November 15, 2018 • 19 mins
Check out this scenario… Two people call customer service at the same time to complain about the same thing. One person gets connected to a rep in a few seconds, the other has to wait on hold for a long time. What’s up with that? My producer Miranda joins us to talk about your customer lifetime value, a number many companies use to determine how much you’re worth for the long term and how nice they’ll treat you. Next, there is a chemical derived from a cactus-like plant in Morocco that is so hot, it destroys nerve fibers, but in a good way. The substance known as RTX has emerged as a promising new painkiller. It destroys certain nerve fibers that signal pain, and could be a new tool to help free us from the grasp of opioids. Matt Simon, Science journalist at Wired, joins us for the potential new painkiller. Finally, scientists have discovered a “Super Earth,” a planet that is much bigger and colder than ours, orbiting around a nearby star. How big? Three times the mass of Earth. How Cold? Over 230 degrees below zero. Doyle Rice, Science reporter at USA Today joins us for what to know about this “Super Earth.”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Thursday, Novem and this is the daily dive. Check
out this scenario. Two people call customer service at the
same time to complain about the same thing. One person
gets connected to a rep in a few seconds, the
other has to wait on hold for a longer time.
What's up with that? My producer Miranda joins us to
(00:22):
talk about your customer lifetime value, a number many companies
used to determine how much you're worth for the long
term and how nice little treat you. Next, there's a
chemical derived from a cactus like plant in Morocco that
is so hot it destroys nerve fibers, but in a
good way. The substance, known as r t X, has
emerged as a promising new pain killer. It destroys certain
(00:44):
nerve fibers that signal pain and could be a new
tool to help free us from the grasp of opioid.
Matt Simon, science journalists at Wired joins us for the
potential new pain killer. Finally, scientists have discovered a super Earth,
a planet that is much bigger and colder than ours,
and it's orbiting a nearby star. How big three times
the massive Earth? How cold over two thirty degrees below zero.
(01:08):
Doyle Rice, science reporter at USA Today, joins us for
what to know about this super Earth. It's news without
the noise. Let's dive in. But they say that they
generate scores using data points like the number of times
the customer has dialed the call center. This is amazing,
whether this customer has browsed a competitor's website or searched
(01:29):
certain keywords in the past few days. What I mean
now is my producer, Miranda, we found this article and
it caught my eye instantly. It's all about your secret
customers score and how companies in a wide array of
industries are judging you and calculating your value to them.
Everyone with the bank account, a cell phone, online shopping
(01:49):
has this thing called a customer lifetime value score. You
have at least one, probably multiple ones. So let me
give you this scenario, and then Mirandy, you'll come in
and explain what it is. Let's two people call a
customer service line at the same time to complain about
the same thing. It doesn't matter. One person is gonna
wait just a few seconds before getting to a representative,
another one is probably gonna stay on hold. Imagine the
(02:11):
d m V waiting online forever, and this customer Lifetime
Value score, this CLV is what calculates if you're gonna
get up to the front of the line or if
you're the one on hold. So explain to us a
little bit more. With this customer lifetime value score is Miranda.
It all boils down to OSCAR. Essentially, the more profitable
you are to any given company, the better service you're
(02:31):
going to get. Your score can determine the prices you pay,
the products and ads that you see, the perks you receive.
Credit card companies use these scoring to decide what kind
of benefits they're going to give you. If you want
to call up and cancel your card and they say no,
we'll give you another year with no annual fee, that
kind of thing. Yeah, And unlike credit scores, the c
lvs aren't available to consumers and they aren't monitored by
(02:54):
any government agency. So these are all internal numbers, internal
ways that they score your value, and you'll never know.
It's all in the algorithms and how they score you.
And this has been going on for a long time.
It's the modern version of you going into the shop
and the shopkeeper sizing you up and saying this person
is going to spend a lot of money and be
a return customer, and I want to do anything and
(03:15):
everything I can to keep their business. This is just
the modern version of it with all these data points
that everybody uses. Explain a little bit some of these
data points that they collect on you, because there's a
common thing we talked about on the podcast all the time, privacy.
You're a fool to think that you have any type
of privacy. Now you're being monitored on everything you do.
