Listener Questions #22

Daniel and Kelly answer questions about interstellar comets, evolution of parasitoids, and the nature of scientific theories.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
There's a new comment approaching from deep space. Could we
get sick if it's dust gets in our face?

Speaker 2 (00:14):
The jewel wasp parasitoid feels around its host brain. How
did evolution come up with this? It's totally insane.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Scientific theory, model, hypothesis or law. Do these words really
mean anything or naw?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Whatever? Questions keep you up at night. Daniel and Kelly's
answers will make it right.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome to another Listener Questions episode on Daniel and Kelly's
Extraordinary Universe.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
We've done twenty two of these.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Hello.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm Kelly Wiersmith. I study parasites and space, and all
of these questions today have a bit of biology in them,
so I'm pretty excited about it.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'll admit
there's a bit of biology in everything we do.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Oh yeah, but there's not physics in everything we do,
so that's good news.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yes, yeah, no, of course there physics is everything.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
I guess I should have gone with chemistry, and then
we could have bonded even though we knew we were
wrong exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, then we could confirm each other's biases.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yep, yep, anyway, I blew it, I'm sor right moving on.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
But today we're not here to talk about my biases
or about your biases. We're here to answer questions from you,
from people out there wondering how the universe works, trying
to make sense of it and scratching their heads a
little bit, And.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
We try to help you scratch your heads for a
slightly shorter amount of time. And so if you have
a question that is keeping you up at night, send
it to us at questions at Danielankelly dot org. It
might take a few months for the answers to come
back to you and go online, but we answer every
question at least by email, and some of them even
make it.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
On the show because we believe in the value of
human curiosity. I'm interested in particles, Kelly's interested in parasitoids.
But everybody's curious about something. And my favorite thing about
science is that we're all curious about different things, which
is why we get to learn about so many different
amazing things in the universe, even chemistry, and.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
All of the questions that we get I feel like
are super fascinating and make me think about things in
different ways. So feel free to help expand our minds
by getting us to think about a new question.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
That's right, and because this podcast is not just about
what we're curious about, it's about what everybody's curious about.
So join the conversation. Send us your questions to Questions
at Daniel and Kelly dot org.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
And our first question today comes from Tim, who lives
in the greatest of these United States, which is of
course Virginia.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
What did we say about confirming our biases today?

Speaker 2 (02:51):
That it's great, That's probably what we said.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
All right, let's hear from Tim, who, unfortunately it lives
in Virginia.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Oh, Daniel and Kelly, it's Tim from Virginia.

Speaker 4 (03:03):
I was watching YouTube and watching videos about our newest
interstellar visitor, Atlas and Omama and.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
What was the other one called?

Speaker 4 (03:16):
Not Benue the other one? So anyway, this is Atlas,
is the third interstellar visitor that we've had in our
solar system. And they were talking about how it doesn't
pose a threat to Earth. But I was wondering, if
it leaves a debris field and its wake, what are
the chances that it has some sort of unknown virus

(03:40):
or bacteria or like maybe even like their version of
tartar grades which can survive in space that they just
deposit in our Solar system. That could possibly if a
planet goes through its trail, could get scooped up by
a planet and cause problems. Thought it might be a

(04:01):
fun question for both of you to answer. Thanks for
what you do.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Bie, Oh, this is a fun question. So not that
long ago you and I talked about umumout no ooh muama.
Recently you and I talked about o muamua and Avi
lobes hypothesis that it was an interstellar visitor and if
anybody wants more information they can go pull that up.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Hypothesis is being very generous to Avi.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yes, yeah, idea while smoking banana peels might be uh.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Better sensationless nonsense cooked up to sell his book.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Oh yeah yeah, we are not pulling any punches today.
And so Daniel remind us what do we know about
these interstellar visitors?

Speaker 1 (04:45):
So most of the comments we see come from inside
our Solar system. They either come from the Kuiper Belt,
which is a big chunk of rocky, icy stuff out
there deep in the Solar System, or long period comets
come even further out from like the Ort Cloud, a
hypothetical never yet observed bunch of icy rocky blobs way

(05:07):
way way out past Pluto. And so most of the commets,
Haley's comment, and the other stuff that we see come
from inside our solar system. But you know, our solar
system is not alone in the galaxy, and every once
in a while an icy rocky chunk from another solar
system will drift over and enter our backyard. And until
this year, we'd only ever seen two of those. Omiamua

(05:29):
famous because it was the first and sort of surprised everybody.
We saw it pretty quickly after we turned down a
telescope capable of finding these things, which is always awesome
because we didn't know how often we would see these.
And when you see one immediately you're like, oh, wow,
maybe these aren't so rare.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, And I gotta say, one of my favorite facts
that I've learned while working with you is that the
ort cloud is a maybe it's a thing that we
think exists but haven't actually confirmed, and that I think
was something that you discussed in response to a listener's question.
And so anyway, love what I'm learning. Keep going.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
So twenty seventeen, we saw O mum it was pretty weird.
It was like a bare object that was either long
and thin or very flat, and it was rotating weirdly,
and so the reflections were strange. Lots of speculation about it.
In the end, it looks like it was mostly the
nucleus of a comet that had already lost all of
its stuff and outgassed a little bit on the way

(06:23):
out of the Solar System, giving it a little bit
of acceleration. Then in twenty nineteen we saw the second one, Borisov.
This is a bigger object, more like a standard comet,
had a coma. It was outgassing. Still very cool to
see these things from deep in space. And you know,
this is awesome because, as you say, a lot of
our knowledge about the rest of the galaxy is hypothetical.

