewhere be that in the Middle East or in North America and then thirdly on the transfer side we've been building Dublin not just as a gateway and one of the largest points of embarkation to North America but very much as a connection point to parts of Europe and into the UK and one in five of our passengers last year were actually not coming to or from Dublin but to somewhere else and that's really important for our business and making it more resilient to be able to cope with downturns in the Irish economy also make sure that our long-haul route network if you think one in five of those passengers are going somewhere else it means there's a stronger chance of Dublin having a long-haul route and our airline customers having better economics. Cost of the runway is anticipated to be around 320 million that compares with a cost say for example in Heathrow of around 8 billion and is extraordinary value for money if you look at what we get and what they'll get which is on the runway side there's lots of other different pieces of the equation but like for like we're massively cheaper. If you look at our position today there's absolutely no restrictions on our business and nor should there be we have two conditions that are usually problematic in the planning that we got in 2007 and we intend to look to have those conditions removed one of which relates to use of the new runway at night between 11 at night and 7 in the morning as I said earlier we're actually totally full at a number of key times including first thing in the morning it's like putting an extra lane on the m50 because you're congested and saying you can't use it until after rush hour so we think that's actually is plainly wrong and needs to be changed the second is a constraint on nighttime flying on the total airport not just on the new runway which constrains the number of flights to 65 from 11 at night until 7 in the morning right now we've about 100 flights at night through that time period and that's been one of the key factors that let us develop Dublin airport so well over the last number of years is building the long haul business which tends to come in early in the morning through to mid-morning you might ask what's the impact if we didn't deal with those it would be horrific firstly the day we open the runway we would lose about three million passengers that clearly would not make any sense by the time we get to 2037 we'd have lost around six or seven million passengers a year so a total of 80 million passengers would be lost to this island and clearly that would also have the impact of pushing up the price to our customers and probably pushing up higher affairs and reducing the connectivity that we'd be able to provide which I think would be a huge disaster if you think we're moving into a time when the world is getting smaller we need to be more independent we need to forge strong trade business tourism links with other parts and being constrained in that way essentially constrains the entire economy so we think that doesn't it's not a good thing moving through to how we've been working through this I think there's a general agreement on the need for a new runway we announced that we're moving forward with the project last April clearly there's a huge impact on people living nearby particularly those people that live nearest to where the new runway is actually going to be and so we've been working very closely with them and all of the stakeholders both formally and informally in terms of engaging consultation and a process of formal consultation as we have gone through the last eight months I suppose the on the individual side we have been working through the preconditions that we got in 2007 we've put in place a voluntary house buyout scheme there are no compulsory purchase orders we've tried to construct it in a way that gives people as much choice and as much flexibility of deciding what works for them in the future after the new runways opened we've established that I'm putting in place a house insulation scheme community gains we're also looking and taking input from our key stakeholders locally on other issues that they face and work on our way through the analysis of those issues and what if any mitigation we can put in place with an idea of putting in an EIS over the course of the next number of months so that we can actually go to change those conditions there's a new directive from Europe section 598 which looks at noise which is what the two conditions relate to it basically says in simple terms of four things need to be considered one land use and planning secondly the type of aircraft that you have in an airport thirdly the amount of noise and the mitigation and then determine is there a noise issue or not and only then determined if any restriction is warranted we believe going through those factors that does not we think we're very very proactive land use and planning and to be put in place a long time before me on the aircraft noise type 95 percent of the planes using Dublin airport or the quietest type we have a variety of procedures in place with both the airlines and the air traffic control people in terms of minimizing the amount of noise how planes approach how they come into land how they break how they start up their engines how they take off how they leave flight paths to actually look on an overall basis how we minimize the impact on people living nearby we also as described earlier have a range of mitigations of where there is noise and clearly there is if you're near the end of a runway that actually mitigates and reduces that noise and we think we've a very very strong case in that and we'll be making that strong case and my job is to provide essential infrastructure to run the business it's to make that case it's not up to me to actually decide in that case so really we'll be making a very clear firm case for those conditions to be removed where we now we announced the project last April we started through the process of complying with the various planning preconditions we have continued on with the detailed work of design we've been out through engagements with our neighbors and various stakeholders we've had a round of two rounds of public consultation and we've started now the clearing works on the site with the view to be able to move as quickly as possible we'll be submitting the EIS in the course of the next number of months as well as what we want in terms of the noise it'll also be addressing other issues that have came up in the course of the consultation so just to sum up and turn over for questions I suppose three key things one it's key artery into the country it's getting clogged and we need to make sure it's able to actually work properly to support the development of Ireland north and south secondly we've got to bring on capacity that actually does that not just build a 3.1 kilometer piece of concrete and thirdly we've put Dublin airport in a position having a lot of positive momentum and a lot of opportunities and it's absolutely critical at a time when a lot of the factors in the external world are quite negative that we don't actually misstep or lose any of those opportunities so thank you for coming and thank you for listening


Hey guys, it's Nate, aka The Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. Today in FIFA 23, I'm expecting a player, SBC, that might just go straight into my team and straight into yours as well because it fixes a problem that I think this Bundesliga team of the season squad has. At least for the players that are in packs. This card can be really insane today and I think it's flying under the radar for a lot of people, but I don't want you to miss it if it drops today because it could be a really, really insane card and help you link up your Bundesliga side. So I wanna talk about that and today is also the guaranteed we want to pack Cristiano Ronaldo but we're never going to pack him SBC pack day, guaranteed Saudi Tots pack upgrade day. So we're gonna take a look at that, how much it might cost and just the potential of this 96 Ronaldo being a part of that SBC pack. What does that mean for the price of the SBC? We'll talk about that. And the Bundesliga Tots cards actually went up yesterday after content released on Monday, heading into Tuesday. A lot of these prices have risen and I wanna talk about why a little bit and if you're looking to buy some of these for your team, when could we be buying a buying opportunity for that also gold rares in the market are down. We have a lot to talk about with the market today, a lot to go over. So if you're excited for the video today, drop a thumbs up on it and of course subscribe if you are new. Let's quickly go over yesterday's content. It was actually kind of a quiet day yesterday, a little quieter than I was hoping for it to be and kind of quieter than expected, I guess you could say. We did have the upgrade packs of course but we were just a little bit disappointed to see once again that