There are hundreds of analytics firms oscar. They calculate your
(03:39):
customer lifetime value, and they all have different ways of
doing it. Some of them put value on shoppers based
on what they spend, and others use data inputs like
your demographic info such as your zip codes or how
many returns you make, the kinds of stores in which
you shop. They score based on transaction history, and they
say that all companies need to determine how customers are
(04:00):
going to behave in the future, and they use that
information to deal with you on a personal basis. They
also weigh you on if you call like a customer
complaint line and you complain too much. You could lower
your score by just by doing that. We'll get into
it in a minute, but they say that specifically, airlines
use that, say oscar. Every time you fly, you get
stuck in the middle seat, and three times out of
(04:22):
the last seven times you flow and they lost your bags,
but you never called to complain. The next time you
go to fly, you may get bumped up to first class.
Whereas I call and complain if the flight attendant brings
me a sprite when I asked for a coke, they're
gonna put me by the bathroom next time. Specifically with
air travel, just because you brought it up, there's certain
data firms that work with them. They can draw on
more than five thousand different data points just to treat
(04:45):
you better, give you those upgrades, that seat upgrade into
first class, five thousand different points that they're looking at.
Let's look at phone service then, because I know a
lot of people, you have to interact with the phone
company a lot of times. How do how do they work?
So wireless carriers like Verizon and Sprint, their lifetime value
determines marketing offers and other perks, so high value customers
that they're concerned are going to jump from say Verizon,
(05:06):
to a T and T or T Mobile, They'll get
routed to the top rated call center employees. And they
didn't get into specifics about how they judged the customers,
but they say that they generate scores using data points
like the number of times the customer has dialed the
call center this is amazing, whether this customer has browsed
competitor's website or searched certain keywords in the past few days.
(05:28):
So say I was sick of a T and T
and I heard T mobile is going to give everybody
unlimited data, and I'm searching at T Mobile. A T
and T is gonna see that. And when I called
to say I'm ending my service, they're gonna give you
a free phone. They're gonna sweeten something for me. Yeah,
it's called your turn score. So it's the chances that
you have of switching to another carrier. The Wall Street
Journal had a really fun quiz. They worked with one
(05:50):
of these data firms. They gave them a simplified version
of how companies could schedule this. So what they did
they had a theoretical clothing company. Both Miranda and I
put are details in there and It was different things
like your age, whether you're male or female, if you
buy your clothes all at once, or if you're like
a seasonal shopper and looking for deals. So, Miranda, what
did your storre being? I'll go last. When I'm answering
(06:13):
these questions, it asks you are you a female? And
I was automatically bumped up to a higher score because
in this hypothetical model, women tend to shop there more frequently.
Another question was if I was married. Yes, I am,
and they say that that about my score up also
because when you're a married woman shopping in the store,
you tend to buy for your husband, you tend to
buy for your kids, buy for more people there. So
(06:34):
I had a really high CLV number of ninety four
dollars and thirty seven cents. Good for you. It was
in the big spender category, which I'm sure my husband
would not be happy to hear about. With that comes
perks like being invited to v I P shopping events,
early access to sales, and better customer service. It said
specifically that it would shoot you up to the top
(06:54):
of the phone list and you'd get handled immediately. I
put mine in obviously at a lower score just because
I was a guy. Right away, my score ended up
being forty dollars, So I was right in the middle.
I was in the cheap skate because they had a
cheap skate, middle of the road, and big spender, which
you were, Miranda, So I was right in the middle.
So anything that was a score between thirty and sixty,
they said that they would send me occasional discounts. What
(07:17):
these numbers mean. My ninety dollars oscars forty is basically
how much money we're gonna each spend in any given
visit to this store. Thanks Miranda, Thanks Oscar. They inject
this toxin which destroys the nerve nings responsible for feeling pain.
(07:40):
You know, after that, the pain wears off and you
end up with a need that is desensitized to pain
because the actual neurons have been destroyed, and it's a fundamentalion.
Different way of working on pain than say, joining us
now is Matt Simon, science journalists at Wired. So we're
gonna talk about your latest story about a chemical so
hot it destroys nerve fibers, but in a good way.
(08:02):
In Morocco, there's a cactus like plant that on the
Skullville scale of hotness. It's sixteen billion units. It's ten
thousand times hotter than the Carolina reaper, which is the
world's hottest pepper. It has a chemical in they're called
r t X, and people are saying that it could
help with pain management and not it's not going to
replace opioids or anything like that, but it very well
(08:24):
could help with pain management. What do we know about this?
