Welcome to the Weekly Twist podcast broadcast. Before we officially start the podcast recording, I do wanna remind everyone that this is a live video stream, yay! So if Natalia and I say bad words, or if we, I don't know if something happens to the internet or whatever, and we have to have technical things happen, then there will be editing and the podcast is fully edited. So you can subscribe to the podcast and get the fully edited program once that is published, which will probably be tomorrow afternoon. Anyway, don't forget to click all of the likes and the stars and the notifications and make the algorithms like us share widely. And Natalia, are you ready to go? Yes, I am. Let's do it. Okay, let's make this thing happen. Starting the show in three, two, this is Twist. This week in Science, episode number 951, recorded on November 15th, 2023. Should Science Monkey around? Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show, we are going to fill your heads with monkeys, sperm and seawater. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. How many of us mailed our cereal box tops and hard-earned allowances to places unknown in order to stare at a small plastic aquarium of sorts in the hopes that we would be the first to observe sea monkeys in all their undersea glory, only to be underwhelmed at the sight of brine shrimp undulated in the fetid water before us? Or were you of the sort who thrilled at the sight of anything at all? How did these beings appear? What were they really? Who am I to scorn the magic of life? As media tempts and taunts us with promises of amazing, sensational sorts, there is a lesson here that we can all be skeptics and yet maintain our ability to be amazed. It is a lesson that we take seriously here on This Week in Science, coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I wanna learn everything. I wanna feel it happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek, I wanna know. Good science, everyone. And welcome to this week's episode of This Week in Science. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode. There's a great show in the making right now. I am joined by the lovely, the inimitable, Natalia Regan, oh my goodness. Hello, how are you? Good evening. Good evening, we are doing all right on the show tonight. I mean, it's just you and me, right? We're gonna... Oh, just two broads talking science. I'm all about it, you know. We're gonna science the heck out of it. Here we go. I mean, if anybody is not counting, I'd love to find out how many different accents we engage in throughout the show tonight.  I sign on. I mean, it could be something that we should really think about for a second. Okay, I have stories. Stories tonight. On this week's show, I'm a serious newscaster, Natalia, come on.  My sibilance is out of control. CRISPR and cholesterol, voiding alcohol, and, well, you, oh my gosh, primatologist, anthropologist, comedian, self-described weirdo. I mean, guilty, guilty, yeah. And you just listed all my favorite things. You got monkeys, you got sperm counts, cholesterol, CRISPR, even sea monkeys. You know, I did so many sea monkeys. Some field work on the beach, I was looking for sea monkeys, which you could make a little tiny shrimp scampi out of those brine shrimp. That would be very tight. I mean, maybe you could dry them out after they've hatched from the eggs and then sprinkle them on top of the scampi, just a little spoonful. Yeah. Brine ship fish. Just don't knock it till you kind of try it. Yeah, I wonder if any little kids have ever, anyway, this is getting everyone. We are so excited to have you here tonight. And as we jump into the show, I wanna remind our people out there that you can subscribe to this program. We are a live streaming web program, Wednesday evenings, 8 p.m. Pacific Time-ish on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. And the podcast is published, all good places that podcasts are found. So look for this week in science. All the places you like to find your podcasts, subscribe, share with friends. And if you need to know things that you've forgotten since I started this little dialogue, just go to twist.org. It's our website. Look for this week in science. Ready to jump in, Natalia? Oh, yes. I was born yeti. Let's do it. Yes! Okay, we're gonna start. I've thrown in a bunch of stories tonight with Natalia in mind. And we'll see where we take these things. First off the dock tonight, chimeric Chinese monkeys born, and, well, one monkey was born. Not a lot of them made it through this little experiment, but researchers have been trying to create chimeric organisms. Those are organisms that have multiple origins, parental origins. There's lots of cellular DNA from multiple individuals within each cell of the body. And any one cell could potentially have mommy-daddy DNA or it could have mommy-mommy DNA or mommy-mommy-daddy DNA. Or anyway, it could be a mixture. And historical efforts in chimeric monkey work have resulted in maybe 1% or definitely less than 10% chimerism in the embryos that have resulted. In this particular study that was just published in Cell, the researchers highlight their, it's the title of the paper, live birth of chimeric monkey with high contribution from embryonic stem cells. So what did they do in the study? What was happening? Why is this important now? The researchers have taken the monkey parental cells, created a blastocyst.  And then they took additional cells from another individual and added them to the blastocyst that was in the dish. And in adding these cells to the blastocyst, they resulted in a lot of non-viable embryos. And one of the embryos that made it out of the dish state was implanted into an adult mother monkey to gestate the embryo. One little embryo resulted. This little monkey embryo turned out to be very successful in terms of the chimerism. So up to 90% of some tissues were chimeric in nature. So they contained a lot of the DNA from the other additional individual that was added to the cells. And so they're excited about this, but it was like a really like one out of 10 success rate for the number of embryos that they created. The other ones did not work. And now I think it's a question of them trying to figure out what happened that was super successful with this one particular embryonic method, why it worked so well, versus the other ones. All that to say that this little embryonic, the monkey that resulted that was birthed, it only lived 10 days. So itself it was not a viable offspring. It didn't last very long. So it's still not, you know, it's not gonna work really well for like, we're gonna make little embryonic chimers of all sorts of cells from all over the place. We're not at that state at this point in time. It's not a viable successful method, but the fact that they had this one success that was limited in its success is pushing them to move forward to see, you know, their idea is, can we create animal chimers moving forward that have synthetic DNA or gene-edited chromosomes in order to study disease or study particular, instead of, you know, having knockout mice or whatever, can we create non-human primate chimers with tissues that are not human, but maybe partially human. So we can study some aspects of how different developmental or disease states occur in these situations. What do you think? Oh, man, it's fascinating. And again, it, again, I'm worried, my big question is why, you know, and if they really do think they could do some, really, I guess, good research that's going to benefit, you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people potentially, then maybe it is worth it. But again, the cost is a lot of monkeys are dying. A lot of them aren't going to survive. And also some of the, I don't know, I just feel like the ethical problems are pretty big here. And we saw it sometimes with cloning too when you had people cloning their dog. I did a podcast years ago when Barbara Streisand decided to clone her dog. And it only, a lot of the clones don't live very long. I don't know how long Barbara Streisand's dogs live for. I feel like Babs would take such good care of her clone. But still, yeah, you know, but it's never going to be the same, right? So I don't know, it's fascinating. And I actually, it was funny, I did a show with somebody last week and we were taking questions from males about dating and there was a thing going around on the internet that any time a woman had sex with a man, they would absorb their, when they got, if they did not use a condom, they would absorb the male sperm and there was that male microchimerism. And that I actually had to explain that it was not necessarily because, you know, they were absorbing sperm, it doesn't work that way. Like they found, you know, the DNA in the brain. I just like, I could see like the buddy road comedy where, you know, the road trip comedy where the two sperms are like in a car and like moving around and just like taking the road trip up to the brain. But it was about more if the woman who had had a male fetus inside of her or if perhaps her mother was pregnant and there was a male twin or, you know, there could be a myriad of reasons but it had nothing to do with the men that someone slept with. But again, I think it's a fascinating idea that there is DNA inside of us that might not necessarily be from our mother and our father. But again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that's a huge, that's a really interesting point to make though is that the way that our bodies work in the way that the reproductive system specifically works is so interesting in that extent, especially for women who have a uterus where cells can gestate and like you said, sometimes not make it all the way be reabsorbed or maybe there's a twin or maybe, you know, there are things that occur that are odd and then suddenly you've got different DNA in you. But you're, you know, you're fine. Our bodies go, okay, let's work with this.  Damn it, Kiki. You think, what do you think about the ethical implications of this? I mean, do you think it's a good idea? What's, where do you, what do you stand? I'm kind of torn on this one. You know, the extent that they are moving in this direction, I understand wanting to understand more about human development and human genetics and how things work together and not necessarily being able to study that in humans because there's, you know, even further ethical issues that go into, okay, we're gonna, you know, you can't have people get pregnant and then study their babies for science. This is not the way it works because hopefully we have better ethics now. But at the same time, I'm looking at this and primates and stop me if I'm wrong, but there are so many commonalities, which is why we're studying them as models of human genetics and human development and disease. But there's so many other commonalities that is just how is it ethically right to be able to push this forward when we have organoids that we can, you know, cell systems that we can study in dishes that there are other ways that we can look at this. No, I agree. And as somebody who studies primates, I love them, of course, but I also try to temper that love with also rationalism and, you know, could there be a benefit here? But I also think that, you know, if there is an alternative, why not focus on that alternative first? And yeah, for instance, it's like macaques are the second most widely distributed primate on earth. There's generally no shortage of macaques on this planet. People talk about Planet of the Apes and I always say, no, no, no, no, it's gonna be macaque attack 110%. But I believe- I think you can see that movie. Yeah. Oh God. Oh, I feel like I've lived that. I volunteered in an animal sanctuary with the macaque that I love her dearly, but when she comes out, I run the other way. Cause, yeah, they're intense, but yeah. I think macaque of Flocularis is, I believe they were put on IUCN as like a threatened, not quite, they're not endangered. There's still a lot of them, right? But I believe one, like something that, I don't think they're doing it on endangered monkeys at this point, but like, again, we are moving into a time when we're causing the six mass extinction, maybe we should be moving away from doing experiments on animals that are vulnerable. Yeah. Yeah, especially, yeah. I mean, and especially if it's, we're only really maintaining them so that we can have them as laboratory populations. What's up with that? Yeah. Sorry, sorry. Look, I like the human side of science, man. You know, you've got to maintain your humanity. Yeah. I don't know. I think, you know, this study, hopefully it will give these researchers information moving forward so that they lose fewer embryos so that there is a more success. But at the same time, what is the value of what we learn versus the ethics of working with the animals in the first place? Yeah, and what if that monkey does live past 10 days? Then what? What, right? Yes, I mean, everybody was all upset about the girls that were gene-edited in China. We don't know what happened to them. They disappeared very quickly. The embryo, human embryos that were gene-edited several years back. They're little toddlers by now, little, probably almost in kindergarten. But you know, we have no idea. What is their quality of life? Now they are protected. Now they're lab, you know, they're probably being studied themselves. I mean, it's just such a, this whole thing is a very interesting road. Just token? Right, what's the road that we're going down here? I don't know. I don't know. Speaking of gene-editing, researchers have recently not studied in monkeys what they did before. But now, because of work that was done in monkeys, they were able to study it in humans. Researchers just presented their work in the last week. It's a study published in, related to a study published in the Journal of Circulation earlier this year, but they were at a conference this last week and presented their work on using CRISPR-based editing to edit a hereditary form of high cholesterol. So there's a gene that leads people, they're born naturally, have high cholesterol, have heart problems, can result in a lot of health issues from that. They took 10 people into their trial that was, like I said, based on monkeys previously, mice, monkeys, and now humans. They edited a gene in the liver and this particular gene, so it's located to a specific tissue. It's not throughout the body. This is CRISPR-based editing as opposed to gene editing. So instead of editing, cutting out a whole gene and replacing it, they've just gone in and shifted one little tiny base pair inside of that gene. They shifted one thing from like an A to a C, or A to a G. So it turns this gene that's called PCSK9 off. And when that gets turned off, LDL cholesterol is controlled better. Anyway, in their trial, they found that these people who have familial hypercholesterolemia that out of the 10 of them, there were a couple who had significant reductions in their cholesterol levels. And this has been ongoing long enough for them to want to talk about it. So there was a control group. Nobody had any issues related to health. So this is like the first trial of human trials. There's like no health issues. There's no negative side effects as far as anybody has been able to tell. And at this point, they're just checking to make sure it's safe. Is it gonna hurt people? Yeah, that's always the next step. Yeah, I mean, again, it's this idea of when I'm getting accidentally shutting something off or on, you know, it's kind of like when you play God, you really do run the risk of making some unintentional changes as well. But you might not find out until, I don't know, five, 10, 15 years down the line, but it sounds good so far. Yeah, so that's something that they don't know. I mean, if you're just changing this gene in the liver, hypothetically, there's really no reason that this should change anything related to offspring. This should not be changing anything related to reproduction.  