May 28, 2021 • 19 mins
Washington is swirling with UFO chatter right now as many eagerly await an intelligence report due sometime next month. Top senators, pentagon insiders, and former CIA directors have been weighing in on the subject, but that hasn’t always been the case. UFO talk usually got you in trouble or got you strange looks. Michael Rosenwald, reporter at The Washington Post, joins us for how UFO sightings went from jokes to national security concern.
Next, for all those that are out traveling this Memorial Day weekend, get ready for high costs and lots of people. As the economy continues to rebound from the pandemic, we are seeing vacations get more expensive with rising airfare and hotel rates. The price of gas is even making road trips more expensive too. Leslie Josephs, airline reporter at CNBC, joins us for why costs are quickly going up.
Finally, a new treatment known as optogenetic therapy has given a blind man some of his vision back. Light- activated proteins were inserted into eye nerve cells and paired with specials goggles that emit flashes of amber-hued light. This combination allowed the man with a degenerative eye disease to see and count objects, when he could previously just detect some light. Tina Hesman Saey, senior writer at Science News, joins us for more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday, ma, I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles, and
this is the daily dive. Washington is swirling with UFO
chatter right now, as many eagerly await an intelligence report
do sometime next month. Top senators, Pentagon insiders, and former
(00:20):
CIA directors have all been weighing in on the subject.
But that hasn't always been the case. UFO talk usually
got you in trouble or got you strange looks. Michael Rosenwald,
reporter at Washington Post joins US for how UFO sightings
went from jokes to national security concern. Next, for all
those that are out traveling this Memorial Day weekend, get
(00:43):
ready for high costs and lots of people. As the
economy continues to rebound from the pandemic, We're seeing vacations
get more expensive with rising airfare and hotel rates. The
price of gas is even making road trips more expensive too.
Leslie Joseph's airline reporter at NBC joins US for white
costs are quickly going up. Finally, a new treatment known
(01:05):
as optogenetic therapy has given a blind man some of
his vision. Back Light activated proteins were inserted into eye
nerve cells impaired with special goggles that emit flashes of
amber hued light. This combination allowed the men with a
degenerative eye disease to see and count some objects when
he could previously only detect some light. Tina Hessman Say,
(01:28):
senior writer at Science News, joins us for more. It's
news without the noise. Let's dive in. We have things
flying over military installations, over military exercises in other places,
and we don't know what it is. It isn't ours,
it isn't anything that's just registered of the f a A,
and in many cases exhibits attributes of things we've never seen, technology,
(01:52):
the kinds of technology we haven't seen before, or at
least that's what it seems like. Joining us now is
Michael Rosenwald, reporter at the Washington Post. Thanks for joining us, Michael,
Thanks for having me appreciate it. UFOs in the news again.
I always love stories about UFOs and aliens, but it's
getting a lot of hype right now, especially in Washington.
Before people kept quiet about things like this, you know,
(02:14):
leave it to the movies and all that stuff. But
we've been hearing a lot about this. Upcoming reports supposed
to be coming out in June. Who knows if it
will get delayed, but it's supposed to detail everything that
the Pentagon knows about UFOs. And you wrote an article
just kind of talking about the trajectory of how this
conversation is going and how more people are buzzing about it,
intelligence officials, people in the Pentagon. So Michael tell us
(02:36):
a little bit about what we're seeing with the conversation
on UFOs. A lot of this really dates back to
sort of the mid ninety nineties. Senate Majority leader Harry
Reid is invited by a friend to go to this
academic conference on UFOs and he's intrigued. He's from Nevada,
that's where Area fifty one is, and he keeps an
(02:57):
interest in this going for several years. And then another
friend approaches him who has a real healthy interest in
UFOs and he's got a ranch in Utah apparently where
lots of weird paranormal things happen, and he apparently gets
a letter from some kind of intelligence officials saying, Hey,
we want to check out your ranch, and then Reid
(03:18):
finally says, you know, we should do something on this,
and so he calls in some of his colleagues to
a secure classified room at the Capitol and he says,
you know, he wants to get some money appropriated to
the Pentagon so they can study this. And he gets
twenty two million dollars, which is, you know, obviously a
drop in the bucket when it comes to Pentagon funding.