It's a little color intuitive, isn't it that the hottest
substance on Earth? You said, sixteen billion units on this
Coville scale is pretty much unimaginable. You, of course wouldn't
want to put this in your mouth, but it has
evolved as a defense in this plant, the resin spurge
as a defense against mammals to keep it from getting
(08:45):
chewed on. So I would not want to go down
that road, obviously, But doctors scientists have noticed that this
has a very unique property in that it destroys nerve
endings and not in any old sensory neuron. We have
a bunch of these different kinds of neurons that feel
vibrations or light touch. These are specific sensory neurons for pain.
(09:07):
A specifically temperature. So this molecule resident fair toxin, we'll
just call it r t X but for short now
because that's much easier, binds to these neurons and actually
destroys them. That sounds obviously very painful, but the idea
here is that you could put somebody under anesthesia and
inject this in, say a sword knee, and this will
(09:27):
be for very obviously serious medical problems. It's not just
via a sorni after running a marathon, aspirin or anything
like that. Yeah right, Yeah, this is a considerably more powerful.
So you're you're under for the operation and they inject
this toxin which destroys the nerve endings responsible for feeling pain.
When you wake up, they put you on pain medication
(09:49):
for a couple of our traditional pain medication that is.
But you know, after that, the pain wears off and
you end up with a knee that is desensitized to
pain because the actual neurons have been destroyed. And it's
a fundamentally different way of working on pain than say opioids,
the craziest things that people come up with, you know,
and using this chemical to help treat pain, it could
(10:12):
help free us from the grasp of opioids. We know
that the country is going through an epidemic of this stuff,
with people taking these medications and abusing them. And if
we could use something like this to treat the pain
specifically targeting only these pain sensing nerve endings, you don't
have to take other pills. But one of the anesthesiologists
that you talked to you for the story said, when
you put a hot pepper on your tongue and it
(10:33):
feels like it's burning, it's not because your tongue is
actually on fire. It's just activating those sensory axons that
are being activated as if your tongue had been on fire.
And that's what they're targeting, just those specific pain sensors.
So you can use this r t X, but it
won't affect your sense of touch or sense of feel
in different ways. That's a really important distinction. We're not
(10:54):
destroying all pain. This is a very targeted technique. So
if you have a sore knee, it is only in
the knee, only destroys the pain in that area that
leaves the rest of your body able to feel pain,
unlike opioids, which is in the article. I call it
this new technique is more of a sniper rifle than
a hand garnaid with opioids. You put opioids in the
body and they bind two receptors all over your body,
(11:18):
so you get side effects throughout. Of course, one of
those is addiction. You can't get addicted to this r
t X. It is a usually one time treatment that
lasts many months. In dog models, they're actually seeing that
it killed pain for eighteen months in one dog, which
is pretty remarkable. And there's again there's no risk for addiction. So,
(11:39):
as I have mentioned before, this is a very serious procedure,
and this is still going through trials, so it's not
like it's available. Yeah, it's very serious procedure for very
serious problems. It's not like you have a sore knee
and you just go in because you feel a little down.
But it is a promising treatment to not get rid
of opioids altogether, as nice as that might be, but
(12:00):
for specific applications, this could be a very powerful way
to keep doctors from having to prescribe. As now, one
of the things that was interesting in the story you
did mention that research has been done on dogs with
this r t X, and so it destroys nerve fibers
and takes away the pain, but it's not necessarily permanent, right,
so they do grow back, and that is why it
(12:20):
is a temporary pain relief, but you know, in the
grand scheme of things, it's tempering the center and a
dog it lasted eighteen months. Of course, dogs aren't humans,
and there still needs to be more trials on how
long this would work in human beings. But at the
n I H they're actually working on a different application here,
which is not injecting specifically in the knee, but injecting
(12:42):
into the fluid around the spinal cord. Not specifically in
the spinal cord because I could damage it, but when
you inject this in that more central location, you actually
get a more widespread elimination of the pain. And this
is important for people who are suffering from things like
bone cancer where no other medication is helping them to
(13:03):
relieve pain. So they're going through these trials right now.