So this would not be a hereditary gene change that's happening. This is just a treatment for individuals. The next question is whether or not there's an increase in cancer risk, whether there are off-target edits that lead to these other issues that we don't know about. So now we're just looking, but it's a very exciting. Apparently it was a very successful early test. The two patients who got, it was dose related. So the highest dose saw a 55% decrease in LDL cholesterol and the next highest dosages saw 39 and 48%. But these are individuals, 10 individuals. Half of them were control and half of them were test. So this is such a small sample size, we can make no inferences really at all. We're gonna need a bigger sample size, Kiki. Yeah, it isn't small. Gosh darn it. Yeah, and also one of the things that the article mentioned was just, they wanted to see if this could be passed down to offspring if this gene edit, which I thought was interesting that they even, okay, if that's what they're considering could be a potential response. That would be fascinating. Right. Yeah, really fascinating. Yeah, except.   Let's mess it up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the question is, even if it doesn't do any of these things for 99% of the people, maybe there's 1% that their biology is just a little bit different than it does. So these are all the questions that until there's a much larger group of people willing to undergo the treatment or, I don't know. Maybe somebody's, yeah. One-time treatment versus cholesterol and heart medication every day for the rest of your life. Yeah. No, I mean, that's one of the things that I have a friend that he does not have. He doesn't have a genetic predisposition to high cholesterol, but he did, he actually was about to do a movie and they would not ensure him because his blood pressure was so high and his wife happened to be vegan. And so he tried a vegan diet just because he was like, well, shoot, why not? And I just tried this and he's, you know, his name is MC Ganey.  I was like, you know, a sweetheart, but gruff. And I was like, you're vegan.  Totally helps. Yeah.  But there are those people that don't have that option cause they're just, you know, again, it's a genetic thing that they're just gonna have high blood pressure forever. So that's an option. But who knows? It might make somebody spontaneously combust. I don't know. I don't, you know, the jury is still out. Highly unlikely, but possible. Just throw it out there. There are almost possibilities. I don't know. I don't know, but it's an interesting, it's a good way to go, right? In the, in the scheme of things. Like, you know, it's very fast, very fast. Super hot. Yeah. Super hot. And you know, great biopic. I would watch that. And then they burned. Then they exploded. That's it. Okay. Not explosions, but seawater is my next story to talk to you about. We love seawater. This is where, I don't know, where the sea monkeys and the brine shrimp love to be. No, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Biology in Bremen have just published in ISME Communications with their collaborators, their work on looking at horizontal gene transfer in organisms. And this is like the most fascinating thing to me. We've talked about horizontal gene transfer before. It's this idea that little microbes, they don't really care where their DNA comes from.  Take a packet of cards. You want one? Pick one. Okay, take one.  And so it's just like really exciting microbe DNA soup down there. And when you think about going in the ocean and traipsing about in those beautiful waves, just think about the number of millions, actually millions of microbes, little viruses, bacteria, other things that are swimming around and just a single drop of seawater.  These researchers determined that, this is the first time they've determined this as well. They went and they looked at the seawater and they're like, we expect to see viruses, things related to viruses and microbes and all their DNA. And this is what we're going to see.  And like, what happening here? And what they've determined is that this junk that they didn't expect to be seeing is from extracellular vesicles. Extracellular vesicles have become more commonly talked about in human biology. The fact that neurons and microglia can sometimes communicate using these little packets, little membrane-bound packets of DNA or proteins or nucleates or just little bits of information and they can go and merge with another cell.  And then it bloop and they grow into another cell and the cell goes, yay! And if it's a microbe, it goes, I really like your DNA. I'm gonna try that on for size. Yes, and suddenly they're sharing and it's wonderful. But this is, to me, just extremely thrilling. The idea that it's not just during replication, that these bacteria might be sharing their DNA doing, but there are these little packages of information that they're constantly sending around. Why they're sending them around? We have no idea. But these extracellular vacuoles full of DNA are allowing horizontal gene transfer. All this is just floating around in the ocean. This information, it's a sea full of information out there. Ha, ha, ha! I know, but I'm very excited about this. Oh yeah, I read this and I was really fascinated because, well, first of all, I think it's like a crime scene's worst nightmare. You know what I mean? It's just like, I don't know where my DNA is right now. Like my DNA could be anywhere. It could be in that guy. It could be in that guy. It's contaminating, yeah, I mean, it's your Lord. But on top of that, just the idea of looking sometimes I'll take samples of fresh water, sea water, and look at the DNA in it, like an environmental DNA sample. I know that they were trying to do that. I've hosted a Bigfoot show years ago, like one does. And I've done a lot of- As you do. As you do, you know. But I've done a lot of like cryptid stuff since then and that's one of the things they talk about with like Loch Ness especially, like, oh, we're gonna just take a environmental sample, like take a sample of Loch Ness water.   I mean, that's an interesting question.  So they should not have active DNA, but, you know, what information is still just information just begging to be picked up? But yeah, I mean, I think this red hair skin, all of it. Saliva, I've coughed up a lot of seawater before. I'm just gonna, you know, like I've got wiped out before. Did you, did you absorb it? Probably, probably. I'm, I don't know how many, I'm, you know what I am? I am, I'm filled with 550 million sea monkeys. That's what I am.   That's what I am, Kiki. No, brine shrimp in a flesh suit? Yes, okay. Yes, exactly. It's your Lord. Well, anyway, these researchers have now determined that because of this really interesting discovery related to extracellular DNA, that researchers should now not just talk about extracellular DNA, but when they're looking at environmental DNA specifically, they should be also looking for this protected extracellular DNA and they are calling it by a new name, P-E-D-N-A. It's a new name for the category that they are putting forward so that people in the research scene will be using the same terminology. So it's not just non-virus-like particles, but actually its own entire category of material that has its own uses biologically and environmentally. This is so cool. Oh man, I just like the idea. I mean, this is a cartoon I wanna watch. I would absolutely watch this. This is, I mean, like extracellular, like get real down to the micro level of SpongeBob. That's what I wanna see. SpongeBob at the extracellular DNA level. Oh my gosh. He's breathing it in and he's breathing it out. Suddenly his friend is swimming in the SpongeBob DNA. Oh my gosh. Very nice. We're swimming in all sorts of things. We don't like to think about it and we're learning more and more about all the stuff that affect us. We think, oh wait, I just breathe air. It's great, whatever. But there are all sorts of things in our environment that we're finding out are not so great for us. This last week researchers dropped this incredible study in the Journal of Environmental Health Perspectives. It analyzed 25 studies conducted over the last 25 years. Really robust meta analysis of the field of understanding how insecticides impact male sperm count. And the news is not great, gentlemen.  What am I thinking? I can't even speak. The worst it is for your little swimmers. We're talking a lot of sea tonight. We've got sea men, we've got sea water, we've got sea monkeys. I mean, we're just covering, yeah, exactly. I'm trying to be classy, but I'm really a... I'm failing miserably. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. The researchers looked at a whole bunch of studies and threw a whole bunch of studies out because they were biased or they had bad poor sample sizes. They didn't control for things well, but the pooled effect estimate remained negative across all the meta analyses that the different kinds of insecticides, specifically organophosphates and N-methylcarbomates reduce sperm concentration. And so this is not still causal.  It's more retrospective where they go, oh, how much time did you spend there? And then they find out that they spent a lot of time or a little time and then they count things. Part of it also is looking at the, not just numbers, but the quality of the sperm. So quality of sperm, which is really important. Numbers are not always what counts. It's also how strong those sperm can swim. How many tails? How many heads? Are they swimming in circles? Look, I study primates. We talk about chimpanzee sperm quality compared to human male sperm quality and no offense to the males listening or watching that human males don't have the best sperm quality or those humans with testicles do not have the best quality. Yeah, compared to say other non-human primates like chimpanzees where you've got a lot of male-male competition.  Why would you do that? Don't back down. Don't back away. Let me talk about sperm. No, but it is fascinating, you know, and the things that can affect and how long-term this can last. Yeah. I mean, and the one thing that we do know is like this, what they've seen so far is like a lot of these studies were like single counts of individuals. So this wasn't looking at a single individual over time. So part of this also is not understanding what kind of benefits come from reduced interaction with insecticides. So does it get better? Because sperm are not created like eggs. They are constantly produced over a man's lifetime. And so environmental changes can impact the quality of the sperm. All right. And that brings us to my last first story of the show, which comes out of a case study led by Southern Illinois University from Illinois. Yes, these researchers published in the International Journal of Paleopathology. What do they do in Paleopathology, Natalia? They study old diseases, Kiki. Yes, they do. Really old stuff. In this particular case, they were looking at really old ovaries. These researchers were looking at mummies from Egypt and found one of the oldest examples of teeth in an ovary, which is what we would call a teratoma because it's technically cancerous, because it's growing in the wrong place at the wrong time. This teratoma is identified as an ovarian teratoma. The young woman was an 18 to 21-year-old who was not elite, but it was kind of upperclass. She was a more adorned non-elite burial in a place called Amarna in Egypt. And this is one of the oldest, the fifth case ever determined in the archeological record and the only one reported from pharaonic Egypt or Africa. This is from the mid-14th century BCE. And very likely, it's possible that the young woman died from the condition or issues related to the condition, but there's no way of knowing whether that's the case or whether it was something else that led to her death, but they don't believe that she would have known that she had teeth in her ovary at that time. The molar of this story, Kiki. Oh my God. Let's get, we're on the cusp of greatness. No, that this, I need to, I know, I'm sorry. Let me get to the root. Let's chew on that one for a little bit. Oh my God, okay. Let me get to the root of the issue. So we've got to, no, anytime I hear stories about this, I had a friend recently that actually had an ovary removed that is similar, I forget, excuse me, I can't remember the exact name of the, of the cyst. It's like a teratoma where it does grow. You know, it's something that can grow hair and teeth. And yeah, I mean, it's the stuff of nightmares, right? But at the same time, it's not absolutely, it's not that rare, right? These things happen. And, but you just don't want it to happen to you. You just, if I may be so bold. I mean, these old, in the olden days, if there's an issue in the pelvic cavity or something like, and somebody could see inside of you at any point and they saw teeth or hair or other, like people would be like, you're a witch.  The superstitions would come in. It wasn't. She's a witch. Yep. Yeah, I know. I mean, that's what they were saying. She's not a witch. She turned me into a new, yeah. So if you did an acropsy, if they actually did find it. Yeah, unfortunately, you know, if she's already dead.  It's really messed up. And this is why, again, women really do get the short end of the old gender stick. Yeah, but yeah, again. And also what I think about too when I hear stories like this is the amount of pain that people have dealt with. I know that there was a homeopathic remedies, but just how many times do we pop an Advil or two and be like, oh, I just got this headache? I mean, you know, people were dealing with major infections and, you know, tumors and all sorts of. A lot of the things that we deal with today, right? But they didn't have this.  Yeah, exactly. Here, chew on this willow bark. You'll be fine. It's great. I have had so many root canals because I got hit by a truck when I was 25.  But I landed on my head. Your hair looks amazing. Thank you. I did land on my head, which explains a lot, but I cracked teeth. And so I've had about 14 root canals and I would be dead. I would straight up be dead. I would have abscess, you know, tooth, one after, you know, like, well, first of all, I wouldn't have been, yeah, I definitely would have been hit by a truck if I lived in ancient days, but still. Probably not. Yeah. No. This is wild. This is what I don't. This is absolutely wild. The image I put up on the screen just now. Yes. So I have shared, for those on the podcast listening later, I've shared an image of a teratoma in the tissues around the uterus near the ovaries. And it's really in the image they've just put like big, blurby things that kind of look like molars within the uterus. They do. They look like uterine walls. They pop corn, like buttered popcorn. Really, to be honest. Carmel coated. I got stuck in my teeth. I need some floss. Oh, dear. Yeah, I mean, it just, I think your point is to be well taken, that now we're once upon a time in Egypt, this young woman may have died from infections related to this condition. Today, if it can be picked up, people can have surgeries that can help them so that it doesn't impact their lives moving forward. Yeah. So we are very lucky to be where we are and when we are. Exactly. Yeah. And also, teeth were growing in ovaries like 4,000 years ago, 6,000 years ago, 14. Yeah, long time ago. Right, dear Lord. Was there a tooth fairy? What do you what happens when you lose a tooth? I'm sorry, you know, I'm going to go now. I'm a terrible human and it's been a long day. What was it? There was another somebody made a joke recently about like a reverse tooth fairy, but you like kidnap people and throw tooth teeth on the bed where you kidnap them from.  