But they established this group internally to look at it,
(03:40):
and they begin collecting a series of reports from military
pilots about these strange objects that they are seeing, which
you know, in the sky and and on radar, which
have a lot more capability than they have. And eventually,
a few years go a few of these videos leak out,
(04:02):
the Pentagon confirms them, and more and more people start
to get interested in this, and and this draws the
attention of former CIA directors who come out and publicly say, hey,
we don't know what this stuff is. It's weird. We've
got to figure out what it is. And then, incredibly,
as part of former President Trump's Pandemic Relief Package and
(04:24):
Appropriations Bill, the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Democrat Mark
Warner from Virginia, gets a provision in there basically saying
that the Director of National Intelligence needs to coordinate with
the Pentagon and release a report in one days which
is due next month, detailing everything every intelligence agency right
(04:46):
down to the FBI, detailing what they have on these
unidentified flying objects, and from Mark Warner and from Marcar Rubio,
the vice chair of this committee, they have couched this
in national security terms. It's like, Hey, they're these things
flying around in the sky that are doing these incredible things.
We don't know what the heck they are. What if
it's Russia, what if it's China, what if it's really
(05:07):
is some of being extraterrestrial. Everybody's pinning this now into
a national security thing. What if it is another country
with some new technology? And so this is where the
conversation is going. So, I know, people get hyped up
about UFOs and aliens, but that's probably not what we're
gonna be hearing about when this report eventually comes out.
We're gonna be hearing about national security implications with all
(05:28):
of this. Yeah, that's true, though some former CIA directors
have said to really eyebrow raising things. John Brennan. John Brennan,
who was a very obviously well respected UH intelligence career
intelligence official and ran the CIA. He says that we
shouldn't just assume that we're living here in this world.
(05:50):
Whatever this world is alone. Maybe there is something out
there that needs to be explained. Yeah, I think one
of his I think in one of his it's kind
of crazy. It's amazing it is, And and that's where
people's heads starts swirling. It's a bit presumptuous and arrogant
for us to believe that there's no other form of
life anywhere in the universe. And he says some of
this stuff that we're looking at could come from a
(06:11):
different form of life. You know that right there. Obviously
he's privy to knowledge that we don't have, and that
really starts sending people's head spinning with all of this stuff.
It really does. And it's it's interesting that we've had
this pop cultural thing for so long. But in other countries,
and I'm I'm hearing from many people in other countries today,
(06:32):
these things aren't treated, you know, as a political ticket
to the looney bin, as as I called it. They're
taken seriously in many other countries in ways that we
haven't been taking it seriously. There's not just UFOs settings
in the United States. These these settings are everywhere, um
and then there are there are things that can't be explained,
you know, but other countries treated in a different way.
(06:52):
Are we seeing these types of reports from military personnel
in other countries, because if it was just happening here,
then maybe that lead more to saying it could be
another country infiltrating our airspace. But if it's happening everywhere,
then maybe something larger could be at play. The UK
has had similar UFO task forces. There have been other
(07:12):
countries that have looked into it. South America people are
hoping that as as part of this report that is
supposed to come out from the government, that there will
also be references to perhaps other intelligence gathered between friendly
countries on this topic. So, you know, there's a lot
of hope behind this, this report that's supposed to come out,
and one of those things is what do other countries
(07:34):
know and what have they shared with our intelligence community.
Michael Rosenwald, reporter at the Washington Post, Thank you very
much for joining us. It was a pleasure. Thanks so much.
You have legal departments and compliance that are dictating a
(07:56):
lot of these policies, and they don't want to send
anyone out too early or a lawsuit. So if you
can travel in the fall or maybe outside of the
peak season, I would go for it. Joining us now
is Leslie Joseph's airline reporter at CNBC. Thanks for joining us, Leslie,
thanks for having me memorial. They weekend is here and
it's time to talk about travel. I don't want to
(08:17):
bust anybody's bubble, but it's gonna be busy wherever you're going.
There's gonna be a lot of other people out there.
You know. It's kind of this double edged sword. We're
recovering from the pandemic, and this is exactly what we want.
