Tentacles. Hurticles. Tentacles. Four tickles, 10 tickles, 12 tickles. I think we're live, everyone. If you are watching right now, this is the live recording of the twist podcast. But it's a podcast, you know, so that means that the podcast may be different from this live broadcast because there's editing that will probably occur between now and then, but things are going to happen now because we're going to do the show. So let's check our audio really fast. Identity four can maybe give us a are we good with our levels? Justin, can you say some words? Some words. I didn't say sing some words, say some words and Blair. Some words. Hello slingshotting spiders for everyone. Are we are we equivalent? Are we equivalent? Are we OK? Can we start the goings or do I need to adjust audio? Let's do this show, show, show, faux show. I'm not hearing anything from anybody in the chat room. I'm not seeing anything from anybody in the chat room. Identity four, so you're still quiet. Oh, my God, you can get that out of the way before the show starts. Woo, get it out of the way, Blair. I bumped it just a slight little hair. I'm always quiet. I don't like being quiet. I don't feel quiet. OK, let's start this show. I'm having issues today, just letting you know off the bat, everyone. This is if you didn't say anything. I should call this show Kiki's having issues.  It's your show. I can. Starting in three, two. This is twist. This week in science episode number seven hundred eighty seven recorded on Wednesday, April 12th. No, that was last week. Recorded on Wednesday, August 19th, twenty twenty. How to save a cow? I'm Dr. Kiki.  But first. Disclamer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The following program has content pulled from the previous week's release of scientific stories. The content itself was created by scientists. Researchers adapted, revealing the secrets of the universe, the stories of planet Earth, the mysteries of life and the systems by which life manages to survive on a planet spinning around a star, spinning in a galaxy, just one of such galaxies out of billions hurtling through space. And while the significance of human achievements may be somewhat limited in respect to the size of the universe, the expanse of our knowledge need no limits on this week in science coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I want to learn discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. That's science to you, Kiki and Blair. And a good science to you too, Justin, Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We're back. We're back. We're back. We're back. We've got all the science that we could fill in our heads in our shows. Actually, there's a whole bunch of stories I'm not even going to talk about tonight that are so good. There's a lot out there, everyone. There's only only this time now for us to talk about the science that we did bring. I have stuff about mystery gas. I have another story about Oh, sensing when you're drunk and a story about breathing. Justin is down to facts coming from Justin, right there. You're so getting sober when you got to get. Oh, yeah, well, you bring Justin. Yeah. How's that jet lag? I it's fine. It's really fine. There's no problem at all. No problem. OK, no problem at all. I have got some stories. Oh, this is an amazing one. I got a story about regeneration of cartilage in places where we didn't think cartilage could get regenerated by the body. Also, there is a potential not treatment, mind you, but cure for the common cold sore as well as, yeah, that's a big one. That's a removing leaking virus from a body thing. That's going to be fun. And then, oh, there was something else, which is totally. Oh, yes, the political speaking over time. Some researchers look at how our political discourse has changed over the time. Ending results. It has changed. I won't surprise you. Yeah, probably. Well, OK, well, I love it. And the show is a little surprising to you. That would be great, though.  I totally know the answer to this one. All right, Blair, what's in the animal quarter? Oh, I have bird songs, baby talk, and of course, slingshotting spiders. Pew, pew, slingshots. What that's? I mean, spiders have so many tricks up there.  Oh, yeah, slingshot around Mars or something. I don't think the spiders are doing that yet. Maybe maybe in another galaxy. Slingshotting spiders yet, not yet. That as far as we're aware. Oh, my goodness, we've also got our covid update this show. We've got so much more in the show. Just get ready, get ready because we're jumping in. Right after I remind you that I'm going to do right now that if you're not subscribed to twists, you can do that by looking for this week in science on YouTube, on Facebook, and in just about every podcast provider that is out there. We're on Spotify, Spreaker, radio.com, tune in, Apple, Google. We're there so you can just look for us this week in science or just go to twists, T-W-I-S dot org, twist.org. All right, let's get to the quick stories. Quick, quick, quick. Take a breath. Just a second. Yeah, when you think of. Breathing, respiration. What's the first thing that you think about? Your lungs? Covid-19. No, the covid update is a little bit later in the show. Most people think of respiration or breathing as the act of taking a breath, inhaling, exhaling, that it's your lungs, right? Well, it goes so much deeper. And we have, of course, these amazing molecules in our bodies, the oxygen-carrying hemoglobin molecules that when they grab onto oxygen, that really is the breath, because they hold the oxygen until they can take it to places where it's needed in the body to deliver it to the tissues, to the cells that will use the oxygen in the cellular respiratory processes. So it's really the fundamental first step of breathing is not taking a breath, but that grabbing onto oxygen that hemoglobin does. And when it does grab onto oxygen, it goes from this kind of relaxed state to a tight state. It's like kind of loosey-goosey. And then it gets this domed bulge to it. And you could think of it kind of as the stereotypical image of the red blood cell, where it's like indented in the inside, like one of those weird water frisbees that you might have played with where they're inflatable. And anyway, anyway, I'm getting off off story here. It's like a bowl shape, and that bowl can get filled with oxygen, and then it gets kind of bulgy when the oxygen is in it. But the big debate among chemists has been, how does that shift in the shape of the heme take place? Is it through thermal dynamics that there is actually heat energy in the molecule that it's either tighter or looser? And so there's more vibration or less vibration? Is that what's going on? Or is it an electron cascade where electrons, they've got their spin and they spin into each other, transferring their energy down the line. So these researchers in Germany, they have done the first step here. Actually, this is Germany and Japan. They were looking at using the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute's X-ray, free electron laser to produce X-ray emission, and they shot it at these oxygen-carrying heme molecules as they were taking oxygen up. So they got this very clear, very sensitive high resolution like femtosecond picture of the spin state of these molecules, the electrons in the molecule of the heme. And they discovered that no, it has nothing to do with thermal expansion or relaxation. It's electrons spinning around and exciting each other. And that is what allows the hemoglobin to change shape and hold on to oxygen. So it's really, and it's, it's electric, electronic, not electronic, but electric transmission within the molecule itself that allows us to breathe, to go like this, because we'd never be able to do that if it weren't for the electrons in the first place. Thank you, electrons. You do so much. Yeah. And thank you, technology for allowing us to be able to create these amazing X-ray pulses. I mean, X-ray lasers, allowing us to look at these second, not even second by second, femtosecond by femtosecond changes in the shape of the molecule. It's crazy stuff.  They excite me sometimes. We can look at these things now. It's very, very. Like, electrons are very exciting. They are exciting. Yes. Negative. Tell me about some negative words. Tell me about those politicians. This is out of Kansas State University. They analyzed two million congressional speeches made by both Republican and Democratic legislators, starting back in 1873, all the way up to 2010. They used computers to analyze those speeches because it's just too much boring reading for even the entire university of students to take on. In the research paper, a data science approach to 138 years of congressional speeches, this was published in the journal Hellion, K-State computer scientist, students Ethan Tucker, Colton Capps, and computer science associate professor, Leora Shamir, used text analysis algorithms to analyze these speeches over the years. The research results, this is a quotey voice of Shamir, research results show that more recent speeches use a smaller vocabulary, simpler language, express more positive or negative sentiments, and have more noticeable differences between Democratic and Republican speakers. As according to Shamir, that's compared to overtime. That's sort of the trend. The algorithm measured different aspects of speeches, vocabulary, reading level, positive negative sentiments that were being expressed. Based on the analysis, part of what is sort of interesting here is that they found that the sort of becoming more positive and more negative also became more dependent on who the president was. So if Bush was president, the Democrats were very negative, used a lot more negative words in their speeches than when Obama was president, he became the Republicans who spoke very negatively in most of their speeches. And the level of the dialogue has been decreasing. So let me see if I can find where it's laying out. But in the 19th century, we tended to have speeches that were around an eighth grade level. And that went up, up, up until the height, the peak was in the 1970s, mid-70s. We were at around a 10th grade reading level. Since then, we've gone back down to an eighth grade level in just 1976 to the present. We've just absolutely gone down. One of the things that they think might be responsible for this trend is the fact that people are now, politicians are using media to give their speeches to a base, and they're using simpler words and they're using this more positive or negative, depending on who's the current administration in the White House. And they're not using these speeches to talk to each other any longer, but using it as a sort of their own infomercial to the base.  I think language is different. If I think about it, so first of all, every time I go to Disneyland, I go to the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, and I listen to the Lincoln speeches there by the animatronics, and it always astounds me how eloquent and flowery it is. It sounds more like Shakespeare than like a president talking, you know, lots of metaphor, big words, flowery language, but also think about like if you ever watched Civil War documentaries, the letters, my dearest Yeah, so, right. So it's just colloquialism is different, language is different, it's less formal in general. And I think that's true. The formality is is less. Yeah. And if we look back at, you know, tests that they gave fifth graders or the eighth grade tests for for grammar and language comprehension, they're often harder than tests that are given today when you look back at them and it's like, wow, who knows that? Oh my gosh. But I wouldn't say that people are getting dumber. I would say that I would agree with the media aspect of this, that if you are preparing a speech to be given over television or even the radio, it's very commonly understood that you want to write for somewhere around a sixth grade reading level or reading comprehension level, not because they expect people to be educated at that level, but because people are busy doing other things. They're taking care of their kids. They are having dinner. They are doing other things and not necessarily just sitting and listening to you. Well, and things are boiled down into little bites more often, right? So you might read the president's speech in the newspaper in its entirety in the late 1800s, early 1900s and so on. But now it's it's two sentences. That's all you get. So you're not going to use a bunch of flowery language. You're going to get straight to it. And in the 1800s, it wasn't as much of a it wasn't as much of a representative government. It was it was representative in the sense that there were landowners and members of the elite class who were chosen by other members of the elite class. They were chosen by a smaller percentage of the of the population. And so it's it was a different segment of the population that was being talked to. That was that they were trying to convince of certain things. I I don't know that that's absolutely true of the mid 1970s. Right. Yeah, no, not 1970s. Everything was the same. Yeah. That's when we got we had vocabulary and it had been going up in that century all the way up. It had been large and positive. Generally, the speeches that were given depart the regardless of Democrat or Republican or who was in the administration. It was only after then it started going into that split of having to say the negative thing or always saying the positive thing, the sort of sycophant versus the resistance situation. Now, again, this ends at 2010. This is when that that's when their data. That's their that's the data that they analyzed. They didn't. That's the data that they analyzed. So they could have analyzed further. What I love seeing, though, is that the last kind of five years, it looks as though the Democrat line what where they paralleled each other for the whole time. It looks as though they are diverging in the end of the graph, which I find very interesting. Oh, yeah. Huh. I can put that back up on the screen again. But I find it, yeah, I think it's very interesting that at the very end, there seems to be a split where and who knows if that continued, who knows how it moved. But it's I think, yeah, modern television, modern news. Cycles, I mean, there are a lot of things to explain it. I mean, but, yeah, fascinating. Yeah. So I mean, this is this is I have some sort of like I get like there's a clarity of message. You can use simple language and that alone should be OK. But but if we all agree to that at all times and this continues, we just dumb down language that is understood by people because they don't hear it. They won't read it. They won't hear it. Their politicians won't speak it. Their media doesn't speak it. Their entertainment won't speak to it. There are anything written won't speak to it. And you will get a continually less articulate population as a result. I don't know if that's really a positive thing.  