One more seconds, but I got crackers in my teeth crackers.  I'm cranky because the crackers crumbled The skeleton ran out of shampoo in the shower The human torch was denied a bank loan I'm gonna have to go watch Anchorman after this show is over y'all it is time for a show though. I think we are here That's right. My new pirate name is cracker-tooth Thanks for that chat room Hello everybody out there. It's good to see you Was this as we can science we're gonna start the show now Yeah, I'll tell you about my crackers after the show. I was telling Blair about my crackers cranky cracker crumbling It's time to start this so show so I Because her crackers crumbled and I ran out of shampoo for my skeleton in the shower Three two This is Twists this week in science episode number 651 recorded on Wednesday December 27th 2017 top 11 of 2017 Right crowd go wild because I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on this week in science. We are going to fill your heads with stories from the past but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer This is the end of all elaborate science stories The end I've done for me lately's in animal corners the end will never disclaimer in 2017 Again my friends, but before we go and come back again in 2018 We will picture what has been a year so limitless in the discovery That it cannot be captured in 10 and while 12 might not be too many We will limit ourselves to but 11 and then actually maybe go on from there top science stories of 2017 here on this week in science Coming up next What's happened this week in science? Science to you Kiki and Blair and a good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there Welcome to another episode of this week in science We are back yet again to discuss all the science that happened in the no wait No, nope. Nope. Not the last week this time around Last year Really long show cuz we're gonna Cover every episode from the entire no, we're not we're not Does that mean I get 24 hours of the animal corner. Oh My gosh, maybe like yeah half. Yeah, you'd have many hours of animal corner. That would be the animal corner marathon Yeah, we should do that someday or at least you you can do that some But not tonight because what we are doing is counting down the top 11 Science stories from the past year from 2017. This is our year in review show and Justin for those listeners who are joining us for the first time in a top 11 review show Why are we doing 11 and not the usual top 10 list? Because every top 10 list leaves you wondering what got left off What would the 11th one have been but you need not ask yourself that here because we will provide that Yeah, who would have been number 11? Which story we'll let you know We are going to let you know because that's what we're gonna start with we're gonna count it all down We've we have covered all the stories for the last year We've looked at the mall and we have deliberated over many hours Over what stories should be in the show and in which order? And bring it to you tonight That's it. We're doing it But before we jump in I want to remind everybody that you can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes the Apple podcast directory in the Google Play podcast portal stitcher spreeker tune in you can find us on YouTube and Facebook we are all over the place look for this week in science TWIS this week in science or just go to twist.org and Twist.org you will find it's still 2017 There's still time for you if you are interested to take a look at our 2018 twist Blair's Canon calendar Blair's animal corner calendar No, that's a tongue twister and it was to for me just now really seriously Even with all those the the verbal warming up exercises there It didn't help at all And also we will be at SF sketch fest on January 18th in 2018 and you can find information about that on our events page on our Facebook page This week in science so look for this week in science go to twist.org find information and Join us join us join us We can't wait to see you there, but you're here right now. So let's get started. Are you two ready? I was born ready Do we have a few more minutes wait? No already on it. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So I'm ready. Yeah, that's the way it works. All right, so starting with number 11 Number 11 All right, so this was a big big issue this year The politics is politicization politicization. Yeah Science and politics. Oh No, that's a contaminant get that out of here. What's that? They should be nowhere near Our science number 11 Justin Yeah, well on this week in science since we got started we have brought The politics of science into our show and this year. I think it really hit a Frequency that reverberated across the scientific sphere The scientists marched this year. There was a march for science that coincided with Earth Day last this last year Scientists hundreds of thousands of scientists took those streets around the country and marched We also had women in science talking about harassment in science and there were so many cases Coming bubbling up that we realized people started to have conversations about the The hierarchies within the the scientific infrastructure We started to have Conversations about the importance of science in everyday lives twist started doing a weekly segment called what has science done for me? Yeah, which we're not gonna do this week because we have a lot of things to talk about but still we have started talking about these things politics in general the election of President Trump Led to over 700 people leaving the environmental protection agency within the last year That's the EPA responsible for environmental protection Things like air quality and water quality and those regulations and making sure that was that was the old name actually Yeah, it's now the environmental purging agency Right And what was it last week's show we talked about the seven dirty words of the CDC and The fact that researchers are having to use different language to be able to speak to the Politicians to be able to even get their ideas heard at this point in time for the possibility of funding the USDA was I think first off the bat with it back in January with many issues related to To their organization the FDA has been running into problems You name a governmental science organization and it has had some kind of controversy within the last Yeah, to the point where there were scientists backing up data off of governmental databases for fear of that data getting erased Yeah, well, but if I may I'm gonna wear the silver linings hat tonight because I feel like it the kind of upside to all of this is that it's causing people who maybe believed in science cared about science kind of an auxiliary nature, but we're not Up in it as much to now start seeking out science. It has brought it into everyone's Living room in a lot of ways It's brought it to the forefront of a lot of people's thoughts and concerns And so something that previously may have been this behind closed doors in the lab Mysterious just we'll let the science take care of it sort of thing that you know The science machine just keeps moving and we'll keep making stuff and it'll keep checking things and they'll be fine Now people are actually starting to ask questions. They are starting to Show outward support of science Science is now something that the average person wants to know about and cares about and wants to support In a way, we haven't really seen before so that's kind of the weirdo silver lining of all of this is that it's making everyone care more about the process I like weirdo silver linings and another one is that more scientists are running for public office Yes We are seeing many scientists and many of them women in fact coming forward to become candidates For public office so scientists are moving out of the ivory towers and Moving into the public sphere much more and I think this is only going to help to improve communication between science and academia and Everybody who's helping to support it and pay for it And it's going to either be help is probably going to be helped by scientific discoveries in their lives, so This is all this is good weirdo silver linings for the win and let's see where it takes us into 2018 yeah, we just can't lose the momentum keep supporting science Just be vocal as you can to support the science support the environment support funding for science Absolutely, so shall we get to that side? Let's get to the science. Yeah, so let's move into number 10 Wait, which one was number 10? Oh, that's what a mine. I got that one Number 10 human evolution I think in this category None more so than the remains in Morocco that Had vast number of of ideas attached to these remains some thought they might be neanderthal The dates range then from speculating between 40,000 to 100,000 years old. Maybe it's 100,000. They're humans Finally got the dating done and it it looks like modern humans Yes, mostly modern humans dating back 315,000 years which pushes it back Substantially further than originally thought so so the modern human was thought to be 200,000 ish years ago And and originated in East Africa. So this suggests that we didn't exclusively evolve in East Africa, which really Isn't or shouldn't be too surprising because East Africa is where we have been pinning a lot of human evolution but it also happens to be rather fossil rich region which because of relative ease of access to and early findings of and Therefore intense focus on searching for more in Is perhaps why we have made most of our discoveries previously there The market discovery also relieved some skepticism. I think even like perhaps the scientist himself on a discovery in Siberia of a neanderthal With what they were estimating to be 270,000 year old modern human mitochondrial DNA So this this is based on the mitochondrial DNA, which was from a human and Dating back when that would have perhaps gotten there. They put it back 270,000 years meaning that somewhere in prehistory There was a female human from Africa that carried the child of a Meryl neanderthal and this female far from Africa would have split Africa before the commonly understood beginning of Modern humans placing the first modern human out of Africa before modern humans evolved would be a difficult conclusion Considering it would have been such an outlayer of the data Of course as was later revealed in Morocco We had a starting point that was off by a hundred thousand years. So now that data fits soundly within our our understanding of human evolution and Adds to it as opposed to being something that has to be debated for another couple of decades. We've just got Perfect timing on this year. Also adding the evidence of older older human evolution was the belito Bay individuals from Kuala Zula and NATO Africa This these are Stone Age people from just a few thousand from there. It's actually a whole bunch There's between a few hundred and a Iron Age hundreds of years ago To some that were a few thousand years old Their DNA was used to predict the split between modern humans and some of the other branches of the Homo Tree and it placed the time frame as far back as 350,000 years which then fits now nicely with Morocco and the mitochondrial DNA from that meanderthal Stingly makes us co-homo habitants of Africa with many many other human ish apes of various description For a really long time meaning that when we consider the path of human evolution We're not talking about an event that took place in a location But rather a modern human So there wasn't a modern human born to non-human parents and then poof modern humans began From that one offspring, but we're talking about a wide range a number of overlapping events taking place all over Africa over a much longer period of time and And as it is sort of we are pulling back the viewfinder and seeing that this activity was taking place all over It gives us a much clearer picture of how human evolution began. I Love that I mean, it's like all of a sudden the data is starting to come together where there were these separate tracks of evidence And I think there were different stories All of a sudden it's turning into one story and it's it's all starting to make a little bit more sense I mean, there's still debate about various things like You know from 2016 there was a Homo Naleti find and there's still the question of when they were there and what they were doing there, but the whole African origin of modern human humans the hominids is That's beautiful. It's coming together and and it's also one of these things that because this was such a productive year in this field That these outlying data points which could have you know sat there We must have bad data. There's no way this data could be correct Um, but you you still you produce the data that you produce and they woulda coulda should have been complete outliers but because so much Work was being done This year in these various You know from Siberia to South Africa. Yeah And in between maybe like pretty close to me between we got we got data that supported each other and made that picture Not not something that we had to to talk about for for a decade or two or 50 years but we kind of Can come come to a resolution within this year on these stories. That's wonderful. I love it when science ties things together It's fabulous And on that note nice tidy human evolution package that Justin has delivered for number 10. It's time to move to the number 9 It's about stem cells I'm so excited because as listeners to the show would know, uh, I plan to live to be over 200 And you're gonna need those stem cells to do it. And there was some amazing breakthroughs this year That might actually make it possible. So first back in july There was a stem cell trial done with mice where they actually identified a lot of the problems of aging as a death of stem cells in the hypothalamus and they even went so far as to stick