We want people to start traveling again, start visiting other locations,
domestic travels, leisure travel, spending that money. We want that.
(08:37):
But on the other side of things, we've been locked
up away for so long. It's tough to get out
in a lot of crowded places with a lot of people.
So Leslie tell us a little bit about what we're
seeing out there. We're seeing rising air affairs and hotel
rates as well. I think we got a little bit
used to those bunkin fairs we were seeing in many
of us. Most of us were not booking them last year.
(08:57):
And even into the beginning of one. Then all of
a sudden, a bunch of people in America did get
vaccinated and encourage this huge uptick in demand for travel.
People have been closed up in their homes for the
better part of fifteen months, and they're ready to go
out and travel, whether you're vaccinated or not. Attractions are
starting to open up. Your Disneyland that opens very recently
(09:20):
in other places, Restaurants are opening in cities, and even
in New York, we're starting to see things return a
little bit more to normal. Yeah, you know, it's not
just the airfare as well road trips. The cost of
gas is going up, and for a time during the pandemic,
that's what a lot of people resorted to. Let's do
a quick road trip something, just to get out of
the house. And even gas prices are going up, so
(09:40):
all around. You know, it's kind of funny too, because
you know, some of these increases and everything, you know,
they're not that pre pandemic levels just yet. They're getting
towards it. But even still, it's just kind of coming
out of this year, we're looking at these prices and
just saying, man, that's expensive already. I think we got
used to those really cheap prices during the pandemic, and
you mentioned road trips. We've seen gasoline prices national average
(10:02):
is the highest that we've seen since. So it was
the sort of alternative during the pandemic. Okay, I'm gonna
go out and avoid other people. I don't feel like
going to an airport. I don't feel safe for you know,
whatever the reason might be. But a lot of other
people had a similar idea. Of course, we're all getting
out of our houses and driving up demands for gasoline
and what we're seeing in the airports, and I think
travelers can expect a lot of full flights. Airlines do
(10:24):
not have the capacity that they had in ten They
retired a lot of aircraft, a lot of their own
employees retired or left the company, so they're not operating
the same number of flights that they used to. But
what they are all doing is trying to focus on
this domestic us leisure demands, and that's where everybody is traveling,
and that's where we're seeing some of the fairs. A
lot of the executives are started to say they're at
(10:46):
or near levels. So the chances of getting a really
good bargain are pretty much fading as we speak. Business
and international travel hasn't ramped up just yet. That's still
going to take a little bit more time, and that's
kind of what helps offset these lower fairs for all
the regular flights basically, so until those pick up will
(11:07):
be in this kind of mode as well. That's helping
the consumers somewhat their vacation or I should say in
the near term, because it will keep a lid on prices.
You know, you don't have those business travelers during the
middle of the week. If you as a vacation or
can travel in the middle of the week and take
those seats at a better price, take it. And then
also if you have a chance to travel in the
off season. The airlines are hopeful that business travel, which
(11:30):
is already starting to come back, we'll come back and earnest.
Maybe in the fall, kids are back in school and
more people are vaccinated, and companies start to loosen up
their travel restrictions for their own people, and maybe offices
open up to receive visitors. But it's not clear how
quickly that's going to happen. I mean, you have legal
departments and compliance that are dictating a lot of these
policies and they don't want to send anyone out too
early or or risk lawsuit. So if you can travel
(11:54):
in the fall or maybe outside of the peak season,
I would go for it. You made mention in your
article that i'll lot of airlines are reinstating strict rules
that they had on basic economy flights. What were those rules?
What's changing there? So one thing that happened during the
pandemic is that airlines started to lift or they have
lifted change fees, and the fees that everybody hates two
(12:16):
fifty dollars or more sometimes to change your flight, and
everybody knows the frustration of even if you have like
a family of four and you need to change for
an emergency or something along those lines, or maybe you
really like your destination you want to stay a little
bit longer, come back sooner. For whatever reason, it's very costly,
and airlines were desperate to get people on board last year,
so they all Delta, American and United lifted change fees,
(12:38):
including for international flights. Great news for consumers, but it
doesn't apply to the cheapest tickets, which is called basic economy.
