today. Shrink your face. Shrink your face. This is the last time I'm going to tell you, Justin. It's very complicated. Welcome to This Week in Science, everybody. This is not the show about Justin's face. This is the show about science. Yes, we're going to be talking about all sorts of great science today. And as I like to say, this is the place where you get to watch the whole unedited shebang. Science shebang. There we'll be editing. Then the podcast will be slightly different from this. So please enjoy. Please subscribe and please tell your friends. But are we ready to start now? Is that what we're going to do? Ready to do this? Yeah, okay. We're going to do this. We're five by five-ish. Not really. Okay. Starting in. Oh, jeez. I forgot to plug in my music. That's the one. Need that. Talk about bopulating. Discombobulating. It's all these last-minute things. When you move your computer from one place to another place and then you have to reset it up again and do the thing and there's the stuff and okay and cancel iTunes. Cancel. Okay, now identity four. Are you ready? Am I quiet? I'm turned up so high and I haven't changed anything. Who's telling me I'm quiet? Identity four again. You're fine. I don't know how to make myself louder. Apologies. All right. We are live in three, two, this is twist. This week in science, episode number 819 recorded on Wednesday, April 7th, 2021. What you should know about Beavers. Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show, we will fill your heads with blobs, femme fatales, and Beavers, but first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. For the past four years, the Environmental Protection Agency has been the worst enemy of, well, the environment. Denial of global warming mass purges of research scientists, repeals of land, air, and water pollution regulations, abandonment of federally protected nature areas, and an odd attempt to get the auto industry to abandon their investment in cleaner emissions, which many of the auto companies rejected. They completely rejected this plan, announcing they would stick to the higher standard California regulations. They were then investigated by the Department of Justice under antitrust laws because not giving people an option to pollute more toxic exhaust out of their tailpipes is exactly what antitrust laws are for. Only no, that's not what antitrust laws are for, and so yes, the investigation went nowhere. But yes, the auto industry was investigated by the U.S. federal government for wanting to make cleaner emitting cars. And there was also a massive reduction in on-site inspections of industry by the EPA, and all the while a pool of radioactive sewage was building up in Florida. Also in Florida, a phosphate plant that closed 20 years ago began leaking, threatening fish populations, seagrass, aquifers of drinking water had forced people to evacuate their homes and could bring about an epic red tide of toxic algae into Tampa Bay. Because environmental regulations, who needs them? But now at least there's some good news. The global warming page is back on the EPA website. And while that's just a small step, science is being restored to the Science Advisory Board of the EPA in the form of research scientists. Yes, those folks are replacing dozens of political appointees illegally placed there by the previous administrators, who I can only imagine start every conversation while at the Science Advisory Board with, I'm not a research scientist, but the way I see it, dot, dot, dot. So to the incoming class of EPA advisor applicants, we say, please take your job seriously. We know you will, but seriously, take it serious. Because the air we breathe, the water we drink is almost as important as this week in science coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I want to learn with new discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know. Yeah, science to you, Blair. And a good science to you too, Justin Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We're back. We made it through another week, everyone. Congratulations on seven Earth rotations. Nice. You're very accomplished for just making it. So we've traveled. We have really been through time and space now. It's it's International Beaver Day. Did you know that? Yes. Everyone with a calendar would know that. That's right. If you have a twist calendar, you would know. So put that on your calendar for this year for next year is to get yourself a twist calendar. Right? Yes. Okay. But yes. So tonight today we are going to be talking about beavers. We've got an interview coming up with Ben Goldfarb and are very excited about this. I also have stories about new physics, maybe. It involves magnetism. Yes. I've also got a story about the physics of raindrops. Because raindrops are just they're wonderful. And if you can make it all the way to the very end of the show, I've got some brain glue for you.  That's important when I'm losing it. Yes, I've got that for you. Justin, what did you bring? I have got a Norwegian blob mystery solved. Blobs. Great. I love solutions. Yeah. Tattoo, some sort of biosensor tattoo thing.  Sweet. Also a better battery for the future. Something that might give lithium batteries one for the money on the horizon. Could be interesting. Blair, what's in the animal corner? Well, I have a couple of stories about COVID, not in the animal corner just at the top of the show, but they're actually kind of heartwarming and fun. So that's interesting. And then I also in the animal corner, I have cone snails and fireflies. We love both of these things. Cone snails. And they're venom, especially. Yes, it's good. It's good stuff.  And we're going to talk more about that later. Perfect. All right. Well, everyone, as you're settling in for the show, I just want to remind you that if you are not yet subscribed to This Week in Science, we are available on YouTube, on Facebook, on Twitch at Twist Science. And you can find us just about any podcast platform that's out there. Look for This Week in Science. Our website is twist.org. Now it's time for the science. New physics. New physics. Every time we hear new physics, it's like, really? But it's annoying because it always replaces the old physics. It turns out all the physics that we were working with was all trash.  The standard model. How many times do we have to throw that out? No, none. Never. Never. Like really, the standard model has stood the test of time for about 100 years and it's doing great. However, there is some new research that was just released about subatomic particles, anti-muons. Not even muons, but anti-muons. It's the opposite of the muons. And they're actually using anti-muons because they're easier to create than it is to create the muons. But they act exactly the same. So it's like, hey, you can be a stand-in, right? You're like the double. You're the dark side double. The anti-muon. But this experiment that has just produced data, the Muon G2 experiment at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, researchers have been waiting for the data analysis to come out. They've been shooting muons around the, shooting muons around trying to get them to collide with things, trying to detect these anti-muons to be able to figure out what collisions they came from, so what created them. And in the process of putting them through their accelerations and doing this stuff, this was a blinded study. There was a calculation that was held in an envelope and kept away from all the researchers, all the physicists working on this experiment. So nobody would be biased by the potential result of this calculation. So it's kind of like, I don't know, it makes me think of other physics, quantum physics experiments, except this is particle physics. It doesn't exist until it does exist. Any case. More like the amazing Karnak, which is nobody's going to remember. It was an ancient Johnny Carson routine where he would hold an envelope up to his head. Yes. You could imagine that also. It's either Schrodinger's cat or the amazing Karnak of physics. These researchers at the Muon G2 experiment, they produced results today that gave a statistical measure of 4.2 sigma, agrees with earlier results from a Brookhaven national lab experiment as well, that suggests that there's a little wobble to these anti-muons, that magnetic fields are influencing them in a way that was unexpected. And so these particles are being affected by something and they don't know what. And so they think at this 4.2 sigma combining the two experiments together, they've got this not quite five sigma result and five sigma is like, that's where physicists are like, this is it. We know this is a good result. It's like one in 350 million chance. If it's six sigma, it's even better. This experiment, they've only analyzed 6% of the data so far. So they think that this result could become even clearer with more analysis and more time. But the question is, what is making the anti-muons wiggle? What's affecting them? Are there other particles that have not been predicted that exist? And that is the question that people are asking. Does this mean there is something missing from the standard model? And physicists are very excited about it. So I realize physics is not my strong suit. And a lot of it's kind of still confusing to me. But I'm just asking here because I feel like this is a constant thing on the show that it's always like, hey, there's this thing we don't understand. Let's invent a new particle basically to explain it. And so it's just kind of adding in here. But at a certain point, is it possible that if you stepped all the way back to the beginning and started over, you could come with a completely different explanation for how the world works instead of just putting all these kind of band-aids on everywhere. Okay, but let's add this in and let's add that in. Right. So there is a controversial paper that did away with this calculation that the Brookhaven experiment and this G2 experiment were looking for, trying to calculate more accurately. And the controversial paper, it elegantly gets rid of the need for these extra particles. But in its solution, it causes more problems. So this is where the balancing of experimental and theoretical physics comes in that the theorists are like, okay, we're going to do the math and we're going to try and come up with new ideas. And then the experimentalists have to go and see what works and what doesn't work and try these things out. So now somebody needs to do more muon magnetism experiments to confirm this even further or to break it and say that it doesn't work. And people need to do experiments that will deal with those issues that the controversial paper sets up. So it's just setting up more things to do in science. Yeah, but I don't think if you, I think because of the way these balances work, if you did go back to the very beginning, it would end up coming out fairly similar because of the way we look at the world using math and physics and the way that we explain things through those lenses. Yeah, and also I'd say that most of the real challenges or changes are you're saying band-aids where we've had to reevaluate stuff just comes from being able to see better, you know, having better technology, having accelerators for the first time has allowed us to actually just find stuff that was already predicted, but also make some new progress. So yeah, progress. Is there new physics? We don't know, but this is a tantalizing result. And it doesn't sound like it's new physics. It sounds like it's just adding to the update, if you will. Yes, updating the standard model 2.0 possibly. All right, tell me about these sensors that you're excited about, Justin. Oh, let's see where I put this. Yeah, this is Professor Karsten Soanschitskensen Researcher at Johannes Gutenberg University has been using gold nanoparticles as sensors to detect tiny amounts of proteins and microscopic flow cells for many years. These nanoparticles can actually act like, you're saying antennas for light. So they react to alterations of the surrounding molecules by changing colors. And that can actually, that's how they sort of operate as a sensor, that color change indicates when something that they're looking for is or isn't passing over the sensor. So they came up with this idea, hey, why don't we put this in people and have a sensor that can tell whether or not a drug is being delivered or whether or not a protein or something is getting, is present around in the system of the human body. So they invented the system. They wanted to first make sure that their tiny golden nanoparticles didn't just drift off and wander around the body. So they created this porous hydrogel that they embedded the human. And so the hydrogel itself has a tissue like consistency. And then once it's implanted under the skin, like a little tattoo, small blood vessels and cells will grow into the pores of the hydrogel. And then they have incorporated, then at that point, the gold nanoparticles as well. So quoting Professor Karsten Soanschitskensen, our sensor is like an invisible tattoo, not much bigger than a penny and thinner than one millimeter. Since the gold nanoparticles are infrared, they are not visible to the eye. However, a special kind of measurement device can detect their color noninvasively through the skin. So that's no fun. Well, that's like what you want. You want to be able to get tested without having to go through getting poked. I guess.  