Are we live? We're going live. Oh wow. Somehow on Twitch, I said that we're going live, but I didn't type that. Yeah, it was you. It was, but it wasn't. Was that a Blair? Somebody has the keys to the car. The keys, yes. Someone is gaining power and it's fantastic. Welcome everyone to the live broadcast of the taping of the This Week in Science podcast. Thank you for joining us once again. We have a great show lined up tonight and just remember there's going to be snipping and cutting and editing and the final podcast will, it will be a little different from this, but this is all real unedited live. You never know what's going to happen on the live show. I don't know. Just want to let you know that. So thank you for being here live. Are we ready to get going? Yes, we're nodding. Everybody's nodding. We're ready to go. That means that I can take over this screen and I can say starting in three, two, this is twist. This Week in Science episode number 843 recorded on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021. How metal is science? Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we will fill your heads with smoke, salt and metal, but first disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Here you are the most advanced, most evolved, most genetically diverse, not to mention the oldest and most populous life form the planet has ever known. And perhaps as you listen to this, you're covering the ear lobe of a human ape or perhaps you were on a house plant near the window. You could be hovering in the air, riding on a particle of dust, or even just be at rest upon the speaker that is producing this sound.  To do all the little things that need to be done, those tiny tasks you carry out while going about your day make everything else possible. Yes, occasionally a few of your friends wind up in places where they may not be so welcome, but you will always have a home pretty much anywhere you choose to. In the water and in the soil, within the niches and on the surface, beneath the bottom of the ocean floor and high aloft the upper atmosphere, on the skin and in the guts of every living creature. And as always, right here on This Week in Science, coming up next. Science to you, Kiki and Blair. And a good science to you, Justin Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back again to talk about science because that's what we do this week and every week on Wednesdays or whenever it is that you happen to download us to listen. We are here with another great show lined up. It's been a fantastic week and tonight I have stories about tiny robots, hot biofuel and smoke. Lots of smoke. The air quality is really bad. We can talk about that. And we have an interview. Dr. Michael D. L. Johnson is joining us to discuss his very metal science. Thanks for joining us tonight, Michael. I'm excited to be here. We're excited to have you here. Justin, what do you have for us? I have got cooking with lasers. I have got, oh, high sodium diet that kills cancer. Dark energy may have been discovered. And we are just discovering now that we may have already discovered it.  All right. These all sound very intriguing. Blair. Yes. How's the animal corner looking? Oh, well, so just for fun, I brought a quick story about touchy-feely joysticks. But then in the animal corner, I have deceiving moths, but really forget all that. I'm here tonight to talk about seahorse placentas. All right. We are waiting for you to serve those up for us. Oh, boy. Oh, I love the animal corner for all that it brings. You never know what we're going to get. You know, it'll be strange. I think that's the guarantee. You know, it's going to be wonderful. All right. If you have not yet subscribed to This Week in Science, remember you can find us all places where you can search for This Week in Science. We are on Facebook. We are on YouTube. We are on Twitch as Twist Science. We are on Twitter as Twist Science and we're on Instagram as Twist Science. We're on all the podcast platforms and our website is twist.org. But now it's time for the science. So since it is climate week, I wanted to get started with a quick overview of what's going on and how things are looking out there in our climatically changing world. Apparently the smoke that has been released by wildfires in California this year has released particulate matter and carbon dioxide, specifically carbon dioxide at a level more than has been released by India in a year. Massive amounts, gigatons, gigatons of carbon dioxide have been taken from forests that have burned and been put into the atmosphere. This is data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. They found that wildfires in July emitted nearly 1.3 gigatons of carbon dioxide. And this is more, this was topped in August. 1.4 gigatons. Woohoo! August was way better. But this is more than all of India's carbon emissions in a single year. So these are majorly wildfires in California, Oregon, but also Siberia has its place in there. We're looking at some old stands of wood, carbon sinks that are being turned into carbon sources. And this is going to be a big issue moving forward. But in those lines, we also have the World Health Organization warning that pollution needs to be reduced and they are setting new levels for standards for air pollution to protect human health, which is a really needed thing. We need to protect human health because we know that air pollution is one of the things that also is a precondition for certain diseases, like COVID-19. And this week, UN officials are meeting during this climate week in New York City at the UN General Meeting. And there is some good news that's come out of it. China has vowed to stop building new coal power plants. They're not going to build any more as of the end of this year. So that's pretty big news. That's great. I mean, with the wildfires and then all this other news, too, it's a good reminder that, yes, wildfires contribute to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and climate change, but they're also exacerbated by climate change. So they're part of a feedback loop. But also, we can try to not make future wildfires more common and worse by reducing our carbon emissions from things like coal power plants. So I was just going to say I would appreciate if they would use units other than yearly India carbon output because I really don't know what that is. I mean, maybe that's gigatons. Maybe the amount... Nobody knows if the gigatons is either. I need it in some American city. The amount of... It's five times the yearly output of the traffic from Columbus, Ohio. Okay. Well, that's at least how they... It's like the way they measure the breakoffs of icebergs in number of Rhode Island. That in amounts to... Yeah, fair point. I think with that... Stick with one thing and use it every time. Yeah, I think people in Europe could say the same thing. I don't know what Cincinnati gets up to. Yeah, that's true. I don't either, but at least if it was every time, I'd know it was more Cincinnati's this thing than that one. I don't think I've heard them use the Indias before. I still think anytime you say the word gigaton, I think that's universally understood as a lot. Yes. The smoke has been crazy because there were actually people on the east coast that were starting to smell the smoke.  It went on a trip like we did. It was just crazy. I passed it when I was in the plane on the way back from North Carolina. We actually didn't smell it, but as soon as we left, they were like, it's all smoky around here. Well, there's no fire as well. That's literally from the east, that's literally from the west coast. It just broke my brain. It was all coming from Oregon, Washington, California, just being sent across the country. You're welcome. You're welcome. We didn't manage our forests well. Hopefully we will do so in the future. Well, hopefully the east coast won't send their storms to us. I don't want that. Oh, yeah, we know. We need the rain. Are you kidding me? We don't need those catastrophic storms. We don't have the infrastructure for that. Those once in a lifetime once a year storms. Yes. We don't need those. What are they? The Pacific rivers that come through and just drop all of the rain on us. But anyway, enough of the negativity. We're positive it's good if China can stick to its promises and stop building coal power plants and manage its power output and its power production. It stands a good chance of reducing its carbon dioxide output, which is growing rapidly right now. So there's a lot. We could all do our part. And currently as well, there are a couple of bills in Congress that are looking at money for sustainable energy and really developing some sustainable energy pipelines to make it work better. But enough about energy. What else do we need? We need food. Justin, tell me about 3D printing it. Yeah, so it might become a thing.  And then a little while later, you've got your tasty meal. Not quite here. They've been working on this for a while. But we're still a little ways off from actually getting a tabletop version of that we can put in the kitchen. One of the hurdles has been how do you cook a thing that's just sort of been layer by layer formulated into a food stuff looking thing. And so some of the engineers at Columbia University did that thing that engineers like to do and they came up with a solution for the thing. And they of course had to use lasers. Because what better solution is there? Can we use lasers to cook our food? No, they're using lasers to make food. They're using lasers to cook the food after the three. So okay, what they did is they bought, they like bought store bought chicken, put it into a food processor, and then stuck it into the syringes of their 3D printer. Just like McDonald's. Just like everything else we eat. Yes. And then yeah, so this thing's printing out a three millimeter thick layer by layer. And as it's getting put down, they hit it with lasers. They followed, just did the scant thing lasers. And they found these three different wavelengths. It's all sort of what's sort of unique about this. These different wavelengths of the laser on this pureed chicken as it was applied. The blue light, they use blue laser and near infrared, a mid infrared and on this chain, the near to mid infrared layers apparently provided the best surface level browning and broiling. While the blue lasers accomplished more penetrative cooking. They found the laser cooked meat had 50% less shrinkage. It retained double the moisture content. Maybe that's part of the less shrinkage. And it shows similar flavor development to conventionally cooked meat. They claim, and I'm saying they claim as opposed to they discovered just because I'm highly skeptical of the claim, that participants in the taste test of their lab cooked chicken actually preferred that cooked on the printer, which, you know, either means the printer is really amazing right off the bat here, or that the engineers were just terrible at cooking the regular chicken that they used. There you go. What is the comparison? Also, did they look and like feel the same? They can't have. No. No, they can't. Right. So you'd know you'd be like, Oh, cool. This is the 3d printed meat. Let me try. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, there's, there's going to be some excitement bias from those who are excited about the possibilities of the technology, potentially. I mean, unless it's a blind taste test somehow. But I mean, it was fine. What was that? I was going to say there has to be a texture difference.  Yeah, I would think so. Yeah, I mean, it's not going to, it's not going to have the texture the same, right? Basically, like a solid piece of chicken versus, but here's the thing. Would you be willing to give up? What would you be willing to give up with it when, and we call it food still and eat it still, if it could be made by itself, if you didn't have to do any cooking? Like it's sort of like how frozen food and then microwaving became like, sometimes that's just a convenient thing. It's not the same. Your grandmother never would have fed that to you. But this is like, yeah, it's quick. It's easy. I'll have the robot cook dinner. And then for something like you can store by the chicken, you can put it in the fridge, you can throw it in. Not too hard. Not too much of a difference in setting up this dang robot. But if we get into the cricket diet one day, maybe people will prefer the cricket protein tube to go into the machine to get printed out to taste like whatever, versus catching crickets across your kitchen counter, trying to get them into the pot. A cricket goo versus chicken goo. Yeah. I'm just wondering if these blue lasers are going to replace the microwave in the common kitchen. So here's how long did it take Justin? How long did it take to make that thing? You know, that's one thing they're not talking about. I think time wise, it's probably not a time saver. Yeah. At this point, probably took like eight hours. It's how long it takes to 3d print plastic, right? Yeah, there's sort of more like, no, no, no, I think it took like the regular amount of time for the cooking wood for a chicken. But what they are talking about is like, you can make interesting patterns in the things that you cook because they're engineers. They're like, look, you can make designs on the food that you eat. Who cares? Toddlers are going to be thrilled. We already have dino nuggets. It's great. Or can you imagine going to a fancy restaurant and they 3d print chicken on to a plate saying, will you marry me? Oh, there's a ring there. She said, no, I can't imagine why. That's right. And possibly the 7000 layer cake. Yes. Love, man. Yes. I would say yes, if it was a cake and not chicken. Things that looked at that need to be looked at in the future. Methods to reduce cross contamination between cooked and raw printed layers. The effects of food cooling rates on lethality, lethality, you gotta make sure you gotta reduce the lethality of your food. I'm surprised they went from go with a food that is notorious for making people sick. Right. Salmonella, it's no joke. There was a couple reasons I guess they chose that as the base. But that they wanted to use a meat, I guess, a meat product. Also, Justin, I did find the triangular prints that we're looking at right now took eight minutes and the squares took nine to 10 minutes. Okay. That's definitely some efficiency that needs to be addressed. Is that that's not too bad though? Is it if you were putting nine minutes on a pan, you'd be like, okay, that's reasonable. They also did this with I think I guess one sort of laser that was shooting that was changing frequency between these infrared and this blue laser. It was all the same laser. That's one of the things they want to look at in the future is they can have simultaneous multi-wavelength lasers at the same time. So that might speed it up, essentially is what they're thinking maybe if they have multiple lasers shooting at the three millimeter layer and we laugh because this is more lasers.  That's why we're laughing at it.  