new stem cells into the hypothalamus and found Reverse effects on these mice So that sounded very promising Inject my hypothalamus full of stem cells, please There was actually a human trial with stem cell cells as relates to frailty And they actually did this on on two humans and they actually found that This kind of frailty measurement was reduced by administering some stem cell transplants So this was an anti-aging treatment directly with humans Next in uh, that was in uh in october and then they also did a regeneration of um hair cells in the inner ear Which apparently they they have it rough your your uh your hair cells in your ear which help you to to hear They they're just getting damaged left and right loud music They just die. They just die and they're done. They're done. No regeneration possible. Well Not anymore stem cells to the rescue And they were actually able to regenerate these hair cells in the inner ear last one An Alzheimer's drug applied to stem cells I have to say the words tooth pulp It it worked with tooth pulp To recreate dentin. So aside from the phrase tooth pulp being really gross um, I don't know why You can Anyway Was able to regrow dentin, which as we know that's really the thing That makes us lose our teeth and there's all sorts of problems Besides just not having teeth that can lead to gum disease and all sorts of problems that actually eventually can lead to death Directly relating to all of that good stuff going on in our mouth But the we we put in fillings and things like that because dentin The grades and it doesn't regrow but even fillings need to be replaced wear down all these good things But this this application of a of an Alzheimer's drug to The stem cells in the tooth pulp allowed them to regrow dentin So it's official. I'm gonna live Well, I won't say forever, but it's looking good. It's looking good for for a second century That's right. You'll have all your teeth and you'll be able to hear if you have if you end up having children You'll be sitting on the couch with them in 50 or 60 years And they will not be tweeting about how annoying it is to watch movies with you Yes, and one day what would that movie say? What are they doing in that movie? And I won't be frail I won't need my my grandchildren and grandsons to pick up things that are five pounds because I can't handle it That's right. No frailty You'll be able to hear you'll have all your teeth. It'll be amazing Stem cells That's right. I'm still wondering, you know these sources of young cells like when there's going there'd be a blood banks and stuff now At what point are we going to have these stem cell banks where young people? are paid You know paid to give them their cells for their youth. That's right Give me your youth. Yeah, but it's looking looking bright for 2018 Yes, and all of our age we're worried about 21 18. You know what I'm saying All right, everyone if you just tuned in this is this week in science We are counting down the top 11 stories of 2017 and we have just come to number eight number That's right and coming in at number eight Is nasa nasa and it's planetary exploration This year has been a great year for nasa. We saw A lot of discovery continuing with curate the curiosity rover on mars discovering a lot happening in gale crater finding These silicates in gale crater that suggest that there was water in the crater at one point that Pushes back and widens the potential for life actually having a microbial life at least Actually having had a chance to gain a foothold Other discoveries made on mars have been the discovery of of elements like boron which are essential for life as well and So there's a lot still happening on mars. We continue to row. No, right? There was snow or at least And not ice crystal formation Jack frost visits mars on occasion But it but it's not just at the poles They used to think that this ice and snow only occurred at the north and south pole and they discovered that no There are special weather conditions where it could snow all over the planet Or ice crystal. It's kind of like the portland oregon ice storms where you're like, that's snow. No, it's not It's just little ice crystals falling from the sky Everyone stay inside Moving on from mars also sound advice not just in portland, but also in mars stay inside Unless you're a little robot that could additionally juno started sending back amazing images this year juno Which is orbiting jupiter and doing these incredible close passes at least as close as it can get within Jupiter's magnetosphere to be able to take measurements and help us understand so much about the largest oldest planet in our solar system They did a flyby of the great red spot That enabled us to discover much more about the depth of this this giant storm that's been raging for So long and will probably continue for so long But to understand exactly what's happening in there and why Juno is helping us do that. We've also gotten a closer look at the aurora the electrical activity That's occurring from what here on our planet. It's when solar winds Speed up particles and they hit our outer atmosphere and electrons get moved around Really fast and so light gets emitted and we have our aurora Well, they found out that on jupiter that's not the only way it happens That also there's stuff that comes up from it inside the planet to create the aurora um That you see at the north and south poles of jupiter So juno is continuing to give us some amazing amazing amazing views of this planet that we've seen before but not in such great detail and juno is really giving us a good help of with that We also saw voyager one and voyager two turn 40 years old this year And additionally voyager one Fired up its thrusters for the first time in 37 years And you know if you were to fire up an old car that's sitting in the garage 37 years later, you'd be like, I don't know if this is going to work, right? It's not going to just work on the first go. You might have to tinker with it a bit. You might have to Nope, it worked. It did exactly what it was supposed to do And it's the movement the thrusters the way they had on fire Potentially going to expand the mission length by a couple of years We might get a little bit more life out of voyager after having done that thruster firing So nasa builds things to last they do last and they they continue to give us great Ex great evidence from explorations that fuel our curiosity and inspire us to do more here on our own planet We also saw the end of Cassini which Made me so sad But I saw it bring together an amazing community of people online and around the world Who have been appreciating the images and the science that have come back from saturn over the last 13 years Cassini Gave us a view of saturn that we never had before we learned about Enceladus and the jets on the on the moon Of saturn enceladus. It's going it's inspired nasa to go To enceladus and to do some digging to send another mission there in the future So we'll be going back, but Cassini gave us The first picture the pale blue dot picture of our planet way far away, right? Little a little planet from distant space It's so Cassini its end a fiery end as it's dove into the gases of saturn, but It continues on and still giving us rich information and And hopefully we'll get another view like that again. Hopefully we'll go to other planets Come on nasa. Let's go to venus. Come on Come on. Well, it would that that whole thing probably would be a lot easier to do though if we were in the trappist Exactly and that This last february we discovered the trappist one system which had the largest number of earth-like planets within the solar system the trappist system then we'd ever seen before it inspired a bunch of travel posters Oh, yeah Not that you could ever really go to these planets, but uh, you know it inspires a lot of fun and creativity Yeah, they're so close to each other That uh, you could you could see the other planets without the telescope in the sky They would be they would hang in the sky Like like the moon in the sky. It's a big pizza pie Yeah Uh and the final story which is you know just part of nasa's job of looking out and exploring but uh, they did They did peak at uh at the first interstellar visitor that we had Come through our solar system that we detected We had a comet home. Oh, oh May a mile wow That's a cigar The cigar the interstellar cigar that came from a far off galaxy It's come from elsewhere to make it make its way Through space and time And just pass right on through people thought it might be alien technology, but really it's probably A comet that's just gotten covered in dust so that it doesn't heat up the same way and lose its water particles Like most comets do when they pass near the sun so you don't have a tail coming off of it But yeah, it's just a cigar shaped comet Passing through somewhere aliens are just like watch we're gonna toss this funny shaped rock at them They're gonna make a whole thing about it. Just wait That's right.  They were doing a lot with planetary exploration And I think it's important to list what they're doing This year because we are not going to see many new New craft going out to explore our solar system for many years And so we got a we got to celebrate what nasa has done the golden period of nasa's planetary Exploration before we hit that big doldrum period That's that's just coming in the future in a couple of years I am excited to see what textbooks look like in a few years because all this data coming in It's already unrecognizable from what we had when we were in school But I can't wait until the basic knowledge of our solar system is just Lightyears above what it was Yes All right, that does it for number six Nope, that was number eight Numbers i'm kind of i'm counting the wrong direction. What's number seven seven seven seven dna Now we have plenty of dna stories that are going to come later. This is just sort of a quick one But fascinating development that it was this year that it made it to number seven on its own We're looking this year at dna as a storage device It is after all a data storage and retrieval system for life So why not use it for other types of information? Result an operating system and some movies were stuffed into genetic code at a density of 215 petabytes program And you thought your new phone had a lot of storage That's right Petabytes what even is that it's a lot a lot It's a scientific term meaning a lot of a lot a lot of zeros Yeah, megas your gigas your terrors Your petas petas Is up there? Yeah And if I believe in a volume Of storage isn't really a thing. You're like, yeah, but I'm looking for long term storage I want storage that I can I can you access over and over again That doesn't go bad like a record well If stability is your thing the scientists predict that their data would be good for about a quadrillion reads Which I don't know If you're not familiar with quadrillions It's about how many times I check my twitter account every day It's a it's approximately the same as a thousand trillion right So you could access these these movies a thousand trillion times And they'd be readable every time and they used to kind of an interesting method too. It wasn't just a one that they used a A form of packet A packet data so that it's it it has Some overlap of the data is in there to to make up for The dna's natural inconsistency your natural errors in in dna So that it could be so that it could be Reliable and and detailed enough to to make a movie play back a movie from Which I still don't understand how they did that but that's That's number seven Yeah Let's have that data store it Keep all those movies. That's what you want. You want your family's home movies to last forever. Don't you? Yeah, I think like all those old spy movies where they like will take the microfilm and will put it into a secret compartment in a watch and you know now You can store this test to all of the data of a nation And yeah, just do a cheek swap. That's all you need. I have it all hidden everywhere in my cheeks That's a that's a oh, that's the modern-day Johnny mnemonic get hollywood on the phone That's right.  