(06:44):
It comes either from just observation or from speculation and
from models. So to see something come and visit us,
we get to study in much more detail and learn
a lot about the rest of the galaxy. And so
in twenty twenty five we're very excited to see the
third one, which is called Atlas.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Well, and you must have been very excited because you
are really into aliens, and oh, Muhamoua was sent by aliens.
It was an interstellar ship, right, That's what I heard.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
You know, there's a lot of really interesting stuff about
oh muha And it's totally reasonable to ask, like, does
this look like a natural object or is it weird?
And could it be artificial? That's totally legitimate, and we
should be excited and open minded about what we could
see and all the people out there excited to have
aliens come visit. I'm definitely near the top of the list,

(07:34):
But we also should be skeptical about it. And those
claims require a lot of evidence. And there's a lot
of push by the chair of the Harvard Physics Department
to call this thing aliens, and he wrote a whole
book about it, and we did a whole episode about it,
and there's lots of videos describing in detail how this
was not an effort sort of primed by scientific integrity unfortunately.

(07:56):
So we're very sure that oh Muamua is a comet
and it's and it's interesting and sort of planetary physics
sort of ways, but it's not an alien object.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Okay, got it. Thanks for clearing that up for me. Yeah,
And so tell me more about the twenty twenty five
Interstellar Visitor.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, so this is pretty fresh and new, and it's
still approaching us right It hasn't reached the closest point
to the Sun that it's going to reach.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
It.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
It's coming into the Solar system still, which is exciting.
When we found Omuumu was already on its way out
and moving really fast. So every day it got more
distant and smaller and harder to image. But this is
coming closer, and so we're getting better and better and
crisper and crisper photographs of it. So the first images
we had got of it, you can look these things
up online. These come from the two meter twin telescope.

(08:41):
These are ground based telescopes, and they show it like
a big, fuzzy blob. And from those pictures we couldn't
really tell what it was or how big it was.
We could tell it's something around twenty five to forty
kilometers across, but we didn't know how much of that
was like the actual thing, and how much of it
was like a dusty coma or gas being boiled off

(09:01):
of the surface by the Sun. So those were our
first measurements about it, and we knew where it was
and how fast it was going, so we could tell
it was coming from outside the Solar system, but we
didn't yet know what it was.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Is a coma just the like dust and stuff that
trails behind a comet.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, exactly, And most of that comes from the sun, right,
Solar radiation, the particles, the photons, the electrons, the protons
that come from the Sun will impact the comet and
boil some of that stuff off, and we'll dig into
that in a minute. But that's where the comet's tail
comes from. And the tail should grow as it gets
closer and closer to the Sun. And so right now
still pretty far from the Sun and the coma sort

(09:38):
of small, but we expect that as it gets closer
and closer and it heats up and the Sun fries
it more, it's going to get it longer and longer tail. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Can we tell the difference between the junk that's getting
kicked off because of the Sun and the center of it.
Is it clear enough to differentiate?

Speaker 1 (09:54):
We can, in fact, And so we have also space
based imaging. So we have Hubble, we have sphere X,
which is a deep infrared telescope, and we have James
Webb's based telescope. But before those space telescopes were able
to take a picture of it, there's a lot of
discussion about what is this thing. It turns out it's
coming in sort of close to the plane of the ecliptic,
which is the planet that all the planets are on.

(10:16):
And so our friend Abvi Lobe made a big deal
about this, and he suggested that this was evidence that
it was an alien visitor sent intentionally to visit our
solar system.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
So he's still on the same kick.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
He is still on the same kick, okay. And he
saw the fuzz around the object, and he misinterpreted that
to be like motion smears, like if you're taking a
slow picture of a fast moving object, it will smear,
because he didn't understand that astronomers already know about that
effect and build it into their telescopes with tracking to
avoid motion smearing. So he was arguing that it wasn't
a comet, that it was a bare object, maybe metallic,

(10:49):
and the fuzz was from motion smearing. Astronomers told him
how he was wrong, he mostly ignored them. Again, it's
not a discussion that's inspired by scientific integrity. He's just
trying to sell his books. And then we've got space
based telescopes to take a clear picture of it, and
you can see in those pictures a very bright core
and a fuzzier coma, so you can tell the difference

(11:10):
from the coma and from the core, and then SPHEREx
can do some really cool stuff where they see the
spectrum of light that comes off of it. So the
core of it is like two to four kilometers and
the rest of it is a fuzzy coma. And what's
really fascinating is that that fuzzy coma is mostly carbon dioxide.
So these things that are from deep space, they have

(11:31):
rocky cores, but there's a lot of ice on them,
and there's carbon monoxide ice, carbon dioxide ice, and then
water ice, and these things evaporate at different temperatures. Carbon
monoxide evaporates at a pretty low temperature like forty kelvin.
Doesn't take a lot of solar rays to fry off
all the carbon monoxide. Carbon dioxide at about one hundred kelvin,

(11:52):
and water at hundreds of kelvin. But we don't see
any carbon monoxide in the coma. So this thing is
probably a combination of CO two carbon dioxide and water,
and since it's still far out on the Solar System,
it's mostly outgassing the CO two which sublimates on the surface.
And when it gets closer, we'll probably see some water,
some water ice turn into steam.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Is there rock in there too, and that's just not
getting kicked out into the coma.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Yeah, exactly. Probably there's also rock out there. And you know,
Avi responds to this and saying he thinks actually the
thing glows on its own and it's not just reflecting light,
which astronomers pointed out was just him misreading a plot
in a paper, maybe intentionally, maybe not, who knows. Anyway,
you should mostly ignore all of his nonsense and pay
attention to the astronomers who actually know what they're talking about.