The 50s and 60s were the beginning of the big marketing kind of pushes. And I would I feel like communications, marketing and communications has become a real skill over the last 50 years, 60 years. And that ability to convince people to buy something, to do something. It it it is very often simple language. You know, don't don't confuse people. Don't add a whole bunch of unnecessary details. There are all sorts of little tricks that people who are in marketing and communications understand. So it's just waiting for that that that eventual debate of the future. America, good. No, America, very good. Well, I think it's if I if I get one more thing out there, there we go. I think that I think about, you know, well, this downturn is pretty similar to when the Tea Party started happening, right? And I think that one of the main tenants of the Tea Party when they first showed up was like those elitist leftists are talking over your head and they don't think you're good enough. And we're going to tell you the basics. We're going to we're going to be truthful to you. We're not we're not talking, you know, we don't think we're better than you sort of conversation. So a billionaire, billionaire, tycoon funded organizations. Right. We just understand the price of milk, whatever that is. I'm not defending it. I see the irony. But I think I think that is that is definitely the the main tenant that they rose within. And so you could see how that would push the the verbiage. No, no, I don't believe that the working class of America is is illiterate. I think I know why they're in the context of the rhetoric. That's what I'm saying. Is they're saying like they're trying to flowery up the language and not give you the whole truth. We're going to get that wasn't that. I mean, wasn't that part of the thing with Bush second getting him into into office was all he's, you know, he doesn't talk down to you. He's someone you'll want to have a beer with.  I don't know. Somebody who's trying to put food on your family. Yes, right. That's right. I was nice to put food on families. That's what I'm trying to very nicely done. All right, Blair. Yes, I said. Spiders. Yes, like shouting spiders. Did you know those were a thing?  This is a study from the researchers at researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology. We've actually known about these Peruvian spiders for a while. They were discovered back in 1932, slingshotting around. But the mechanism behind it, the why of it, the how of it has still been a question mark. And so they're the the Georgia Institute of Technology sought out to figure out how this worked exactly. So when the spider weaves a new web every night, they create a complex three dimensional spring. And if you look at natural silk spring, the spring, what it's made out of carbon nanotubes or other human made materials have similar power density or energy density. So this is a pretty intense contraption. It's actually more powerful by several orders of magnitude than anything manmade we've ever seen before.  How does this web store energy? How does it provide new sources of power for potentially robots? It always comes with how can we make our robots more like spiders? I feel like it's always what it comes down to. And and how we can use that on more robust materials. So they make this three dimensional conical web. There's a tension line at the center and this little spider is about a millimeter long. Pulls the tension line with its front legs to stretch the structure and holds onto the web with its rear legs. Now, if it was just holding this tension, they hold it for hours sometimes waiting for something to fly by. It would rip their legs up probably. So there's something else going on. There appears to be some sort of catch that they can then release. So they looked at this kinematic study. They they saw that it had an acceleration of about thirteen hundred meters per second squared. That's a hundred times the acceleration of a cheetah. It had velocities of four meters per second and was and subjected the spider that was flying to approximately one hundred and thirty G's. So that's more than ten times what fire pilots can withstand without blacking out. So they they have this spring that creates this ultrafast motion. They can hold the ready to launch spring for hours. And this latch mechanism, it it appears to be like a little basically a hunk of web. And if they release it and they miss their food as something flies by, they can actually pull the tension line back and reset. They don't have to build a whole new web. So they also think they're using an acoustic sensing technique to figure out when something is flying by, because researchers got these spiders to eject by snapping their fingers near them, which is pretty wild. And so they they have a little bundle of silk that they have on the tension line. They release the bundle. That's the catch. And then they fly both the spider and the web move backwards. It stretching the web actually requires at least two hundred dines, which is a tremendous amount of energy. And and so they have a trick to lock their muscles with that latch so it doesn't consume energy while they're kind of poised for a attack. Right, it would be kind of like a ratchet. Yeah, kind of probably a ratchet kind of system where it won't go back backwards until you release it. Yeah, absolutely. So basically these guys are just super powerful, super strong. The the silk itself is very strong. And then the the methodology of the latch and release is something that is really wild and could potentially be used in manmade things. Yes, a spider silk is a thing. And isn't that isn't that stronger than steel? Yeah, depending on the test you're running, for sure. OK, but this is like a steel cable that you can actually stretch and it's going to go back to it's like pretty sounds like it can store quite a bit of energy. Yeah, I'm imagining, though, the the uses for this. So yeah, OK, we could figure out how to use this in robots. But I mean, we need to update like that circus sideshow act where people get shot out of cannons. Yes, Spider Slingshot, Spider Slingshot, exactly. Or this is the next extreme sport. Perfect. Yeah. It's actually we should have an entire like X Games, an entire event that is all based on spider feet. That would be amazing. Yes. Balances producers, we have an idea for you. Come talk to us. Balance rapping would be one. How many times the G4 pilots? Oh, I think it was a hundred and thirty. OK, yeah, geez.  Maybe people will only die from this. We have to get some waiver signed for sure.  Oh, no. All right, I have another story about. How can you know when you're drunk? How can you really know?  The intoxication limit. Should you be stopped? Best way to tell. Best way to tell. If you've had a drink and you think you can drive. Probably. You shouldn't. Yeah, you probably over the limit. Exactly. Well, people make poor decisions. They decide that they can go and do things they probably shouldn't. And the more they drink, the poorer those decisions usually are. So researchers are trying to figure out how they can use devices that people have around them all the time to be able to help them make better decisions. Smartphones. So a group of researchers from Stanford University and the University of Pittsburgh used accelerometers in the phone in your smartphone. They attached the phones to people's backs and then had them walk around down a hallway after having drinks. And then they used the accelerometers to try and predict how drunk people were to try and correlate their movements and what the accelerometers read to actual blood alcohol levels. And they found that they were able to they were able to very accurately determine that kind of that correlation. So they were able to predict when people were oval over point oh eight blood alcohol content based on how they were walking at 92 percent accuracy. So really, I have a question as a person that is incapable of walking in a straight line one sober. Do they do they have a baseline? Like, do they measure things before the drinking starts? Yes, yes, they did start with a no drinks baseline. And then and then at different time points after the drinks, what they found is that there is a very high correlation, a very strong relationship between the side to side sway of people's hips and how intoxicated they are. And that can be. Lucy hits the hips way. So even though you might not be able to walk in a straight line when you're sober, you probably move differently and perhaps your hips move differently when you're intoxicated than when you're sober. And that is not necessarily reflective of whether or not you can walk in a straight line. And those drugs tend to have a lot of a lot of upper body sway. That's not necessary. Like, not while walking, but like standing still, there starts to be this sort of like swaying constant need to sort of just be in motion to be tracking what balance means. Yeah, the goal of this this research is to hopefully at some point have an app that you can download onto your phone that will just monitor you walking around while you're at a bar, while you are at a party and potentially send you a message or a notification when you hit a certain amount of sway. This is like, hey, I hope you have a plan to get home because it ain't going to be the car. It's not going to be the car.  No, no, that's a pretty cool idea. That's a pretty cool idea. Although there is you can't get pocket sized breathalysers that run on batteries that, you know, you can blow into and will tell you. Um, that probably that also probably don't have as many privacy concerns. I mean, this is trying to carry the data with anybody but you. Yeah. And it's not necessarily, you know, you download an app and you have to give all sorts of permissions. It's like, no, I don't need you to have access to all my content, my contacts list to be able to monitor. If you sold a phone that not just an app, but just had a built in breathalyser, like I don't think the phone manufacturers are thinking far enough ahead. You don't need little kickstands, a little magnet thing. That's what just had a breathalyser to the back of the thing. People will buy it. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So more research, obviously always is necessary, but they're trying to develop a tool that would, you know, an app that could work with your phone so that your phone would be in a purse or a pocket and it could fairly accurately determine whether or not you are over the limit, honey. I didn't bring the I didn't bring the story this week, but there's the they're working on a breathalyser test that will test for COVID. Yeah. Can you imagine having that on the phone or even better yet? Just have like a tiny little fan that's pulling air through the analyzer on the on the back of the phone case and tells you if it's in it's like you've been exposed somewhere leave immediately, you know. It's all sorts of cool things. We have this giant technology in at the bottom of our hand and it's being used for like games and calendars and stuff that's kind of. Yeah. Well, like I said, privacy, people like their privacy, but our phones could be used for so many good things. Tell us tell us about another great thing that's happening, though, Justin. All right, this is the. Well, this is researchers at Fred Hutchison, which I assume is a cancer research center and not a person have used a gene editing approach to remove latent herpes, simplex, virus one, also known as the oral herpes and animal models. The findings show at least 90 percent decrease in the latent virus, which is enough researchers expect. It will keep the infection from coming back. Now, what is this latent virus? This is a virus that has accumulated in cells and then regenerates in their cells, exits again and reinfects the body sort of keeps happening. This is a study that has published August 19th Nature Communications kind of an interesting process. These two sets of genetic scissors that targeted and damaged the viruses DNA, they fine tuned the delivery. So it went more specifically to the area of the infected cells, targeted nerve pathways that connect the neck with the face and reach tissues where the virus lies dormant with the people with this infection. Sort of interesting is that this these scissors that came in caused damage to to the DNA of the virus. But then that was it. That's all they did. And because they were now recognized as damaged, the body's natural pathways were removing damaged junk took over and flushed out the those DNA remnants. Right, all the bits that are left. Yeah, all that all the bits that were left as well as whatever is attached to it also went. So they didn't really have to be targeting like this is the mechanism that we need to cut that allows it to X, Y, Z later down the road. As soon as they damaged it, the body was like, Oh, something's broken here. Let's remove it. Pshh, yeah. So they're also looking at a bigger number than I thought. I need to stop sharing water with people. Two thirds of the world population under the age of 50 have oral herpes. People over I think all have it, according to the World Health Organization. Infection primarily causes cold sores and is lifelong. It doesn't go away. You don't get over it. Virus not magically going to one day be gone. Oh, science does something like this. And then magically, miraculously, scientifically, with what research college granted scientists that red hatch, it will be gone. It'll be gone. So based on the success, based on the success that they've had this far, they are also looking to pursue a similar strategy to attack herpes simplex, too, which is the genital herpes, which is four AIDS was the biggest risk of the dating scene, maybe one of them. Herpes. Yeah, it was a big deal. It's forever. It's forever. Yeah, maybe not.  