I just have a phone that went direct to holly. I don't know what I put it though All right, shall we we shall move forward to this time really truly number six six Enough with your dna. Let's talk about XNA it's the extreme NA no, it's actually It's It's dna made with new base pairs and we've talked about this in the past and this first came about I think actually in 2013 where they they were able to just make dna with x and y base pairs instead of the normal atc or g's But now it's taken a whole new step into the bizarre This is where they have been able to make Organisms in a laboratory. So in january, they were actually able to make Bacteria they were able to culture bacteria in a lab with x and y and their genetic code in the place of some a's or t's or c's or g's and They these bacteria did not die right away. They were stable. They were able to hang out and exist with this fancy new dna and Later in the year They were able to take dna with x's and y's and actually synthesize proteins So not only could this live could it could exist in a living thing without killing it But also it was able to serve the function of dna. It was able to make proteins So this is something that could get propagated into future generations potentially Even further in the bizarre Also in january, they were able to have artificial cells Speak with natural cells communicate with with uh With chemicals and and hormones and things so they were actually able to do their job As cells despite the fact that they were completely artificial So Which is pretty amazing. I mean and and from that like I I love the part of that story if uh the The researchers in the article in the the research report that they write they refer to what they created as A cellular touring test and so as we move forward with these with synthetic synthetic biology and biologists potentially creating their own Microbes, you know from scratch as we start creating organisms. How do you tell the difference between? Yeah, a natural bacteria or one that has been created through science, you know, and so the idea is What aspects of the behavior? Are the same as or similar to existing bacteria and can they interact do the bacteria treat the artificial bacteria? Like regular bacteria. Yeah, this is definitely getting into some borderline mad scientist territory But it's not mad. It's the future. Yeah Synthetic biology is fascinating and terrifying and we'll have we'll I'm sure we'll hear more In 2018 about it to fascinate and terrify us. Yeah, let us engineer our future yikes That's right better people used to say better living through chemistry, but seriously Better living through synthetic biology Yeah, I don't know about that jerry's out jerry's out what? All right from the girl who wants to live to be 200 That's me She's gonna take and choose the things that she's This is America America Okay, everybody was that it for uh for number six Blair. Yes Okay, okay, okay XNA and communicating cells That makes way for us to take a break. This is this week in science We are going to come back in the second half of our show with the top five Stories from 2017 you don't want to miss it because oh my god, the best stuff is coming You know it is you know it always leave the best stuff for the second half of the show We do no now does the this Well, this yeah, because if you count down you went from here's the best story of the year And now we're gonna tell you what the decreasing and now they get only better as we go down this list It only gets better. That's right. So stay tuned for more of the top 11 of 2017 on twists coming After this break We'll be right back You guys I can't believe it is the end of another year Thank you for being here with us for this week in science yet again as we count down But I need to ask you do you have your Blair's animal corner calendar yet? Have you gotten it? I'd love to know if you've received your calendar And if you haven't Why not is it because Of the postal service or because you haven't ordered it yet You know, you can order them still You can we still have calendars left You can order them if you go to twist.org and click on the Toady picture of twist 2018 and it'll take you to the order form directly From the main page. So all you do is head over to twist.org To get yourself get your hands on the best calendar for 2018 that you have ever seen art done by Blair Art done by Blair Created just for you in calendar form and it's a coloring calendar So you get to color color color and we've had some wonderful pictures shared with us from other twist Minions who have been already enjoying coloring their calendar. I love seeing the way that everyone is Artistically adding to these different images And I can't wait to see it through the entire year.  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Thank you for being here We thank you for your support And we couldn't do it without you held in their looks while waste precious time and try selling their books Oh, I sit and wait for your publishing royalty. Everyone has real power who needs If you could travel by thought to a mystical place Why go to book signings and buy for shelf space? Why would you wait for your agent to call you invent and try to convince you? She's worth 12 percent. Why would you bother with talk shows and trades from this? Why deal with the people that repeated the insist that's just show them real And we're back with more this week in science 2017 top 11 counting down Yeah, we're back we are back and Where are we now? Oh my gosh, it's back to the For five So moving on from number six, which was all about synthetic biology. Let's Continue on the biology tip and manipulation of all of that. You know how much I love crisper and gene editing And that is our number five for 2017 2017 Another huge year for christa crisper and gene editing in February Uh, scientists at the national academy of sciences and elsewhere elsewhere wrote a big report endorsing gene editing with limitations but uh, basically endorsing the idea of Let's do this. Let's take our genes and let's manipulate them. Let's edit them and maybe we can make things better What to go wrong? Yeah, but it was endorsed. It's great Oh, what could go wrong? Well, hopefully the FDA will help keep things from going terribly wrong, but we'll see about that There's so many genetic diseases. It's a great thing many genetic diseases. And so in uh, march of last year we had uh, the chinese have the first report of gene editing in embryos Editing normal human embryos none of the none of the embryos were allowed to go to term and one of the problems with this, uh, this First report out of china is there were a lot of off target effects, which were issues, uh, but that did not stop This research from moving forward. I mean Let's find out what we can do to get rid of Mutational issues in In genes that cause disease most of human disease is caused by single nucleotide polymorphisms. That's a single atc or g A single atc adenine tyrosine cytosine guanine Mutation just a single letter in your dna being flipped to something that it shouldn't be No single nucleotide polymorphisms or mutations Are the cause of much genetic of the majority of genetic disease in humans. And if we change those Through something like crisper, that'd be amazing, right? Okay, uh, so in august researchers in the united states here at organ, uh, organ science and health OHSU Oregon health and sciences university here in portland, uh, chukrat metallopov's lab Was they reported successful crisper gene editing in embryos to repair a heart defect caused by a single nucleotide polymorphism And they said it was very successful the way that they got around issues that other people had had is they got the crisper In there at the moment of fertilization and it seemed to make all the difference to their success In june CAR T therapy they reported a successful trial CAR T therapy uses gene modification To go go in and stick a gene in the dna of people with leukemia to they basically remove the the white blood cells and figure out Stick a new gene in and then put it back in the body they insert it from at least in one of them in a hiv Viral virus that's kind of And then this gene edit and goes in puts your put your white blood cell in there reintroduce it to the body and It goes around destroying cancer throughout the body in this in this uh leukemia job Yeah, basically this CAR T therapy uses the addition of a gene to program the white blood cells which are immune system cells To hunt down count cancer cells and kill them and it was a small trial But it was a proof of concept that it's a fairly safe procedure and that uh the individuals In whom it was used. I think it was something like 32 out of 35 or 33 out of 35 individuals went into complete remission from their cancers with then with something ridiculous like 48 hours too like it was It was like right away. Yeah, so uh further trials larger trials are moving forward and it was uh, it's one it was accepted for use in the united states in uh very distinct population of individuals um So very few people but and if you have what one one of the qualifiers is you must have a million dollars You must be able to pay for it. Yeah, also on top of needing to be In a select stage of of people. Yeah, um again, not uh, not crisper, but another kind of gene editing Uh, there's a report of successful I mean, we don't know whether it's successful or not yet But a different kind of gene editing known as zinc finger Nuclease therapy was used to treat a man living with hunter disease and He was given The treatment and we will hopefully here in the new year, uh, whether or not it was successful Fingers crossed for him But I mean this is like on I mean it was through a hospital that this therapy was provided But this is like on the edge of diy treatment It's like we know we've got this. Let's use it. I'll pay for it Let's make it happen And then crisper other wonderful uses for crisper.  Yeah, exactly. They're crispy. Uh, but the gene edited pigs are They're great. We don't know how they'll taste but uh, suppose that it was a very successful trial of using crisper editing to change the fat deposition in pigs And then crisper was also used. This was my I think my favorite story of the year because it just had such a touching human aspect to it crisper gene editing editing was used to fix a skin disorder in Where a young boy a syrian refugee in, uh, germany had been admitted to the hospital He'd lost almost all the skin over his entire body as a result of stresses to his skin That exacerbate this genetic condition. He lost all of his skin and he was uh, he was going to die. And so the researchers Knowing that they could do skin transplantation They went in with crisper to fix the skin To take the mutation and fix it the mutation for disease get rid of it and then grow the child's skin And give it and give it back fixed and the the child is Is doing very well and he will never have that he will never suffer from that disease in his skin again Thanks to this gene editing. So this is an amazing proof of concept Using two different technologies the crisper and also known Skin transplantation techniques and bringing them together to to do something amazing And then finally, I mean one of the things I mentioned at the beginning, uh, the chinese study Using gene and gene editing in embryos and they had the off target effects And there was it's kind of like crisper goes in and is like what else looks like the thing I'm supposed to cut out what else looks like the thing I'm supposed to cut out And it just keeps cutting and cutting There was an improvement this year with a new cast protein instead of crisper cast nine It's crisper cast 13 and it targets RNA It doesn't cut the DNA at all and it leads to much more accurate single nucleotide editing With fewer off target effects So we might be looking at not crisper cast nine, but a whole new Set of genetic editing tools that are off shoots of the crisper system That are just going to be used for different reasons, but this crisper cast 13 is making it much more targeted and efficient I'm going to wait till crisper cast 40 something Yeah, that new update. I don't know. I've heard it's kind of buggy for the crisper All right, let's move forward to number four four four number four The gut microbiome and you This is like this thing. I feel like we've been talking about with increasing frequency over just the last few years this year was no exception to a plethora of gut microbiome stories scientists replace the microbiome of fruit flies With a selective alternative Or varying degrees of what they would normally have and found they could change the food That the flies sought out telegraphing that perhaps our appetites Are tied to our microbiome less so decision which uh, which that story reminds me of a previous year's guest, uh, jaziah zayna uh, jaziah zayna when he was talking about his he had done a fecal transplant and had that sudden sugar craving and devoured a box of cookies, which he never would have done previously and asked his friend Do you ever eat like a whole bag of cookies and was like no, I never do that But sometimes they get like a pint of ice cream and eat it one night. Aha there was like this anecdotal or this testimonial Uh evidence from his experience and they um, it was recreated in fruit flies this year microbes were found to exert a previously unappreciated influence on gene transcription factor meaning our evolution As humans or as any kind of life was likely helped along over the years by a little gentle direction of microbial influence Uh comparing the gut microbes of mice with Alzheimer's like pathology and healthy control scientists found noticeable differences in microbiome composition treating diseased mice with probiotics They decreased gut leakiness inflammation and boosted memory performance Finding that perhaps some of our diseases are actually tied To the microbiome itself, which we're finding more and more ever I think there was a bunch of stories somewhere in that in that track this year speaking of tracks bacteria in the digestive tract Relinked to healthy bowel movements because bacterial signals They found had a decisive effect on the pattern of spontaneous contractions that move Poop along its merry way acting as a sort of pacemaker or pacemaker maker regulator for the bowels My favorite story of the year in the gut. They're not microbes was the finding that cells lining the gut wall Can transport viruses into the body Where they go somewhere and do something That we're not completely sure of just yet But that they do so naturally And we can assume intentionally to serve some function somewhere previously we had only Uh, sir, they've only been hypothesized that viruses that we find in different organs And in the blood in different places in the body get there when there's a a cut a legion There's inflammation. There's some way that these viruses bypass the body's natural defenses Ah, but it turns out the body itself was encompassing and transporting into the direction of at least in the lab thus far They've shown uh that gut microbes Pick up and move from the what would be their exterior, which is your gut lining to the interior of the body correction And that this is just a natural normal thing that your body does for some reason And while uh, these uh, microbiome stories are only a sample Of what this year brought I have the feeling gut feeling Making more of these stories to come next year Yeah, I think there there is just so much that we don't know that we are learning and Man, it just seemed like every episode. It was like, oh, there's another gut microbiome story. Oh, there's another micro Oh, this time it's a yeah, they're talking the the gut and the brain and the bacteria. They're all talking Oh my goodness. Yes So much there were there were many aha moments For me really quite quite a bit and we are again, we're just on the cusp of discovering longer Yeah, that was another one that I really liked was the young. Yeah, that's a fantastic one Yeah, so it's it's it's all about the microbiome though It is and it's one of those things that too like it's it doesn't throw out everything we know about diet but there's there's examples plenty of examples now already where diet is is part of the equation but How it actually affects you is dictated but by your microbiome by the microflora that you have in your particular gut And if you don't have that which you need to process this or that thing that you're putting in there Then eating it doesn't matter or affects you terribly or So like but it's also like it's the microbiome. It's your genetics It's your diet and your microbiome affects your diet and your microbiome affects your genetics and your genetics affects Your microbiome and it's this it's this give and take of this triangle of things going on And and it tells you whether or not maybe when we figure it out You'll know whether or not you or the person who should be drinking all that wine Right, right Is the wine going to be helping my brain or not? That that depended I sure hope I have Depended on the microbiome that was another great story this year and and And there is like at some point we're gonna get like You get this print out, you know from your doctor or from your computer at home or however things are done in the future It'll be like an allergy test, but instead Yeah, but it's like here's your here's here's a diet you could you can survive on and be fully healthy And and some of us might get like here eat all the fatty foods and fast food that you want It's gonna be fine and and some of us are gonna be like I'm on a all cookie diet. I don't understand why but this is what My body's demanding from me And you know, it's not your body. It's your bacteria. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's we're city buses We are bacterial city buses.  We're just the conveyance Yeah, we're just the machinery upon which this the the microbes are pulling the levers There you go. And it's been that way since the beginning of biological time Okay, moving on from microbes. We got the guts going on. It's time for number three It's time for climatia Ah It wouldn't be a year without Some climate change in the rundown for our top 11 Just because it's perhaps the largest Environmental problem of our time and the more we learn about it The more we're learning that it affects human health Right now not in the future, but right now Wait, I don't I'm sorry. I have to interrupt I thought the biggest environmental problem we were facing in this age was rising seawaters Or or was the change in the migration of birds or the Yeah, you see that's all Oh, the trees are moving too. Oh It's because of the heat trapping blanket you guys It's the carbon dioxide the heat trapping blanket. It's creating climate change trapping and heat. It's changing all these things. So For example This year was once again the hottest on record. This sounds familiar, right? But it also was the 50th anniversary of the original climate predicting paper Which I found particularly interesting because everyone says, oh, they're just projections Oh, it's very dangerous to talk about projections because they're just projections It's even if we do our job, then the projections don't come true. It becomes a whole problem. Well, this 50 year old Was pretty darn accurate. And so it also lends itself to supporting All of the past 50 years of climate science not that we need to we know it's there but Regardless, that's very interesting to see We saw a lot of symptoms of this climatio. We saw oxygen plummeting in the oceans. We saw sea level rise We saw the greening of the of the Antarctic. I think that's what he was Alluding to and then just ocean temperatures all this kind of stuff Ultimately, this is all part of what we are now calling the Anthropocene Which is the epic of humans because this is officially now the sixth mass extinction One other thing that we're seeing that's pretty telling is that insects are dropping in huge numbers And this is mostly anecdotal. This is from entomologists that are mostly Kind of amateur scientists They're doing it for fun kind of like birders look out for birds.  Yes, that is the thing and you You suck up a bug into this little chamber and then you identify it and then you release it And so they found an 80 potential drop in 2013 In insect sightings, which is Pretty terrifying because insects have a lot of important jobs And they think that that may be due in large part to changes in global temperatures now I'm putting my silver linings hat back on because this was also a year for some of my favorite climate solution stories And I think this is a change from years previous where we were just dooming gloom When there was a lot of doom and gloom with warming and co2 and sea level predictions and all this stuff You know, it's major storms and things like hurricane harvey and others But this year is different. I think because there's more positive solutions going on Yeah, people are really starting to band together to do something about this And they're taking action and one of the things is that um more and more people are investing in solar wind hydroelectric alternative forms of energy and as more and more people invest as we've talked about many times on the show then the The technology improves It becomes better. It becomes cheaper and it's this feedback loop that actually helps us get somewhere good what we found in the study from august is that There's actually an economic benefit between 30 billion and 113 billion dollars in moving to renewable energies That are actually uh, it equates to about seven cents per kilowatt hour, which is more than unsubsidized costs So for all these people that say oh, it's going to take massive government subsidies It's not worth it. The technology isn't good enough yet. We can't actually replace it scientists have done The due diligence and found that it is actually beneficial mainly because of the public health benefits So that None of us will be losing money on this which is really important um in a similar story talking about the offset of removing fossil fuels out of the economy there are people in In apple in the Appalachian beach keeping collective actively training coal miners to keep bees And I think that one was a great. Yeah, that was a great story. I love this is such a great thing because You can move away from coal and toward bees. Yeah bees need help There's another there's a similar thing. Um, that's it didn't it wasn't invented this year But it's currently still ongoing where they teach former coal miners to code And so people are out there making Making programs to help us, you know make this transition as painless as possible, which is great And I think that it's really important to remember that there are all sorts of Problem solvers out there working to make this as painless of a transition as possible. We just all need to Get moving Yeah, also, I think really important to keep in mind too Uh the vast majority because there's no other majority but vast the vast majority of coal mining jobs Went away due to automation. Yeah, that's also very true. The jobs were disappearing as coal production increased for decades So let's keep so this is a win-win people are already losing their jobs and as as we make more and more renewable energy More and more people will be looking for work either in those renewable energies or in other facilities and if there are nonprofits and government agencies and Companies willing to band together to make Spaces for these people. I think that is fantastic. There's there's that plus side and then there's also the huge public health win from using sustainable renewable energies like solar and wind that reduce the amount of pollution in the air that lead to disease cardiovascular disease especially in various areas that that lead to billions of dollars in health care costs and if we can Minimize that, you know, that there's all sort. There's all sorts of places. This is a win. And so We will move forward. There will be a positive Absolutely. Yeah, I mean weirdo silver linings all over the place The the science has shown us this year that that it's it's real and it's happening The science has also shown us that people have trouble understanding It's happening right now Which is why we're here is to talk about it, right? And then on top of that the science has shown us that there are easy and And sustainable and real life solutions to this problem. How neat Yep, let's move past it. We have solutions. Let's put them into action Oh And where are we right now on this positive positive note? We are at number two number two two number two Life is old That pretty much covers it for this section. Uh, we can go on to number one. No, there was a lot to cover in this so we This was actually kind of a year for For confirmations more than discoveries in this in this uh section. We had the the UCLA University of Wisconsin, Madison Re-reconfirmation That microscopic fossils that they discovered nearly 30 years ago Had actually formed nearly 3.5 billion years ago And rocks found in western australia Which are about the oldest fossils ever found indeed the earliest direct evidence of life on earth Except for of course the fossilized microorganisms that released 3.7 thousand million 3.7 billion years possibly even going back as much as four billion years old and Then uh fair genius sedimentary rocks That were thought to be once a seafloor hyperthermal vent This was in Niva Gitta Niva Gitta Uh belt in kebac canada So that's uh providing those are really old rocks evidence for biological activity in submarine hydrothermal environments more than 3.7 billion years ago Uh not to be totally left behind in all this They found at 3.48 billion year old hot spring deposits in western australia pushing back by 3 billion years the earliest known existence of inhabited terrestrial hot springs But that's you know when when we're when we're talking about the win life first Formed and the age of the planet. This is like extremely early This is well before Uh, we we thought these sort of things would have had time to develop but again As as we pointed out every time we've talked about one of these stories for life to start showing up in and I end up the UCLA University of Wisconsin, madison The fossils that they were looking at were not just of One micro uh microbe that had fossilized but of several types of microbes So for there to already be an abundance Of and variety of these microbes that early means that life can take root that quickly Which expands the possibilities of drake's equation further than We had thought drake's equation being a number of planets and solar systems out there And by possibilities of life forming on them and all of the planetary discoveries that we've made This year, uh put that number Probably much higher than we would have we would have conceived before also, uh world's oldest algae fossils Billion years old, uh, this is the analysis by scientist at McGill University That we reported on relatively recently was that last week It was last week or the week before yeah Yeah, uh, so based on that finding they estimated photosynthesis And today's plants was set in place 1.25 billion years ago Again, that's as and now I look at these 1.2.5 Yeah for now Yeah, and in also when like earlier talking about the Uh the human evolution We always have to keep in mind that the earliest dates that we have are from our earliest evidence And that they can always get pushed back further that these are placeholders This is our our best estimate based on all of the information that we have available So all of these numbers although many of them actually are etched in stone as these micro fossils were The the the data can there can be more data out there waiting to be discovered Uh that can push these dates back even further Yeah, I think like what is it right? So it's between canada and australia for the the oldest life But both both of them are like pretty much close to four billion years Yeah, they're both they're both way back there and and again, this is this is that thing when we're we're finding fossils from that era We've got a sea floor that was covered in ice that we've discovered in canada We've got a bitter rock formation that just happened to not geologically erode or be covered over in australia and That evidence for early life Is everywhere Except it's even buried or some to the ocean or it's Been eroded in some way that we don't have access to it currently Uh, we may we may find More of these things. I want to keep this is always this thing in the back of my mind that all of the information that we collect comes from The surface of the Quarter or less of ish Of the planet that's above the sea and so much of not just The planet's history, but even of human history Is hiding there under the ocean whether it was coastal civilizations that are now underwater or evidence of dinosaurs or Evidence of microbial life or whatever it is so much of this is under the ocean at this point that We only have access to very little of our history So when we do find these things they are incredibly important to understanding the history of the planet Yeah, and the the history of the planet and beyond that potentially The history of the solar system the history of our galaxy the history of our universe, you know, and The the ultimate questions of where did we come from? Right, how did we get here? Which brings us to which brings us to number One one one one the top story of 2017 the story by which all other stories that we just talked about