there is no other upgrade pack SBC besides the Bundesliga premium upgrade, which of course does require the 11 rares. And like we mentioned in yesterday's video, the pack weight from these seems to be a little bit better than last week because there are fewer rares inside of the Bundesliga, which in my opinion makes it a little bit easier to pack Tots cards, even though you're more commonly packing the fodder Tots cards, I packed full crew twice yesterday, but I also was able to hit a Alfonso Davies. It was started off the week with a really, really nice pull from one of those eight rare gold packs from the Bundesliga, so that was really, really nice to pack Alfonso Davies yesterday and at the same time yesterday we had probably the best chance to pack your Tots cards, like we mentioned in yesterday's video, the 81 times 11 Bundesliga upgrade, which from these that we opened yesterday on stream, we saw a lot of people packing guys like Koldo Mani, we packed a Diaby for somebody yesterday, Slaughterback was popping out of those. It just seems like for an 81 times 11 SBC, the weight on that is not too bad, so make sure you're getting this done, crafting it with upgrades if you can, throughout the rest of this week, because that SBC right there I think does give us a really, really nice opportunity to pack some blues from the Bundesliga Tots squad. So those were kind of all the pieces of content we had yesterday, again kind of a quieter day, but one thing and objectives I will point out is yesterday was a very popular day for this level 25 choice between the Jesus Navas flashback card and the disappointing 85 times five pack, it's disappointing because we just came from a level 20 reward where there was an 84 times 25 and this only gives us five players, 85 plus, that's a bit disappointing. I think the play here as we talked about yesterday on the stream and on the Clips Channel YouTube video, we talked about Jesus Navas being kind of the best choice here, especially with LaLiga team this season being next, I know it's not an insane card, but you will be nice for the LaLiga Tots Cup for sure, good links and it's 75 strength on this Jesus Navas, which is like, I mean, you put an anchor chem style on him, he goes up to what, 83 strength plus eight and you have the strongest Jesus Navas card ever because his gold card is like 37 strength. So I think this guy is really good in game, he can also play right mid, right wing, so five star skills is fun there. I think that is actually worth more in terms of value to the club as a 92 rated fodder card in the future and also just for the links this upcoming week, I think that is the best choice from level 25, but without further ado, let's talk about the SBC on hand and I think we're getting a player SBC today and I'm like 90% sure it's gonna be this guy. I really hope that it's this guy because we have two SBC players that are leaked, this Rafael Guerrero and the Griffo card and the reason why I really hope it's Guerrero today and I think it is gonna be is because this one would really bring some hype to the game, he was leaked first and the links are what are the most important part about this card. As we mentioned in yesterday's video when we talked about him for the first time, he had a player of the month SBC that expired not too long ago. The thing that I like most about this card is he should be pretty cheap and he should be cracked as well. A lot of people really like this player of the month but take a look at this card guys, he can play center mid, left back, left wing back and left mid, he is explosive, he is four star, three star, so hopefully they would upgrade a team in the season version to be four star, four star. This card, four star, four star would be absolutely mental. You take a look at these stats, it kind of reminds me of like a mix between Conte and Acuña, right? The left back from Sevilla because he can play left back but he can also play center mid, he is short in stature, five foot seven, short and lean body type, very high interceptions, very high agility and balance, amazing passing stats, high composure and reactions as well, very important for this time of the year. In the midfield, his pay split is a bit off for sprint speed but if you think about it, he's gonna be more of a box to box, maybe a DM or maybe even as a left back if you're gonna play him on the left side there with his really high acceleration, he will be able to catch up to people like this right away, maybe not on a longer run tracking back but he'll be able to use his explosiveness and his speed right away to get in on those tackles. It kind of feels like it's gonna be like a ratty version of a midfielder or maybe even a left back if you wanna use in there. Think about like a guy like Alan St. Maxman, how short he is, how he can kind of just like get under people because he's so short, short and lean body type but still not bad strength statistics here on this card as well. He's gonna have really high 90 stamina, mid to high 90 stamina. He's gonna have probably around 70 strength, 70 aggression. Hopefully they boost the aggression up too. That would be nice. But the reason I think this SBC is really, really cool too is if you did the Marco Royce or if you're on the fence about doing Marco Royce, a lot of people I think are not doing this card right now some of them because the chemistry links are not hard but maybe just a little bit tough to fit in your squad with all the Prem players that you maybe got in last week during Premier League Tots. And I think this Rawfield Guerrero today would be a perfect way to kind of fix the problem that this Bundesliga team this season had that I mentioned in the intro because there's a problem with this Bundesliga Tots squad guys. We don't have a really good, cheap midfielder in this team. We've got Jude Bellingham, five mil, absolutely insane but how many people can afford that? Goretzko, one mil, also really insane. You've got Kimmich, 430,000 coins. That's definitely down in the more affordable range but still with the links that he has for the Royce card he's not from Dortmund. Yes, he is very versatile, but still 400K is a lot for some people. And then you've got Julian Brand who's basically fodder priced 43K and not very good. This card probably coming in somewhere between 150 and 250,000 coins. That would be perfect for a card like this. I just think would be super craftable and it would make me want to use him and my team with Marco Royce and I think it would make a lot of people who want to do Marco Royce, want to do both of these cards together. So I'm not trying to just blow smoke about this Guerrero card guys. I really feel like he could be super duper cracked and especially in gameplay right now that I don't know if it feels slow for you guys but in the gameplay right now that just feels very slow, very muddy. A card like that having that extra agility balance in the midfield is maybe something that just kind of works really well in the state of this game right now. So I'm very excited for Rafael Guerrero. I hope he drops today and I hope he is at very good price because he will literally go straight into my team and I think it'll be very useful for a lot of other people. Now let's move on, other content today. Yes, it is a Tuesday, which means the first up to guaranteed TOTS SBC days and today we're looking forward to the guaranteed Saudi League TOTS SBC. If you might be thinking like Nate, is Ronaldo actually gonna be packable or is EA gonna try to pull something funny today to not make Ronaldo packable? Well, technically according to the pack code, he will be in this pack. Guarantees one team of the season or team of the season moments player from the Saudi League TOTS squad.  But again, with so few players in packs, think about back to the air to busy guaranteed. How many people pack Javi Simons from that SBC? Few and slim to none. I feel like the weight's gonna be even worse today for Ronaldo, eight million coins still. The fact that this card is eight million coins is crazy to me. But for guys like Romo Reño, for guys like Tulisca and Ronaldo, the top three cards that are in this Saudi TOTS team, they're gonna virtually be unpackable today. This is probably gonna be the most disappointing upgrade pack or guaranteed TOTS pack that we all do yet. But it's still gonna be one that we try to do because those top three cards are going to be there for the taking, but get ready to see a lot of Marcelo Grohe, Tombatki, Hegazi, like all of these guys except for the top three.  