(12:40):
So it's a fascinating object. We're going to learn something
about deep space, and you know what things are made
out of. This thing is probably a chunk of ice
and rock from somebody else's ort cloud, right, some other
star has ort clouds, and we snagged a piece of
it because they lost it. It's going to be really interesting.
It's not going to come close to the Earth. So
if you're worried about this thing because it's a bit
chunk of ice and rockets about the same size as

(13:02):
the one that ended the dinosaurs. But it's not gonna
hit the Earth. In fact, when it makes its closest
approach to the Sun, we're gonna be on the other
side of the Sun.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
That's reassuring. I like that, although I'm sure we'll see
it less well, and that's a bummer, but trade offs.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
All right. So that's the setup. Tim has a really
fun question. He's wondering, like, what if this thing really
does come from aliens? What if it's like loaded with
their viruses or alien tartar grades and those things boil
off and they sort of make a path through the
Solar system and some of them come to Earth. Are
we in danger?

Speaker 2 (13:36):
What do you think?

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Awesome question. Yeah, well, we're not gonna pass through any
sort of dense part of its tail, Like we're gonna
be on the other side of the Sun when it turns around,
and it's gonna exit the Solar system. So it's not
like it's gonna leave a long wake that we're gonna
fly right through. But you know, it is leaving particles
and bits of itself in our solar system, and so
who knows if this thing actually is from aliens and

(14:00):
like seeded with all sorts of weird microbes, maybe they
designed this thing to like explode when it comes close
to the Sun and spray all of its stuff everywhere
through the Solar system, in which case some of them
will come to Earth and could potentially, you know, come
through the atmosphere and land on the surface and infect
people's brains and convince them to live in Virginia rather
than California. I mean, we're talking deep tragedies here.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
Oh give me a break, man, That's where.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
He was going, right. They might even convince them to
study chemistry. I mean, those aliens, who they're up to
no good.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
I mean that would be a nefarious plot, absolutely so,
But do you think so? Okay, So, when we were
doing our tartar grade episode, which we did a little
while back, we showed that, yes, tartar grades are like
resistant to tons of things, but when you expose them
to the radiation in space, they do kick the dust. Yeah,
they can't survive that indefinitely, and I would have to
imagine there's not a lot that could survive in interstellar voyage.

(14:55):
But I guess we can't rule it out.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
What do you think it depends? I mean, you could
survive an interstellar voyage if you're the core of one
of these objects, right, if you're shielded by a lot
of ice and rock, then yeah, you could survive the radiation.
You know, whether you could survive being frozen that long
and your metabolism could restart, you know, I think that's
a biological question. But I think we've seen that in
lots of critters here on Earth. So I think it's

(15:17):
plausible for things to be frozen at the core and
survive the interstellar trip and even the solar wind. But then,
you know, once it disperses in our solar system, you know,
then it's vulnerable again. And I think that's the most
dangerous point.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah, when it gets kicked out of the coma or
kicked into the coma.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, and less of course they come out in you know,
tiny little microscopic alien ships, and so they have their
own shielding. I mean, if we're going to speculate here, like, let's.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
Go all in, right, let's go lob style.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Let's pretend we're the chair of the Harvard Physics.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
Department, that would be pretty solid.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
Exactly, So Tim, this is a really exciting event. It's
super fascinating. There's no evidence that it's aliens, like the
astronomers want to believe that it's aliens, but so far,
there's nothing that points in that direction. But of course
you don't know. And it could be that it comes
deeper into the Solar system and we learn new stuff,
in which case we're all very happy to believe that

(16:14):
it's aliens if the data points that way. And in
that scenario, it's not going to directly leave a wake
for us to fly through, but it could disburse stuff
which eventually will come to Earth. I mean, there's a
lot of cosmic dust that falls to Earth every day,
so he could contribute to that. We could all be
breathing in bits of an alien package one day.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
Could we have all already breathed in o mua mua bits?

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Oh yeah?

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Absolutely nice exciting. We are connected through space and time.
All right, let's see what Tim thinks of our answer.
Is he going to sleep well tonight or not? Let's
find out.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
Hey, Daniel and Kelly, thank you for answering all of
my questions.

Speaker 4 (16:53):
I can rest assured now knowing that Earth won't go
through an alien comments tail and gain a whole bunch
of microbes.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
That will convert us to alien life forms. Keep up
with the good work.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Thank you. All right, we are back when we're answering

(17:25):
questions from listeners, questions we get every email and also
questions on our discord. If you love thinking about the
universe and hearing us chat about it, you might want
to chat with us. We are very active on our discord.
If you want to join, it's for everybody who's curious
about the universe. Go to our website www dot danieland
Kelly dot org. Well you'll find the link to join

(17:46):
the discord. So many fun, nice people talking about the
universe and asking questions. Kelly tell us about this question.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Well, at first, I'd like to just note that we
also have the best moderators, so you know, another good
reason to come join us. All right, So Marco from
Discord had this question about parasite manipulation of host behavior.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
And Marco is not just another Kelly sock puppet account.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
I mean, you'll never know, You'll never know.

Speaker 5 (18:13):
Hi, Daniel and Kelly, I have a question about the
jewel wasp discussed in Ed Young's book An Immense World
Horrified as an understatement, as is the sentence. I had
a nightmare about this. In the book, Young describes how
the jewel wasp feels around for the cockroach brain with
its stinger, and I keep wondering about the evolutionary mechanisms
at play here. The wasp doesn't know what a brain is, obviously,

(18:37):
but how on earth could it have evolved the precision
to accomplish this. I'm well to side This strongly implies
that the wasp has not only absurd command of its
own body, but the body of the cockroach as well.
There's a ton of evolutionary time to miss the sweet
spots and the cockroaches back and head and not be successful.
There's a neat series I've been watching on octopuses, and

(18:58):
it discusses how these intelligent creed learn everything on their
own without parental support. Wasps aren't teaching their young where
to sting, So how does this amazing ability emerge from
this tiny little wasp brain? Just realized I've been listening
to the podcast long enough to realize the answer is,
we don't know. Thanks for everything, love the show. Can't

(19:19):
wait to hear the answer, all right.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
So, first of all, I love that Marco clearly has
been paying attention and suspects that there's a high probability
the answer is going to be I don't know.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
Good job, Mark, welcome to the forefront of science.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Everyone great, that's right, And so yes, the answer at
the very end for a lot of these questions is
going to be we don't know. But let's talk about
some of the things that we do know first, because
I love this system and I'm going to use it
as an excuse to tell you all about it.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yes, so tell us about the jewel wasp and what
it does to poor cockroaches. Are we going to feel
sympathy for cockroaches at the end of this?