Be really interesting to see the results from that using
this as an extremely powerful medication for end of life
care when nothing else is working. And it gets a
little trickier there because you want to be sure that
you're not eliminating all pain, right, because we have pain
for a very good reason. It's an evolutionary tool to
(13:24):
keep us from doing stupid things with our body. We
need it. So there's a tricky balance here. It's it's
using this extremely powerful technique to really destroy pain at
the sensory neuron level, but we have to be careful
about how we do that because we want to keep
these people having a sense of pain, otherwise it could
lead to trouble. So it is it will be interesting
(13:46):
to see in the coming years how these trials shake out,
but it looks very promising, particularly in dog models, and
is the work continues. Yeah, I mean maybe there's a
possibility to dilute it somehow, so that doesn't take that
much of an effect that you said. We don't want
to end pain completely, so maybe there is a possibility
to dilute it. Right. It's a it's a tool. It's
going it's going to be a tool and not a
(14:07):
cure all for the opioid crisis, but it could help
alleviate that by again more specifically targeting pain as opposed
to the hand grenade that is opioids. Matt Simon, science
journalists at Wired thank you very much for joining us,
and thank you for having me. And this one is,
(14:31):
as you said, extremely cool, probably around two d and
thirty eight degrees a low zero fahrenheit, so not a
place where we expect to find any any life or
anything like that. Joining us now is Doyle Rice, Science
reporter at USA Today. The new science news that came
out was that scientists have found a super Earth. It's
a planet much bigger and colder than our world, and
(14:52):
it's been discovered in orbit around a nearby star. What
do we know about this super Earth? Yea, as you said,
it's three or four times as large as the Earth,
and super Earth is defined as a planet that is
bigger than the Earth but still smaller than some of
the giant planets in our Solar system, like Jupiter or
Saturne or Neptune. Super Earth is somewhere in between those two.
(15:14):
And this one is, as you said, extremely cold, probably
around two thirty eight degrees below zero fahrenheit, so not
a place where we expect to find any any life
or anything like that. It's in orbit around Barnard's Star,
which is the closest single star to our Solar System
in the galaxy. Yeah, it's about thirty trillion miles away
(15:34):
from Earth, but as you say, it's relatively speaking, it
is kind of close. It's only what is it six
light years away something, Yeah, something like that. I had
to do the math on that one. The six light years.
People sometimes have trouble figuring that out. So I did
multiply it out and got thirty trillion, which is still
pretty hard to imagine anyway. But it's definitely far away,
(15:56):
but astronomically speaking, fairly close. Now tell the name of
this planet, because it's not a very creative one. Now,
they use a very basic naming system. This one is
called Bernard's Star B, with the B meaning just it's
one of the objects they found in orbit around it's
perhaps I don't know for sure, but Barneage Star A
might be the star itself, and then B is this
(16:19):
object they've probably spotted around it. I know they have
certain rules probably around naming certain these things, but they
could have come up with something a little bit more
creative on that. I get. Yeah, there's a system out there.
I'm assuming there's a couple of astronomical associations that are
in charge of this sort of thing. And I know
sometimes when there's meteors or common they do give them
(16:40):
a little more fun names, sometimes named after famous astronomers
or physicists, but in this case, for now, it's just
Bernard's Star B. And because they have to be precise
with how they describe these things, they say that they're
two percent sure that this is actually a planet there.
How did they discuss there's actually a worldwide effort among
(17:02):
dozens of astronomers and several different telescopes that were looking
for this thing. It was the team international researchers, and
they spent uncounted hours and days looking in the sky
at this one tiny little patch of the sky. And
it was actually a new technique they used this time
to determine that from the best that they could see
(17:23):
that they based on what they're looking at, they could
kind of detect almost for sure that there's something there.
They can't give it sure yet, but based on all
the physics and the science, the best science they have,
it's certainly very likely it is there, and that they'll
keep they'll keep studying it, and as the technology improves,
they should be able to at some point give it
(17:44):
that full The technique they use for this particular observation
that it's probably going to be used again for others.
It's pretty technical, pretty quick as far as the methodology
that they use, but it's certainly state of the art
in astronomy, and this particular one, I actually look back,
I believe it's twenty years worth of data, so a
(18:04):
giant team of astronomers were working full time on this
for quite some time. I've always loved space and space stories. Obviously,
finding a new planet is very exciting. It just you know,
leads to more details of the universe and and how
it was formed in all these things, and obviously everybody
always wants to know if there's life out there and
the hunt for aliens and whatnot. This planet in particular,
(18:25):
probably not so much. It's not it's well beyond the
habitable zone where you can find liquid water and things
like that. Yeah, it's not in that so called Goldilocks
zone where it's either not too cold or not too hot.