So this I am assuming this will be a thing. And it has to be tried. Yeah. I actually really liked your idea about using more insect protein for this particular mechanism. I think that's because you could basically have a little bit more sustainable of a supply source without the stamina. Yes. And I mean, and you know, even for veggie goods, like, you know, just having having if it can make interesting meals of itself, spicing the thing, like I would try it. Absolutely. I think, yeah, I think there's something weird about the idea of using chicken for it. It's something that does seem like it could go really wrong. Yeah. Especially to like this, you know, the other thing, sorry, the last thing about it is this also has like this I fear in the back of my head, like the juicer. The juicer is an amazing thing. And it's like so easy to use, you just take carrots and you put it in a thing and it's like, and it's done. But then at the end, you usually end up with a machine that's impossible to clean. Like, like, how do you clean syringes that had chicken goo or whatever going through? Like you just have to be throwing out. Throw it away. Yeah. High pressure pushing water through. So the whole solution, it's going to be a whole, it's going to have to be a whole directly. And then something will have to happen. Yeah. But there's going to be a bunch of disposable stuff at the end of it. It's going to be disposable stuff. And we're going to end up with, you know, you're going to be missing the soft serve chicken machine at the Dairy Queen because they haven't cleaned it properly. Oh, boy. Oh, man. Sorry. Just don't get the swirl, whatever you do. Don't get the swirl. So would you get like gravy on top instead of sprinkles? Some parsley. That's right. Okay, Blair, take us into another 3D printing story. Something not so edible. No, but it's very touchy-feely. Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a new method to 3D print mechanisms that can detect how force is being applied to it. What does that mean? It means that it is a 3D printed interactive input device, like a joystick, a switch, or a handheld controller, and it can be just printed all at once, ready to go. They integrate electrodes into structures made from meta materials, which are materials divided into a grid of repeating cells. And they, to test it, they created a special editing software that helps them build interactive devices with this new technology. So these 3D printed structures are capable of integrating the sensing directly into the material and structure of the object. So you don't have to wire it. You don't have to make all these individual moving parts. You just kind of like press on something and it knows that you're pressing on it. And so this has the opportunity to enable new intelligent environments in which objects can sense your interaction with them. So this is where it gets really crazy. For instance, a chair or a couch that's made from smart material could detect your body when you sit on it. And you could use it to query particular functions, like turning on a light or a TV, or to collect data for later analysis, like correcting or detecting body posture. So this is where it gets kind of dystopian, I think, potentially is your chairs could interact with you and sense the way that you're sitting and have you gained weight? So anyway, or worse, it's tied into advertising and it can tell you're slouching. And it's like, hey, try these purchase ideas. 100%. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And so these grids of cells that were 3D printed when a user applies a force to them, some of the cells are have flexible interiors. And so they can stretch or compress it. So that's how they can kind of figure that out. And then so they have these conductive shear cells that have two opposing walls, and they're made out of conductive filaments. And then there are two walls that are non conductive. And so they basically work like electrodes. So in, in the case of their demonstration, they created a metamaterial joystick with four conductive shear cells embedded around a base of a handle in each direction, up, down, left, and right. And as the user moved the joystick, the distance area between opposing conductive wall changes, so that the detection, the direction and magnitude of applied force can be sensed. That is fancy schmancy speak for they used it to play Pac-Man. So they successfully use this thing to play Pac-Man.  And I can't wait to see what happens. That's amazing. I can't, the potential, like you mentioned here, that there there are sci-fi stories about those couches that sense your body and then fit the couch based on your size, based on how you are.  So sci-fi has been thinking about all these things and imagine a couch that can tell whether or not you're too hot, whether or not the chemicals also that are emanating from your skin are potentially, you know, maybe there's something wrong with you. They're monitoring your health. Your, your gaming, your favorite gaming chair is also a doctor's chair. Yeah, you just need your gamer chair. Maybe, maybe you should lay off the video games you are developing Carpal Tunnel. I can tell by the tensor strength of your hand. Or a couch that just tells you it's, it's time to get off the couch. Yeah. Yeah. So can it sense weight as well? Like it could sense different weight as well. So in theory, would be able to sense if I put down an empty chip bag beside me on the couch. Yes. There's a full chip bag. And then you would get into those whole advertisements of, you know, oh, maybe I do need some more Doritos. What you do is you have your plate that your 3D printed chicken is on. It's made out of this material. And then it can sense in your running low on your 3D printed chicken. You put it down, it clops out more. There you go. The future, the future is so amazing to imagine. Yeah, I do think this is going to be a thing. I think this is really, this is going to change things in the future. Yeah, I think both of these 3D printing stories are, I think it is hinting at the usefulness of 3D printing where 3D printing, yes, hobbyists have been able to create, you know, knickknacks and doodads and create plastic figurines or little structures that enable them to do particular jobs, print little tools. They've got metal 3D printing up on the International Space Station. So they're, and they're going to start using recycling so that they can print things and use them and then put them back into the system so that they have a constant supply of things that they need. But this makes it interactive. This makes it something that is like, this is taking 3D printing in a whole new direction. And that, yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah. With what they did with it here, it looks like it'd be a great toy for a kid. And I don't say that to, you know, demean it any way, shape, or form, but it's one of those things that could really get somebody interested in science. And I think that the more of those things we have, the better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That and what a great way to sort of field test the durability. Put it in the hands of kids and see how badly they can tear it up in a year. I want to see this, I want to see the plans for this up on Adafruit very soon where you can, you know, get your Raspberry Pi for board that you can program with your own video game. You can 3D print your own joystick that is going to sense what you want it to do. You can connect all the pieces together. I mean, this is where the maker and science really start coming together and connecting. And actually, I left that completely out of the story because I didn't even think it was relevant, but the 3D print cooker thing that they were working with the lasers, they ran it all with the Raspberry Pi. Nice. They're doing everything off of, yeah. That's great. I love that. It's the best. It is. It's off the shelf technology at this point. We have these devices or smartphones that can be like black boxes if you don't know about all the technology that goes into them. But there are ways now to make things, to create things. And all these components, they're all available for building and making. And it's so cool. Okay. This is This Week in Science. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. I hope you're enjoying the show so far. If you really are enjoying it, share it with a friend right now. Tell somebody about it.  We have our guest tonight, Dr. Michael D. L. Johnson. Dr. Johnson is an assistant professor in the Department of Immunobiology and the Bio5 Institute at the University of Arizona. His lab is studying how certain metals can be used to kill bacteria. And this is really important because we know antibiotic resistance is on the rise. And so it's important to understand what other tools we have in our toolbox. How can we live with, defeat our bacterial nemeses? Dr. Johnson, thank you so much for meeting us and joining us for the show tonight. Yeah, it's been great so far. And I look forward to sharing what we do a little bit more. To get into what you do, I'd love to start at the beginning or maybe not the very, very beginning. But how did you, you are a music major as an undergraduate. How did you go from majoring in music to killing bacteria? Well, that is, so I'll actually go ahead and tell you the real story because it's one that's, I guess, has been a defining feature in my particular career. It was a fantastic weekend, my, right after my senior year finals, at least first semester finals, when I was in undergrad. That weekend I actually spilled the beans to my then girlfriend that I had intentions in marrying her. We've been married for over 16 years now. And I also found out what I was going to do and, you know, another disclaimer is Justin said, again, you might find me crazy for this one, but at least you'll know where my heart is. So, you know, I was, you know, doing what you do, you know, you do things with the girlfriend and you try and get in good with their parents and her parents are great. I actually really love hanging out with them. So we actually went to That's good to say when you're on a podcast. Oh, no, they know, they know. But yeah, there's there's no hiding anything here. But I actually went to went to church with them and I, it was like during praise and worship and all of a sudden I heard the word pharmacology. And I can tell you that no praise and worship Christian song has the word pharmacology. So I'm like looking around like, did I just really hear what I thought I heard?  Like, I'm a music major, you sure you want? Okay, okay, you're right. Okay, fine. I'll go into doing that. And, you know, at this point, I'm borderline thinking that I'm crazy, but it kind of still all made sense and fit. So, like I said, you can call me crazy, you can call, you know, you can say with divine intervention, you could say whatever you want to say about it. But that's my version of the events. And I started to pursue going into science. And if you can imagine, it's really difficult getting a science position as a music major. I mean, I could compose you a symphony, but I can't hold a pipette, but I can learn. So I had to. So after like doing all of that, trying to try to apply to almost 200 jobs and getting denied left and right, I sent my CV, I just went to different HR departments and said, look, I'm looking for a job. Please help me. And I went to UNC Chapel Hill, and in the Department of Microbiology and immunology. And also, I got a phone call from a guy named Jeff Grelinger, who was the chair of microbiology immunology. So I went and got a suit because I'm like, this is the interview, this is going to be my big moment to get a job in science, which will launch my career. And I show up and I go over to the lab manager, I say, I guess I'm a little overdressed from the lab, just trying to make a joke, bad joke conversation. I do the interview and get a call back three weeks later saying, I got the job. And he's like, in true Jeff fashion, who was my mentor at that time, he said, I didn't hire you because you were the most qualified for this job. You think I'm a music major? I got that. You didn't have to tell me that. I mean, it was really understood.   But I'll take it. So ever since then, things start falling into place. You know, I did my, I was a technician at his laboratory for two years, working on immunology, looking at T cell responses, and looking at innate immune responses to a bacteria called Francisella tularensis, also known as rabbit fever. And I went to graduate school, got my degree in biochemistry, biophysics. So yeah, from music to biochemistry, biophysics, it was I was a little jump, just a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, a very smooth, smooth transition. Before we move on to the science, I have to ask, what was your instrument of choice? So my instrument of choice was trumpet. So I love playing the trumpet. But if I had to, if you said you could do, you know, only a few things in music, it would have probably been music composition and music theory. Those were, those were my favorite. I love to compose different songs or arrange things. I did things for orchestras for singing groups, for marching bands. It was just, it was just fun. Do you still play? I do not, unfortunately. I, you know, it's one of those things where you have kids, you have science, you have like all these things. And it's just, it gets hard to do, it gets hard to do everything, but it doesn't make me miss it less. But I don't regret the choices. I think that, you know, what I'm doing now is write exactly where I need to be. Now you're writing symphonies of science. Yes. I am. Yes. There you go. You're composing experiments. Yeah, I'm doing my best. And, you know, luckily, I have a really good team in my laboratory that helps drive some of those decisions and some of those projects. Nice. That's great.  