I can't imagine that this is gonna cost more than an 85 rated squad. I know Ronaldo is in there, but of course EA know that they're not gonna be dropping Ronaldo's everywhere in this game today. But also since Ronaldo was in there, they can probably make the SBC a little bit more expensive. And that is another reason why I think it might be the worst TOTS upgrade pack that we have seen yet so far. So maybe you stock the club if you have not already on a couple 83s or 84s because I could see an 84, 85. I doubt an 86, but maybe an 86 squad requirement today because fodder is very cheap, but so is the rest of this team, right? This entire team is fodder apart from three cards. So I think it'll be an 84 rated squad today, but I could see EA going above that because Ronaldo is in there. So just kind of watch out for that. And of course, we're all gonna do that pack today just in case some of us, you know, get struck by lightning and somehow pack the Christian Ronaldo today, which is probably, like I said, not gonna happen. But, you know, we'll at least take our shot at doing that. Watch Tolisco, watch Romarino because if there's any low points on these cards, if you wanna try them out, I think you're gonna have to buy them before the content drop today. I really do believe you're gonna have to do that. 490K for Romarino right now. Anderson Tolisco was 420 yesterday at content. I think right now he's about 440, 430. So some of these guys are up a little bit. If they drop at all today before content, I think that's when you're gonna have to pull the trigger on them because they will probably just go up a little bit like we normally see every single week after that guaranteed SBC drops and people want to go out and try those cards. Although there's just not many cards from this Tots team that you maybe wanna try anyway. So that's gonna be most of our content for today. Player SBC most likely and that guaranteed Saudi Tots SBC. Now, let's talk about the market because yesterday with the content that we had and it kind of makes sense why the market moved yesterday when you take a look at some other things that are actually not moving on the market. The number one thing right now that I think a lot of people are wondering about is Nate, why are gold rares not moving? Gold rares are still 800, 850. They're actually down 800 now instead of 850 into the sell for gold rares on this game. And if you take a look at some of these cards that are getting listed up, you can see second owner tradable. People that invested in these cards at 600, 650 coins, 700 coins are starting to sell them and they're getting worried that these cards are not going up a price. Here to tell you guys, I still think they will go up. We still have absolutely insane cards in packs and really this is a great opportunity to do upgrade packs for a little bit cheaper to try to pack these blues. I did pack Alphonse with Davies yesterday. You can still pack the Kimmich, the Bellingham, the Giancuncu, the Musiala although it definitely is going to be very difficult. I mean, this is pretty cheap for doing upgrade packs specific to the Bundesliga League and I'm a fan of that. I'm going to be rocking upgrades throughout the rest of this week just because we can pack blues and it's way cheaper than last week for the Premier League but in saying that, a lot of people are worried that these cards will not rise up to where they were. I said this from the beginning, I said I don't think they're ever going to get back to the 1.4 or 1.5K range that they were last week during prem tots. Although I will tell you right now if you invested in these cards, there is no reason to panic. List these up for 1,000 to 1.2K and you will get a couple of sales every hour. If you invested in gold rares, list in that 1 to 1.2K range, maybe even 1.3, there are people that are buying these cards as they expire for 1,000 coins, 1.2K for the lazy sales. So don't feel like you have to panic sale them right now. These golds could still rise up further on in the week as people are maybe going and doing more upgrade packs towards the end of the week if they're feeling more hyped and seeing maybe a good SBC today which makes people go out and want to try to pack guys like a Schlotter back or go and pack guys like Mane. We still have crazy cards in this team, man. And not doing upgrade packs right now is just kind of doing yourself with this service at this stage of the game. These are some really, really cracked cards that are at least semi-packable during the season. So I would be careful with those but I wouldn't say it's definitely, it's not time to panic yet on any of those if you invested in the gold rares. Those should keep rising a little bit more and you will be able to get lazy sales. Now for the tots cards, Bundesliga specifically, a lot of these cards actually went up yesterday. And I think that is because you can tell with the gold rares not rising that much, you can tell there is a lack of demand for the upgrade packs and instead it looks like people just went out to the market yesterday and went out and bought cards because they wanted to play with them or they wanted to try them out and they just said, hey, I'm not gonna try to pack these guys, I'm just gonna go buy them, right? There was a bit of a dip right at content. Cambridge was like 430, he went down to 400 and then boom, went straight back, flying up in price and it felt like there was even some FOMO going on in here. A lot of people felt like they were maybe missing out on the low point and they started buying cards like crazy and these cards kind of had like an hour where they spiked really, really high. This Goretzka was 950K right after content right here. He went all the way to 1.03, 1.04. Now he's back down to 970 right now but you take a look at guys like Alfonso Davies was 340 yesterday at the content drop and now he is 380K, like look at this spike, he was 350, 340, all the way to 390 almost. Fran Pong was 220, he went to 260. Delict was up like 150K. So a lot of these cards, mine is up big time. A lot of these cards started to rebound really big yesterday. As I think people are like, I don't wanna open a lot of upgrade packs and these cards also, if you think about it, they're just more rare, they are. It's a fact, they are more rare than the Bundesliga and the Community Tots because there are not as many safe packs that were open this past weekend and that is gonna make these cards really good to number one trade with but also it's gonna make them a little bit more volatile during the week and they're gonna have maybe a bit more price fluctuation and if people start to say, hey, I wanna buy one of these for my team, you know, it's gonna take less people to go and buy these cards to make their prices actually move because they are more rare. So I think that's why you saw the fluctuations. I do think today, you know, I don't think you missed the buy time on the best prices for all of these cards. Do I believe that Kimmich could go back down to 400K and you have another buy opportunity there? Yes, but I think if you see prices on these cards drop down to where they were at their lowest, whether it was either Sunday night into Monday or maybe yesterday around the Monday content drop time, especially on a middle to high tier card, I would say that's probably your go sign. I think that's your time to buy. If Kimmich goes back down to 400K seeing how quickly he's bounced back to 430 to 440, that would be a card I would be interested in if Delict goes back under 1.5, if Mane comes back down to 1.5, Goretzka goes under 900K. Those cards may not get to those prices, but you know, I think those might be short-term buys. Again, let me rephrase, let me put this out there and be very clear, short-term buys because if we have a really cracked La Liga team of the season that comes this weekend, just like we saw with Premier League Tots, these cards are gonna be forgotten about by the time Saturday Sunday rolls around and their prices are probably not gonna sustain themselves into next week if La Liga team of the season is really good. So I'm not investing in these cards for the longer term, I'm just saying maybe there's a buy window here we can buy in the next day or so, hold them until Thursday or Friday morning, sell the cards, maybe even until Friday night and then worry about La Liga team of the season then. So just watch out for these Buenos Aires Tots cards because they are fluctuating, they are moving in price and there have been some good buying opportunities because they do fluctuate a lot. Now to talk about the gold situation on the fodder a little bit more, as we mentioned in yesterday's video, 86s were gonna go back up to 11K, I think I specifically said that in yesterday's video and they absolutely did with the 85 squad requirement inside of that 81 times 11, these guys went all the way back up to almost 11,000 coins, they were sellable at 11K. Now just like we normally see, right, there are weak in the rewards getting paid out, there are still store packs out, people are opening that are tradable and you see these cards dropping down into the late night hours, 86 is probably gonna go back up to 10K today, 85 is probably gonna go back up to about seven, 84 is probably gonna go to 3K, sorry, to 4K, 83s were 1.8K yesterday I believe, now they're 1.2, you can daily trade with this fodder man, you really