Yeah, it's for life. Well, it's tough, too, because it's not one that general safe sex practices can prevent. Really? So I think that that's the thing that really is a bummer, too. If you're otherwise safe, you can still get herpes. Yes, yeah, because you can get them from a toilet seat. Wait, what are you saying? No, because just general birth control techniques. Oh, right. Black things like that. You need to wear a condom. Yes, but you can still if somebody has a flare up, you can still get it even with a condom. I did not. Not as easily, though. Not as easily, but you still can, which is why I think it's it's always felt like such a bummer to me that, like, you can be you can follow all of the steps. But if you're not doing that one step where you're asking people to get tested before you engage in activities, then you can still get herpes, which is the one that is until now incurable. It just feels so. It still is. It still is the only one that they think they've really got so far out of this is the is the oral one. So the cold sores, those little marks there, I guess on the inside, the cheek or the tongue or somewhere in there. Usually on the lips. On the lips. OK. Outside on lips is that it's nice to see that there's progress happening. Yeah, no, absolutely. Eventually, when they get past, once they get past the animal models, hopefully it'll work in humans and they'll be able to actually have this be a treatment. And oh, my goodness, what a huge step forward, because we've talked about on the show before, the fact that like herpes has been with us for almost as long as we've been human, like even it goes back to. I think it goes back to the apes even like it's it. The herpes virus is it's it's been on this. It's smart. It's smart. If you want a successful virus, but oh, my gosh, can we get rid of it? If you want, if you want to be a successful virus or a parasite or anything, attack the things that people use to have sex. Because those are protected. They're going to use those. They're going to use those. You know it. Oh, thank you. Let's try and keep COVID away from that. Yeah, let's talk about some eye spots. Eye spots. So. What are you searchers? What are you saying? Ice pots, eye spots, eye spots. It's still here. I'll hear the story. I'll catch up. Eye spots, eye spots, like, like on butterfly wings, how many animals have what look like eyes in their population to, yeah, can potentially help avoid predation. At least that's the hypothesis that is the working hypothesis to date. Researcher in Africa was looking at farmers with cattle and realizing that their cattle were getting predated and eaten at a fairly high rate. And he said, oh, hey, why don't we try this thing? And he tried it a while back with like one cow or six cows or something and painting eye spots on their rumps. And it seemed like the eye spots scared the predators away. And so he did a bigger study. And that's what's published now in Nature Communications Biology. Artificial eye spots on cattle reduce predation by large carnivores.  And then they looked to see who survived. They found that cattle that had eye spots painted on their on their rumps were significantly more likely to survive than those that had no eye spots or that had just crosses on their on their rumps. However, just crosses on the rump did seem to have a little bit of protective ability, which was interesting to them. But really, eye spots, high survival for the cows that had butts with eye spots. Why haven't cows evolved this on their own? We I don't know, probably because humans were involved and eye spots don't help against the humans, but this could help protect ranchers and their cattle from big cat predation moving forward and potentially protect those animals as well. Because if the cattle are not being predated, then the big cats and big predators, which we know are these animals are at more and more risk as humans expand their ranges. People aren't going out and hunting them anymore. OK, so important question. I know I usually talk about when you talk about human studies and I turned it into animal stuff, but I'm going to take an animal study and turn it into a human thing. So with COVID and everyone inside way more going out for run feels a lot more scary, especially in California because mountain lions. So I'm proposing a new line of running gear for humans that has eye spots on the back. Yeah, put them on the butt. Great idea. On the butt, on the shoulders, any of it. Big eyes. Yes. And big eyes. It's just confusing. I'm picturing the two lions sitting in the savannah at the end of the day and one line is turning the other is like, tell me, Bob, I'm chasing this thing full speed and it's running backwards, just staring at me the whole time. It was the weirdest thing. I was the creeper behind a thing and, you know, catching them from behind a little bit. This one's just staring me right in the eyes, running backwards. Those eyes.  Specific. They look like I kind of do. That's pretty clever. That was the other thing I was wondering if it was just eyes like on a butterfly, but see even the butterfly eye spots are supposed to look like horn owl eyes, which are the predator. I mean, right. So they. Yeah. So they need it specifically look like lion eyes. They did the end apparently it's very successful. So there's people who wear Puma backpacks are less likely to be attacked by mountain lions while jogging. Well, yeah, I spots on the back of your Lulu lemons. It's going to be a thing. It'll be a huge thing for all those rural runners. Not even rural anymore. That's what I'm saying. There's mountain lions. That's right. Actually, everywhere. Oh, my goodness, you're right. They're all they run in from the wildfires. Maybe. Oh, gosh. At anywhere that people in wildlife collide, there can be issues. But I spots, we can potentially solve a bunch of problems. If you just tuned in, you're listening to this week in science. If you are interested in a twist shirt or mug or face mask or other item of twist merchandise, head over to twist.org and click on the Zazzle link. The Zazzle link is where you can find all sorts of products. Fun things and support twists. Time for the COVID update. Code update. This just then was just then. OK, so cases in the United States are on the decline overall, although several individual states are continuing to experience cases or even increasing spread of cases. Generally, the trend suggests that there should be a reduction in deaths appearing in the data in the next few weeks because deaths lag cases by several weeks. And that would be a welcome change, considering the United States has been averaging over 1,000 deaths per day for several weeks now. So it would be nice to see those numbers start to come down. But we've been staying inside. People have been isolating. How are people coping? We've potentially seen and read and heard stories of mental health being a major concern as social isolation goes on and on and on. Researchers at UCLA were especially concerned with the population of older adults who have been diagnosed with anxiety and depression and were concerned about that particular subset of the population that are isolating, having larger or deficits, problems, even further problems with their mental health issues. Anyway, the study that they did, they interviewed a bunch of participants over the age of 60 who were screened for their anxiety and depression and that was before and after the pandemic. And they pretty much determined that, number one, participants were more concerned about the risk of contracting COVID-19 than the risks of isolation. So they were like, I don't want to get sick. I just want to, I will stay home. I'll do what it takes. So they are maintaining physical distance. Many of them are not feeling socially isolated because they're using virtual technology to connect with people. And this is potentially something they're doing more now than they did before because it's become more widespread generally. A lot of them said that their quality of life was lower and they worry that with continued isolation that their physical, their mental health is going to suffer and participants were generally upset by the inadequate governmental response to the pandemic. But overall, they found that they were worried about this population. And the population was actually resilient and that because they had been dealing with depression and anxiety for a period of time before the pandemic occurred, they already had tools in place to be able to deal with mental health issues. Did you say this is people over 60, specifically? Yeah. So they've been through some stuff. They've been through some resilient bunch. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a little bit of, you know, for right now, positivity in, you know, there are people, we're concerned about people. We want people to be doing OK. And this is a hard time. And it's kind of nice to see that there are people who they they're not doing, you know, great, but they are doing fine. They're making it through. So, you know, keep an eye on people. Check in with the people that you love. But it's good to have some good news occasionally.  I wear a face mask. And if I feel like I'm doing something especially risky, lots of face time with lots of people, I will wear goggles.  Yes. You know. Yeah. So goggles can be really great. There was a study that was done in Chennai in India. Where a group of people, health work, health care workers volunteered to stay in a hotel to isolate away from their friends and family and to go out into communities to do social contact tracing with people who had potentially come in contact with people who had COVID-19. And so, you know, of course, many of the people in that population ended up having COVID-19. And initially, when these health care workers went out, they were isolated by themselves in hotel rooms. They were chauffeured in vans that had had steel plating between the driver and the passenger part of the van to minimize air contact, viral contact. Messing around. They were not messing around. And these were public health professionals who knew how to wear masks, who knew how, you know, how to take care of themselves. They wore masks going into these these families, homes, doing their contact tracing. Many of them got sick. So they shut the whole program down. They went back. They retooled. They got more volunteers and eventually started the program back up again. Only this time, they used clear plastic face masks in addition to the breathing masks, the respiratory masks. And with larger numbers of contact tracers, with larger numbers of people they interacted with, and with larger numbers of COVID-19 positive individuals that they interacted with, nobody got sick. Wow. So that's a good combo then. That's really good. It's amazing. And they don't know there's they don't know what exactly happened to make the change. The only thing that was different in the methodology was the use of these clear plastic visors. They think it is potentially stops airflow, that it maybe breaks things up a little bit. It's a it's a different an additional layer of shielding, but to know that there is some additional massive additional protection potentially based on that simple change is of an exciting, exciting also other things like this jump out like, OK, maybe we're wearing this face shield means people are fidgeting less with their masks because then they would have to be removing a thing to fidget with the thing to, you know, so maybe there's lifted up, move it over. Yeah, you can't get your nose as easily when you've got a plastic face mask in the way roll. So fun, fun COVID update. So I just flew on an airplane. Terrifying. Thankfully, the flight was empty enough so that even it wasn't a full flight at all. Everybody got to sit a really decent distance away. Nobody had to sit next to a stranger on this flight. That part was pretty cool. The plane circulates air every three minutes and everybody was, of course, having to wear our face masks. And I changed, I brought enough to sort of change out during the long flight within an hour of landing. I was directed, I was directed to a white tent where I got my free COVID test. I'm sure. 24 hours ago. Because you left the country. You did not come to the United States. No, not within the United States. This is not within the United States. This isn't Denmark. This isn't Denmark. This is going to be clear. I got a free COVID test and results came back within 24 hours. I'm going to take another one maybe a week because, of course, you required to stay where you are in between. Yes, until I get the result. So the result is clear. I'm going to take another one because you're free and because, you know, if showing up, not having had COVID, it's fine. But I'm going to worry about that airplane ride. Like, who knows? That's just the closest confines I've been with a group of people who were strangers since this whole thing began and for a pretty long period of time. But it's it's such a day kind of like I couldn't go and get a test in the States and have it with that quick for any dollar amount. So the that's amazing. The difference. That's the difference. That is insane. And this white tent isn't just at the airport. They're apparently all over the city of Copenhagen. And if you have a concern or just want to relieve your stress level or anything, you can go there. Get the swab. It was really quick. This was a drive-thru. You just drove through the UK. They had the face mask shields and stuff going on. And they are it is a throat. Didn't go to the nose. They did the back of the throat and then off you go. And you'll get so civilized. Yeah, like, why is it that it's just what's going on? How is there a point in asking why at this point? How is the disparity this ridiculously different? Yeah, I don't understand because it was ignored for a long time. But I think one thing that's important about the face shields is it's an and it's not an or. Yes, it's an and. So it adds extra protection. You can't say nevermind with the mask.  