You were starting to investigate through the biophysics and biochemistry, looking at, looking at the immune system and interactions with bacteria. And what, at what point did you go, okay, we're going to focus on the metals and, and what metals are doing? The moment that happened was actually when I was in graduate school, where I studied a protein called pill Y1. And, you know, we have names for all of these particular proteins that sometimes don't make a lick of sense, but that's what this one's called. What this protein did in particular is it was basically controlling something called pillus extension retracting. So bacteria have these arm-like grappling hooks that they can use to kind of move along on a different surface. Think of it as an army crawl. And it kind of helps them move on, move around or actually sense their environment. And they also use it to attach to surfaces. So this protein, pill Y1, controlled when that pill is without and that pill was in. So it controlled motility. It controlled attachment. And it did so in the bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is really well known as a, an opportunistic pathogen and people with cystic fibrosis, people with, who are burn victims. And even more direct in this huge protein of, you know, what actually controlled whether or not that pill is with extended or attraction was a singular calcium ion. And I just thought that was the coolest thing. Like one calcium, you know, and I actually made this meme back when I was in graduate school, one, you know, I had like the Lord of the Rings of wording under the crystal structure saying one metal to rule them all, right? And it's just really fascinating how, you know, when, when calcium was in, the pillus was out, when calcium was out, the pillus was in, and it basically caused this flux and all it controlled so many things that were necessary for that bacteria to do literally, you know, almost everything it needed to do first before even colonize. Like if you can't attach as a bacteria, you're just going to be coughed out. So it was the, it was the initial, you know, point that that bacteria made contact with the host and it was controlled by calcium. And I, like I said, I thought that was one of the coolest things ever. And I said, well, what else can we find out about metals? And I sought to find out different laboratories to, to show me. And so when I went to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, they said, Hey, we got this project about copper. And I'm like, I don't know that much about copper, but sure. And sure enough, I fell in love with working with it. And, you know, it's just, it's an amazing metal that, that we use quite often, but, you know, a lot of pathogenic bacteria don't really like. And, you know, that's something that we can use to our advantage. Yeah, I'm just thinking about, you know, metal toxicity is something that's, you know, common people will talk about having to take key laters to stop up the metal that is building up in their body because one of their organs isn't working properly or whatever. And so is that kind of what you're looking at in the bacteria? Do, do they get metal toxicity? Is that, is that what happens? That is exactly what happens with them. So one of the things you need to know about metal is the way that they bind to different active sites to, you know, because, you know, things kind of put together and metal binding is actually quite promiscuous. So, you know, if you look at things like one that row on the periodic table, iron, you have manganese, you have calcium, you have a cobalt, nickel, copper, and then zinc. Hopefully I said that in order, otherwise I might lose my PhD. But what they do is they can actually bind to different active sites, but there's one metal, you know, it is kind of an order of stability in which they do that. So copper is actually very stable in a lot of those particular binding environments. And that can be great for us. We use copper in proteins that work for metabolism, you know, there's, you know, proteins in the blood that have copper as well. But for bacteria, what ends up happening is those metals get into those enzymes and it essentially locks them up for the bacteria. So when excess metal comes in like copper, that's what causes some of that toxicity. Now, this is just one of the mechanisms of copper toxicity. There are plenty of others, but that actually does cause that particular toxicity that you're talking to. They get intoxicated, they try and get rid of it, they have these export systems. But by and large, when our bodies actually try and use copper to kill bacteria, we can still overcome their defenses. How do we do that? How do we overcome their defenses? What are you doing? So one of my favorite cells in the host is called the macrophage.  The macrophage can phagocytose or eat bacteria or other invaders. And when it eats that particular bacteria, what it does is it makes this specialized ball of death. And that ball of death is actually called a phagolisosome. It's when the phagosome mixes with the lysosome and I call it the ball of death. In that ball of death, it lowers the pH where acidic conditions make things less hospitable. It increases the oxidative burst, which people always talk about free radicals are bad and it does that with the bacteria as well. But it also does something called nutritional immunity. Now, we mentioned earlier that metals are actually still necessary. Bacteria need iron. They like manganese. They like some of these other metals like calcium that I mentioned earlier. But the host by and large knows that and says, well, we're going to sequester all of those metals. We're going to try and take those away.  So now we're going to start bombarding you with copper. So all of that is happening in concert with a lower pH with the oxidative burst.  And then the macrophate says, okay, what else is there to eat? And it goes and actually buying some more things. So that's exactly what happens. So yeah, right in that fatty lysosome area, that's where the magic happens inside of the host. So, you know, that's one of the ways that our body takes advantage of copper toxicity with particular bacteria. But I mean, we've been using copper for a lot of things. Since antiquity, people actually stored food in copper pots to make sure their things didn't spoil. There's actually something called the Bordeaux mixture, which is copper and lye. You can spray it on vineyards to help save wine crops. You can spray that same compound on potatoes to help save against the potato blight. So if you like wine and you like french fries, you're a copper fan right now. Congratulations, Dean Copper. But you can also use it on surfaces or as tools inside of a hospital to cut down on hospital acquired infections by up to 70%. And if copper has all these awesome properties, we should know how it works. And we're still trying to figure that out. So that's actually one of the things my laboratory is trying to address. How is copper toxic? What did the bacteria do to overcome that toxicity? And then the subject of what the paper was is can we weaponize this to kill not only pathogenic bacteria, but maybe fungi and other things as well. Yeah. So you've been looking specifically at the streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria, which is known for all sorts of diseases and nastiness. Do you expect that the mechanisms that you're finding out about within the strep bacteria, is that going to be applicable? So that's one of the things that we really hope will happen here. So, you know, we found a compound that can actually work with copper to kill the bacteria. So if you add copper, that can be bad. But if you add the compound, maybe not so bad. If you add them together, it rips the bacteria to shreds. So one of the things that we have to do is empirically test that compound or that combination against other pathogens to see if it actually works. But one of the ways that we're trying to use this particular compound is to say, well, let's see if we can make it a Goldilocks situation. And I like to use lots of analogies. So let's say we have a compound that binds copper really, really tightly. That's actually going to be protective.  And that's actually good for it. What if you have something that binds it very lightly? And what that does, well, the bacteria has these export systems and it can still just kind of overcome that. But if you have something that's just right, something that can hold on to it long enough for it to get inside of the bacteria and release it into one of those enzymes that and causing that enzyme to break. And again, since it's promiscuous, it's not just a singular target. There's multiple targets that it actually can poison inside of the bacteria. Then you're on to something. So what we're trying to do now is say, okay, can we play with those Goldilocks range for different organisms to see if we can find one that will work for strepococcus pneumoniae, one that will work for now strep pyogenes, which is a positive agent of strep throat. Can we find one that works for staff? What about gram negatives? Can we have it work for Pseudomonas aerogenosa? Can we have it work for fungi? And we actually have had our compound work for fungi. There's this endemic fungal pathogen called coxidioides images, also known as valley fever. And it actually works against that. And we're super excited about that because there aren't too many cures for that. So we're trying to play with some of these variables, various conditions to see if we can almost come with a library and be able to predict this compound should work. This compound and coxail should work against this pathogen and this compound pathogen work against this other one. We're still far away from that, but you got to start somewhere. Yes. You got to start with the 3D printed chicken first, right? Right. Start with the 3D printed chicken and then solve antibacterial resistance. Well, and that's a big deal, though, because we are getting so resistant. I think that, well, we're not. The bacteria are getting resistant. The things that we've thrown at them in the past, we're sort of selecting for a super robust next, current wave of bacteria that our antibiotics are working on less and less and less. And people forget, people forget because it was so long ago that bacteria killed more people than anything else. Just infections was like a leading cause of death in the world for forever. And this is a paper cut. Could be lethal. Could be lethal. If you got the infection, that could just be it. And we kind of wouldn't be afraid of any of that. We'd put on a little MioSporin. At the worst case, we'd have to go and do an antibiotic treatment if we got a really bad infection. But we take it for granted that the signs of medicine have already figured that out and it works forever. And it's getting overcome by more and more bacteria. So we need these additional tools out there to save off the next 100 years of antibacterial existence. The estimates currently are by 2050 that antibiotic resistance deaths will outnumber cancer deaths. So that's the current prediction. And, yeah, it's kind of a crazy number. And then you complex that with the antibiotic resistance is going up, but the production of antimicrobials that are being invested in is actually going down. Because it's just literally getting harder and harder because you make this antibiotic that targets this one drug, this one protein inside of a bacteria. And then all of a sudden the bacteria says, well, I'm just going to change how I use that protein. And now your drug doesn't work in so one of the things that we like about this particular at least this approach is that copper can basically mismetallate or poison multiple different targets, which makes it a little bit more difficult for the bacteria to adapt or a way around that. And if it can adapt the way around that, then hopefully we don't ever see that day. Yeah, but yeah, if there are multiple targets, maybe it can adapt away from one of them or maybe even a couple of them, but getting away from all of them is going to be that much more difficult. So yeah, that is our hope. Well, that's a great approach. Yeah. And the thing is too, I'm sure if you go into a copper mine, there's bacteria in there that have learned to somehow metabolize or utilize copper, right? So the thing is though, then maybe the focus of you've actually changed the thing that the bacteria is even interested in devouring or being involved with. Like if it really can resist copper, then it's probably got to be metabolizing it in some way. And therefore it's probably doing something completely different than the thing did in the first place when it was trying to be eradicated in utilizing copper or whatever metal is being utilized to move it on down the evolutionary path to bothering something other than us. So there are actually, I mean, so there are a lot of microbes that do utilize different metals and can clean up metals that are actually toxic to us. There's environmental or oceanic bacteria that can and do use copper often. And if you actually look in some farms where people use copper washes for their boots, if you look in the soil there by the copper wash, you're still going to find some bacteria. So what we're hopeful about this is that those bacteria will never, ever speak to the ones that are actually harmful to us. Right. Inevitably, they probably will. But hopefully we're millennia away from that particular point and this can work for a while until we find the next best thing. But absolutely, there are bacteria that do utilize those metals. It's just that at the, I guess the host pathogen interface with those particular bacteria, those by and large are not friends of copper. And that's good for us. Right. The ones that are down in the bottom of the mines eating the copper, living next to the copper happily, they're not the ones that are infecting us and causing disease. So yeah, hopefully the horizontal gene transfer doesn't happen. We don't have to worry about them swapping their genes and turning into bigger problems. But in the meantime, this is a great strategy. And so along with this, would the targeting effort that you're making, would it be used in conjunction with antibacterials that we currently have? Would it be like, oh, you're going to take a moxacillin and this copper treatment? Or is it a standalone that you foresee working all on its own? Or do you have any idea? So I would definitely say it wouldn't be a standalone. I think that it's one of those things that if you can give the host the competitive advantage to kill those bacteria, why wouldn't you do that? And one of the things that we're trying to do now is understand what the mechanism of how this compound works. Like, how exactly is it poisoning the bug? What is it doing to the bacteria that is causing such problems? And if we can do that, then perhaps we can actually predict which antibiotic to pair it to so that we can actually give really a nice knockout blow. So instead of jab, jab, it's uppercut, uppercut. And that's really what we're trying to do here. I don't think there's, I think there are lots of seats at the table to try to eliminate certain pathogens. And trying to say that this is the only way, and it'll be my way or the highway, which it's just, I don't know, that's, that would be a weird take. Yeah. We have, we have for sale at the end of this interview, Dr. Justin's not a real Dr. Copper Tincture for what ails you, one out of one researcher who we quoted said, why wouldn't you? On that note, actually though, I read a New York Times article about you from a while back that you had been getting letters, emails from people trying to use Copper to either prevent COVID infection or to treat COVID infections. Can you talk a little bit about some of the misunderstandings and what was understood and what wasn't? Absolutely. So there was a study that came out talking about how viable COVID viral particles are on different surfaces. So they looked at cardboard, and that was that one thing, it's like, well, leave your packages, don't touch them for a couple of days. Right. Everybody was bleaching their groceries and sanitizing. Use the corax wipe for your luggage when you kind of go somewhere. But once by and large, when they did that study, the surface that COVID did not survive on very well was Copper. So soon as that happened, I got lots of calls. It's like, oh, you're the Copper guy, right? I'm like, but I'm not a virologist and I'm not a materials chemist, but you're the Copper guy, right? Okay, okay. So if I have this Copper phone case, right? Will that actually protect me from COVID? No.  And I feel like with so many things that people are taking these days, let me repeat very clearly, please don't eat straight Copper.  