It is a weird, it is, it is like trafficking body parts. Do you not realize that we teach our children it's OK to to to sell body parts? Like, what's next to kidney? Like, you know what I mean? You start with your, you know, pre-molars and then. You can't look like your pancreas, Kathy. Go to sleep. Some stranger is going to come in and steal a tooth from under your pillow while you're sleeping at night. Don't give you money. That's great. Go to sleep. Sleep well. That's good. That's late stage capitalism for your kid, you know? Seriously. I saved all my teeth. I started, I waited, I got, I started losing them late and I started like, like, like hoarding them and not your baby teeth until you were 22. Like, no, like 15. But still, I kept them and like, I was going to put them on. But even at that age, I knew that it wasn't real, but I was going to put them all under my pillow and cash out big. That was my. All at once. Moe money, moe money. Making it rain. Oh, my God. That's such a weirdo. Oh, thank you for being that.  Thanks, me too.   I really hope that everybody who watches and listens to the show, like, they understand just how much of a weirdo. I don't know if they do. I try to be very normal. OK, all right, everyone, if you're just joining in right now, Natalia Regan is my incredible guest this evening. She is an example of, let me say, the best that science communication has to offer. She successfully straddles comedy and science and so much of her work. And honestly, like, for years, I kind of followed Natalia in, like, a little comedy psychom fandom of my own making. But anyway, I've always appreciated the comedy, but also the candor that she brings forth on important issues related to health. Like boobs and butts, mammograms, and these important things in life, very important. Yeah, I've been an incredible fan of the more recent shorts that you've been producing for TikTok and Instagram and these little bits of content that you've been putting out and everyone's like, I'll share. I'm like, hi, friends, you must know Natalia. She's great. But anyway, I do, at this point, need to start a video to introduce you all to Natalia. She's making me want to sign in. Do I have to sign in? I don't want to sign in. Do I have to sign in? I'm going to sign in. Log in. No, we're going to make this work. Gosh darn it. It's going to be great. I'm going to start it over. Which video is? I'll just reenactment. It's your introduction video. Hold on. You introduce yourself. And I'm going to let you. Hello. There. I'm going to let you introduce yourself in just one moment here. Hold on. Hold on. Refresh. Let's go. And we're making it good. Oh, no. Gosh darn it. Hi. Primatologist, comedian, mother of dragons, professor, podcaster, TV show host. Oh, I also make art with my boobs. And weirdo. Essentially, my passion is to make science funny. Yes, I use humor to make science topics more digestible for the masses. You may have seen my Going Ape series or Fossil Friday. You might also know this. I talk in a million different accents. Why? It isn't time for the backstory. If someone helped me with this, before I became a scientist, I was an actor. Guess how I got my sad card? I played a dance in chicken McNugget and McDonald's commercial. I failed for the stunt nugget. Hotting was such sweet and sour. Sorrow was terrible. Went on to play career-changing roles like pregnant prisoner with black eye. Yes, I'm sitting on the toilet. Not even my shittiest role. You might have caught me as a drunk groupie in my brawn panties on my name is Earl. Earl and Ralph's mom made out on top of my passed out body. At age 25, I got hit by this truck. Good news. I survived. The truck didn't. You want to know more about this totally freak accident. You can check out my story collider podcast. But, but, getting hit by that truck was the catalyst to go back to school to become a monkey-chasing anthropologist. Or a primatologist. Got my bachelor's degree from CSUN. I also went back for grad school where I got to move to Panama and chase monkeys whilst riding a horse. Mine liked to fart a lot. I had to do a survey of a critically endangered subspecies of spider monkey. Important side note. Never touch a wild monkey like this. Fontein Floss was a former pet that we were trying to get into a sanctuary. And that smile is pure fear. Because this is the next picture. She jumped on me. And while finishing grad school, I decided to combine my two favorite things, science and comedy. Started making videos in my garage, including the titillating, the story of boobs, the breast-tail ever told. That landed me on the Today Show. Talking tatas with Ann Curry. And I accidentally admitted I watched Skinnamax as a child. Sorry, mom. And a couple days later, Stephen Colbert made fun of our boob segment. Oh, for Butt Week. You can bet your sweet peachy keister I did a rebuttal. And Butt Week was born. For more butt stuff, you can check out my oligies podcast.  And I hosted this Bigfoot TV show. Then I moved to New York City to be a comedy writer and corresponded on Neil deGrasse Tyson's Star Talk. Then I got to talk some monkey morality with Bill Nye. So there's a little backstory. Thank you so much for your support. And please stick around for more appealing adventures. Ah! Okay, seriously. Do people go bananas for you? Ah! Well, sometimes. Usually it's because I'm wearing a banana suit. Yeah, you do wear a banana suit. What happened? How did you start going bananas?  You know what I mean? So for me, part of that was, you know, slipping into something more comfortable and putting on a banana suit. But yeah, I know it's, I wore it on the picket lines the past month at Warner Brothers. Every day I would go out there in my banana suit for, you know, the whole time. And so I became, I became banana. People just call me banana. And I'm not kidding. I don't have no more name. You're just banana now. Where are you? That is all. My banana costume's on my couch, but I got a lot of people to sign it when the strike ended to, yeah. Like Jerry Ryan, who came out every day I had her sign in. Oh, Jerry's so great. Yeah. Yeah. She's a big, like for, you know, part of the acting community. She's a big, not a science communicator herself, but a huge proponent of science communication and the things people do. But how, how are you feeling? Like this is not science or comedy related at all, but like the writer's strike, the actor's strike, all this stuff, like are you just relieved it's over? Are you happy with the results? TBD with the writers, yes, but with the actors. So I joined SAG 26 years ago and it had, you know, I've watched my union when I joined my union, when I was 18 years old, I only had to make $7,500 a year to qualify for health insurance. You got a card in the mail, didn't have to pay a premium. You had health insurance. Now you have to make $27,000 of SAG money a year to qualify. To even qualify. And then you have to pay a premium. So I haven't had SAG insurance for many, many, many years, right? So, and I also, that's a whole like United States systematic problem because our health insurance should not be tied to our employer because that doesn't incentivize them giving us hours or that money.  So it's a little frustrating because we can't, we're just been given a summary. And I don't know the actual wording related to the AI rights, which was just like, they could take your body, your face, your voice and use it however they want. Well, the new deal, the summary says we have to give consent, but they also can turn us down if we say we don't want to give consent. So how is that consent? That's not consent, that's coercion, basically, that space. Yeah, it's not, that's not how that works. So I want to know more, I, and I don't know about you, but I have been what is considered FICOR for 10 years because science communication, and this is another problem with our field, is not union. There's no union. Yeah. And I actually, I would love to do a video showing what I get paid for all the jobs I've done because I want people to know how little science, I mean, not because I'm like, wham, wham, wham, it's more about people telling me they want to leave academia. And I've been a professor. I was a professor, I left teaching because it paid so little, but I get paid just as little to be a science communicator.  Yeah, I'm a comedian. So my mom always goes, do these comedy shows pay? And I'm like, mom, no, it's comedy. But it's funny, it's not like I can't eat, come on. Comedy's pain, mom. It's pain, it's other people's pain. But yeah, so I think what we're seeing now, so yeah, for science communicator, communication purposes, I am now FICOR, which means I'm still, I'm not really part of the union. I'm part of it, but I don't get any of the benefits. I don't even get to vote, but I still, I'm so passionate. I was out there every day because I want to see change. And I also have been talking to a organization called the Nonfiction Coalition about unionizing psychom. So I'm hoping that we can make some strides in that because I think we can only benefit from that. And I tell other science communicators that I've turned down work because it didn't pay and I've had science communicators come to me and say, oh, can I grab that work? I would like to do it for free. And I said, you can do that. Don't do it for free. However, you need to be paid.  You screw yourself over because you're saying I am worth nothing, but you're also screwing all of us over because it tells these, and it was basically, it was my own boss. It tells the industry that all together we're worth nothing. We're worth nothing. And it was an organization or a company that I'd work for that is very high profile, that did have money, right? So this is where we have to fight, but that's my soapbox. I do think we're, this is a labor revolution. You had UPS who had made big gains this year with their contract. WGA hospitality workers were on the line. Starbucks workers, I just found out that WGA strike captains went out with Starbucks workers to strike this morning. You have CSU where I used to teach, they are threatening on going on strike right now. Yeah, there's bad students and others who like lecturers who are also looking at striking. Just throughout science, throughout entertainment across the spaces. We're done. And I had an argument with a relative who, she's not a blood relative, but she makes a lot of, she's rich, she comes from money. She's a relative by marriage. And I remember telling her that I made about $550 a week teaching basically three classes a week at a university where I taught in person for your university. And her response wasn't the system needs to change. This is unfair. Her response was, you should live with more roommates. You don't have to live alone. And I was like, I'm a 44 year old woman. It's your fault, Natalia. It's your fault you wanted to educate people. Right, I'm a 44 year old with a master's degree teaching at a four year university where students are paying X amount. And we know that tuition is constantly being raised, but what isn't being raised is the salary. And a bulk of the teaching is now done by adjunct lecturers, which is basically slave labor. It's next to nothing, it's indentured servitude. So I'm seeing a revolution and I'm excited to see it. I think the information economy has been devaluing information, right? It's been taken, everybody can get information. The internet is full of information. You all can have information at your fingertips whenever you want to go. You go, ah, information, information, information. But when do you have a person who is educated and wise in the ways of the area you want to study? Who can give you direction? Who can help to give you a curated version of the science to help you find a path among all the studies, among all the data sets, among all the things. I mean, yes, everybody can look at all the different data sets and yes, do your own research, hashtag. But expertise is valuable. There is time and there is effort and there is so much in what we know that I'm really, yeah, I think you're right. There is a revolution in the making in terms of what we know where we are. Absolutely, I think, I even just found out that my mail carrier let me know that postal workers have been working without a contract for months. Did we learn nothing from the 1980s? Going postal did not happen. That's not a euphemism. That is about just- It came from somewhere. Yeah, like, I mean, I'm just, and do you know how many postal workers I just did a stand-up bit about this? There are 630,000 postal workers. We have 630,000 disgruntled postal workers in the United States. Like, what are we doing, you know? So again, like, across the board, the disparity of the haves and the have-nots is growing and it needs to, it will sort itself out, but again, it's just in the meantime, a lot of us are suffering. Yeah. I mean, have another latte, just, you know.  It's okay. Just stop having so much avocado toast. If you would just stop, you could afford this mansion.   It's, you know, it's got fiber. Chlorophyll.  Oh, Jesus. Sweet purple cheese. It's a little bit about some really awesome things you've been doing recently. What kind of science are you interested in? What do you like these days? So, God, lately, this past year, I started podcasting for Scientific American. So I had a podcast that, yeah, that came out in September about a lesbian monkey love triangle. Yes, at an animal sanctuary that I volunteer at called Animal Tracks. You should look them up online. They're wonderful. They're called Animal Tracks in Aguadolce, California. But it's three monkeys, two species, one hell of a love story. It's a white-faced capuchin and two brown capuchins that have a torred love affair. The white-faced capuchin has just reached puberty and she is just a hot and bothered monkey. And so she goes back and forth, pleasuring. So it's Bailey, Macy, and Haley. Hey, bae, may. And Bailey goes back and forth, pleasuring Macy and Haley. Oh, my. But their power dynamic is really interesting because Bailey is, you know, she's the white-faced capuchin. She's younger. Haley is the lowest of the monkeys on the ladder of monkeys. And so when she's pleasuring Haley, she is essentially kind of dominating her, right? But when she's pleasuring Macy, that's boo on the far right. That's, he's not involved. He's actually been fixed, poor boy. But when she's pleasuring Macy, it's about serving the dominant one. So it's her way of buttering one's biscuits. So it's like, if I butter your biscuits, you might drive the getaway car when we rob the banana stand again.  But as I was writing this, yeah, as I was writing this, another study came out of Chiosantiago of macaques, back to macaque attack. Macaques that they were studying, they found that there could be an evolutionary benefit to homosexual behavior in a group of males. They found 76% of these, I think it was 273 males. 76% of them were mounting other males. And only I think 25% were mounting females.  So perhaps by buttering the biscuits of the males that are dominant, they will have more access to the ladies that they want and perhaps father more for offspring.  We generally, pansexual would be the term, a lot of fluidity, but I think we can see that across humans. Yeah, it's just a monkey there, right? It's like, why are we labeling it any particular way aside from anthropomorphizing based on the particular more age that we have right now? That, and I do think anthropomorphism is an interesting idea because I don't know, the more I think about it, the more I kind of get a little perturbed by some of it only because we have to remember, like for instance, we look at primate behavior and we're like, wow, they're like us and we try to find ways that they're like us but it's like, have we stopped and think for a second?  