can, like look at this, 1.2 is pretty low for these 83s, you might be able to trade with that into today, people are gonna do the 81 times 11 again if we do get that Saudi League Tots which we're expecting, that could make 83s move just a little bit, so watch for the fodder, sell in the spikes around the content time or an hour afterwards every single day, that is the time to sell the fodder. Now the last two things I wanna talk about in this video really fast are League One Player of the Month, it is official, tweeted out by the official UNFP Twitter account, Openda has gone back to back, he is gonna be a Player of the Month, SBC coming in this game pretty soon, he's gonna get another POTM card, this is just a prediction by FIFA U team about what his card could look like, it could be really, really cracked, I also hope that he gets into League One team this season with how he has been playing recently, they're saying an expected release date of the 18th which I believe is Thursday which would make sense, Thursdays are usually the days when League One Player of the Months get put in the game, so watch out for that there, that could be a really cracked out card, please update the week foot order skill moves or both EA sports, we would like that for Openda, so there's that, and then EA yesterday dropped the Serie A team this season vote which if you saw it on stream yesterday when we were first seeing this and reacting to it, there is a player in the defender vote here that makes absolutely no sense, Kim Min Jae is in the vote, I actually voted for him just to see what would happen, Kim Min Jae is in the team of the season vote, but my guys already got a team of the season card, he was in community team of the season guys, right? I mean, we don't forget about this card already, right? We haven't forgotten about Kim Min Jae, Tots 89 rated, how in the world can he be in the vote but already have a team of the season card? The whole point of community Tots was for those that have only had one special card or less during the year and somehow he is in the vote once again. Now, I think that I would, I was kind of voting for Kim Min Jae just for the fun aspect of why is he in the vote? We thought maybe it was messed up at first, but nonetheless, I don't think it is messed up and honestly, I actually don't want him to win if I'm thinking about it because I think if he won, this card would just get re-released and that would be a huge L. I hope that EA, I don't think they would upgrade the card, I think it would just re-release the same item that he had in community Tots and that would be a disappointment. So my advice to you would be do not vote for Kim Min Jae, put somebody like, I don't know, whether you've got D Lorenzo already in there like I do, maybe you put Bremer in there instead of Kim Min Jae and boom, there's a better Tots card for a new different type of item instead of having a re-release of a Tots card but that was kind of just something that we didn't expect to see, that we did see yesterday on this game and one other thing I want to shout out just really quickly at the end of the video is shadows, consumables right now. Shadows are basically extinct, they're about 5,000 coins apiece on this game. You can see they're basically selling for max price, chemistry-style trading with cards that need the shadows, specifically defenders, right? I was just kind of taking a look at Maxence Lacroix, he's right now I believe like 76,000 coins on this game but with the shadow, you know, people have to pay 5K for a shadow right now. So a card like this selling for 77K, you can see a couple here at 77K, maybe during the daytime, you can catch a couple more Lazies on a card like this, selling for maybe five, six, seven, eight K above where his actual sell price is just because people know the price of shadows right now on this game is up. So it doesn't look like it's working right now but during the day when there's the most demand, that could be something you watch out for on this game right now is trading with those types of players, chemistry-style trading because shadows are basically extinct. So that's kind of what's going on this game right now. I feel like the hype for Bundesliga Tots is kind of, you know, just it's being drained a little bit but hopefully today with the guaranteed Tots and hopefully a really good Guerrero SBC that could bring some hype back today. And of course, let me know in the comments what Tots cards you're packing, how you're enjoying this Bundesliga team this season promo and we'll continue to watch the market and watch and see how these prices fluctuate and maybe even starting to get some of the first leaks about LaLiga team this season coming this Friday. So if you enjoyed the video today, drop a thumbs up on a comment down below if you have any questions and of course, subscribe if you're new. I'm Nate for the count. See you guys on the stream today. Peace.


And I am grateful to the university for giving me the honour of receiving honoris causa and what I was very pleased to note is that the university has some very interesting ways of helping students to grow. Today is the 4th Convocation Day of the Global University of Sibirahman Global University. Today, we have given the address of the Convocation address to one of the founding members of HCL Technology, Dr. Ajay Chaudhary. We already have a placement work in the 7th semester. If you liked our video, please like, share and subscribe to our channel.


Welcome, everyone, to a special interview episode of This Week in Science. This is TWIS, This Week in Science interview with Matthew Cobb, recorded on Wednesday, November 10, 2022. Happy Day of Science, everyone, and we are so glad to have you here on the show joining us from where you are. Welcome to this week's special interview episode, and we definitely have a great show ahead. Before we jump in, I do want to remind everyone that if you are not yet subscribed to This Week in Science, you can find us all the places that podcasts are found. Look for This Week in Science. We also stream live weekly Wednesdays at 8 p.m. Pacific time and on occasional Thursdays and Fridays at 11 a.m. Pacific time for interviews. And you can find us on YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook. We are TWIS Science on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram, and if all this is just too much information for you to hold in your brain for one working moment. Just go to TWIS.org. TWIS.org is our website, but now it's time for me to introduce our guest, who is Professor Matthew Cobb, a British zoologist and professor of zoology at the University of Manchester. He's spent many years studying psychology, animal communication, pheromones, scent. He's also written several popular science books, including The Latest, which is being published here in the United States as God's immoral history of the genetic age, which comes out in print on November 15th. Professor Cobb, welcome to This Week in Science. Thank you for joining me. Thank you very much, Kiki. It's great to be here. It's so wonderful to get you to talk about some fun things. I mean, as God's, the moral history of the genetic age, it really gets at the point that we're bringing together science and history. And from our learnings of the past, potentially we can go into the future more intelligently. When did you first come to your interest in science history and looking back at history? Well, I've always been interested in history. I did it in the UK. You have a very restrictive system of education at high school level. But I was unusual in that instead of just doing sciences or just humanities, I did a mixture of the two, much to the despair of my teachers. That actually was a great help for me when I became a student, then eventually became a scientist because it meant that I was always trying to understand not simply the way things are, the way that we study things or understand them, but also how they got there, what have been the kind of differences in the past. And then that was a kind of general interest. And then in the early, the mid-90s, I was working in France at the time and was working on a big review, one of the things that scientists have to do is write lots of, you read everything there has been ever written on your tiny little topic. My tiny little topic was the maggots nose. And I kept on seeing these references to material from the 17th century and I couldn't believe that it would be very interesting. And I went into the library of the National History Museum, which was just down the road. And I found one of these books and thought, God, this is astonishing. And that got me interested really in starting to do quite a bit of historical research, first in the 17th century, and then more recently in the 20th century history. And as you indicate, also perhaps 21st century, futureology. Where we're going to. Yeah. And it's interesting that you bring up 17th century scientific work on the maggot. I mean, infections and maggots were probably very important back then. But it was really the 16th and 17th century that the scientific revolution was getting started. And additionally, intelligent writers were starting to write on fictional topics. And Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein's Monster, which dovetails very neatly with the kind of the timeline that we're looking at. Having worked in genetics and, you know, modified genes in fruit flies and these these laboratory standard research organisms are model organisms. Did you have you ever throughout your career considered the aspects of Frankenstein and the modification that science has started doing more and more? Or is it more recently that these kinds of questions have started to come into the forefront?  