Like you have your own air system. Like you are an astronaut. Yeah, otherwise you need to still need a mask as well. So I did actually I did Blair wear that face buff thing. Oh, yeah. So poorly in the test. I wore that above the medical grade mask. Oh, great. Yeah, I still doubled that. It was I was like, you know, like, OK, this thing, it's alone isn't effective. This one is supposed to be the good one, the medical grade. But I put the other one over it just because I could still breathe in more is better. Or is probably kept it from smooth moving around too much. And you could actually lift it up higher and then it could work like a line fold in the flight. Then you can go to sleep on the flight, which is what you always like. That I never sleep. Never mask thing. I try, but I can't policy. There's a question as to whether or not people were protected by regular glasses in this study. And I don't know the answer to that question, but that is one one point that the authors to the study did bring up, which is potentially these the plastic face shields provide eye protection. And maybe that is what is adding the difference. They don't like I said, they don't know, but it could be this additional reducing the infectious routes. Or just like it's just like in that same vein, getting the covid virus landing somewhere on your face. And then and then you're out of public and you're thinking, OK, I can take off my face, you're not touching your eyes. And now I'm out of public.  I wash my hands and did all that 20 seconds on this one.   Evil invisible glitter. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I love that. And I mean, to that point, it's everywhere. Everywhere, I have two daughters and I have glitter and still in place. It shows up places like it hasn't been glitter near this for a year at least. And there's still glitter everywhere. You're going to find you're going to find glitter somewhere in Denmark. It followed you there for sure. And lightning rod in the chat room brings a really good point in the YouTube chat room about if you're not trained in how to use PPE like masks and gloves and glasses, then there's a lot of opportunity for you to do it wrong, take them off wrong, not sanitize properly before you and after you take them off. All that good stuff that where it kind of it it can it doesn't nullify the effect of wearing the stuff, but it definitely can reduce the effectiveness. So knowing how to do all that properly is is important. It's very important. Yeah. Face shields, something to think about. And we know face shields. If you have a 3D printer, some of those those parts can be 3D printed. So that's kind of cool, too. Yeah, I love the story, too, because I was not I was last time out there. Jeff, I was not I was not really a believer in these face shield things. Like, so there's a couple of people on the plane who wore them. And every time I've seen them, like, that's just it's a barrier. But you're breathing around it. Like, I don't really get it. Like, why are people still doing this? I am now that changed my mind completely about them due to this. I'll if I take the flight back, I think I'll have to pick one up. It's I think, ultimately, it's about compounding risks, right? So like, we've talked about droplet this whole time. And now there's this more and more. We're talking about aerosol, but ultimately it's both. And so if you can cut off the droplet factor completely, your risk factor just plummets. So there's still risk if it's aerosolized, but it's way less if you're taking the droplets out of the factor, which is what the face shield is essentially like. If everybody's wearing pants and holding a shower curtain. The analogy grows. A JAMA article compared the 1918 flu pandemic to the current COVID-19 pandemic looking at excess deaths. And it found that aside from modern medicine and health practices that are probably saving lives today, like we have intubation and respirators and all sorts of stuff that weren't really available. And we have lots of things that were not available sanitation wise in 1918. The two events are highly comparable. And in fact, the current pandemic might actually if if individuals did not receive modern treatment or sufficient treatment, it could have an even higher mortality rate. Than the 1918 pandemic. So just looking and this is just looking at data from New York, New York City, which we know had an extreme outbreak early on. But we don't need to talk very deeply about this right now because we're going to be talking with one of the studies authors, Dr. Jeremy Faust next Wednesday. Nice. And he's doing a lot of interesting COVID-19 communications. And I'm very excited to talk with him about this because people have always been like, we don't know. How do we know how bad this pandemic is? And if we look at the 1918 pandemic, it's like, Oh, two million people died and how many dead in the United States? Six hundred thousand dead in the United States, like massive numbers. It was it was huge numbers of deaths. But what is that? How does it really compare to what we're going through right now? And so I think it's going to be, I don't know, it's very interesting. It's a good point, lightning rod. Definitely kill more people than 1917 because there's 10 times more people on the planet now. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good, that's a good point. Oh, I also point out that there are just as many snake oil salespeople and snake oil cures now as there were then like that element, the grifter con artist element of trying to profit during a pandemic with fake cures is is is the same. It's that's that's really that's the most disappointing part. Yeah, a final study on convalescent plasma. We have talked about previously. There's a new preprint out that is very promising. Some 35,000 people enrolled in this study through the Mayo Clinic, but they didn't have a control group, which is it was an observational study. So they gave people through other different amounts of convalescent plasma, so different concentrations, but they didn't actually have a control group. It was not a randomized study. The FDA just shut down this as a treatment right now. They didn't shut it down as a treatment. They were looking at giving it emergency use authorization, which would allow doctors to it speeds up the ability of doctors to be able to use it as a treatment. But because they didn't have all the data, they have postponed it to actually wait until the study comes out to look at the data from this study and really figure out if they think this study tells them something that they didn't know previously. Yeah, but it's promising. It's they had significant effects where people who got convalescent plasma, that's plasma from people who have had COVID-19. So it contains antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. And those antibodies in different concentrations helped people recover more quickly. So people with who got higher concentrations of antibodies or even got antibodies compared to no antibodies, they recovered more quickly. It helped them. Maybe I'm missing something really obvious here. But wouldn't wouldn't they be able to compare it as a control group to just the people who didn't get convalescent plasma who have COVID? Right. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, but it's it wasn't randomized. And there are apparently a lot of confounding factors. OK, fair enough. But yes, you are you are correct in that. But like we have a pretty big control group. Well, so we do. But then you necessarily, yeah. But you could sort of also then at some point say that then you're taking an average of people with and without natural antibodies that they may have been producing, right? So who might have been surviving it just fine versus people who were having. But then if you just took this, yeah, it seems like there's enough data. This has also been the thing like with the five million cases just in the United States. It's like, how can we not have just mined the data on hand yet to find some of these answers? I totally agree, but it should be a way to assess that is with the big data data mining perspective is, yeah, we can mine on all this data. But are we really getting real answers? Or are we just finding patterns that look promising but aren't actually real? You know, especially, you know, we talk about this with really with respect to genetics, you know, where they take these massive genetic studies and look at all the all the all the mutations to see is there one that is linked to a certain trait and it's questionable. You have to have incredibly massive data sets and you have to really figure out what your confounding factors are. I have to say, at the beginning of the summer, when I thought I had COVID, I didn't, but when I when I did, when I was lying in bed with 102 degree fever and I was shivering and I couldn't eat food. The first thing I thought was kids. No, at least I'll get to give some convalescent plasma. That was like the first thing I thought I was like, if I get through this, I'm giving my plasma. Well, hopefully you won't get COVID anytime soon. No, you still might be able to. Yeah, I'm going to hedge my bets and hope that I won't. But if I do, I'm giving that plasma. Give it up. If you just tuned in, you are listening to This Week in Science. Hey, I'm wearing a twist shirt right now. Do you know how to get this twist shirt? How did you get that shirt? That one's from Patreon, isn't it? This is a Patreon shirt. Yes, if you become a Patreon supporter, there is one level of support. I believe it's the twenty five dollars a month, might be fifteen dollars a month. I don't recall, but there's a level of support in there where you can get a t-shirt. I'll send you a t-shirt just like this. It's a nice t-shirt. Head over to twist.org and click that Patreon link if you want a t-shirt or if you want us to thank you at the end of the show. I have mystery gas again. Or what's that flag about it last time? Who had the gas last time? I think it was me. Again, all of this is too much. So much gas. Oh, my gosh. These studies, I do love it. This is out of the Australian National University. Researchers there have been looking at the Milky Way. They've been looking toward the center of the Milky Way. They're trying to... Sagittarius.  And it's got a lot of it's sucking things in. And as it does that, it shoots things out.  They also emit gas and there is there are a couple of different kinds of gas that generally come out of there. The researchers say the wind at the center of the Milky Way. Yes, the Milky Way emits a wind with mystery gas. The center of the Milky Way has been the topic of plenty of debate since the discovery a decade ago of the so-called Fermi bubbles, which are two giant gas bubbles, orbs of hot gas and cosmic rays that have formed coming out of the center of the Milky Way. And they observed that there's not only hot gas coming from the center of the galaxy, but also cold, dense gas. Cold, dense gas. Yeah, so they don't know whether the Milky Way has expelled this cold, dense gas or whether it has come from someplace else. It doesn't move around very well, but it's heavier because it's denser, it's heavier. And but it it's affecting the kinematics, the movement of the dynamics of the flow of this wind out of the center of the Milky Way, and they're hoping that they can figure out where this gas came from, whether it's really this part of the Milky Way wind or whether it's not, whether it's come from something else. They say it's the first time something like this has been observed in our galaxy. We see these kinds of processes happening in other galaxies. But with external galaxies, you get much more massive black holes. Star formation is higher, and it makes it easier for the galaxy to expel material and our own galaxy, though, we have to we have to look at it closely to figure out what's going on. What is happening with this mystery gas? You guys don't know what's happening. Nobody knows. I'm picturing. I'm picturing is like these now like weather map of hot and cold, high low pressure density. Yeah. Like maybe that, you know, is it so there's something that keeps a hurricane together, which is all temperature based on sea level temperatures and air temperatures and wind directions and stuff like that, that helps them form and then maintain whatever. Maybe we're just a big, all of these galaxies are just big hurricanes. But it's a vacuum in space. It's not a real vacuum. Yeah. It's close to this just because there's close to nothing out there. There's not a lot. There's not a lot. Exactly. Apparently there's gas. There is gas. And what they're trying to see here is that this gas is potentially star forming gas and because it's being shot out of the Milky Way through these Milky Way winds, it means that the Milky Way could be losing some of its star forming potential. So what does that mean about the life cycle of our galaxy, the life cycle of the black hole at the center of the galaxy? What is, you know, how does how does it all, how does it all work together toward, you know, as far as what we understand for star formation, galaxy formation, and how these things exist over long periods of time? Just remember if there's mystery gas, just say. It's the Milky Way. It's the Milky Way. It was this. Oh, it was the Milky Way. It was. It wasn't me. It was the Milky Way. Another story of unexplained nature. Researchers were using the. Oh, hey, this is. No, I used the wrong links that I'm putting places. Let me see. Researchers were using the Fermi gamma ray space telescope to look at. The black hole, the center of our galaxy. And to look at a number of gamma ray producing objects in our galaxy. They looked at one particular supermassive black hole called SS433, which has high terra electron volt energies of spouting out jets of gamma ray power. Yes. They analyzed more than 10 years of giga electron volt gamma ray data from this space telescope and they saw that there was a life cycle or I keep saying life cycle in my stories, but really there was a timing to how the jets moved around this black hole.  