Is that saying? There was some old wives tales about sucking on a penny before 1982 and it actually had more Copper in it. And that was kind of a way to beat whatever ails you. Really? There are actually some zinc sprays that people actually do use and they have actually literature-based evidence to work, unlike sucking on a penny or just consuming straight Copper. Or do the Copper bracelets work? I mean, there's just... Yeah, it became a lot of... We have this product and you're like, no, no, I can't. I'm sorry. But I probably could have made a lot of money, but I don't know if I could have lived with myself, maybe while I was sitting on the beach crying with my pile of money, wiping my tears with a hundred dollar mill. I would have eventually felt guilty. Yeah, yeah, that's not... I'm so glad that you didn't do that, but yes. And now you're here, are people... Yeah, I do hope that people don't decide from this to try and that they listen to you, no eating Copper, but are Copper doorknobs, are Copper table tops, are the things that are Copper in our environment, they're nicely antibacterial. Yeah, and they look pretty. And the thing is, I'll also preface that by saying, or at least comment on that by saying, there's a lot of surfaces that have that keep that kind of reddish brown Copper look. Those are actually also treated surfaces, which means that when you're putting your hand on it, it's not quite on the Copper that's underneath. If you want to talk about a surface that's actually made of Copper and is not sealed at all, the Statue of Liberty, and you could see it oxidizes over time and it turns that blueish-green. It's actually Copper underneath that. Well, that is Copper. It's just the oxidized version of that Copper. Copper is a great accessory. It looks really cool, but I would not count on it to save you from all that ails you. At least not until we figured it out. And washing, sanitation, it works pretty well, pretty good. Exactly. Yeah, so the eventual outcome of all of this, you've got the study that you've published where you're working on creating this multi-pronged attack. You're getting in there, trying to really target these things. What do you hope with this will be the eventual outcome? Are you going to follow it to market or are you going to do a pivot and look at other basic science questions after you've figured out the mechanistic aspects of how it all works? I would say a little bit of both. I think this project has been really wonderful in that by studying this compound and what it's actually doing with Copper with the bacteria, we're really learning a lot of extra basic science things about bacterial physiology and then working with bacterial genetics to really fundamentally understand some questions on how bacteria process metals in general. And that's, I mean, if you want to look at science, there's basic science questions, there's kind of the biomedical realm and then there's like the translational part where you're trying to make something that goes right to clinic. And I think that they coexist and this project is a great example of that. Do we want this product to go to market? Do we want it? Absolutely. It was funny, I actually talked to, you know, our university has this thing called Tech Launch and they helped me, you know, as far as like funding to make some derivatives of the compounds that we're finding to see if they work against different things and they do, which is also really, really cool. They helped me file for the patent for this and, you know, they got me in front of some people and the people were like, well, what's your business plan? I'm like, that's why I'm here asking y'all, I can tell y'all about the science, but the business plan, I'm like, I want to cure things. I want to save lives. Yeah, that's my business plan. I want to save lives. But, you know, and I think that's where I got into this.  I mean, if you want to be an inventor, yeah, you can do that. But like, you know, that was not my passion. And, you know, and based on the story of how I got into science in the first place that I told you earlier, that was, that really wasn't something that I saw as my mission. It was really to make science accessible. It was really to help as many people as I could. And just, you know, just honor the craft, if you will. So it's really nice to kind of be on kind of a couple sides of that to do, you know, to basically have, you know, people helping me say, well, let's get this to market. And I know there's plenty of steps in front of me, you know, to do that. And so many things fail along the way. But, you know, you have to put them in the pipeline to be able to try. But then again, I also have the basic science part of that, where I'm just really making fundamental, you know, bacterial discoveries, which is really just a lot of fun. I love that. On the research side of things, and also the working with other people and lifting people up, you've also been involved in developing a program for Black, Indigenous, people of color, the NSERP program. And I was wondering how many people, so this is something that was started during COVID-19 to allow students to get research experience even when labs were shut down. So how is that gone? And how many students have you been working with? And is it going to keep going after this is after hopefully we get to go back to work again for real? Yeah. So, you know, in the middle of both, I guess, a racial pandemic and a public health pandemic, my heart was heavy. And I needed to do something to help somebody to kind of channel that negative energy.  And in 11 days, we put together a website bylaws and said, this is the program that we're going to have. So we opened it up on, you know, and within a week, we said, well, if we get 25 mentors to match the 25 mentees, we were basically like a matchmaking service, like swipe right for research kind of thing. That's what we were trying to really do.  And the response was overwhelming last year. Last year, we had 250 students matched to over 170 mentors on a virtual research project. And I did not know that Gmail had an email limit of how many percent per day. Holy moly, so many emails, but we made it work. And you can, if you know, you can go that project and presentations, you can see all the projects that people actually had last year.  And, you know, you can actually click those links and see some of the virtual projects that people did. This is the ones that you're looking at now are for this year. So we actually this year got some funding from not only U of A, we had some funding from NSF. Yeah, so you can, you know, like basically lots of people were giving talks, we added captions, so people could, you know, be included there. But this year, we got some funding from the National Science Foundation to actually be able to not only have the program, but pay students for full time research. And one of the reasons why this is really important is because COVID hopefully, hopefully fingers crossed one day will go away. But when we asked the question to some of the students in our program, we said, look, independent of COVID, would you have been able to travel to go to a summer research program? And 33% of them said no. And an additional 25% said, I'm not sure. And the reasons for those are family obligations, they have to take care of loved ones, they might have health, something that's going on, you know, just inaccessibility to get somewhere, transportation. So we said, this program is not going to be for them. We're going to make sure that we meet people where they are. And I think that that's one of the things that's lost in science so much is that accessibility point. And, you know, we had these students that were hungry, willing, really, really eager to participate, do some great science. And, you know, the mentors had some great research projects for them. So this year we had 66 mentors, or 66 mentee, 64 mentors, and all of them were paid full-time for the eight-week program, living wage. We had had 15 months per hour for that. Some of them were coming to science for the first time. Some of them had never touched a pipette before. But we had them coding, learning different micro-reason, like a biome, and compare all of that stuff. And, you know, it was really great. We also had a professional development course forum for so other, you know, BIPOC and Latinx speakers speak to them on their science, and also professional development things like research and responsibility conduct. We had the other thing as far as meeting people where they were. We had people who were afraid to sign up because they didn't have a computer that worked. They couldn't sign up because they didn't have a webcam. So we bought them computers. We bought them webcams. Fantastic. And we hope to goodness that the grant that I just put into the NSF gets funded so that we can run this program back for the next three years. And then we'll, you know, I think this template of virtual research can work. I think in person it's always going to be, you know, great. That interaction is going to be fantastic. But for those who don't have that opportunity, we can meet them where they are. And we can have this virtual program for them. And they can succeed. And they can, you know, get experience.  We got some great stories about people getting accepted to some great graduate schools, going to national conferences and getting awards that they, you know, projects that they did during this particular summer. So this is, you know, this is, to me is just as important as finding that compound that kills bacteria. Because it's something that is, you know, really giving back is something that's really close to my heart. And like I said, I can't tell you how much working with this program did to me and meant to me as far as just kind of lifting my spirits in a scenario, you know, of, well, lack of better words, a period of suckage. I mean, it really was. But, you know, this is one of those things that I could really, you know, get behind. And, you know, I'm fortunate that the microbial community, and now we added immunology, we're so supportive in providing, you know, mentorship. We've had people, you know, donate people, you know, do lots of things to really help sustain this program and hopefully help it grow. Because I mean, I don't think microbiology and immunology are the only disciplines that we could do. We'd love to expand into things like cancer genetics or other things that, you know, that require, you know, just, you know, a lot of computer based work or really just helping the students learn how to form hypothesis because that's really a lot of what we teach them in graduate school is like, how do you form a good hypothesis and how do you test it? And you don't always need to be at the bench to be able to test it. Sometimes it's good enough to actually just teach them how to do that. I recall when I had to do my qualifying exam. My qualifying exam was I had to write something and then I had to stand up and defend it. It wasn't go in the bench and actually do an experiment. It was, so if that's the standard that we're holding graduate students to as far as how they're actually learning things, why not teach those skills to these particular students and that can be done virtually to give them an advantage and, you know, when they didn't have any length to stand on before. And as a model moving forward, even, you know, remote work, remote learning, this is, this would be another another part of that. And like you said, enabling people who might not be able to travel across the country to an internship for a summer, maybe the internship that they want isn't going to pay a living wage. How are they going to be able to manage that? And very often it's people coming from a place of privilege or, you know, really scraping and having to having to give things up to be able to get those opportunities. And so to be able to get that next little step into the field of science that they're interested in, that next little bit of experience, that's great. And very much like the copper that persists after the initial encounter with maybe one or two bacteria. It can persist in that environment and spread its effectiveness. So too does getting this many more minds engaged and involved and sort of up to the next tier of really being dedicated to that pursuit. Especially if you've got a research project that you've done and you can show like, hey, I haven't just been studying this, I've done some of this work now. Yeah, those people are turning back. It's a good reminder. Yeah, it's a good reminder that science is only as good as the people doing it in a lot of ways. And I think that, you know, I'm reminded of a story that we talked about on this show a while ago where ornithologists for hundreds of years were white men and then all of a sudden women started doing ornithology.  So it's just the fact that we all carry these biases that are sometimes they're very, they're kind of invisible and sometimes they're not. And those biases impact everything that we do, including our science. And which is why it's so important to have everybody at the table. And our science is never going to be good enough unless you have everybody there. It's such important work. So awesome. Yeah, thank you so much for for leading that effort, for being a part of it, for bringing people together and lifting them up and making that happen. Science will be better because of things that you're doing. Awesome. That is my, that is my hope. That is truly my hope. So this interview is much fun as we're having doesn't go all night long. I'm going to wrap it up a little bit here. So is there just kind of a take home message or anything about your work that you want our listeners to know? Anything that we haven't really gone over or just a take home message, something that you're like, this is what people need to hear. Well, I think there's a couple of things that I've learned in my laboratory that I think that are really important. I think sometimes we look at scientists and, you know, the field people look at scientists and they expect us to be perfect. And even within our own field that we sometimes expect each other to be perfect. But what I, you know, a lot of the hypothesis that we've actually generated, we proved incorrectly, we prove that they're incorrect, we proved our no hypothesis is true. And even within the same project as how this compound works to kill different bacteria is like, well, we think it does this, whoa, it does something completely opposite of what we thought it would be doing. And with that, I think a big lesson there is that you're not defined by your hypothesis, but how you actually learn from it and move forward. And I think that's something that I tell, you know, graduate students, I tell trainees, I tell myself in the mirror sometimes. But it's one of those things that I think that's like a really, that gets lost in the shuffle with how we treat science. You know, we want to always treat it as this is an absolute thing. Well, times change, situations change. And as does, you know, we have to, you know, change our hypothesis with those particular times. So I would say that, you know, you're not defined by your hypothesis, but how you choose to move forward after it. That's wonderful. Thank you so much for speaking with us for this interview. Where can people find you online? I know you have a very active Twitter account. Yes, so I'm on Twitter at BlacksideLog. You know, it has kind of all my information to my, you know, faculty page and those things. You know, you can find me through the NSERF website as far as, you know, trying to reach me there as far as how ways you can help there. And yeah, those are kind of the ways you can deal with that. And, you know, I think my email is on my website too for frankly. So if you have any scientific questions, I'm happy to answer them over email. I'm also happy to answer them in the public domain over Twitter. Because I think some of those scientific discussions out in the open actually make for some of the best science discussions you can have. Yeah, that transparency and that the public questioning and the inquiry, the process of figuring something out and watching somebody, helping somebody figure something out can be so fun. Yeah. All right, everybody. Michael, would you like to stick around or do you, because we do have more stories to come, but we'll be here probably until about 9.45. I can hang out till then. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Then everyone, this is This Week in Science. We're so glad that you have joined us. We hope that you really enjoyed this interview with Dr. Michael D. L. Johnson. And if you did enjoy this interview, please consider supporting TWIS to help us continue to bring you interviews like this and more science every single week. Head over to TWIS.org, click on our Patreon link, and you can support us at the amount of your choosing. Once a month, you'll be charged. If $10 is good for you, anything like that and more, we will thank you by name at the end of the show. You know, we really can't do this without you. Thank you for your support. And now it is time for Placentis. I don't know Blair. It's Blair's Animal Corner. I'm going to make you wait for the Placentis. I'm going to talk about mods first. I know. I know. I just want to make sure I have enough time to talk about Placentis because it's a thing. But first, I want to talk about mods and the evolutionary arms race that is over 65 million years old between bats and mods. There have been a host of evolutionary defenses ever since ultrasonic sensitivity evolved in bats, and that is particularly prevalent and diverse amongst moths. So there's a bunch of different ways that different types of mods try to get away from the echolocation of bats. Some shift the frequency of their calls to, or some of the bats will shift their frequency of their calls to a spectrum that a moth isn't sensitive to so they don't even know they're echolocating. They can sneak up on them. Other bats have decreased the amplitude of their calls, basically whispering as they echolocate. You can't hear me, moth. And then the moths themselves have started to do things to try to evade these bats. And in particular, I wanted to talk about a type of moth that has found a way to create an acoustic decoy. So how do you create an acoustic decoy? They're not like throwing their voice. But what they're doing instead is it's almost like throwing a bat off of the scent based on sound with the structure of their wings. So their scales on their thorax are really good sound absorbers. So first of all, that can kind of deafen the sound a little bit. So less echo returns to the bat from the moth's body. So this allows the insects to kind of disappear. But this new research, so we've known about that for a while, this new research was all about the scales on moth wings. And that the way that they are structured, they can dissipate sound energy that is used during echolocation. So they basically they're kind of curly and folded in a way that makes the sound bounce back in a different direction or a different way to confuse the bats. So in some cases, they amplify the sound, it's louder. And it comes at them in an unexpected direction. And they're like, what is over there? Then the moth can disappear. So this is all based on their wing tips. And right now Kiki's showing two different types of moths, the hind wing decoy and the four wing decoy. So this is two different moth strategies for doing that. So in in one case, we have this moth that has this like long finger kind of coming off of the back of their wing. And so that allows them to kind of confuse the shape of the moth. But this other one, this curled wing on the top kind of closer to the head on kind of the fingertips, if they were bat shaped instead of moth shaped, try to pay a picture for our listeners. That one is this one that has this new structure that has never really been studied. So this is the one where there's this acoustic tomography. And they were able to map it with special software so that they could see exactly how the sound goes back. And so they found that it just confused the heck out of the bats. They created this image of a moth using sound. And they were able to see which parts produce loud echoes, which parts produce weaker echoes, which parts are invisible based on echolocation. And what you come up with is something that really doesn't look like a bat at all. So it is enough that the bats are kind of like, Oh, nothing to see here. And then you can just kind of move along. So yeah, so right now we're projecting the image, which I recognize also to everyone else probably looks a lot more relevant. I'm told there's red in this picture. And that that is where it's especially loud. It's like most of our audience is listening and not looking at the picture also. So it's just as obvious to them as it is to you what color this is. Sure. So essentially the front of the wing, this initial arc up from the head to the those fake fingertips, I was talking about before. That part is just the wing tip. Yeah, it's the wing tip for sure. But it's curled over. It looks kind of like a moth or a butterfly who's just having come out of a chrysalis and maybe the wings aren't entirely dry. And so they they haven't completely unfurled yet. They're just yeah, kind of curled in. Yeah. So yeah, so that area is really, really strong that that area creates lots of kind of loud echolocation. And then the rest of the wing kind of fades into nothingness in terms of sound. So it really doesn't make the shape of a moth to a bat. So the bats don't see moth. They just see something that they don't recognize. They haven't learned that shape. That's absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so essentially, this is a new way of kind of cloaking that these that mods have been doing that that scientists have discovered. The question is next, of course, a what can we do with this technology? Is it helpful? I don't know. Just some food for thought. cloaking technology will this I mean, we've already got planes with odd angles on their surfaces that are supposed to be. Yep. Yep. But then the second question is, will bats evolve to adjust? Yeah, probably. Probably. Yeah. If you told me if like next week, you're like, yeah, so bats and mods are now using lasers on each other. Yeah, wouldn't surprise me. I mean, I've had 65 million years. Yeah. It's a lot of time to do your homework. Anyway, forget about these mods. Let me talk about seahorse placentas. Woohoo. Let's get into it. Why is the phrase seahorse placenta weird? Any takers? Because because go ahead, Justin. In the ocean, ocean stuff is born in eggs. So first of all, they're fish. Seahorses are fish. A lot of people don't realize that fish. Generally speaking, there's a lot of asterisks on this statement come from eggs. Right. So why would they have a placenta? Okay. There's another reason that that phrase is weird. Seahorse placenta. Is it because the males carry? Aha, bingo. So they are. Nice work. They're one of a very, very select club that where the males carry the babies. So in seahorse copulation, females actually have an ovipositor that looks kind of more like the usual male mating device to deposit sense over depositor egg depositor to deposit unfertilized eggs into a seahorse male seahorses pouch. The male seahorse then releases sperm into the pouch and then those eggs are fertilized and that male carries those babies as they gestate as they grow until they hatch. So this is extremely strange for a bunch of reasons, but the real one being that this is not really, I wouldn't consider this an internal process. It's a pouch that is essentially an outcropping of part of their skin on their tail. It's not like a uterus. Fanny pack. It's like a fanny pack exactly. Thank you Justin. That is an excellent, excellent descriptor for this. It's like a fanny pack. It's outside of the body. So seahorse placenta, insane statement for three reasons. It's a fish, males, and also it's outside of the body wall. So all of those things together make this crazy. So let me tell you. It's like a marsupial fish. It's like a marsupial fish. Kanga horse. Yes. So the issue with not laying eggs, if you are a mammal, if you are a shark, a lot of sharks don't lay eggs. If you are a snake or a lizard that reabsorbs your eggs and gives birth to live young, there's a big problem with that. And that is that if you're in an egg, the eggs have gas exchange with the outside world. So they have this opportunity to absorb oxygen and release carbon dioxide through the pores in the shell. But if you give birth to live young, how do you do that? In humans, we have a placenta. It's an organ that connects the mother to her baby. It allows for gas exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. It's also involved with nutrient exchange. It removes waste. It has a connection to the mother's bloodstream. It's this amazing thing. I feel like the general public, and especially people who haven't grown a placenta in their own body at some point, don't understand how complex and beautiful the placenta is and what a crazy thing it is that it provides to the baby. So I'm just throwing that out there. Do a quick goog if you're not aware of what placentas are up to because it is fascinating. Regardless, I digress. That's how mammals take care of their babies. And there's a placenta we're showing on the screen right now. It probably looks kind of like what you thought a cartoon of a kidney would look like, but it is its own thing. So that's males. In sharks, a lot of sharks have live birth and a lot of them have really long gestation, like 12 months. And so they develop a placenta, something akin to a placenta. It's not exactly the same as a mammal one, but there is an umbilical cord. It joins the mother to her babies. Some lizards form a similar structure. So it's something that is not totally way off base outside of mammals. But what is weird is again, this is in a pouch outside of the male's body, just kind of like a skin pouch, skin fanny. So in seahorses, we already know they the males go through lots of weird changes similar to those seen in mammalian pregnancy in females related to their blood and all sorts of other things while they're they're growing these babies. And so researchers took seahorses who were raising babies in their pouch and they they looked at them under a microscope at various stages of pregnancy. First of all, found blood vessels growing inside the pouch. Whoa, very cool. The distance between the father's blood supply and the embryos also decreased dramatically and continued to decrease as pregnancy went on. That improved efficiency of transport between the father and the embryos could provide nutrients could do all sorts of things. And all of these changes that they saw were akin were kind of analogous to something that you would see in a uterus with a placenta during mammalian pregnancy. So they didn't have a physical structure, but they had the same mechanisms going on inside the pouch through the skin that was like they were turning the lining of the pouch into a placenta. So this is wild. Nothing about this. This is all new information. There's still a lot to learn. The next step is to kind of look at how the nourishment of these babies works during pregnancy, really mechanically how that works. But for starters, this definitely shows there is morphological there's a morphological change in the seahorse-brewed pouch that is very similar to what happens in a mammalian placenta. Right, it's that the reconstruction. It's like this isn't going to be taken over for a little while. We're going to remodel for a little bit. We've got to put some new furniture in here for a bit. We're going to a little different purpose maybe than you've been using it for for a while. Yeah. Oh, you don't need to store your your supplies over there anymore. We're going to put some we're going to put some else over here. And then babies are born and it goes back to the way it was. It's amazing. And then you can actually move all that furniture that got squished in the one corner back to where it was before. Exactly. Yes.  Your pelvis has changed forever. It doesn't move back to the same exact positions, but I mean No, but your organs have a lot more. It would have generally back. Yeah. The organs they could move. The pelvis, sorry. There was some light damage in the process. Anyway, yeah, Seahorse placenta is I blown away. I love it. I can't wait to find out more. Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing.  That was great Blair. Okay, Justin, what can we do with a few stories here? You've got some stories to tell, don't you? Yeah, this is researchers at the translational health science and technology institute have found evidence that suggests adding salt to the diet can suppress the growth of cancerous tumors. Dot dot dot in mice. This is one of those mouse studies that we should actually look this week and this next couple of weeks for the morning TV show that's like high sodium diet. Here's cancer. Doctors have found, but this is definitely gonna have that on wait, wait, don't tell me next week. I love those kind of stories in the opening. But this is actually this is a pretty interesting this is published in the journal science advances. They feed tumor afflicted lab mice a high sodium diet and compared tumor growth with mice on a normal diet. Part of the reason is the there's an association with a high sodium diet that leads to inflammation also high blood pressure and increased risk of heart attack. So if you're trying to avoid heart attacks, don't go on a high sodium diet kind of. But they wanted to look at and see what was going on with tumor growth with all of this inflammation and thing that was going on. They found that mice on the high sodium diet had an increase in bifidobacterium probiotics. That led to an increase in the type of immune cells that attack cancerous tumors. They also found an increased ability to inhibit PD one proteins, which have been found to prevent T cells from attacking tumors. So they kind of got rid of the protein that was protecting tumors and increase the amount of immune cells that were there available to attack. And this was through a probiotic. Well, how does this probiotic getting to tumors? Closer looked showed that the high sodium diet made the gut barrier leaky and having a leaky gut barrier allowed more of the bifidobacteria to move from the gut to the sites where the tumors were located. They also found that once the bifidobacteria made their way to the tumor crosstalk between the bacteria and the immune cells that were attacking the tumors resulted in more successful attacks. This is this is a coordination on a level of things we have in our bodies that we just don't even realize is we're doing all this heavy lifting. Right. So they also found that conducting fecal transplants from mice on high sodium diet to those of a normal diet also improve their ability to fight the tumor growth. But I guess that was just sort of skipping ingestion really at that point. Also, what was interesting researchers found that instead of a fecal transplant, maybe you could consider eating less salt or more in this class. No, no, this is this is high sodium is is leading to this high sodium is leaky, right?  