ranked Lower than because of its incredible importance to our understanding of everything of everything yes of the universe of galaxies of Oh, so many things. Oh my goodness We know Gravitational waves exist and this year LIGO combined with Virgo Was able to detect more gravitational waves than we're first detected and announced in 2016 LIGO the LIGO work Was was given a Nobel Prize that's here and additionally LIGO and Virgo together Not just detecting more gravitational waves but being able to triangulate and pinpoint regions of space in which mergers of large mass bodies are taking place Enabled the detection of not just black holes But just a slightly smaller but still dense bodies in the universe that have been hypothesized to merge we detected the merging of two neutron stars In a specific area of space which was then corroborated By detection of a light signal of a gamma ray burst occurring at the same place and point in time which also enabled us to be able to Validate another hypothesis which is that gamma ray bursts occur when neutron stars merge Okay, these are things that physicists south astrophysicists have hypothesized to take place but now with LIGO and Virgo working together, it's beyond just these basic hypothesis validation things It's been able we've been able to look at the light spectra Emitted from this first detection of the neutron stars merging We've been able to see the gravitational waves We've been able to understand that gravity the gravitational waves travel at about the same speed as the speed of light So the time it took for the gravitational waves was about the same as the speed of light Which means that they potentially people have talked about gravitation gravity Being uh that that that gravitons or some kind of particle is responsible for gravity And this uh is a little bit of evidence in that direction because you've got something a particle traveling Something a frequency a wave something traveling at the same speed as the speed of light then you have Additionally the understanding that the electromagnetic radiation that we saw enabled us to see what kind of Heavy elements were created where there's a mystery of where Heavy elements come from and now we're able to say oh my goodness Gold and platinum potentially they're coming from the merger of neutron stars where it's starting to put together the pieces of the universe Our understanding is becoming richer and it's just going to get better because we will see more of these things And it's going to be able to answer even more questions in the years to come about models of how the universe works how it's constructed why things work the way they do and It's it's big It's a really really big discovery So LIGO 2016 was huge and with Virgo It's gotten even bigger and we reported this year that they're also now Going to be using pulsars In space like if you want to talk about more gravitational wave detection Researchers are going to develop a system similar to the LIGO Virgo array here on our planet But using pulsars in space to to see the slight shifts In light coming from the pulsars to be able to Tell us about even fainter signals The signals from the merger of super massive black holes. So this year we talked a lot or This year there were reports of when galaxies collide. We know at the center of galaxies black holes exist Right and so if galaxies collide then as they're colliding The black holes are eating lots of stuff and eventually the black holes are going to collide with each other and as that happens We want to find evidence of it, but it's super low Frequency information that's coming at us that we don't have a way to detect yet So pulsars new gravitational wave array. It's coming in the future Researchers are working on it right now these guys. We're gonna learn so much more It's gonna be a new era of astronomy according to the researchers There are going to be new observatories added in japan and india. So This gravitational wave network is growing It's already discovered so much There's more to come the universe is we're gonna start picking it apart and seeing how it's built And that's number one The answer to life the universe and everything is number one. Is that what you're saying? Maybe that kind of makes sense I get it. I get it Yeah, so that does it for our list for this year the top 11 of 2017 everyone let us know If you agree with the things on our list. If you don't agree, let us know as well. Actually, no, I don't want to hear with you Always let us know what your favorite stories of the year were Yeah, and uh ed dire said ed dire sent in his recommendations As well as some other people on twitter and thank you so much for your recommendations for stories for this year. There were There were a lot wonderful stories this year. Oh, but you know what? There were some more Runners up. Yes. I have some uh thus in these last few minutes of the show So, you know how there were always pop polls your senior year You pick the the class clown most likely to succeed. I kind of have those stories for the year So first I have the crappiest story of the year What crappy story of the year it's all about how animals poop And there was a rather dubious study we reported on In the on the show in april about how all mammals big or small poop in approximately 12 seconds Now this this study was uh part of An they actually won an ignoble But once you look into it their their science was potentially equally crappy as their premise They had 23 video clips from youtube a dog park and zoo Atlanta from 11 types of animals and from this they deduced All mammals poop in 12 seconds I can tell you that is not true after many observations of my six-year-old son Yes Yeah My favorite let's see if I can find my favorite sentence from this study They said that The act of pooping is more like nudging preformed Turd cylinders down a well greased chute Rather than squeezing a morphous toothpaste out of a tube So feel free to think about that while you're brushing your teeth tonight Then I would like to give this the golden turd award.  There we go Next I have the most adorable story of the year. It's all about how bees Make a ridiculously cute whoops Noise when they're startled or they almost run into each other. They go whoops Almost as if to say oh excuse me. I'm so sorry. Excuse me. Good day. Good day So bees, you know just making me smile on the daily Then I had this year's proof of scientists war on sports or Football can we stop now? It's all about chronic traumatic encephalopathy mainly the development this year was that some Football players did donate their brain to science after they passed away And that allowed for a pretty comprehensive study on their brains postmortem 202 football player brains and they found a really high diagnosis rate in relation to football it was 177 players so 87 percent and 99 percent of nfl players so Football can we stop it now? I think it's an important study to remember for future years We need to keep talking about it because apparently we can't stop it yet but Something to think about and then also the I knew it story of the year Was about unattractive people seen as better scientists So as a woman you can pick pretty or smart but not both In terms of public perception or you could just say Screw public perception and and be you and be gorgeous and smart and Forget all that jazz Public perception be damned. That's right. And then Overall this year's Blair's animal corner MVP Goes to spiders Of course How could they not be on the list? So Spiders are the gift that keeps on giving I feel like they tell us things every single year about the environment about chemical reactions about How we can make things better this year. We found a lot about spider silk We were actually able to replicate spider silk in a lab. We were able to make antimicrobial spider silk and Their venom helped us develop better painkillers, but my absolute favorite story of the year In relation to spiders Was that they crunched the numbers and spiders eat 400 to 800 million tons of prey Every year. Thank you spiders. They eat more than anything else that includes whales So these guys help keep our life Pest Not free but reduced. Can you imagine a world without spiders? So as much as we like to talk about how they're creepy and we villainize them and I agree I don't want one anywhere near my pillow Spiders are very important very important Spiders are so important and oh my gosh as the insects die off. What are the spiders going to eat? Oh, yeah, don't they do things like eat eat frogs. Yes. We found that out this year Spiders and plants they eat plants too. Yes. Yes. We found that out. Yeah, of course We already know that they eat birds and lizards so many birds. They like oh my goodness. Oh spiders What are you going to teach us in 2018? I cannot wait to find out.  They don't even need human teachers. In fact, they're like done with No, actually there will be more there will be more games between the ai and the top dawns of the go world in the future, but I I don't know that ai they're going to teach us things that hundreds of years of humans playing go have not been able to figure out about the game and And possibly lead us to world ai domination Beyond that we also have scientists created in january the first big human chimera. What does that mean?  In fact, it was the opposite the human cells We're ended up being fairly rare in the offspring that they created in this chimera experiment, but human pig chimeras the ultimate goal is to be able to really grow organs For transplantation in other animals like pigs or cows that are already farmed and ranched for our use So why not, you know, we don't have enough people dying for organ transplants And people don't really want to be taking all those anti rejection meds all the time So maybe we can fix it by growing organs in animals Bring the whole new meaning to the phrase steak and kidney pie, right? And that's right as long as it's not a human Steak and kidney in there from that pig And over oh over at the over at eureka alert triple as uh, they uh They show their most shared through social media story of the year Was a report showing that more american children are living in poverty today than at the height of the great recession That was the most shared the second most shared Uh, was the was the story about the the Viking warrior Oh, right Right, right, right. Yeah, where they discovered looked at the gravesite and went. Hey, that's not a man. The Viking warrior That's not a man You're a lady The lady viking uh warrior Uh chiefed in leader of lady was Was the number two most short on shared on the social media although I guess the one that got the most uh actual hit was scientists invent way to trigger artificial photosynthesis to clean air and create power There you go climate see climate solutions Yeah, it was a it was Uh, also, uh, also the number two click was migratory birds bumped off schedules climate change shifts Uh, so the first two the first two were climate change oriented People are concerned, but they're also looking for solutions Yeah, it's getting out there and uh, my final mad science story was the lamb bags lamb bags, that's right Researchers are trying to create an artificial womb and uh, they created bags That they filled with juice and they were able to well, you know juice in the sense of that all the liquid and fluid that surrounds the A fetus in the uterus Except it was in a bag A bag bag Yes, and uh, the idea is to be able to support premature premature human babies That the where the mother's uterus rejects the baby where there's some kind of problem If they're a baby a baby's born premature currently We have to we stick them in incubators with tubes and wires and all sorts of things And it would be a much better solution if we could just transfer them from one womb to another Excuse me little baby We need to change your womb number It's a little it's a little mad sciency the images of these little baby lambs incubating in the artificial lamb bags is It's interesting, but it's very good science and a good purpose going into the future Do you guys have anything else any crazy stories or anything that we've missed? I have a I have I have a full palette This is full palette or maybe it's yeah There's plenty of stories that we we could have given more attention to There's plenty of stories that we didn't cover this year that we should have that somehow we missed So uh patrons give us more money on patreon. We'll do more episodes per week Yeah, whoa Yeah, that's one thing that's possible. Uh, but the other is is as as you see stories If you think they're interesting Assume that we will too and send them to us at the emails that you will get in a little while Towards the very end of the rundown of the show but I I often I often do miss stories That I would find incredibly interesting Only to find them in my email inbox because somebody found it and sent it to me And they become part of the show quite frequently There's of course, yes, we had more hours in the day every one of these stories that came out Uh that we didn't talk about deserved our attention deserved us talking and discussing And hopefully we'll get to even more of them in this next year Yeah, we do love them all and we love talking about them Uh fata in the chat room says tabby star. You didn't talk about tabby star. Well Yeah tabby star that was a kind of a 2016 story with an update this year where uh researchers saw that it's uh The star tabitha boy gn Detected they call it tabby star as a nice nickname with these weird this weird dimming behavior where it dims and then it brightens again and then it dims again and it kind of had it just it's odd It's not regular in its frequency. They don't really understand why it dims the way it does But observations suggest that it is a star that has a cloud of dust Surrounding it that there's some kind of irregular ring of dust Around the