You could also get a, you could make a tattoo over it, I'm sure. You could incorporate a tattoo, the design into it, make it all fit in so it doesn't look like anything extra. But what would, what would you use this sensor for? Is it something like this like insulin level sensing? Or is it, is this the kind of thing that will, it'll change over time? Like how, what are, what are they suggesting? Yeah, so the, well, one of the goals is to make it so that it can last a really long time. I think this one, so far they got it up into the months of functioning. In their study, they, they took the, they implanted them in hairless rats and they gave them various doses of an antibiotic. The molecules when they passed by the sensor were able to be, see the difference, a color change depending on the drug concentration. So if there is a concentration of anything in your blood that you could think you might want to know what that level is, this might be one way of being able to test it. And this is also the sort of thing you could sort of end up seeing a home testing kit where you would put it over that little patch of your skin, where you have to be implanted, put the light sensor on it and your, your phone might tell you, yeah, what your glucose level is or whether or not the, the drug that you've taken is enough concentration or if you need to, you know, pass through your body already. Yeah. If you're trying to maintain a level of something. But yeah. Cool. The goal is to extend it to, to having a lifetime implant sensor so that you could just do it once. Right. I'm just imagining people wanting to go back and get tattooed or implanted every few months. And that seems a little bit much, but if it's at least a few years that could be good or lifetime best. And if it can do more than just one thing, sensing one thing that would be awesome. So the gold, the gold nanoparticles can be implanted with just about any kind of a sensor. I mean, their perfect mounting mechanism for that. So yeah. I still think it would be better if it was, if it was visible all the time. I still think. Hey, Blair, it's like, look, it's visible. Something wrong. No, no, I'm saying that though, for example, no, this is a serious comment. I was joking before, but this is serious. So if, if you need to know your insulin levels, right, it would be very nice to not have to pull out an indicator and think like, oh, I should check my insulin levels. Yes. Yes. Yes. That is what I, that's what I'm saying. I think, I feel like that would actually be much more beneficial. Yeah. Yep. Very. All right, Blair, tell me about your COVID stories. You've got a couple of COVID stories here. Bring it in. Yeah. So you might have heard some whisperings about COVID dogs. Nice. Portmanteau. Dogs that can smell COVID. So there has not been any peer viewed study yet on the efficacy of dogs smelling COVID. And so something has begun at Rome's Campus Biomedical University Hospital. They started something a couple of weeks ago looking at the dog's ability to smell coronavirus in human sweat. And so they have, you know, obviously we do antigen swabs now, which can take about 20 minutes. Those are the super rapid ones, right? Not to say the normal brain-swabby thing. It takes, you know, days. But with a dog, they could tell in about 30 seconds if you have coronavirus, if this all works out, which would be super helpful for, just imagine going through a drive-thru and having the dog sniff you and then be like, all right, you're good. You don't have COVID. It would be so helpful. That would be great. Yeah. Of course, it would be even more helpful at like a football or soccer match or a rock concert or something in an airport. Exactly. Yes. So just like drug sniffing dogs, they'd be able to pick people out in these potentially super spreader situations, right? And so we already use dogs to detect human diseases like cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's. This has been proven a little bit through that. Do we really use them to diagnose? Do we really? Wait, what? Usually, yes. They help diagnose and then tests back it up, but you can use, yes. Yes, we are. It's not well used, but yes. No, where? I'm sorry. We talked on the show a bunch about how other animals smell when conspecifics are sick, right? So this is something is your body gives off certain sense when you're sick and dogs have a really good sense of smell so they can figure this out. So there's been studies going on in lots of places. This one specifically was in Rome, but there's been pilot programs happening in Finland, Germany, France, United Arab Emirates, all looking at dog sniffing trials. But so the first step is to get them to recognize volatile organic compounds from COVID from patients in a hospital. And then the second step that I love is they're actually doing a drive-thru as a test subject where they take gauze of sweat, they then have the dog sniff it, and they also take a nasal swab so they can test the efficacy against that. So this will be the first peer reviewed study of this when it's complete. Hopefully it works out and it should be really helpful in the coming months and years with coronaviruses. Yeah, Goldisator in the chat on Twitch is saying poor doggo is gonna get COVID. No, no, no. Hopefully not. Cats are more likely to get infected. I'm still stuck on, are they only doing the follow-up test on the people that the dog said might have cancer? Because then I'm like worried about all the people that didn't get tested. Because they don't believe dogs can smell cancer. So first of all, they can. And second of all, there are lots of other ways if they think that you might have cancer that they can test. No, they can't. I'm just, I'm sorry, no they can't. Okay, so Justin's coming in with, you can't. All right, so let's move on. That's just not possible. Because you're just coming up against the science just saying, nope. So Blair has more stories though, so we can talk about the next COVID story. Anyway, so the other thing I know a lot of people, I know several people currently who had babies during lockdown. And there's some new studies coming out on breastfeeding moms. So the first peer reviewed study on whether you can pass on antibodies from COVID if you've been vaccinated while your breastfeeding has come out. And yes, it does appear that that transfer happens as we anticipated. Yeah, and of course, I will say here's the huge asterisk on this. It was five people this study, but it was over 80 days. So this again, this is very preliminary data. But over 80 days at the end of their study, they were still expressing antibodies in their breast milk at high levels. So it could be even past that. So this is also to say we don't actually know how long our antibodies stay in our system from the vaccines yet either. So this is interesting. Yeah, so that's really good. Yeah, so they had frozen breast milk samples after the two doses. This is the Pfizer specifically vaccine. And so this is the first peer reviewed evidence of antibodies being pushed down through the breast milk. And prior studies on maternal vaccination with influenza and whooping cough have shown similar results for up to six months of antibodies getting expressed through the breast milk. So looking really good. And this is a really good time to reach out to anyone that you know, who might have recently had a baby if they are eligible to get a vaccine because of that. So it might be really good for that, because then you can inoculate your little baby at the same time. Yeah, there was something else also that women who were inoculated while pregnant passed on antibodies and protection to their babies. And so that's also very good news, especially since women who are pregnant are one of the groups who can be really poorly affected, badly affected by severe COVID. Yeah, absolutely. And you could see how if you have a newborn getting COVID could really mess you and the baby up as well. So yeah, really good.  Protect yourself, protect your baby. I love it. All right. Do you want to talk about blobs for a couple of minutes, Justin? I can save it for later. You're going to save it for later? Yeah. All right. I have a puff piece and I've also got some rain for later. I just want to tell you about this puff piece very quickly. Researchers have quote unquote, harnessed chaos to protect your devices. When I say puff piece, what I am talking about are physically, what is it? There we go. Physically unclonable functions. Physically unclonable functions. These are little unique differences in the chips that are created and they're completely unique. And researchers have been trying to figure out how they can be used to increase security, make it harder for hackers to hack to get into your devices. So these researchers from Ohio State University, Daniel Gauthier, and his colleagues, they focus on chaos theory. And so they started applying chaos theory to these puffs, these physically unclonable functions in computer chips. And they're trying to create a balance between the amount of chaos so that it's manageable chaos and creates what they call deterministic chaos, which is something that is potentially unhackable by hackers, but also manageable by the people creating it, as opposed to just pure chaos on your computer chip. So it's a new method to hopefully making more secure chips so it's hardware-based, not software-based necessarily in a future devices. Chaos! I think of computers as ordered and not straying into entropy and chaos. And so to me, this is a very exciting. I feel like they're completely built on chaos. And it's just like this, when you first get one, you have like this window of order you can get out of them. And then it's just... And that is entropy, from then on, yes. But I think that's more descriptive of you. It's also that one, that very particular laptop that you had. We don't talk about that. It's actually the... Yeah, it's many of them. Hey everyone, this is This Week in Science. If you just tuned in, we are talking about science. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. If you're enjoying the show, please tell a friend. All right, I would love to take this moment to introduce our guest tonight. Ben Goldfarb is, as he says, the author of Eager, The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. Winner of the 2019 Penn E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His work has appeared in publications, including The Atlantic Science, Orion Magazine and National Geographic, Lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife Elise and dog Kit, which is what you call a baby beaver. Welcome to the show, Ben. Thanks a lot for having me. Thank you so much for joining us tonight on Beaver Day. Such an appropriate day. I'm really honored to be celebrating with you guys. I couldn't imagine a happier occasion. So I'm curious how you came to be the guy who writes about beavers. How are you, what brought you into beaver ecology, biology, and becoming passionate about these animals? Yeah, they just appeared to me in a dream one night and said, write about me. You know, I grew up hiking and camping and fishing. So I was always around beavers, had some kind of baseline appreciation for them as this neat animal who I heard smacking their tail at night in upstate New York when I went camping with my parents. But it was really in 2014 that I became a true beaver believer, a beaver obsessive. I was living in Seattle, working as a journalist, looking for stories. And I got a flyer for a beaver workshop.  So I went to this beaver workshop. And it was just this parade of scientists, ecologists, hydrologists, salmon biologists, fluvial geomorphologists, all of theseologists talking about how critical this animal was for all sorts of environmental reasons. And I realized that this rodent that I had sort of taken for granted and known all my life, what was actually this profoundly important sort of shaper of landscapes and ecological restoration tools. It was that workshop that got me super fired about beavers and I've been sort of exploring their world for the last five or six years. That's fantastic. So I'm on the West Coast, grew up in California, I'm in Oregon now, and I did not grow up hearing beavers. Occasionally, we'd drive somewhere or go out and it's like, is that a beaver dam? But it's this rare thing. And everyone I would talk to is like, they're a pest. We don't like them. So you're, you are talking about them as beneficial. And I want to hear what, why is there this disconnect? What's going on? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think to understand the answer to that question, you have to sort of go back in time, hundreds of years. Historically, this was a ubiquitous animal. You would have seen beaver dams and ponds and wetlands all over North America. Before European arrival, there were maybe 400 million beavers or so in our best population estimate on this continent. And when we wiped out beavers during the sort of the industrial fur trade, they were killed to turn their actually have a pelt here to turn their pelts into hats. When we wiped out hundreds of millions of beavers, we eliminated all of those ponds and wetlands that beavers create. And I think that we in many ways kind of forgot what North America's landscape was supposed to look like or how it functioned and how blue and green and lush and wet it was. When it had 400 million beavers building dams everywhere. So I think that's the sort of the case of ecological amnesia, where we wiped out this really crucial species. And we've kind of lost our understanding of how important it is to the landscape. Because of course these ponds and wetlands, we know that especially in the American West, water is life. And these habitats that beavers create, they support amphibians and baby salmon and waterfowl and moose and swans and all kinds of critters. So bringing this animal back really requires us to sort of reconfigure our historical imagination and recognize just how deeply embedded this critter is in North American ecosystems. Some people have said that the beaver is as much of a landscape architect as humans. Do you agree with that? Well, I'm a shameless beaver apologist. So of course I love all of the beaver superlatives. I think that we don't, I think that the critical difference between beavers and humans is that we modify the landscape in very different ways. We tend to create landscapes that destroy other species.  Whereas beavers, beavers create these incredible wetland habitats that support all kinds of other species. So I think that beavers are probably second only to humans as landscape architects, but they're modifying ecosystems in ways that are profoundly beneficial to life, whereas we're doing it in ways that are profoundly detrimental to life. Yeah, I'm looking at these images that you've taken through some of your work, these beautiful landscapes. We see the pile of sticks that juts up over the top of a pond or that is in the middle of a roaring stream kind of blocking the water creating a pond. Can you tell us what life is like for the beaver inside of that? Why are they, why are they doing this? Why do the beavers make these things? Yeah, that's a good question. So beavers are their semi-aquatic animals, right?  They're really powerful, agile swimmers. They can stay underwater for up to 15 minutes so they're kind of champion breath holders. That's a long time. It's really a long time, yeah.  So, you know, by building those dams and creating those these nice deep ponds, you know, they're basically maximizing the extent of their own shelter, right? They're just engineering the habitat in which they're safe. And I think it's, you know, it's just, I mean, it's incredible to me.  They're really, really amazing architects that don't really have any other analog in the animal kingdom besides humans. Where did this, but so they, they got to this point of that we killed them for their pelts, we took their, we took their, their land, we took their land. And now, and now, what are they doing that makes people so upset about them? Why are, why is it a struggle now to bring them back to mean to basically let them come back into the ecosystems that they've been in? Right. So I think, you know, I think an important thing to keep in mind is that, is that good, good beaver habitat and good human habitat is the same habitat, right? You know, we both like these kind of broad fertile flood plains and, you know, low gradient streams, that's where, that's where they want to build their dams. And that's where we want to build our roads and rail lines and towns and farms and so on, right? So, you know, when we wiped out beavers, we then, as you said, we stole their land, right? We colonized these, you know, these, these flood plains that we had evicted them from. And then when they started to recover in the 20th century, you know, they found that we had kind of occupied all of the good habitat, right? So when beavers come back and they start, you know, they start building these dams and creating these ponds, you know, they're doing it on top of infrastructure that we've, that we've built in their, in their absence, right?  