They're the most restrictive and one are the pillars of
that for most airlines is that they don't allow change fees.
So those fares exist and they'll be in buckets on
the website when you book your flight on the airlines website,
(12:59):
they're there and the executives are not shy about this,
so that you booked the next highest that will give
you a little bit more flexibility that will allow you
to bring. For certain airlines to carry on bag on
board let's say not board last it comes with a
seat assignment for what that's worth for you. So it's
not free changes for all. Some airlines like Southwest, for example,
they haven't had change for you, so it wasn't much
(13:20):
of a change for them. But for the major airlines
they are keeping that, but it is for standard economy tickets.
Leslie Joseph's airline reporter at CNBC, thank you very much
for joining us. Thank you. So what these researchers have
(13:42):
done is taken a gene that will produce a light
sensitive protein and they put them in these other nerve
cells that are still there in the retina, and so
now those nerve cells can respond to light. Joining us now,
was Tina Hessman Say, senior writer at Science News. Thanks
(14:03):
for joining us. Tina, Well, thank you for having me.
I want to talk about a really interesting story. They
were doing gene based therapy on a Frenchman and they
were able to partially restore his vision. They're using these
light activated proteins. They insert them in his eye nerve cells.
He has to use special goggles with this, but they
(14:24):
were able to get him to see a couple of things.
I think he was able to see and count objects,
maybe see the outlines of a pedestrian crosswalk. All very
good for him obviously. So Tina, help us walk through
some of the story. What are we seeing with this
gene based therapy. So this is a type of therapy
that's called optogenetic therapy. It's a little different from some
(14:47):
of the gene therapies you might have heard about before,
which replace a faulty copy of a gene with a
healthy copy. And it's also different from gene editing, which
goes in and fixes a particular mutation. So those types
of therapy are good for people who still have some
(15:09):
of the cells in their retina that collect the light.
Those are you've heard probably rod and cone cells. They're
also called photoreceptors. So those cells die in people with
these degenerative eye diseases, including the one that this man has,
(15:29):
and when they die, you lose your vision. But there
are still other nerve cells in the retina that are
still alive and still capable of working, but they're just
not getting signals. So what these researchers have done is
taken a gene that will produce a light sensitive protein
(15:53):
and they put them in these other nerve cells that
are still there in the retina. And so now those
nerves cell can respond to light the way things work
in either layer. So with this gene therapy, they're targeting
the far back of the eye, which is sending those
signals to the brain. So how those cells that they
(16:15):
put these this light sensitive gene into, they're called ganglion cells,
and they're sort of the last line of the retina
before you send off the signals about what you're seeing
to the brain. So normally they would get varying signals
from the other layers in the retina and they would
(16:38):
fire off in pulses. So the gangling cell doesn't know
what to do with a constant source of light, so
that's why you have to send pulses to it because
it responds to change in light levels. They've done this
type of optogenetic therapy before with different light sources. It
(17:00):
used to be more of like a blue light source,
but I guess it was very straining for a lot
of people. So with this one they use more of
an amber light source, and that's why they use the
goggles to put that light source in there as well.
So just a lot of interesting things and modifications that
they had to do just to get him to be
able to see a little bit. So these goggles actually
take advantage of a lot of technology that's been developed
(17:23):
for cameras, for instance setting light levels, because your eye
can respond to a huge range of light levels, from
the dimmest starlight to the brightest sunny day at the beach.
But these proteins that are now responding to light only
respond to a very narrow window, and so the goggles
(17:48):
have to like take all these different light levels and
put it into that narrow band that these proteins respond to.
How optimists are doctors for the future and the man
himself has he had any reaction to being able to
pick out certain things? Now? You know? The doctors are
(18:08):
cautiously optimistic. This is one person they have done this with.
I think they said nine other people so far in
this clinical trial, and this man got the lowest dose
of these light activated proteins that they felt would be workable.
(18:29):
And so other people in the trial are getting higher
doses so they may have better responses. But with COVID,
it was very difficult for them to come into the
lab to do the testing and training that they needed
to do because this is not like a therapy day
you can just go in how them shoot something into
your eye and then you can see. It takes months
(18:52):
actually for the proteins to be made, and then it
takes a while to train the brain to make sense
of what you're seeing because there are very few solves
that contain these coachains and they're getting it in a
different information sense than they normally would when you see,
(19:14):
so it takes a while for the brain to figure
all of that out. Tina Hessman Say, senior writer at
Science News, thank you very much for joining us. You're welcome.