This is what I was going to say. I don't kill the tumor, but somehow they are communicating in a way that's helping to coordinate the attack and suppressing the thing that would suppress the attack. It's so good for cancer, but bad for cardiovascular health and other hang on. The leaky gut that is not something you want generally. We don't know that though because this is what we're learning is that all the things that we think we know that all these assumptions we have just don't you don't want the word leaky related to anything inside your body. More permeable. Thank you. More convenient pathways. There's a lot of literature out there that actually defines, you know, so you have like all these different types of bacteria. You have bacteria that are commensals, which is kind of what we think of those good microbes that we have. You have like some that just kind of don't really do anything for us and they're just kind of hitching a ride. You have things that are like pathal violence, things that like are on our skin. And if things go wrong, then that's when, you know, they wreak havoc. Things like seed if we have lots of seed in us, but once we are, you know, like clear out some of the microbiome, then that's kind of when they go crazy. And then you have your very virulent bacteria, things like bubonic plague, which don't really care. They're just going to, they're just there to try and kill you.  They're just in the wrong place. They're not supposed to be in you. They're doing the thing they would normally do. And it's like, Oh, this is killing the host. What's wrong with this host? I'm highly convinced that your synopsis are just evil. They're there. No, they're just alpha blood. But at least here, there's a lot of literature about different commensals that actually do help prime the immune system.  So the connection between microbes in your gut and the rest of your body is actually really, really fascinating. And what I mean, it's basically them reprogramming immune cells to do their job more efficiently, or in some cases, not more efficiently.  Yeah. And there was there's also, there was this idea that the leaky gut or the permeable gut was was an injury situation, which allowed for infiltration from the gut into the bloodstream. And then they found motor proteins that were grabbing bacteria and bringing them in. So there's, there's a, yeah, there's a, there's a, there's some mechanism in there that's like, no, no, we actually need that to happen in certain situations. But there's a little bit more to this, because researchers also found the opposite to be true in a scenario. So researchers also found that low sodium diet worked in conjunction with cancer fighting drugs that showed an increased ability to reduce the tumor growth. So, so, so the big disclaimer on this thing also is if you're taking a drug treatment, don't go for the high sodium diet, a low sodium diet was actually more effective because the drug interaction was probably on a model that didn't include bipidobacteria suppressing a thing and doing another job. So your drug treatment is taking a different pathway to the solution of reducing the tumor and it prefers a lower sodium environment. So again, or the drug pathway is making your gut leaky and letting the bacteria in. Well, it could be. No, that's a great, that's a great, like, I don't know if that was seen or studied, right? So, but the, the, the, the, yes, the entire world of our guts and our microbe interactions and how they affect disease is we're still, we have just started to scratch the surface of this. So anybody who is interested and thinking about doing a scientific pursuit by going, oh gosh, they've already figured out everything. No, no, no, no, all of, all of science throughout the history of all sciences is just a setup for you to make some big discoveries. It's all just been that, that platform for you to actually find the real stuff that we've been, we've been edging towards all of these years. So now I have so many questions about people with IBD, celiac, colitis, you know, how that actually plays a role into some of the questions that they were asking in that paper. Which part of the spectrum do they fall under? Yeah, like maybe you have IBD, but you're not going to get cancer. Right. Exactly. You know, at least not cancer in other places, colon cancer is probably, yeah, well, I guess what kind of cancer were they looking at? What kind of tumors? These were, I think melanoma tumors, colon cancer and colorectal cancer, by the way, I think we need to rename those for specific groups. Because there is, there has also, this is a whole other thing, but there's like this still of resistance for people and different groups and men, especially to, to seek treatment or speak about colorectal cancers.  And if it's, you know, if you've got your conservative uncle who doesn't want to deal with it, Ronald Reagan. Right. And the African American community, Jackie Robinson. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You got somebody who's like, uh, not really in it. Yeah. Audrey Hepburn. Like just go find that, that fame and rename it the Audrey Hepburn. Does it rename it the Ronald Reagan? Just call it lower tummy cancer. Just tell me lower tummy. Fanny pack. No, I already used fanny pack. All right. In the show. Okay. Other mystery that's being used, being delved into dark energy. Okay. So dark energy, mysterious force in the universe that's causing it to accelerate. This is that thing that's, uh, 68% of the energy in the universe, you know, 27% is dark matter. And then whatever's left over that little bit is all the stuff we see in interacting. So dark energy is this huge mystery. This is a, we may have discovered it a while ago and just not figured it out. The Xenon one T experiment deep below Italy's Apennine mountains was a study that was designed, uh, to detect dark matter. And yeah, I had some results and stuff, but there was these weird hiccups, this sort of noise in the system that they kept trying to get rid of because it didn't really, it was, it was like an interference or something wasn't working right. And, uh, now they're looking at it modeling and they had all these different things that it could have been. I know the sort of, it's sort of by eliminating all of the things that they, uh, all the hypotheses, there were a bunch of null hypotheses that took place. I think it's this, I think it's these, uh, this, this energy, these, what are they called, add the axions or whatever it is that these little particles created by the sun that could have been doing the thing by eliminating all of these and ruling them out of their models. Kind of the thing that was left was maybe that's dark energy. Maybe that's, uh, the dark energy being created by the magnetic field of the sun. And it's still kind of early because we've known about, well, this is the quote from Dr. Sonny, uh, Vagnosi, Cambridges, Calvi Institute for Cosmology despite both components being invisible, dark energy and dark matter. We know more about dark matter since its existence was suggested as early as the 1920s. Well, dark energy wasn't even discovered until 1998. So large scale experiments, experiments like Xenon 1T have been designed to directly detect dark matter by searching for signs of dark matter, hitting ordinary matter. Dark energy is even more elusive. And then this is Dr. Lucia Viscinelli. These sorts of excesses are often flukes, but once in a while they can lead to fundamental discoveries. We explored a model in which this signal could be attributed to dark energy rather than dark matter. The experiment was originally devised to detect. And, and, you know, this is one of the, I love accidental science. It is some of my favorite types of science where you've, you've designed an experiment and here's what you're designed, that you've designed it for. Here's the thing you're going to learn from it. And you know this is going in and it's just whether or not this was the right approach and then you find something completely different. Then your experiment found a, caught a parameter of nature in this case that you weren't even expecting. So they still have to keep looking into this to make sure this was not a fluke. They need to sort of recreate the experiment or maybe refine it to try it again. But very exciting that we may have, we may have accidentally discovered the most elusive and predominant energy in the universe. Because if they found it there, then that would imply that it's being released by the magnetic fields and forces of stars all over the universe and other large active bodies, right? So it could solve that big problem. Okay. Very cool. And then last story I've got for the evening. This is new research. Also, University of Cambridge suggests that autistic individuals are less likely to identify as heterosexual and more likely to identify with a diverse range of sexual orientations, more so than non-autistic individuals. This of course has great implications for how we teach and how we instruct healthcare workers to approach. So the findings counter what were previous assumptions that autistic individuals were just uninterested in sexual romantic relationships. This is, again, assumptions made by general public healthcare workers, psychology, whatever field, these things persist. Sort of like, what was it, the ornithologists? Somebody said something and it got into a textbook or got into a lecture and now everybody who's been taught thinks this way. Turns out once they actually did a large scale survey and started asking people, absolutely not true.  Overall, they had about 1,100, 1,200 autistic and 1,200 non-autistic adolescents and adults. This was huge age range, 16 to 90 provided information about sexual activity. Results showed majority of autistic adults, 70 percent autistic males, 76 percent of autistic females engage in sexual activity. They do so to a lesser degree than non-autistic peers, which was just up to 89 percent for both male and female non-autistic, but still that's much higher than the assumptions had been. Contrast previous findings study also found there were no differences in likelihood of contracting STIs or at the age in which participants first engage in sexual activity between autistic and non-autistic individuals. In addition, they found there were approximately, autistic adults were approximately eight times more likely to identify as asexual and other sexuality compared to non-autistic peers.  This is a Professor Simon Baron Cohn, Director of Autism Research Center. Who is that, a name Simon Baron Cohn sounds familiar? Yes, he has been a guest on the show before. He says the new study is an important example of applied health research with policy relevance to health and social care services. And then the lead researcher of the study, Elizabeth Weir, here's what I'm going to say, it's particularly important that healthcare providers and educators use languages that is affirming accepting of all sexual orientations of gender identities when providing sexual education, sexual health screening checks to autistic and non-autistic people like, but large emphasis on refocusing the assumptions people make about people without having any of the data to back it up. Speaking of not having the data to back it up, I have two ideas about this that I don't have data for, but one is that I would be willing to guess that historically research about people with autism was done on and not with those individuals, right? And so this is probably something where historically there was an assumption about the sexual activities of people with autism because it was just from the observer, right? Nobody asked me. Nobody asked me. There was an understanding for a long time that like people with autism that are verbal, there were assumptions that there was less verbal capability with people that are perfectly verbal because there are huge assumptions that are made. Anyway, so that's one thing. But the other thing I was thinking is that like this could be a weird byproduct of the fact that until recently and in some places still people with autism and other learning differences are separated from kind of like neurotypical learners in early ages, right? So does that then remove them from some of the weird social pressure that neurotypical people receive that prevents them from identifying as bisexual, asexual? Oh gosh, it's all that. It's all that. Interesting questions. I love that take. I do love that take. I was really thinking that second take as well. It's so interesting, you know, having kids and kind of hearing them talk about just the fluidity of how they talk about gender and sex right now. And it's just like, it's one of those things that how they identify are things that when I was their age, I didn't ever talk about or ever consider. And there's just so much more openness about that with them right now and less pressure on their peers to, you know, to conform to one thing or another. So your point as far as like taking them out of that pool makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, it's I would be more likely to say that like the the ratios that we see in the people with autism are probably closer to what gen pop would be if people weren't like all the peer pressure like, yeah, in the way that we are because let's face it, most people are some sort of bisexual. Even people who say they're heterosexual, they're not like totally heterosexual. My favorite, my favorite, my favorite joke on this is actually a Seinfeld bit where he's talking about the homophobia being a fear of salesmanship is really like if you got walked into the showroom, it's like, yeah, have you ever held a hand with a man? Well, no, I never have. You want to try it? I'm just here in the showroom just holding me by the hand, just go for a little walk back and forth. It's actually isn't as bad as I thought it would be. It's like a fear of that like actually maybe I would like that and then there's because of all of the the social pressures I would have to reject. Yeah. Yeah, very interesting. That's an interesting study, Justin. Thank you. And I've got just a couple of studies for the very end of the show here. I wanted to let you know that biofuel might be getting really hot and by hot, I mean created by nuclear radiation. Yeah, engineers at Lancaster University have published in communications chemistry and they have proposed a process to generate a biofuel additive. So it'll be a sustainable additive called solkatol and it would use waste from biochemical and nuclear industries. So the idea would be to use nuclear waste radiation and the heat that comes from that to do the processing to power the processing for this biochemical biofuel creation. So it would be taking waste products from two dirty industries and using them to create sustainable biofuels out of waste organic products. Would the biofilm be radioactive as well? I think that's the big question. No, the idea is that the fuel would not be this additive that would be created. The solkatol would not be radioactive that it would be the heat from the radiation that would lead to the process that would take place. But the energy could be derived from that and the idea is that the manufacturer of this biofuel could be integrated at nuclear waste sites or on the way out. Solkatol is what they call it, yes. Okay. Yeah, so pretty fun stuff there. It's maybe taking dirty industries and hopefully turning them into something a little bit more positive and sustainable in the... Yeah, if it turns out all of this nuclear waste that we're storing in these leaky compounds around the country can actually be used for something positive, that would be great news. It would be great. Right? Oh, it's not just going into a hole in the ground. It's also continuing to do work. Hey, who knew? Yes. And then the littleest, teeniest, tiniest robots have been created. It's a winged microchip and it flies. Perfect. Just what we needed. Just what we needed. Smaller than an ant, these researchers publishing in this last week's issue of Nature from Northwestern University have basically put wings on microchips and given them the power of flight using the biological principles after watching pedaled seeds fall to the ground from trees. Imagining devices that could be used tossed out into the environment with sensors to measure and find out what is happening. Yeah, that's what it's for, to measure. Exactly. We now welcome our new robot overlords. They will litter the ground, but they won't because these engineers are aware of the issues of pollution and the fact that they would be creating these devices to potentially track air pollution, air quality, oil spills, all sorts of fires. Yeah, where they could be dropped and be used to gather information and monitor. They are biodegradable. They have been created with materials that have been used medically and have been developed as biodegradable polymers. So eventually, they would simply melt away.  