This one is in definitely in the too cold for
as far as they know for liquid water to form,
which of course is what scientists believe is necessary for
(18:46):
life as we know it to form. So it's just
this particular one is too cold. But the search goes
on and they're always they're finding new Excel planets. It
seems like every few months now, new ones all over
the place. Again, an Excel planet is a planet outside
of our own solar system. Well, that's great, and we'll
see if you can get that confirmation and hopefully we
(19:08):
can find some new Exo planets out there. That's with astronomy,
as with all science, just to be continued. It's a long,
long process. Doyle Rice, science reporter at USA Today. Thank
you very much for joining us. Thanks appreciate it. All right,
that's it for today. Join us on social media at
(19:30):
Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
us the stories that you're interested in. Follow the Daily
Dive and I heard radio or subscribe wherever you get
your podcast. The Daily Dive is produced by Miranda Moreno
and engineered by Tony Sarantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los
Angeles and this was your Daily Dive
It's Thursday, Novem and this is the daily dive. Check
out this scenario. Two people call customer service at the
same time to complain about the same thing. One person
gets connected to a rep in a few seconds, the
other has to wait on hold for a longer time.
What's up with that? My producer Miranda joins us to
(00:22):
talk about your customer lifetime value, a number many companies
used to determine how much you're worth for the long
term and how nice little treat you. Next, there's a
chemical derived from a cactus like plant in Morocco that
is so hot it destroys nerve fibers, but in a
good way. The substance, known as r t X, has
emerged as a promising new pain killer. It destroys certain
(00:44):
nerve fibers that signal pain and could be a new
tool to help free us from the grasp of opioid.
Matt Simon, science journalists at Wired joins us for the
potential new pain killer. Finally, scientists have discovered a super Earth,
a planet that is much bigger and colder than ours,
and it's orbiting a nearby star. How big three times
the massive Earth? How cold over two thirty degrees below zero.
(01:08):
Doyle Rice, science reporter at USA Today, joins us for
what to know about this super Earth. It's news without
the noise. Let's dive in. But they say that they
generate scores using data points like the number of times
the customer has dialed the call center. This is amazing,
whether this customer has browsed a competitor's website or searched
(01:29):
certain keywords in the past few days. What I mean
now is my producer, Miranda, we found this article and
it caught my eye instantly. It's all about your secret
customers score and how companies in a wide array of
industries are judging you and calculating your value to them.
Everyone with the bank account, a cell phone, online shopping
(01:49):
has this thing called a customer lifetime value score. You
have at least one, probably multiple ones. So let me
give you this scenario, and then Mirandy, you'll come in
and explain what it is. Let's two people call a
customer service line at the same time to complain about
the same thing. It doesn't matter. One person is gonna
wait just a few seconds before getting to a representative,
another one is probably gonna stay on hold. Imagine the
(02:11):
d m V waiting online forever, and this customer Lifetime
Value score, this CLV is what calculates if you're gonna
get up to the front of the line or if
you're the one on hold. So explain to us a
little bit more. With this customer lifetime value score is Miranda.
It all boils down to OSCAR. Essentially, the more profitable
you are to any given company, the better service you're
(02:31):
going to get. Your score can determine the prices you pay,
the products and ads that you see, the perks you receive.
Credit card companies use these scoring to decide what kind
of benefits they're going to give you. If you want
to call up and cancel your card and they say no,
we'll give you another year with no annual fee, that
kind of thing. Yeah, And unlike credit scores, the c
lvs aren't available to consumers and they aren't monitored by
(02:54):
any government agency. So these are all internal numbers, internal
ways that they score your value, and you'll never know.
It's all in the algorithms and how they score you.
And this has been going on for a long time.
It's the modern version of you going into the shop
and the shopkeeper sizing you up and saying this person
is going to spend a lot of money and be
a return customer, and I want to do anything and
(03:15):
everything I can to keep their business. This is just
the modern version of it with all these data points
that everybody uses. Explain a little bit some of these
data points that they collect on you, because there's a
common thing we talked about on the podcast all the time, privacy.
You're a fool to think that you have any type
of privacy. Now you're being monitored on everything you do.
There are hundreds of analytics firms oscar. They calculate your
(03:39):
customer lifetime value, and they all have different ways of
doing it. Some of them put value on shoppers based
on what they spend, and others use data inputs like
your demographic info such as your zip codes or how
many returns you make, the kinds of stores in which
you shop. They score based on transaction history, and they
say that all companies need to determine how customers are
(04:00):
going to behave in the future, and they use that
information to deal with you on a personal basis. They
also weigh you on if you call like a customer
complaint line and you complain too much. You could lower
your score by just by doing that. We'll get into
it in a minute, but they say that specifically, airlines
use that, say oscar. Every time you fly, you get
stuck in the middle seat, and three times out of
(04:22):
the last seven times you flow and they lost your bags,
but you never called to complain. The next time you
go to fly, you may get bumped up to first class.