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Oh maybe? And then I got to talk about the
parasitoids that manipulate web building behavior in spiders and actually
makes you feel sympathy for spiders. That's another day. I
love those systems. Their videos are just like nuts.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Anyway, all right, today we're pro cockroach. Tell us why?

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Okay, well I'm gonna I'm actually gonna end up on
team Jewel Wasp. But anyway, so right, So jewel wasps.
They're beautiful, they're kind of iridescent. They need to lay
their eggs somewhere and provide their babies with a meal.
And so essentially what they're going to do is paralyze
a cockroach, hide it in a really great spot, lay
an egg on it. That egg is gonna hatch, eat

(20:29):
the cockroach from the inside, and then leave its carcass
when it's done. That's the big overview.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
And the cockroach is alive while these things are growing
inside of it.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
The egg is attached to the outside of its body.
But then the baby does eat its way in. Oh yes, yeah,
it's it's pretty gruesome.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
And why does the cockroach have to be alive? Is
that so that it stays fresh and tasty the way
you like put like living lobsters into pots.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah yeah, I don't feel comfortable about that. Don't do
it myself. But anyway, so this would be like you
wouldn't want to leave the puid spinach for your baby
out on the counter for like a week. You know,
you want your cockroach and your spinach to be fresh,
all right, So here's here's how the process goes down.
So the jewel wasp and the cockroach get in a
tussle because the cockroach knows that the jewel wasp is

(21:15):
bad news. So the first thing that the jewel wasp does,
if it gets lucky enough and can get the angle right,
is it stings the cockroach in the thorax so like
the chest kind of region, and this will paralyze the
cockroach's front legs for up to five minutes. And so
this makes it so the cockroach can't fight back quite
as well, and the jewel wasp will deliver its second sting.

(21:36):
The second sting is in the head, so it goes
through the neck kind of moves through the tissues until
it finds the brain. It's got this like ovipositor that
delivers the sting, so it's almost like a needle at
the end, and so it puts this needle up into
the brain and it delivers another sting. And this sting.
I know it's nasty, this sting, but I love it.
This sting does a couple of different things.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
It's nasty and just the way Kelly loves.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah, Well, nature's horrible but fascinating. And so now the
cockroach starts grooming itself furiously, and I think we're not
totally sure why that is happening. Maybe it's because they
want the meal to be like super fresh, no, like
bacteria infecting your meal, And so the cockroach cleans itself
up a lot. And then another interesting thing is that

(22:20):
the cockroach technically is capable of moving, but its desire
to initiate its own movement pretty much goes away. So
it can move, but it doesn't it's desire.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
We're talking about what it's like to be a cockroach,
Like we're in the mind of the cockroach thinking about
what it wants.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
So all right, I'm being a bit anthropomorphic about it.
I don't know what the cockroach is thinking. But whereas
usually cockroaches in an area where they know that there's
like something dangerous, ye would initiate movement and would get
out of there, this cockroach just kind of stands around.
But it's still capable of moving because the parasitoid will

(22:59):
like find a good nesting spot and then come back
and grab the cockroaches antenna and lead it to a
nesting spot, and the cockroach will follow.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
It's like, yes, it's like driving it. Yeah, so this
way that way.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah. The way it's usually talked about is like it's
like walking a dog on a leash or something like that.
It just follows and so then it gets moved into
this little like nook where everything can be hidden so
that nothing will eat the cockroach and also eat the baby,
because the cockroach can't fight back really anymore, and it
will the mom will put the cockroach in the nest,
lay the egg somewhere on the cockroach, I think, like

(23:35):
near its leg, and then seal up this little nest
site with you know, leaves and rocks and stuff like that.
And then the rest of the process takes about eight days.
The egg hatches, eats the inside of the cockroach, pupates inside,
so it goes through a couple developmental stages in the
body of the cockroach.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
So it's basically laid the egg along with some food.
It's sort of like a chicken egg is the embryo
with the food, but the chicken provides it instead of
stealing it from a cockroach.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
All right, Yeah, that's exactly right. And a lot of
parasitoids do this. There are parasitoids, you know. Just the
other day I saw a parasitoid dragging a giant spider.
It had paralyzed, and it was dragging it to its
nest so that it could then lay eggs on it
and keep its meal fresh. And so what's special about
this system, not from the perspective of the cockroach, of course,

(24:20):
but is that a lot of parasitoids will paralyze food
and then lay their eggs in or on it as
a meal for when they hatch. But you've got this
extra layer where the parasitoid is also able to like
direct the cockroach to go to a particular location, rather
than needing to like physically drag it there, which a
bunch of others have to do. Wow, amazing, yes, amazing.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
So the cockroach like participates in its own demise.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
It does it does?