You know, they're very, they're very meddlesome animals, right? They, you know, they love just, just like we are. They love to modify their surroundings. And, you know, and we're not really good at sort of tolerating other intelligent sort of ingenious urban, urbanized creatures, you know, we kill ravens and coyotes and black bears and, you know, all of these animals that have the, the kind of the audacity to try to live, live amongst us and, you know, beavers are kind of that, that same way.  Blair, did you have any questions about the, about the beavers? Well, so yeah, kind of following up on this conversation we're having about how they've been gone and we're trying to bring them back.  And of course in my lifetime, just in the past few years, they've started coming back, which is amazing. But I guess my question is, why is it taken so long? Because I feel like we stopped hunting them a long time ago. So why this intense lag between stopping hunting them in the United States and then now starting to reestablish in these areas? Yeah, that's such a good question, Blair. And you know, I think that I'm really glad you mentioned the Bay Area because that actually has a very sort of unique distinct beaver story in some ways, which I think really gets to your question. So what's interesting about California is that California really had two separate fur trades. It had an overland fur trade, right? You know, all these white trappers and traders kind of crossing the continent from east to west. But then it also had a maritime fur trade, right? So it had guys on ships from the Spanish, the Russians, the British, Americans coming around South America. And that maritime fur trade really came first. So those guys wiped out beavers and sea otters and other sort of fur-bearing animals. And then a few decades later, the overland trappers showed up in California. And they said, well, there's no beavers here because they'd been trapped out 50 years earlier. And that conventional wisdom that, oh, there are no beavers in the Bay Area basically became enshrined as scientific truth. So for a very long time, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife actually considered beavers a non-native species in the Bay Area and in much of California and basically treated them with extreme prejudice. And so beavers, you know, I've had a really hard time getting a foothold in California precisely because, you know, there's this kind of long legacy of considering them non-native.  And there's no reason they wouldn't have been. They live from, you know, Mexico to the Arctic Circle. There's no reason that the Bay Area would have repelled them. But, you know, I think it's a really good example of how, you know, we just don't really know what these landscapes look like. We don't really know where species were. There's a lot of historical ecology that we're kind of lacking. And, you know, and that just ends up having really detrimental legacies for the way that species are managed today. Okay, so then follow-up question. Since you mentioned, they're so widespread. Yeah. Are we worried about a reduction in genetic stock in specific areas because they were practically completely eradicated in certain spaces or because there's so many of them in other areas or at least their space is so wide? Do we feel like there's enough genetic flow for their populations? Yeah, that's a good question.  But I've never heard of any kind of, you know, inbreeding concern in beavers. And I think that, you know, rodents in general compared to a lot of other groups of organisms, organisms are actually, they're pretty tolerant of inbreeding and do pretty well. So, yeah, I've never heard of any real genetic diversity concerns with beavers, you know, in the way that you'd see in like California mountain lions, for example. So, do you feel like beavers are going to end up being like a cross between a duck and a squirrel in terms of how we see things in the wild? Do you feel like in the United States we'll see them a lot more often in places where they haven't been in the next several decades? I don't know. That's, you know, if I get my way, that's for sure. You know, I certainly hope so. You know, there's some wonderful case studies of, you know, of communities and municipalities sort of learning to tolerate these animals in really urban settings, you know, what like a few years ago I visited Logan, Utah, where there's kind of this famous colony of beavers that lives in this little tiny wetland, you know, the size of it, like a bathtub practically, next to a Walmart parking lot. And, you know, and there, you know, some scientists, the city managers, the Walmart guys sort of all got together and they basically created this, like, beaver coexistence plan that, you know, allowed the beavers to remain next to the next to the parking lot. And, you know, and they've created this wonderful little pocket of habitat and there are, you know, cutthroat trout and waterfowl and all kinds of things living in this incredibly urbanized space. So, you know, I think that we're, I'd like to imagine that we're getting better at tolerating these animals and coexisting with them. But, you know, we certainly still have a really long way to go. In in Oregon, I was reading one of your articles that you mentioned that Oregon has the beaver classified as a predator? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Right. Maybe if you're an aspen tree or something that that makes sense.  And, you know, that's the kind of thing we need to get away from on, basically. And so it's so it's every state, obviously, is very different. Is it all in how they manage beavers? Are there any, are there any states that you've seen, you're like, this is the model, this is the way to do it? I mean, is it Walmart parking lots from here on out? Or is there a good model? That's a good question. So, you know, I am biased as a Washingtonian, but I actually feel like like the state of Washington has the best, the best beaver laws in the country. And a few years ago, we passed this thing called the beaver bill, which basically, you know, liberalized beaver relocation around Washington.  You know, there's really no option to live trap it and relocate it. Whereas in Washington, you know, you are allowed to relocate beavers. And there are, you know, probably eight or 10 different, you know, nonprofits and native tribes and agencies that are all sort of shuttling beavers around the state, you know, and using those, those quote unquote nuisance animals to kind of repopulate some of the watersheds that historically had beavers but don't today. So I think that Washington has the best and friendliest kind of beaver relocation laws. I've never thought of a native species as being a nuisance animal. And this is, this is kind of blowing my mind a little bit. I, yeah, because you usually think about nuisance animals as being invasive species. Right. But you know, that's, that's just our incredibly kind of antagonistic mindset toward the, towards, toward the natural world and beavers in particular. I'm just thinking, okay, so you mentioned indigenous populations in Washington and how the beaver bill is working with those communities and part of the, as part of the relocation plan. Has that, do you know much about how that has gone? How working with indigenous populations is that, has that been beneficial to the people, to the beavers? Like is, are there other groups that are working in this way? Yeah, good, good question. So, yeah, it's been, it's been wonderful. And you know, there are a few different native tribes in Washington that are involved in beaver relocation. You know, the Tulalip tribe, which is just outside of Seattle, the Yakima, the Cowlitz, I think those are the kind of the big, the big three. And what's, you know, what's so cool about that kind of example is that, you know, so in, in those cases, you know, really, I mean, those tribes are interested in beavers primarily because they care about salmon, right? Salmon are, you know, these really important, of course a very important food item, as well as this, you know, this deeply important cultural species. And beavers create really good salmon habitat, right?  So there's all kinds of peer-reviewed literature showing that beavers are really good for salmon.  You know, the tribes in Washington are, you know, when it comes to, when it comes to salmon are pretty politically powerful, which is basically given them the opportunity to relocate beavers and use beavers as this, this salmon enhancement tool, essentially. So I think that's, you know, I think that's, that's really exciting is seeing, seeing native native people kind of take, take the lead on beaver restoration in Washington. And now that's, you know, that's happening in other states today as well. I hope that that is happening in Oregon also because that salmon is a huge part of native populations here. And I think that would be beneficial. We need to stop calling them predators first. Oh my gosh. I am concerned. Right.  And of course, that's not, you know, that's, that's not an idea that's original to Western science. You know, that's something that, that native people have recognized for thousands of years.    They wouldn't kill beavers and sell the pelts because they understood how important these animals are. So this notion that beavers are this beneficial animal that's, you know, deeply embedded in landscape.  We just said, oh, forget that. We like the pelts. You need to move. We're going to put our roads in. Time for you to go. I feel like there's so much movement in conservation and in a lot of scientific fields that deal with the earth ecology people and those and where they overlap. That's really realizing where we've gone wrong and that we need to start talking with the people who have lived in the lands for thousands of years and that there's a lot of knowledge there that we overlooked, that we, the hubris that we had has led us to a place that's not sustainable as a result. Yeah, you know, I think that hubris is the perfect word for it. I think that's, I mean, that's one of the really exciting things about that sort of the beaver movement is that, you know, implicit in the beaver movement is this idea that, you know, hey, there's this animal that manages the landscape a lot better than we people do, right? That, like, we're, we actually screw things up. Whereas beavers kind of set things right again. And that, you know, the way to heal our ecosystems is by sort of outsourcing restoration to a rodent, you know, and that's this kind of very heterodox idea that runs against our kind of like fanatical micro-management of nature, right? Which is why, you know, which is I think why people take a lot of convincing to embrace beavers because it, you know, requires kind of letting go of that hubris as you put it and, you know, and being, and being humble, remembering that, hey, you know, there are other species on this planet that, you know, that, that's influenced the landscape in more beneficial ways than we do. Absolutely. So this kind of brings it around a bit to, you mentioned salmon and, you know, human impacts, the roads that we're building, that is a new area of interest for you, road ecology. Was it looking at beavers and how they were affected by human roads that led you down the path of starting to look at how roads impact ecology? You know, it's funny actually that my, my interest in, in roads kind of predates the beaver, the beaver stuff.   And that was just so inspiring, you know, the notion of, of this infrastructure that we would build explicitly to, you know, to make our world more navigable and permeable for wild animals. That seemed like a really inspiring vision to me. But, you know, I think that like the, the road, you know, the road book that I'm writing now really emerges from the same sort of general set of interests as the beaver book, which is just, you know, I'm just fascinated by environmental history, by, you know, why our landscapes look the way they do, what sort of historical forces have changed them over time, and, you know, what we can do to kind of set, set them right again. So, you know, I think, I think about, you know, the beaver book and the road book is sort of being part and parcel of the same interest in sort of infrastructure and the built and natural world and where they collide. There's one, there are multiple aspects of roads. There's the physical road going through habitats and cars and how that impacts animals in their ecosystems. But then there's also the stuff that we don't see. There's the chemical runoff. There's, we've talked a bunch on this show, Blair's brought stories about the chemicals from tires, whether it's the rubber from the tires. And there's a study that recently came out that, it's a microplastic, but there's a study that just came out with pinpointing a specific chemical that interacts, it's like a preservative for rubber that interacts with ozone before the ozone interacts with the rubber. And it's the offspring of that chemical interaction that floods into the waterways and then kills salmon. I'm sure it probably impacts beaver. What can we, what are we missing with roads? How much are we impacting the world with our roads and our cars?  We road salt and the amount of road salt we put down, both the sodium and the chloride have their own sort of set of very discreet and kind of catastrophic impacts in a lot of respects. The one that I think about a lot is road noise, which I think is kind of this hidden public health crisis that we really take for granted. I didn't think about it much until I started writing this book and then I realized that I live about a half mile from I-90 and wherever I sit on my porch, I can just kind of hear like the hiss of traffic probably right exactly, raising my cortisol levels and probably shortening my lifespan.  It's just completely appalling and the same impacts are also really affecting wild animals. There's all kinds of literature about road noise and how it makes the songs of birds less effective. It stresses birds out. They forage more poorly and so on. Road noise is really, it's this form of habitat loss in a sense. There's this envelope, this noisy envelope around the road that animals just don't want to hang out in because they generally don't love that noise. So roads are, that acoustic pollution is affecting the lives of both humans and other species and all kinds of really complex ways that we're just starting to understand and that's a whole chapter of the book too for sure. That's fantastic. I mean, though speaking of the noise, I wonder how it is that so many deer have car impacts every year because shouldn't they hear the cars coming with all that noise you would think? Maybe they can just kind of numb to it. I mean, my last apartment was next to a major freeway and I had no idea how loud it was till I moved and then, yeah, it was kind of what you're talking about. My shoulders were lower all the time so it stressed out. I could have the windows open. It wasn't loud, but also just like, yeah, you wouldn't notice, but then you'd shut the window and go, oh my god, I've been shouting this whole time. I feel like that's the deer, right? They just get super used to it probably. Yeah, there's definitely acclimation that happens. And also, look, I mean, whether you know, like it or not, animals have to move, right? Of course, mule deer in the west, they're moving from summer range to winter range twice a year. Amphibians are moving from forests to breeding ponds. All of these large carnivores like cougars and wolves and bears are moving around these kind of giant ranges they patrol. Movement is sort of this inherent fundamental aspect of animal life. So in a densely-roated world, inevitably, mobile animals have to cross roads. And that's just an incredibly dangerous interaction for them, obviously. Yeah. Have you learned much more about the chemical runoff and other problems with the chemicals that are getting into the ecosystems? You know, I mean, certainly, I don't know much more about the tire study than what you just laid out.  