That's it for today. Join us on social media at
(19:36):
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The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright and engineered by
Tony Sarantina Hi, Moscar Pameiraz, And this was your Daily Dive.
It's Friday, ma, I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles, and
this is the daily dive. Washington is swirling with UFO
chatter right now, as many eagerly await an intelligence report
do sometime next month. Top senators, Pentagon insiders, and former
(00:20):
CIA directors have all been weighing in on the subject.
But that hasn't always been the case. UFO talk usually
got you in trouble or got you strange looks. Michael Rosenwald,
reporter at Washington Post joins US for how UFO sightings
went from jokes to national security concern. Next, for all
those that are out traveling this Memorial Day weekend, get
(00:43):
ready for high costs and lots of people. As the
economy continues to rebound from the pandemic, We're seeing vacations
get more expensive with rising airfare and hotel rates. The
price of gas is even making road trips more expensive too.
Leslie Joseph's airline reporter at NBC joins US for white
costs are quickly going up. Finally, a new treatment known
(01:05):
as optogenetic therapy has given a blind man some of
his vision. Back Light activated proteins were inserted into eye
nerve cells impaired with special goggles that emit flashes of
amber hued light. This combination allowed the men with a
degenerative eye disease to see and count some objects when
he could previously only detect some light. Tina Hessman Say,
(01:28):
senior writer at Science News, joins us for more. It's
news without the noise. Let's dive in. We have things
flying over military installations, over military exercises in other places,
and we don't know what it is. It isn't ours,
it isn't anything that's just registered of the f a A,
and in many cases exhibits attributes of things we've never seen, technology,
(01:52):
the kinds of technology we haven't seen before, or at
least that's what it seems like. Joining us now is
Michael Rosenwald, reporter at the Washington Post. Thanks for joining us, Michael,
Thanks for having me appreciate it. UFOs in the news again.
I always love stories about UFOs and aliens, but it's
getting a lot of hype right now, especially in Washington.
Before people kept quiet about things like this, you know,
(02:14):
leave it to the movies and all that stuff. But
we've been hearing a lot about this. Upcoming reports supposed
to be coming out in June. Who knows if it
will get delayed, but it's supposed to detail everything that
the Pentagon knows about UFOs. And you wrote an article
just kind of talking about the trajectory of how this
conversation is going and how more people are buzzing about it,
intelligence officials, people in the Pentagon. So Michael tell us
(02:36):
a little bit about what we're seeing with the conversation
on UFOs. A lot of this really dates back to
sort of the mid ninety nineties. Senate Majority leader Harry
Reid is invited by a friend to go to this
academic conference on UFOs and he's intrigued. He's from Nevada,
that's where Area fifty one is, and he keeps an
(02:57):
interest in this going for several years. And then another
friend approaches him who has a real healthy interest in
UFOs and he's got a ranch in Utah apparently where
lots of weird paranormal things happen, and he apparently gets
a letter from some kind of intelligence officials saying, Hey,
we want to check out your ranch, and then Reid
(03:18):
finally says, you know, we should do something on this,
and so he calls in some of his colleagues to
a secure classified room at the Capitol and he says,
you know, he wants to get some money appropriated to
the Pentagon so they can study this. And he gets
twenty two million dollars, which is, you know, obviously a
drop in the bucket when it comes to Pentagon funding.
But they established this group internally to look at it,
(03:40):
and they begin collecting a series of reports from military
pilots about these strange objects that they are seeing, which
you know, in the sky and and on radar, which
have a lot more capability than they have. And eventually,
a few years go a few of these videos leak out,
(04:02):
the Pentagon confirms them, and more and more people start
to get interested in this, and and this draws the
attention of former CIA directors who come out and publicly say, hey,
we don't know what this stuff is. It's weird. We've
got to figure out what it is. And then, incredibly,
as part of former President Trump's Pandemic Relief Package and
(04:24):
Appropriations Bill, the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Democrat Mark
Warner from Virginia, gets a provision in there basically saying
that the Director of National Intelligence needs to coordinate with
the Pentagon and release a report in one days which
is due next month, detailing everything every intelligence agency right
(04:46):
down to the FBI, detailing what they have on these
unidentified flying objects, and from Mark Warner and from Marcar Rubio,
the vice chair of this committee, they have couched this
in national security terms. It's like, Hey, they're these things
flying around in the sky that are doing these incredible things.