Will they be melted away faster than they will be hacked? This is a great question. I do love the idea of being able to do sort of large-scale monitoring data collection kind of a thing. That sounds amazing. There's a story I didn't bring tonight though that's sort of a line where they're trying to create a sort of remote control device for drug delivery that is made from a patient's plasma so that it would actually be, yeah, so if you can actually make the construction, somebody won't get rejected and it can be absorbed into all of its pieces at the end of it like a used blood cell. If this can be biodegradable to the degree which it would mimic what's in nature and degradable there, I'm still like picturing, okay, so the wings biodegrade and it's some part of this chip though or something, like it's got to persist, doesn't it? Or, but if not, if you can actually biodegrade it in the way that nature wants it to biodegrade, not the way that we think about it. The human biodegradable as opposed to everything else, exactly, yes, but they're working on that, so it's good to know that there are researchers working on these robots that could be deployed into the environment, the sensor devices that they're not just potentially throwing them out there and causing more lure and pollution and damage to the environment, but they are thinking about how to do it in a way that works with the environment. Fingers crossed, you know, more research, there's always more questions and more research to be done. Yeah, oh, and by the way, researchers discovered how we make associative memories. There are a whole new group of cells that they just discovered in the brain, in the memory center of the brain, and they are basically powered by dopamine.  The researchers did not even think that dopamine would be involved in the memory circuits because dopamine is supposed to be the reward circuit. What the heck? Dopamine is involved in things that are important for learning and survival.  Yes, it rewards you, but it also is making a note. It's saying, this is important. This is different. Watch out. The dopamine is like a little tag that says, okay, this is a thing, and now we know it's involved in memory.  Really? You really want to do that? They won't remember it. Yeah, they'll forget that they're on the diet quick. But this is, I mean, this is always fascinating to me when you're talking about the brain kiki because it always informs me that all the things that I think I am as a human being who's doing this conscious effort to exist, there's this other part of the brain that's forcing me to do it. Like, I'll forget to eat, but the brain is like, no, your stomach is now going to grumble.  There's a brain back there.  We've done it. We've talked about lots of science. Oh, we talked about so much science. It's been an amazing couple of hours. This has been so great. Thank you, Dr. Johnson for joining us this evening and continuing the conversation with us. It's been so great getting to speak with you. It's been really fun. It's really been fun. And you have done the twist trifecta. Almost. He hasn't done after show yet. Oh, that's right. That's a quadfecta. But the intro part, then the interview and then the after part contributions as well. So that's not every guest does goes to that length to participate. That trick. Thank you very much. All right, everybody. I want to say thank you to people who help with the show. Fada, thank you so much for your help with show notes and with social media. Identity 4, thank you for recording the show. 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You can also contact us directly, email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistminionatgmail.com, or me, Blair, at BlairBaz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist, T-W-I-S in the subject line, or your email will definitely be mashed up and stuffed into a 3D printer, and we won't recognize what comes out the other end. We might like how it tastes. I don't know. You can also hit us up on the Twitter where we are, at twist science, at Dr. Kiki at Jacksonfly and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address, a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes to you in the night, please let us know. We'll be back here next week, and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember. It's all in your head. This week in science is the end of the world, 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 their robots with a simple device. I'll reverse for all the 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 earth. It's this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, 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 understanding. That we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. We're just trying to save the world from jeopardy. And this week in science is coming your way. So everybody listen to everything we say. 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This week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science. And that is the show. We're still live. Oops, I thought I turned it off, but I didn't. It's still going. Music for everyone. If you listen to the radio on the radio in David's, the first assumptions will be correct. Music. Wait, it's your interstitial music. The radio show. Music. Music. Now we're going to get tagged by YouTube for having other people's music. Oh no. It's so funny because I have permission from Jake to use the song, but it's like you have to go through a process to get it white. You have to appeal like every time, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm multitasking with some tacky glue. For the calendar? You have to approve what? The song that is our theme song. We have to approve to get it used through the YouTube filters or something. Right. So YouTube has automatic algorithms. Okay.  What are you doing? So I saw something interesting on, and I don't know if it was a YouTube thing where there was this little thing saying like this has been approved music. And it wrote it onto the screen and I don't know if that was like some weird thing that YouTube's adding where you can be like, here's the song and it's always okay to add to the thing. But that's interesting. I don't know any of the stuff that happens behind the curtain on that. YouTube does all sorts of things in their different editions. Yeah. Michael, thank you so much. I don't want to keep you up any later. It's ten o'clock. Yeah. While I do have to run, I have to ask one question for a Blair before I do. In your awesome theme song, it mentioned things except for giant pandas. And squirrels, yes. And I have to ask what the story behind the giant pandas is because I'm well known in my household for being someone that has a certain level of disdain for pandas. You go first. You go first. Ever since I saw that video of the panda trading its baby for an apple and I'm just like, are you kidding me? Do you want to survive as a species? How hard is it to get shot? It's just unbelievable. I had to get you to breathe. You can't eat food. Because they're cute. Seriously? This is exactly Blair's point. Yeah. This is the thing that's trying not to survive. They are perhaps the only species that is alive that is not extinct because of humans. Yeah. They're an evolutionary dead end and they zap so much money from other conservation efforts. We're offering you a panda as a gift. Nobody, I don't want that. I don't want that. Here's a fun factoid. Did you know that every panda in a zoo in the United States is owned by the country of China? And that zoo, even if they breed pandas and a new panda is born, that panda now belongs to China. A zoo has to pay a million, last time I checked this could be different, a million dollars a year as a lease per panda. So even when pandas are these giant kind of magnet and people come to check out the pandas and it's a huge draw and they are allowed to like raise all these conservation dollars, it is very rarely fiscally a net gain. So I lived in Memphis and the weirdest thing about that zoo is they had, it was a great zoo but they had a couple pandas. And they had these viewing windows to look at the pandas and everybody crowded around the windows. And basically it's a panda sitting with its legs wide open just munching on bamboo or sleeping. And I'm just like, yeah, I'll just stand back here. I'm with you Blair, I'm with you. I did not agree with this at all to begin with, but Blair has convinced me over the years. She switched me to being not a panda enthusiast. The more we learn about them, the worse they are as an animal. It's the problem. They're bad at having them. Blair, we're besties now. You and me, you and me, we cool. But wait a sec, Michael, what is this story about a panda trading its baby for an apple? There's a video of it. I've not heard this. And basically the panda is like holding a baby. Are you finding the video? Yeah, we'll see if I can find it. It's exactly what it sounds like. And a trade baby. For Apple, it's like the first search that comes up there in the YouTube. There's no hesitation. Just like, sure, go ahead. Like they didn't even plinch. They didn't even plinch? No, thank you. I like apples. I don't care about my baby. I'm a bad mom. They don't want it. They always have a stomach ache because they have their own gut bacteria. They get lost. They can't find their way home in the wild. It's just a mess. It's just a mess. Oh, now my internet says no. Yeah, you're a... I can redo that. Here we go. Here's an apple. Can I have the baby? Oh, that just pops. Just dropped the baby. Not even like gives it up like literally just completely dropped the baby. No look of surprise. No look of like, oh, where did my baby go? Just it's gone. I have an apple. Don't care at all. Okay, but there, I will disagree with you still to this day about squirrels. I think they're the most... Oh my God, they're terrible. First of all, most of the squirrels in the United States are invasive. So they're an invasive species. So that's a huge problem. And one bigger. So she has a... She's got a grudge. Listen, they... Unfortunately, it's our fault. Like, we've turned them into these like extremely habituated monsters to humans. And so, yeah, they get way too close. They're grabby. They're too smart. They're thinking six steps ahead. Maybe squirrels if humans can't handle things. Maybe squirrels if humans can't handle things. A natural movement to try and eradicate squirrels. And all we did was just make it worse. Yeah, that's like... Basically, if you kill the squirrel and it was like your civic duty to do though, you can like trade in a tail to get money. And they like kept shifting tails to like the government. And it just had this huge bat bat of tails. And they couldn't pay out and they just start smelling bad. Yeah. If you look at like attempted squirrel eradication in the United States, it has a very interesting history. So every electricity company, every like utility company has a squirrel budget. Because it's one of the number one reasons for power outages. This literally happened this year at the job place.  And the word back from Pacific Gas Electric was, squirrel got in there. Yeah, filled it with nuts probably, right?  Yeah, they have a squirrel budget. They have a squirrel budget. I think they spend more money on squirrels than on like natural disasters. Wow. Mostly utility companies. Like it's insane.  Squirrels are the worst.  Thank you so much. I think I should take off right now. Thanks for having me on the show. I really had a great time talking to you. Please come back. It was super fun. It was really fun talking with you. Really great. Talk to us again about copper or. There'll be more stories. I promise. Yeah. Or any of it. Awesome. I love it. All right. Bye everybody. Bye. Have a great night. Thank you. Don't mind me. I'm just. Yes. Gira has an awesome. I found. An amazing image for us squirrel eradication. Apparently. The United States in 1918. Got children. To kill squirrels. Yes. And in this comic, it says kill the squirrels. And there's a woman with a nice. Wide brimmed hat carrying poison barley. And she says children, we must kill the squirrels to save food. But use poisons carefully. Yeah. What could go wrong? Yeah. Another. Another part of it is. Like a five star restaurant hotel, California. And there are two squirrels, Mr. And Mrs. Squirrel having dinner. And they're asking for some nice young barley sprouts. For their dinner. Yes. Yeah. It was the ball. The poison ball. I like squirrels too. I think. It was squirrel week. They called it. They called it squirrel week. And. They got children to do their part for Uncle Sam. Yeah.  Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I'm learning so many things. Atlas Obscura is fantastic. Oh, I love it. Okay. The. This squirrel week, they fed the children. Oh, wait. It was announced in 1918 at a meeting of the state's government that they had lunched on grain fed gophers. Okay. Good. Good. They would drop. 1918 was a very different time. In 1918, they ate gophers for lunch and they, it said the San Francisco Chronicle reported liberal portions of beef were served to those who did not like gopher meat. Good. Well, at least everyone was happy. I think nature doesn't care if something's cute. No. If it's invasive, it's a nuisance. And I'm sorry. And I'm sorry about that. That's true for squirrels. That's true for stray cats. Then I see all of humanity in the squirrel. And there was a study out this last week though, there was a study this last week that said that, that squirrels have personalities like people. Yeah. All the more reason not to trust them. Oh, I didn't say trust the squirrels. I didn't say trust. Well, that's my big thing about squirrels. They're untrustworthy. I'm just impressed by them. We've all seen squirrels running up trees, running across these branches, doing house, I've never seen a squirrel fall out of a tree. Never seen it. There's videos online that are pretty good. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. What? I've seen them. It's probably CGI. No. Squirrels. But you still support people having cats, Blair? Indoors. Indoors only. So should we have an outdoor cat eradication policy in this country? Unpopular opinion time. Oh, yes. Blair's nodding. She's not going to say the words so the audio won't go out. There's no audio of the after show. Yeah. No, absolutely. Yes. Cats need to be rescued and homed and spayed and neutered. Well, spayed or neutered. You can't do both. Spayed or neutered. I'm talking about the plural cats. Yeah. You can't just home all cats, though. No. So there is an unfortunate piece to this. But like, you have to make a decision. Is it going to be stray cats or is it going to be lizards, frogs and birds? And for the whole world, basically, because this is a problem on every continent. Yeah. So there's the show on Netflix, Cat People. And they're talking about, there are a couple of people who go out into the community and into their community and they capture feral stray cats. They take them in, get them spayed and neutered, but then they return them back to the place where they were trapped. And the reason that they give is that it's, you know, no kill so that the cats aren't killed. And then also they are maintaining the social hierarchy within that local cat community so that there's no like big empty hole in the community that causes a bunch of cat fights as they try to assert dominance and find their new territories as a result of the loss of an individual. Yeah. So that's a trap, neuter release or TNR program. And that's like really common in a lot of places. The problem is that you have to wait for cat lifetimes to finish for the massive destruction to stop. Right. So we're talking you, yeah, spayed, yeah, trap, neuter release. And then you wait 15 years. Yeah. Which a lot can happen to an ecosystem in 15 years if you have the species like eradicating small birds. It's pretty, it's pretty rough. It's a great point Blair. I don't know if everybody thinks, no, it's good. I love cats. I really, really love cats and I want to save all the cats, but I also really, really love birds and I love the wild native animals and. Yeah. I mean, the other thing to keep in mind too is like, what are you releasing them into?  It's, I mean, so I almost brought to the show, but I didn't want to like start a whole uproar on the internet about it. Cause I know it's a hot button issue, but there was a study that came out a couple of weeks ago where they looked at, I think it was in Australia, the average life span of a stray cat and the average life span of a stray cat is actually under a year. And it's because they're being hit by cars. They're getting sick. They're getting attacked by other animals and other cats. And it's, it's not, it's not a fun life to be a stray cat. It's not great. Yeah. The thing I still guess I don't understand about that then, if that was true, is where are all the cats coming from? Most of them are neutered. Most aren't really. Yeah. Most of them are not. Yeah. There's a huge number of outdoor cats that are pets that are also intact. Okay. Because it's up to local governments to require it.  But if it's a cat out in the world without a collar on, how do you know if that's somebody's cat or if that's a stray cat? You don't know. You don't know where to send the bill to if you see a cat. So you have plausible deniability. 100%. To do eradication. Yeah. Sorry. I actually know a lot about this because I'm in a Facebook group about this. Oh, wow. Wow. That is an issue for you then if you chose to be in a Facebook group. I like lizards and frogs and birds and I like local wildlife and I want to preserve ecosystems and cats are big problem. Yeah. Did we all, because I know we switched some of the stuff that we say at the end of the show. Did we also switch some of the opinions that we have? The opinions of the hosts. Like how much change went on? No. Justin, I've thought this forever. Where's the anti-cat one? Who knew? I'm not anti-cat. I am anti-outdoor cat as an invasive species unrestrained. Okay. Okay. It's a very specific thing. It's specific and it's important. I mean. In the last two days alone, I have come across in my neighborhood. Cats without collars. Young male cats that were obviously. Unneutered. Yeah. Yeah. Just like just walking around and there's a lot of them and it's, it's shocking to me in a. In an urban environment where you think people are like hip. To the. Everyone's like, no, my cat's got to be free. And it's like. No, no, no, your cat needs to be indoors or in a, in a cat. Porch. A catio. Or on, or on a leash. But I think this is the, this is the weird. Um, dichotomy of this particular issue that's just wild. Is that people who love animals, love animals, but don't know a lot about ecology. Yeah. We'll feed raccoons. We'll feed squirrels. We'll feed stray cats. Yeah. Because they love animals and I totally get that, but there is a huge deficit in understanding as to what that does for, you know, the raccoons and the squirrels, obviously it completely changes their foraging strategies and messes up their whole function and the ecosystem and can eventually get them killed.  But also, um, yeah, the, the feeding stray cats thing, I get it. Like people are like, I love animals. There's this cat that's really, has an affinity for me that responds to me that, that comes to me meowing for food. Of course you want to feed that cat and you have an emotional connection to that cat, but I'm saying trap that cat, take it to the vet. See if it has a chip. And if it doesn't and take it home and keep it home. Yep. Please. Suddenly I'm trapping cats in the neighborhood, going and getting them bait or neutered and just returning them to the, getting them chipped and returning them to the neighborhood. Their owners are posting on next door saying, did somebody do something to my cat? Yes, I did. No. Which if your cat was home, we would know what was your cat. This is where I would have to interject into your scenario Blair and say that if you've taken this cat home, you may be introducing toxoplasmic gondii to yourself and your other six, seven, eight cats. Yeah. That's definitely possible. If you have those six, seven, eight other cats, you probably have toxoplasmic gondii already because those, where did those cats come from in the first place? In our cat room, who definitely doesn't. Exactly. You guys look. Japanese mossy frog. Wow. There's frog in the calendar. It's like a whole next level thing going on there Blair. She does. It's going to be an awesome calendar. It's done. I'm scanning it in tomorrow. Woo hoo. I cannot write it. Rachel, if you're listening, I'm going to plop these into the calendar and it's going to be up to you to set the holidays and then we can buy them. Awesome. Does that sound good? Yeah. If we can, yeah, I guess if you send a link to... I can just write her an email. Yeah. Or just send her the link to the Google spreadsheet that had the holidays in it from before. Is that what you need? Yeah. Just to double check that. Yeah. So basically, yeah. So she can double check the ones that are in the calendar currently because I usually start by copying the previous year. So check that. And then in the Google sheet, whenever possible, I've written like changes every year or like a new year or same date every year or whatever for as many of them as I can. But they just have to be double checked. So I poked it, our and Laura in the chat room. It was fine. I actually do not have talk so got tested for it. Okay. That's awesome. This is something that I... I didn't know you test for it. You can. I mean, I guess that it was the common test or whatever. I proposed that we do this on the show before. You know, like how you had people going out and getting vaccinations to show people like, hey, you can get vaccinated and it's not a big deal and it's fine. We should do that on the show. We should all go get tested for talk. So encourage our audience to do the same. I probably have it. She lived in the zoo with the animals. I also cared for cats. And like, this is something that I didn't know until probably my late 20s. I didn't really understand. Like this is the thing is like, you can know a lot about animals and be an animal lover and not know that stray cats are this huge issue. It's just not talked about because it's really unpopular. Anywhere but the show. Because we're more than happy to be unpopular. That's right. That doesn't bother us. What's important is being right. Unpopular. The truth can hurt a little. I wonder why people don't like it when people talk about this. This is why. I wish there was a way to really, truly explain the issue without looking like you've lost all compassion. Because it's just, it always gets twisted that way, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, everyone has a different perspective and they're looking at things from that perspective and it's, you know, it takes that awareness to be able to step back and look at things from a different perspective to be able to go, oh, I just really like animals and I, oh, there's this whole ecological impact. I had no idea. Yeah. It's a tough thing. Do I care about the ecological impact or do I, do I just care about me and my cat that has to go outside? It's all tech gold. Thank you. We appreciate you. Oh, what happened? And we said, look, it's very nice. Oh, I appreciate you too. Yeah, I think nature doesn't care when things die. That's how nature works. Yeah. There are winners and losers. And the problem is that we put, we put this, this tiny predator with claws and teeth and hunting skills in a place that doesn't have that. You know what I also think would be very interesting to do is before somebody takes on a pet, they'd be given a one sheet, a one page on the proclivity of disease and the cost of treating those diseases and that, of that pet. Like that breed, the breed of dog that you've picked out because you think it's cute. If you learn that 70% of them. Well, responsible pet owners should do that. No, but nobody does and it's not being offered anywhere. Like, well, but if you go into like the SPCA to adopt a pet or anywhere that you're getting your animal from, you should be handed a one sheet page showing that, you know, 80% of this breed gets a hip dysplasia or a major cancer thing or a thing by that time it's like six years, whatever the thing is. There's two problems with that. You should get that data, the comparative data between the breeds. So if you're getting a pet from your kid, know that you're going to also spend, if you're going to keep it for the kid to be like 10 years old, you might also have to put the college fund aside to keep the thing alive. These are important things that just don't get like presented to the general public. Yeah. So Justin, problem number one with that though is that most animals that come out of the SPCA or whatever place like that, they're not pure red. But I can tell you that when you adopt a dog for most shelters, including the SPCA, you're required to take a class. I wasn't ever. Yeah. That's a newer thing. That's started in like the late 90s, early 2000s. But I think it must have been late 2000s because I've, the last dog I got from the SPCA was around 2001 or 2002, 2000 maybe. So I did mine at the SPCA in 2000, 2001, 2001. And we were required, you're required to like sign up for the class. They're not going to chase you down if you don't go, but you're required to sign up for the class. And I had to go, it was like a six week course. What? On Saturdays. Yeah. That can't be everywhere. That must be a similar thing. The SPCA is like, they are something else. They do that for cats too. They have like, they have training classes. They're not going to let you just take a pet. I think that's a city thing. I don't think that's happening other places. Okay. Yeah. I thought that was an ASPCA thing. I don't think it's all of them. I think it's, I think it really is, it's the city and maybe they don't have, they have a lot of people who want pets. And so they want to make sure that the people who want them are really going to put in the work to take care of them. Yeah. It definitely doesn't happen all over the place. Oh, our and Laura had a long course. Oh, Oh wow. Locally from a small charity. Leafy sea dragon. It's so shiny. I'm a male having a baby potentially. Here's the last one. I'm almost done. You want to see them all? Yeah. I want to see these pictures. Anyway. Yeah. So I'll have, I'll be able to do this. Plop this into the template very soon. But they're all done. Woohoo. So a prior link can go up soon, huh? Yes, it is on my list of tasks to do. Okay. I started writing down lists of tasks to do. To ask a to do list of lists. Yeah. I have a list of lists I need to make. Yeah. I need to make. Okay. Put that on your to do list. Make list of lists. Make a list of lists to do. Oh gosh. I have, I have a giant whiteboard. Oh my God. With all of my things I need to do. Oh my God.  I sat down and started, I started writing down my lists of lists. And now I'm like, now I'm scared. That's too much. Maybe I need to clean house and get some things finished so I can put other things on the list. Well, I saw tweet the other day that was like, there's no rules. Put wake up on your to do list. Great. You've got something done. Success. Put brush your teeth on there. Oh my God. You're on fire. Yes. Like, you know what? You're right. Yeah. All right. So here's this one. I'm very proud of the shading on this one. Blop. Ooh, I like that one. That's really cool. Hammerhead. Okay. So then we have, you saw the Sea Dragon. I have to like put weight on these. You saw the Tony frog mouth. You saw the emu. You saw the Japanese mossy frog. I didn't see that. Did I see the emu? Yeah. Show them all off. Oh yeah. Yeah. I should. I showed this one a minute ago. Oh yeah. I like that one. Background on that one. Here's a Chuck Walla. I don't know what that is. I mean, is it the Australian? No. It's in the Mojave Desert. Oh, yes. Here is my velvet ant, which is actually fun fact, a type of wasp. Ooh. Yeah. You don't want to get stung by that sucker. Grave Sharma in the chat was asking, will 2022 be COVID free? No. No. Absolutely not. There's my guinea pig. I will not. Guinea pig. If you say 2023, we can go maybe. Garden. 2020 is too soon. It's not going away. Oh, I like the snail. It's going away. It's not going away. Saver toothed tiger. Ooh, I like the saver tooth. That's pretty. pretty. I have read opinions by experts that it's gonna be endemic completely endemic probably in six months so what that's gonna mean is just like the flu shot kind of stuff but we're just gonna that's great but by that point in time hopefully at least here in the United States the majority of people could be vaccinated or have been infected and so there will be some underlying immunity that will keep people from ending up in the hospital love man twitch asks are there any microbes on the calend