We are just like them in many ways. We have like a lot of the emotions that we feel, grief, jealousy, understanding what's fair or not, altruism, we see that in a lot of animals. So what's to say that they're like us? I mean, that's pretty species centric, if you ask me. I think it totally is. And I think it goes, this impacts also the research questions that are being asked because if we're trying to just say, oh, they're like us, so we'll ask these questions, it's not actually, like the difficulty is getting researchers to just look at the animals as the animals they are and take all the bias away from it with no like judgment or what expectations. Yeah, well, a great example is gender. This idea of gender, gender is a constructed idea by humans, yes, there's differences between the sexes but I'm probably gonna make some people piss but scientists have known for a while that sex and gender are not the same and neither, okay, good. I figure, I know, this ain't Joe Rogan. Or is it, are you, wait a minute, who's under that mask? Great reveal. Joe Rogan experiences all the time. No, but sex and gender are not the same and neither are binaries. But this idea though about gender and foisting these sort of gender roles on non-human primates is just ridiculous, right?  And I'm like, yeah, I mean, there's also this idea that there is some sort of, culture, sometimes with some different primate groups cause a lot of behavior or what they call it culture just behavioral adaptations to the environment cause that's oftentimes what it is if they're responding to what the environment is and there's a lot of plasticity in primate behavior. We've seen primates go from having a very strict hierarchy to in one generation become nearly egalitarian, you know? And one of my favorite books is writes about that Robert Sapolsky is a primates memoir. If anybody is interested, it is the book that basically made me want to become a primatologist and he talks a lot about how plastic we are. Yeah, I love his work in primatology and behavior and like so much of his work. I'm not sure about his recent, most recent book and free will and all the terminism and all that kind. I'm like, okay. That bummed me out a little bit. So, I know, yeah, I need to read more cause I'm like, I love him so much and so much behavior was really fascinating. And but yeah, the free will stuff is, yeah. It's interesting, you know, when you're scientific, not idols, but the people you look up to, you know. Yes, I remember when I was a PhD and he gave a keynote speech at the annual Society for Neuroscience Conference and just the excitement of getting to see him speak and like talk about the brain and hormones and behavior and all the work that he had done and it was fascinating. But this is like another step beyond it where it's like, okay, you're like Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about sea slugs. This is, you'd get out. Yeah, well, so, and I, you know, I worked with Neil but one of the, I will take him to task for one moment, but one time he tweeted. And he used to run primate tweets by me. He would run something and I'd be like, no Neil, that's wrong. Or yes, that's right.  He's a very smart man. But he's very smart. On Twitter or whatever that place is now, he would get torn apart by the biologists every time he stepped into the biology ring. Every time. But my favorite, favorite, favorite tweet was, if there was a species for which sex was painful it would have long since gone extinct to which the biologists immediately leapt on and were like bedbugs, black widows, cat, praying mantises, like, you know, just ducks, pig, like all of them. So many. I mean, we're talking endometriosis real quick. But like, again, actually that's something I won't go into but another thing that's really fascinating to me is also endometriosis and the lack of attention it gets. But that's just a sight thing. That's a lady problem. Yeah, well, actually my next podcast with Scientific American is called Junk Science.   It's genitalia. Erin Feinstein, brilliant and mean. Love him. Oh, boys. Oh, middle school. But I got to interview Dr. Blair Peters, the surgeon who finally counted all the nerve fibers on the female clitoris, the human female clitoris. I interviewed them about two months ago and it were a month and a half ago and it was fascinating. And you'll appreciate this, guess what? Well, first of all, Dr. Blair Peters is a peripheral nerve and gender affirming surgeon. That's what they specialize in. And I asked them, why did you count all the nerve fibers on the human clitoris and just guess, guess why? Because no one had done it before. It's a great, great, great guess. No, it was to build a better penis. No, I mean, I should have gone there first because that's super patriarchal and really the way that a lot of the research is addressed. But this shows why transcare, it helps everybody, right? Because now we know. This is the perspective that researchers are coming from when they wanna think about female reproductive health and sexual health, then it's really all about the penis.  It's great. I feel like I have that saved, hold on. I feel like this is something everyone should do.  Have you ever seen the Mount Vesuvius or the Pompey Dicks? Pompey weans, I don't know what I can say here. Pompey baloney ponies, they're the weans with wings. Weans with wings. Yeah, my step-grandfather is Italian and he had a book about it and I was enamored. You know, I got busted for writing, I was a smut peddler as a tween.  Because, and sorry mom, your mom knew already. She knew. Oh wow, these are some good weans. There, I mean, there are weans with wings. I love these. Weans with tails, there are weans growing out of heads. There are. With noses. Large, there are small, it's fascinating.  In this one, I just want to point out, the balls, oh wait, hold on, they're knees. They're knees, that's what they are. Test knees, they're test knees. I'm gonna just, wow, some of these are very impressive. And this is, it was archeology, that's history. Well, the world's oldest, can I say this word? Maybe the world's oldest dildo is thought to be 30,000 years old. Okay, good, I just want to make sure. Yeah, it's very, you know, I mean, it's science. Well, because there was a study that came out last year that macaques, a back to macaque attack. You can't get away from macaque, macaque. I gotta keep touching macaque, okay. Touch back to macaque. But they found that they were masturbating with pebbles. No. And so, yes. Ladies. No, no, no, the males were. Yeah, I'm like, how it, what, I don't, yeah. But still, that's why I did that research, science. There was, I'm not just a, This is research. A draped pervert, I mean, I'm that too, but there was, this was for science. But yeah, so with junk science, so I interviewed Dr. Blair Peters, Dr. Jen Lincoln and OBGYN and then a urologist, it's Dr. Ashley Winter. But I also, you'll love this. I interviewed, or she's soon to be Dr. Ashley Falwell, who did the research that discovered that snakes not only had one clitoris, they have two Davils door bales and it's forked. The carpets match the drapes.  So there's. The hemi-penes. The hemi-penes, yes. Double fun. And she showed me tons of pictures or not pictures, but actual plasticized hemi-penes. And I gotta say, they were excellent. Just really something. Plasticized. I don't know if they were plasticized. Maybe that's, did I make that word up? Jazzercised? That's a real word. Maybe they were just in formaldehyde, but they were just, they were gorgeous. They were terrifying.  He, I've been staring off to the side because I was trying to remember a science writer, friend of mine was writing an article and I don't know if she actually has published it at this date, so I'm not gonna say anything, but in your interest of this kind of topic, you should look up Minotoxin. Minotoxin. Minotoxin. Is that male, yeah. No, apparently there was an idea that floated about for a very long time that female menstrual blood or the menstrual cycle produced toxins, toxic to men and those around them. And the story, like if you dig into the story. Oh dear lord. There's a scientist, a housekeeper and the rest is history, but. I can't wait, this is amazing. Well, yeah. Seriously, it's a deep dive if you wanna go Minotoxin. I don't know. And it's only within like the last 10 or 15 years that researchers are really going, no, there is no such thing as Minotoxin and addressing this wild tale from some male scientist's brain from so long ago, but yes, for. Was it David Wakefield? Yeah, right, yeah. Oh my God. Decades, decades of this garbage. Wow. People were just like, yeah, okay. Yeah, that's why we have to put women in a room or get them to go away. That's great. Do you know Kate Clancy? Is it Kate Clancy? Do you know Kate Clancy? She just wrote a book, you would love her. She is. Yes, the biological anthropologist. Yes, she did the work recently looking at the changes to menstruation based on COVID vaccination or yes, I got it. Yeah, good. And she just wrote a book called Period. You did? Okay, cool. I don't know if I should tell you this. I feel like your viewers have already gotten a clear idea of how weird I am. I do make art with my boobs, but I have known to do this in the past and present to make art with my menstrual fluid. Really? Yeah.  It's art supply, let's forget shark wheat, it's art wheat, you know? Who needs to go to the art store when I have fresh supply once a month? I mean, look, it's a miserable time, why not make the best of it? The most of it. Especially when you're having to be by yourself in the woman tent. Oh yes, my hut. It's very uncomfortable. I have to go out there, I get displaced. I live across the street from Warner Brothers, so it gets a little weird. What is it? The three little Warner Brothers, little characters coming out. Yeah. Hey, hey. What's going on there? Natalia? Meadow Toxin, stay away.   There we go. Oh my God. But yeah, that's how I make lemonade out of lemons. Or artwork out of period products. Yes, I know. I'm, yeah.  Well, you know what? At a certain point, like I'm getting older, like there's a point where I know that this is limited. See, this is all, this, this is, the window is closing. Oh my God. Are we seriously going to come see your art show? That's the like life exposition. It's like, D. My Boop Paintings from the beginning to end. Oh my God. I don't even think I have the old ones, because I think, you know, after five million moves, they've gone away. Yeah. I would love to see that, though. It would be so hilarious. It would be like a life in blood. Blood sweating. Actually, I'm not. The woman's life, the beginning and end. I may have an Instagram page, and it may be called My Period Pieces. It may be. Okay. Probably, possibly. And my name might be Hema Globan. Perhaps, Hema for short. And it just got real. Yeah, I, yeah, I'm spitsin' over here, because I don't generally. I admit it. I know. I told my dad recently, and he was like, What's art? Why? What, do you want to see one? I bet I could. I didn't want to have a cheetah. No. Oh my gosh. I love this.  I know. It's really ridiculous. But it's, you know, it's art. It's a thing. I like how you are expressing yourself. I do what I can. Whatever works. Yeah. Sounds like you have a follower on Twitter now. Oh no. I already saw it on Twitter. Hello. How are you? I hope I haven't totally disturbed anybody. But yeah, I, you know, again, like I feel like if you can kind of combine science and comedy and still, you know, find other hobbies that are entertaining, you know. What is life except like, seriously, if you're not finding a way to entertain yourself throughout it, are you enjoying your process? We 3D print skulls, too.  Yeah. That's fun. Yeah. So scientifically accurate reconstructions of the skulls that are, yeah, it's a scan. So they do a see the actual scan and then you can print it. It took four days to make that one because they just take forever. Yeah. So is it resin printing or is it? It's PLA. So I have, we have a resin printer but you can't run that in the house. It has to be the garage. It's toxic. It's stinky, yes. I'll get real high. Not the kind, you know, not the high you want. Not the fun kind. No. Natalia, yeah, I'll lose a few too many blood cells or brain cells, which I've already probably lost just in life in general. But yeah, no, it's the filament. It's the PLA filament, which is actually made from corn, essentially. So it's really cool. And you didn't get that recycled. They have recycled sourced PLA and yeah. Yeah. I love that gold color for what species is that? Granthorpus boisei, I'm my favorite. It's OH5 found by Mary Leakey. Awesome. I love him. His nickname was Zinjianthropus and then they later gave him, or well, his name was Zinjianthropus and then they renamed it Paranthropus boisei as the genus and species, but yeah. And he has ridiculously large molars. There we go. He's so shiny. He's gorgeous. He's beautiful. Yeah. How many skulls have you printed? What do you, how many do you have? We have one to, we have two tong childs because we were trying to get it dialed in. So we have maybe four. This is another one. This is Paranthropus. I'm sorry. I was doing- Here's another one. This one's black. Oh, that's great. That's a dark. Is that a dark black color? Yeah. So this is black skull. That's actually its name because when they discovered it was, it was encased in a lot of magnesium. So the skull itself was really dark. It was discovered by Alan Walker and Richard Leakey of the Leakey fame. His mom discovered this. So two Paranthropus individuals were discovered by Leakey people and discovered in 1985. But yeah, they have these huge sagittal crests. You can kind of see right here. It looks like a conquistador helmet. Yeah. And that is cause they had big chompers, big old molars. So there were large muscles that had to come up and attach to the top of the skull to be able to have the bite strength. Yeah. Even though we've determined through rigorous research that humans and our amazing jaw is here so that we can punch each other. Yeah. Yeah. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Excuse me. And we have a, we were also, none of them had a chin. You know, I always, yeah, keep your chin up because you have one most. We have one. We have none of them. None of them others. Our primate, our primate brethren, they're like, what chin? I don't have a chin. Chinless. Chin, chinless non-human primates. Aw. Over. Yeah.  