I mean, of course, in a sort of a healthy landscape is a permeable, porous one where the rain falls and it infiltrates the ground.      You know, where all of those contaminants have an opportunity to kind of drop out of the water column and, you know, be entrained in the kind of the sediments at the bottom of the pond. You know, there's lots and lots of literature out there about sort of beavers' role in enhancing water quality, especially in urban areas.  So, all of our pharmaceuticals could settle out into the bottoms of their ponds. They're going to be some really hyped up, you know, Adderall. Invertebrates that are, yeah. Right.  I saw somebody from the federal government in Colorado send me a picture a few months ago of beavers who had built a dam in an old flooded mineshaft in Colorado. And the water was just, it was just slight, it was just orange with, you know, all kinds of copper and other heavy metals and crap. It was just, you know, the nastiest looking water. And the beavers, you know, the beavers were living, you know, as far as I can tell, pretty happily in the kind of the shaft of this mine. So they're, you know, they seem like tough critters who can really handle a lot of these. Just a little liver toxicity, that's all. It's fine. It's fine. Right. Don't eat that beaver. Yeah, no. Yeah, I feel bad for whatever cougar that's, you know, bioaccumulating into. Yeah, so between, I mean, beavers, maybe they can save us from roads, probably not. But what did you have any thoughts like that you want people to like take with them about roads and how we approach driving and how we get places and from what you're learning with your research for your book? Yeah, it's a good question. Now, you know, I think that one of the one of the big takeaways for me diving into literature is just how ineffective it actually is to ask drivers to do anything, you know, that like that people, I mean, like, you know, I drive everywhere. And this is such a, this is such a defeatist attitude in some ways. Right. But you know, but like, but there are all these studies basically showing, for example, that, you know, reducing the speed limit doesn't do anything because people just don't obey the speed limit.  So trying to, you know, I think they're trying to influence driver behavior, especially in such an intensely car oriented culture as ours is just, that's just such a, that's a tough nut to crack in a lot of respects, you know. And so I think that it makes more sense in some ways to try to influence animal behavior, you know. And how do you do that? Well, you do, you do that using, you know, basically fences and wildlife crossings, right? Overpasses and underpasses that, you know, that, that animals can use to cross the road. And the fence, you're talking about basically separate sanctuary land for them to, to be able to roam on and be nature and have it be a separate segment segment space away from the people trails. Exactly. Or not, you know, not a separate space, but just, you know, having sort of separating where they're crossing the road from the surface of the road itself, right? So they're moving. You're giving them their own lane, basically. Exactly, yeah, exactly right, Blair. You know, and then, but, and of course, you know, for the, for the animals to be able to find those, those, those lanes, you know, you need, you need fences along the roadside, right? They can't just, you can't just look and cross wherever they want because they'll, then they'll get hit. You need fences to kind of funnel them to those, those kind of designated lanes.   You know, when those structures are well designed, right? And you know, there's a lot you can do to sort of make them more appealing to animals. We have a, we have a, we have a tunnel that we built next, near a waterway and the sort of busy intersection of downtown Davis. That was for the toads that would come from one side and they try to get across the road and they'd get squished. And it quickly, it was dubbed the toad tunnel when it was built, but it was only ever been used by rats, as far as anybody can tell. The rats love it. It really cuts down on their commute. But nobody's seen a toad go through. Right. So that's actually, that's actually a really infamous project in the kind of history of rarity college because, you know, because that tunnel was built without any kind of, you know, there was no science behind it. It was, it was, it was way too sort of tight and narrow. It was way, it was much, Yeah, I don't think you could hop through it. I don't think it was too low clearance. Exactly. Just make a tube, they'll be fine.  So we know that, yeah, they're all kinds of crappy pipes out there that animals aren't using. But we also know that, you know, if you design these things right, they really do get used and help populations for sure. So there's a lot more than just the little cattle, cattle guards that keep cattle. And Montana's done a few things, right? Did Montana have to do a reintroduction program with beavers of some sort or did they just stop hunting them? Because I feel like at some point they reintroduced and it changed the landscape. It was about the same time I think that they were reintroducing the wolves and stopped hunting them. But, but I sort of recall, there was like this whole sort of study, like here was this area of deforested, you know, open field land. They reintroduced and suddenly, because beavers were there to make dams, the waters were there enough to feed the, all the lush vegetation again. And then with the wolves, the deer were afraid to stay in the forest. So they moved out into the open fields so they could see everything. So they stopped, started dropping seeds all over the open fields. And there's more shrubberies and more trees were going everywhere. And it's sort of just the whole thing, by adding beaver and wolf to back to where they'd been before, totally revitalized nature by just adding those really key components to the biome there. I find it, I find it scary though, to be a, to be a beaver enthusiast, what is it, a beaver? Beaver believer? Beaver believer, thank you. It's a little too close to the believers. Because I mean, it's got to be a little bit scary though and intimidating, because more, I think more than half of the American waterways, fresh waterways are heavily managed.  It's really hard to find nature space that you could be like, ah, yeah, let them go, go to town, let them do what they need to do where it wouldn't, you know, destroy a town's water supply or yeah, cause massive flooding and all this sort of thing. Because we're so overbuilt and over managed in our specific way. We've managed it as if, as if nothing else lives. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think that's, that's definitely a big, a big part of why California is so hostile to beavers.  It's all farmland. Yeah, you know, and, you know, beavers love damming in irrigation canals and ditches, right? That's like, it's kind of the perfect stream for a beaver to dam. And of course, people don't like beavers, you know, messing with their waterworks for sure. But that, you know, what you said before about the kind of the beaver-wolf connection, you know, you guys could do like an entire episode on trophic cascades. And I think, I think you should. I'd love to listen to that. I've definitely done at least 10 minutes.  They need that stream side, you know, willow, aspen, cottonwood, that food and building source.   And, you know, wolves are kind of one way of potentially managing that vegetation consumption for sure. The way that all the animals interact is so fascinating. I mean, you, we hear about the food web and we hear about these ecological predator-prey interactions. And so you think about the wolves and the wolves and the deer. You don't think about then that the secondary effects of how the deer are potentially affecting the beaver and how the beaver is affecting the salmon. And that's also going to affect bear populations. And that's good, you know, the way it all interconnects. Yeah, I think a lot of, I think about that a lot, you know, in, in Washington these days, you know, of course, the, you know, the orcas, right, the Southern resident killer whales and Puget Sound have been, you know, those are such a species of concern now.  You know, you need the wolf to have the beavers and you need the beavers to have the salmon. You need the salmon to have the orcas, you know, it's, and you sort of go from, you know, from it's kind of like terrestrial apex predator to marine apex predator. And there's this kind of this nutrient flow, you know, uniting land and water and these two apex predators. I think that's a really cool sort of cascade to think about. That is fantastic. And you need the beavers in there. Heck yeah. I might as well just say my catchphrase at this point. Protect habitats, not species. Yes. Yeah, or you could, or you could protect the species that creates the habitat. There you go. We'll see if we had protected habitat for the beavers to hang out and then no one would be mad at them, it'd be fine. Are there other species that are habitat creators in quite the same way? I mean, yes, humans were the habitat creator destroyer, maker, destroyer of worlds. But what other species? I'll say what, like, are people listening or probably yelling at the screen right now. So elephants are architects, for sure. They create landscape. Alligators in, in the southeast. Alligators. Yes. So when they're sloshing around in the bayou, they are creating little pools that baby fish can grow up in. So it's not quite on the level of beavers, but yes, there are other species that are architects in their own right.  It always brings back to the mammoth. It always brings back to mammoth and bring back the Canadian tundra to what it used to be. There's also what I like to consider like super poopers in the, on the rainforest. So there's animals that eat so much diverse plant life and move around enough that they are basically propagating the entire rainforest all the time. So that's kind of a, a kind of architecture also. I'm really, you know, maybe, maybe I'm just, I'm just like a, a rodent guy, but, but, you know, I think a lot of that prairie dogs, you know, these animals that create these elaborate burrow systems that are, are habitat for other species and also a really important in sort of allowing rainfall to kind of infiltrate into the soil and, and recharge aquifers. I think it's really good prairie dog book to be rid and maybe, maybe by somebody else. You're not going to go there. Well, they have to get into ferrets and that's like a whole thing. Yeah. There's a lot there. Fascinating story for sure. The clonal ferrets. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, all of, all of this is just, when you think about it, it's so fascinating. Okay, wait, rodents, ROUS is, what's your, your, what is the southern rodent that is massive pest rodent that they're starting to? The capybara? The capybara. No, it's not capybara. That's South American. Oh, you're talking about the Nutria. You're talking about the Nutria. Yes. What is your, do you have a take on the Nutria? I don't have a hot Nutria take. I hear, I hear they're, I hear they're pretty tasty.  Nutria, you know, aquatic mammal. So they do well in beaver ponds. So in, in, in Oregon actually, you know, there are lots of sort of beaver ponds that also have Nutria in them. And people always say, well, you know, wait a second, aren't beavers encouraged in the Nutria?  I feel like, you know, they're the habitat creation for native species, you know, far outweighs any invasive concerns you might, you might have. Yeah. My other, my other big Nutria gripe is that people are always posting pictures of Nutria and saying, oh, look at this beaver I saw. And I gave a talk recently, which was, was promoted with a picture of a Nutria. I was very, very unhappy about that. What's the most, most dragonfly tattoos are damsel flies? Yeah, I feel like now I have to go back and check the gift that I shared, because I didn't even think about that. But no, I'm pretty sure I shared a beaver. It had a nice flat tail. Okay, good. What is one, what is one just completely awesome, random fact about beavers that you just, you just have to share? What do we, what have you not shared yet that's just like, this is ridiculous and awesome. Well, do you guys know about, about castorium? No. So, yeah, so, so beavers are there. Justin knows the story, but, but, but beavers are, they have, they have castor sacs, which is basically this scent gland, which they use to kind of mark their territories and, you know, communicate with other beavers.  They, you know, they send these very elaborate sort of chemical messages to each other. But that, you know, that, that castorium, this, the substance that's produced by their, their castor sacs has been, you know, it's been used by people for thousands of years for all kinds of things, you know, in Europe and Asia was sort of used as this like panacea to treat anything from, you know, epilepsy to constipation and actually had, you know, incredibly, incredibly valuable.  And it's still, it's still used in perfume today. I just want vanilla in my vanilla ice cream. Okay. So, you know, so this, this beaver, you know, this beaver secretion has just been incredibly valuable for all kinds of reasons over the years. In fact, you know, in North America, you know, the beavers were wiped out for their, their pelts. But in, in Europe, you know, it was really that, it was that castorium trade that primarily drove their, their near extinction. So this is this kind of crazy substance that they, that they secrete that humans have always have always surprised. Yeah. Is there any science behind it? Or is this snake oil? Is this just like people are like, it does this. It's, you know, it's the, it tastes like vanilla. Special medicine. I'll sell you a bottle, you know, or is there something to it? That's a great question. So, so, so the castorium, so the, so the compounds in the castorium are, you know, are things that beavers derive from the trees they eat, right, the bark they eat. And one of the compounds comes from willow and is salicylic acid, which is the active ingredient in aspirin, right. So, you know, so is there much science behind, you know, beaver, castorium as medicine? No. But, you know, is there some kind of pain relief potential there? Yeah, maybe. But we, we have salicylic acid. So why do we need to be, meet the beavers? Well, right. So yeah, yeah, we can leave the beaver out of that. Absolutely. Okay. Is there something that people can do to help beavers? Is there as like, are there organizations or their places they can go? Or is this a, you know, find out about how they're classified in your home state? Because I had no idea they were a predator in Oregon, you know, and then write a letter to your senator or, you know, what can people do? Yeah. Well, you know, I think, I mean, a lot of different things.  