They they're spinning around the spinning black hole at the center. And so they are moving in this wobbly fashion. And they found that there was a timing of that wobbliness of about 163 days. And in the timing, they also just happened to notice. Another object that was kind of off central and off center and about 100 light years away from the black hole binary. And they found that it too was producing gamma rays at exactly the same timing as the procession of the black hole jets. And so what they think is that there's something coming like hydrogen gas or the nuclei of the hydrogen ions coming from the jets and the gamma rays that are coming out of the black hole that are somehow traveling to this other stellar object to produce gamma rays from that object, but it's the timing of the two objects are they are the same. So they're going to do more investigations. Look at magnetic fields and really try and see what it is they're looking at there and why there's a relationship. Are we going to find an entangled black hole? Right. Is that what it is? That would be pretty amazing. Is it a wormhole? Somebody didn't want to travel a hundred light years. Yeah. And now it's just spitting out over there too. Wow. That's good. That's kind of fun. Could this be a coincidence? It could be a coincidence. Also, I mean, the whole universe, the fact that things have the same timing. I mean, that could happen. There's probably a high probability of that, but. And if you're just tuning in to monitor when you went, you found this pattern and you're just sort of tuning in to catch it the next time to see if it's there kind of thing. Maybe it just happened to be picking. But I do like the other possibilities.  Yeah, that's really fascinating. That's fascinating. And it's like these wonderful mysteries. Why do they or is this happening? We don't or also kind of like, yeah, or there's something else that's triggering both that the black hole isn't triggering.  That's affecting both at the same time, irregardless of space. Yeah, interestingly, at the same time. Fascinating questions. We really don't really do not have the answers to at all. A mill. No, we don't. But, you know, more questions equals mo beta for science. That's what science loves. That's the word. Yeah, that's the that's the greatest, I don't know, simultaneous disappointment and, I guess, elation that comes with understanding what science really is. It's a lot more asking questions than actually providing answers. Right. Yeah, a lot of questions and trying to find answers, not always finding them at all. Not always. No. Thank you for listening to twists. You're the reason that we're able to do what we do every single week. Helping us bring sanity and science to people. This world's crazy and full of misinformation these days. Let's let's use big words and let's talk intelligently. Let's share that. And with your help, we can do that for more and more people. So please head to twist.org and click on the Patreon link and choose your level of support to help bring more twists, more sanity, more science to more people. Justin, what you got? This is researchers from researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine. They discovered a way to regenerate cushion, cartilage and joints. This is sort of a slippery shock absorbing their tissue between joint connection points like in the knee. It is responsible for many cases of joint pain, arthritis, afflicts, apparently 55 million people who have lost or have degenerated cushion, cartilage. This is this is the suffering from arthritis, inflammation, joint pain, that sort of thing. And that's one of those things they say when you lose it, it's gone. Yes, because it gets surgery to have it returned. And even then, it's not always successful. Sometimes it's very painful afterward. Anybody who's had an ear pierced knows that those holes don't ever really grow closed again. Well, they do, they do, though, eventually. But but this is Stanford researchers. They figured out a way to regrow where they're called an articular cartilage by first causing slight injury to the joint tissue. Now, that sounds very much like an existing surgery where they will go in and drill little holes and the because it's the body's skeletal system that has the stem cells that will go in there and add or move bone like when you're getting the rubbing from the lack of this cartilage, but also will do repairs to to damage that you do. So they go into the joint and they will drill little holes in the bone and through the what material is there. And the skeletal stem cells they've already found will go in there and regrow tissue. Now, what they're regrowing is scar tissue. And that scar tissue is not the same as the cushioned cartilage. It has not got the elasticity, the cushioning effects. It helps reduce symptoms, but it doesn't last very long. Whereas out quickly and doesn't really have that protection. And it was it was this is an assistant professor of surgery, Charles K.F. Chan, Cody voice cartilage has practically zero regenerative potential in adulthood. So since so once it's injured or gone, what we can do for patients has been very limited. It's extremely gratifying to find a way to help the body regrow this important tissue. What they found was these stem cells can be you can be given chemical signals to stir them to do the growth of the actual cartilage that's now missing. They've worked as published August 17th in the journal Nature Medicine. So the old that old that old treatment. Which was causing this scar scar tissue, they didn't exactly know how it worked when they went in a different lab and figured out, oh, it's actually the stem cells that would be normally responsible for doing a regeneration or building these structures in the first place that are going in there and creating the scar tissue. That's when Chan, his lab, started working on instead of doing what's called the fibrocardic cartilage, which is that scar tissue, a way to get it to do the correct one or the one that was more desired of the original. Basically, they figured it out and it worked. They've gotten this this to function. So this is this is like a pretty major development. There's there've been also materials you're saying like surgery replacement with artificial cartilages. There have been some massive improvements there in recent years. This is one of those things that, you know, when you talk about bodies breaking down as we age and over time, this is kind of a big one. You know, we were talking about the speed at which people move or can walk sometimes determines how long they will live. Part of that is as you age, it becomes more painful to walk. You want to walk less of a time because joints now are rubbing up against each other and it's painful so people get less exercise just out of avoidance of pain. Just just avoiding hurting themselves while exercising. So being able to restore cartilage to these joints could actually have a very dramatic impact, not just on reducing symptoms from arthritis and inflammation and that sort of thing, but actually allowing people to engage in more strenuous physical activities, exercise as they age and then prolong, hopefully, human life in that way. Fantastic, fantastic findings out of Stanford. It's really exciting. I mean, Blair, you must be thrilled at the prospects with all that cartilage. Yeah, I'm looking at the the story that you posted, Justin, and the last quote. One idea is to follow a Jiffy Lube model of cartilage replenishment. Every 3,000 miles, every 3,000 miles, you go in for a little oil change. I mean, like I run three to five days a week and I have to wear a knee brace now. And it would just be so great to be like, oh, superhero powers activate. I can run like I'm 10 years old. Yeah, and if that can help to reduce the wear and tear on knees in general, on hips in general, oh, my goodness.  That's a and that that is a major surgery. So to be. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. And the hip joint don't have to do that. They don't always last forever, the hip replacements, especially if they're metal or there can be all sorts of complications after the modern day ones apparently have have progressed pretty, pretty darn far. Like you can get you can get a lifelong one that should outlasts. Some of them are. But but the first place you're probably going to see this, I my estimation is going to be sports medicine. You have aging athletes or injured athletes. Well, instead of retiring earlier, can maintain a level where they can continue. Keep going. I want to be an athlete that can continue. I mean, not just the super sports stars, the runners like Blair.  And I don't mean that just in terms of like the benefit of this would be that we could have our favorite sports athlete players last longer in their careers. But there's so much money behind them maintaining a career and there's so much the sports industry itself has actually like we talk about the good that NASA has programs have done for technology for all of the injuries that happened during major league sports in America. There's a ton of medicine and research and application that takes place that then translates to all physical therapy. We wouldn't have the physical therapy that we have today without our athletes footing huge bills to get those athletes back on there as quickly and healthly as possible. So so that's who's going to be able to afford, I think, initially to pay and lend to the research and and get that perfect to get it more widespread. Yes, easier access to the gender. That's that's sort of I always think of sports is really like for all the things it does, it's really big benefit to society is, you know, medicine or sports, medicine, physical therapy and that sort of that's the thing. It does the best for society. It's like the cheering, the booing that all happens. But this is really the sports medicine that benefits everyone. I know I benefit from some of that sports medicine. This is This Week in Science. Do you want to help Twis grow? Get a friend to subscribe today. Tell somebody today about Twis. Share it. Don't keep it to yourself. Share it. Help us out. Blair, is it time for that part of the show where you talk about the animals? Sure is. It is. It's time for Blair's Animal Corner with Blair and Small. By Peck Milliped, no pet at all. If you want to hear about this animal, she's your girl. Except for giant pamphlets grow. And animals grow. What you got, Blair? I have a story all about bird songs. And I just got back from camping. And one of the lovely things about being out in nature is that you get to hear bird songs. But one of the things that I may never get used to is that some birds start singing very early and very loud. And this study that came out this week from Duke University looks at that. Why do birds sing so loud so early in the morning? And a new hypothesis is that it actually is a warm up routine. The morning singing is usually mostly males. And often those songs are meant to impress potential mates and to scare off rivals. And what they found is that that the early morning might actually be the best time for them to get the kinks out to broadcast to to kind of hone their skills before it's showtime. Previous thoughts were that it was actually when the wind was the lowest, so there was less distortion on their sounds or that the dim light actually makes it impossible to do things like hunt. And so might as well sing. But this new theory is that it's all is about the warm up. They recorded eleven male swamp sparrows between two a.m. and noon for two to three mornings each. So this is a small sample size. It is one species of bird. So that's kind of my big asterisk here on this story. But what they found was that the song of these swamp sparrows, it's usually a simple trill of up to five notes repeated about five to ten times a second, but that it actually. The trill rate and the vocal range over the course of the morning changed. They started off taking it easy. They sing slower, they had a more limited range, and then they would only start to get that song just right, picking up the tempo, reaching for higher and lower pitch, just after dawn, after hundreds of attempts at the song. And the more they warmed up, the better they got. So it might also help get their blood flowing, temperature rising in their throats. All of that kind of stuff helps with the demand of singing as the morning continues. Previous playback by the same research team also showed that a well song song compared to a rusty one actually does better with females and is more threatening to eavesdropping males. So a better practiced, a better warmed up song is, in fact, more effective for these swamp sparrows. So if they have hours to warm up, then their next step now is they want to see what females responses specifically are to individuals after how long they have been warming up so that you can see exactly what the advantage is and the percentage is and all that kind of stuff, but they these very specific trills that they make where they go high, low, high, low, in rapid fire succession actually means a precise coordination in the movements of both their beak and their voice box. So it makes sense that a warm up might be effective to them. I love the idea that they it might not just a warm up, but rehearsal that they are. Yeah.  La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. OK, OK, I got this. OK, which might be why that super early morning bird song is just a little bit more annoying. If you're trying to say the rest of the day is because they're still working the kinks out, might be a little shrill. They're waking it up. They're they're getting the voice box. Those vocal cords warmed up and ready to sing at their peak. And I love the idea also. I mean, we know from lots of birdsong studies that there is a pathway within the bird's brain where they compare their performance against a model of what the song is supposed to sound like that's in their head. So when they're baby birds, they listen to adults, their tutor, that basically puts an imprint of that song into their heads that they spend the rest of their lives trying to sound like.  