We don't know what the heck they are. What if
it's Russia, what if it's China, what if it's really
(05:07):
is some of being extraterrestrial. Everybody's pinning this now into
a national security thing. What if it is another country
with some new technology? And so this is where the
conversation is going. So, I know, people get hyped up
about UFOs and aliens, but that's probably not what we're
gonna be hearing about when this report eventually comes out.
We're gonna be hearing about national security implications with all
(05:28):
of this. Yeah, that's true, though some former CIA directors
have said to really eyebrow raising things. John Brennan. John Brennan,
who was a very obviously well respected UH intelligence career
intelligence official and ran the CIA. He says that we
shouldn't just assume that we're living here in this world.
(05:50):
Whatever this world is alone. Maybe there is something out
there that needs to be explained. Yeah, I think one
of his I think in one of his it's kind
of crazy. It's amazing it is, And and that's where
people's heads starts swirling. It's a bit presumptuous and arrogant
for us to believe that there's no other form of
life anywhere in the universe. And he says some of
this stuff that we're looking at could come from a
(06:11):
different form of life. You know that right there. Obviously
he's privy to knowledge that we don't have, and that
really starts sending people's head spinning with all of this stuff.
It really does. And it's it's interesting that we've had
this pop cultural thing for so long. But in other countries,
and I'm I'm hearing from many people in other countries today,
(06:32):
these things aren't treated, you know, as a political ticket
to the looney bin, as as I called it. They're
taken seriously in many other countries in ways that we
haven't been taking it seriously. There's not just UFOs settings
in the United States. These these settings are everywhere, um
and then there are there are things that can't be explained,
you know, but other countries treated in a different way.
(06:52):
Are we seeing these types of reports from military personnel
in other countries, because if it was just happening here,
then maybe that lead more to saying it could be
another country infiltrating our airspace. But if it's happening everywhere,
then maybe something larger could be at play. The UK
has had similar UFO task forces. There have been other
(07:12):
countries that have looked into it. South America people are
hoping that as as part of this report that is
supposed to come out from the government, that there will
also be references to perhaps other intelligence gathered between friendly
countries on this topic. So, you know, there's a lot
of hope behind this, this report that's supposed to come out,
and one of those things is what do other countries
(07:34):
know and what have they shared with our intelligence community.
Michael Rosenwald, reporter at the Washington Post, Thank you very
much for joining us. It was a pleasure. Thanks so much.
You have legal departments and compliance that are dictating a
(07:56):
lot of these policies, and they don't want to send
anyone out too early or a lawsuit. So if you
can travel in the fall or maybe outside of the
peak season, I would go for it. Joining us now
is Leslie Joseph's airline reporter at CNBC. Thanks for joining us, Leslie,
thanks for having me memorial. They weekend is here and
it's time to talk about travel. I don't want to
(08:17):
bust anybody's bubble, but it's gonna be busy wherever you're going.
There's gonna be a lot of other people out there.
You know. It's kind of this double edged sword. We're
recovering from the pandemic, and this is exactly what we want.
We want people to start traveling again, start visiting other locations,
domestic travels, leisure travel, spending that money. We want that.
(08:37):
But on the other side of things, we've been locked
up away for so long. It's tough to get out
in a lot of crowded places with a lot of people.
So Leslie tell us a little bit about what we're
seeing out there. We're seeing rising air affairs and hotel
rates as well. I think we got a little bit
used to those bunkin fairs we were seeing in many
of us. Most of us were not booking them last year.
(08:57):
And even into the beginning of one. Then all of
a sudden, a bunch of people in America did get
vaccinated and encourage this huge uptick in demand for travel.