You know, I think that, that more, more likely, more practically, and maybe, you know, just, just because I'm a, I'm a road guy. But, you know, but I, I think that, you know, the most, so the kind of the most common beaver conflict in North America is beavers building dams in road culverts, where the streams go under the roads, right? Because if you're a beaver, right, like the roadbed is this fantastic dam, and the culvert is the leak in the dam, right? And beavers plug up the leak. Right. Don't you people want me to do this for you?  So, you know, so, so I think that most of the, most, but a lot of the beavers that are killed are beavers that are damning in road culverts.    You know, we're going to use these, you know, kinds of like non-lethal contractions, these kind of pipe and fence systems that basically, you know, keep the water flowing freely through the culvert, even if the beaver tries to dam it. And, you know... Beaver-proof culverts? What? Beaver-proof culverts. It's a really frustrated beaver through. I know. This is just not working. So the Beaver Institute has all kinds of, you know, they've got all kinds of resources that that had to sort of beaver-proof your culverts. So I would, I would talk to like, I would figure out like, you know, who is managing the culverts on your, you know, your local roads and, and, you know, and talk to that, that body, because that's going to be some kind of, you know, public commission or council or agency that you could potentially influence. Yeah. And we can't, yeah. People, you can influence things. So, yeah. Don't just drive on by. Don't just be a person on the road, ignoring everything.  So, you know, there's, there's, beavers just have this way of like roping in normal people and turning them into, you know, I feel like all these, I feel like all these people were secretly subversive to begin with.  Right, they're like, they're like ecoterrorists. Yeah. Yeah. But nice ones that are saving beavers. Yeah, yeah. That sounds good. Okay, so where can people find out more about you and find your books and when is your road ecology book going to be coming out? Yeah, sometime in like 2046, I don't know. Okay. Oh. Just a couple weeks. Just like another march. That's fine. Yeah, hopefully next year, I would love that. We'll see. As for me, yeah, BenGoldFarb.com is my website and then Twitter, I love seeing pictures of people's, I get like so many pictures of Beaver dams and lodges and beavers that people tweet at me. I love being part of Beaver Twitter. So if you've got Beaver tweets to share, you know, yeah, BenGoldFarb on Twitter, give me up there. I love that. Thank you so much. It was really wonderful talking with you this evening. Yeah, such a fabulous celebration for the holiest day on our calendar. The most, the beaver-est day on the calendar, for sure. It's been the beaver-est day. Yeah. Thank you for joining us. Everyone, BenGoldFarb, he is the author of the secret, the surprising and secret life of beavers and why they matter. There's a whole book on beavers. If you didn't, if you didn't believe before, he'll make you a beaver. A beaver. It's too hard. He's had practice. He's had practice. He has had practice. I just added beaver to my list of animals for the 2022 calendar. Oh, perfect. See, it's already making a difference. It's already changing the future. We've all got the beaver fever now. I mean, I just want to see them in the San Francisco Bay. I feel like if I saw one, I'd be like, it's like seeing a flamingo. It's like, what? Do you see that? I don't think I've ever seen a beaver. I could be wrong. I might have seen one in Canada, but I'm pretty sure I haven't seen a beaver. But I do recall seeing beaver dams up in the foothills when I was a wee, little young- A wee tyke. A wee tyke, maybe. We'd be walking along and every once in a while, you'd see one of these creeks that had the head created a pond. It was a good place to go swimming, as long as the beaver would get upset. I don't think the beaver would be fine with you swimming in its pond. I never saw a beaver, though. Yeah, it's not like an otter that's going to mess you up. I think they're pretty chill. They are chill, just like we are, because hey, this is This Week in Science. Thank you for joining us tonight. I want to ask you, if you could please, if you have the ability, head to twist.org and click on the Patreon link. Your support really helps us continue to keep this show going week in and week out. And honestly, I love reading off our list of names at the end of the show. Anybody $10 and above per month, I'm going to read your name at the end of the show, unless you don't want me to, and then I won't do it. But I love trying to micromachines it and get all the names in and really get a sense of this community that keeps this show going. You can keep it going, keep the sanity in the science, coming into the world, help us reach audiences, help us reach new listeners.  Thank you for your support. We really can't do this without you. And now we're going to come on back and we're going to get into some more animals because it is time for Blair's Animal Corner with Blair. What you got, Blair? I was trying to make my camera focus. That was crazy. I have some surprising hidden talents hidden, some hidden talents hidden. You have some invertebrates. Yikes. My first story is about cone snails. Cone snails are famous for being one of the most painful animals in the world. They have a harpoon-like tooth at the end of a proboscis that injects venom into their prey. And for prey, it will paralyze them for humans.  But, yikes. Yes, but cone snails are also responsible for a huge suite of medicines because that venom is the key to a lot of pain relievers. And so most scientists have focused their research on cone snails that hunt fish. And the venoms from these gastropods are called peptides, the protein segments inside the venoms. And these peptides are used to develop drugs. But because of their structural composition, they can only be injected. They can't be taken orally. So it's kind of an intense use for pain relief that has to be injected, right? You can either be stabbed by the cone snail or with the needle. With the needle, with the needle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, so it's something that you would do like if you went to see a doctor or you were in the hospital. It's not something that you would be injecting yourself with at home. So it's not an over-the-counter pain relief, right? So that's kind of the pro con of this is that cone snails have given us a lot of insight into pain relief. But the nature of the venom brings us to this kind of intense version of drug. Enter worm hunting cone snails and their nature as a femme fatale. So this is from the University of Utah Health Scientist. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. What they do is they seduce the worms and then eat them. So they, yeah, yeah, you heard that, right? They use a previously undetected small set of molecules that mimic worm pheromones to encourage worms out and into a sexual frenzy. What makes it easier for them to gobble them up. So yes, they're femme fatale. They turn the natural sex drive of their prey into a lethal weapon. And they do hope that because these molecules are completely different, that they could bring in new avenues of medicine. So let's, let's look at this a little bit. So this cone snail that hunts worms or does firearms, they produce small chemicals that mimic the pheromones of the firearms. The small molecules in this snail has a chemical called a connozzolium A, which sparks them behavior, the mating behavior in female worms. So they swim in tight tail chasing circles and then they release the rigs.  So they have two different chemicals that they are releasing that's causing both male and females to go kind of crazy and expose themselves so that they can be eaten. It's the exposing themselves.   So this is what's weird though, is they only saw this in a lab and mature worms are only sexually active with the full moon. So if you expose worms that are either immature or not sexually active and it's not the full moon, there's no effect. So in laboratory experiments, they actually had to use artificial moonlight to elicit these responses from the worms related to the cone snail pheromones. So this is why the researchers say that there's this, this asterisk on the study because the cone snails, they, they don't know exactly how they hunt in the wild. They haven't, haven't caught this in the wild yet and how they can time it so well so that their compounds fit into this kind of temporal bucket of when it's actually useful to them. So the cone snail only hunts at night. Yes. And only at the full moon. They only once a month. I don't know. Yeah. So there's a lot of unanswered questions here, but ultimately 80% of drugs that we currently use today are derived from small molecules. So the fact that this release is a small molecule from the cone snail, they're kind of connecting dots that aren't quite there yet. But the expectation is that because cone snails have been used to create medicines in the past, this is kind of a Venn diagram, right? And so we're in the center here where we have the small molecules and we have the cone snails. So it's possible that in the center here, there's an opportunity for new drugs and medicines from this weirdo strategy from these cone snails. Right. So the pheromones, so using the small molecules that entice the worms? Yeah. So there's pheromones and they have these two different molecules that they found. Yeah. Right. And so I think, yeah, that's their next step is to figure out, is this strictly a pheromone? Is there something else going on in this mixture? Is it just creating this response because it's a pheromone? Or is it doing something else? Is there something else linked to this small molecule that we could utilize in other things? So I think it's not a straight line where they're going with this, but it's a potential rich vein because it's coming from cone snails, which already are studied very well for their medicinal properties, but specifically the ones that eat fish. So this is the thing that's new about this is these are some of the worm eating cone snails. So basically it's making them reexamine how cone snails hunt and what chemicals they use to do it. Right. And maybe someday they will be able to, I don't know, do what they want with the worms because they have the molecules.  Yeah. And next I have a study about fireflies or lightning bugs, which I'm enamored with, to say the least, this study out of Tel Aviv University. And it was in collaboration with the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, looking at how fireflies avoid being eaten by bats. This actually, the idea for the study came up accidentally. It's always a good start to a study, right? A study that was, they were, they were tracking bats at a location. They were wandering around a tropical forest with microphones and they detected kind of a weird, like low level sound in the background and they knew it wasn't a bat and it wasn't anything they recognized and they figured out it was fireflies. So then they explored this further. They looked at high speed video. Fireflies are producing a sound by moving their wings. And this is the thing that's crazy. The frequency of the sound meant that the fireflies couldn't hear it. So they were making a sound they could not hear. That's crazy. Okay. So they're producing this thing. And what does it do? So why exactly? So fireflies are in this weird position with bats because they glow. So it's kind of like, Hey, I'm over here. And so they, they give away their position really easily. But so they, they think that this is actually a way to kind of cloak themselves from bats that don't have good eyesight. Through sound. It's like that. It's like the, the, the road noise that Ben was talking about. Yes. So they examined three different species of fireflies that are common in Vietnam and one in Israel. They found that they all produce unique ultrasonic sounds that they cannot hear. They think that it is specifically a defense mechanism for bats because it was within a frequency that bats can hear. Messes with them. Yeah, but they have not proved that through tests yet. So that's the kind of the not proven part of this. What they have proved is fireflies make this background sound with their wings and they can't hear it. But they're, they do think that it points to this conclusion and they look forward to studying this in the future. The fact that they can't hear it themselves, but bats can is kind of a dead ringer, right? So it sounds like it's some sort of warning signal or it's confusing them. It's just background sound, one or the other. And there's, so yeah, so I guess that's kind of their two buckets of thought is either it's a warning signal because the fireflies, to some species, the, the brightness is actually a warning signal. It's saying I'm poisonous because they are, right? So fireflies are nasty. Don't eat them. It's an aposematic signal. But the other kind of thought of this is that it is in fact part of the musical battle. So it, it drowns out the bats ability to echo locate. But they don't know that yet. So that's the next step is to do some sort of testing with bats and fireflies in a lab I would guess would be the next step. That's what I would do next. Yeah. Anyway, if you're listening. Now I want to know if there are other, like moth species that do something similar is, is this, because if this is a solution, a strategy to drown out the clicks of the bat, the echolocation of the bat, is this something that could have popped up multiple places and we just haven't seen it yet? And this is exactly why I brought this story because also humans hearing it's garbage. So how many species out there are making sounds we haven't even noticed because we haven't looked. Right. And how many ceases out there are making sounds that they themselves can't hear because it's beneficial to them. And then of course I have to ask myself like, are they doing this subconsciously or is it part of a response to a potential threat? Like, so could we be making sounds that we can't hear all the time? That's what tinnitus is. You're suddenly becoming aware of the high pitch noise that you make all the time. No, I'm kidding. That is not. So anyway, I just thought it was a fun kind of rabbit hole to think about how many animals out there are making sounds that we can't hear, but also that they can't hear. And it's actually for the benefit of another species seems crazy, but it's there. Yeah. I mean, when we talk about ecological signals, behavioral signals, usually they are things that the animals can perceive themselves. And so this is out there. What is that? Why? How did that even evolve if they don't even? Great question. Right. Seems pretty complicated to evolve that when you can't hear it. Yeah. But I mean, if it works, it works, right? That's just absolutely. Yep. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Is that it for the animal corner? Thank you, Blair. Got it. Yeah. Justin, do you want to tell a story? Sure. Yeah. So for decades now, there has been mystery. Mystery, mystery, mystery. Something has been floating around the Norwegian sea. Big blobs of biomorphic gelatinous spheres. It's just sort of a hover in the waters, hundreds of feet below the surface. They were first spotted by divers back in the 1980s. Eyewitness accounts have persisted over the years with no explanation of what these things are until now. Any guesses? No.  