star that obscures it in a way that leads to this irregular dimming And it's not a Dyson sphere The boring answer is usually the most likely unfortunately It should be a Dyson sphere that uh, that exploded It could be it could have exploded a dusty one a dusty Dyson sphere. How about that for a tongue twister dusty Dyson sphere Yeah, anyway, there were so many stories this year so many that we covered so many that we didn't cover and that we're still interesting and I'm You know, we've tight. We've brought it down to these these 11 top story categories and um, also kind of these runners up at the very end but everybody thank you so much For being a part of the show. Thanks for listening. Thanks for uh hanging out with us and counting down the year I do love reminiscing at the end of every year and going back and going. Oh, yeah That's when that happened. Oh, I remember that that was so fun And it kind of puts a nice end cap On the year to know where we've been and give us a place to think about where we are going and uh next week is the first week of 2018 And in 2018 we will be bringing you first Our annual prediction show so it'll be a fun experience to go through the predictions that we made last year about what would happen in 2017 and see how we did Usually we don't do very well We make bold predictions. We make some bold predictions about the show I like to do a mix of real predictions and also very humorous you know Take the fun out of Poke fun at predicting a little bit, but uh, so we will do that and we will also make new predictions for 2018 about what we think is going to happen in 2018. Do you have predictions? Send them to us tweet them to us. Let us know what you think is going to happen in 2018 We'd love to get your input before our show next week before we make our before we place our bets On what kind of a year 2018 is going to be because I don't know if it's anything like 2017 It's gonna be another big year people years of highs and lows All over the place all over the place Hot rod. No the world is not gonna end in 2018 stop that All right, it is Just real quick too. I just to throw this on the end of the show if you're gonna make a dune's day prediction I'll make it like this year or next year. You need to make it at least seven years out That gives you time to build the cult following and to have people start anticipating It takes a while to get the word out. You can't just make it right away. This is it's a process Plus we have to plan twist mcgetten. It's a whole thing You can't just throw out the end of the world like like tomorrow It's you won't one person might believe you and like cancel some plans that day, but they won't really All right giving advice for how to predict the end of the world Thank you very much And everyone out there once again, thank you so much for joining us For our end of the year show It has been so much fun to share the year with you reminisce about the old And get ready for the new Remember, we still have twist calendars available if you head to twist.org You can find information about that. Additionally, january 18th the new year January 18th. We are going to be in san francisco at sf sketch fest Live at the cal academy of sciences and we hope that you will join us there Our facebook page has event information and a link for tickets I would also like to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone Who does so much for the show blare justin. Thank you for being here week after week and having fun curious exciting inspiring conversations that I look forward to every week Fada, thank you for helping with the social media identity for thank you for helping to record the show so that we have an audio version To put up on the rss feeds brandon. Thank you for helping to simulcast to facebook Absolutely appreciate the work that you all put in to help keep this show going in its many different forms And I would also like to say thank you To our patreon sponsors. Thank you to the paypal sponsors also, but this is a reward for patreon, so if you if you If you support us at the at certain levels on patreon I will thank you on the air and so right now I would like to say thank you to the following sponsors Thank you a honey moss erin luthan adam mishkan alex dodie alex wilson Andy grow arlie moss rt on benrotha bill cursey bub calder brexton howard brinton minnish brian hedrick brian kondren brian hoan bruce cordell iron lee charlene henry christopher drier christopher rap and colombo amid craig porter Dale bryant dania pierce and daniel garcia darwin hannon darrell david neighbor davilkinson david david friedell david similly david wiley donald trump the dubious google cambell e o edward dire emigrenier Eric nap erick wolff felix alvarez flying out gary s gerald sorrell's jibberton latimore jarl loniago greg guzman greg riley haroon sarang hexator howard tan luma lama jacklyn boister jake jones james james dobbson randall james randall jason dozier jason oldes jason roberts jason schneiderman gene telie jim drapo joe wheeler john atwood john crocker john gridley john retus swami keith corsell ken haze kevin paroch and kevin rails back city of alcova hurt larson larry garcia leila louis smith mark mazzaro's marjorie mark marshall clark matt sutter matthew litwin niche neves more cowbell mountain sloth nathan greco orly radio patrick cone paul stanton paul disney phil nadeau philip shein randy mazuka richard hendricks richard onemus richard porter rick ramis robert astin rodney rudy garcia salgad sam shuwata sir frankadelic stefan insom steve debel steve lesmond steve machinsky the hardened family taught north cut tony steel tyler harrison tyron fong trainer 84 and eulissies adkins thank you all for your support on patreon and if any of you are out there are interested in supporting us on patreon you can find information at twist.org where there is a link to the patreon community and you can find out information there oh we will be back next week and like i said it's our prediction show so i hope you're ready for some big predicting i predict will be live online sometime around eight p.m pacific time on wednesday and you can join live if you go to twist.org slash live or facebook.com slash this weekend science but it's archived online if you can't make it to the live show so don't worry get the podcast you can also find past episodes at twist.org slash excuse me youtube or at facebook.com slash this weekend science or just twist.org thank you for enjoying the show twist is as uh can you just add available as a podcast you can google this weekend science in your itunes directory and it should pop up there if you have a mobile type device a perfumé if you will twist the number four droid app is available in the android marketplace or again simply this weekend science in anything apple market placey for more information on anything you've heard here today like all of those links that we went through for all of those stories that we ran through today in our top 11 show notes will be available on our website that's at www.twist.org where you can also make comments and start conversations with the hosts and other listeners or you can contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at this weekend science dot com just and at twist meaning at gmail.com or blare at blare baz at twist.org just be sure to put twisty wis somewhere in your subject line or your email will be spam filter you can also hit us up on the twitter where we are at twist science at dr kiki at jackson fly and at players menagerie we love your feedback if there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview a haiku that comes to you in the night please let us know we'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news and if you've learned anything from this year of shows remember it's all in your head i'm setting up shop got my banner unfurled it says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice show them how to stop the robots with a simple device i'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand and all it'll cost you is a couple of grand this week science is coming your way so everybody listen to what i say i use the scientific method for all that it's worth and i'll broadcast my opinion all it's this week in science this week in science this week in science science science this week in science this week in science this week in science science science i've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what i say may not represent your views but i've done the calculations and i've got a plan if you listen to the science you may just better understand but we're not trying to threaten your philosophy we're just trying to save the world from jeopardy this week in science is coming your way so everybody listen to everything we say and if you use our methods that are rolling and die we may rid the world of toxoplasma got the eyes this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science science science i've got a laundry list of items i want to address from stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness i'm trying to promote more rational thought and i'll try to answer any question you got the help can i ever see the changes i seek when i can only set up shop one this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science come to the end of another show and the end of another year the beautiful friend yes the end of another episode of this week in science another year another calendar year i can't believe it's already been another year why doesn't keep going so fast you're too busy i know scientists are looking into figuring all that out but yeah i'm so busy the end is nigh that's funny the end is bill nigh nighy nigh the bill is due c r1 you're funny you're funny who's got a snow right hot rod has rain with mike is it really oh negative 12 what that's just not okay that's not all right i've had enough with the cold weather it's supposed to actually be in the 40s and 50s for the next couple of days oh speaking of i'm gonna turn my uh my heater on do that we had we had snow we had a white christmas in portland oregon everybody said no it's not gonna snow why would it snow in partland on christmas and then it snowed and it was all snowy and white and then it melted a little and then it was really icy and it's still just icy but it was mike it was minus 20 jeez yes too cold for me too cold but we had snow and it was great dry as a bone in california we had that precipitate shy on it's not good not good it's very dry not a good thing california you need to be wetter i'm just going to say that maybe california will listen that would be good mm-hmm you know being the breadbasket of the united states and all might be good yeah there was snow in seattle yep oh and you were in denver snow identity for with shoveling snow in denver yes oh that's snow there was snow in the northwest schnoo schnoo um did you get any good gifts for the holidays i got sweaters good i got a new sweater it makes me warm and happy it's a nice little sweater it's very nice yes yeah we got some fun you know fun wonderful geeky gifts for kai for christmas excellent yeah he did get a new bicycle one of the good ones but um who assembled the bicycles are the marshal got to do that i was busy putting kai to bed when he did that um yeah it was like it was a good christmas there's lots of good stuff there we have snap circuits and which are a fun um electronics thing for kids these days snap circuits we got some of those let's see kai get kai got um oh his favorite gift though came from his grandparents he got a pretty decent size plastic like tupperware type bin full of plants versus zombies stuffies little plants versus zombies stuffed animals and he has taken those little stuffed animals and since christmas he has been making movies with the little stuffies and so i'll just find him or just not making a movie but he's acting out things with the characters he's got them and he's got them and he's got this dialogue and he's got things happening and he's got yeah there's a lot of action going on there children are natural directors yeah yeah yeah he knows what he's wants he's like but i have to put he's like why do you have why do you have a plant with a with a water lily if it can't go in the water and i'm like but your water lily plant is a stuffed animal it's going to get wet and icky and then my mold and he's like but it's a water lily i'm gonna have to get him to introduce me to all the characters because he seriously he knows i think every plant versus zombies plant type and zombie type and the things these children use their their best brain storage for stem cells are you looking what are you what are you what are you talking about stem cells in the different amounts of 200 year old Blair will be something to see or hear the creaking that's right it won't she won't be creaking at 200 oh i'm gonna look just like i do right now if not better thanks to those glorious stem cells stem cells stem cells i would love a musical about stem cells oh what's the uh did you did somebody get snap circuits i was yeah i got snap circuits oh i love those actually i've got a whole case of them over there yeah those are those are a blast those are so much fun endless hours of entertainment yeah make things yeah make things go yeah show show show merry christmas merry christmas dave fridel panoramic good to see you in there all these people in the chat room so good to see you oh my goodness panoramic has stored 1700 million stem cells nice for her daughter cool that's what you do with the cord blood right the cord blood storage time i did not end up doing that with kai thought about it was expensive and awkward and i don't know i also kind of think that from the show like um all the stories are kind of like i don't know if it's gonna be necessary yeah because you can just take your own skin and revert them back to stem cells that was one of my favorite stories