Whereas I call and complain if the flight attendant brings
me a sprite when I asked for a coke, they're
gonna put me by the bathroom next time. Specifically with
air travel, just because you brought it up, there's certain
data firms that work with them. They can draw on
more than five thousand different data points just to treat
(04:45):
you better, give you those upgrades, that seat upgrade into
first class, five thousand different points that they're looking at.
Let's look at phone service then, because I know a
lot of people, you have to interact with the phone
company a lot of times. How do how do they work?
So wireless carriers like Verizon and Sprint, their lifetime value
determines marketing offers and other perks, so high value customers
that they're concerned are going to jump from say Verizon,
(05:06):
to a T and T or T Mobile, They'll get
routed to the top rated call center employees. And they
didn't get into specifics about how they judged the customers,
but they say that they generate scores using data points
like the number of times the customer has dialed the
call center this is amazing, whether this customer has browsed
competitor's website or searched certain keywords in the past few days.
(05:28):
So say I was sick of a T and T
and I heard T mobile is going to give everybody
unlimited data, and I'm searching at T Mobile. A T
and T is gonna see that. And when I called
to say I'm ending my service, they're gonna give you
a free phone. They're gonna sweeten something for me. Yeah,
it's called your turn score. So it's the chances that
you have of switching to another carrier. The Wall Street
Journal had a really fun quiz. They worked with one
(05:50):
of these data firms. They gave them a simplified version
of how companies could schedule this. So what they did
they had a theoretical clothing company. Both Miranda and I
put are details in there and It was different things
like your age, whether you're male or female, if you
buy your clothes all at once, or if you're like
a seasonal shopper and looking for deals. So, Miranda, what
did your storre being? I'll go last. When I'm answering
(06:13):
these questions, it asks you are you a female? And
I was automatically bumped up to a higher score because
in this hypothetical model, women tend to shop there more frequently.
Another question was if I was married. Yes, I am,
and they say that that about my score up also
because when you're a married woman shopping in the store,
you tend to buy for your husband, you tend to
buy for your kids, buy for more people there. So
(06:34):
I had a really high CLV number of ninety four
dollars and thirty seven cents. Good for you. It was
in the big spender category, which I'm sure my husband
would not be happy to hear about. With that comes
perks like being invited to v I P shopping events,
early access to sales, and better customer service. It said
specifically that it would shoot you up to the top
(06:54):
of the phone list and you'd get handled immediately. I
put mine in obviously at a lower score just because
I was a guy. Right away, my score ended up
being forty dollars, So I was right in the middle.
I was in the cheap skate because they had a
cheap skate, middle of the road, and big spender, which
you were, Miranda, So I was right in the middle.
So anything that was a score between thirty and sixty,
they said that they would send me occasional discounts. What
(07:17):
these numbers mean. My ninety dollars oscars forty is basically
how much money we're gonna each spend in any given
visit to this store. Thanks Miranda, Thanks Oscar. They inject
this toxin which destroys the nerve nings responsible for feeling pain.
(07:40):
You know, after that, the pain wears off and you
end up with a need that is desensitized to pain
because the actual neurons have been destroyed, and it's a fundamentalion.
Different way of working on pain than say, joining us
now is Matt Simon, science journalists at Wired. So we're
gonna talk about your latest story about a chemical so
hot it destroys nerve fibers, but in a good way.
(08:02):
In Morocco, there's a cactus like plant that on the
Skullville scale of hotness. It's sixteen billion units. It's ten
thousand times hotter than the Carolina reaper, which is the
world's hottest pepper. It has a chemical in they're called
r t X, and people are saying that it could
help with pain management and not it's not going to
replace opioids or anything like that, but it very well
(08:24):
could help with pain management. What do we know about this?
It's a little color intuitive, isn't it that the hottest
substance on Earth? You said, sixteen billion units on this
Coville scale is pretty much unimaginable. You, of course wouldn't
want to put this in your mouth, but it has
evolved as a defense in this plant, the resin spurge
as a defense against mammals to keep it from getting
(08:45):
chewed on. So I would not want to go down
that road, obviously, But doctors scientists have noticed that this
has a very unique property in that it destroys nerve
endings and not in any old sensory neuron. We have
a bunch of these different kinds of neurons that feel
vibrations or light touch. These are specific sensory neurons for pain.