So it's a long time. And one of the main ways that we have of trying to understand how it works, how the genes work, how everything about it works is by changing its changing its genes, creating mutations. And I think right from the very outset, when, you know, I was studying flies with different colored eyes or whatever, you always wondered, well, what's going to happen if one of these flies gets out? If it gets out of the laboratory, what is going to be the consequence? Now, the answer fairly obviously is, well, these mutants aren't that healthy. So they're going to die. They're not going to survive and the gene will just disappear. But around the same time as I was moving into this field as a young student, that was exactly the same time that genetic engineering was taking off. And there were great concerns there, not about insects, because we couldn't manipulate them at the time, but it was all about microbes and viruses. And I was aware from the very outset about these debates that were taking place when I was a student and a graduate student meetings, organisations, protests all over the world as the people were worried by what the scientists were doing and to their great credit, the scientists were worried as well. And that's one of the kind of themes of the the book is the genetics, which is this is I mean, it is a moral history, this but the subtitle, really it should be title, but you couldn't call this call it that in a in a popular trade book. It's a critical history, but if we said it was a critical history, people wouldn't understand what it meant. They're thinking about this game and it's much more actually reflecting on what that history has involved in trying to understand it. Because four times in the history of genetics, the scientists have become so frightened and so alarmed by what they've done that they've decided to have a research moratorium, a pause, a moment, a period, perhaps several months in which they will not carry out those experiments. And I was struck by the fact that that's unique. So geneticists know about this and are very proud of it because it shows they're kind of socially responsible. But there's no other example of science, not even in the people who are developing the nuclear bomb during the Manhattan Project in the Second World War. Nobody in any of the fields, as far as I'm aware, no other group of scientists said, look, this is a bit alarming. We should stop doing this until we're really sure that it can be done safely. So that's what I wanted to explore. I wanted to explore that history, which is kind of I've traced. I've gone in lockstep with I've grown up and been a scientist and an academic at the same time as this field has repeatedly raised doubts, concerns, nightmares. And then they've kind of faded away. And there are three in particular new things on the horizon that I'm very worried about and we can talk about them in a minute. But the principle is that I knew that the things I'm scared about now are similar to the things people were scared about, say, 50 years ago. And those worries turned out to be not to be irrelevant, but they weren't as acute. The danger wasn't as acute as people thought. So I wanted to find out. Am I overreacting? Is this me being scared or is it really an issue? And so what better way to do that than to write a book? Find out. Give myself lots of time to read and think and talk to people. I think that's fabulous. It's it's an opportunity for you to actually get an answer for yourself, as opposed to. Absolutely. Yeah. I didn't know where I was going. I mean, I knew what kind of story I was going to tell. I didn't know what the answer would be by the end. There are a couple of reviews out that have said that you take it as as you said, it's a critical look. But that that say they it seems as though you're you're negative about the the outlook for scientists to manage themselves. Do you think that those are accurate? That saying that you've taken a negative stance is. Well, I think this is too important to be left to the scientists. That's the key thing. I don't think that we should. So the first the first of these or the first two really of these moratoriums took place in 1972 and then 1975. And this big meeting took place at a cinema on the California coast, which is very famous amongst geneticists, perhaps not amongst the general public and about 200 scientists from all over the world came together and they discussed how these experiments on what was called at the time recombinant DNA could be done safely without risk of causing strange pandemics or whatever. And what's very striking about that is that not only did they not ask are these the right? Is this the right thing to do? They just thought, how can we do it safely? So the discussion was all about safety, but also it was entirely kind of informal. It was entirely up to the scientists themselves. And although they they they argued that the NIH, which is the main funder of genetic research in the US, the main federal funder should not give should make it a condition of funding that people obeyed these biosecurity protocols. It didn't have the force of law. There was no there was no prevent mean if you if you have private means, as some companies did, you could do what you want, which is still the case in many respects in the USA. So I was very struck that there were in this this moment where there was self-regulation, the scientists decided it's OK. You know, we can do this safely. Don't worry, a little heads about it wasn't really like that. But it was a bit of condescension in there because the public wasn't involved. They did have journalists there. But there was no there were the the voices of the many people who were worried about those experiments were not heard. They were not present. And I think that's that's really quite striking that this key moment, which is praised understandably because it enabled an awful lot of development both in industry with the development of the biotech industry, but also a lot of very important scientific and ultimately medical research. The public wasn't wasn't anywhere there. And that that meant that after the meeting, it happened. And after these experiments began, there was an awful lot of public disquiet. And for about five years, there were a lot of protests, there were meetings, town hall meetings in particular in Cambridge, Massachusetts over at Harvard's plan to build a new lab. And then by the end of this period of huge debate around about 1980, the whole thing just kind of evaporated because it turned out for various reasons that the experiments were safe. Not only were they safe in the conditions that they were being done, but some experiments that people were worried about, say, putting a human gene into a bacteria and what happened then turned out the answer will be nothing because the bacteria wouldn't want to know wouldn't know what to do about the human gene because our genes have special kind of regulatory stuff on them that bacteria don't understand. And above all, you could make a lot of money. So money is above all else. Yeah, you've got about this 1980. So this is Reagan. This is the beginning of the Reagan year deregulation. And it's also the moment when both Genentech and Apple went public. First Genentech, the big biotech company. And they actually incorporated the same week in Silicon Valley. I was quite amazed. It's quite a coincidence that they obviously didn't know you have Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and the founders of Genentech didn't know about each other. But it shows you part of that spirit of what was going on in that part of California. And so I thought all this was this fascinating kind of mixture of science, politics, culture, economics and so on. It is and, you know, in the decisions that we make and the things that we do go on to impact the future. And so these companies have Apple and Genentech. And since then, many others have gone on to. Just incredibly impact everyday human life to the point now where when it comes to genetic modification, where we have people who are still concerned about genetic modification of organisms here in the Pacific Northwest, we have Frank and Salmon as some activists are calling it. But we've got Salmon who have genes that affect their their longevity and their ability to reproduce. And there are many organisms that we eat. And so genetic modification itself is a part of our lives. And in the book, you go through all sorts of various technologies and different methods of modification that we've used. But then one of the instances that we've gotten to in recent history that led to a brief moratorium in one of those moments that people, scientists sat back and said, let's take a break. What are we doing here was with CRISPR, the technology that has allowed Chinese scientists to modify human genes in human embryos. Yeah, I mean, this is the most disturbing, I think, thing that has happened recently. And it's disturbing not just because what happened. So in 2018, the Chinese scientist called her John Quy, he changed the genes of two what at the time were single cells embryos. So these were fertilized embryos.  