Oh, plastic, dead jellyfish. Those are good guesses. International team of researchers called upon citizen science to get the samples because these things are spotted, but they're spotted rarely. So they put out the word. If you see mysterious blobs floating in the Norwegian sea, get a sample and send it to us. So that's what people did. They collected samples of this gooey gelatinous blobs when they would see them, put them in a jar, throw them in a refrigerator, and then wait for them to get picked up by the scientists.  Well, they might not be giant, they're not giant squids, but the sacks are big. They're egg sacks. Whoa. Egg sacks. Yeah. So the samples that they got contained squid embryos and also this gooey material that was sustaining them. It's a Alexi, or Alex, Queen Daddy, which is the type of squid common in the area. Researchers found that the embryos were all at different stages of development. So this was sort of a giant squid egg filled with thousands of these things that were developing at different rates and then they'd pop out. And then at some point, the blob itself would just dissolve and the rest would go free into the into the sea. Yeah. A 40 year old mystery has been solved. It's squid egg sack. Nobody had. How did we not figure this out before? I mean, it seems like somebody could be like, let's scoop it up and look at what's inside the blob. Well, I, you know, I think it was if the waters off off the coast of Hawaii or San Diego, maybe somewhere in the Marietta training, we may have figured it out a long time ago. It takes a probably special breed to go diving in the Norwegian sea. Fair enough. It's probably not as many as you might think. But still more, still more than you might imagine going under those waters. But those are like, look at this.  They do look very alien. They look, they're, I mean, I could imagine if you were to see something like this floating, you'd be hard pressed to figure out exactly what it is. They look like some sort of bizarre jellyfish that's unlike any jellyfish you've ever seen, because it's got, so it's got this, that, that spear of see through gelatinous, whatever it is, like a bubble underwater. And then I don't know, a sea cucumber inside. It's kind of what it looks like. Yeah. What is that? I know the first time I saw by the wind sailors, you know, Valela Valela, first time I saw those, I thought, I, I thought it was an alien. I didn't know what to make of it. It's kind of, you know, I can kind of picture seeing this and going, I, I just don't know. Just don't know. It doesn't seem to relate to any known life form that you'd be like, ah, that's a blotty blot or like something or another. But no, giant egg sack for baby squid. I love how every, like, you start looking at things on this planet. There are so many alien looking things on our planet. This planet has so many aliens on it. So next story is our current modern world is being run more and more by power of lithium ion batteries. Yes. And that is a problem. Yes. Well, it's still, you know, maybe better than the old days when we ran our technology on child labor, open flames, and petroleum infused hair cream. Those were, those were tough times. But there are issues, lithium ion batteries, potential fire hazards, performance loss at cold temperatures. There is the environmental downside when you're trying to get rid of the old batteries. Enter Oleg Levin, professor in the Department of Electrochemistry at St. Petersburg University. He's been exploring some ways to improve the situation. And what they've done is they synthesized a polymer based on the nickel saline complex, ni-salin. The molecules of this metal polymer act as a molecular wire to which energy intensive nitroxyl pendants are attached. Molecular architecture, material enables high capacitance performance to be achieved over wide temperature range. Basically what they did is they initially started playing with these, these new technologies to have connecting components to lithium ion batteries. But they sensualized that they can maybe actually make an entire battery out of this material that based on what they've demonstrated thus far has 10 times faster charging speed than a traditional lithium ion battery, which is pretty phenomenal if you, if you're looking at it from the perspective of storage for just yet charging your devices faster, that's cool. But you're also looking at then being able to charge faster from a solar panel array. You're able to grab more energy faster, basically. However, at the stage that now it is still about 40% lower capacity than a lithium ion battery, which is already big and bulky and heavy once you scale them up outside of your, your little device. So you still want the capacity to be, have storage there. So that's the next step of this. But some of the, some of the upsides of it are that it uses less of the environmentally harmful things. They're not really going to ever catch fire. They have, so they've got, and they can work at those again, at those lower temperatures where if you, if you have a solar array somewhere and you're using lithium ion batteries, once the temperature drops, I think just below zero, your system shuts down. It'll stop trying to charge the batteries. They can be damaged in some way or they just won't function properly. So if they can work at those subzero temperatures, that also opens up a lot more areas where these batteries are going to be able to, sounds like a nightmare battery to make economically. Yes, actually they use a lot less of the hard to find metals. So economically, they might be cheaper in that regard. But again, you know, at the outset of any new technology, I'm responding to Grabsharm in a term, at the outset of any new technology, of course, right, everything is super expensive. The first dose of penicillin costs like $10 million. The first Prius that was on the road was like a $4 billion vehicle. But of course they made more. They didn't stop at the one that they spent all the R&D on. They kept going. So my last story tonight is kind of interesting. They found ancient DNA from a Neanderthal. It's about a 50,000 year old Neanderthal in Czechia. I guess it's the Czech Republic somewhere. Sort of interesting thing about this is that it had, it was a Neanderthal that had interbred with humans at some point. And it wasn't the humans that we think of being introduced to Europe about 40,000 years ago, or the nearest even 40,000 years ago. This is more, this is humans that that we have since last year discovered were already in Europe before this human migration. So this is the oldest current modern human DNA that we have. This is the oldest representative that we have is in this Neanderthal. And it's not related to any of the Europeans of today. So this was, this was a colonization of Europe by current modern humans that for some reason failed because they aren't represented anywhere in the genetic history now. But here it is preserved in Neanderthal remains. And they think this Neanderthal was about 2000 years removed. So while, while we all have anybody, people who are not of African direct descent usually have between two to three percent Neanderthal DNA somewhere in them from a 30, 40,000 year intermingling event that took place at some sort of bottlenecking point or multiple bottlenecking points when, as current modern humans moved into Europe. But this group was already there and had already been intermingling. And it was only 2000, this Neanderthal was only 2000 years removed from a human intermingling event. And it's showing us a great glimpse of current early modern human DNA of a branch that had colonized Europe and failed to remain there. That's, I mean, we already know this is like surprise humans and Neanderthals intermingled. But this is like extra surprise. It happened longer ago than we expected and probably more times completely different group with a different group. Yeah, current modern humans, then the ones that are persisting now in Europe, which is also fascinating. Yeah, group of group of old modern humans that died out. Yeah, so when the current current modern humans of Europe arrived in Europe and were making their way to Europe and intermingling with Neanderthals, it might have been their first time seeing a Neanderthal. But the Neanderthals are like, Oh, yeah, we've seen you 2000 years ago. I know what these guys like. I think, yeah, it's not the question. Yeah, it's not the question of whether Neanderthals and humans intermingled. Now it's how often, where, when, how far back did it go? Yeah. I'm also fascinated that this is our earliest DNA sample of a current modern human. I thought we might have had older than that, but apparently this is it in the in the housed within the Neanderthal is our best glimpse into 45,000 years ago in the caves of the Czech Republic. The early human, the early European, not European now peoples. I don't even know what to count. Proto Europeans, other juxtaposed Europeans, proto juxtaposed, I don't know. Two legged buddies. Europe's first humans, early humans. Yeah, we can call them all sorts of names, but you know what, they were all just human people. They were all family. They're all family. That's right. Invite them to Thanksgiving. Everyone, thank you so much for watching this week in science. I have a couple of stories. So I'd love to dive into those before we before we go. First, raindrops. The rain in Spain falls mainly the same on other Earth-like planets, regardless of air density, according to a new study, looking at the physics of raindrops. Good. Yeah. Now say that again. Exactly. It just rolls off the tongue. Oh, and by the way, apparently raindrops don't look like raindrops. Wait, what? Yes. These researchers in the paper, they specify that raindrops do not look like the raindrops that we characterize as raindrops. They are oblate spheroids and that that shape as the air density changes or the speed of the drops plummeting toward the ground from the clouds. It may squash them until they look kind of like the top of a hamburger bun. But they don't look like raindrops. I mean, honestly, why would they? If you think about that, like a teardrop shape, right? Why would they? They don't look like that. That's not a raindrop, apparently. Thanks, physics. Hang on. I'm sorry. I have to crack something from my previous story really quick. Graveshaw was pointing out Chechia is the new name of the Czech Republic, not a city in the Czech Republic. Okay, thank you. I'm still getting the new maps. I'm still getting the new maps downloaded. I haven't really... He's still working on a map from like the 1970s. Don't worry about him. Sorry. That was a great correction. Thank you. Thank you, Gaurav. Yeah. So these researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences looked at the physics of raindrops to find out if raindrops are wool, if they'll be like raindrops on other planets. And so they looked at certain aspects of rainfall, of raindrops, things that affect raindrop shape and how they evaporate. Because if they can model how rain happens on other planets, they may be able to get better climate models here on our own planet, but also help us understand the atmospheres of other planets in our solar system and on exoplanets elsewhere where water and not water, other volatiles may be detected. That's what I was just going to ask if other substances would act the same way. Yeah, so we'll say if you were on Titan, the rain would fall the same as the rain on Earth, except it would not be water, it would be methane. As I was going to say, if we can find the planet that the raindrops actually look teardrop, then we know the artist that first started making that teardrop is from there. That's where they're from. So they were looking at the key question whether or not the raindrop makes it to the surface of the planet as rain. Water in the atmosphere is really essential to planetary climate, and so size matters when it comes to raindrops. If they're too big, the raindrop is going to bust apart if there's not enough surface tension to hold it together, if the surface tension can't hold on anymore. And this is the same whether or not it's water methane or liquid iron on exoplanets raining from the sky. And so they were looking at drop shape, falling speed and evaporation speed and modeled what raindrops would be like on multiple planets. And Earth-like planets are going to have rain like Earth. Air density doesn't matter, but rain is rain.  You should imagine hamburger buns falling from the sky when you look up at the rain. But it's the top bun. You're saying it's the top bun. So it's spherical on top and it's kind of squished at the bottom because of the downward force. Yeah. Wow. That's wild. See, I would have actually pictured them to look exactly like hail. Like whatever a hail looks like is how I would expect. Like little rocks falling from the sky. What's like frozen raindrops, right? Yeah. But they are kind of, they are, they're not perfectly round though. They are, they do have like a, I'm going to have to look closer next time I see hail. They have a flat side. Take a quick look before it, before it melts. Yeah. Yeah. But the things that we learn about raindrops, thank you physicists for doing this modeling. And then I would like to take it from raindrops to tits. We talked about beavers. Now I need to talk about great tits. Good. The researchers looking at the great, the, what is the scientific name of the, what is it? Paris. I don't remember though, but the great tit. There are researchers in the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior and the University of Constance in Germany. We're looking at these birds and their ability to change behaviors. They trained a bunch of birds on little puzzle boxes and they found that different birds came up with different solutions for how to get food out of these puzzle boxes. The, what they found over time is that there is a change in populations to the strategies for solving these puzzle puzzle boxes and they wanted to know where that change was coming from. Is it coming from innovation within the group of birds or does immigration from other birds coming into their population have anything to do with the way that their cultural knowledge changes? So they got these resident birds to get trained up on these puzzle boxes and then as the birds learned different ways, had different ways of solving the puzzle, they then started bringing new birds into the situation. Immigrants and the resident population had kind of fixed on one pretty good way of solving the puzzle, but it wasn't the most efficient. There were innovators within the population of birds that started finding more innovative, efficient ways to get food out of the puzzle boxes, but the resident population was like stuck in its ways and wouldn't adopt the new methods. However, when the immigrant birds came in, they were more likely to adopt the more efficient methods and when they adopted the easier, better way of getting food, the other birds in the population followed suit. Immigrants, yeah, these birds were learning from each other and the birds that were coming in from elsewhere immigrating in, they learned, but they didn't learn the inefficient way to