And then they go about practicing and crystallizing their song and getting their song as juveniles. And then as an adult, maybe every morning it's like, OK, I'm going to sound like that song, it's today is going to be the day. And then they warm up trying to match what they think they should sound like in their head with what's actually coming out of their throat. Yeah, well, most human musicians have an idol or an inspiration or someone that they they really admire for their style and that often can inform their music. So pretty similar birds are very similar in that way. Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of growing up and learning bird language, would love to talk about what to do. I want to talk about baby bats learning bat language. Oh, OK, that's different. What? Yeah. So this is a study from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, or STRI. They wanted to explore how infant directed communication in bats might be different and how that might result in specific vocalization changes. They were looking at the greater sack winged back bat. Psychoterics, Bill and Neata. And it's it's found in Central and South American South America. It has a large vocal repertoire, it has complex songs and vocalizations for territorial defense and courtship. So, you know, the bats did that, they do. Female choice in mating is very pronounced in the species, so just like the bird songs you were just talking about, which probably led to the complexity of their vocalizations in males in the species. The reason the researchers wanted to look specifically at baby bats and the mothers and their communication is that during their first three months of life, these guys start experimenting with what you would consider bat speech. And female and male adult bats respond differently to the babies. They looked at sound recordings of vocal interactions and found that the mother bats interact with pups as they babble, as they're learning the bat language, which could be interpreted as positive feedback to pups during vocal practice. Yeah. And then they looked at what they consider the color of voice, which in humans, when we think about baby talk, we think about slow speech, raised pitch and a change in the color of the voice. It's kind of more sweet or sing-songy. And they found something similar with female bats. Pup-directed vocalizations of adult females presented a different color and pitch than the calls directed towards adults. Male bats also communicated with the pups, but in a way that seemed to transmit the vocal signature of the social group. So the females had this kind of this baby talk and the males were kind of providing a template like Kiki was just talking about something to emulate in the future. So these results suggest that the adult males serve as guidance for the development of group signatures in calls, but that the females give important social feedback during vocal development. So it's kind of this this balancing act between the two of them. The males have this consistent talk. This is how our group sounds and the females kind of lift them up and help get them there by changing the color, the tone, the cadence of the language as they're learning. So this shows that social feedback is important during vocal development in animals besides humans and that there's a lot more going on there when you think about people that do baby talk with their toddlers or their infants, that there could be evolutionary reasons for that. Learn a lot from these bats and their baby talk. Like learning from bats. I was trying to find examples of baby bat babble that I could play. But I couldn't find any in time. I don't know if you'd be able to tell a difference. High pitch, high high frequency squeaks. Yes. So this could be a whole new avenue of research amongst any vocally communicating animal. Whether or not their babies babble and which individuals, which individuals respond in which ways and how that training takes place.  Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's so cool. I mean, I know you never really consider and we have little baby birds that go and they want their food, but they do their little practices and they they babble. The kids babble. Who else babbles? There's there's also lots of different theories when it comes to raising human babies and whether baby talk is good or bad, or if there's a time at which you need to kind of curb it, but this kind of balances that you have the baby talk that allows for them to grow and change with what they start with. But you also have the constant of another voice that is giving you the adult language from the start. So having both sides might actually be what's beneficial here. You can do baby to I, of course, this is not contested at all. But this is my extrapolation is that you could potentially what this could mean. So the baby talk is not such a bad thing with human babies for extended periods of time, as long as they're also hearing normal adult speech. Yes, because that is what will teach them how to speak. Right. Yes. But the baby talk is also narrowly stimulating. It is going to stimulate the brain. And it's right. And it gives the feedback based on my mommy's making a noise. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And play classical music and bird songs and and bat calls to the kids too. And I'm here at all. They'll be tri-lingual before they go to kindergarten. I see human bat and bird. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Do you babble to your babies? Do you babble to your baby bats? This is not really a tongue twister. Babbling baby bats. That's definitely tongue twister. Blair's babbling baby bats. Yes. Yes. All right, everybody, we have come, I believe, to the end of our show. We don't have a question from anyone to answer this week. So if you have questions for us to answer. We've answered all of the questions. Science is fixed. We figured it all out. Everyone forget about what I said before. We've got questions. We've got them all. I could have missed an email somewhere. I went searching through my email. It's been very busy recently. I did go searching through there, but didn't see anything that had twists in the subject line. So if you have questions for us to answer, send me an email, kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, put twists in the subject line, twist questions to highlight what exactly you want me to want us to do with that email. And we will try to get to it. You can also ask a question on our Facebook page. I will say I did get an email correcting my pronunciation when I was talking about two atars last week. But I said the very anglicized Maori when I was talking about native peoples in New Zealand, and it is Maori. Maori is the correct pronunciation. I think I've only ever seen it written. So that was that was my bad. And I appreciate somebody reaching out and letting me know. I think that's important. And to to change your pronunciation based on that correction. And I think what's also interesting, there was a study looking at people who have read a lot as kids that they tend to mispronounce words quite often because they've they've early on read a lot, but not heard the word spoken before. So there's a large literary knowledge, lexicon, but not actual knowledge of how to pronounce the words correctly. So. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I went to the library once and that's a thing. I was trying to get a book written by Nietzky. Because I never had been reading Nietzky for years, but I had never talked to anybody. I hadn't been instructed to read it. I hadn't talked to anybody about it. So I was looking for more books by Nietzky, who's like my favorite author right now. Yeah, I get it. We had the same thing happen when discussing Denisovans, who turns out to be pronounced Denisovans.  And if you don't know anybody who is smarter than you, you need to find some new friends or make your make your circle bigger. Find or you need to ask your current friends what they're experts on because somebody is smarter than you at something that, you know, guaranteed. Although I bet you. So here's the thing, though, is that I guarantee that that would not have taken place that going to the library and asking for Nietzky where the Netsky books are none have happened had YouTube existed.  OK, now I now I get it. It's that's how you say that. Nietzsche Nietzsche. Nietzsche is also not right, but that's OK. It's not right. It's close. It's close to the Netsky. Netsky makes him sound like a Russian author, which I didn't make it by the words, but he's a German. Yeah, keep learning, keep asking questions. And thank you for listening to the show tonight. I really hope that you enjoyed the show. Time for some shout outs. Thank you to Fada for help with social media and the show notes. Gord, thank you for manning that chat room over there. Identity for thank you for recording the audio for the show. And I would also like to thank our Patreon sponsors and the Burroughs. Welcome fund for their generous support. Thank you to Donathan Styles, a.k.a. Don Stilo, John Scioli, Eric Holmes, flying out Guillaume, John Lee, Ben Rothig, Ali Coffin, Maddie Perre, and Gaurav Sharma, Josiah Zaynor, Mike Shoemaker, Sarah Forfar, Donald Mundis, Rodney Lewis, Stephen Albaron, John Ratnaswamy, Dave Freidl, Deramai Shax, Stu Pollack, Andrew Swanson, Fred S. 104, Corinne Benton, Sky Luke, Paul Ronevich, Ben Bignell, Kevin Reardon, Noodles Jack, Sarah Chavez, Paul Jason Olds, Brian Carrington, Matt Bates, John Fury, Oh, Joshua Fury, Sean and Nina Lam, Sue Doster, John McKee, Greg Riley, Marc Hessenflow, Jean Tellier, Steve Leesman, Ken Hayes, Howard Tan, Christopher Wrappen, Richard, Brendan Minnish, Melon, Melisonde, Johnny Gridley, Richard Porter, Christopher Dreyer, Mark Mazzaros, Ardeam, Greg Briggs, John Atwood, Robert Grudegarcia, Dave Wilkinson, Matt Sutter, Philip Shane, Kurt Larson, Craig Landon, Mountain Sloth, Jim Der Poe, Alex Wilson, Dave Neighbor, Kosti Renke, Matthew Litwin, Eric Knapp, E. O. Kevin Parachan, Aaron Luthin, Steve DeBelt, Bob Calder, Marjorie, Paul Disney, Patrick Pecoraro, Gary S. at Dyer, Tony Steele, Ulysses Adkins, Brian Condren, Jason Roberts. Thank you for your support on Patreon. If you're interested in supporting us, you can find information at Patreon.com slash this week in science or just click the Patreon link at our website. On next week's show, we will be speaking with Dr. Jeremy Faust about COVID-19 and his paper comparing the 1918 flu to the current pandemic. And we will be back at the same time on the same channel, despite the fact that my show notes are not able to be seen or working properly right now. Yeah, you can watch us from twist.org slash live. But if you want to listen to us instead, we do we do a podcast. This is the podcast. Just search for this week in science, wherever podcasts are found. Fjound. If you enjoyed the show, get your friends to subscribe to my pronunciation. See, it's gone now. I don't speak English anymore. Oh, my God, we can correct you on all your pronunciation. It's fjound.  That's www.twist.org. And you can sign up for our newsletter too. Hey, Justin, what are our emails and Twitter handles? We've got twistminion at gmail.com. That's me at this week in science.org.com. That's Kirsten. And then Blair at Blair's Menagerie. Well, that's my Twitter. Oh, that's my Twitter. Without the show notes, I don't know. Blair Baz at twist.org is me. And then on Twitter, it's at twist science, at Dr. Kiki, at Jackson Fly and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover, address a correction of word pronunciation other than the word fjound, because I know I did that one wrong. Let us know. And when you do email us, put twist TWS in your subject line. Or what happens, Justin? Your email will be spam filtered into oblivion. That's right. We'll be back here next week. And we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember. It's all in your head. This week in science. This week in science. This week in science. This week in science, it's the end of the world. So I'm setting up my banner unfurled. It says the scientists is in. I'm going to sell my advice. Show them how to stop the robots with a simple device. I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hands. And all it is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth. And I'll broadcast my opinion. All of week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science. I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news. That's what I say may not represent your views. But I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just get understand. That we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. We're just trying to save the world from juggling. We say and if you use our methods that are rolling. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science. The laundry list of items I want to address from stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness. I'm trying to promote more rational thought and I'll try to answer any question you've got. But how can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop? One hour a week in science is coming your way. You better just listen to what we say and this week in science. This week in science, science, science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, this week in science. and it's the end of the show it's the after show it is Blair had to go walk the dog so she'll be back Justin who knows where Justin goes maybe he went to get more coffee because he's in the very early mornings of Denmark time uh thank you for joining us for another show this week Blair will be right back but they haven't left left they're here they haven't turned off their computers so i'm assuming they will be back in a moment but for now it's just you and me we're here together yeah thanks for joining that was fun Gorov Gorov uh are we wobbly i'm always wobbly wibbly wobbly timey wimey whoa he should be doing the outro in his sleep for sure it's kind of funny like i've been hearing these songs for so long and i know i know the words but i can't sing all the words from memory because i've never actually practiced doing that it's the same thing for the intros and the outros it's like i know them they're in my head somewhere but always having the notes there in front of you you don't commit them to memory so having them actually in your brain indelibly marked it's a very different very different situation oh kira 1 a.m in philly yes early morning late night early morning we did we finished the show at 10 and we started a little late which means the show is under two hours i'm excited about that one just after seven a.m in norway oh we have someone someone from norway in the in the youtube chat justin howdy carol yeah i'm in your same time zone apparently apparently yes they'll come in right welcome to twist they'll come in uh yeah uh what you mentioned earlier how do i not know the end of the show after 15 years of doing it yeah it recently changed it recently changed if you it hasn't changed that much it's all the same information our emails are the same okay okay fair point but i got like really nice because i'm trying to i was like it i don't know why my show notes don't survive the length of the show sometimes it's just it like no i'm not working loading but it's not working and it's not loading and i'm like i just i i closed it i reopened it it just didn't it didn't care that's what's weird i mean i could think that uh it's some kind of a memory issue maybe i mean google the browser uh historically the the chrome browser has historically been a huge memory hog so it's good to close your chrome on occasion this is yeah but i restarted before the show right before the show i did a full reboot it's a chromebook running chrome and it's the the it's just it's just ridiculous it's google drive that the thing is based on like how do you not work how do you just not work chromebook how is that possible how do you just know this is seriously kira is saying my dog ate my show notes it was but it's a computer my browser ate my show notes oopsie what type of covid test did i get that's a great question i don't know i don't know usually tell you because they didn't tell me they were just like we'll call you yeah we'll call you we'll tell you what test it is i've got top people they didn't tell me what kind of test it was they just told me i didn't have it good i'm always pushing buttons shoe brew it's a major it's just one of the things i do in life pushing buttons nice mask you brought war in there blare what superhero was on that uh a lot of them there's um i mean there's captain america i see captain america it's like iron man's fist this is very hard for hammer that's i think thurs fist and hammer that's i think that's um black widow yeah and then who's over here not the scarlet witch black widow and then iron man's uh shoulder i think is what's right there so so i gotta say iron man's shoulder also very strange uh being in a country that is still open yeah from this seventh story balcony there's a school that i can see with school children playing at recess um at times there's uh you know bars restaurants these things are open they've just instituted face masks for uh public travel uh like the trains and stuff and the airport of course is that new or is it because that's new that's new they're there's yeah so cases here have tripled uh from uh like 40 to 120 over the last i think two weeks um that's still not a lot no there's no zeros behind that that's it not k there's not a k at the back of that uh that's just yeah um so they're increasing some of their measures uh they did a very hard close very early uh and and are doing constant like constant available free testing with rapid response so people know whether or not they should quarantine or seek help and then can contact friends loved ones to be in contact with and it's just you know like oh there's such a big long deep-seated rant at the basis of this that makes me angry at the country of my birth uh oh yeah you're not the only one justin yeah yeah yeah i think a bunch of us are there's a wonderful article in the atlantic um written by a couple of people alexis madrigal is one of the authors and he's been doing some of the some of the work that the atlantic has been doing on their uh their testing tracker that they the covid tracker that they uh came up with and it's it's a great article talking about the need the problems with testing and then basically what we need to be able to get back to some semblance of normal but there is a driving like if we can get paper test strips that are cheap like one or two dollars each super cheap they're not super accurate but if everybody's getting tested like all the time things are gonna be a lot better and it could be the kind of thing like the the story has this this scenario of like you go to a restaurant you do a little saliva test strip wait 15 minutes for your results and if you are negative you get to go to dinner and have a a mask free dinner experience if you're positive go home you know and they have um and same thing like if you're going to go shopping at the mall you take a little paper test strip if you're going on an airplane 15 minutes you just have to arrive a little bit earlier little test strip 15 minutes you're allowed in to go to your plane or you're not um it just would allow more freedom of movement and but what it what it neat what it is is basically everybody being tested cheaply and prolifically just ubiquitous testing where it's all over and then you could do things like take uh workplaces or classrooms at schools and do pooled samples like find ways that you know you can do more accurate tests but pool all the samples so that all the kids in a class you find some safe way for them all to spit in the same container that container the results come back 24 hours a later later the whole class is clean or some there's a positive result so now okay the whole class has to stay home but then they do specialized testing on individuals in the class you know so it makes the tracking better fun fact about that they don't have to spit in the same container they can all spit in individual containers those containers all just get tested in one run and then that's right but what they were you have to read that you have to read the article because the way that they explained it even with having there there are ways to make it cheaper and easier and more accessible and the people who were these epidemiologists and other experts who that they who they talked to for the article came up with these ideas so I'm not coming up with the idea like completely out of my own brain but it's a great article lightning rod once into the population of Denmark it's approximately six million people yeah tested carol ann in youtube says her son got tested because he felt ill after being with dutch cousins for a week was tested at 11 a.m and had results that night yeah this the barrier is not actually there it's like this is something that this can't be figured out is nonsense absolute nonsense the will it is will where there is a will where there is leadership there is a way I'm just keep wondering if like if the if the federal leadership won't take over this and make this work could at least you know the western states alliance pool together their resources to pay for this kind of stuff could it be or even you know could an entire state do it could the state of california on their own or the state of oregon um things need to change it's tight so that we can something something that was just pointed out to me but i can't help but share uh new zealand and denmark have both done phenomenally well yeah both have female prime ministers yeah of course most countries that are doing quite well have female leaders oh wow yeah that's a very interesting correlation that had not occurred to me yeah there's there's uh oh anyway yeah school's coming but online school is where we're at and if we have to do it with chromebooks we're doomed the chromebooks don't love zoom which uh i mean at least in my experience is that like zoom google hangouts google meets like all these even stream yard online is fine but zoom is extremely glitchy on my chromebook and so i have to use like my phone or my work issue to ipad or my desktop i i have to use an apple product because my chromebook won't work i had a different uh i would have had the different because i was able to do remote via a hot spot on a farm in the middle of the north central valley of california it was able to get on zoom no problem but could not join the show you should just drop that no you should just drop that during the show every once in a while so stream yard which we're using um oh it says we're offline oh no i did it wrong um stream yard which we're using they just started allowing accounts at our level to stream to three locations so i was just trying to go to twitch.tv which we are streaming to for the first time in a very long time and we're there we're over on our twitch channel we have a twitch channel twist science i did see that popping up that was interesting yeah so i mean nobody's nobody's chatting oh there we go norway also has a female prime minister yes norway has a who are absolutely uh defeating this this pandemic threat uh to their own nations and they all have female prime ministers we should start we should start looking at this a little closer maybe there's maybe there's a reason wow could be yeah kira we are i guess going to be on twitch now which is great because i had to make a choice uh because we're on stream yard and the level subscription for the stream yard service only allows us did allow us to stream to two locations and i knew that we had people watching us on youtube so let's stay with youtube but then um i i decided on facebook because facebook was making a big push for video and so we've been doing facebook facebook and youtube um but now they allow three and so as of tonight our twitch channel twis science is on twitch.tv slash twist science and we're there oh and i see people put in the chat with the twitch logo oh we get the twitch chat in here too fantastic so we're i'm going to try and hopefully that will continue over on twitch and that will be another location where people can find us we'll see yeah we'll see it worked i spent the whole i spent the whole show going well it looks like it's on i don't know if it's working because i'm doing yeah it is really like stream yard it's a great service and there would be some other oh there's people in the chat room over there working it's working i'm glad you all found it shared with your friends um what oh i should try to get on silver dot tv and dive dot tv but i can't stream to those places too yet i have to pay for a higher level of stream yard service to do that we will see should i push more buttons and uh i mean always and make more dance music oh oh my gosh you guys oh this this i need you all to hear this you're going to love give me one moment to open it up you have to listen for just a few a few moments to something that is fantastic okay here it comes hold hold it starts it's facebook auto start here it comes i is from this guy grant forbes who his his friend took a herpetology class where they recorded a bunch of frog noises and they were identifying frog noises and he took the sounds and made a remix out of frog noises which i absolutely love there's a youtube uh there's a youtube link for it it's also on on facebook that's great it's so great yeah it's called this guy's a jumper you can tell i Jennifer thanks i hate it i don't think you have to i don't think you have to love it i just think that it's fun that the whole concept is really neat because you can you know take a sample from anything and the idea that these animals who are making this music to each other right for communication purposes but they're all these different sounds and that yeah that they're able to make all these noises it's it's so brilliant um Dave shorty's asking if there were only frogs and i think there were two two tracks in the mix because the video shows the actual mix let's see if i can um actually bring it up on big computers so i can show y'all this guy's a jumper you can tell in the very beginning initially i thought this i kind of got the concept of what it was going to be but at first i thought it was duck a duck i couldn't tell it was a frog at first i thought it was going to be like duck calls getting uh sample together but yeah yeah so i think there are two tracks that are um other than a frog call but they've got a pine barren's tree farate tree frog that starts it off you're gonna say tree fart that's my mystery gas a scapiofus hot brookie eye um is the second track and then there's a couple a crate digger and chip tune lead so those two tracks are uh just basic tracks i think that are set just general uh stock samples but then he has green tree frog green tree frog but changus spade foot echo spade foot left spade foot right chunky spade foot sonorous spade foot which i guess are um took the spade foot and made it sound different ways um yeah and then what else did they have gopher frog a hyla andersoniai bull frog and hyla femoralis so a bunch of different frog sounds and made a song but no codes no just frogs all come on they weren't slum in it okay well so uh so i got this was about not a year ago beginning of this year i was i was doing something not similar but i was listening to uh frog and toad song i must have been the toads then because i didn't really hear it through these frogs some of them have sound like songs that sound very much like bird song like some of the the the the sounds were i couldn't tell if it was bird frog or toad it sounded or i identified them as bird even though they were yeah some of them are going to be pretty elaborate pretty cool sonorous even yeah yeah i thought that was that was a fun find this week friend of mine shared pretty awesome remix of frog sounds what frog sounds are out there