Or do you want to? Yeah, absolutely. So I was, I did two episodes recently on the History Channel and we covered some, one of them is just a constantly developing story. Now, I don't know about you, but I am 100% team Orca. We talked a little bit about this labor revolution. And I believe that these sassy, sassy citations take the term, eat the rich quite literally as they have been attacking and ramming rudders of sailboats since 2020. There's been over 500 attacks, attacks on these different yachts. Four boats at this point have been sunk by these Orcas and they're trying to figure out, trying to get to the root of why this is all happening. And it seems they found the original Orca that has been orchestrating these attacks of these games of yachtsy. I know it's terrible. There's too many puns. I just need to stop. But there's these three Orcas that have seemed to be associated with a lot of these attacks. And the main ringleader is a Orca, a mature female named White Gladys. And then there's gray and black Gladys, which are two juvenile males. And they think the timing makes sense that White Gladys may have been pregnant when these attacks started to happen. And she shows a lot of signs of scars, just different cuts and markings on her body as if she had either been hit by a propeller, one too many times, or caught in a net. And so one of the theories is that, because what's happening is she is attacking these rudders and it's the crazy cool thing is they know, they know that a rudder, if you disable a rudder, the boat's SOL, it's not going anywhere. You're screwed. No, not going anywhere. And you could potentially- And probably going over. Sink it. You can possibly breach the hull, right? Yeah, so they're going for the soft, vulnerable underbelly. And what's happening is she's doing this and the other two males have learned and are following suit and doing it with her. And not only that, but she's transmitting this behavior or it's being learned or imitated, whatever you wanna call it, by other Orca groups. And so we're seeing this behavior grow in this area, which by the way, this is off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula in a very populated area where a lot of boats have to go through called Orca Alley, it's been called that. And basically what's happening is they're attacking these rudders, disabling boats, and it's either thought that it's retaliation. Like she's actually- Like retaliation? Yeah, retaliation. I wish, I wish. I wish White Gladys knew who I was. I love her so much. In this dream of revenge. She's such a beauty.  But she's attacking these boats. It's not sure if it's retaliation or it's play because Orcas like to play. You can see them, you know, and they also will imitate and they have different fads. Like in summer of 86, they were taking, they took to wearing salmon on their head like hats. So for no reason, just because. Just weirdos, I love them. Yeah, just salmon hat. Do you have a salmon hat? Just for the hell of it, you know, that's why we do it. You knew it was coming. You felt it, you felt it. But yeah, these sassy citations, I mean, yeah. And if it's not enough that they can ram the rudders and disable the boats, they also have an eight foot long prehensile baloney pony that they could, you know. What if they put that to work? The whole new meaning to cold cocking, that's all I can say. Yeah, absolutely. It's terrible. It's terrible jokes here.  That cork was popped in that. Yeah. I mean, there. The boat was not left bobbing like a cork in the water. Oh my God. That's that's my case of bubbly. Yeah, it was bad. And they're just eating the rich like straight up, you know what I mean? Like eating the rich just don't even care. They're just like, we got this. I think the actors need to team up with the workers. I think the postal workers. Yes, workers and unions. There we go. Oh my God. Contract problems. Yeah, this is, yeah, this is a great idea. Yeah, no. So they also just sunk a Polish ship last week. Yeah, because I did this, I did this show last Tuesday and it was a few days before, yeah, a few days before that, they, they sunk their fourth ship and it was, and they, they, they attack for like an hour. There's been a couple of accounts of like how terrifying it is. And you can imagine if you're on a sailboat, which I actually, I lived on a sailboat off in San Francisco for like a year, which it sounds a lot sexier than it was. It was miserable. Yeah, cold in San Francisco for the sailboat life. Cold and small.  And I would be terrified. You think we'll be in Portland? Yeah, right. But yeah, so that, that's, I don't know, it's a fascinating story more, more to come, but it's left a lot of people just sort of terrified to sail their sailboats through that bay in Peninsula. I have a friend actually who put life savings into a boat and went sailing and had to leave Harbor through Orca Alley. And there were reports of Orca sightings, but their boat, their boat made it through, but like a couple of boats behind them was, it was attacked. And so like they just narrowly missed being attacked by Orcas. And yeah. Yeah. So they, they were very, yeah, there was definite anxiety about that going on. Yeah. Because they've sunk, so they've sunk four so far. It looks, yeah. The last, the Polish one was number four. Because that's the thing. They're going to get better at sinking the boats. They're going to learn the techniques a little bit better. But I think this is fascinating because we've, we've talked about this story on the show before, but they hadn't gotten as far as tracing it back to the like. White Gladys, yeah. White, white Gladys. Well, that's, I know. This is seriously like, is this an HBO special? So good. Yeah. And, and they think, okay, so it was pregnant when this started. So, you know, they're very protective of their calves. This is how crazy she is about ramming rudders. She's really into it. She will leave her calf to ram a rudder, which is not generally, you know, that's what scientists were kind of like, whoa. Poor parenting. There she, you know, it's a little risky. Maybe there's a little PTS, Orca PTSD there, maybe? Like. Yes.  I know. Get it? Because they're in a pod. The pod, the Orca pods. Yes. Don't listen. Just don't, just don't, just don't. I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop. But seriously, I want to know what's going on. I want to know, I want to get to the bottom of, so that's, that's one thing. And then we also, we're talking about permafrost. And this is crazy. This is, as you know, the worth, the earth is warming. That, that ship has sailed. Is that? What? What? I know. You've never heard of this news. Fake news. We just, we just had dengue fever. I feel like in Pasadena. And it just, and that person hadn't been traveling. So it's like, well, okay.  I could have been, yeah. Yeah. But, yeah. So anyways, permafrost is melting. Permafrost, of course, is, you know, called permafrost because it's earth that is permanently frozen. But as climate is warm, you know, as greenhouse gases are emitted in the atmosphere, earth is warming, permafrost is melting. And when permafrost melts, guess what? All that organic matter in the permafrost is now able to decompose. And what does it do? It emits even more greenhouse gas. So it's climate change causing climate change. Yay. And then, I know. And so they, you know, like the snow called unexplained, unexplained. And I've done several, a few episodes of the regular show, but this is unexplained now, which is like a shoulder content. But they talked about how they were drilling in Siberia about 130 feet down and they found nematodes, a new species of nematode, which is a roundworm, a parasitic roundworm. And it was about, almost 50,000 year old roundworm. And it came back to life. So like those brine shrimp, it's that cryptobiosis where these species can actually freeze metabolic function. So basically like a brine shrimp, this nematode froze all metabolic function. It came back to life. And immediately started reproducing. And they're an all female species. So they weren't banging. This is just like, it's like a mother's job. I'm going to split. I will, I'm just going to be my daughter. I will make my daughters. And then my daughters will make my daughters. And we're, yeah, we're splitting. We're budding. That's good. But yeah, so immediately, right? But this is just an example of, you know, the fact that we are waking up a host of, you know, well, we're the hosts, but a host of potential zombie viruses, bacteria, like cause, you know, one of the questions they asked me was like, well, what about a woolly mammoth? Could that come back to them? Well, no, we're not going to get a reanimated woolly mammoth, but the bacteria and that woolly mammoth's gut has already been known and seen to wake up. And some of it is even antibiotic resistant bacteria. That's wild. So they had, because we know with antibiotics, a lot of these antibiotics come from bacterial warfare, right? The bacteria fighting each other. And so we found them because we're like, look, this bacterial toxin kills another bacteria. We'll use it. And yeah. So you have these reemergences of genes and mutations and traits and yeah. Yeah. No, it's great. I mean, the whole zombie virus, you know, again, we talk about things like Zika or Dengue or yellow fever coming further north, but we don't talk about the things that are sleeping. Right. The emerging infectious diseases, which are the ones we're looking at right now that have been around for a while, but that are just moving with the climate changing versus the sleeping ones.  Herpes virus is like, I love these proto humans. We'll stick around with them. And so we have evolved with a lot of viruses, with a lot of bacteria. And so I do wonder, even though now we haven't been exposed to things, how much our immune systems still have in them from, you know, just little bits and pieces from previous infections ancestrally? How much is in our DNA still?  Just rub it all over us. Just go swimming in the ocean. That's, yes, absorb it. Yes, this is what we will do. What are the extracellular vesicles? Yes. Yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting to see. That's the newest in skincare. Right. Well, there, I mean, wait a minute. Remember, I'm sorry.  And I remember La Mer. La Mer face lotion, which is the sea. Yes, the sea. The sea. Were we just rubbing weird DNAs all over our face? That's right. Thank you. La Mer. La Mer. What are you doing today? Something. Something. How are you? I don't see anything. Without my vibrator. That might have been dirty. I'm sorry. To your French. I'm going to go to the library. My friends. I'm Laura de Fremage.  I was going to say, yeah, one of the things that was really interesting is, is anatomically modern humans. So, so we're talking about being chinless at one point. And I just want to point out, there were two camps for a while that thought, yes, we definitely had sex with Neanderthals, anatomically modern humans, because we will have sex with just about anything, right? Anything with legs that walks up, right? We will probably, it doesn't even have to have like that chair.   But there were a lot of people that actually there was a whole camp of people that were like, we would never, we would never have sex with those chinless freaks. Never! We're humans. Yes, we would never. But the ancient DNA, like hips, does not lie, it doesn't lie. And it told a little story. It snitched, it snitched on those Neanderthals. And it was like, yeah, we definitely boned them. And we also gained, you know, there was benefits to boning Neanderthals because we actually gained some of the immunity that they had developed from living in a cold Europe. You know, and also some of the traits that helped them, whether it was, you know, being stockier, having more fat reserves, broader chest, whatever, stockier build, paler skin for absorbing that vitamin D or that sunlight to synthesize vitamin D. And yeah, so I don't know. It's just very interesting. Like what if we maybe have any immunity to some of these sleeping pathogens that are just waiting to. Right, yeah. So it's got to be, I mean, we've been evolving. We talk about, you know, systems evolving together for eons. And so what is, we've been here. We've evolved with these things, even though some things might be sleeping. We also know that there are lots of little repeats, another sleeping retroviruses and other things in our DNA. You know, what do we know? I don't know anything, Kiki. I'm just here to party. I'm just here. I'm just here to rage. With white, with white, gray and black glattis and ram rudders. That's what I'm here to do. Oh, ram rudders. That's my stage name. My drag name is my cocaine. That's my drag king name. I'm just going to wear a little pencil. Yeah, when I'm doing my drag routine, it's always going to be, I'm misinformation. It's a good one. Yes. It's a good one. It's a very good one. Only I did drag, but I don't. I'm sure there's somebody out there who's got to be using that name. I can't believe I don't. I always have mustaches. Where are my mustaches? Where are my minions to bring me my mustaches? My boyfriend would laugh if he were here, because I'm not, I can't even tell you how many times we find mustaches throughout the apartment where he'll find something on his floor and he'll pick it up. But I'm like, what is this? I'm like, it's a mustache. Because every five minutes you mustache in my question. I mustache. I found this. This is weird. This is like some weird. What is that? That's a fun costume image. I think I have a mustache on my, I cleaned it recently. It's really, really wonderful that this is actually distressing to you that you don't have a mustache. I also have a very fun. I know.  There are a lot of boob paintings because I did a live earlier and I was not with my, I was showing them the paintings, not my boobs, to be very clear. Thank you for clarifying. Yes, yes, yes. There were questions. I'm here to answer them. But God, no mustache.  What is happening? What world do we live in? Not one that I want to continue. Somebody came and took all your mustaches, cleaned them up. Honey, quick, come home. Someone has robbed us. What have they taken? My mustaches. I cannot find one. They must have come and gone on a razor scooter. You read my mind. You know that they probably did. Oh, this is so depressing. Oh my gosh. All right. So we've got Neanderthals. We've got reemerging diseases. We've got permafrost. We've got multiple clitorises on snakes and orca attacks. I'm looking for a mustache. Okay. I know you are. Where did Natalia go? Oh, on the wild mustache. The wild mustache hunt. I have come up with nothing. I am so sad. In the chat says they all left as they said they must dash. Winner, winner, winner, winner. Thank you very much. Must dash. That is Kevin. Kevin, high five. My hug just ran over here. My dog just ran over to tell Kevin that she must dash, but she also loved your joke. Did you bring a little basket of mustaches? The chances of finding the mustaches. Oh my God. I wish. Yeah, what? Someone just, I'm not the woman I used to be without my mustache. I mean, the funny thing is, if you get close enough, you can see that it is coming in nice. You know. So something, not mustaches, but I found out that my husband's new thing is watching television programs with really attractive women with like big, bushy eyebrows to try and figure out which of them must have a mono brow. That they shave. Oh, that they'd like just. That is. That is good. We're watching like an old Star Trek episode. He's like, definitely a mono brown. Yeah, because the old, so that's a thing. This is the deal with the old ones. Yes, but with the new ones, microblading. Right. Yes, my. Yeah. Microblading is a tough one because I've seen people with like nothing. And then like all of a sudden, bam. He's like, Kara. What's her name? Kara de Levine or Vina or something. Kara de Levine Brow or Vine together. She's got great brows. Great brows. Like Brooke Shields catapult or brows, you know. It's wonderful. Raising chill out. We'll go out soon. My dog, my pug. Pugs like you're talking about eyebrow. Please, I must go out. Are you have, do you have to keep talking? I must choose the facilities. By facilities, I mean your backyard.  