People have been closed up in their homes for the
better part of fifteen months, and they're ready to go
out and travel, whether you're vaccinated or not. Attractions are
starting to open up. Your Disneyland that opens very recently
(09:20):
in other places, Restaurants are opening in cities, and even
in New York, we're starting to see things return a
little bit more to normal. Yeah, you know, it's not
just the airfare as well road trips. The cost of
gas is going up, and for a time during the pandemic,
that's what a lot of people resorted to. Let's do
a quick road trip something, just to get out of
the house. And even gas prices are going up, so
(09:40):
all around. You know, it's kind of funny too, because
you know, some of these increases and everything, you know,
they're not that pre pandemic levels just yet. They're getting
towards it. But even still, it's just kind of coming
out of this year, we're looking at these prices and
just saying, man, that's expensive already. I think we got
used to those really cheap prices during the pandemic, and
you mentioned road trips. We've seen gasoline prices national average
(10:02):
is the highest that we've seen since. So it was
the sort of alternative during the pandemic. Okay, I'm gonna
go out and avoid other people. I don't feel like
going to an airport. I don't feel safe for you know,
whatever the reason might be. But a lot of other
people had a similar idea. Of course, we're all getting
out of our houses and driving up demands for gasoline
and what we're seeing in the airports, and I think
travelers can expect a lot of full flights. Airlines do
(10:24):
not have the capacity that they had in ten They
retired a lot of aircraft, a lot of their own
employees retired or left the company, so they're not operating
the same number of flights that they used to. But
what they are all doing is trying to focus on
this domestic us leisure demands, and that's where everybody is traveling,
and that's where we're seeing some of the fairs. A
lot of the executives are started to say they're at
(10:46):
or near levels. So the chances of getting a really
good bargain are pretty much fading as we speak. Business
and international travel hasn't ramped up just yet. That's still
going to take a little bit more time, and that's
kind of what helps offset these lower fairs for all
the regular flights basically, so until those pick up will
(11:07):
be in this kind of mode as well. That's helping
the consumers somewhat their vacation or I should say in
the near term, because it will keep a lid on prices.
You know, you don't have those business travelers during the
middle of the week. If you as a vacation or
can travel in the middle of the week and take
those seats at a better price, take it. And then
also if you have a chance to travel in the
off season. The airlines are hopeful that business travel, which
(11:30):
is already starting to come back, we'll come back and earnest.
Maybe in the fall, kids are back in school and
more people are vaccinated, and companies start to loosen up
their travel restrictions for their own people, and maybe offices
open up to receive visitors. But it's not clear how
quickly that's going to happen. I mean, you have legal
departments and compliance that are dictating a lot of these
policies and they don't want to send anyone out too
early or or risk lawsuit. So if you can travel
(11:54):
in the fall or maybe outside of the peak season,
I would go for it. You made mention in your
article that i'll lot of airlines are reinstating strict rules
that they had on basic economy flights. What were those rules?
What's changing there? So one thing that happened during the
pandemic is that airlines started to lift or they have
lifted change fees, and the fees that everybody hates two
(12:16):
fifty dollars or more sometimes to change your flight, and
everybody knows the frustration of even if you have like
a family of four and you need to change for
an emergency or something along those lines, or maybe you
really like your destination you want to stay a little
bit longer, come back sooner. For whatever reason, it's very costly,
and airlines were desperate to get people on board last year,
so they all Delta, American and United lifted change fees,
(12:38):
including for international flights. Great news for consumers, but it
doesn't apply to the cheapest tickets, which is called basic economy.
They're the most restrictive and one are the pillars of
that for most airlines is that they don't allow change fees.
So those fares exist and they'll be in buckets on
the website when you book your flight on the airlines website,
(12:59):
they're there and the executives are not shy about this,
so that you booked the next highest that will give
you a little bit more flexibility that will allow you
to bring. For certain airlines to carry on bag on
board let's say not board last it comes with a
seat assignment for what that's worth for you. So it's
not free changes for all. Some airlines like Southwest, for example,
they haven't had change for you, so it wasn't much
(13:20):
of a change for them. But for the major airlines
they are keeping that, but it is for standard economy tickets.