do it, they learned the better way to do it, the more efficient way. It's almost like having an outside point of view gives a more whole picture of what's going on in a space. You could be more objective. Potentially. Yes. I don't know. I thought it was really fascinating, this idea that there are, you know, when birds become residents in an area, they don't have to innovate as much or they do innovate, but they don't, they're like, meh, I've got this way, it works really well. I'm fine. I don't need to try. I don't need to pick up this new efficient way. I'm fine doing the old thing. I like my habits. But then when the newbies come in, they're like, oh, hey, why are you doing that? This one, that, that looks good. I'm going to take that one. They look at, they look at all the potential options and they don't have habits yet. So they're more likely to pick up on something new and they can change the whole population's behavior as a result. Birds have cultural knowledge. Yeah. And diversity of opinion and knowledge is important. Yeah. And listening to voices from the outside, sometimes you need to change what you're doing and fix it up. Yeah. We could take some lessons from these. I feel like I've had that talk a few times. Have we had this talk before? I think I've had that talk a few times, directed at me. It's a good vice from the outside. It's also, you know, just the way you've been doing it is not always the right way. The minimum wasn't the minimum, they wouldn't call it the minimum. Paris Major, that's the species name for the great tit. Oh, that's cool. Paris Major. That's a good one. Yeah. And they're very pretty birds also. They are yellow with white cheeks and they got, it's gray and they're beautiful. We don't have them here in North America, but they are all over Europe. Yeah. Oh, look at them go. If you ever hear me talking about great tits on this show, these birds are what I'm talking about. Yeah. They are great. They are great. They're fantastic. Some might even call them major. Major. Are we doing euphemism? I always get lost in the middle of this segment. No, I'm doing science. I have a couple more stories really fast to get through before we get to the very end here. One, I just wanted to bring up because I thought it was so thought provoking and it's just an interesting, after thinking about this cultural adaptation and learning within this bird species, thinking about how culture changes and how we can do things better. I found another story where a researcher at Boston University uses Mario Kart to teach about economics and capitalism to his classes and he's written a paper about how this Nintendo racing game can teach us all important lessons for social and economic benefits for the entire world, specifically for the world's developing regions. And his thesis is that Mario Kart is a game which gives boosts to those in the back of the pack. It increases opportunity for those in the back of the pack to be able to make it closer to the front. Even though those in the front might have banana peels that they can throw out to strip people up behind them, those in the back are always kind of kept in the game so the race never feels like it's totally lost and everybody remains a player. And so his idea is that if we were to learn how to give economic opportunity and benefits to those in the lowest socioeconomic statuses specifically in developing countries to let them boost up to help them you know potentially they could become big but you know regardless keep them in the game. Farmers in rural India who might be really struggling because of drought or other cultural or environmental situations find ways to keep them in the game, keep them in the race. So how many other gaming concepts can we use to better humanity? This is my question. So this is also though if I may this is a compliment to the designers of Mario Kart. Yes it is. Because this is exactly why I've had conversations about this with people before. Mario Kart is a superior racing game to other games and this is exactly why because you are never out of the running. Yep. So it's almost impossible to get fully lapped more than maybe once if you're at the very back because they have found a way to equalize things and I think yeah like Nintendo accidentally created a game that made you want to continue playing and get better at it and learn because you never felt fully defeated. Right. And kids can play it with adults. It's like yeah. Or do you think it's because they realize like okay this is going to go into households where the kids might be two three or four years apart in age. So we need a way to make it so they both want to play the game still. Right. I played so many racing games and none of them do this as well. Yeah that's what I'm saying. That's that's smart because they realize there's an age gap probably at home between the players of siblings who are going to be separate. So there's going to be one with a lot more ability to get it and just be like figured out and play hard and try to beat up their younger sibling and the younger sibling can like I'm messing up but oh I found one of these cool things that's going to help me along a little bit. It's a little equalized. You know you say it's age it's not always age sometimes you know there's just different abilities for video games amongst people. Did you have a younger sibling that used to beat you at video games? No no I'm just saying it's not always the case. Well I hope that you know we can leave people with some interesting thoughts about video games and how they can give us lessons to better the world how Mario Kart will help us design a better future for humanity. I like it. I like it but before we go I do need to tell people about Brain Glue. Brain Glue researchers have developed a compound. You were talking earlier about the gold nanopore tattoos that use hydrogel to be able to incorporate all the components. This does something similar. These researchers at UGA's regenerative biosciences center they have created a hydrogel which contains a lot of the proteins that are should be released by the astrocytes and the support cells in the brain in the case of injury but in the case of traumatic brain injury there's such extensive damage and tissue loss those cells that are the support cells aren't really there to do the fixing and so these researchers have created and they've published it in Science Advances they have created this brain glue that can be implanted so far only into animals that have a model of traumatic brain injury and they were able to see that by mimicking the structure and the function of the sugars that support the brain cells that it was able to bind to fiberblast growth factor brain-derived neurotrophic factor to protective protein factors that enhance survival and regrowth of brain cells after traumatic brain injury when they implanted this hydrogel into mouse brains they discovered that the protective factor the protective factors accelerated regeneration of brain tissue accelerated recovery from in from injury in the animals they had repair of damaged brain tissue and so they recovered more quickly so potentially this is just an animal so far but potentially they'll be able to translate this to people so people who are injured in car accidents or during battle this would be great for for people in the military potentially or anyone who suffers traumatic brain injury that it could help the brain fix itself which is what the brain needs the brain makes you you make your brain what if i've had brain glue what if i've had slow over a long period of time brain damage it's just been incremental incremental but but if you add it up the sum total is like not unlike a traumatic brain injury but it's been done very slowly over a long period of time this is kind of thing i don't know i'm not sure but maybe that will test it i mean yeah i'd like to try it yeah everybody needs some brain glue their lives i hope that this show has been brain glue for many of you making new connections and sticking parts of your brain together reconnecting making making sparks fly yeah electrochemical sparks to be sure okay i think we've done it finally we've reached the end of the show right oh is it the end we've done it we have no announcements or did i miss it we do have an announcement yes everyone oh it's coming up very quickly now don't forget about the twist dts crossover april 17th at 4 p.m pacific time it's going to be the science tech crossover show of the century well maybe not this maybe the month year you don't miss it make sure it's on your calendar we'll have a link for you soon you better not miss it favorite science show your favorite tech show all smushed up into one science and tech mushy mushy crossover it's gonna be great if you have topics you would like us to discuss with the dts crew send us an email let us know we'll put it on the list see if we can get to it i do want to say thank you to ben goldfar before his interview on this international beaver day wonderful day of beavers and a great interview on the subject thank you fada for help with social media and show notes thank you gourd for your work in the chat room thank you identity four for recording the show and rachel thank you for your assistance who justin and i really really do want to say thank you to our patreon sponsors without whom we really would not be able to keep this show going thank you too oh goodness where's my paper great where'd it go it's in the back somewhere i lost it did i lose it there it is thank you twist patrons thank you to carl cornfield cornfield apologies carl cornfield jen myronuk melanie stagman dak cramsta karen tazi woody ms andre beset chris wozniak dav bun vegaard chefstead house nighter donathan styles a k a don stylo john she only geome john lee alikoff and gore of shawarma shoebrew darwin hannon down on lundus seril steven alberon darryl 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The after show and Sadie's doing tricks. Would you do in CD? Just doing some shake and some touch that's all okay i'm paying attention to you very very attentive right now you have the treats i will do this hey you got the treats you have the treats i want the treats thank you all for watching we are now joining Blair's animal training hour yeah here you go ready touch touch good girl look at her go she's like i love you i want to touch you oh what a good girl she's really she's really coming along with that training yeah yeah i want to take her back to classes again now that yeah things are calming down but we're just to do calming down it was calming down here we were at moderate risk level for four whole weeks and then we decided let's open everything up and within like a week look at this we're going to go back to high risk level again because people don't know how to moderate well california is opening the the gates completely june 15th they're opening the whole state what yep just opening they're going full texas with it what yeah they just feel like vaccine vaccination it's gonna be fine so you know not to get too far into politics but there's a recall vote circulating and i feel like Gavin Newsom's just like whatever you want ending the pressure yeah but it's i don't i just i understand california the top half of california is doing okay but my concern is if you open california in june people will come from everywhere to here nah nah why because it's california summer in california it's where everyone goes not in the summer when it's like a hundred degrees and everything's on fire no the fire comes in the fall that's right yeah kevin jones fourth wave is coming get your vaccination i just get so i'm so frustrated because people have no patience and yeah moderation is not a word people understand i know that all of our wonderful twist listeners you understand i just i really don't understand also the idea that like we're just talking about california opening the floodgates oh we're opening for business on june 15th i believe fully yeah just removing everything maybe california should open for business but close its borders yeah really well like disneyland is opening their um ticket sales on april 15th and uh it's only for california residents that's better that's still gonna be a lot of people though yeah well they're doing 25 capacity too which is insane yeah that's good though i mean at least they're being responsible about it otherwise i mean oh my god i went to disneyland during spring break i talked into it by my sister-in-laws family and that was like the worst one of the worst crowd experiences of my life when five it was like five years ago okay i'm like no no like five years ago disneyland during spring break but that was like yeah i went there oh my god the years the people it was never again it was insane i had to wait in line for 20 minutes to use a bathroom which like does not happen in disneyland they've like very well engineered the bathroom situation there so that you should really never have to wait in more than like a two person line i think the first three times i went to disneyland it was on employee day where they usually are missing a couple of major rides because they're down for maintenance or revamping of some sort and all the employees are employees of but it's employees of uh like disney animation like the corporate and the creative side as well as the park the park people probably stuff to work i don't know but it's uh but there were no lines for anything that was there the first like three times that i went and it was i was just like this is my favorite place on the planet this is great and then i went back one time when it was just with the masses and i was like oh this is awful i mean i still is still like the most amazing place on the planet but i'm like i could do with a lot less crowd you know what any place with people is not the nicest place on the planet well and the thing is it's the first time i really felt lied to yeah like you know we've all been lied to are misled at one time or another but it's when you get into one of those lines that then it's hot backs on itself when you get inside and you think you're there but no now you're in and now you're in a gym you went you's like oh look there's a short line to get into this thing to go walk through mickey's playhouse or whatever it is and then you go in and then that was a gymnasium then you're in a gymnasium of double backs switch backs up a stare down whatever it is and you're there for like two hours of your day to walk through mickey's model home now now i will say son is not going to experience joys getting to like i'm not gonna hang out next to mickey for the eight seconds to 15 seconds that you can stand next to mickey with the kid gets to go stand next to mickey ultimately worth it because they're just like i just met mickey mouse do you know how i'm gonna tell people when i get home because that's they're so stoked to have met the mickey like all the other the just you gotta like know where to go to meet mickey without the line like if you go there like first thing in the morning mickey and minnie are like hanging out on main street just you could walk right up to walk that's right you don't have to go stand in line that house is like the biggest crock in the world yeah i felt really lied to i thought i looked at the line i was like now right i just i didn't do any of it i left i was like this is the i went on one ride and i was like