Oh, hold on, pug. Just one moment. Oh, there she is. I forgot I have headphones and folks at home, just so you know. She wants to be part of a pug now. No, she's just breathing. That's her. No, people always think she's growling. That's the sound she makes. Uh-oh. Is Kiki going to get an animal? Because I swear to God. Oh, I thought you were going to get him. That's on the couch over there, but I'm just dying of laughter here. She really is. This last weekend, I saw a Nobel Prize-winning scientist presented. Like you're saying pug. Pug presenting. And of course, I'm blanking on the name because I have the memory of a goldfish. And so, yes, Francis Arnold. And Francis Arnold was fantastic, talked about creating new enzymes and the technology, the chemistry technique that she pushed forward that she got the Nobel Prize for. But her humor was great because she was like, look, biologists, you think you're awesome? You have like this much of the world to play in. You are constrained by nature. I have the whole universe. So she's going on. She's like, and also humanity, what are we doing? We're creating these things for our own uses. I mean, why are poodles? She makes a really good point. The pug with the breathing. Oh, don't get me started. This is like the panda of humans genetic tinkering. She's very cute.  She's not very bright. I love her. I love you. I love you, but no, no, this.   And she fulfills that role very well here, but she, I would not. My boyfriend, he came with a pug. That's why I swiped. Right. It was because I mean. Thank you. Yes, I would give a pug. You like your pug. She was, he looked like a good dog dad, you know? That's, there's something very sexy about that. But yeah, their selective breeding has been cruel. Yes. Yes. And dog domestication is fascinating too. Like that thought to maybe have helped us out compete Neanderthals. Right.  You know, they killed maybe a few of the mice, but you know, dogs probably did that a little bit better even. But possibly. I don't know. I am convinced my cat, she is like the most wonderful, soft lap cat. She just gets in there. She's like, no, I'm an anchor. I hold you to the couch now. You shall not ever rise again. And I shall be soft like a chinchilla. Oh, I want to love her in a way that's appropriate for a human to love a cat, but as soft like a chinchilla. Yes. What's her name? Cappy. Oh, is she a capybara? Why did she get the name Cappy? It's so cute. She's a tabby. She's a tabby cat. And when my child was young, I was explaining at the time we had our other cat Stella. It's like a star. And then I was like, Oh, well, there's a scientist named Tabitha. And she found this star, which is doing these weird things and people want to know why the star is acting the way that it is. And so she's studying it and it's called Tabby's Star. And I was thinking, maybe we could call the cat, the cat Tabby's Star because she's a Tabby. And Kai said, yes, Cappy's Star. Oh, and so she's been Cappy. Cappy ever since. How old is she? She is eight years old now. I want to love her. Midlife. Midlife. I'm going to come to Portland. I will. You must. Come to Portland. I shall. Please tell Cappy I'm coming. I shall take the first train at dawn. She'll be here. Oh, she glared at me just now. She doesn't care. Tell her to shove it. Bring me a fish. I want a fish. Cappy. Give me a little salmon hat. I want one of those. She could be a little orc. I did. I dated a guy years ago who had a black and white cat named Shamu. And I called Shamu the orcat because it was an orcat cat. It was an orcat. But his name was Shamu. She was a good cat. She's dead now. I'm just laughing now. That poor kitty. Pretty brilliant. Good kitty while she was up. I'm just thinking now about putting my cat into an orca costume with a salmon hat on top of it. Hilarious that would be. It would be better if someone like she would kill me in my sleep. But I would love it if you walked down the street because I think that was a joke. Was it Puget Sound? Was it like, I feel like it was in the Pacific Northwest. I feel like it was. It wasn't like Orca Alley. But I would love it if you walked down the street and somebody was like, Summer of 1986. Orca's wearing Sammons as a house just for the hell of it. Like they just, like they just know. Probably in, in, yeah, around Seattle and in that area they probably would know. The locals know. They pay attention. Yeah. They know, they know to Orcas when they see them. Okay. Just getting later, I have two more stories. Yes. Do you want to run through them really fast? Sure. I'm going to text my boyfriend real quick. I'm sorry. Hey, honey. I'm still podcasting with Kiki. Don't come in. Don't, yeah. Please don't come inside the house. I'm okay. Well, Natalia's texting. I'll let you know that if you head over to twist.org, you can click on our Zazzle link to purchase some of our nice merchandise for twists with our art and other things with our logo. It helps support the show. The Patreon link, if you would like to just directly support us in an ongoing fashion, $10 and more a month, then you'll get thanked by name at the end of the show.  Maybe. But we'll have... Brrrr! Woohoo! Yes. Okay. So we were talking earlier about emerging infectious diseases. And so I'd like to jump really quickly into one of the interesting questions of like, when does an animal become social or not social when they're sick? So, all right, when I'm sick, I'm like, I'm at home and I'm going to crawl into bed and I don't want to see anybody. I don't feel very good. And bats. Bats are like, go away. You have a cold. I don't want to talk to you. And so the bats, when they're sick, they're like isolated. However, this recent study out of Virginia Tech is kind of interesting, published in the Journal Ecology and Evolution. The researchers determined that sick finches, like house finches, that these finches that they studied, when they, and the way the researchers determined this is they basically gave the finches eye infections. They're like, here, we will infect you and then see how you act.  So they could have the same animals in different situations, see if their behavior changed. And they determined that these cute little house finches really like to socialize when they're not feeling well. It's unlike most other stories that we've heard about sick animals, that when these finches had eye infections, other birds were not likely to notice the eye infections and so didn't shun them. Like, you know, they had a scarlet letter or something like that. They just, you know, so these birds hung out near the beard, the bird feeders, and kind of hung out near the flocks. And when they were better, they became less likely to hang out by the flocks. They were more, you know, kind of average, like the regular, un-sick bird. And they determined this by basically having the birds infected or as a control in cages where they had empty cages and cages full of a flock. And then they said, where do you like to sit? Are you sitting near the food? Are you sitting near the birds? Where are you going? And these birds, who were sick, were more likely to go to the flock. Oh, these flocking birds. Yes. And these flocking birds were more likely to be spreading the disease, which is the downside of this behavior. But the benefit of this behavior that the researchers have determined is that the flocking behavior might benefit them because when they're sick, they're not able to see or react to prey, I mean to predators as easily. So the birds are, they have reduced anti-predator behaviors and they're just taking cover in the flock. I just like that these 15 birds have like eight eyes between them, you know what I mean? Because like all the eyes are infected. So they're like one giant weird like, you see them? No, I can't see a hole and you stand over there. I can't, oh, okay, no, I can see. You see them? I don't see them. Yes. But I mean, you know, birds of a feather, they flock together to hopefully not get eaten by predators. God, are they giving them pink eye? What's that? That's just their presence. Yeah, they pretty much gave them pink eye. They gave them what they, a bacterial pathogen, mycoplasma galasepticum. Yeah, and it pretty much gave the birds conjunctivitis and this is common in these finches, but it's also treatable so that they knew they had antibiotics that they could treat the birds with and so the birds did, they were treated. So even though they were given a little eye infection for a little while, the researchers did help them become better. That is fascinating because I definitely don't want to be around anybody. Go, go away. Leave me alone. That's, you know. All right. My favorite was Tracy Ullman at the end of her old comedy show. Go home, go home, everybody. Similar. Yes. Yeah. Not like we can, not like we can spread the old. Yeah. Yeah. No, I just, I wonder if they were just like eating the eye crusties off of each other's eyes. I know it's gross, but I'm just like wondering what I know. But yeah, that's, that's a rough one. I mean, it's so interesting because like, you know, primates are highly social family of animals and humans are no exception. Even like, Super social. Super so, hyper, hyper, hyper, hyper socials, you know, our babies are completely altrucial.  That makes sounds and poops and all that good stuff. I can't wait to have one.  Look at that. Oh, yes. That was me as a child, Kiki. Just, uh, swimming in that extracellular vesicle filled seawater. My, oh, that, that just brought the pug over the pug. Someone say extracellular vesicle seawater. I'm so excited. Do you want to play? Do you have a ball? Mama, I fetched you a mustache.  I've been searching for hours. Hey, it's only been five minutes. Come on, lady. Oh, nothing crazy. That's not a mustache. She, she doesn't have a mustache for me. Um, but she's put durable. It's okay. She's repugnant. Um, so, I love you. Um, yeah, but we're so, so incredibly social, but yeah, I get, when it comes to being sick, yeah, it, it would make sense for us to stick together, at least, you know, take care of our, that's actually one of the, the, um, kind of landmarks or, you know, kind of check marks of what makes a, a human is taking care of our sick and, and injured. So, um, not necessarily, I mean, I don't know if we flock together, but we, we take care of them. Obviously I'm having inside jokes in my inside jokes, and I'm, yeah, keep them inside, Kiki. Don't say them outwardly. I felt like I heard it, and it was hilarious. It was so good. Yeah. Oh man. I don't know. I don't know if this show has led people to drink yet, but, um, the last story for the night is, you know, we like to be social, but a lot of people can have issues, and extreme alcohol use is a disorder that can cause brain damage and health problems. Lots of alcohol kills your neurons, everybody. And so researchers have known for a very long time that there is a thinning of, uh, the cortical areas. So the cortex, which is your, like, rational thought part of the brain, it's like, this is the part that puts all the cool ideas together. I, I don't, I don't have that. No, okay. You should get one. Okay. But the, uh, when you drink a lot, uh, the cortex, this area that we rely on, a lot for being human, it thins, thinner, thinner there. Researchers previously have determined that, if you stop drinking for a month, that your cortex starts to thicken up again. And so these researchers are like, okay, well maybe let's look for longer than a month and see if these changes continue, see what happens. So they looked at 88 people with this alcohol use disorder. They did brain scans at a week a month and 7.3 months of abstinence. I don't know why 7.3 and not 7.5. I haven't dug into that specific aspect of this. But they determined that, the, the individuals who were able to abstain from alcohol for the entire period, the majority of the cortical thickness was increased during that first month. There was a continued increase, but it was drastically reduced over the next period of time. So it really like falls in line with a lot of, of talk related to changing habits and behaviors where it takes, you know, a certain number of days to get past the first impacts of the alcohol in your system and then to get past that psychological barrier of, or the, the psychological habit and create new habits that relate to abstinence. So perhaps the structure that's being built, rebuilt there, once you've gotten past a month that maybe that is actually tying in with, with, with more long-term benefits. But it's really that first month of abstinence that can help your brain recover. That's wild. Yeah.  You know, sober September, sober January. October, yeah. You know, sober November, whatever it is, that one month of being sober can actually really, does have impact on your brain.  We don't know exactly what it is, but the thickness of your cortex recovers during that month. That's good to know. It's good to know, right? Yeah. No, I didn't drink from age 17 to 29 at all. Like I quit drinking at 17 because we start early in California. We start early.  I just was like, this is dumb.  I've watched, you know, family members suffer. So I was like, yes, not for me. And then I started drinking at age 29. And I had to learn how to drink in my 30s. And I was really bad at it. Like, you know, but I wasn't, how much you should drink and. I black out. Like I straight up black out. And I, you know, and I don't, it doesn't take much, you know what I mean? And so, so I had to watch it and I didn't really, again, I kind of, I went back and forth up and down of like, no, I don't want this is not for me to this and that. And then finally, in March of last year, I was like, yeah, I think I'm done. Like done, done. Like, I think this is, this is. Yeah. But it, it definitely, you know, all the research that I've looked at since then. And I mean, I've known it this whole time because I've worked, I actually worked at a rehab for adolescence when I was 25. I was the night tech. So I had, I worked 11pm to 11am with these recovering addicts and children really. And yeah, and you could, you could definitely see the changes with them from when they came in to. When they left. You know, a month. Oh yeah. Yeah. I wonder also the period of time that you were not drinking was also a big period of time that when the prefrontal cortex is completing its formation and not having alcohol involved during that period of time probably was really great because alcohol has been known to impact and also any substance abuse has been known to detrimentally impact the formation of the prefrontal cortex, which is also important for habit control for being able to say no for being able to make decisions. Yeah. I mean, I made terrible decisions while I was sober, but I, I, but like, Yes, I mean, you, that's the difference. But I was, I think I, no, because I joke about that, like I made terrible decisions when I did drink and when I didn't, and my 20s, because my 20s and my 30s are two, like my 20s are crystal clear. Different time. Crystal clear. I remember details from my 20s that people are like, are you okay? That is weird.  And especially since I, you know, I'm not sure if I'll have children, but if I do, if I do make a small gelatinous sack of beans and sand, baby, I would like to be coge, like cogent and you know, know what the heck's going on. I want clarity. I want, you know, you would. Yeah. I would hope so too.  More mustaches for Natalia every day. Yeah. But the, the, this was published in the journal alcohol and really put it out there to alcohol. The researchers say the data provides clinically relevant information on the beneficial effects of sustained sobriety on human brain morphology and reinforces the adaptive effects of abstinence based recovery. So. Yeah. That's interesting because there's a lot of harm reduction research now about not doing full apps because also that's right. I do think harm reductions preferred in many cases because it's hard where there's a lot of shame with 12 steps sometime.   