Leslie Joseph's airline reporter at CNBC, thank you very much
for joining us. Thank you. So what these researchers have
(13:42):
done is taken a gene that will produce a light
sensitive protein and they put them in these other nerve
cells that are still there in the retina, and so
now those nerve cells can respond to light. Joining us now,
was Tina Hessman Say, senior writer at Science News. Thanks
(14:03):
for joining us. Tina, Well, thank you for having me.
I want to talk about a really interesting story. They
were doing gene based therapy on a Frenchman and they
were able to partially restore his vision. They're using these
light activated proteins. They insert them in his eye nerve cells.
He has to use special goggles with this, but they
(14:24):
were able to get him to see a couple of things.
I think he was able to see and count objects,
maybe see the outlines of a pedestrian crosswalk. All very
good for him obviously. So Tina, help us walk through
some of the story. What are we seeing with this
gene based therapy. So this is a type of therapy
that's called optogenetic therapy. It's a little different from some
(14:47):
of the gene therapies you might have heard about before,
which replace a faulty copy of a gene with a
healthy copy. And it's also different from gene editing, which
goes in and fixes a particular mutation. So those types
of therapy are good for people who still have some
(15:09):
of the cells in their retina that collect the light.
Those are you've heard probably rod and cone cells. They're
also called photoreceptors. So those cells die in people with
these degenerative eye diseases, including the one that this man has,
(15:29):
and when they die, you lose your vision. But there
are still other nerve cells in the retina that are
still alive and still capable of working, but they're just
not getting signals. So what these researchers have done is
taken a gene that will produce a light sensitive protein
(15:53):
and they put them in these other nerve cells that
are still there in the retina. And so now those
nerves cell can respond to light the way things work
in either layer. So with this gene therapy, they're targeting
the far back of the eye, which is sending those
signals to the brain. So how those cells that they
(16:15):
put these this light sensitive gene into, they're called ganglion cells,
and they're sort of the last line of the retina
before you send off the signals about what you're seeing
to the brain. So normally they would get varying signals
from the other layers in the retina and they would
(16:38):
fire off in pulses. So the gangling cell doesn't know
what to do with a constant source of light, so
that's why you have to send pulses to it because
it responds to change in light levels. They've done this
type of optogenetic therapy before with different light sources. It
(17:00):
used to be more of like a blue light source,
but I guess it was very straining for a lot
of people. So with this one they use more of
an amber light source, and that's why they use the
goggles to put that light source in there as well.
So just a lot of interesting things and modifications that
they had to do just to get him to be
able to see a little bit. So these goggles actually
take advantage of a lot of technology that's been developed
(17:23):
for cameras, for instance setting light levels, because your eye
can respond to a huge range of light levels, from
the dimmest starlight to the brightest sunny day at the beach.
But these proteins that are now responding to light only
respond to a very narrow window, and so the goggles
(17:48):
have to like take all these different light levels and
put it into that narrow band that these proteins respond to.
How optimists are doctors for the future and the man
himself has he had any reaction to being able to
pick out certain things? Now? You know? The doctors are
(18:08):
cautiously optimistic. This is one person they have done this with.
I think they said nine other people so far in
this clinical trial, and this man got the lowest dose
of these light activated proteins that they felt would be workable.
(18:29):
And so other people in the trial are getting higher
doses so they may have better responses. But with COVID,
it was very difficult for them to come into the
lab to do the testing and training that they needed
to do because this is not like a therapy day
you can just go in how them shoot something into
your eye and then you can see. It takes months
(18:52):
actually for the proteins to be made, and then it
takes a while to train the brain to make sense
of what you're seeing because there are very few solves
that contain these coachains and they're getting it in a
different information sense than they normally would when you see,
(19:14):
so it takes a while for the brain to figure
all of that out. Tina Hessman Say, senior writer at
Science News, thank you very much for joining us. You're welcome.
That's it for today. Join us on social media at
(19:36):
Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter and Instagram. Gave us
a comment, give us a rating, and tell us the
stories that you're interested in. Follow us on I Heart Radio,
or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. This episode of
The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright and engineered by
Tony Sarantina Hi, Moscar Pameiraz, And this was your Daily Dive.
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