Speaker 1 (24:45):
It's complicit.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
That's gross complicit. I don't know that. That's that word
has too much human baggage. It unwillingly, unwittingly does, does
the wasps bidding? Okay, So Marco was interesting in the
fact that when that second sting happens, and the sting
is happening in the brain, the wasp that is stinging

(25:08):
the brain, it's mom isn't there to teach it how
to do that. So how does it just know where
to sting in a brain? And at the end of
the day, the answer is going to be we don't
really know, but I'm going to give you a little
bit more detail about what is actually happening when it
stings the brain. So we talked about how it puts
its little like hypodermic needle esque but into the neck

(25:29):
of the wasp and it starts going up to the brain.
And there have been some experiments trying to figure out
what happens inside the cockroach's brain. So one thing they
did was they injected carbon fourteen radio labeled amino acids
into the stinger and then they look to see where
it ended up in the cockroach. And it does end
up in this area called the subsophageal ganglion, so it's

(25:52):
like kind of the bottom part of a cockroach's brain.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
So injecting carbon fourteen labeled amino acids this is just
a way of tracing like where something go. Like add
like a little dye to so you can see where
something goes. But in this case, it's not a visual die.
It's like you're measuring the radioactive decays or how does
that work?

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeap, that's exactly right.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Fascinating, Well, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Pretty cool experiment, Okay, And then they did some other
experiments to try to figure out what it is that
the wasp is queuing in on, to figure out where
it's supposed to deposit what we we call this the
stuff that gets deposited during the sting venom, which is
awesome anyway. So they've done things like humanly euthanize a

(26:32):
cockroach and then remove its brain and then give it
back to the wasp. And when you do that, the
wasp spends a bunch of time like searching and not
delivering its venom. It's like, what something is missing in here,
and so it's like it's definitely.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
It's looking for the brain.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
It's looking for the brain, and it gets kind of
confused when it's not there. And so then the scientist
looked a little bit closer at the ovipositor and they
found sensors on there, and some of the sensors are
mechanical receptors, so they like can touch things, and some
are chemical receptors. And so first they wanted to dive
into what happens with the mechanical receptors, and so they

(27:08):
took all the mechanical receptors off of the wasp, and
the wasp just kind of like searched around for a
really long time. It was super confused because it couldn't
feel anything. Then they humanely euthanized the cockroaches and they
put a very soft substance that wasn't very brain like
into the head of the cockroach, and the wasp also
searched around for a really long time and was like,

(27:29):
what is going on? But then they put a hard substance,
harder substance that's more like the brain, and the wasp
responded more quickly. So it doesn't have to be a brain,
but it's got to feel right.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
So they're testing what the wasp wants to sting, and
they're like, how about a squishy brain having an actual brain?
How about some of it feels like a brain. They're
like exploring the space of what the wasp is willing
to engage with. That's fascinating.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah, yeah, And if you like kind of mix up
the brain and kind of change its consistency, like mixing
it up with like scissors or something, they also are
confused and are like, what the heck is going on here?
So it looks like the mechanical stuff really matters, And
so that suggests to me that there's some genetic coating
that gets passed from generation to generation, doesn't need to

(28:15):
be learned where they know, like it goes in the neck,
and then you look for something that feels a certain way.
And I don't think we've looked close enough in this
system to understand exactly how that happens. But we have
looked at other behaviors that are you know, what we
would say is innate. They just happen without learning.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
So it's so important that it touches the brain that
the system has evolved requirements to ensure that it only
happens when there's like an actual brain there to be
delivered on, not just like randomly spraying this stuff in
the head of the cockroach.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yah. So presumably the chemical cocktail that gets delivered into
the brain is expensive to make in some way, like
requires a lot of energy or certain nutrients or something.
So you don't want to go stinging things and wasting it.
And so if this cockroach seems like it's totally off
for some reason, then you abandon it.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Well, go go find the cockroads through the bigger taste
of your brain.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
That's right, Well, there are other parasitoids that can test
and see, like, are there already parasitoid wasps living inside
of this insect because I don't want my babies to
have to compete with babies that had a head start.
And so there's all sorts of like crazy stuff that
happens when the wasp is like evaluating its host for quality.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
All right, So this is really fascinating and very complex behavior.
And I feel like Marco's question is essentially, how does
the wasp evolve this kind of behavior? The mom is
not there to teach it, which means it must be
somehow innate, which suggests that it's like in the code
of the DNA, which means it comes from evolution, not
from like the wasp culture. How is such a complex

(29:48):
process ever evolved? It feels impossible to imagine that you
develop such an intricate system because it needs many parts
to work all at once.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Well, maybe your imagination is limited, Daniel, No, I'm just kidding. Yes,
it is very complicated. So one of the ways that
we look at the evolution of complex behaviors is that
we'll look at things that closely related species are doing,
and sometimes you can see the steps that build in
a more complicated behavior. So, for example, this system has
two stings, and one of them is a little bit

(30:19):
more complicated, but a lot of other parasitoids, as we've
already talked about, do one sting to paralyze their prey.
So you can see that as like a beneficial early step.
We have not in this system been able to work
out the order in which all of these complicated things
evolved and sort of built up.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
So let me just make it explicit. You're suggesting that
it's a complex series of behaviors, but there probably are
simpler versions of it that are also beneficial. You don't
need all the complex pieces in order to gain some benefit,
and that would allow you to tell the evolutionary story.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Is that the argument that yep, that's exactly right, and
every intermediate step needs to be beneficial in order for
it to keep passing through the population, unless you've got
drift going on. But anyway, okay, so these are there
are beneficial steps, and you know, you can imagine something
like initially the jewel wasps only stung the cockroach once
and paralyzed it, and then you had to drag it.

(31:13):
But then there was one wasp that had some mutation
that made it extra stabby, and it stabbed once in
the thorax and once in the brain, and that did
something that made the cockroach a little bit easier to handle,
which meant the mom could lay more eggs and could
do this more times. And maybe that got passed on genetically,
and you can imagine generation after generation that's just honed

(31:34):
and more and more beneficial.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
And maybe my imagination is limited, but does the phrase
extra stabby appear in the biological literature anywhere?