You know, and if harm reduction allows people to make their way towards some kind of abstinence at some point, that's great, or living just generally healthier lives. That's the best thing. So. We want people to live and survive and have happy, fulfilling lives and, right. Yeah. Thrive. Thrive. That's, yeah. Thrive. Thrive. Not, not just here to survive, but to thrive. I believe in this. I like this. And I hope that people enjoy coming to this weekend science because we enjoy thriving. Lots of thriving. So much thriving. So much thriving. What are you doing this weekend? Thriving. Thrive. Going to thrive. Wait, wait. You're going to drive somewhere? No, I'm thriving. Putting this car to thrive. I've got, I've got my thrive vehicle and it's a stick shift. I've got five gears of thrive. Thrive. It's going to take it to Thrive Alive. 10,000 RPM. Oh my goodness. I'm going to give you a Thrive Star Yelp review. I'm sorry.  I have a sip of my protein drink. I'm dorky. Well, because you're not drinking alcohol, you're having a protein drink. That's healthy. At all. You're getting everything you need right now. All right, Natalia, you've decided to drink protein drink and your camera said, that's where you're going to stay. What happened? Seriously? Of all. I was like, is first sight showing I'm frozen drinking a protein drink because I am seeing that now. That's where you are. What is happening?  I did just take a screenshot because it's so perfect. What is that? Come on.  Well, I've been practicing for years, Kiki. What is happening? Why? I live in Los Angeles.  Oh my gosh. Arn-Laura says, toggle the camera on enough. Maybe that'll help. Oh, wait. Okay, here. Stop cam. Stop cam. Reboot cam. It's not even letting me stop cam. There you go. It loves you drinking protein drink. Are you there anymore? Now she's gone all together, everyone. What is happening? We took, it's the pug revolution. The pug needed to go outside. The pug was jealous. The pug has disabled her internet. And, yeah. I mean, we thought it was the mustaches. The pug took the mustaches. And that was the first sign. Yep. I know. Maybe she's restarting? I don't know. She's still, yeah, she went away. Maybe she'll come back so that we can do the end of the show. Because it's time for the end of the show right now. But I do want to be able to say thank you to her as we close out the show. I hope you've all had, and I laughed a lot tonight. I do enjoy laughing and enjoying what is going on. Oh, yes. Protein drink. TM. Yes. Protein drink. The drink that will freeze your camera. Yeah, the proteins do that. They're not really sure. It's definitely not science. I don't even think she's going to come back. She's like, I got to go see my boyfriend now. That's where I'm going. My computer. There we go. Well, it is the end of the show, so I can definitely start the thanking of everything. I do want to be able to say thank you to Natalia though so that we can finish it all out. This has just gone wild. Work has gone wild. I'm going to keep moving the question I was going to answer to the next week's show. And we're going to move and move and move. Yes. Yes, Kevin, exactly. Technology eventually will fail, regardless at any point. All right, Laura says she just heard about the reality behind the world, the world's broadcast, and how most people were actually tuned into the top radio program instead, which was a ventriloquist on the radio. Oh, I see. I see where she is now. Are you back?  I know. While I was rebooting, I was like, I have to grab one. They don't stay on. I'm so sorry.  I'm so sorry. I know. We're right at the end of the show. It's fine. Okay. That's great. I was like, well, maybe she just left and went to go see her boyfriend. This is how I go. I ghost at the end of the shows, you know, like whatever. Just, you know, instead of the mic drop, it's the protein drink. It's a protein drink freeze.  Thank you so much for having me. Natalia, thank you so much for joining me. This has just been wonderful. I mean, honestly, like I feel like we could hang out and pun around all the time related to this kind of stuff. It was a pun zone, man. We've been in it. We've been going hard. We have been. Hit those puns. Oh, yeah. Not gonna back. Damn. But anyway, okay. Before we go, I do want to make sure that everyone knows where they can find you, what's your, you know, where you are and where to look out for you these days. Well, I'm in my little lady hut now outside because I'm out a lot in the house. No, I'm kidding. I, you can find me on Instagram and on that X thing at Natalia 13 Reagan. I'm on TikTok at Behold Natalia. I have a bunch of comedy shows coming up in Los Angeles. So if you live in the area, please check out my link tree. I've got a bunch of shows coming up and some virtual ones. And I'm actually leading a trip to Madagascar next May and you're invited. So if you like anything that I had to say or you find that my weirdness matches yours and you want to come to Madagascar and meet some lemurs, reach out to me. We're going next May. It's gonna be a great time. I feel like it would be like traveling with what was the name of the king lemur from Madagascar? Oh, oh, King Julian. King Julian. And you bet. Yes, okay. This is great. We're gone now.  We have a dancing. Okay, now stop. Now I'm sleeping. It's just like that. You guys, she just described it to a T. That's what we're doing. So come. They'll be maybe. Go. Sorry. Oh, no. I was just going to say, there'll be chameleons there too.  Yes, they work for scale. Sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I don't really give a flock. It sounds like an amazing, amazing adventure. And I hope that there are. You should come. You should come. You should say, please come. It's going to be fun. We go. We wear mustaches. We dance with ring tailed memos at midnight in the moonlight. It'll be so much fun. And they will tell us things about their lives. Yes. Yes. You know, they have stink fights. It will smell, smell you later. Oh, no. On that note, I do have to give a big shout out to people who help with the show as we end it all out. Thank you, everyone, for joining us tonight. All of you in the chat rooms. Thank you for being here, for watching the show, for adventuring with us through the last couple of hours. Those of you who are here live, you always make this journey so much better. Fada, thank you for your help with show notes and with social media. Identity four, thank you for recording the show. Gord, Arnmore, others who just there and make the chat rooms happy. Nice places to be, not mean places. I really appreciate you being here. And Rachel, thank you for editing the show. Of course, as always, I need to thank our Patreon sponsors. So if you're ready for me to read the list, here we go. Thank you to Arthur Kepler, Craig Potts, Mary Gert, Streesa Smith, Richard Badge, Bob Krolls, Kent Northcoat, Rick Loveman, George Chorus, Pierre Velazarb, John Ratnaswamy. I got to make that go away. Carl Kornfeld, Chris Wozniak, Vigard Schefstad, Dunnison Stiles, aka Don Stilo, Alecoff and Reagan, Shoebrew, Sarah Forfar, Don Mundist, P.I.G. Steven Albaron, Daryl Meischacht, Stu Pollack, Andrew Swanson, Fred S.104, Skylake, Paul Roanovich, Kevin Reardon, Noodles, Jack, Brian Carrington, David E. Youngblood, Sean Clarence, Lam John McKee, Ray Riley, Marc Kessonflow, Steve Leesman, aka Zima Kenhays, Howard Tan, Christopher Wrapp and Richard Brendanmanish, Johnny Gridley, Remy Day, G. Burton Latimore, Flying Out, Christopher Dreyer, R.D.M. 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Look for us wherever you find your podcast, This Week in Science. If you want more information on the show notes and links to stories, again, go to twist.org. You can also sign up for our newsletter that might come someday. You can also email us. Just, you use the email addresses. Kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistminion at gmail.com, Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org. Make sure you put twists in the subject line so that your email does not get spam filtered into a sea-driven extracellular vesicle that's slathered all over a sea monkey and takes off to Madagascar. We'll never get you there. You can also ping us on the social medias. I'm usually Dr. Kiki, maybe the Dr. Kiki. Justin is at Jackson Fly, Blair is Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback if there's a topic or a suggestion for another interview or another guest that you want us to bring on the show. Let us know. We'll be back here again next week and we hope that you will join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember. It's all in your head. Show them how to stop their robots with a simple device. I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand and all is coming your way. So everybody listen. It's the end of the show, everybody. This is the after show. We don't have to do an after show. We're late. You need to go see your boyfriend, take your pug out for a pee and probably find a few mustaches. Getting Magdog by the dog. She's just, she's, she climbs the, she's fine. She climbs the highest point on the couch and then she just stares. She's dominating. With those pug eyes. She's owning me. Very large pug eyes. Yeah, she got the pug eyes. Sweet. Thank you so much. Huh? I said I hope the pug eyes is not catching. No, I don't think it's contagious. Is the show actually over or is this the after show? So it's the after show. We're still live. I haven't shut us out. So everybody's still here. Hi. Can I just, yeah, I saw some of the comments and I just want to say some of these puns are really great and I didn't get to acknowledge them. I was like trying to be in the thing in the moment, but I was like, there was some good, good S-I-H-I-T. I curse more than the average bear.  We need to prepare the protein drink. Hey, buddy. Yeah. Ear muffs. Just leave them on the whole episode. You never know when she's going to rip. My favorite. Oh, yeah. There goes one. Yeah, maybe say my dad. I was working with him years ago. He was a production designer and I was like, his assistant's assistant. And he said, watch your blanking mouth when you, when you talk to me. But I was like, you know, he basically said the F-word while he was telling me not to say it was just, it was, everybody looked at him like, you do the apple tree. Yeah. These are great. This is why she is the way she is. This is connected somehow. You created a monster. These are really great comments. Thanks guys. Yeah, we've got some great people here who come and visit every week and hang out so we can talk about science.  We could be so punny and keep it weird. Racious. Yeah, I know. I mean, if we, if we're normal all the time, then it's really boring. You know, weirdness is the thing. It's a spark. It's a spice. It's a thing that makes life more interesting. I think so. You know, yeah, I like to, yeah. You weird everyone. Please. Yes. Yeah. Because it's important. Weirdness. Yeah. Embrace the strange. And thrive. Thrive. If there's a takeaway from tonight, put your car in third wheel thrive and is that even a thing? Is it four? No, four wheel thrive. I don't even know. If you three wheel thriving. You're driving a spider and that's fine. Why do spiders have three wheels? Shouldn't they have eight? Sorry. I'm going to stop. I swear I don't drink. I just say. You just have no filters. It's okay. No.   And oh yeah.  I don't, yes. They do the video games and enjoy that together, which is great. Oh, that's good. Yeah. They had a whole boy sleepover. I went to a conference this last weekend and so they had a Friday night. My son got his, his best buds over. And Marshall single dadded the sleepover.  I mean, it was, it was probably like the best boy night ever. Right? That sounds like, I'm jealous. That sounds amazing. No. Like I want to stay up. Scotch bonnets and yes.  Come over, Natalia. Come on. Just give me 13 hours. I'm pretty fast. Actually, no, I'm going to need 15. Hold on. Portland, how many walking, no. Yeah. Right. How many riding on the back of your pug? I could pop raisin, saddle up. From let's go. We ride a dawn raisin. Come, come my child. Oh dear. She is. No, she's not a deer. She's a dog. Or at least you'd think she is. We say that she's a frog lid all the time or a walrus. Raisin, what are you today? Are you a honey chicken?  Okay, I agree. Yeah. She's ignoring me now. That's fine. She's like another weasel. I am a pug. I do not know this, but now. Mother, I am dog. I'm a doggy. Don't mom. I'm dog. Don't mock me. Oh my gosh. Yeah. A pug, Mackina. Oh God. Deus pug, Mackina. I would watch that movie. I would. That would be good. That would be absolutely spectacular. Man, it's the pug god in the machine. Just snorts and wheezes and grunts and farts. She... I picked her up today and it was the longest, most like the longest, loudest, most sustained fart I've ever heard her make today. Today. You say today. Today. It's a pug.  Like this, I don't... I haven't done a science experiment. I need to deflate more dogs. Because you know when you deflate a dog? My cat's just looking at me judging me right now. Oh my God, Cappy. I want to meet her. She's soft like a chinchilla. She's very soft. Is she an orange tabby or is she brown tabby? No, she's a brown tabby. She's like... She's got... She's just the judgy-faced, but most cuddly little thing.    Yes! Reason I could. Like the farts, like the... Like all the sounds that come out of my dog and my boyfriend. I could play my boyfriend like my... He's... The sounds that creatures in my house make are pretty... Scottish, really. It's not a church.  Look at one F-bomb with a punishment. No way, really. Oh wait, are you on Twitch right now? Yeah, but no, that's why. It's not... No, they don't know. He's making it up. I was like, oh my God, what? I had no idea. Yeah, oh my God. Non-mature hot tub streams on Twitch. What? No. It's okay to be in your bathing suit in a hot tub as long as you don't say an F-bomb. Yeah, because there's no bathing suits on Twitch, right? Or something like... There are. Yes. Oh, it's very much a thing, yeah. Oh, okay, yeah. It's not on this channel though. No, I haven't done the... Yeah, no. No, no, that's okay. I feel like... I feel like that's okay. What about banana suits? Oh, definitely banana suits. Those are fine. Raisin, fetch me my banana suit. Oh my God. Oh, Cappy, she's a beauty. Yeah. What color are her eyes? Oh, they're yellow-green. Oh, honey muffin. Little chicken and waffles. What is this little muffin? And she's like this... She's like the liquid cat. She just like rolls out of here. She's so smooth and boneless. Boneless, yes. She's a boneless cat. That's what I call Raisin.  This dog deadweights with the best... Here, hold on. Raisin, give me the last one for here. Come here. All of the boneless animals. We would like all of the boneless animals. Oh, dear, she is. She's a real raisin. Look at the boneless creature. Is she like... She's just leaning on your face right now. Yeah, she has no bones. She has no... She is... This is what she does. I can't hold on my own head. No, she really... She won't hold up her... Like, look at her. She... Oh my gosh. She's so cute. She's like... You can't even hold on to her because she's like one of those... She's liquid. Those gooey tubes, you know, that are like... Yeah. The gel-filled plastic tubes, remember? We play with them and they slip. Yes. They slip. Float. Yes. She really... This is what... She's a dog. Look at this creature. No, she's not a dog. She is a gelatinous sack of beans and sand. And farts and smirks. Farts and... Yeah, and not very many smarts, but look at... I mean, look at this creature. Oh my God.  