In fact, there were three. We now know and this experiment was really botched. It went horribly wrong. Lots of we know, don't know much about what the exactly what he did because the information that's come out of China has been very little. But the key thing is that this was a very, very bad experiment which went horribly wrong with a bit of luck. The girls will be well. We don't know, but they have mutations that we have never seen in any other human. And also not all their cells are affected. And normally all your cells have the same genes. So that could be bad for their future well being. Plus the mutations that have been introduced are going to if they have children, they're going to be there.  And that's that's one of the crucial points in the debate about human genetic modification. It's one thing to impact your own genes related to a disease that you're suffering from within your own lifetime. But if you are impacting those cells that go on to allow for reproduction, that's impacting the future of humanity because then those genes can spread. Yeah, and it's also obviously you are. I mean, if you think about it, it's a really kind of operationalist rather unpleasant view of human life. I mean, those girls didn't ask to have their genes changed. No, somebody did it to me. Right, which is going to be. I mean, so there's a lot of people get very I'm not going to mention his name, but there's a certain person who's currently wrecking a bird social media program that he's very keen on, you know, he says, you're going to go to Mars. I'll take you to Mars for free.  Your travel debt. Yeah, the travel debt. And maybe we can also mutate people so they can live on Mars quite happily and just think about what a minute those people, if you could do if you could do that and you couldn't, they just die, they have been turned into this other thing. No, they never asked that. They never asked for that. They had no choice about it. They have no choice. And I think there's I mean, everything about that experiment in in China stank. There was no medical need. It went wrong. But above all, the scientific community at the time was although it was outraged when it heard what had happened was complicit in this atmosphere of that the world was on what they called a prudent path to the use of genetic engineering, allegedly in human embryos, allegedly to get rid of genetic diseases. But as now everybody has recognized, I'm glad to say, in fact, in the vast majority of cases, overwhelming majority of cases, couples with genetic diseases who wish to have an unaffected biological child can do so through existing techniques without changing their genes. You select embryos, go through IVF and you select embryos that are affected. And the number of couples around the world who wish to have a child and cannot have it safely by that means are probably a few hundred. So really, that's outside of the tech bro fantasies of living on Mars. That is really what you're talking about. You talk about meeting the desires to have their own biological child of a few hundred couples around the world. And we know where those couples are going to be. They're not going to be randomly distributed. The only people who are going to have access to this technology are going to be in the West, in particular, very wealthy individuals. So I think there's a million and one reasons why this is a bad idea. And I think the key phrase, Fyodor Ernov, who's a genetic engineer who works on somatic gene therapy, so that's therapy which will not be transmitted to the next generation. And he's been right from the outset, verently opposed to this, this embryo editing. He said that human embryo editing is a solution in search of an answer. Sorry, he's an answer. Answer in search of a solution. There we go. I got that. You get that phrase right. An answer in search of a question, which is a very sharp way of putting it. We don't. There's no reason why we should do this. It can go horribly wrong. There are immense ethical issues, including those, as I say, about the children and their own sense of being and exit and in personhood.  We're all a product of chance, but at least we're all equally a product of chance and it's all a bit weird. Whereas some of us might be manipulated in order to produce particular outcomes that certain individuals might desire, not us, but somebody else. And I think that's very bad.  There is a a group who are calling themselves long termers or they're into long termism. There are also effective altruists, individuals within the technology community who are looking at the future of humanity and what they can do in a very, very, very long term to ensure the survival of humanity. And they're willing to get there at whatever cost to current humanity. So future humanity is more important or more valuable than current humanity, as long as we get to the human. It's the whole whole planet. Yeah, it's the whole moral, ethical conundrum. This is a huge philosophical question, right? I admire the work of some of these individuals who are mainly men. It's quite interesting. But, you know, OK, yes, we need to ensure the long term survival of humanity, but that's not by filling around with genes. That's going to be by sorting out the climate and resolving the problems we have of carbon economies around the world, which we're all part of. I mean, there is no no country is is not involved in that. We're all completely imbued in it. And that is where the intelligence and the brilliance and the initiative and the vision and the money of these people should be directed because without that, we are all not just us. But, you know, every organism is going to be sunk by this. Yeah, the outcome of the moratorium based on the the human embryo genetic modification. Well, there's not actually an M. This is part of the tragedy. There's no moratorium. The scientific community, not absolutely, because the scientific community did not agree on that one. And strikingly, Jennifer Dowdner and Emmanuel Sharpentier, the two inventors of CRISPR, they differed. Sharpentier signed the the call for a moratorium and Dowdner wouldn't. So, I mean, she's not engaged in that kind of research, but her view is, look, it's too late. We can't stop it. I think that's wrong with all due respect to somebody who's a lot smarter. Done much more for things, genetics and probably humanity than I will ever do. But I think she's wrong on that. And the shift that there has been in after the Herjonki scandal erupted, there was a very slow move as people really thought hard, which they should have done before. Why do we want to do this? What is the point and what are the dangers? Because that was never asked. Nobody ever asked that. And to its great credit, the meeting in 1975, which didn't ask, should we be doing this either? It was just focused on biosecurity. But it did say very clearly, this is what is an acceptable risk. And since it became obvious that CRISPR could be used on to edit human embryos in around about 24, 15, that question just wasn't asked. Now it is being asked. And the answer is, well, not for very much. Yeah, it's not really something that's very interesting. You can use it to cure genetic diseases in humans. Right. But this procedure, at best, would allow a certain type of human to come into being. It wouldn't cure any disease because the individual who might have the disease didn't exist. And if the two people involved don't have sex, the individual will never exist. Never exists. Yeah, the zillions of individuals don't exist because people don't have sex. Every day, I make a choice for humanity. The infinite number of humans have not been conceived. Thanks to me. Oh, geez. So we're going to be running short on time here. Because this topic is so this topic, this book is full and this topic is deep and it's it's a fascinating topic because it's about us, right? It really does come down to these questions of who who matters among us? What do we want to where do we