Speaker 2 (31:43):
No, that that's just because I'm super creative. You know,
that was my creativity. I'm just kidding, You're very creative.
But yeah, so we don't know exactly the path that
this took, but you can imagine how it would have
built up, and then you know, it's possible somebody could
test this by looking at closely related wasp species and
maybe if you understood more mechanistically about how this was

(32:04):
all happening, you could understand how one step could happen
after another. But for this system, I would say, we
don't have a really good evolutionary answer.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
I think that all makes sense that complex behaviors of
all from simpler behaviors that are also beneficial, and it
sometimes takes a while to figure out what path you
can take from simpler to more complex. I think the
thing that blows my mind is that these complex behaviors
feel kind of fragile, like everything has to work for
this to happen, and it feels like there's so many
ways for it to go wrong. It's incredible that it

(32:35):
relies on such a complex system. And then it mostly works.
And then I look at you know, like humans, I've
raised a child. It's complicated. It feels like there's so
many ways it can go wrong. And then I walk around,
I'm like, wow, all of these humans, they were raised
by people. It seems to mostly work. It's incredible. Yeah,
you know, biology seems so fragile, but it is pretty robust.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Yeah, I mean, it is incredible. But you know, there's
plenty of times when jewel wasps go after cockroaches and nature,
and the cockroach wins and the jewel wasp doesn't get
to sting.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
Or heay cockroache, hey cockroache.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Or you know, the jewel wasp dies for one reason
or another or just doesn't. Like, there's plenty of times
in nature where these things do fail, and those individuals
usually just get wiped out of the population, And just
so it doesn't sound like I'm saying, well, whenever we're
talking about complex behaviors, we always just imagine a picture.
There are systems where step by step we've sort of
figured this stuff out. And I'm working on finding a

(33:29):
behavioral geneticist to come on the show to talk to
us about those answers. So stay tuned.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
All right, Well, I think that's a pretty good answer
for Marco. Let's inject that into his head and see
how his brain responds.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Did we lead you to the answer, Marco? I promise
we won't lay any eggs on you.

Speaker 6 (33:47):
After hearing your answer, I admit I'm no less terrified
of jewel wasps. I can only hope I don't have
another fever dream frantically trying to keep one from stinging
the back of my head by jumping into water. I
can't find forever in awe of evolution, coming down to
random events and mind boggling numbers until some advantage emerges
and gets successfully encoded. I keep going back to a

(34:09):
couple of points you made. One is that without passing
down knowledge genetic coding instructions and organisms behavior, the LOSPs
are compelled to behave as they do the.

Speaker 5 (34:19):
Evolution handles the rest.

Speaker 7 (34:21):
As with most of the podcast episodes, we end up
with more questions like how did Kelly end up on
Team Jewel Wasp. I can't side with that freak show.
I fully support Wally's cute sidekick, not the Jewel Wasps.
That feels like siding with monstrous killers, or the seventeen
percent of people that prefer white chocolate not tolerate it
but like it better. It truly is an extraordinary universe.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
Thanks Daniel and Kelly.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
Next up, we have a question from southern Scotland. And
I am so excited because I got to go to
Scotland for the first time last month. I was in Edinburgh,
which is probably not where Ben is from. But Ben,
your country is beautiful. I loved it, and vegetarian haggis
a plus.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
And I'm going to Scotland next week for a wedding
in Inverness.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, and you're gonna wear kilts.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
I'm gonna wear a kilt exactly all right. But today
the question is not about Daniel's wardrobe at Scottish weddings.
It's about what these terms in science mean. So let's
hear Ben's question.

Speaker 8 (35:37):
Hello, Daniel and Kelly. It's Ben here from Cukubree in
southern Scotland. I'd really like to know what you think
is the difference, if any, between a theory, a law,
a hypothesis and a model. I'm especially curious about Darwin's
theory of the origin of species. Is this a typical

(35:58):
scientific theory? Does it of predictive power? Can it be
refuted by experiment? I feel I really need the combined
advice of a particle physicist and the powascientologist to help
to settle these questions. I really enjoy your podcast.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Oh this is a really great question.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
This is a really fun question. I'm really glad that
Ben asked it, because it's one of these questions where
if you ask philosophers or if you ask scientists, you'll
get a different answer. And if you ask different philosophers
and different scientists, you'll get lots of different answers. It's
something a lot of people are not very precise about.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Frankly, yeah, I think when I was an undergrad, I
remember in my biology class there were definitions of all
of these terms, and then I was very confused later
on when they were used in ways that were not
at all consistent with what was in that textbook. And anyway,
now I know we're all sloppy.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
Well, you know, scientists are practitioners who are not experts
in the philosophy of science. We go out there and
we do science, and we say theory, we say law,
we say model. We haven't all taken philosophy classes or like.
The distinctions between these things are argued by nerds who
are super excited about it. You know, we're excited about
the biology or the chemistry or the physics or that

(37:08):
kind of stuff. And so when you hear scientists talk
about it, they're not often being very precise because they're
not experts in the definitions of these terms. Philosophers of
science are the folks who really narrow down on this.
But again, also philosophers of science disagree reasonably with each
other about how to describe this stuff. So I'll break
it down for you in a way that makes sense
to me, but definitely other people will have different definitions

(37:31):
of this. This is not definitive in any sense, and.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
If I could just mention that, I also think another
thing that makes it complicated isn't just that most of
us don't actually know what these terms mean. It's that
even if we did, when you understand something, it's not
usually like there's a clear yeah switch that gets flipped
where you're like, oh, now we've entered law lands. Before
we were in hypothesis land. It's like you need to
slowly accumulate and it's not always clear when it's time

(37:54):
to like update to a new term. And so anyway,
that probably complicates things too.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, yeah, So let's start with laws. I think of
a law as something the universe actually does. There's some
truth out there, and one of the basic assumptions in
science is that the universe follows laws and we don't
know them, but we can do experiments and think about
it and all this sorts of stuff to try to
figure them out. So we think the universe follows some

(38:22):
sort of concise, simple fundamental rules, and those are the
laws of the universe, all right, still with me?

Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeap?

Speaker 1 (38:30):
Cool? Now we don't know who those things are, but
we can have theories about it, so we went it
from law to theory. Theories are like our explanations for
how the universe works. So general relativity, for example, is
a theory about how matter bends space and how space
tells matter to move. Quantum mechanics is a theory that
tells us that space is filled with oscillating fields. These

(38:54):
are theories. They're like our explanatory frameworks to describe the
things that we see in the universe, and we hope
that those theories line up with the truth the laws
that are actually out there in the universe. And so theories,
it's kind of a fuzzy term, right, Theories are sort
of like our ideas. They include a bunch of evidence
and they come together to give like some sort of

(39:15):
coherent explanation for how something is working in the universe.
A theory is not just like a random guess, not
just like, hmm, maybe it's this, right, like a fan
theory to explain the ending of some movie you just saw. Right,
It's something that's really based in evidence and has been
tested and it's sort of part of our explanation of

(39:36):
the universe.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yeah, lots of different labs have looked at it. It's
been looked at from lots of different angles. Predictions have
been tested.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
Yeah, agreed, Yeah, so the whole like, you know, gravity's
just a theory, man, doesn't mean that like we don't
know anything about gravity, or it's just like one of
ten options to explain why we stick to the surface
of the Earth. Right, A theory can be something that's
very well developed and understood.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
I don't know, was vity really the best pick. There
seems like there's a lot we don't know about gravity.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
There is a lot we don't know about gravity. That's
the other thing about a theory is that they're never complete, right,
They're evolving, their changing. You know, gravity is a wonderful,
amazing theory, but there's definitely a lot we don't know about,
you know, what's going on at the center of black
holes or the early universe, or fundamentally how gravity works
for particles.

Speaker 3 (40:22):
Right.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Definitely, it's a not complete explanation of the universe. It's
an explanation of part of the universe. And we don't
have a unified theory. We'd love to have one, because
we think there is one set of laws, but we
have sort of piecemeal theories that we think are approximating
those laws.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Excellent. I'm glad we have a scientist slash philosopher on
the show.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
So there are laws out there. We try to build
theories about how the universe works and follow those laws.
What's a model in that sense, and model is a
very overloaded term in physics, we use model to mean
sort of a simplified version of a theory, because theories
are complicated. If you wanted to calculate the orbit of
the Earth around the Sun, you couldn't use general relativity.

(41:05):
Nobody knows how to do that calculation. General relativity really
really nasty. The only times we've ever been able to
solve problems with general relativity are in simplified settings, like
an empty universe, a universe with just a black hole
in it, a universe filled with uniform dust. None of
those correspond to our reality. Our reality is too complicated
to solve with the full theory, and so we build

(41:28):
a model. We can simplify the universe. We can say, like,
let's assume the universe is empty except for the Earth
and the Sun. Now, let's do the calculation, and we
hope that the calculation is still relevant to the real universe. Right,
we find a simpler version something we actually can crank
on and hope that the answer is still irrelevant. Or

(41:49):
we can simplify the calculations. We can say, well, let's
use an approximate version of the theory. You know, Einstein's
equations for general relativity. If things are far apart and
masses are not too high and they're slow moving, they
reduce to Newton's theory. And so you can use Newton's
theory for most stuff. You want to calculate whether your
cannon ball is going to fly over the castle walls,

(42:10):
you don't need to use general relativity. You're going to
get basically the right answer using a simpler model, right,
a model of general relativity, which is just Newton's equations.
And so, you know, spherical cows are a fun joke
because that's the kind of thing physicists do. We're like, well,
let's replace a complex situation with a simpler situation where
the answer is basically the same. And so a model

(42:30):
is a simplification. Either you've simplified the universe or you've
simplified the theory so that you can get some answers out.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Yeah, and models are great. They help you decide if
you know your simplification.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeap.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
When you do a simplification, you're making assumptions that some
things don't matter that much. And so then when your
model gives you an answer and you test it, you
can see, oh, was I right? That the thing doesn't
matter that much? And you know, ideally it's an iterative process.
The model gives you a prediction you can test, You
actually go out and you test it, and then you
update your model as needed.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
That's right, and it's import to understand that every calculation
anybody has ever done uses models, uses simplifications. All of
physics uses approximations. If you want to calculate how the
Earth goes around the Sun, in principle, you need to
include the gravitational tug from every single object out there
in the universe which is pulling on the Earth. Most
of those are negligible, and some rock out there in Andromeda.

(43:21):
It's really not going to change the path of the
Earth in a way we can measure, but in principle
it does, so we always do approximations. It's impossible to
ever do full calculations in any of our theories for
any situations. So all of science is approximate to some degree,
and that's where a lot of science happens is figuring
out how to be clever about it. What approximations can

(43:42):
I make so the answer is still useful and irrelevant right,
and I can get this done in a PhD length
of time and not be here for ten thousand years.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
That can often be a very painstaking part of the process. Though,
What are my parameter estimates that are reasonable and useful
and that can be a lot of work.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
That's right. And so that's what a model is. And
let me say that model is used very differently in
different fields. Like I talk to computer scientists and machine
learning people. For them, a model is like a trained network.
They talk about neural networks as my model or their
boosted decision tree is a model. They use model I
means something they very different than physicists do. And I
know biologists talk about like model systems. They're studying the brain.

(44:21):
They're doing it in mice, or they're doing it in rats,
or they're doing it in flies. To them, that's the
meaning of model, like which model system are you using?