(09:07):
A specifically temperature. So this molecule resident fair toxin, we'll
just call it r t X but for short now
because that's much easier, binds to these neurons and actually
destroys them. That sounds obviously very painful, but the idea
here is that you could put somebody under anesthesia and
inject this in, say a sword knee, and this will
(09:27):
be for very obviously serious medical problems. It's not just
via a sorni after running a marathon, aspirin or anything
like that. Yeah right, Yeah, this is a considerably more powerful.
So you're you're under for the operation and they inject
this toxin which destroys the nerve endings responsible for feeling pain.
When you wake up, they put you on pain medication
(09:49):
for a couple of our traditional pain medication that is.
But you know, after that, the pain wears off and
you end up with a knee that is desensitized to
pain because the actual neurons have been destroyed. And it's
a fundamentally different way of working on pain than say opioids,
the craziest things that people come up with, you know,
and using this chemical to help treat pain, it could
(10:12):
help free us from the grasp of opioids. We know
that the country is going through an epidemic of this stuff,
with people taking these medications and abusing them. And if
we could use something like this to treat the pain
specifically targeting only these pain sensing nerve endings, you don't
have to take other pills. But one of the anesthesiologists
that you talked to you for the story said, when
you put a hot pepper on your tongue and it
(10:33):
feels like it's burning, it's not because your tongue is
actually on fire. It's just activating those sensory axons that
are being activated as if your tongue had been on fire.
And that's what they're targeting, just those specific pain sensors.
So you can use this r t X, but it
won't affect your sense of touch or sense of feel
in different ways. That's a really important distinction. We're not
(10:54):
destroying all pain. This is a very targeted technique. So
if you have a sore knee, it is only in
the knee, only destroys the pain in that area that
leaves the rest of your body able to feel pain,
unlike opioids, which is in the article. I call it
this new technique is more of a sniper rifle than
a hand garnaid with opioids. You put opioids in the
body and they bind two receptors all over your body,
(11:18):
so you get side effects throughout. Of course, one of
those is addiction. You can't get addicted to this r
t X. It is a usually one time treatment that
lasts many months. In dog models, they're actually seeing that
it killed pain for eighteen months in one dog, which
is pretty remarkable. And there's again there's no risk for addiction. So,
(11:39):
as I have mentioned before, this is a very serious procedure,
and this is still going through trials, so it's not
like it's available. Yeah, it's very serious procedure for very
serious problems. It's not like you have a sore knee
and you just go in because you feel a little down.
But it is a promising treatment to not get rid
of opioids altogether, as nice as that might be, but
(12:00):
for specific applications, this could be a very powerful way
to keep doctors from having to prescribe. As now, one
of the things that was interesting in the story you
did mention that research has been done on dogs with
this r t X, and so it destroys nerve fibers
and takes away the pain, but it's not necessarily permanent, right,
so they do grow back, and that is why it
(12:20):
is a temporary pain relief, but you know, in the
grand scheme of things, it's tempering the center and a
dog it lasted eighteen months. Of course, dogs aren't humans,
and there still needs to be more trials on how
long this would work in human beings. But at the
n I H they're actually working on a different application here,
which is not injecting specifically in the knee, but injecting
(12:42):
into the fluid around the spinal cord. Not specifically in
the spinal cord because I could damage it, but when
you inject this in that more central location, you actually
get a more widespread elimination of the pain. And this
is important for people who are suffering from things like
bone cancer where no other medication is helping them to
(13:03):
relieve pain. So they're going through these trials right now.
Be really interesting to see the results from that using
this as an extremely powerful medication for end of life
care when nothing else is working. And it gets a
little trickier there because you want to be sure that
you're not eliminating all pain, right, because we have pain
for a very good reason. It's an evolutionary tool to
(13:24):
keep us from doing stupid things with our body. We
need it. So there's a tricky balance here. It's it's
using this extremely powerful technique to really destroy pain at
the sensory neuron level, but we have to be careful
about how we do that because we want to keep
these people having a sense of pain, otherwise it could
lead to trouble. So it is it will be interesting
(13:46):
to see in the coming years how these trials shake out,
but it looks very promising, particularly in dog models, and
is the work continues. Yeah, I mean maybe there's a
possibility to dilute it somehow, so that doesn't take that
much of an effect that you said. We don't want
to end pain completely, so maybe there is a possibility
to dilute it. Right. It's a it's a tool. It's
going it's going to be a tool and not a
(14:07):
cure all for the opioid crisis, but it could help
alleviate that by again more specifically targeting pain as opposed
to the hand grenade that is opioids. Matt Simon, science
journalists at Wired thank you very much for joining us,
and thank you for having me. And this one is,
(14:31):
as you said, extremely cool, probably around two d and
thirty eight degrees a low zero fahrenheit, so not a
place where we expect to find any any life or
anything like that. Joining us now is Doyle Rice, Science
reporter at USA Today. The new science news that came
out was that scientists have found a super Earth. It's
a planet much bigger and colder than our world, and
(14:52):
it's been discovered in orbit around a nearby star. What
do we know about this super Earth? Yea, as you said,
it's three or four times as large as the Earth,
and super Earth is defined as a planet that is
bigger than the Earth but still smaller than some of
the giant planets in our Solar system, like Jupiter or
Saturne or Neptune. Super Earth is somewhere in between those two.