want to go with humanity? And then also, how do we want to impact the world and along the lines of what CRISPR can potentially do for gene for for disease therapies? We're also looking at it and other gene modification modification technologies as potential ways for affecting other species on the planet. And I know one of the topics that you bring up is gene drive. And that's one that we talk about a lot on this week in science whenever there are our new studies. Yeah, because I know about that. Yeah, that's the one I'm most afraid of. Yeah, people need to know about this technology that can lead a gene to. Just spread uncontrolled within a population. When you're when we're talking about mosquitoes, it's one thing. Well, I mean, even as an insect biologist, I beg to differ. I mean, so I think the first point to make is whenever people talk about when I talk about gene drives, the first thing I say is half a million, in fact, six best figures, 600,000 people a year die of malaria. The vast majority of the children under five. So if you say we're not going to develop this technology, then that is that's the price. OK, that's what you've got to think of. What are the other solutions? And that's the motivation of the scientists. I've talked to these people, I've interviewed them. They are all none of them are crazy. They are all very concerned by what they are doing. But they're also looking at that other part of the equation of those 600,000 people. And if you could find a solution to that, then why wouldn't you? Now, the interesting thing is this very sexy and apparently simple solution and it is simple. It's complicated, but it's very simple in its consequence of changing mosquitoes or eliminating them from certain regions could have unknown ecological consequences. Yeah. And secondly, there may, in fact, be more simple solutions. So the WHO has just approved a vaccine for malaria, which is only 80 percent effective, but which is nowhere near as good as our covid vaccines. But that will be enough to reduce the amount of malaria in the local population and will lead to a massive reduction in transmission. So there may be more traditional solutions. And what's striking is that these gene drives, which, as I say, the scientists are very concerned, the people who either dreamt them up or have actually made them have been terrified. You know, they said, maybe we shouldn't publish this. Or one of the Kevin S. felt is one of the people who's really thought about it hard enough. When he initially, first day, he was really excited. The next day, he worked out, my God, what this could be. What have I done? Yeah. And I didn't tell my supervisor for a month, he said, because he kept it quiet. He was so frightened.  And also why we're often attracted to these apparently sexy techno fixes when more fundamental questions and perhaps simpler solutions also need to be addressed. And I don't really know how an answer to that, but there is a very clear desire for something that is not only effective, but is also elegant and has got to. I mean, you know, I'll be honest with you, that's one reason why I was very happy to get the mRNA vaccine because it's so sexy. It's so clever. I didn't I didn't want the boring ones. You know, mRNA, it's amazing. I mean, it really is. We're living in the future, but we are still going to be affecting the future to come. And from your work and research in this book, do we have any any history of times when scientists did not just look down on the public, quote unquote, and say, oh, we'll make these decisions. As a scientific community, we're not going to ask if we should. We're just going to ask if we could, right? If we can. And and where the public and scientists have come together to to actually make decisions about how future technologies will progress. Has that happened? I you could you be worried now because the kind of question there must be a yes answer to. But I can't think of what it is. I mean, during genetic engineering, there have been a series of public debates and so on, like, as I said, the one in Cambridge, Massachusetts that have seen these issues thrashed out in a public arena. And, you know, that's that's the kind of model. And the end result was the the public said, well, this seems as though it's going to be OK, which in fact it was at the moment for I mean, but if you think of the problems. So you're, you know, we're talking here. Most of everybody, by definition, who's watching or listening has got a computer, they're literate. But if you want to release, say, a gene drive to get rid of malaria in Burkina Faso, as is one of the projects in in the long term, there are no media plans, you've got to get prior informed consent from the local population. How do you do that when there's no word for gene in the language? Never mind gene drive, where the population is illiterate, where so what they've done, for example, is to have theater. They've gone in and they've made plays that can explain to the local villages what what exactly they want to do. But then the villagers when journalists talk to them, the women say, well, yeah, nobody asked us, we don't have any say in this. And even if your local village did want to let one of these things loose and you could understand why, because their children are dying, for goodness sake. Why should that village decide for because the mosquitoes travel an entire area or the whole world? You know, that's how Zika got into Latin America. It came from Africa, came over on ships. Mosquitoes are very good at moving about.  Yeah, they end up in where they shouldn't be. So there's a major issue and we need something like, I think, something like the Civil Aviation Organization, which enables everybody signs up to is an international organization kind of vaguely under the UN, which decides what is safe and pretty much you can fly safely in a civil airplane or similarly, the International Atomic Energy Authority, which is perhaps more appropriate because it's very dangerous and quite complicated. Yeah, yeah, the question there is, however, is will governments do governments now have an appetite for international regulation, especially does the US? I think not. So there are bigger issues behind these scientific issues and we're getting to big kind of global politics about what kind of world we want to live in. It touches the science touches all aspects of our lives. And this book is fascinating and I didn't find it negative as some of some review. It's realistic. It's history and it's it's a realistic view of where have we been and where are we now and what do we potentially have on the horizon and what do we need to be concerned about? And just today, another study came out related to CRISPR. There's T. CRISPR, which is the first gene drive to be used in vertebrates. And they're I haven't seen that. I'll check that out. They're planning to get rid of the house mouse, the house mice in that are invasive to Australia and New Zealand. But it's vertebrate and it has gene drive. And so there's OK, there are studies that prove very proved intransigent until until now. So people have tried and haven't been able to do it. So I'll check that out. Yeah, brand new work out today. No, hold the presses. But we need to add something. Something new to put that in your book, too. And I think this kind of conversation is very a proposed to today. It is UNESCO's World Science Day for Peace and Development. And so this topic, you know, this is one that will touch all people. And so as much information as individuals can have, whether or not we consider ourselves as gods, this book is, I think, a great look. And thank you so much for your time today and for speaking. Thank you very much for inviting me on, Kiki. It's been fantastic. It's wonderful. Where can people find more information about your book? I follow you online, et cetera. I would go to bookshop.org because I don't like the other spaceman. That's the one, just that one. Yeah, I think go to bookshop.org or basic books for my publisher. Great. And then you have a Twitter account if people would like to follow. I am at Matthew Cobb, one word on Twitter. And I'm on Mastodon now. It seems as though, yeah, the scientific community. I'm still on both. So I signed up for Mastodon years ago. And then I was like, wait, nobody's here. And so I stayed on Twitter. We'll see what happens over there. It's very, it's very posed and there's no shouting. It's quite nice. I like the lack of shouting, although sometimes you have to shout because you're excited about something. Absolutely. Yeah. There's a bit of that. There's a bit of whooping, but there's no. I haven't come across any very grumpy, bad behavior yet. Not yet. Everyone, thank you so much for joining us for this live interview. Dr. Cobb, thank you for joining me once again.  And we hope you will join us again for more great science news and interviews. And if you learned anything from the show, please remember it is all in your head.