or what nature sounds are out there that you are gonna sample are you gonna remix what can you do baby battling sounds i could definitely get a lot of seagulls from here they make a lot of neat noises oh yeah yeah i think yeah people hear a lot of the birds songs but and and the loud calls but there are all sorts of other sounds that birds make and animals make little tiny vocalizations that because they're not like the big statements we tend to ignore them yeah so so there's this class i was taking and and one of the the assignments was to go out and after learning a little bit of terminology about how to identify a chirp versus a you know whistle versus a call versus whatever yeah to go out and just listen you know spend 20 minutes and write down as many of the the things that you can identify what was wild about it is if you haven't paid attention there's a good chance that there's a lot of this apparently especially in the morning that you can go out and hear and then me but then i got left with this and it was like amazing it's like i have not like really been noticing how many different types of bird calls i'm can hear just outside my doorstep and then i got hit with this this this sort of dread that now i can own i will always hear it to this at the end level where it's going to be very distracting because this is the first time i've ever really paid attention and it's everywhere i can hear all these different calls it's like constantly going on they're constantly talking what if now i just can't unhear it but it uh yeah you can ignore everything you can ignore it pretty easily tune it out yeah but go out it's kind of worth doing go out and give a lesson yeah there's a lot going on out there oh hot rod thanks for hosting us on your twitch channel that's awesome thanks yeah so i don't know what the the the the the the butt chungus are you aware of that frog no don't know what that was maybe it's a song maybe it wasn't a frog yeah that was weird i go ahead and continue not knowing keep not knowing there i don't need to necessarily look that up that's gonna affect my my search history oh hot rod i thought you charged ten dollars in it i thought you would pay us ten dollars that's come on here uh corvid testing i saw that picture too Eric Eric in Alaska there's a there's a big testing sign in lights that says with arrows pointing and there's traffic cones trying to get people going a particular way and it says corvid testing mm-hmm yep awesome uh who's testing the corvids that would have been me when i was in graduate school i might have gotten trolled it was in the list on that i i'm gonna go back and look at it again it's one of the green tree frog comma butt chungus all right latin you're drunk i don't know what that is it's it's on the list of tracks for this song of the frogs so i'm wondering if it's maybe the green tree frog that has been sampled and reprocessed in stuff away such a way to be similar to something else that's out there called a chungus no yeah i love the idea of somebody somebody getting into the front of that line and then having their pet their pet raven with them i would like to find out how smart he is i would like to test my raven would you like to test my raven i hear new caledonian crows are quite smart but are they as smart as my raven let's test them i was just looking back when i was on the um podcast where we built the perfect animal i started talking about new caledonian crows one of the hosts said wait they're making new crows still what like oh no no they're from a place new caledonia yeah the old caledonian crows we've known about them for a while for a while crows or cephalopods who is smarter crows i think that's a hard one because cephalopods that's like a big group right and so you probably have really dumb cephalopods and then maybe you have some really smart species of cephalopods so i think you need to get more specific because crows while a big group is fairly i mean that's fairly indicative of a certain type of corvid um so i like i said i was camping i just got back yesterday and um there were jays i think there were stellar jays um all over our campsite and for the first day we were there i was like oh my gosh like this this little valley we're camping in is full of hawks like i have heard so many red tailed hawks i've heard so many red shoulder hawks i'm very familiar with how they sound and then isn't it like after the first day yeah so that's the red tailed hawk and then the red shoulder hawk goes ah ah ah ah so anyway uh after the first day day two i'm watching a little jay hop around our campsite looking for scraps and i see its mouth open and you guessed it hawk sound came out and it was oh that's awesome it was kind of muffled the way that they did it so it sounded like the hawk was far away that's cool what a neat mimic so and i and i proceeded to watch the way that they did it so it sounded like the hawk was far away sorry i said wait i tried to pause you what a neat mimic sorry oh no you're getting very meta there getting very meta for a second sorry i need i'm trying to open windows in different ways yeah um yeah so uh they were mimicking both of them it was crazy i was like are there even any hawks in here now i'm like skeptical as to whether there are any hawks at all you should be skeptical after hearing that maybe they weren't darned jays there was just the jay i mean it makes sense they would do it to make other birds stay away from where they're trying to steal picnic food uh-huh that's i'm that that's smart other birds small mammals stay away these little sparrows and graham crackers these are mine that's awesome yep corvids are smart yeah but while i was there i also saw gray foxes and heard a lot of raccoons a lot um there were turkey vultures good old tv's um i think one of the people I always came with saw a deer so we saw a lot of wildlife and there were lots and lots and lots of frogs at night oh that's wonderful i just hear so much about how frogs are dying well hopefully they're still there and didn't get burnt yeah yeah so you had to run away from the fire i did i left uh a whole day early it was last night we just we had to eat and dinner the sun was like starting to go down and then um we started getting hit by ash and then we looked over and there was like an orange glow in one direction and then brang goes didn't the sunset on the other side yesterday we're like yeah you're right so that's no sunset that's a fire and then we went and we talked to some of the park's people and they're like oh it won't get here it's still pretty far away but the air quality will probably be pretty bad tomorrow yeah i got uh yeah i don't want to sleep al fresco in the middle of smoke and ash so i got uh pictures sent to me uh from the city of davis right uh with ash covered cars it had been raining ash in that town so yeah well and when we were taking down our tents uh the the rain fly was had a bunch of ash on it it's like okay this is the right call well because besides air quality and all that kind of stuff i just you know these campsites are down on one lane hot like road in the middle of nowhere with no service and um i didn't want to get a call to evacuate and then be trying to outrun a fire on a one lane windy road down a mountain like you know let's just go this is not a reason to stick this isn't our home that we're waiting till the last minute to evacuate we're camping for fun time to ditch yeah uh lightning rod is saying a really big fox grabbed one of my neighbor's cats the other day there's a fox on coyote foxes are so small they're like cat sized well unless it was a red foxes are probably a red fox is what i'm no it's about this no they're definitely bigger than a cat red fox is like bigger than stady red fox is like this big oh yeah i've worked with them i'm not that big aren't i yes yes they're like this big bigger than a corgi for sure bigger than a bread box that's a corgi red box gray foxes are smaller gray foxes are like cat sized but red foxes are pretty big giant fox indeed okay wow like little foxes i like the little foxes so that's one of the animals that kai wants to have he wants to have all the animals foxes are not friendly to humans he has seen youtube videos of friendly foxes and he wants one so there's that rafshama are there any pros to buying a house in california politically speaking there are it's it's um toasty in the summer we're in a pretty nice bubble in terms of california or in terms of no the whole i'm talking about gubernatorial decisions i'm gonna say well insulated by a lot of nonsense yeah but at the same it's it's nicely insulated in the bay area um but gosh in terms of weather what has it been four five years now of summer fires where the sky this is like day 10 of triple digit heat yeah it's just gonna get hotter and hotter and hotter fire earthquake is only a problem for the really big city which is which is yeah like a lot of the population um yeah yeah uh but the the one thing that california has that the other states don't have uh is it's california i mean chill attitude yeah it's it's go there for the people and maybe the politics that's your weather inclement thing but uh education tends to be pretty good in california uh the state resources are actually pretty nice like the there's things like unemployment and health care that are basically california is moving the direction of creating its own universal uh one-payer system because they're not gonna wait for a national or anything yeah but housing is a major issue major issue that's like justin's big rant uh slide that i'm gonna avoid well um in terms of property on the market it has gone up 96 in the last month in the bay area yeah availability people have left right so the the tech industry is like hemorrhaging people because people are just transitioning to full-time work from home and uh places like uh where was it Idaho there's like no available houses to buy because so many people are leaving and going to like beautiful scenery and just be like i'm just gonna live in this cheap space with beautiful hikes and work remotely and i can have a giant backyard and all this good stuff so i don't know so here's here's what's going to happen as these people are moving out as property values kind of take a dip as rentals are hard to fill and people who have been doing investment properties having maybe two or three properties and renting some may decide to sell those properties those properties are going to get bought by hard money funds through wall street through probably your you know your your company's 401k has probably got a lot of real estate and that mutual fund those are going to get purchased and then not sold again but uh rented out to californians in fun item and we'll as soon as this recovery thing takes place there'll be more properties in the hands of property managers than there were at the beginning which actually creates more of a housing crisis than allowing people to own homes at reasonable prices yeah it's uh we're target we housing in california is such a great state and there's so many people it's been targeted and commoditized uh as a wall street asset and a place for wealthy people to keep their money secured so uh as long as that continues california will be a nightmare in terms of anybody is an individual who wants to own a home hooray hooray do we have let's take positive thoughts oh are there what are those you're in denmark where things are denmark ish it's a lovely morning yes you've had coffee uh look at all these positive thoughts we can have all sorts of positive thoughts yeah Carol uh you have pretty strict laws in orium and how uh many rental properties a person can own a rent and stuff so look so state of california this is a couple years ago try to pass a law just to count just to count how many people or how many corporate owned single family homes that there were just to look at it just to get a bird's eye view of what's going on with their housing market and they weren't allowed to do the count they couldn't get the count funded because there was an opposition uh a multi-million dollar opposition to what was just basic the first step in looking into the problem uh denmark denmark is a very lovely country as you were saying i haven't gone out so i've been quarantined uh for 24 hours it's been 48 hours something like that it's not been long before i got the test i'm now allowed to to go out this go out and mix and mingle with the the other humans that's exciting but uh you know first sounds like carol an has had a wonderful life of travel left the united states moved to new zealand for 15 years now in norway wonderful places that's fantastic yeah i would like to travel we will do it we will travel one day again oh yeah i miss our traveling shows these were fun days i know yeah we could put twist stickers put twist stickers on walls just wander around put stickers on walls it's a great idea yes my cat is here purring at my feet finding things to play with oh you're playing with a pen huh right i gotta go i've got some uh i got some spypals uh some rye bread and some liversty waiting for me i don't i understood one of those if you were in norway you'd have yet host with your with your rye bread with your bread that is it goats it's a goat milk cheese orange goat milk cheese very interesting sweet flavor get toast oh lever posty says carol an okay it's actually one of the it's one of the danish foods that i like i don't think the danes appreciate as much as i do it's like a the lipposty is sort of like a liverwurst spread kind of a thing i love this and i and even though it's readily available and can be made i don't know that i think it's me and the really old danes i think only wants to which makes sense we're really into lipposty okay uh so uh say good night blare good night blare say good night justin good night good night everyone have a wonderful week enjoy science in your world enjoy these weeks of summer in the bay if you're in the bay area if you're in california which is burning to the ground enjoy more time indoors but stay safe everyone do your best and do your part thank you so much for watching us tonight we will be back next week