I know. And she's also very... She likes to steal covers and she likes to walk on people. She's wonderful. She really... Now she is... She is literally like this in my lap. If you could only see... She looks like a sacrificed lamb. Like she's just like, I don't care. I give up. Just kill me now. Oh my goodness. Okay. Our lore is going through the Twitch rules now. Okay. Oh, let's see. Prolonged and repeated use of obscenities, profanities, vulgarities as a regular part of speech. Yeah, yeah. Now we're fine there. For sexual things, content that focuses on sexualized physical attributes and activities, sexual topics or experiences. And then maybe we break the drugs intoxication or excessive tobacco use rule. Excessive tobacco glorification or promotion, any marijuana consumption use, legal drug and alcohol induced intoxication, discussions of illegal drugs. We talk about illegal drugs all the time on our show. Really? I was like, I'm not going to lie. I would, I was looking... Ketamine therapy or LSD, you know, like... When I was looking through my drawer boxes here. Yep, there we go. Mature. Your drawer of drugs. Well, no, I was looking for a mustache and I pulled out a big giant mushroom and I was like, I'd been looking for you. Tonight's gonna be... It's gonna be a great night's grief. Well, I was like, do I tell her? Is that appropriate? I'm just not going to say anything. Well, you found it when we were ending the show as opposed to before the show. So this could have been a very different evening. What of? I don't know. It was already kind of weird. I don't know. Maybe it would have been very normal. Maybe that would have been the... Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. This is interesting. Very normal. Very normal. It's really, it's fascinating the way that a lot of these rules come down because we always talk, we joke about stuff, but we always talk about things in their scientific uses or explanations or whatever. And then we use home humor as a part of it. But I don't know. I have us ticked as not for kids on YouTube. So you should probably check us off for... I don't know. I don't know. It's hard. Whatever. Just figure out which... Pay attention what your kids are watching. Seriously, I think it's... Do you approve? I am on Instagram. I can't even tell you. Every time I post a video, immediately it says it can't be monetized because I do spicy or science topics. Some of course, some are obvious. You are. Like if I'm... You are spicy and sometimes in your bikini top or... Yeah. But like that's, you know, I mean like how many... This is what also kills me. I did... I posted a picture of me in a bikini on my Instagram and I generally don't post like a flat out picture of me in a bikini but it was like... It was a vulnerability moment of like me saying, I deal with body images. I think I remember when you posted that a while back. Yeah, I thought it was great. I lost about 200 followers in one day. Really? Yeah, and then another like 150 or something. And it's like science communicating males can, God bless them with great abs will show all sorts of abs shots and it's just like swoon, swoon, swoon. Yeah, yeah. Male science communicator, no shirt, totally fine. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I mean again, and I try to walk that line but it is a double standard that's frustrating because it's like we're not a lot of human. We have to fit into whatever box. But I think that comes along with having public personas at a certain point. You are not yourself too. And when you do encroach on stepping out of that narrowly defined box and suddenly you're challenging people's assumptions of you and that affects how they think of themselves. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. Yeah. Yeah. And suddenly it's like, no, wait, you're in a bathing suit and you're talking about important mental health issues or what? Yeah, yeah. So it was it. Come on.  Come on. Right. Yeah, yeah. And forget it if I get political, forget it. Like that's another. Well, because I having hosted a big foot show, there's a lot of there are a lot of politics in Big Foot circles. There's a lot of, I dare I say, blue collar folks into Big Foot that but not there's nothing wrong with blue collars and a lot of blue collar folks. I technically come from blue collar folks that are very liberal, but very conservative folks and community. So they if I, you know, if I challenge this conservative, yeah, ideals. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, whatever it's. I mean, I believe in Big Foot. Maybe he believes in you. I can believe in Trump being president again. Yes. Right. They're just about as a probability. Yeah. Yeah, I know dearly.    You're helping, you're part of the conspiracy, not to let us know where Big Foot lives. You got me. You got me. I know it. I know it. I actually wrote a pilot based on that show called Diddly Squatch about that idea that the lead character in the show does find him and she hides it because she knows that if she discovers him, her show goes away and her fame will go away or change. And then, you know, and then it becomes this weird buddy comedy. Yeah, I pitched it to Adult Swim years ago and Fuzzy Door. And I'm actually just my friend who wrote American Dad. He created American Dad. Just gave me a bunch of notes for it. So I'm going to re-work it. Oh, redo? Yeah. I'm going to redo it and try to get it out there because I think it still has a fun idea. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. And if you, I mean, if you were to get, you know, yeah, that could be great with the right writers and like putting like, oh my gosh, it could situational comedy at its best. Right. Exactly. Douglas Fur and his crew. Yes. Both cryptids. Very silly. You writing something that's silly? I know. Guilty. Guilty. What do you got going on? Anything exciting coming up? For myself, I'm still doing twists. And then I'm really working on the association of science communicators and trying to help create more of a professional pipeline for science communication.  Like, I don't know. We need to talk more about this. We should. Absolutely. No, I've really, it's been a very big point of frustration. As you know, we've, we've had some, we've had some behind the scenes chats about how it's, it's been hard. Yeah. How the bacon is made. Yeah. Making that sausage. It sucks, man. Like I, and it's not, yeah. It has not been an easy year, I think, for a lot of folks. But, you know, I just, and I think a lot of people think it's easy. Like I've got a lot of people being like, I'm going to leave academia and I'm going to do science communication because it looks easy.  Yeah. You know what I mean? Like this is not, I didn't fall off a turnip truck. You know, so just on the side, come turnip. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. No. This is a career and you've been working on it for years now.  So it's like, not forever.  But yeah, we're both, we've been in the game for a while. So it's, yeah, it's, it's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, with what I'm doing, I think the goal is to turn it, make it understood that it's more than doing a couple funny tweets or a tweet thread. And that's not all psychom is. And that there, you know, as a, as a calling, as a profession, that there are many ways to do it.  There's, you know, illustration. There's, you know, all sorts of things and there's collaborations between all these things. But there are evidence backed ways to help people understand things and to, you know, break through some of the social barriers and identity barriers that are out there. Yeah. I am years ago. There's more learning. There's more learning that people can do. Seriously. I am, I didn't mention it because I don't want to, it hasn't come out yet. But I, I developed a show in like 2015, was after the shooting in South Carolina of Dylan Roof and in that South Carolina church. And it just broke my heart. And it was, you know, a white supremacist piece of, we won't go into it. But anyways, I was just heartbroken. And I thought, dear God, if people just like knew early on, as soon as possible, that race is, you know, it's a social construct. If there's no biological basis to it, maybe it'll, you know, it was a very naive thought that like, I can teach people and they won't be racist. But, you know, it was coming from a good place of if people understood that there's no biological basis to racial, racial classification, maybe this would change hearts and minds. And I've realized since then that there's so much more to it. But the idea of the show is called Science for Social Change is how science can teach people and hopefully promote positive social change. And so I was developing, I developed it and I was going to do it at Discovery in 2015. But they were like, they wanted me to just talk for 50 minutes about it. And I was like, no, I want to interview people. They're like, oh, no, we don't want, we don't want to do that. And so I ended up just not doing it with them. And I did it as a live stage show in 2018 with Augustine Fuentes, Tina LaCici, Dr. Achille McClain, and then my friend Malcolm Barrett, who was in Timeless, Better Off Ted. He played the sciences in Better Off Ted, Lem. And he was in it and he he rapped as well. And we co-hosted it together. We've known each other since 2008. And I wanted to continue it on, but it was just it was too much work and not enough. It was killing me to do it. So I was like, financially, I wasn't making any money. And I was like, how do I do this paying the bills? Yeah. Yeah. So I but I finally I got funding from the American Association of Biological Anthropologists and I reported 18 for 18 interviews in three days at our conference in 2022. And they've been I've been sitting on them because during that conference, my dad's partner died. I was going through some other like really intense things. So by the time I came back, I was like, I had to shelve it. And so I'm finally now releasing them. And so in the next week or so coming out, yeah. And it's they're awesome. They're all these interviews with these amazing biological anthropologists. But I have all these other scientists that I have these interviews already kind of baked and stunned and piled. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm very excited. And it's just looking at how science can, you know, bring about hopefully positive social change and how what people's lived, what lived experiences, how it influences science. Because it's always good. Science is always going to be biased. It's never going to be purely objective because we're people humans, right? We try with the scientific method, but at the same time that there's only so far we can go because we're humans asking questions and, you know, that's how I start it from there. But yeah, you have to send me the links to those when you start releasing them. I want to share, share, share, share, share, share. Yeah, but I want to help you throw those things out. Thank you. Yeah. I'm going to ask your advice because I'm actually going to try to, I'm trying to, I have a Patreon, but it's not, you know, I don't, I'm bad at that kind of stuff. And I'm just trying to figure out, well, no, I mean, yeah, it's hard. It's, yeah, yeah. Just to organize things and stay on top of stuff when, when you're like, and I just want to do the content and make the, do the communicating, but then suddenly you're like having to manage a thing and the marketing and this. And yeah, yeah. There's a lot. Yeah. So the razzle dazzle.  You said it. You said it. Not me for once. Oh my goodness. Yeah. I am that person who seriously, if you were just like, let's just sit and have a conversation. I am that person who is just going to naively say things only to realize what I have said after the words are out of my mouth so often.  This is kind of a gross story, but I'm taking up, I'm making a poop. I am pooping at my best friend's house and my friend is trying to rush me. She's like, come on, hurry up.  I just said, hold on, I'm really anal about wiping. And I think I just peeked in that moment, you know, like at 18, it was just like everything is just downhill, downhill. The jokes are never going to get better folks. No. And I mean, you can stick around, but no. Oh, I did tell my students we were, I was, I was, I was lecturing about the, the vaginal microbiome in one lecture. And I, and I was finishing up the lecture and I, I ended it and I said, just want to give you guys a heads up.  Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. And then they laughed and they all said, yes. By the way, Arinal, Arinal, Arinal Lord, oh my God, is it Arinal Lord? Thank you for sharing my Patreon page. That was very nice of you. Thank you. That's great. Yeah, I, I have. Share. It's good to share the links. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a work in progress. I post a fair amount, but yeah, I'm excited about the podcast because I think it's going to be, you know, a rollicking good time, you know. We like those. Yes. Yeah. Especially if they're rollicking. That is gorgeous. Riveting, rollicking, what's the, raucous. This raucous rob of a film. I've switched. I've switched to my other poison. It's yellow. It is looking poison-y. There's like, it's, this is Gator 80, cucumber lime. It's Brando. Brono. Lecture lights. Oh my God. Oh, that movie. It's got protein. It's got electrolytes. It's like plant cave. It is, this is, my boyfriend yells at me and he tells me, you need to drink water. And I'm like, this is water. It's just green. It tastes like electrolytes. No, it's, it is delicious. So when I quit, I'm not going to lie. When I quit drinking, my favorite thing in the world, when I drank was a a stiff margarita, spicy. And so I was like, how the heck? And I don't, I wasn't a huge drinker, but how am I going to get like that fresh? This is, this is the freshest Gatorade flavor there. It is pure freshness. And no, it tastes, it tastes really good. It tastes like, it tastes like a vacation. It's, it's like a vacation in my mouth. Here we go. This delicious green water. Oh my God. It is like an Airbnb. Oh my God. It even comes with a balcony. Yes. I mean, maybe you're going to absorb some of those electrolytes. I extra cellular vesicles. It's, oh my God. No, no, no. I don't want random DNA. Go away. No. Oh my God. That could you, I don't know. I really do feel like that's like a crime scene right there. Like, but like, you know, man, like imagine like a crime scene on a boat and they're like, all right. See extra cellular vesicles.  And it turns out, no, you know, Captain Jack Ballsteed was right. It really was the extra cellular vesicles. I don't know. I just feel like the DNA is everywhere. And it's terrifying. It's everywhere. It's all around us, especially when you're swimming in the sea soup. The sea soup primordial ooze. It really was like, yes. It gets more and more. I'm wearing the ooze and the primordial. The words are more convincing every day. Yeah. I wanted to do a talk stoop, but primordial soup. I don't know if you know this. I don't know if you know this, but I've got a buzz all the time. Like a hundred different. I'm not even kidding. I've got like a hundred. Some of them are terrible because I like, I mean, it's like startups, you know, you just got to keep throwing them out there. Maybe one of them. In Gold Childless and loving it. I mean, that was a good one. That was a pitch that to TLC. Living my best life. Hashtag. With green water. It's a vacation in my mouth. I like to put this flavor in my mouth parts. It tastes like sunshine and a bikini. It is delicious. I'm not going to. I freaking love this stuff. It's a cucumber and a plastic jug. Oh, dear Lord. I know. I know. I should just make it my own way. And that would basically be putting a cucumber in, yeah, a jug with some stevia. And that's it. People come over and say, what's that? You go, it's my cucumber jugs. This is my artist in water. My artist in cucumber water. Oh, you could sell that in Portland. No problem. I absolutely could. I feel like it's like I could. It's like kombucha. Like