Welcome to my official science degree tier list. Make sure to sit back, relax, gently tap the like button, and let's begin. Agriculture is going to be first on the list and unfortunately this one is not very good when it comes to the stats. Agriculture is the theoretical study as well as the practical application of farming and cultivation. Salary isn't great, demand isn't great, there just aren't that many things going for this degree if I'm being honest. One thing that is decent is the job satisfaction seems to be relatively solid. So for that reason I can't put this one too low, it's gonna go ahead and go in D tier. Next on the list is going to be animal science. This is a relatively popular one as you can imagine, I mean pretty much everybody loves animals. In fact, you could make a pretty solid argument that animals are even better than chocolate chip cookies. Now this one does emphasize animals that interact with human beings and generally it's going to be farm animals. Now because of that the demand for this degree is extremely low, maybe the lowest on the entire list. Now the job satisfaction is still relatively decent and I think that's something you notice with a lot of the science degrees. The job satisfaction tends to be pretty good, but the pay is really low and there's just not that much opportunity out there. And so for that reason it's going to go in F tier. Next on the list is going to be aeronautics and aerospace science. And this one is going to be all about studying things that fly such as rockets, planes, satellites, and of course flying saucers. Now this one might be something that you'd study if your goal is to work for NASA for instance. Now as you can imagine becoming a rocket scientist isn't the easiest thing in the world and for that reason this is one of the hardest majors out there. This is big brain time. But for those that can do it, the pay is excellent starting off at about $52,000 but it works its way up to $129,000 by mid-career. So to put this in perspective aerospace engineers get paid extremely well but they only make $118,000 for mid-career pay. Now besides being really difficult the other downside to this one is there's not as much demand as a lot of the other high-ranking majors. But overall when we're talking about science degrees this one clearly goes into S tier. Next on the list is going to be biology and I don't think I need to explain what this one is all about. This is one of the most popular majors out there and also one of the most overrated in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, it's important to know that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell but the pay isn't great to be honest with you. But the pay might be the least of your worries because the demand for people who graduate with bachelor's degrees is also extremely low. There's a huge issue with this one with people graduating with a four-year degree and not being able to find a job and so they have to go back to school, pay for the expensive grad school just to be able to start their career. However, I still think biology is a decent degree and here's why. It's still relatively well respected and it's somewhat flexible. So if you can't get a job as a biologist there's a lot of other careers out there that would potentially hire you with a biology degree and on top of that if you do manage to land a job as a biologist the job satisfaction is pretty good. So for those reasons I'm going to go ahead and put biology into C tier. Next on the list is going to be biochemistry and if you're passionate about biology I would say this one is a much better choice. And biochemistry is just what it sounds like. It's basically the chemistry that happens inside of biological organisms. The pay is quite a bit better than biology with a starting pay of nearly 5,000 more and a mid-career pay of 15,000 more. There's also a lot more demand for this degree and it's more flexible which means it's much easier for you to get a job with just a four-year degree. This is also a really good one if you're trying to go into a healthcare career. A classmate of mine did get a biochemistry degree and she said it prepared her extremely well for pharmacy school. Overall, I think this one for science degrees is going to go into A tier. Next on the list is going to be chemistry and this one is a little bit better than biology in my opinion but not quite as good as biochemistry. You know, if you get an engineering degree you're probably going to become an engineer. If you get a nursing degree you're probably going to become a nurse.  But overall the stats on this one aren't too bad. I'll go ahead and put it in B tier. But seriously if you're not careful with this one, if you don't plan ahead you're probably going to end up a little bit confused when you have to go to grad school in order to just get a job. Next on the list is going to be environmental studies. Now this one is all about studying and protecting the environment and it actually did grade out pretty well when it comes to job satisfaction. But the downside to this one is basically everything else. The stats on it are horrible. On top of that, this one is not as flexible as a lot of the other degrees. So there's a good chance you won't be able to find a job with just a four-year degree and it will also be hard to transition into other industries. And I think this one in the future might become a little more important. I mean, you have to admit it would be cool if you didn't ever have to charge your phone. The power of the sun in the palm of my hand. Overall because of the high job satisfaction, I'll be nice and put this one in D tier. Next on the list is going to be exercise science and this is pretty close to the last one when it comes to statistics. It has pretty high job satisfaction as you would imagine. A ton of people are really into exercising. However, the demand might actually be the lowest on the entire list. The salary is also extremely low. I think it was tied for the lowest on the entire list. It also isn't a very well-respected or flexible degree. There's just not that much upside to this one. This one definitely goes in F tier. Food science is going to be next on the list and I was actually pleasantly surprised at how well this one graded out. The pay is pretty decent for a science degree and the demand is actually pretty good as well. And let's be honest, who doesn't love food? And it does seem like there's actually a good amount of jobs out there if you graduate with a food science degree. Now, the knock on this one is that unlike a lot of the other science degrees, the job satisfaction is actually pretty low. That's why I would put this one in B tier. Forestry is going to be next on the list and this seems like a really cool one to get into.  It's also pretty cool to be able to conserve nature and save the trees and all that stuff. I mean, nature's cool. And the job satisfaction for this one is pretty good as well. Unfortunately, everything else is extremely bad.  On top of that, this is not a very flexible degree where you can just go into a different industry very easily. For that reason, forestry is going to go into D tier. Geology is next on the list and this one was actually a pleasant surprise. And geology is basically the science that deals with the Earth's physical structure as well as the substance. Now, the stats for this one did have their faults, but overall they actually graded out pretty well. The pay was above average and the job demand was also pretty decent. The job satisfaction was really high. In fact, it's one of the highest on the list. And after doing some research, I think I found out why. And I think it's because a lot of geologists end up working in the natural gas industry, which tends to pay extremely well. For instance, petroleum engineering is the highest paying four-year degree that you can get. The only problem with this one is there's a good chance that you'll have to move into the middle of nowhere. You might even have to move to an oil rig. But overall, I'm going to give this one high B tier status. Next on the list is going to be molecular biology and this one's pretty close to just normal biology, but the stats are just slightly better. So I'm going to put it in B tier next on the list is going to be neuroscience. And this is basically the study of the structure of the brain and nervous system. And this is another one where you have that same common problem that you have with a lot of the other science degrees. Basically, there's a lot of neuroscience majors graduating, but there's not a lot of neuroscientist jobs. So a lot of them end up going back to school, get a six to eight year degree, or they end up completely switching their career. But overall, this one does have pretty good job satisfaction and it's relatively well respected and flexible. But everything else is pretty bad about it if I'm being honest. So I'm going to go ahead and put this one in C tier next is going to be psychology. And this one always gets a lot of comments. It's very controversial because it's one of the most popular degrees out there. And I can see why psychology is very interesting. I mean, I took extra psychology classes in college, but the stats don't lie, guys. Psychology is very overrated. There's so many psychology majors graduating and there's just not that many jobs for a four year degree. And if you do end up getting a job, you're probably not going to get paid very well and you're going to get worked extremely hard. And you can't complain about it because there's 10 other people lined up that would happily take that same job if you quit. So even if you're doing what you love and you're following your passion, it might ruin it for you just because of how stressful it is. Now, if you do end up getting a psychology job, the job satisfaction is pretty good, if I'm being honest. And if you are willing to go to grad school, get your master's or your doctorate, you can get some pretty decent jobs. And I almost put this one in detail just because I do think it's important and I have a lot of respect for people who work in mental health. I do think it's a very important degree and it's something that society really needs. My sister graduated with a psychology degree and she does amazing work. But the fact that it's so overrated, there's so many people graduating with this degree makes me have to put it in F tier. Next on the list is going to be physics and this is the branch of science that's concerned with the nature and properties of matter and energy. Now, physics is technically a science degree, but it's also extremely math heavy so you get a good dose of both. Physics is also very difficult. A lot of people think it's the most difficult major in undergrad. But the stats are very solid for physics. The pay is good both when you start and also when you've been working for a while. The job satisfaction is also pretty decent as well. The demand is pretty good for this one and on top of that physics is a very well respected degree where you can easily switch fields. Many physics majors end up going into the tech industry and working as software engineers or something along those lines. For that reason, physics is going to rank highest on the list and it is going to go into S tier. Make sure to watch my other videos right here. I made them just for you. Go ahead, smash the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the little notification bell and then comment down below any comments, thoughts, criticisms, etc. that you have on this video. Thank you so much for watching and bye for now.