but i'm not sure if that was this year yeah that was last year a few years ago yeah there was uh what happened recently though where they did something with a vector and they applied uh electricity some kind of electroporation of the skin to get some uh a genetic editing vector in that led to uh like creating induced pluripotent stem cells in the lower yeah that's what i'm talking about yeah that was this year oh man yeah we missed that one that was that was a good one one of my favorites i also really liked all the sperm as uh cancer treatments that was another one there were two of those there was i was i was surprised to see another one of those from like february we talked about it but i i can't remember what the like very intricate difference was between the one we talked about last week i think it was and then the one in february but we talked about it twice this year yeah yeah being a vector for destroying cancer and yeah sperm sperm sperm came up many times throughout the year as it does sperm comes up from time to time right ed from connecticut electrified stem cells part of a movie plot yeah usually it doesn't end so well right the chat room is now yeah the chat room is going to take away is going to be sperm cures cancer that's right what are you talking about in the last year sperm cures cancer there you go no it's sperm carries the cancer killing thing and magnets and it's a whole smoke and mirrors operation that's right smoke just sperm and magnets cures and and harnesses yeah the magnets were on harnesses on the sperm that's right little magnets on sperm back a little magnet jockeys good night fodder oh happy end of the year what as it should panoramic oh my goodness oh my goodness live shows i do love them so we told you panoramic you take the sperm you harness on one of those magnets and cartoons and then you go get the cancer boy go ha and he goes see that's how it works with this little whip tail yeah yeah he was chasing chasing the cancer chase the cancer chase the cancer oh gracious um let's see so yeah kiki why are people steering sealing the calendars what's happening with this i don't know that's the second that's the second one that arrived empty and i don't understand it either what get it i got i got this returns to me in the mail with empty like it had been opened and ripped open and then no calendar in it the exact same thing happened to one of our patrons who i um who i work with now he uh yeah he he got that exactly he got an envelope where it's torn and there was nothing inside well i will send i that's what i'm i will send new i will send the calendars i'm sorry damage i don't i don't get it so first of all how how in the mail system is this happening but second of all like really you're gonna steal a calendar right now what do you think is in there the amazon effect yeah so uh what was that what was the story somebody it went viral the other day a woman in san francisco was tired of um of uh people stealing her packages that the delivery people were just leaving on the doorstop doorstep and um so it just kept kept happening over and over again and so eventually she started taking amazon boxes and filling them with her used cat litter and then leaving those on the porch and so those started getting stolen too and so she's getting rid of her used cat litter and she's potentially deterring the thieves from coming back again good one it's good yes yeah what i do now is i just put the address of my uh my ups mailbox yeah so that nothing comes to my door anymore yeah i've been yeah i've been using uh i've been using the work address yeah exactly you can i don't have another at work address so but that's that's exactly what you do and then things come in and if it's like the holiday time and you're having deliveries of presents the kids don't know about it mm-hmm good nobody steals anything off your doorstep yeah yeah but like this thing goes in the mail slot i don't get it yeah these are this is mail slot size stuff but this one i mean this has a us postal service we're sorry that your article was damaged during processing uh i think it's part of an elaborate Illuminati effort to prevent science the colors from falling into the hands of the general public yeah i got a christmas card for me stop cutting out stuff got a christmas card for me i did too i did too nice oh you know a different one mine had a nice house on it mine is the dr seuss the who's down in whoville i'm liking christmas a lot twist miss enjoy twist miss yes i don't know but i have a thing from the mail recovery center and that says something about i can try to recover my lost items i'd love to know why didn't they just put it back in the envelope if they have the missing item why didn't they just put it back in the envelope oh because it's they can't just that's that's mail forgery see they need they need to know document your permission for them to re-enter the mail that seems like ridiculous uh dudes i hope somebody in the us postal service in seattle is um enjoying a twist calendar yeah really i hope that's what i hear in san francisco yeah man oh well day friday i think so people are dying to color in the calendars i hope so and i just really want to color them in because they're amazing davie are you having fun coloring the calendars i hope you're having fun coloring your calendar i'm gonna eat my crackers now should i tell everybody about my why the crackers made me cranky cranky crackers i would like you to look at these crackers what stands out to you about these crackers they look like almonds i don't know they look like cracker crumbs there's not really any big enough pieces of cracker that you could dip it in hummus or put some cheese on it this was one of those like nice boxes of crackers that you spend four or five dollars on so that you can take it to a holiday party and i did that i spent the money on the crackers and then i got it home and i was like all right i'm gonna put together a cracker and cheese thing take it to the party and the entire box of crackers was broken the whole box i spent like five dollars four or five dollars on cracker crumbs cracker crumbs um cracker crumbs have a cranky because of the cracker crumbs yep i mean that's i mean you buy a cracker that's what you're gonna get maybe it's like you gotta expect the cracks in the crackers at some point but what do you have a unicorn um is that a unicorn justin or is that um what's going on there um he has his microphone turned off but he's got a unicorn that looks like a my little pony well i have this cracker crumbs what do you have what's that this is ludo from labyrinth from labyrinth oh that's good yeah look at him his little tail whoop wait wait let me see that guy his ludo hi ludo so when you come to portland we can go to the fernie bray which is his wonderful art gallery slash store in the southeast of portland that has it's a gallery primarily for the art of the frunes and brian fruned and his wife and they did the art and the uh that made the puppets for the dark crystal oh and for labyrinth so they were in jim henson's creature shop they were oh my gosh that's amazing yeah and there are these amazing uh pictures and there are these these creatures in the shop that are so cool it's it's just it's like you go in and it's like this place of fairies and trolls and it's just it's just super cool and then they've got like a little bookstore in the back where they have a book on fairies written by the frunes where the art is all like the fairies and trolls and so they've got books and they've got um they've had some a couple of books that are like these really interesting explanations of like how the dark crystal was made and like basic there's one that has like script pages taken out of the dark crystal with jim henson's notes on the side of how he wanted things to look and oh my god yeah super cool oh when i was a kid i really wanted to work in jim henson's creature shop oh me too awesome me too and then science and then science happens dream fell apart maybe one day there's gonna be another labyrinth right is there they're making a they're doing another labyrinth without david bowie but there's a how do you do a labyrinth without david bowie i don't know then it's not labyrinth i don't know they saw something about that labyrinth but i think yeah nice no wait 2018 oh fan made jim henson's daughter lisa henson will produce labyrinth too hollywood green got enough hollywood green light without the goblin king yeah that was from april huh oh yeah you're labyrinth the sequel is on the way wait what no will they have jennifer connelly in it again it's really the mom yeah or will the she was the sister and then her brother was the you know her little baby brother character was the one that was stolen babe the babe with the powder voodoo voodoo you remind me of the babe yeah i wonder who's gonna be in it that'll be interesting this seems very uh dense match a lot of people making guesses that is a bunch of guesses i don't know it won't be it can't be as good as the original oh guardians the galaxy raider attached that's cool and it might the director of don't breathe is now the director uh i don't know how to say that like a horror movie feed alvarez big day alvarez i don't know oh cool identity thanks for that link from the denver zoo cold animals uh yes panoramic this is an entire shoot anywhere of course it is oh little snake eye it's a nice picture my step the field i liked guardians of the galaxy and as much as people didn't like guardians of the galaxy too i liked guardians of the galaxy too also i like both of them i watched none of them oh they're fun they're very fun i have to say i am looking forward to i've been getting into the whole marvel universe and rewatching the iron man movies and horror movies and the avengers and uh all these movies with kai and i'm really looking forward to infinity war which is gonna bring everyone together and oh my gosh it's gonna be epic yeah i'm pretty excited too i'm super excited i can't imagine getting the guardians of the galaxy together with four i really like chris helmsworth with his haircut the only show the only show that i've been watching is uh is actually on when we're on so i always have to catch up like after the fact i have to wait till it gets into the on demand are you saying you would watch a tv show when it's on tv that is so like 10 years ago i know but but it's the one show that i watch that i like that i'm like oh i want to watch can't wait to see the next episode oh that's right i gotta wait a little longer because i gotta but it's the one show what is it on vikings i love that show um i just got super into dirk gently's holistic detective agency blew through the first season could not wait for each new episode this season and i just found out it got canceled i'm devastated really i haven't gotten around to and i think i caught a little bit of a thing but that but i did just i did just um uh because it's done with adams of course i did just re well mostly relisten to it was it started it started because it was on the radio it was on kdbs they were doing hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy the original uh and it was coming out over the radio and i got i was driving somewhere that i was in the car for a decent amount of time but then had to get out of the car and go into a day and and i didn't get and i was just like oh i missed this so much this is such pure genius that i went back and i rewatched the original hitchhiker's uh and it's just so good and i i don't think uh i could you know and and douglas adams is is the origination of dr hoose sense of humor and i don't think from the little bits that i saw of uh dirk generally is a detective agency that i was i didn't feel like i was gonna like it and i was afraid to watch it and not like something with a douglas adams general but you're but it's that happens it's very douglas adams yeah and it that happened to me with the dr hoot reboot i was like no there's no way and of course it yeah so i should i should overcome my fear of not liking something that i would love i'll overcome your fears just watch things i don't have many fears but the ones that i do are totally freaky man that's why they're my fears ozzy bogan tech uncle leon who is there and my youtube say tater tater's still there for the potato today wonderful conversation with kai he said something about spuds and i said you know what spuds are he goes yeah potatoes oh derpy emu want to see a derpy emu they're always derpy that makes them so great hello he's a cookie look at this oh i'm gonna turn my head at you this way okay is there something to eat there can i poke you with my beak yeah that emu wants to eat your camera nice that it looks like you're the cute emu very brown emu feathers look like hair yep they feel kind of like they feel kind of like hair too yeah they look like hair that's fascinating um where do they live australia huh what part of australia i don't know where do emus live thank you google complete me through most of the continent ranging from coastal regions to high in the snowy mountains once they were found in tasmania but were exterminated soon after europeans arrived because europeans did that they ate them europeans ate y'all emu that would explain why i didn't know because the answer is all over yeah but feathers like that i would think that they would be uh it seems more adapted for a colder habitat because you would think that feathers like that might be more insolative i think they're all for display because they go like this and they oh shake them around yeah and it's like oh you look like the best dust mop you're pretty let's play funny looking eggs black ones emu display and i don't mean like a museum display yeah no no you have to go like sexual selection display that's what i need to do because i ended up with a uh some dash unit yeah technology stealing biology words sexual display yeah