this is the dumbest thing ever i'm going to count the california adventure there was nobody there it was awesome we met all the people not all the people all the cars from cars i was super happy because he was five at the time that's a great ride yeah it was great yeah i love that whole area that was great california adventure was perfect i think they no longer have the bug land i think they're correct by why they've they pulled it out it's the adventure it's the avengers complex or whatever now it was too bad like little toddler like one yes yes i like to pose a lot it was the bugs life one right where everything i really like the chuchu train the chu chuchu train that was heimlich you'd like went through the food and they'd like spray food smells at you it was very fun i liked it a lot yeah i don't know if i don't i honestly don't i i've never been big on places that pack people in and do big crowds and i honestly feel like i don't think i will do those things again i don't need to if it's going to be like oh we're bringing in 10 000 20 000 people for this event or they're gonna be this huge i'm i honestly i'm gonna pass i would rather stay in my backyard i don't need that for the for the most part i agree with you but there are there are exceptions there are exceptions i don't know if there are anymore i'm done with it yeah oh sweden you're having fun sweden's having fun again honda delva and then we have so we haven't talked about covid stuff in a long time on like a lot of it on the show or doing it less regularly now which is kind of nice give us a little a little break on the twist weekly thing but yeah talking about these variants the brazil p1 variant that's up in uh british columbia right now um it infected the british columbia hockey team they're having a serious issue because of an outbreak of the p1 brazil variant it's not their first outbreak but i have something but yeah but the problem with that is is and if the if the data holds from what they've seen in brazil there is it's it's like a 50 percent increase in infectivity right so it's more transmissible uh doesn't seem does not seem to be more people i mean more severe disease so it's not the percentage of people who get severe disease overall is not changing but the age groups are shifting lower so more people in the 18 to 45 age group we're experiencing that here now in florida florida's got the the you know i think i think it's now the largest amount of people in uh icu are in that like 25 to 40 range wasn't that bound to happen vaccinating the oldest people first i'm not saying that was the wrong thing to do but doesn't that kind of push variance that way a little bit there's there's that there's that that's also because the people who are interacting with society more or the working class or the lower class are going to be more in that age group also so that's also another reason why they probably should have focused on not just not just age but like how often do you have to interact with humans right well this is why also my whole theory was what if you vaccinated geographically instead of demographically right so what if you like vaccinated an entire county and said like don't leave the county basically right and then you like move through because then the virus can't travel as easily right yeah so then that was my whole theory was if you it's the whole habitat's not species thing it's all over again right oh my gosh nadella they said she's saying they found all three viruses all three variants in one person in tron time woohoo that that person's getting around gosh well triple anybody um yeah i just that was my whole theory was like oh la's having a hot spot vaccinate everyone in southern california yeah yeah i mean if if people are going to be like they're angry about social distancing and lockdowns and all that stuff okay you're having the biggest issues you're having the biggest outbreaks because people are not sticking by the rules you know the social rules to try and knock this thing out and if people can't do that well then you need to get them vaccinated faster so yeah yeah so so here's the here's the thing that you have to picture and i think it was the prime minister uh denmark the matter of tradition uh who who illustrated this but with the new variants the fact that they're more transmissible uh it was put in the context of a soccer stadium however you can put a football stadium basketball stadium uh concert hall whatever you want but the the rate at which it is increasing and people who can get this because it's more transmissible it's like yeah at first it's the first row way down in front that's it and then it's the second row then it's the fourth row then it's eight but when you start that when you get to once it gets about halfway and you still feel safe because it seems like it's far away from you sitting way up at the top back of the stadium as soon as you feel comfortable it's gone over and is overflowed the stadium because the next round is bigger than around before and by the time it looks dangerous it's too late to get out of the way of which is i kind of like the regional thing i just feel like everybody who got vaccinated would have been like we're good now yep because that's how people act yep i got it i'm good it's time to go do whatever i want whatever to a certain extent though if you did it regionally and you kept borders while you were doing this that would kind of be okay and i agree with you i think i think it's a crime that we sent any vaccinations to the state of florida i think i think that we should not have vaccinated anyone from texas i think any state that was wantonly politically flaunting uh or going into the whole it's don't need these masks we don't need to do this didn't put in the the the basic stop gaps for preventing shouldn't have gotten a single one and i'm sorry if you live in that state i'm sorry for actually i feel as bad for anybody who lives in a red state as i do for anybody who lives in north korea i don't think it's their fault it's really not their fault so how about this though but how about but um politicians don't get vaccines until everyone in their jurisdiction is vaccinated how about that yeah because you know that because it's not you know that you know the people who the people who are banning coca-cola still got a coca-cola on the desk i'm just saying they haven't they never have cared for you they never have but that's kind of what i'm thinking is like i don't really want to punish people who are stuck in states where governors are making stupid decisions but i would like to punish that governor and that is my problem is like those people making those weird decisions got their vaccine you best believe they got their vaccine yeah so that's the part that drives me nuts is that all the politicians got vaccinated and then started making these crazy decisions here is the thing that is going to get talked about some point in the future maybe but the fact that it already hasn't been news is already a travesty which is you can get vaccinated for volunteering at a vaccination site now that sounds like of course you would want to vaccinate somebody who's volunteering their time to be on the front line to help other people get vaccinated but how that was utilized was it was parceled out to friends family wealthy donors and all of this sort of thing who would show up for one day wearing a mask directing traffic for one half an afternoon and that qualified them to get the vaccine so in all of these pushes there are well connected people to whatever organization was doing that and i think that is an investigation that needs to be done look who volunteered for a half day at some point at one of these things how they found out about it did they pay something for it and get the vaccination several months before they were actually qualified to do it there's been a lot of this going on and and i know we won't go back afterwards who was like hey we got there finally it's all over let's never talk about it again but there's some major corruption and how the the rollout of this went that i think has to get looked at at some point and if it doesn't it's because it's because the people who got it are the ones that are controlling whether or not there's going to be an investigation yeah i can't wait to be able to volunteer though like i've been not doing things and i yeah i would love to be vaccinated and not be afraid of getting sick or and now we know potentially not transmitting it to people what if i could you know be a driver for you know to help elderly go to the vaccine clinic or to go to the doctor or you know i can do some things once i'm vaccinated i've just been afraid most of the last year by the way by the way uh cdc finally has confirmed this thing that i've been saying but trying not to say too loudly because i've been wrong a lot uh the touch transmission is almost non-existent yeah it's i mean it's there but it's not it's not pretty much non-existent yeah and i and i think i think i turned that corner once we realized it was aerosolized and when mask wearing was cutting those numbers yeah then you know because i know that people still weren't washing their hands but like we can't lice all everything it's just not wasn't happening the 22nd hand wash lasted probably a few weeks and then people got sick of it and stopped doing i well i just started counting faster but i think people all around i think i feel like that's i'm the canary but like everybody just counted that 20 seconds 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 that's 20 okay like but uh but the the the fact that it's aerosolized uh was the thing and that's why masks are still important and that's why we still need to wear them even if you've been vaccinated you're not immune from carrying it well right but that's so this is the this is the data that there is slowly trickling out it appears that you're not immune from carrying it but there is a decreased much much decreased probability right and and because highly decreased right because you're not you're not going to be generating as uh as many of the viral part of virus part of us because it's massively suppressed which is why you're not getting sick in the first place yeah but it's not no so yeah so there's that's why the weird thing so it is suppressed in your body but like your nasal sinuses like if that's why respiratory viruses are so weird like they and they that's why they weren't expecting the vaccines to be able to cut down on transmission and they're just at first just hoping they would cut up cut down on severe disease because you inject something in your bloodstream and even though it's the antibodies are in your body it's like the the air and the nasal system a virus can get in there and start multiplying before your body has a chance to get all those antibodies where they need to be to cut it down so you can actually be the idea is that you can actually not be getting sick but be infected right and able to transmit which has actually even been the thing with this disease from the get-go like there's that was the scariest part of this in a way you know we almost like you could we would have lost a lot less people if this was worse uh what we would have lost a lot because it would have killed people that happen it would have killed people faster well yeah because it killed it like a 70 80 percent rate and like within days like it killed people very quickly and very efficiently right the fact that you could get uh there was none of this asymptomatic pre-symptomatic stuff yeah and you were actually the most virally transmissible in the period where you felt most symptoms where you were completely asymptomatic early on uh because your body hadn't wasn't doing any sort of defense because it's like whatever it's fine it's just cool to them it's just fine it's no big deal oh did I just get those viral particles to you I didn't even realize it I'm sorry because people weren't dying did I do that oh I hope you all I mean I'm frustrated with things very frustrated there's a lot of frustration things are not going to be normal for a long time I am optimistic that vaccines are going to help I am worried about variants I am very concerned about people's behavior and it's okay to have all that you can have all these things at once hope frustration concern worry optimism they can all coexist so so if you take it from the the Justin Jackson school of pessimistic optimism right COVID-19 is the end of the world and everybody's gonna die except we beat it and not everybody's gonna die now yeah so if you think of it as it's way worse going in than any better outcome is actually wow really we did well yeah by the way is that a violent fems shirt or just does it say violent fem it says violent fem I got it at a violent fems concert nice yes yes I love it is arguably my favorite band of all time Gordon Gano all right he's cool but that fast uh stand-up bass player he had behind him yeah yeah Gaurav get ready for yearly shots everybody get ready for regular shots every six months well maybe once a year once a year or you can go on get your flu shot you'll get your COVID shot also get it all at once and and I and I really think this might be a good enough popular enough widely transmissed enough disease to finally darman out the anti-vaxxers I think I think we might finally have something because you know not not wanting to vax for whooping coffee like that's never gonna happen and then it does but it only hits a few no what's yeah if not the problem is any vaxxers really like to focus on the kids and so unless COVID is attacking children which so far children are spreading COVID but still statistically not really getting they are but not as the same numbers as adults still so that I think that's the other problem is like if if people don't want them um if they don't want to vaccinate their children against measles which could actually kill their child why is this going to be different I don't know it just yeah yeah Sadie's mad she's pissed you mad Sadie I'd be I'm mad too oh man I think Sadie's uh trying to tell you uh good night Blair yeah she wants to go to bed she's grumpy good night Blair say good night just oh no wait wait wait wait wait um just before we say good night I do want to say I will figure out ASAP because I need to exactly where we are broadcasting this twist DTNS program whether it's going to be whether I can get a stream um whether oh yeah we're gonna work out the details I got I have to get in touch with Tom Merritt and Roger who figure out what we're doing Rachel Rachel yeah have Rachel doing mythical Rachel yes I will put Rachel in touch with the woman that Tom is having managed this event and so our our assistants will both work on this together and make it happen mythical Rachel she's not mythical she's real I think she's mythical she's she's that she's not like a unicorn she's real she even wrote it in the show notes she's like she made comments I saw I was looking at things that she wrote in previous days but I did see that that was great I thought you wrote that I know you did write that okay I did it it was Rachel all right so okay Rachel's real then uh we have people already working on it so like it was let's not even worry about it things are happening yeah things are happening it's not this weekend is that next weekend it's two weeks from now two weeks from now it's it's not this weekend it's next