(15:14):
And this one is, as you said, extremely cold, probably
around two thirty eight degrees below zero fahrenheit, so not
a place where we expect to find any any life
or anything like that. It's in orbit around Barnard's Star,
which is the closest single star to our Solar System
in the galaxy. Yeah, it's about thirty trillion miles away
(15:34):
from Earth, but as you say, it's relatively speaking, it
is kind of close. It's only what is it six
light years away something, Yeah, something like that. I had
to do the math on that one. The six light years.
People sometimes have trouble figuring that out. So I did
multiply it out and got thirty trillion, which is still
pretty hard to imagine anyway. But it's definitely far away,
(15:56):
but astronomically speaking, fairly close. Now tell the name of
this planet, because it's not a very creative one. Now,
they use a very basic naming system. This one is
called Bernard's Star B, with the B meaning just it's
one of the objects they found in orbit around it's
perhaps I don't know for sure, but Barneage Star A
might be the star itself, and then B is this
(16:19):
object they've probably spotted around it. I know they have
certain rules probably around naming certain these things, but they
could have come up with something a little bit more
creative on that. I get. Yeah, there's a system out there.
I'm assuming there's a couple of astronomical associations that are
in charge of this sort of thing. And I know
sometimes when there's meteors or common they do give them
(16:40):
a little more fun names, sometimes named after famous astronomers
or physicists, but in this case, for now, it's just
Bernard's Star B. And because they have to be precise
with how they describe these things, they say that they're
two percent sure that this is actually a planet there.
How did they discuss there's actually a worldwide effort among
(17:02):
dozens of astronomers and several different telescopes that were looking
for this thing. It was the team international researchers, and
they spent uncounted hours and days looking in the sky
at this one tiny little patch of the sky. And
it was actually a new technique they used this time
to determine that from the best that they could see
(17:23):
that they based on what they're looking at, they could
kind of detect almost for sure that there's something there.
They can't give it sure yet, but based on all
the physics and the science, the best science they have,
it's certainly very likely it is there, and that they'll
keep they'll keep studying it, and as the technology improves,
they should be able to at some point give it
(17:44):
that full The technique they use for this particular observation
that it's probably going to be used again for others.
It's pretty technical, pretty quick as far as the methodology
that they use, but it's certainly state of the art
in astronomy, and this particular one, I actually look back,
I believe it's twenty years worth of data, so a
(18:04):
giant team of astronomers were working full time on this
for quite some time. I've always loved space and space stories. Obviously,
finding a new planet is very exciting. It just you know,
leads to more details of the universe and and how
it was formed in all these things, and obviously everybody
always wants to know if there's life out there and
the hunt for aliens and whatnot. This planet in particular,
(18:25):
probably not so much. It's not it's well beyond the
habitable zone where you can find liquid water and things
like that. Yeah, it's not in that so called Goldilocks
zone where it's either not too cold or not too hot.
This one is in definitely in the too cold for
as far as they know for liquid water to form,
which of course is what scientists believe is necessary for
(18:46):
life as we know it to form. So it's just
this particular one is too cold. But the search goes
on and they're always they're finding new Excel planets. It
seems like every few months now, new ones all over
the place. Again, an Excel planet is a planet outside
of our own solar system. Well, that's great, and we'll
see if you can get that confirmation and hopefully we
(19:08):
can find some new Exo planets out there. That's with astronomy,
as with all science, just to be continued. It's a long,
long process. Doyle Rice, science reporter at USA Today. Thank
you very much for joining us. Thanks appreciate it. All right,
that's it for today. Join us on social media at
(19:30):
Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
us the stories that you're interested in. Follow the Daily
Dive and I heard radio or subscribe wherever you get
your podcast. The Daily Dive is produced by Miranda Moreno
and engineered by Tony Sarantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los
Angeles and this was your Daily Dive
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