even with the crazy colored eggs so i always think they're black but some people say they're green well they might be green i don't know here let me screen it's dark oh look at those fluffy feathers i see you um somebody asked if they're delicious um i once had an ostrich egg and it was it was okay it was very rich it was kind of like fried up almost mealy uh one looks black and then one looks green or some look green so i don't know yeah look at this little muffin that's the way they look when they're babies oh they're so cute emu nini i want a baby emu but that one has a diaper on that's weird you can't have an emu if you need to diaper it no get out for birds here's a tiger salamander on an emu egg for some reason because the internet i guess yes i like the carved kind of decorated emu egg shells those are beautiful i know i need an emu egg so i can um add to my egg collection oh i want somebody to carve me something on the outside of an emu egg uh did i show you my latest addition to my egg collection so um to build it up uh you guys know i have a bria egg and i have my favorite the first one i got my ostrich egg oh my gosh and i have a swan egg so have all of these like had a pinhole put in them and had the insides blown out yep yeah cool um but my latest of course it's in this mealworm container it's in there not mealworm uh it is yeah guys emu egg carving is a real thing they're beautiful etched emu eggs i want one no they tinamu egg tinamu it's pink tinamu it's more like a taupe it's like yeah it's in the in the context of like actual lighting it's a little bit more pink than it's coming off more rose colored yeah yeah but it's really pretty and it's very shiny i have to find a good knife for it guys i really want an emu egg a carved emu egg uh you can probably have one they're beautiful why why emu eggs uh because they're the only one that's green or black or whatever you're white underneath though yeah they're the only ones they're really pretty what i've never heard of that before how interesting i had no idea dave i it's not that i'm wearing clear nail polish i'm not wearing any at all hey blaire what tooth pulp poop tooth pulp say it again blaire tooth pulp i mean that word is already gross pulp pulp pulp fiction that's some of the best fiction ever written but pulp who's a gross word that you think about tooth pulp and then the thing is is it the second the second you say are you saying the word pulp i only consider it like pulp as in fiction like they were pumping out lots of these and and and i think some of the possibly some of bad writing but some of the best writing because you had you had people who were who were probably trained in the classics because that's all there was there wasn't all their crap literature that's come sense they've trained on the classics and they're writing like throwaway mystery stories and sci-fi stories and they were harkening back to classic literature themes as they did so and i think it's some of the best writing out there orange juice some of it can have pulp that's a little harder to me i think about like overripe like squishy fruit um why don't you like fruit what's wrong fruit what is but really i feel like it's like the healthier orange juice like for me the reason tooth pulp grosses me out so much is that um tooth stuff kind of inherently grosses me out like um if you get like if you ever accidentally bite down on a fork right and then like does that ever happen to you no um or are you accidentally biting forks or if like something hits you in the tooth or if you're like drinking something hot and then all of a sudden you drink something cold and then like it hurts right so like all those kind of tooth related sensations i'm like kind of grossed out by why are you you know why your teeth are so sensitive blare because you're over brushing this is what's saying like your fixation on dental hygiene is causing you to over brush and now you have sensitivity you've got this little exposed nerves on your teeth and that's why toothy stuff well but tooth pulp you see makes me think about like when they're when they're scrapped when they're like doing a deep clean on your teeth right at the dentist and they're like scraping away at your teeth i hate that sensation right i love it it's the most relaxing feeling and so thinking about that and i get hit you with the needles and the roof your mouth so you don't and you just and then they're pulling your head over here and over there no no that's what i'm talking about i'm talking about deep clean i'm talking about um no they don't they don't um they don't uh do uh local anesthesia for that they just well that's the problem they just scrape they just scrape away at your tartar with this with this metal hook and it like it makes this like scraping sensation on your on your teeth that i hate but but you think about tooth pulp you think about like inside yeah i know you think about like gooey insides like oozing out through breaks in your dent it's so gross oozing out stop oozing out of your teeth you're not oozing out of your teeth Blair you're a biological entity on the planet that is revolving gravity will continue to work inside of you there are microbes that are handling all the necessary functions and your tooth pulp isn't sliding out through the cracks just because you're getting a cleaning everything is under control but it does when you lose your dentin which is the whole problem but that's what stem cells are for oh my goodness see robin the chat room knows what's up he knows just go off and i don't have to have one of those major cleanings i mean i go fairly often my dentist is my friend he used to be in a band with me so um i like going but it's it's definitely changed the the paradigm of the dentist because i was like oh i get to see my buddy jeff all right me it's like nice yeah but and then he you know he just he chats with me while he's doing stuff and he does that classic dentist thing well where he'll ask you a question while he has his hands in your mouth and i'll answer and he yeah he understands it which is great it's so funny speaks english with something in your mouth that's yeah yeah yeah let's go um i i get i get i i'm the person that gets annoyed with the dentist though i'm the and it's and it's because i have a sciency chip on my shoulder i get it i shouldn't be arguing or even add a dentist i just shouldn't go but the invariably at some point go you know you've got a lot of bacteria in your mouth like yeah what's your point well you've got gum disease i'm like i'm 45 you got a lot of 45 year olds coming to this place and don't have any kind of gum disease or is that just kind of your stock answer for everybody at every at any point that they've got bacteria in their mouth you're gonna point that out and then at over 40 you're gonna be like i'd watch those gums is that a thing somebody comes at 50 years old and you go hey guess what you your mouth is bacteria free and your gum's a perfect get out of here get out no no get out of here we don't you don't need to be in here right you did perfect you're the one person and i got into this conversation about so because i didn't have i didn't have a dental coverage for a really really long time so when i finally get in there i'm expecting the worst and it turns out i've got two cavities i do and they're in they're in my wisdom teeth which came out without ever needing to be removed and and so they're like we can remove those they're too hard to fill because they're too far back there which is why they want to remove um and you've got because there's two cavities back there and you've got bacteria in your mouth okay so i'm like okay so and and lots of plaque and they're like uh that was i like i had to go in for the deep cleaning because i had i had build up below the like above the gum line everything looks fine below the gum line i had to go down in there to find it but and they're like this is caused by bacteria i'm like okay so so but how come like but i don't have cavities i thought that was bacteria well that's a different bacteria okay but i've got the one that creates the plaque yeah so you're gonna have to do these rinses and this thing and the sanitized metals okay but hang on why why aren't my bacteria causing cavities okay that's a different bacteria you've got the kind that creates a lot of plaque i'm like okay so they've out competed in my mouth like these two bacteria that can be in your mouth one creates cavities and the other one creates plaque yeah and so the one i have creates plaque which you can go in and scrape out right uh huh okay so so if i sanitize if i do this mouthwash this antibiotic mouthwash isn't that going to give an opportunity for the cavity creating wants to to take over the because i kind of like i can come in you can scrape and i can come back six months later you can do some scraping right like that will work well uh technically so but i wouldn't want to do is clear it out and make room for the cavity causing ones because then there's drilling and crowds like those are the ones that are kind of like you can't if you are at the least bit have ever listened to this show you can't be afraid of somebody saying you have bacteria anywhere on your body in your body or anything like that alone is not going to have germs in my mouth like that's not going to freak anybody out if you've been listening to this show so so i got into this whole thing where i'm like so really like what you're saying is i should probably not sanitize like with that with an antibiotic mouthwash and all this stuff they want i should probably not go over the top of that because i want to maintain the microfluor my mouth house because at 45 the only cavities i have are on teeth that you say i shouldn't have had in the first place so i don't know i shouldn't go to the dentist is what i'm saying hot rod says just go for full dentures problem solved there you go i don't need them though that's the thing i don't need like they said you have two cavities oh yeah but they're way back there by the time they get forward i'll be gone if you know if you get uh and like if the if that goes down into your root that is like so painful right and as long as i have the as long as i have the plaque forming bacteria in my mouth they will be fighting for every square millimeter of tooth space and you have you have interesting hypotheses justin i'm just saying i'm four to five years old cavities i can't wait till you for somebody who didn't have like proper like dentist cleanings ever they're pretty good they're pretty good uh and i challenge i challenge uh uh the which i know like because if it's not me and they say you've got bacteria in your mouth and and like i'm in you're somebody who isn't a listener to this show that would freak somebody out right so i feel like i'm already i feel like they've lied to me right like i feel like they were like they're in tip like intimidating me or don't know the whole truth maybe they dentists are idiots and that's what it is that could be i guess no justin stop it no i don't believe that but i i do believe that like it's like lack of scientific knowledge on some level is used aggressively towards patients in dentistry uh i also think that they they may be simplifying what they're trying to say in a way that scares you into accepting whatever treatment they want to offer they they just want people to take good care of their teeth and nobody does that i suppose but i guess i guess and i have to qualify this like i also have i did go to a dentist about 20 years ago that told me i had eight cavities they were lying because the next time i went into a dentist back then which would have been years later i had none and i had a dentist uh tell me that my daughter had five or eight cavities or something and i tried to get them to point it out to me on the x-ray as they were pointing around they said oh you have to be a dentist to see it and i went really so when do you want to schedule the uh i don't thank you yeah no thanks off to another dentist and sure enough clean back up so it's about time you have person yeah but wait shouldn't be that hard to find the right person so then i've already got this bias of having you need somebody who can understand you while his hands are in your mouth yeah go see jeff and like and like a meme and like a meme uh me and uh my republican friend is known only republican uh had a dentist um who were saying that our children needed their jaws widened like i never heard of this was a thing you could do and suddenly it was showing up like wow your kids as well as mine interesting that we're all getting this information that we didn't even know existed all of a sudden and interestingly i haven't heard sense so i don't know i have a i think that's a field that uh it's like if i go to my doctor and he says yeah well we'll just amputate like that's what i feel the level of dentistry is on some degree on the other hand i had a crown put on on a tooth i don't even know what side of my head it's on like that thing blended in so well that they didn't there's good and bad dentists just like there's good and bad everything it's it's it's really hard to paint with a broad brush an entire group of people based on a couple of jerks or crackers there you go all right it's almost 11 are we done talking about dentists may i go now we better do okay say good night good night play your second night justin good night justin good night good night everybody good night minions and hope to see you next week see you next year happy new year everyone yeah i hope everyone has a wonderful wonderful year transition remember oh in the new calendar year remember the uh the winter solstice just passed that means the days just get brighter all winter my favorite seasons are yet to come oh there we go or longer maybe that's right which is brighter longer daylight all right all right good night good night all thank you