Speaker 2 (44:29):
But when someone says to you, you know, what do
you do? When you say, oh, I do modeling, they
know that that means that you are using equations to
try to capture the dynamics of a system and are
making predictions that way. So I think we use the
word model in a couple different ways, one of which
is model systems.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
Yeah, and I think that fits in because, like you're
using the mouse as a model system to understand Alzheimer's
because you can't and you shouldn't, do experiments on humans,
and so use the mouse brain as a stand in
as an approximation for the human brain. Because know, it's
not okay to do the things the humans that you
do to mice, and maybe it's not okay to do
to mice either, but it's maybe more okay. I think

(45:06):
it's the argument biologists make.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
Yeah, yes, depends on who you're talking to, but I
guess I'd prefer it happened on mice.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah, all right, And so the last term was hypothesis.
We test our model by generating hypotheses. We're saying, here's
my model of the universe. I think that this interstellar
comet is made of ice and co.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Two.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Let me generate a hypothesis about what James Webspace telescope
we'll see when we point it at it, and then
I can compare that hypothesis to what we actually see.
So the model predicts something that's our hypothesis, and then
we compare it to reality in order to learn whether
the model is correct or not.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
Cool. So we have laws, theories, models, and hypotheses. And
the last bit of Ben's question was a sort of
loaded question about Darwin's theory. I hear a lot of
this discussion online about how evolution is just a theory man,
and because it all happened in the past, it's not
really predicting anything. It's just descriptive, and therefore it's unfalsifiable

(46:01):
and not really scientifically valid. And I wonder if these
critiques are really done in good faith. You know, these
are folks attacking evolution, trying to use the language of
science to undermine it. But I don't think they really
believe in the scientific process personally. Yeah, agree, So let's
talk about it. Darwin's theory is definitely a theory. I mean,
it provides an explanation for how speciation happens. Right, There's

(46:23):
lots of evidence out there that it's pulled together. It
definitely qualifies as a theory, and in that sense, it's
not just like some dude's random guess, right, It's a
well established explanation for a huge variety of stuff that
we see out there.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
What do you think, Yes, so for one hundred and
fifty years, we've been trying to decide if evolution through
natural selection is supported by the data. And you know,
there's probably evolutionary biologists in every department that does research
around the world, and we have found results that make
us think about evolution through natural selection in a different way.

(46:56):
But in one hundred and fifty years, none of us
have come up with a result that's like, oh, definitely,
we drop this theory. So we've got one hundred and
fifty years of researching coming up with predictions based on
this theory that are supported by future work. So yeah,
I agree with you.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Yeah, And Ben asks like, is this a predictive theory?
And I think the answer is absolutely. You know, it
predicts lots of things about what you should find out
there in the world. You should find fossils, you should
find simpler behaviors leading to more complex behaviors. You should
see real time evolution, you know, when communities respond to
changing circumstances. You should see a connection between the species

(47:33):
that we observe and the genetic information that leads to them.
This is I think a really powerful confirmation of natural
selection is finding the sort of mechanism the DNA, the
biochemistry that underlies all of this, and seeing confirmed in
the history of that evolution in the DNA, I think
it's super fascinating. You know, we can learn things about

(47:53):
like when community is diverged by seeing the differences in
their DNA.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yep, yep. And you know, yeah, Darwin is clearly like
the best scientist of all time. Sorry, Daniel. And so
if you could be the scientist who finds the data
that refutes this theory, yeah, you could replace the name Darwin, right,
And so there's no.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Mainstream narrative the biology is trying to protect.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Yeah, that's right, that's right.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
Now every scientist out there wants to overthrow the mainstream
narrative because that's how you become a famous scientist. And
also that's what we all want to do. We want
to learn the truth about the universe. We're driven by
our curiosity to reveal the truth, not to support some
sort of dogma. But you raised I think the last,
maybe the most important point is that the question about

(48:39):
whether this could be refuted. So can you, Kelly, imagine
some evidence that hypothetically would undercut this theory of evolution.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
At this point, we have so much evidence. It's kind
of hard to imagine something we could have missed and
like one piece of information that would refute everything. So
I think at this point, if you had a finding
that like multi cellular life existed before we found unicellular life,
like it just popped into existence or something, we would
have to look really hard at, like have we collected

(49:09):
all the data and all the different places, Like yeah,
because there's this mountain of evidence and you've got this
one thing that maybe doesn't fit. But I do think
that if there were evidence out there, scientists would be
open to considering it and looking at it and trying
to understand if that makes us wrong, or if it's
just a shady corner in the room of evolution that

(49:30):
we haven't explored yet and we just need to move
into that into that area instead.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
Yeah, And I think the question is reasonable, Like we
expect theories to do more than just describe the data
we've seen. We want them to generalize. If they really
are coming close to the truth the laws of the
actual universe, they should be able to predict things we
haven't seen. And Ben's question is like, well, hasn't this
all this stuff happened in the past Yeah, a lot
of the stuff has happened in the past, but we
haven't seen it yet, and so we can predict, like

(49:56):
I predict what I'm gonna find when I dig into
the ground. Yeah, the stuff is already there and the
events already occurred, but if we haven't seen it yet,
then it's fair to predict it and to treat that
as a test of the theory.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Yep, agreed.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
All right, So Ben, let us know if we answered
your question about the definition of these terms and their
application to Darwin's theory of the origin of the species.

Speaker 8 (50:16):
Well, Daniel and Kelly, even though the classification of groups
of ideas is obviously a complicated topic, I just knew
that it would come up with some clear insights. Thank
you very much, and it's good to hear that Darwin's
amazing theories are currently being used by scientists to help
both explain and predict many phenomena. I wish you all

(50:36):
the best for your trip to Inverness, Daniel, and I
hope the weather matches that in southern California so you
can stay comfortable wearing that kills.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
All right.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Well, that was a ton of fun. As always, I
learned a ton hopefully the listeners learned a ton too.
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